Natasha's Burble

Football Avoidance (Again)

2007-05-20T11:43:00.000+01:00

This is a theme I have written about before. I make no apologies for returning to it because I'm still not a happy bunny!

Yesterday I attended the Barrow Hill Roundhouse Beer Festival. It is a very popular event and the beers were running out very quickly through the afternoon. I have no wish to carp about this or, for that matter, about anything else that didn't quite go according to plan. The lesson to be learned, of course, is that if you want to be able choose from the full range of beers, go on the Friday. I knew this already - I've been before and exactly the same thing has happened - and there was nothing, either, preventing me from making the trip on Friday. But Barrow Hill Roundhouse has no television, big screen or otherwise, and was, therefore, guaranteed to be a football free zone on the afternoon of the 2007 FA Cup Final.

You may be aware that, at the start of this season, I renounced football.

I can, nevertheless, look back with some nostalgia to a different world where the FA Cup Final was the highlight of the sporting year, perhaps of the year - full stop. Come what may, whatever other attractions there may have been, whichever teams were playing, not watching the Cup Final was inconceivable. If, for any reason, you hadn't been able to find a way of watching it, never mind if you'd chosen not to, you would have been a social outcast for weeks afterwards. At least in boy-world, anyway.

Not having had television at home now for some years, watching televised sport means going to the pub for it and I do recall a time when watching football communally in this way was actually a pleasurable activity.

Not any more. It may, of course, just be me getting old or going a bit soft but I really cannot abide the hostile, intimidatory atmosphere that is now an almost universal accompaniment to televised football in pubs, especially, it seems to me, if it involves Ing-er-land or that team down the road in Trafford Borough. Hence my decision, this weekend, to avoid it at all costs.

Nevertheless, I feel most resentful that these mindless cretins, pandered to by rapacious drinks and media industries, should be able to dictate my social calendar. < Insert profanities to taste. >

And the result? Something inside me just can't help but feel rather pleased at the outcome of the match. I fear, however, that such feelings are nothing more than my own expression of the very hostility and pointless animosity I am so decrying in others. The official line, therefore, is that, quite frankly, I don't give a damn.

If I say it often enough I will, hopefully, begin to believe it. I'm sure it will make me feel a better person.

If I'd known ten years ago what I know now...

2007-05-01T21:04:00.000+01:00

...I would have stayed in bed on Thursday, 1 May 1997. Frankly, if I'd known sooner what I knew on 2 May 1997 I certainly would have done a lot of things very differently. I don't suppose it would have actually changed anything but at least I wouldn't have had to carry around the burden of knowing that I helped bring Tony Blair to power with such an uncompromisingly huge majority. I am very sorry.

Trials and Tribulations

2006-09-08T11:14:00.000+01:00

Twice more this week the Marvellous Road Improvement Works (© 2006 Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council) have made me late for trains off Trinity Street station.

As luck would have it on one occasion the train was late anyway (the previously mentioned 09:30 to Manchester Victoria) and I didn't miss it after all. It was, to be precise, seventeen minutes late leaving Bolton. Seventeen minutes, quite honestly, is nothing and for me it was three minutes earlier than I would have been had it been on time and I'd missed it. It would hardly have merited a second thought had it not been for the profusion of mobile phones the delay produced. To hear some of the desperate conversations you'd have thought these peoples' entire lives were being torn apart.

No doubt each could have told their own tale of woe but, FFS, it was only seventeen minutes. Seventeen minutes is hardly enough time to cook breakfast - certainly not enough time for a decent breakfast. It isn't going to bring the world to an end being seventeen minutes late and if only some of those people could see themselves as I saw them: most of them, all of them probably, were just not so important that anyone else would give a shit if they never arrived where they were going at all.

I sort of get the feeling that left on their own, most of these people would have acted entirely rationally and would have been as unconcerned as I was about what was happening, or not happening, as the case may be. But they weren't left on their own, were they? They all had one of those pernicious little cell phones putting them at the beck and call of all and sundry.

It seems to me that so many of us have become slaves to these things. At one and the same time they seem to imbue their owners with a false sense of their own importance while robbing them totally of any independence - the freedom, for example, to be stuck on a train going nowhere and not give a damn.

I'm sorry if I've gone on about this before; no doubt I will again. It's just that in my search for positive life changes, one possibility is to take my work life more seriously. But if it's at the cost of starting to worry myself to death about being seventeen minutes late then the answer to taking that avenue must be thanks but no thanks. Not for all the tea in China.

Now for some breakfast and then another attempt to catch a train from Bolton! If I miss it today...

Well, I guess I'll just have to wait for the next one, or catch a bus.

Written while listening to...

Panufnik : Sinfonia Mistica

In an Earlier Installment of Natasha's Burble...

2006-08-30T22:36:00.000+01:00

...you may recall that I'd been ill - a bit. I'm happy to tell you that I had, indeed, made a full recovery and, despite having tested things to the limit, there have been no repeat performances. More than one heavy beer outing has gone surprisingly well and surprisingly uneventfully. I put this down to having had a 'clarity of purpose' - knowing what I wanted to achieve, having a plan and, perhaps more importantly, not losing sight of the fact that there are limits to how much beer a girl can drink before judgement and coordination start to fail and trouble starts.

There is, nevertheless, something not quite right. Somehow, I don't know, being too careful sort of takes the fun out of it all; it becomes just a little too routine and predictable - and I shall come back to this in a moment. The other thing is that this 'clarity of purpose' only works when I'm left to my own devices. Having to accommodate other people into any plans inevitably means extending my plans rather than adapting them and then I'm back to overdoing it and then things start to go awry again. The moral, of course, is that I should make more time for other people and cut out some of the 'me time' and perhaps make some of the 'me time' a little less centred on beer all the time. I should, perhaps, write a little more often in this blog or put a bit more into my half finished web site.

Another thing is that these instances clarity of purpose begin and end with the beer trip - just the getting there, the beer and the getting home. Which is great if that's all I want to do with every minute of my free time - but it isn't. I feel I need to, I don't know, spread out a little. It's not just that, from time to time, I'd like to come home sober and wake up the morning after bright as a button (I believe some people do), it's that I feel I've got into a routine that makes one beer trip follow another like night follows day. There's an inevitability about it. The one day recently I'd set aside a day for a non-beer trip, I managed to oversleep (yes, for the obvious reason) and ended up not having time to go.

But there is more to it than even that. I've almost completely lost sight of the bigger picture. Rather than the big life changes that I have talked about here before, I seem to be digging myself deeper into the rut that I was supposed to be using this year to climb out of. The clarity of purpose that's needed to put together a new 'big picture' is totally lacking. It might be that I don't see enough of the big picture to have a clear purpose about it, maybe I'm still too afraid of taking that road less travelled or maybe just too bone idle to get myself out of the comfort of the familiar. I don't know.

And guess what I'll be doing tomorrow...

Natasha, you need to get a grip.

Written while listening to...

Frederic Chopin : Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor

Serendipity

2006-08-30T22:25:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I've written anything here; it's been a while since I did anything out of the ordinary enough that seemed worth the while finding the time to write about. More about that later.

I'm not sure I fully understand the meaning of the word serendipity. Something that happened this morning occurred to me as being serendipitous but on reflection, is serendipity not more in the way of repeatedly making lucky finds, rather than just a one-off bit of good fortune? I don't know.

Anyhow, there was me making my way to work with every prospect of making the 09:30 train from Bolton to Manchester Victoria, when the bus got stuck in traffic. The cause of the traffic jam - road works for what, no doubt, Bolton's Borough Engineer regards as the dog's bollocks of road widening schemes. Consequently I missed the 09:30. As luck would have it the 09:50 was cancelled, leaving me having to wait for the 10:02. All in all that means Mr Borough Engineer's road works cost me 32 minutes of my life. No big deal, I guess, though I suppose not everyone would see it like that. What I would like to know, though, is how bloody good this new road layout will have to be for me to ever get those 32 minutes back? Let's face it, Mr Borough Engineer, you're a wanker because every inch of your new road will be as full of fucking cars, within months, as it is now - long before I've ever got my 32 minutes back. But I guess you know that already, don't you. It's just that you'd be out of a job if you ever admitted it.

While I was quietly (I hope) ranting away to myself about that, something most unusual came into view heading north towards the station...

31 233 light engine at Bolton

It's many a long year since I've seen a class 31 in Trinity Street station. That's what I call serendipity.

Damage Limitation

2006-08-07T21:11:00.000+01:00

I thought today was never going to end or at least it seemed for much too long that getting back to the sanctuary of home in more or less the same state I left it would be beyond me.

I have, you see, been a little poorly over the weekend and I do not think it would have been unreasonable, under the circumstances, to have had the day of work sick. Except that, even at the best of times, I prefer not to have to admit such weakness and certainly not on a Monday morning when the obvious conclusion, that I would hardly blame anyone from drawing, is that Natasha had been a little overindulgent again.

True, I did have my usual Friday session but nothing untoward by my standards. Indeed, had I not fallen asleep on the bus, I would have been home unusually early. As it was, I managed to get a last slurp before ambling home but still quite early for me. I made some supper, briefly surfed the net, went to bed and, so far as I recall, went to sleep.

By around two thirty on Saturday morning, thought, I was awake with that sure and certain knowledge I was about to be sick. You may be aware, if you have noticed my recently published Beer Scooping Rules, that being ill has implications and this, even in the urgency of the moment, did not entirely escape my attention. One good thing, however. about being halfway to ninety instead of only halfway to thirty is that you know, come what may, resistence is futile. Unless, of course, you are prepared to spend the next morning, feeling like shit, on your hands and kness cleaning up misdirected waste product from impossible nooks and crannies, not to mention hair, clothes and treasured possessions. Damage limitation is the first order of business.

Without, however, going into any more graphic detail, it soon became clear - to me - that this was not normal "overindulgence re-balancing"; I was really ill!

Although by this morning the worst symptoms of my mystery illness had stabilized to the point where I judged it safe to venture out for an indefinite period, two days without proper food or sleep had certainly taken their toll.

Still, the main thing is that I survived. Something inoffensive to eat now and an early night should just about see me back to firing on all cylinders tomorrow, so no harm done, hopefully.

Am I right in believing, though, that I just happened, by total coincidence, to have picked up a "tummy bug" on a beer night or am I in denial of an obvious truth? Who knows? Anyway, don't be rushing out to buy any get well cards.

Written while listening to...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Mass in C major, K317 ('Coronation')

What a pity that about the only decent period of sleep I managed over the weekend was during a broadcast recording of Bruckner Seven. When it's not your day, it's not your day.

South

2006-07-30T12:21:00.000+01:00

Looking South from Lancaster station

I've been meaning to offer an explanation for this seemingly pointless photograph for a while. It has been suggested that perhaps there was an ‘invisible' locomotive at the end of the platform that only I could see! I did, however, take it with this very blog entry in mind; it just took a while to get round to writing it.

In fact, this picture had its origins in a conversation I had with a dear friend who, shall we say, doesn't share my enthusiasm for the escape of travel. He'd been away for a few days on a trip somewhere t'other side o' Pennines. He told me that, while he'd enjoyed it, he was always glad to get back home and that he always felt a sort of reassurance when familiar landmarks come into view. Like this one, I guess...

Holcombe Hill and Peel Tower

I sort of understand where he's coming from. That view of Peel Tower is one that has been familiar to me for as long as I can remember and has always been a sign of getting near to Bury. Except that for me Bury was a very long way from home when I first knew this view.

As you may have gathered, I like to get out and about; home, as cosy as my little abode is, is not somewhere I have any desire to spend a great deal of time. It is always with heavy heart that I turn for home wherever I may have been and it was in such spirit that South was taken - a melancholic view of the homeward road because, while there may be places to call at on the way, the train south out of Lancaster is inevitably the beginning of the end of a journey.

Perhaps next time I go I should take a happy photograph from the other end of the platform and call it North.

Enough's Enough

2006-07-23T11:15:00.000+01:00

Another eminently satisfying trip to the Prince of Wales draws to a close as Class 142 unit, 142 054, bound for Preston approaches Foxfield station in South Cumbria.

My recollections of what actually happened on this journey are, well, to say the least, unclear. Anyhow, my local football team, Bury, were, by coincidence, playing a pre-season friendly at Barrow and the faithful followers of the mighty Shakers staggered their way onto the train. They were drunk as I don't know what (yes, I know, the pot calling the kettle...) and they were some of the most pig ignorant, boorish scum it's been my misfortune to come across for a long time. Whatever was said or done, I don't recall, though I don't think any of it actually involved me. Suffice to say, by the time the train arrived at Lancaster, I'd had enough and bailed out. Even one of Mr Branson's Virmin Pandemonium units had to be better than putting up with that all the way back to Bolton.

I dare say this human trash is not representative of the majority of Bury FC supporters or football supporters in general. Nevertheless, it's all rather helped reinforce my rather jaundiced view of modern football and I'm afraid that after some forty years of following the game, you can shove it. I have renounced football once and for all.

Blonde Moment

2006-07-22T00:01:00.000+01:00

OWL BREWING COMPANY (Oldham) : Blonde Moment (4.3%)
slurped in Bar Fringe this evening. Thankfully there's not been anything remotely approaching a real life blonde moment happened to me recently. Probably something to do with the heat; too busy trying to stay cool to get into any mischief!

How Not to Sell

2006-07-08T14:16:00.000+01:00

This week, through the post, I received some junk mail trying to flog me a well known slimming product, though not well known enough for me to have remembered actually what it was. Junk mail is junk mail and this, like most, was probably sent out with fairly random scatter gun approach. I couldn't help thinking, though, that maybe, given the slightly above average cost of the mailshot (of which more anon) a little more sophistication had been applied and that their advertising agency had got hold of a mailing list of women known to buy clothes of a certain size, perhaps. In other words they were saying to me "we know you're a fucking fat cow, so buy some of this."

Cheeky bastards.

Anyhow, not to dwell on that too much, it would normally have been straight into the shredder with shit like that, except this thing was one of those that when you open it up it plays a tune. I perhaps might have appreciated the total lack of irony in something like

Who ate all the pies,
Who ate all the pies,
You fat bastard, you fat bastard,
You ate all the pies.

but it was some piece of "popular music" the significance of which, if any was intended, was completely lost on me.

So with all that crap in it, I had to break it up before it went in the shredder and I pulled out of it not one but three little alkaline batteries. No doubt tens of thousands of these things went straight into the bin and so now all that number of batteries (times three, less the three that I salvaged), hardly used, are on their way to contaminating landfill sites up and down the country.

And for what?

Drought, what drought?

2006-07-02T18:15:00.000+01:00

I don't know what the weather's like in your corner of the Real World but here is South East Lancahsire we are having the absolute Mother of All Thunder Storms. It's really quite exciting!

They think it's all over...

2006-07-02T14:15:00.000+01:00

Well, it is if you're and En-ger-land "supporter."

I would not like anyone to think that I am in any way anti-England; I am as disappointed as anyone at the abject capitulation of the England cricket team over the past few weeks. I am not, either, as I may have indicated before, anti-football - I just hate what has become of football and all that surrounds it. However, in much the same way as I reported after Wet Spam's demise in the FA Cup Final, England's exit from the FIFA World Cup yesterday, I'm afraid to say, put a great big grin on my face. In fact I believe, in the vernacular, I ‘laughed my cock off.' (Would that it were that easy.)

Anyhow, let me say that even while I was laughing at all the flag waving numpties crying into their shite lager, I genuinely felt pain for the actual players. It is fair to ask, I think, owing to the ludicrous salaries they're paid, whether they really have the hunger and desire to win and, indeed, if club football in this country hasn't become more important than international. I think, nevertheless, that yesterday's scenes should not have left anyone in any doubt that those lads wanted it.

So why then, yet again, did they fail?

Anyone who follows sport (rather than their team or nation) will know that the difference between a great player and a true champion is that the champion does not ‘bottle it' at the vital moment. England's footballers, as evidenced by their unblemished record of failure in World Cup penalty shoot outs, do not have what it takes to perform when that sort of pressure is applied.

Maybe it is because they are simply under a pressure created by our jingoistic media and flag waving numpties that is too great for anyone to cope with. Perhaps, because of the frenetic, emotional way football is played in this country, English players have completely lost the ability to focus on the simple technical aspects of the game.

A clear headed Steven Gerrard, of course, would probably never have attempted to score that death-or-glory FA Cup Final goal but when it came to the clinical execution of a simple penalty kick yesterday he was found wanting. You may well say you can't have it both ways. Maybe not but until a way can be found of reducing the hysteria that surrounds the England football team or until the players can find a way of blocking it out and playing inside their own spheres of calm when the chips are down, they will probably never win anything ever again.

They could, of course, if they really were the best side in the world, score more goals than the opposition in normal play and not need to do the penalty shoot out thing but, while they do expose themselves to it, they prove time and again that they lack the cold blooded killer instincts of true champions.

More Sport

2006-06-17T11:31:00.000+01:00

Derbyshire County Cricket Club
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

Just to prove that I do retain an interest in live sport, here's a picture I took at recent 2nd XI county game at Derby. It was a real ‘one man and his dog' crowd but I think the dog may have gone home...

Anyhow, this is the first time I've tried to cobble together a panorama in Photoshop and I'm quite pleased with it for a first effort. A long way to go, though, before I'll be attempting anything as ambitious as Siobhan's.

World Cup Avoidance - An Update

2006-06-17T11:20:00.000+01:00

Having studiously avoided newspapers and overheard conversations I finally found out the score of the Eng-er-land game at 10:47. Of course, as luck would have it, I was told it by someone who, for all the years I've known him, has never once shown the slightest interest in footie. At the risk of mixing sporting metaphors, it was completely out of left field!

As it turns out, though, the score he mentioned (or at least what I thought he said) was wrong so I would like to claim that I didn't actually get confirmation until I came upon it in a discarded tabloid in the pub at 19:00. That, I reckon, means I went just about a full day without finding out the score.

Written while listening to...

Gustav Mahler : Symphony No.2 'Resurrection'

A new recording by Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on Radio 3's CD Review. No doubt that will be finding its way into my collection before long!

Avoiding the World Cup

2006-06-16T09:22:00.000+01:00

If you read my earlier post you will know that I have ‘issues' surrounding the FIFA World Cup but I would not like anyone to be left with the impression that I am anti-football or anti-football supporter in some way. Far from it. Over the years I have been a loyal follower of the game and my local clubs. I'm afraid, though, all the hype and hysteria surrounding this overblown marketing jamboree masquerading as a major sporting tournament leaves me completely cold.

Just as an exercise in bloody mindedness, therefore, I decided to see how long I could avoid finding out the result of last night's England (sorry, En-ger-land) match. So far, just past nine o'clock in the morning, I can honestly say that I have no idea how it ended. I don't suppose this state of affairs will survive first contact with the free newspapers strewn all over the bus floor when I leave home shortly and no doubt some wag reading this will get it into their head to comment or e-mail it to me in some subtle way that will make it impossible to avoid, so further resistance, I fear, is futile. Apart from anything else, this self imposed isolation means I have absolutely no idea what else has been going on in the world - that is, of course, assuming that any of the media can be bothered with anything other than football at the moment.

Written while listening to...

Ralph Vaughan Williams : Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

The music of Vaughan Williams is often said to evoke a quintessential Englishness and that is a sentiment I share, even though it is probably an Englishness that never really existed at all. It is certainly not an Englishness that will have been portrayed by the knuckle dragging, flag waving chavs that were no doubt at large in the streets of England and Germany last night.

Don't just book it

2006-06-12T22:45:00.000+01:00

Still in Leicester, I snapped this photograph of Thomas Cook outside the railway station during my recent visit. Being something of an ‘independent traveller', travel agents are not people whose services I avail myself of very often, so I've never really given much thought to their origins. Having taken his picture, however, I thought I might just check up on Mr Cook so I might at least have something to put on the caption. Turns out that he was born in Melbourne (Derbyshire, not Australia), his link with Leicester being that that's where he started up his travel business.

Turns out that it all started through organising trips for the local temperance society that he founded. Now, as you know, temperance is not something that I'm any too good at, so I'll definitely be checking the small print if I ever find myself booking a trip with Thomas Cook in the future. I'm quite amused, now though, by the irony of having had a beer or few before I took that picture.

It reminds me, too, of the time someone who was boring me senseless crapping on about how great their local butcher's shop was suddenly remembered I'm a vegetarian and started to apologise profusely for any offence. "My dear friend," I said, "I'm not in the least offended; butchers' shops, to me, are like temperance bars: I just don't do them."

Scum

2006-06-12T21:26:00.000+01:00

I've added another couple of railway photographs to my flickr photostream. Nothing remarkable in that but I would have you note the damaged windscreen of this Midland Mainline HST power car, seen at Leicester on Friday. I assume it was en route to Nottingham because if it had been going to Sheffield I should have been sat on it and not watching it leave. I was a bit wibbly-wobbly at the time so I can't be certain about that but after the previous two encounters with Sheffield it was probably just as well that I decided, like the Wise Men, to go home by another route. Anyway, that's by-the-by.

I cannot, I'm afraid, offer any explanation as to how 43 104 came upon this misfortune. Anything I offer here is pure speculation but that I may be wrong in no way, I think, diminishes the point I want to make. Whatever the explanation, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that you have come to the same conclusion as me and sometimes when I see things like this it is very hard not to think thoughts such as "hanging's too good for them."

I would like, however, to push the train of thought (no pun intended, honest) and supposition a little further. Imagine, if you will, these public spirited chavs hurling rocks off a bridge somewhere in the Home Counties or the East Midlands last Friday afternoon and see how much of a leap of the imagination it is to picture those same little shits draped in the flag of St George on Saturday.

That's why I fucking hate it when Eng-er-land play in major competitions and that's why I, like the Scots, will be cheering on anyone but England. It is at times like this I am ashamed to be English, to even have to admit that I am English. English, me? No, mate, I'm an American.

Mmm... Maybe not a much better option, I fear.

Written while listening to...

Arvo Pärt : Tabula rasa

It's not easy to get angry when listening to such peaceful music so just think how ranty this post could have been!

Houston, we have a problem

2006-06-03T10:22:00.000+01:00

Let me explain that my brief post from last Saturday morning was not the result of any calamity or illness. I was sure drunk but no more so than might have been expected and not dangerously so, at least not so far as I'm aware. No, I was just angry; angry at myself for having, through drink, lost something.

I lost something that was, in reality, of no value; of no practical, monetary, aesthetic or sentimental value. I lost a thing that could be of no use or value to anyone else. I lost a thing that took no more effort to replace than to reach out another from the drawer. I lost a thing of so little value that any effort to retrieve it would have outweighed the benefit. It was certainly not the sort of lost thing that would have been remotely interesting enough to end up in Emily's shop.

I was angry, not for the loss itself but for the fact that I allowed myself, despite all my best intentions, to get so drunk that I couldn't help it happening. I'm lucky, I guess, that it wasn't something important, like credit cards or house keys but that's not the point. It's the fact that it happened at all when I was so determined that it wouldn't; that I couldn't help myself from making choices that a few hours earlier would have seemed unwise or at least best avoided. Choices that would lead me down the same ill-fated streets as the previous week.

Anyway, it's made me take a big step back and have a good hard look at just WTF is going on.

From some points of view I can almost convince myself that I have absolutely no problem with drink whatsoever. I don't drink every day; I don't crave drink when it's not around; I never drink at home and I am very choosy about what I do drink. Trouble is, once I've started, I never know when to stop. There's a sort of feedback loop in operation.

The obsessive desire to scoop new beers means new beers are scooped whenever the opportunity arises; having had a few drinks the normal sensibilities about limits and consequences break down and the obsession then sees no barriers. The whole exercise becomes one of pushing the limits as far as they will go. It's not good. At least some of the outcomes are not good.

I think it's the loss of control rather than the consequences of the loss of control the frightens the shit out of me.

Also, it's not just that I have these little ‘incidents' from time to time (over the years, it has not been unknown for part of the journey home to be in an ambulance via Manchester Royal Infirmary so, as I said, things this time could have been a lot worse) it's the sheer amount of resource that this little hobby consumes. Let's not even begin to think about the money just for the moment [I used to have lots of money; some I spent on wine, women(‘s clothes) and song, the rest I wasted]. It's the time. I'm one of those people who never seems to have enough time to do everything that I want to do; indeed I seem never to have enough time to do the things that I need to do. I seem at the moment (after essentials like sleep and work) to do nothing but drink or be planning a drinking trip or recovering from a drinking trip or, as now, writing about it.

It isn't, though, any use just moping about it. I need to do something about it.

I must hasten to add, that, in the cold light of day, a complete renunciation of beer is not an option. I know that making life affecting change and taking the road less travelled is becoming something of a leitmotif around here at the moment but to go down a road with no pub on it really would be a road less travelled for me indeed.

No, let's not be um... hasty about this. Let's just say that my intention at the moment is to look at options for filling more of My Time with things other than beer.

The thing with beer ticking, like any other ‘ticking', be it football grounds, railway locomotives or whatever else, there are certain personality types for whom this sort of thing becomes an all consuming obsession. I'm led to believe this is mainly a boy-thing so (a) that means it's not entirely my fault or (b) it proves I really am only a boy in a dress and not a girl trapped in a boy's body.

It means, though, that if it is Boy's personality flaws that are driving this madness and only my ‘can do' attitude that facilitates it, then all it needs is for me to give Boy a good kick up the arse now and again. If, on the other hand, Boy has imbued me with that same character flaw then we may be up shit creek without a paddle!

Anyhow, yesterday must have been the first Friday in ages that I didn't have a drink at all. Can't say that I really missed it (though I might do if I thought I'd never be out on a Friday night ever again) and I really do feel a hell of a lot more lively than I normally do at this time of a Saturday morning - indeed there have been plenty of periods when I didn't even realise that Saturday's had mornings.

It feels quite encouraging but that doesn't allow for the fact that there's not a lot going on this weekend - I'll not rant on about how crap Stockport Beer Festival is, save to say that I wouldn't have been going anyway. Next week though, there's another festival at Out of the Vaults in Leicester. Now behaving in the face of that temptation will be an altogether different challenge.

Written while listening to...

Dmitri Shostakovich : Piano Concerto No.2 in F major, op.102

It might be as well to admit that I started writing this last Tuesday and got interrupted by a call to... the pub and I entirely blame Boy for that.

Fuck

2006-05-27T02:21:00.000+01:00

I'm back.

And I'm really really close to renouncing the demon d..drink...

Undeterred

2006-05-26T09:23:00.000+01:00

Undeterred by last week's mishap, I'm just about to set off for Newark Beer Festival. Hopefully, on my return tonight, I shall be able to report a completely uneventful trip; otherwise I'll probably be asleep or unconscious in a ditch somewhere in Nottinghamshire.

TV

2006-05-24T20:55:00.000+01:00

Diligently avoiding the temptation to make any obvious puns on the confusion between TV for television and TV for transvestite, I will, if I may, refer back to last weekend's escapade in Sheffield. The one thing that always intrigues me when I stay anywhere away from home is the television.

I don't have an idiot's lantern myself. I did do. In fact, when I was a kid, I think the whole family was fairly obsessed with television. From what I can tell, the box is still rarely off at my parents' house. I'm not sure they've yet sunk, even in retirement, to watching the daytime stuff but they do watch all the staple nonsense such as Rear Enders, Constipation Street and Enema Dale.

I'm not sure if I've remembered those names right, somehow, but it has been a while. Like I said, I did have a television until one day, it just sort of stopped working.

Now, as I had never lived anywhere before where there wasn't television, I automatically put repair or replacement at the top of the ‘to do list' and... And, well that was that really. My innate tendency to procrastinate whenever possible meant that I never even got as far as assessing the feasibility of repairing or the cost of replacing. Within days I realised that I really didn't miss it at all and I still don't. Now radio, that would be an entirely different matter and I just have no idea what I'd do without the wonders of the world wide web.

So, anyway, there I am, in a hotel room in Sheffield, going nowhere until I'd had at least two good strong cups of coffee and another couple of hours rest after that. And there was, of course, a television set. With me, I just put it down to the novelty value but there is something, I'm sure, about a television set that sort of compels you to switch it on.

Anyhow, what an absolute pile of dross. Two things struck me as being particularly bad. Rolling news and the kids' stuff. The actual news (probably BBC) and Sky Sports News were simply thirty minutes of trite editorial content repeated ad nauseam. How different to, say, the Today Programme on Radio 4 that can fill three whole hours without a hint of hesitation, repetition or deviation (as they might say). OK, I exaggerate, but I'm sure you know what I mean. The only good thing I can say about it is that Steven Gerrard's goal in the Cup Final does bear a few repetitions.

As for the kids' stuff, that really was dreadful. So bland and inoffensive you could hardly even call it moving wallpaper. I know a lot of children's televison is criticised for being nothing more than cartoons and puppetry but hasn't that always been so? None of this poo, though, could hold a candle to stuff like Wacky Races, the Clangers or even dear old Bagpuss. None of this modern stuff has any of the originality, individuality or subtle irony of the things I remember. (I know I said, not so very long ago, that I didn't remember Bagpuss but I have seen it now.)

Maybe it's just me getting old but I will put forward one last thought to try and prove my point. Whenever people talk about television (other than the immediate stuff they've watched the night before), even though I've not properly watched anything for years, I always know what they're on about. I have a colleague at work who can turn any conversation to a quotation from a televison game show and I know just where he's coming from...

You wanted show business but it's gone in spelling.
For two hundred pounds, spell ‘hermaphrodite'

Actually, hermaphrodite isn't that hard to spell, is it? Is he trying to say something or am I just working on the wrong level of irony? Or just paranoid?

Anyway, modern television: you can keep it. It is shite.

Is it time for The Archers yet?

Beer Scooter Malfunction

2006-05-21T22:44:00.000+01:00

I was, to put is mildly, a little bit concerned this morning to find myself not in my own bed.

What was most worrying was not that I managed to miss the last train home from Sheffield and two later trains that would have given passage home via Leeds, but that I don't have the slightest recollection of how it happened. One minute I'm slurping my umpteenth beer of the day, the next I'm tucked up all nice and snug in a very comfortable bed.

Trouble is, when my multiple obsessions coincide it all just gets too much...

A trip on one of my favourite type of old bus...

...to a railway museum...

...that's holding a beer festival.

There's only so much excitement a girl can stand.

At least I had the presence of mind not to do anything really stupid like try to walk home.

Priorities

2006-05-19T09:15:00.000+01:00

It's not like me to miss a beer festival at the Black Horse, Darwen. Lest anyone should be wondering if I'd already wandered down some other road less travelled, I will have to tell you that I was following an even more well worn path yesterday; I was attending a performance of Mahler 3 by the Hallé at the Bridgewater Hall. It takes a lot, even more than a Black Horse beer fest, to come between me and Mahler!

The mezzo-soprano, Birgit Remmert, sang beautifully but let me tell you, just to see the dress she was wearing was worth the ticket price all on its own. A short sleeve turquoise¹ number - but spangly-sparkly like you wouldn't believe. I want one!

I have to meet with some tosser government minister this morning, then normal service will be resumed at the Black Horse this afternoon.

¹ Turquoise is a rough approximation; I'm none too good at telling blues and greens.

The Road not Taken

2006-05-18T07:55:00.000+01:00

Poetry, I fear, is one of the things that my dreadful education did it's best to keep me from; a denial that I have not yet been properly able to overcome. I am, therefore, in the somewhat unaccustomed position of having a poem I'd like to quote...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road not Taken by Robert Frost.

It sort of sums up how I like to think I have chosen to live my life - taking roads less travelled by. It is a maxim that has served to give me a certain peace of mind over the years but I feel that it is one I have not always properly applied. Some less travelled roads I have avoided because they seemed too difficult or led in directions too far away from familiar territory. I feel, though, that am now in that yellow wood where the two roads diverge. If I take the one less travelled by now, I hope, or fear, that it will make all the difference and nothing will ever be the same again.

Allow me first to fill you in with a little background on this for a moment.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I had ambition. When I was little and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up my answer would be "Prime Minister." (It hadn't occurred to me then that all I would really want to be was a big girl.) Unrealistic as that ambition might have been (let's face it, far fewer people become PM, or even cabinet ministers, than, say, win the Lottery) I did, as you may know, end up dabbling in politics for a while.

I'd like to think that, despite my childhood fantasy, I went into politics with the best of motives, not like so many these days who seem to do it solely as a selfish career move. I often wonder, though, whether or not I couldn't have made it further than I actually did. My innate talents meant that, although my views may not have held popular acclaim during a time when all the old certainties of left-of-centre politics were being swept aside, I could still command some respect because I got things done; always a good trick in politics if you can pull it off. I guess, though, in some ways, I could never take myself quite seriously enough to be have made it as a ‘proper' politician. (I think what I might be trying to say here is that I could never see myself as far up my own arsehole as seemed to be necessary to achieve political success.) Ultimately, however, the fact that the political zeitgeist was moving away from me so far and so fast meant that what I was doing was increasingly at odds with what I believed. I'm not one to bite my lip; if something needs saying, I say it and fuck the consequences. In the end this tension led, inevitably I suppose, to the enormous girly strop that saw me press the self destruct button on any political ambition I may have had. I have not, I must tell you, regretted getting out when I did; not even for a moment.

Getting back to the main point of this post, though; all that was some six or seven years ago now and since then my life has, well, sort of drifted along on the currents of whatever whims have taken my fancy. During that time I have had no major ambitions to fulfil and while I don't necessarily think this has been bad in itself, I feel now I need some changes in my life. Change for the sake of change is something I would normally eschew but I feel, I don't know, sort of restless.

I think, in the past, I have been somewhat (and I hesitate to use the word) conservative when it has come to making life choices. When I say that, I mean, more than anything, that I have tended to avoid risk, to take safe, well tried options. As much as I may have outwardly tended to show an unorthodox, anti-establishment approach to life, I've always done so in a manner that's left options open to make an orderly retreat, as it were, to safety and comfort. I'm not sure I want or need that anymore.

So where do I imagine the road less travelled by may lead? It is a trait of mine not to announce plans, in that I ever have any. All part of my safe, no-risk approach, I suppose; no hostages to fortune and all that. Nevertheless, I fear that my restlessness is building towards something of a crisis from where things must move on.

Shall I take the road less travelled by that will make all the difference?

More Schadenfreude

2006-05-14T08:22:00.000+01:00

I can't say I'm a great enthusiast for the game of football (soccer) these days (too much hype, too much froth and too much money - Murdoch money - has IMHO ruined the game) but I do, nevertheless, still take a interest in what's going on. I didn't watch yesterday's FA Cup Final (I've alawys been more of a cricket girl anyways) but I always think that the penalty shoot-out is a particularly cruel way to see your team loose a big game, especially when you've had the agony of conceding a last minute equalizer. But, when it's Wet Spam on the receiving end, what self-respecting Millwall supporter isn't going revel in such misfortune!

The only thing that could have topped it would have been if that traitor Sheringham had missed one of the penalties...

Bitter and twisted? Moi??

Written while listening to...

Francis Poulenc : Concerto for Piano

Anonymity

2006-05-07T09:08:00.000+01:00

I have always taken some care not to reveal Boy's ‘real life' identity when I shove stuff up on the web as Natasha. I have, however, always accepted that sooner or later my cover would be blown.

The other day I did let it slip to a friend who I'm sure knows nothing of Natasha that my well-regarded Beer Lists could be found on the web, if you knew where to look. I left it at that and didn't think too much more about it. Today, I got to thinking that, if our positions had been reversed, I would be quite intrigued about a website who's URL I hadn't been given. So what would I put into Google if I wanted to find the site?

Shit! My first guess brought Natasha's Website up as No 1 entry. Can't say I quite know how I feel about this or even what I should be feeling. We'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out, I suppose.

Am I going to do anything about it? Absolutely nothing, except write about it here.

Do I wish I'd been more careful? Best I can remember, the conversation had drifted to a point where the only way out would have been to (a) lie (not the way I do things) and (b) admit to not sharing ‘gen' - which is an even more heinous crime! For good or ill I think I played it as cool as was humanly possible. It could turn out that nothing will ever come of it, of course; it could, on the other hand, start a chain of events - good, bad or indifferent - that will change things for ever.

One would also have to keep in mind the possibility that I did it deliberately, albeit in a semi-subconscious sort of way. Not, I think, in a "hey, look at me, I'm a trannie" coming-out sort of way; just part of phase I seem to be going through at the moment of needing changes in my life, in a sort of "for good or ill things will never be the same again" sort of way. I almost feel I'll be more disappointed if nothing does come of it.

Written while listening to...

John Foulds : Keltic Lament, Op.29, no.2

Not a composer I'd ever heard of before but it turns out he was born in Manchester, so he can't be all bad!

Weight Loss (Part 2)

2006-05-07T08:41:00.000+01:00

You may recall a little while ago, I reported on my attempt at losing some weight. I have now lost a little under 4kg but progress has not been at all steady. There have been two significant upward spikes in the graph of late. I don't just mean day-to-day, which is highly erratic and totally unpredictable anyway, but the moving average. I feel this may be symptomatic of a desire not to become obsessive about it, which would, I'm sure, be most unhealthy, slipping over into an attitude of not being arsed about it at all.

More exercise, Natasha. More exercise and less time sat in front of screens and bars, more time taking in the Spring air. That should sort it.

We'll see.

Written while listening to...

Felix Mendelssohn : Overture - The Hebrides

Schadenfreude

2006-05-06T12:25:00.000+01:00

While not wishing to indulge in any anti-Blair ranting [correction: I'd love to indulge, I just thought it better to spare you the trouble of reading it] I cannot help but have a satisfied smirk to myself at newLabour's abysmal showing in this weeks local elections.

It is not, however, joy unbridled. Fun as it is to see Blair squirming in his latest woe and making a total hash of his attempts at clinging to power, it is definitely not good to see the Tories back in the ascendant and it is seriously not good that the far right have gained the credibility of electoral success. What was most disappointing personally, though, was that two very good friends of mine lost their seats on our local council. Not only that but one of them managed to lose a ward that, not so very long ago (but before boundary changes stripped it of all its middle class bits), Labour won at a stroll with a flaky transvestite for a candidate.

Ah, those were the days - the days before I had my great girly strop and stomped off the political stage once and for all.

Written while listening to...

Dmitri Shostakovich : Violin Concerto No.2 in C sharp minor, Op.129

As if to prove the point...

2006-04-24T00:49:00.000+01:00

...that nothing is ever straight forward, you will, if you were quick, have seen that I managed to post the previous entry three times. Don't know how that happened!

There can be only one

2006-04-24T00:46:00.000+01:00

No! The world is not ready for one, never mind TWO.

Anyway, it's been a while since I posted anything here. Sorry about that but things have been a little hectic chez Natasha of late and it doesn't take much to throw my routine into chaos. At least, though, there are some things to show for it...

First up, my little house now has a full set of new windows. It didn't go exactly according to plan and I ended up having nowhere to sleep for a night, except the floor. Now I've never had any problem sleeping on other peoples' floors (usually after a skinful of ale) but when you have to sleep on your own floor, stone cold sober and it's all down to someone else's shortcomings, it really is a bit hard to take. I found myself asking, not for the first time, why nothing is ever straight forward? I think it's a question society needs to ask itself because it's not, I'm sure, just me that feels this way.

Anyway, it's done now, the windows, that is. Only time will tell whether it was all worthwhile. If nothing else, it's made the outside of my little home quite presentable again - something that had I tried to do by refurbishing the existing window frames would have taken days and, judging by the ease with which the old ones came out, it could well have been a futile effort. Maybe that's just me trying to justify the somewhat substantial outlay for the new ones and, after all, who's fault is it that the old ones got into such a state in the first place?

That just leaves the internal decorating, floor coverings and furniture, all of which are getting decidedly careworn, to sort out. It would be fair to say that all of these things are a complete mystery to me, so there's plenty of scope here for typical Moorfield-style procrastination!

Astronomically Poor Taste

2006-04-03T06:26:00.000+01:00

I don't know why this has occurred to me just now, but anyhow it always makes me chuckle. Imagine, if you will, the train journey from Manchester to Crewe. Not, I grant you, one of the Great Train Journeys of the World, but, nevertheless, sometime after you've left Wilmslow, you come upon this.

One morning, on a Virmin train wedged with normals, the following conversation ensues...

Natasha: Oh look, there's that big radio telescope thingy.
Travelling Companion: Jodrell Bank?
Natasha: No thanks, I had one before we left.

Arf. Arf.

This on the other hand...

2006-03-25T11:42:00.000Z

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

...the Bridgewater Hall, just around the corner from that unsightly erection in the previous post, is what I call a proper building.

Written while ~~listening~~ trying to...

figure out why I made such a pig's ear of posting the last entry from flickr.

Eyesore

2006-03-25T11:12:00.001Z

Anyone familiar with Manchester's burgeoning skyline will recognize this monstrosity that's arisen next to the Great Northern Railway warehouse on Deansgate. I spotted it yesterday as far away as the M60 roundabout at Prestwich, and I'm sure it must be visible from much further afield. If it had any aesthetic beauty at all, it might not be a bad thing; something that Manchester could be famous for and proud of. But this eyesore, by any standards, has about as much architectural merit as camel dung.

Written while listening to...

Franz Schubert : Symphony No 9 in C major, "The Great"

Equinox

2006-03-21T21:22:00.000Z

Today (or was it yesterday?) is the first day of Spring. By way of a counterbalance to my post at the last Autumnal Equinox, just let me say that I love this time of year!

Written while listening to...

Gustav Mahler : Symphony No 2 in C minor, "Resurrection"

MSIE 7.0b

2006-03-21T08:14:00.000Z

I'll say it quietly, but I have recently installed the Beta 2 release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Some may think that's a bit like injecting yourself with a dose of bubonic plague but let me explain. I can tell you now that I shall not be writing any in depth reviews about it because I won't be using it and wouldn't recommend anyone else do so either even if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

My primary reason for grabbing hold of it was to test my own website with it. Rather disappointingly, it didn't display properly at all. Which was poo. Much as I may despise Bill Gates and all his works, people through ignorance or circumstance will come by and want to view Natasha's Website using MSIE 7, and it won't be Gates they think is a twat if the site looks like shite, it'll be me. So thanks Bill, that was a whole afternoon spent crawling through loads of CSS correcting "errors" and making sure everything still looks exactly how I want it to look.

After all that, though, I'm not altogether sure what was actually wrong with my original code. It may be that Firefox, Opera and even MSIE 6 are more tolerant of my sloppy coding than they aught to be. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I may actually have to learn how to use CSS properly instead of just throwing stuff at browsers and tweaking it until it (sort of) works.

Top Withens

2006-03-19T14:01:00.000Z

Top Withens
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

Not quite a contemporary picture this, I took it on 1 August 2004, but happened across it on my hard drive this morning. I'm posting it because it is one of my most favourite places in the whole world.

Situated on the moors above Haworth in West Yorkshire, on the Pennine Way long distance path, the ruined building in the centre of the picture, known properly as Top Withens, is supposed to be the inspiration for Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. There is, apparently, no documentary evidence to support this and the building, when it was still whole, is thought not to have particularly resembled the one described in the novel. If, however, you've ever read the book (and if you haven't, I strongly recommend it) and visited this place, you'll be left in no doubt that this is as near as you're ever going to get to it, especially if you go in bad weather. It was a baking hot summer's day when this photo was taken, but even so it wasn't difficult to imagine myself a Catherine in Emily Brontë's bleak nineteenth century landscape.

{ Written while listening to Camille Saint-Saëns : Symphony No 3 in C minor, the "Organ Symphony" }

Sudoku

2006-03-12T09:40:00.000Z

May I put on record that I am addicted to Sudoku - the harder the better.

The trouble is it's absolutely pointless. With, for example, a crossword puzzle, you at least stand a chance of learning something, like, say, a shade of meaning to word you hadn't come across before. With Sudoku, once you've worked out (or learned) the limited set of strategies needed for solving them, you can learn absolutely nothing else from it.

I am, therefore, renouncing it, forthwith. I shall use the journey to work to do something more worthwhile instead, like reading some these hundreds of books I've got cluttering up the place.

Natasha's Burble

2006-03-12T09:26:00.000Z

A bit of self-referential musing...

"What's the reason for writing this 'ere blog," I ask myself?

I don't know, does there have to be a reason? I guess it's one of those things I do because I can, rather than for any specific purpose. I've never, in the past, been much of a diary writer. I do keep a log of my travels, but it's just that - a logbook. It contains nothing but facts - there's no commentary, no opinions, indeed nothing to suggest why I made any of the journeys it records or what I got out of them. I suppose that's one purpose this blog does usefully serve, but that's not why I started it or why I feel minded to carry on with it.

I suppose a lot of the reason for it is to record those things passing through my mind that would otherwise be forgotten and lost just as soon as I'd thought them. (I still lose a lot of potential blogging material that way, having ideas and thinking "that'll make a great blog entry," only to have completely forgotten about them before I can do anything about it.

One thing drives out another, so to speak.

I could do with a [Blog This] button in my brain.)

The idea that it's a repository for private feelings, opinions and thoughts, though, begs the question why a blog? It's a very public showcase in which to deposit private stuff. There are some very practical answers to that question. A blog lends a degree of permanence to one's words; while it can be edited and deleted, once something has been downloaded and read, it's out of your control no matter what you do to the original material. It doesn't allow the opportunity to change your mind later, and I am, I'm afraid, an incorrigible reviser given the chance¹. I like the discipline of the 'get it right first time or live with the consequences' idea of the blog, rather than private files that can be tampered with endlessly and no one's any the wiser.

The thing is, though, when I started it, I genuinely didn't have any expectation that anyone would actually read the thing! Not, anyway, in the sense of actually becoming engaged with it. I have, I guess, written everything with an audience in mind, but a notional, abstract one. Now that I know people are actually reading it, I find conflicting considerations beginning to assert themselves - should I continue in the same vein, writing exactly what I feel about whatever it is that's rung my bell or rattled my cage. Or should I, as it were, play to the audience?

In my working life the use of the written word to explain the obscure to those who don't want to hear and to persuade the unwilling to my point of view demands that I write precisely for the target audience. But that's just it - it's work: when I write here I do so knowing there are no constraints. I can write what I like without any worries about whether the reader has understood a word of it or not. On the other hand, if someone has taken the trouble to come here and read all this stuff, I do feel under some obligation to make their visit worthwhile.

A nice little challenge.

¹ Yes, I did revise this entry after posting it - but it was only to add some HTML - the content remained untouched, honest!

Really Famous People Called Natasha

2006-03-11T13:19:00.000Z

Part 1 of an occasional series.

I don't generally do "Popular Entertainment" and so the songstress Natasha Bedingfield would never have appeared on my radar if she'd had a different first name. Anyhow, turns out she went to the same University as me!

Weight

2006-03-11T11:06:00.000Z

(Or more accurately, of course, mass.)

As you may have noticed, I'm rather partial to the odd glass of beer now and then. It's not a pastime that lends itself to the maintenance of a sleek feminine figure - certainly not for me, anyway. Frankly, over the years I've degenerated from being a lean, fit, athletic type to a bulbous Miss Piggy look-alike. With a view to reversing this trend I've started trying to shed some of the bulk. In a favourable light and after some dubious statistical analysis, I've lost about 2kg in the past couple of months. Never having done this sort of thing before, I've probably not been going about it as carefully as I perhaps should (there's nothing going on that could reasonably be identified as a diet) and I have absolutely no will power at all to resist either beer or food.

Still, 2kg is better than nothing and at this rate, in six or seven years, I'll have completely disappeared. That's not good, is it?

Tea or Coffee

2006-03-05T13:22:00.000Z

On the whole I am a coffee person, but I do get a bit cranky if I can't start the day with a nice big mug of Earl Grey.

I bought a packet the other day and read the blurb...

A favourite of the 19th Century, Earl Grey is a blend of fine teas and its most distinctive feature is the flavour and aroma of bergamot oil. Ideal for an afternoon cup of tea.

So, as I thought, afternoon is definitely the best time of day to get up :-)

Education, education, education

2006-03-04T11:11:00.000Z

Yesterday I met my dad for refreshment in our favourite watering hole...

The Crescent, Salford
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

Although we rarely actually arrange to meet there, if we're free on a Friday afternoon we both tend to drop in for a few beers and a bite to eat after the lunchtime rush has died down. Of itself, there was nothing remarkable in yesterday's meeting; unplanned as usual (certainly on my part) but as it turned out my dad was seeking counsel. He seems to do that quite a lot these days and it's sort of reassuring that he values my judgement enough to ask for it.

I should say here that in the past, he and I never really saw eye to eye on that much. More recently, though, we have set aside much that divides us and now just get on as two people with a fair few common interests who enjoy a beer or two in decent real ale boozers. I should, perhaps, also mention that I don't know if, or how much, he knows about Natasha; I'm certainly not ‘out' to him, or any of my family, but you can never accuse my dad of being either stupid or unobservant.

Anyway, back to yesterday. He was telling about my nephew who is in his last year at primary school. More specifically he enlightened me about the dilemma his parents are facing in deciding which school to send him to next year.

Now the thing about all this choice in education stuff is that if, like my sister and brother-in-law, you are filthy rich and can afford extra tuition and such like for your offspring, you can, in effect, buy choice. Now, it appears, they have bought themselves too much choice. In an effort to avoid having to send my nephew to the local 'bog standard comprehensive' they have applied to a well regarded faith school and put him through the entrance exams for two fee paying schools. They have been offered a place at all three.

(As an aside here - and I shall try not to rant or allow my atheist scepticism too much reign - one of the pre-conditions of acceptance at the faith school is that they had to show they are regular church goers. I'm sure they are and for all the right reasons. According to my dad, however, and I have no reason to doubt him, you have to attend at least 40 times in a year. This, for me, raises a number of issues. How do they know? Do they keep a register? Do attendances at churches out of the area count? Do they, perhaps, have a little card you can have stamped on the way out, like you used to have in the good old days at the YHA? Can they really tell the devout from those who are just cynically collecting their visits to get their offspring into the 'best' schools? Call me cynical if you like, but it seems like a system ripe for abuse.)

Anyway, what was my advice? (I should, again, by way of background, tell you that I have been a School Governor in my time, so I do, sort of, speak of which I know.)

Political views aside (I despise the very concept of fee paying schools) I assured my dad that IMHO my nephew would not gain any educational benefit from either of the fee paying schools, so why would my sister and brother-in-law want to waste their money?

My dad agreed, but the problem, it seems, is that this is the obvious choice to all concerned except my brother-in-law, who, now that it has become an option, wants to send his son to the same school that he went to - one of the fee paying ones. Of the two fee paying schools, my sister favours the other as being a better school. Now, of course, its none of my business and I'm certainly not going to get involved. My guess is that, as money is no object, logic will not prevail and the poor little thing is going to end up going to the school of his father's choice.

If you're still with me here, the rather more poignant issue for me is that my brother-in-law wants to send his son to the same school that he went to. Aside from whether that's the right choice for my nephew or not, the thing I just can't get my head around is why on earth anyone would ever want to do that. I utterly detested school, in particular the school that I was sent to (not any of those concerned here, I hasten to add) and the thought of putting any child of mine through that Hell was enough to put my right off my lunch, I can tell you.

And, of course, I couldn't say anything at all. To have said what I felt - in effect that I blame my parents' choice of school for all the misery I have ever suffered in my whole life - might not have gone down too well and could easily have unravelled all the bonding that my dad and I have finally managed to achieve after all this time. The horror of my schooldays is something that has plagued my mind of late and I am in the process of writing more about it at the moment which may or may not see the light of day here in the coming weeks.

Do I really blame my dad? No, I don't. I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was only doing what he thought was best. And I know, before anyone says anything, that heaping the blame on my school for all my shortcomings and underachievement might be seen by some as just a way for me to avoid facing up to issues I probably could do something about but choose not to. I disagree.

{Written while listening to Shostakovich - Symphony No. 6.}

Memories of Childhood

2006-02-25T13:34:00.000Z

I've posted this picture for no better reason than I rather like it. It's sort of evocative of childhood outings to the South Coast, although I feel this image may pre-date that time a little. Or is that just wishful thinking?

Picture attribution: Southdown at Brighton by Mike Jeffries

Bagpuss

2006-02-18T13:57:00.000Z

Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss, old fat furry cat-puss, wake-up, and look at this thing that I bring, wake up, be bright, be golden and light, Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing.

I recently acquired The Complete Bagpuss [1974]: DVD and it's really cute; a reminder that the world really was a gentler, less hectic place than it is now. I don't (unusually for me) recall ever having seen it on TV when I was a kid, but if it didn't hit the screen until 1974, then maybe I was a bit too old for it, and as there were only ever thirteen episodes made I guess it was a case of blink and you missed it. Anyhow, I'm really glad I've caught up with it now :-). Although I can't speak with any authority on the matter (I haven't had a television) - that works - for years, I guess I'd be correct in saying they don't make programmes like that any more.

And wouldn't you just die to have a dress like Emily's? Well I would, anyway.

Global Warming

2006-02-18T12:49:00.000Z

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

You may be wondering why a post about global warming starts with a photo of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Bare with me - we'll get there eventually, honest.

Being an atheist, I normally have to be dragged kicking and screaming into places of worship; except this one, affectionately known by the locals as Paddy's Wig Wam, the crypt of which plays host to the annual Liverpool Beer Festival :-) Plenty of ale and good cheer yesterday at this year's festival resulted in anther Wrong Train Episode at Lime Street station. At least this wrong train did go to Wigan, which is more or less on the way home, and I don't appear to have got gripped without a valid piece. They do say that everyone who likes a drink or two (OK, drunks) have an inbuilt ‘beer scooter' that always gets them home, no matter what state they're in. I'm sure I do, but I can't help thinking one of these days I'll do something so irrecoverably stupid that I'll end up going missing for days!

Anyway, as if to disprove the point about the beer scooter, I later managed to get off the bus on the final leg of my journey home at the wrong stop. Not the normal ‘falling asleep and waking up in the depot' type incident, but getting off too early. How could that happen? Anyway, it was only a couple of stops, no big deal and there is, anyhow, a short cut down a back passage (that was around the back of a farm when I was a girl, it's a ‘business park' these days) but it is very muddy. I've been on my hands and knees all morning cleaning up the mess :-(

The muddy carpet, though, is not what's bothering me. When I first moved to where I live now, some fifteen years ago, that path was just as susceptible to muddiness as it is today, but in the summer you could always rely on it drying out, and in the deepest winter months (i.e. like now) freezing solid. It never seems to do either these days - so don't tell me Global Warming ain't happening!

Anyhow, I'm doing my bit to cut down energy consumption by finally having double glazing fitted¹. To be honest, energy conservation is not my primary motivation - the current wooden frames require some major attention if they're going to last much longer, and, whilst I could do it, I really can't be arsed. So double glazing it is, for good or ill. I'm also looking to install a low energy lighting system, so the rather decadent crystal chandelier will be going as well, which will please Boy, no doubt, because I don't think he ever wanted it in the first place!

¹No doubt some smart arse will tell me that it takes four hundred years or something to ever save as much energy as went into making the units in the first place.

Performance on Three

2006-02-09T06:39:00.000Z

I refer to BBC Radio 3's live broadcast, last Thursday (02/02/2006), from the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, at which I was in attendance. Good as the concert was, it was not necessarily, of itself, immediately promising material for this blog - even though the programme did include Mahler's Rückert Lieder.

More of note here was another piece in the performance that still, a week later, leaves dissonant chords ringing in my head - Offenbach's Gaîté parisienne. I speak not of the performance itself, nor make comment, here, on the musicological merits of the thing, but this piece has issues, somewhat traumatic issues, for me.

That, a week later, I am still haunted by the childhood memories that it dredged up is, I think, testament to deep resentment I have for the institution I attended for seven years of my life that masqueraded as a place of education. The incident brought to mind by the Offenbach (which, frankly I don't want to discuss) was just so typical of how that bastard place could take literally anything and make me hate and detest it.

How I still feel now is only a faint echo of how I felt a week ago - any empaths or telepaths present in the auditorium of the Bridgewater Hall last Thursday would have had their socks blown off!

Anyway, enough of wallowing in self pity. Of the concert itself, the Mahler was excellent - what more can you ask from an evening's entertainment? Geoff Brown wrote of the performance in The Times:

Plenty of solos in Mahler's Rückert Lieder too, though the players couldn't match the eloquence of Sarah Connolly. Top notes were floated with tender beauty; the texts were not just sung, but inhabited. She'd probably have been terrific dancing the can-can as well.

I can only end by saying: not in that dress she wouldn't!

My Temperament

2006-01-19T21:47:00.000Z

I know these sort of things shouldn't be taken too seriously, but, honestly, this assessment of my temperament is amazingly, even painfully, accurate...

You Have a Melancholic Temperament

Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything.
You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life.
You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you.

Given enough time alone, it's easy for you to find inner peace.
You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life.
Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times.

At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you.
You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others.
You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult.

What temperament Are You?

The Concept of Boy

2006-01-06T11:30:00.000Z

I trust by now you have all had enough time to ditch those pointless New Year resolutions you made while you were pissed up on 31 December. If you decided to embark upon something meaningful for 2006, and you're still determined to stick with it, Good Luck!

Myself, I normally avoid disappointment by not making resolutions in the first place, but this post could just turn out to be the mother of all New Year resolutions.

So, you have no doubt been thinking to yourselves, six days into 2006 and not a dickybird out of her. Did she not bother coming back from Middle Earth?

As anyone who's been there will tell you, time moves very differently in Lothlorien than it does in Lancashire. However, I have, as it happens, been beavering away on material for publication here and it has entailed a most searching and revealing journey into the depths of my soul. Some of you may have thought that I have no soul, but I do, honestly. It's just very well defended against prying eyes. I can tell you now that there's stuff in there that even I didn't know existed - stuff that may actually make the future I alluded to the other day a realisable ambition.

There is something close to 10,000 words of text waiting to spew forth onto this weblog and the main website, some of which may serve well as a road map for the journey ahead. So... where am I (are we) going?

Before I answer that question, let me digress for a moment.

From reading some of the previous posts - especially the really bile-filled ranty ones - you will not be surprised to hear that I am delighted all the festive nonsense is now well and truly over. I may even have said (*checks* Yes, I did.) that I was glad to get back to normal. Well, on reflection, I'm not sure that is altogether true. I haven't, of course, suddenly gone all Roy Wood & Wizzard "I wish it could be Christmas Everyday" (Ha! You'll not be able to get that crap out of your head for ages now...) it's just that ‘normal' is not where I want to be any more. ‘Normal' is that rut I'm stuck in; that rut, though, that I might just have found a way out of.

I did say before that I was reluctant to give hostages to fortune by setting down plans and aspirations and I still hold with that. Without, however, making my some sort of public statement of where I want to go, I don't think it will ever happen. OK, maybe not many people will read this or be in a position to hold me to account when everything goes awry, but it's here now, in the most public of public domains.

[You're talking vacuous nonsense, Natasha. Just get on with it!]

Bear with me, because I now need to introduce you to the concept of Boy.

Boy is the person who created me. There is, now I think on, quite possibly, and contrary to what I said before, some documentary evidence in existence that can pinpoint more accurately than my failing memory when that was, but I don't have it to hand at the moment. For the sake of argument, lets say it was sometime in the mid 1980's. I don't think Boy created me before he started dressing up in girls' clothes (that was definitely early 1980's), but I'll take his word for it when he says he did it for his writing rather than as part of his cross-dressing activities. Nevertheless, I think he soon realised that he needed me to make his experiences more fulfilling, and I took that opportunity to just sort of climb into his head, where I've been ever since.

I have never claimed to be a girl trapped in a man's body; I just decided to move into one and make myself at home.

Does that make any sense? No, perhaps not. I don't think it contradicts what I said in What's in a Name, but having just re-read that post, I can see now it was written very much from Boy's perspective. Well, this isn't Boy's website, it's mine, and I think it's very important that you see this from my point of view, not his.

To be fair, it has only been during these last few days, while I have been deep in self contemplation, that I even realised this concept of splitting our two existences might be a useful tool. I've certainly read about other tGirls treating the two parts of themselves as different people but I was never convinced it worked, or would work for me, because (a) we knew that we were not - of course - two separate people and (b) I was quite happy just being the part of Boy that liked wearing frocks.

Clearly, there is only one corporeal (adj. relating to the body as distinct from the soul; physical) entity here. But could there be more than one soul? I don't generally believe that any of us have souls in a spiritual sense of the word; I would perhaps be happier thinking of a person's soul as somewhat analogous to a computer's operating system. It's that part of the machine that has no mass, but which nevertheless makes it behave as it does. And of course it is perfectly possible for multiple operating systems to co-exist on one machine, and make the machine behave very differently. So why can't people have more than one soul?

Anyway, to get back on track, but still with the analogy of Boy and me being two souls occupying one body (OK, Boy's body), it seems to me, over the years, that I have taken over more and more of the space in Boy's brain. I'm starting to think, now, that it ain't big enough for the both of us anymore. I don't know if Boy is altogether happy about the idea just yet, but I think it's getting about time for him to go.

Rather than just deleting him, I rather fancy the idea of the two of us, Boy and me, setting off into the mountains one day but only me coming back. I could just open the door (presumably the same one I used to get in here in the first place) and let him drift off into the cool mountain air. I would just... leave him there. He'll be happy enough...

Last Post of 2005

2005-12-31T18:11:00.000Z

So far everything has gone to plan. I just managed to vacte the Trackside bar in Bury before my carriage turned into a pumpkin and I've got home safely without being dragged off to some unspeakably awful NYE do. As there will now be no further communication with the real world until I return from Middle Earth, may I, nevertheless, take this opportunity to wish everyone everything they would wish for themselves for 2006.

How did that get there?

2005-12-31T17:57:00.000Z

The Mill Hotel, Chester.
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

Yesterday I had a beery trip to Chester. My moves book clearly shows that I got off the bus at my usual stop at 23:43 and arrived home at 23:48. That means no deviations or detours for take-away food. So where on earth did that empty pizza box come from?

Stand Up If You...

2005-12-29T22:24:00.000Z

I don't have a fantastic memory for jokes and anecdotes, so I wrote this one down before I forgot it.

A man was browsing in a bric-a-brac shop and came upon a brass rat; the sort of nick-nack a woman of a certain age might keep on her mantlepiece and thought to himself ‘This will make a good birthday present for the mother-in-law.'
He enquired of the shopkeeper how much it cost. "The rat is £10," replied the shopkeeper, "but the story of the rat is £100."
"Mmm. I'll just take the rat," said the man. It was, after all, just a present for the mother-in-law. He handed over £10 and left with the rat.
He had gone no more than twenty metres down the street when a live rat jumped out of the gutter and started following the man. In no time at all, more had joined the first and soon there were quite literally thousands upon thousands of rats following in the man's wake. No matter what he did or where he went, he could not shake them off.
In desperation he made his way to the top of a high cliff and flung the brass rat into the sea far below. Much to the man's relief, each and every member of the rodent hoard rushed to the edge of the cliff and flung themselves after the brass facsimile to a certain death.
The man returned quickly to town and back to the bric-a-brac shop.
"Ah. You've returned for the story of the rat," the shopkeeper said. "I though you might."
"Sod that," said the man. "You haven't got a brass Manchester United supporter, have you?"

It had me laughing my tits off for ages, anyway.

Back to Normal

2005-12-28T22:59:00.000Z

I woke this morning with a happy heart: it's all over for another year. Whoopee!

I spent Christmas day in the company of my family, which included all four hyperactive nephews and nieces. Without going into details, which would only end up sounding like criticism of their parents (definitely not intended), Christmas will have done those little ones no favours at all in helping them get through the rest of their lives as balanced, responsible human beings. But then it's not supposed to, is it? How else would the madness of ever-expanding, over-commercialised Christmas survive if it were not able to bring on the next generation to act like gibbering idiots every mid-winter?

Anyway, it's back to normal now with only 31 December to get through. I have already made my one and only New Year's Resolution. I shall not - I repeat not, under any conceivable circumstances - be attending a New Year's Eve party or the like, nor shall I be taking the risk of doing so inadvertantly by remaining in any public house after nightfall. Pre-Christmas festivities, and even Christmas Day itself, can, to be fair, sometimes yield the odd nugget of genuine, meaningful happiness. I can honestly say, however, that I have never, in my entire life, been to a New Year's Eve do and enjoyed it. I have never woken up on 1 January and thought to myself "Wow! What a great night that was!" Or "Wow! What so-and-so said was real food for thought!" It just never happens. I can bring to mind nothing that I could do or say that would alter the inevitable course towards the utterly pointless climax of the evening. Everyone drinks more than they should, as if that, somehow, is going to make them better people. Then, incapacitated by drink, they attempt to prove what brilliant people they are by coming out with the same old insincere, unimaginative, mawkish crap they come out with every year. And they expect me to join in, too. How on earth do sober people cope with New Year's Eve? At least if you're as drunk as everyone else you tend to forget most of it.

Well this year I won't be there. Unless someone can come up with some compelling (and quite unexpected) reason why New Year 2006 really will be different (and not just ‘better') than normal, then I shall be disconnecting from the world, settling down in a comfy chair and watching the extended version of Lord of the Rings on DVD. And, no, it was not a Christmas present, not even from myself.

It's strange, isn't it, how some people justify spending money on themselves by calling what they've bought a present? Yes, my precious, very strange indeed.

Has he been yet?

2005-12-25T12:41:00.000Z

More to the point, has he not gone yet? Unfortunately the corpulent Laplander will still be with us in tacky plastic effigy for at least another week yet. *Humbug*

I hope, however, that whatever you all do today that you'd rather not be doing, you can at least make the most of it.

Why didn't I think of that?

2005-12-24T23:05:00.000Z

Came across a beer this afternoon under the name πη from the Mayflower Brewery in Wigan. Quite clever, I thought. Or maybe I'm just easily impressed after I've had a few.

Thumper 1305

2005-12-24T19:26:00.000Z

Thumper 1305
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

"Santa Special" may be one of the most frightening phrases in the English language, but at least these events get normals to shell out shed loads of dosh to keep the railway going. Thankfully the fat git in the red coat was nowhere to be seen on the shuttle service between Bury and Heywood today, worked by English Electric DEMU 207 202. Quality!

Where Next?

2005-12-20T21:20:00.000Z

You may have noticed that this blog stopped somewhat unexpectedly back in September and just a suddenly started again, with just a little bit of a rant-fest. (Sorry about that, it wasn't meant as a deliberate re-launch attention grabber. That outburst just happened to coincide with an independent decision to restart the blog. I'm much better, though, now.)

So, in between time, what was I doing? Well, as I intimated, I had a little time touring my beloved North West of England, and I did, as it happens, write (using rather quaint pen and paper) quite a bit of stuff that I intended to publish here. Some of it was quite entertaining (I thought) and perhaps might have shed a little light, for you dear reader, on something of what makes me tick. I might yet re-cycle some of it in due course. The rather dull reality of the matter is that pressure of time meant I just never got round to typing any of the stuff up. However, while it lay unread by any eyes but my own, it dawned on me that none of it amounted to anything. It was just froth. It wasn't going anywhere, it had no direction or purpose. It quickly dawned on me that the problem wasn't with the blog itself or the larger website (although that too was going nowhere) - it was me, Natasha. I wasn't going anywhere. I realised I was stuck in a rut. Oh yes, there were plans and dreams, but no will to bring them to fruition.

OK, so after three months of doing sod all but gaze into the empty depths of my soul - and sulking because it was Autumn - my plans and dreams are still just that. It's just that now, at last, I feel as though some of the will that I was lacking is starting to return.

I don't intend, just now, to reveal what I hope the future holds, or how I intend to make it happen. I really don't like raising false expectations or giving hostages to fortune, but I feel, if nothing else, this blog now has the purpose of recording my progress - or lack of it - towards my ambitions. Hopefully this blog will hold me to account if nothing much happens, because it'll be as boring as fuck to write - as well as read - if that is the case.

And so, where next? I'm fucking off for a drink, that's what. Meeting the same people in the same old pub as I've been doing for donkeys years! Every thousand mile march starts with a first step - it's just that this isn't it.

I Do Not Like Christmas

2005-12-20T00:36:00.000Z

I did warn you to stand well back, because this one is coming through with the power handle on notch seven. In fact, if you're someone who really quite enjoys Christmas Festivities, you may want to look away now.

I did mention, in my last post way back in September, that Autumn was not my favourite time of year, and alluded to the fact that Christmas was partly to blame for this. It is with some relief that I greet the Winter Solstice in the safe and sure knowledge that the end of the festive season is almost in sight, but - as the old saying goes - it's often darkest before the dawn.

I make no apologies here for launching into a full scale rant against Christmas, because it's no exaggeration to say that I absolutely despise Christmas. Now don't get me wrong here; I'm not religious myself but I have no objection if consenting adults want to participate in a spot of worshipful celebration of their deities. But please, don't expect me to understand or join in - it's just not my bag. To be fair, I don't often come across people who expect me to join in with the religious mumbo-jumbo stuff, but why, oh why, do they nevertheless expect me to join in with all the rest of the nonsense. Why can't they just leave me alone? How plain do I have to make myself - I do not like Christmas.

I could rant on and on and on... And I will, given half a chance, because it's something that really gets my back up; I mean to the point of making me physically ill. I don't offer a well argued thesis on why Christmas is bad. For all I know it might not be in the grand scheme of things - I just know how it makes me feel: Not Good. So let me just lay out a few of the things that really wind me up at this time of year...

Christmas Shopping. It's 100%, in your face, rampant commercialism; it is materialist greed gone mad. It is every capitalist's dream - a time when literally every one on the planet feels compelled to spend money they don't have on the most unbelievable tat. It's not just the sheer misery of the activity itself. It's the utter pointlessness of that meaningless exchange of gifts. Sure, it's great if a gift is meaningful to the giver and the recipient, but most often that's not the case, is it? So how does Christmas manage to make us all act like fools? By using the oldest trick in the book - Guilt. There's an all pervading consensus that says you will not be welcome amongst your kith and kin unless you come bearing gifts. Now is it just me, or would we all not enjoy our family get-togethers that much more if there wasn't that overpowering expectation that you will bring to the party gifts that you can exchange for whatever junk your nearest and dearest have thought to burden you with? Can't people just enjoy each other's company without having to judge them by the worth of the presents they've bought? Wouldn't it be so much better for everyone if we all spent our money sensibly all year round, on stuff we really wanted, instead of wasting it on a one day extravaganza - on stuff that mostly ends up, in very short order, in the bin or down the toilet?

Christmas Decorations. Once upon a time, a half glimpsed tree in someone's front room was all you would see of other peoples' celebrations. You could imagine, whatever the reality, a family preparing for a ‘traditional' Christmas (if any such thing ever truly existed). Now, it seems, everyone is competing to have the most garish and outlandish outdoor displays they can turn their hands to producing. Let me tell you something - it's tacky and all it says to me is that you're stupid. And just what the fuck do you think is powering all those flashing lights, fairy dust? No, you morons, it's electricity! I shudder to think of all the fuck-knows how many extra millions of tons of carbon being belched into the atmosphere as a result. And for what? You Selfish Bastards.

Once a year drinkers. They roam around from pub to pub, drinking shite and getting in everyone's way. They don't seem to realise that the seats helpfully provided are to sit on, so they stand at the bar and make sure no one else can get served. They conduct themselves like pompous asses, reckon they can drink anyone under the table and then fall over after a couple of pints of piss weak lager. Us regular drinkers know that the one thing alcohol does not do is make you more sexually attractive. Why do once a year drinkers always insist on trying to prove otherwise? They make me fucking sick.

Santa Claus. I'm no theologian, but I did go to a Church of England school and I'm pretty certain that St Nicholas doesn't get a big writeup in any of the four Gospels. Now who or what St Nicholas was in history I'm not altogether sure. What I do know is that his current manifestation is merely the projection of his name onto the much older ‘Grandfather Frost' - a pagan god of winter. This was bastardised, in turn, in the 1930's (or thereabouts) by the CocaCola Corporation - making him wear a red coat (instead of his traditional green) just as an advertising stunt. The most potent icon of this pointless festival is, it turns out, just some fucking fat git dressed up in a ludicrous red coat to sell fizzy pop. Very deep and meaningful, I'm sure.

New Years Eve. Just when you thought it was all over, a week later you have to endure this theatre of self-delusion. No, I'm sorry, but all that insincere bonhomie dished out by drunken idiots who wouldn't normally give you the time of day is not my idea of a great night out. And just in case anyone thought I'd forgotten, it still really, really, really gets on my tits that all you fucking idiots celebrated the turn of the millennium a whole fucking year early!

I'm so glad I've got that off my chest. My message, though, is a simple one. You get on with Christmas if you must, just leave me out of it, please. Pretty Please. Because if you don't you'll only get more of the same next year.

And before you say anything, yes, I do know about my name's Christmas connotations!

Warning

2005-12-18T22:17:00.000Z

WARNING

This blog is about to be re-activated.

Please stand well clear of the platform edge.

Autumnal Blues

2005-09-14T01:42:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, it's mid September already! It's a month since my last post on this blog, but, more worrying is that another year is drawing to a close. The last Test Match has finished, the Last Night of the Proms is now but a fading memory, and not only that but the Trans-Lancs Historic Vehicle Rally has already been and gone. It is Autumn.

I hate Autumn. I hate it getting darker all the time. I hate it because that means that the dreaded C thing is looming.

As usual I shall be having one last throw of the dice at the end of September, and, as I really am striving to make this a daily blog [Ha!! Who are you kidding!] I will endeavour to keep you all abreast of my travels in the good old North of England.

Are exams getting easier? Discuss.

2005-08-25T23:15:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again. The media is full of images of squealing teenagers clutching bits of paper on which are printed yet more lists of exceptional examination results. And yet again the media is as equally full of innuendo berating the education system for making the exams easier than ever. So are exams getting easier? Inevitably, in the absence of hard facts and quantitative research it is impossible to say, but it must be a possibility. Strangely there does not appear to be any such research to prove the point one way or the other, so everyone is driven to speculate. Personally I do not think it does justice to the students to say that exams are too easy - they can, after all, do no more than is asked of them.

The government asserts (as it would) that it is delivering a better education system. Teachers' trade unions will argue that teachers are better than they used to be (and so should be paid more). The most often quoted argument, however, is that the students are getting better grades through sheer hard work. Never, you will note, because they are any smarter than their predecessors, they just work harder.

Now, excuse me for being brutal, but any jackass can work hard. Getting good grades in exams without doing any work at all - now that takes real talent. Let me illustrate my point. Put yourself in the place of an employer or a university admissions tutor and you have two applicants with equally good grades before you. One has a reference from school extolling her virtues as a diligent student who has achieved exceptional grades though her unstinting hard work. The other has a less glamourous testimonial describing her as a feckless, bone idle under-achiever. Which one are you going to choose?

If you chose the first student, you have someone at the limits of her capabilities - someone who is going to struggle ever to exceed your expectations of her. But at least she'll always show up for work on time. If, on the other hand, you chose student number two, you have someone with plenty in reserve, someone who's not going to get stressed out when faced with something difficult, someone who will find a neat solution to any problem, because they sure as hell aren't going to find a solution that involves anything like hard work.

Still like student number one best? Unfortunately most employers in the UK certainly will. We live in a society that would far sooner reward a hard working simpleton than an impetuous genius.

Do not adjust your browser

2005-08-25T21:43:00.000+01:00

If you're reading this post close to its creation date, you may notice that the whole blog has changed to Microsoft Comic Sans font. You'd be forgiven for thinking - That's Poo! What is she thinking? Click here to find out why you're not wrong.

Personally I do find it something of an insult to receive communications written in Comic Sans, like you're supposed to be in on some private joke but you haven't a clue what it's all about.

Please do not adjust your browser. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

What's in a Name?

2005-08-24T03:26:00.000+01:00

Last night on Radio 4's Front Row programme was an interview with the latest translator, Anthony Briggs, of Count Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace. Not the sort of thing I would normally feel moved to write about, except that this particular novel has a special place in my heart because it's where I got my name from.

I am sure it will come as no surprise that Natasha Moorfield is not the name I was given at birth. I am, however, moved to tell you that it's invention happened, on a conscious level at least, independently of me starting to put on dresses - I think/thought...

No records exist to verify which came first, me in girl's clothes or Natasha, but I think it was me in girl's clothes. The character Natasha Moorfield, best as I can remember, anyway, started out as a minor player in a novel (not finished but not, as yet, lost) that I once tried to write. Natasha, however, started to assume a life of her own in this creation to a point where I was starting to identify with her far more closely than I did with any of the other characters. Then I read somewhere about transvestites assuming their own female names (yes, before the Internet, transvestites could still find each other through books and magazines; I think you could even come across such writing in Public Libraries!!). In no more than the twinkling of a powder blue shadowed eye Natasha and I became one and the same. Since then Natasha has never been anything other than me or I.

Back to the business of the acquisition of the name itself. The surname Moorfield is, I am sure, pure invention. I cannot recall ever having known anyone with that name; although how or why I came to invent that particular name I don't think I will ever remember either. However I did it, though, if I had to it again I don't think I could do any better. It's a surname made up of the common enough elements Âmoor' and Âfield' that, to my mind, go together in a logical juxtaposition that could easily be a Ânormal' surname but it is one which, by happenstance, is actually quite rare. Rare without being unusual or out of place: I rather like that.

Quite why I latched on to the name Natasha in the way that I did I don't suppose I will ever really know either. I am quite sure, though, that it was Countess Nataly (Natasha) Rostova from whom I took it. I should say, though, that Tolstoy's epic has, otherwise, left no mark upon my sensibilities whatsoever! I can't even say that I feel any empathy with my namesake in the book, it is just the name, Natasha, pure and simple. Interestingly I even prefer Natalya as the formal rendition of the name, which does not appear in my copy of War and Peace, to either Nataly or Natalia, which do.

So back to the beginning of this burble, and Mr Briggs' translation of War and Peace. He claims to have brought to it the straightforwardness of a man from the north of England (even if his accent seemed a little too east of the Pennines for my liking (apologies if I've got that wrong)), so I might just give the thing a second reading and see if I can get anything more from it.

Wouldn't you just die without Mahler?

2005-08-18T00:51:00.000+01:00

There is no answer to the question why did I buy yet another recording of Mahler 6 today. Suffice to say that it (Berlin Philharmonic / Claudio Abbado / June 2004) is not disappointing thus far.

Withdrawn

2005-08-15T21:31:00.000+01:00

I have had another message from my neighbour following on from the one that scared the living crap out of me on Friday night. I had a mind to pull my previous post, and not make this one, and I may yet, to spare her any future embarrassment, pull them both. Having shredded the original, though, I somehow feel that deleting it from here too will, as the saying goes, airbrush it out of history. That may well, given the content of the latest message, be the author's wish. However, in view of the relatively low probability that she will either read this blog or can be identified from it, I have decided to retain it, for the time being, as a record of a curious incident in my life. After all, that's what a blog's for, isn't it?

The thought crosses my mind also that her messages are a pretty desperate cry for help. Not one to which I could sensibly render literal assistance, nor one to which I feel capable of offerring wise counsel. But what if something like this happens again? Keeping a record might help someone else put her back on the rails and keeping a public record might just help me out of a tight corner if things turn nasty...

And another thing: reading them again - was the original ‘invitation' (whatever that was) posted on a similar note that I never received, or just a figment of her imagination?

Although I don't think I like the territory into which this is taking me, I just don't seem to be able to let it lie. Perhaps, though, the next time you come by, normallity will have set in again and this post will have gone; replaced be some inane burble about beer glasses. Much safer ground...

Talking of grounds, I did mention 'groundhopping' the other day and told you it had relevance to something else I was going to burble on about, but I think I might have forgotten what it was. Shit.

Lost for words...

2005-08-13T21:37:00.000+01:00

Believe me, this is the last thing I expected to find on my door mat when I got home from a night on the beer in the Northern Quarter last night! What's almost of more concern than the message itself (mega scary), I have absolutely no recollection of this 'invitation' what so ever. I just hope that will be the end of it!!

My Little Pony - Ben

2005-08-07T16:48:00.000+01:00

My Little Pony - Ben
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

I thought I'd share this picture of my adopted pony, Ben, before I filed the original away. Photograph courtesy of Redwings Horse Sancturary.

ID Cards - The Truth

2005-08-04T23:11:00.000+01:00

Tony McNulty - the newLabour stooge charged with foisting compulsory ID cards on us all - has admitted that the Government "oversold" the case for ID cards. He has been forced to come clean about the reality that they will do little to prevent fraud, illegal immigration or terrorism. Yet despite this confession of having "oversold" the idea (for which read "mis-sold" or "lied" depending on your level of contempt - I don't think it changes the meaning very much) they will still be pressing on regardless!

If these bastards accept that the original premise of the cards is wrong, why do they insist that they're still an absolute necessity? One can only assume, as with the illegal war in Iraq, that there is a hidden agenda behind it all that they will never dare come clean about. My own theory (apart from the obvious one - that the Government are a bunch of megalomaniacal fascist obsessives) is that Blair has already made promises to the IT industry that they can (a) build the system at great and ever escalating cost to each and every one of us, and (b) completely fuck it all up (just as they have done with every major public sector IT system in the whole history of public sector IT) and get the contracts for clearing up all the mess afterwards. Either that, or Dubya has told Blair it would be a good idea, in which case no further reason is needed and no further questions need by asked.

This is a subject I will no doubt be returning to...

Groundhopping

2005-08-02T20:10:00.000+01:00

H2G2: "Groundhopping is the practice of visiting as many football grounds as possible. This, however is an oversimplified explanation. The majority of people who do this activity are known as groundhoppers and have either already been to the majority of decent grounds or have some perverse dislike of good quality football and stadiums. A consequence of this is that groundhoppers are more often than not found at non-league football grounds - the more obscure and difficult to get to the better. The Ability to Boast

Groundhoppers are very fond of enquiring about the activities of fellow hoppers - commonly trying to out-do each other with tales of where they've been. 'Have you been to Bloxwich Rangers yet?' 'I've done all that league now including Dudley Amateurs' new ground'. Most hoppers actually compete with their fellow travellers and take pleasure only in having visited more grounds or more obscure grounds than each other. They sometimes travel in packs - sharing a car - but this is frowned upon by 'real' hoppers who only ever use public transport ."

I stumbled across this little article today (OK, I did Google 'Groundhopping', so it wasn't exactly by chance) and, although it has no immediate relevance to anything in particular at the moment, I shall be referring to it later...

Dog

2005-07-25T23:25:00.000+01:00

Dog

What a cute little doggie! I've had this little image floating around in my head for an age, and couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd seen it. Then it came to me - only to find that the Bastards at HMRC had taken it off their site! Just a Lucky Guess that they would have left it lying around on their server in a file called dog.jpg!?

Festival Glasses

2005-07-22T02:37:00.000+01:00

There has been some chatter of late in the beer ticking community about beer festival charges, in particular the cost of hiring or compulsorily purchasing glasses. So let me put my two pennyworth in.
Let's face it, we'd all love to get into every beer festival for nothing, to be given a glass without having to pay a deposit and drink lots and lots of new beers absolutely free of charge. In the real world, though, no one puts on a beer festival to lose money, or just to break even. Be it a CAMRA festival, a charity shindig or a pub festival, profit is the motive and the festival's main raison d'être. Costs have to be covered and there has to be something to show for it at the end.
In simple terms, it seems to me that the significant income streams available to festival organisers are, in no particular order, entrance fees, glass charges, beer sales, sponsorship and catering. I shall ignore the latter on the basis that the food at beer festivals (some notable pub festivals excepted) is generally so dire that it's an issue in itself. Of the others there needs to be a sensible balance, which, I would have to say, many festival organisers get absolutely spot on.
Let's start by considering the set piece CAMRA beer festival.
The first thing we're faced with at the door is the entrance fee. I don't think it is realistic to expect this kind of event to be gratis to all comers, so what we are essentially looking at is a mitigation of the fee for the hardened festival goer, which I am taking to mean concessions for CAMRA members (whatever your views may be on CAMRA as an organisation). With some experience myself of fund raising in non-beer related organisations, I can tell you that it's always better to take money off the general public than it is to keep on fleecing your own members. At CAMRA festivals, therefore, I feel it is almost unforgivable to charge card-carrying members the same as everyone else (and I must say I can't bring to mind any that do). So, then, should it be free for CAMRA members, or just a discount rate? Should the reductions cover all sessions? I, personally, take a dim view of festivals that don't have at least some free sessions for CAMRA members, even if I can only get to a paid-for session and I almost certainly wouldn't attend a CAMRA festival if I had to pay full whack. Whether or not I am prepared to pay a reduced entry fee depends on what I am getting for my money - very much a cost/benefit analysis.
Next, the vexed question of glass hire. Now, quite frankly, so long as the thing is actually made of glass, I don't give a flying f**k what I'm drinking out of. I am one of those with a house already full of festival glasses and they are, almost to the very last one, totally and utterly bloody useless!! Now, to be fair, a lot of times I do end up bringing glasses home because I can't be arsed cashing them in, but, frankly, I just don't need or want any more. So I say this on the issue of glasses - I find it most irritating, to say the least, to be charged for something I do not want. And I think a little honesty may not go amiss sometimes, as well - if the glass deposit is not refundable, it's not a deposit, it's a f**king charge. Now I'm sure there are plenty of people who perhaps only go to a handful of beer festivals in their entire lives and are happy enough to pay over the odds for a souvenir of their visit. Those of us who may go to two or three in a week (a small minority of festival goers, perhaps, but big spenders in the real ale market) don't need the extra expense and certainly don't need the extra glassware to go with it. (What other industry, incidentally, would go to the same lengths as some parts of the real ale business do to piss off their best customers?)
Of course, the cost of glasses has to be covered somehow, along with all the other expenses. I feel more could be done, however, to minimise those costs and thus reduce the need for us poor punters to have to stump up. (1) Don't date the glasses - that way they can be reused at future festivals; (2) Reuse old, dated glasses, or even glasses from other festivals for those of us who don't care what we're drinking out of; (3) Reduce the number of glasses needed by encouraging people to bring their own suitably verified glasses; (4) Make best use of your sponsors by getting them to pay for the glasses - after all the sponsor's advert on a glass may stay in someone's kitchen for years, whereas an advert in the programme, for example, could be in the bin before the end of the night.

I should say, now, that not all of the foregoing necessarily applies to up-front charity fund-raisers to the same extent. If you go to a festival knowing it's a charity event, you expect to get fleeced and see nothing in return. If it's a charity you don't care for, then you should either grin and bear it, or don't go.

OK, that's CAMRA festivals (and the like) covered; what about pub festivals?
At this point, I have to say that I am rather less ambivalent about add-on charges at pub beer festivals. I don't find being charged to get into a public house at all acceptable, on any pretext, and as for charging for glasses - in a pub - what are planet are you from!? Yes, I know a lot of effort goes into obtaining rare beers from obscure breweries, and it all costs money, but selling beer in glasses that you reuse again and again is your stock in trade 365 days a year. That you will be selling lots more beer than usual hardly seems a good reason for ripping off your customers by charging them to come in or charging them for something to drink out of.

* * *

So from all this, do I derive any hard and fast rules? The answer is probably not. Where the relevant costs and charges are known in advance it will all be weighed in the balance before setting off. Where unsatisfactory arrangements only become known after getting there, they will determine whether any future visits are made, although stomping off in a girlie strop isn't always out of the question! At the end of the day, though, a judgment has to be made: was what you got (i.e. lots of quality ticks, new breweries etc., and all in tip top condition) worth what you had to pay for it?

To back up those who have made adverse comments about various festivals, that judgment for me does not always come out wholly in favour of the festival, IMO, but, to be fair, rarely is it an unmitigated negative. Perhaps, however, experience and better access to gen these days does make it a lot easier to avoid the worst offenders.

To conclude, my message to festival organisers is this - the more you charge, particularly for the glass, and the less fair your charges appear to be, the less likely it is that you will receive any custom from me.

My message to festival goers is this - if you don't think you're being fairly treated, make your feelings known to the festival organisers - tactfully of course - and if you get short shrift, don't go again. Remember, as well, that if we're all daft enough to keep paying, they'll keep charging. And it's not as if there's a shortage of festivals to go to, is it?

Notable recent culprits:

National Winter Ales Festival, Manchester - way overpriced and crap, I understand, beyond redemption. (Luckily a well informed pre-festival cost/benefit analysis, plus other local distractions, meant nothing was lost here.)
Star Inn, Huddersfield - non refundable glass charge and non refundable beer tokens - in a pub. Not good. On the plus side, the glass charge, if memory serves, was in lieu of the straight entry fee charged for previous festivals and this charge only applied in the marquee out t'back, not in the normal parts of the pub. Bulk purchase and shrewd trading did mitigate losses on the token front as well. As there were more winners than you could shake a stick at, all in all, this festival did still get the thumbs up.
Bhurtpore Inn, Aston - Glass hire charge, though it was refundable. Not quite sure if this applied to everyone in all parts of the pub. I think I might have been well hacked off if it was my local and I was being asked to hire a glass in my own pub! Again, though, a good day out and plenty of ticks, so perhaps it'll get another visit.

Notable examples of how to do it right:

Crescent, Salford.
Black Horse, Darwen.

Other common festival gripes:

Crap food (sorry, did I already mention that?)
"Entertainment" (At least Stockport gets something right by having it tucked away in a separate room.)
Compulsory pre-booking (I think this might just be a personal thing, but I don't think I'm alone on this one, either.)
Plastic beakers - the only hard and fast rule that will keep me away from a festival is plastic beakers. You can call them high density polycarbonate if you like, but to me they are still plastic beakers and I don't drink out of them. Real ale should be drunk out of real glass. (That's not a dig, incidentally, at the Panda Pop scoopers - that's your choice. I just don't want to be told that I must drink out of plastic whether I want to or not.)

Natasha on Tour - Tram Sunday

2005-07-20T02:58:00.000+01:00

Blackpool Transport 604
Originally uploaded by Natasha Moorfield.

Always great to have a ride on a "Boat" and, OK, Tram Sunday is not the same as it was, but it's still a good day out for lots of people.

New Britannia in Preston was visited on the way home - the first visit for me since Paula finally left - and pleased to say nothing has changed and I scored one new beer. Happy to report that three other beers would have been winners for less desperate tickers than me!

Natasha's Burble

2005-07-16T22:10:00.000+01:00

I have spent far more time than I would have liked today getting to grips with this 'ere blog - in particular trying to understand how the template thingy works. I don't seem to have a great deal to show for all the effort that's gone into it, but I think I'm now in good enough 'field position' to enable me to do some more meaningful work on it in the future. The aim now is to get the blog more seamlessly integrated, functionally and aesthetically, with the rest of Natasha's Website. We shall see.

Congratulations

2005-07-16T01:51:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to Idy and Sal (from the Crescent (Salford, Greater Manchester [ph.107])) who are getting married today!!! I am sure I will not be alone in wishing them both all best wishes for their future happiness.

Natasha on Tour

2005-07-09T09:30:00.000+01:00

"Will it be a last train home job, tonight?" asked a freind yesterday afternoon just before I set off on another leg of the great Beer Mission.
"Not today," I replied, confidently, "I'd be far too drunk if I stayed out that long!"
Depending how you look at these things, the 2359 off Huddersfield is not the last train, but, yes I was far too drunk for my own good. Thank you, anyway, to all at the Star Inn for another excellent festival. Yes, I know some people carped about there not being any refunds on the glasses, but I still enjoyed myself - and scooped a fair few winners :)

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner...

2005-07-08T07:25:00.000+01:00

...well, an honorary one at least, that I feel more deeply outraged about yesterday's atrocities than I might normally do. My anger, though, is all the greater becasue of my utter contempt for that fact that it was done, apparently, in the name of utterly deluded religious fanaticism. To those who perpetrated these acts, and to those who support or sympathise with what they have done, I say to you that you are scum. The lowest form of stupid, brainless scum. Stupid, stupid, brainless scum.

And to you, Mr Tony Blair: You say "When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed." I hope you bear those admirable sentiments in mind the next time you are bringing yet more draconian, police state legislation before parliament.

Damp Squib

2005-05-06T09:23:00.000+01:00

I suppose I aught to feel pleased that the outcome of that there election was pretty close to what I wanted, even if Blair's majority might still be a little too big for comfort. But I can't help feeling a little underwhelmed; all those weeks of unremittingly tedious campaigning and, no matter how the media may try to hype it up, essentially, nothing's changed. It seems to me that the British electorate is totally devoid of political imagination and is quite content with the flawed status quo; or is, perhaps, prepared just to settle for the least bad option. A bit like me, then, I suppose.

Election Fever...

2005-05-05T21:02:00.000+01:00

Well, at last a proper entry in this 'ere blog.
I was going to start, in that there was ever a proper plan, with a series of entries recording my thoughts on the 2005 General Election. That never happened (a) because I never got round to it, and (b) it was all so damnably dull, it wasn't worth the effort!
Anyway, belatedly, here are my current thoughts on the state of British politics...
I must start by telling you that I have voted Labour in every General Election since 1979, ever since I was old enough to vote. I was a card carrying member of the party until around 2000, and still, reluctantly, voted Labour in 2001. This time I don't think there was ever a moment that I thought I would - even to stop the Tories. To be fair, since I left the party I have dabbled with ‘green' politics, but the root cause of my dissatisfaction with the party I have supported for half a lifetime can be summed up in one word - Blair. I first came across this self-seeking shit in the early nineties when he was still a relative nobody. It was clear, however, that even then he was the ultimate career politician, someone who would probably stop at nothing to get what he wanted, and who was certainly bad news for everything I held dear about the old Labour Party. I do not think that even in my worst nightmares I could have conceived of how truly dreadful he would become, and how far from my ideals he could take the party.
In 1997 worked my pretty little cotton socks off as a party election worker to help secure the election of a Labour Government, but even on the night of the election as the Labour votes piled up in my own constituency and the most unlikely Troy seats fell to Labour across the country, I knew that Blair had won by too much - that he would be unstoppable. And so it proved to be.
As I pen this, there are still around ninety minutes to go until the close of poll and no indication yet of what the outcome will be. The hatred I have for Blair almost matches that which I hold for the Tories, and the contempt I have for the vacuous and opportunistic Liberals. I can almost feel myself believing that I don't give a stuff what happens. Worst case scenario though, is that the Tories return to power with a whopping majority; next worst, that Blair gets back in with a whopping majority. Ideally, given that the Green Party haven't even fielded enough candidates to form a government, and that realistically it's a straight choice between newLabour and Conservative, then it has to be newLabour with a majority reduced to the sort of proportions that will hugely embarrass Blair and mean that he either goes quickly or is forced, at last, to pay some heed to our sort-of democratic parliament.
One thing I am certain of, though, as I sit here looking through the window at the rain bouncing of the pavement, contemplating whether I should have stayed in the party and fought the evil from within: I'm glad I'm not out there trying to cajole reluctant electors to go to the polling stations and vote for someone I can't stand the sight of anymore!

First Post

2005-01-12T23:23:00.000Z

Some days you just can't get anything done, no matter how hard you try. Today has been one of those; but, hey, I got this started, didn't I?