The Herne Bay Telly-Go-Round

People often ask me why I like odd things and my reply would be - life's strange, so enjoy it.  Anyway, I do see the bizarre and the surreal popping up pretty much everywhere and quite frankly, I revel in it.  One of my current obsessions, of which I have many - the TV quiz Pointless being one of them, ditto my new Philips electronic flosser (don't ask...)

Right, the Herne Bay Telly-Go-Round is a local phenomenon - it's a kind of sideshow attraction funded and run by the local Rotary Club and is basically an automaton featuring past and present childrens' TV characters and is rather nicely filmed in this YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoPhJmRwzXU  My son absolutely adores it, as do quite a few people who meander down the seafront, I think it's because it's a mixture of rather quaint poorly-maintained figures and hugely inaccurate models - i.e. Thomas The Tank Engine is painted the wrong shade of blue and sports a face daubed with icky grey paint.  Sometimes they'll add another plush model, but the remainder of the characters will be sadly ignored as a result.

I've taken a few rather rubbish pictures on my phone to illustrate the point:

T

They're all rather shabby aren't they?  Is that a bit of a Viz 'up the arse corner' scene I spy with the Fraggles?  Obscene, especially in front of the kiddies.  Also, who on earth was/is 'Wiggli Willi'?  The only reference I can find using Google's safe search function is an arachnid character who helps children with their counting?  I mean, don't get me wrong, part of the reason I go on breaks to the seaside is for a bit of 'Wiggli Willi', well that and copious amounts of ice cream anyway....

In Praise of Geekiness, Especially of the Male kind

Yes, on a blog which is pretty much centres around being a female geek I am going to write about how much I adore male nerds and geeks.  I guess it's all part and parcel of what suits your own personality, but I very much doubt whether I'd date, hang around with or indeed marry anyone who didn't fit into that category.  Let's take ourselves back to the days of the early 1990s, I was studying for my A-Levels at a local sixth form college and emerging from a single-sex secondary modern girls' school I am dragged, kicking and screaming into a mixed environment with a whole bunch of boys who formerly attended my school's brother institution.  It's nice and it made lessons such as geography, rather fun.

So, the boys are nice, but on the whole, they're pretty samey - apart from one that is.  I won't name him because he's all grown up now and married with children, but to the 17-year-old me he was fantastic and best of all, and quite frankly, rather strangely, he used to sport two badges on his jacket - one depicting Matthew Kelly's face and the other....Henry Kelly (of Going for Gold Fame).  So, why on earth would that impress any girl and indeed me?  Well, I grew up in the London suburbs and as we all know, they're rather uniform by nature, everyone has to conform to a certain ideal and any kind of oddness is stamped out of you either by name calling at school or physical bullying.  Of course, like most adolescent relationships it only lasted until the first year of his degree, but it's always worth setting people free to follow their own paths in life.

Since then, well I must admit that my most successful relationships have been with nerds, but don't pity me as I think that it's great.  "Blokes need a hobby" said my Mother, and I hate to admit it, but she's right and shed or house space must be cleared as a result.  India Knight wrote about the very same thing in last week's Sunday Times supplements and I agree.  There is a higher concentration of males on the autistic spectrum then women and I think it's because everyone sits on the spectrum, but quite a few of the attributes are mainly male - such as an obsession with comedy or say, sports results.  So, nerds of the world rejoice - us women don't all want fake tanned, bleached teeth muscled torsos in any way, shape or form.  Surely, as in everything in life, personality rules out?

PS - the image if of my favourite mug which is a bone china number depicting an early tube map.  Sad?  Yes I am and proud of it.

Postscript: can I just say that some nerds are twats of the highest order?  Yeah, it's my blog and I can express whatever views I bloody well like.

Some weeks are bad weeks

Yes they are and isn't that the truth?  Well, the weekend was a good one but I made the mistake of commenting on a Facebook friend's status and lo and behold, some of his rather stupid friends started being sarcastic back, I replied and then....well, I didn't read the thread, I merely deleted it.  I haven't a clue what happens to people when they get online - do they really think that the people behind the smartphone, tablet or laptop don't really exist in reality? 

On Tuesday I performed in my choir concert and although it was fairly enjoyable, I didn't really feel part of it.  I don't think it helps that I'm quite a bit older than the majority of the women and cannot get quite as excited as they do about stuff. 

On Thursday I had issues at work; a colleague whom I'd been bantering with suddenly turned odd and asked me to leave him alone.  Perhaps I went too far?  I'd always thought that it was reciprocal, but clearly not?  It's getting more and more difficult to tread the correct line between professionalism and fun in the corporate world these days.

Today was much better as I wasn't working and all of my social media interactions were good - we've got a group of five caterpillars as part of a butterfly game I'm reviewing on a major retailer's site and I have named the bugs after the five members of the seminal 80s band Five Star.  They're all doing rather well and Steadman seems to be clinging to the lid somewhat - good for him!  One of my Facebook friends commented upon the picture I'd uploaded stating that he would want to recreate the scene from Going Live when a caller rang up to ask 'Five Star Were So Shit?'  I replied that I'd be raising a nest of spiders and would name them after members of Matt Bianco.

Finally, I saw an amazing sight en route home from the shopping mall - the newly refurbished 'hobo benches' as I've dubbed them hosted something rather wonderful - a tramp eating a trifle.  Now that's something you don't see every day, isn't it?

Monday: Shlepping around Asda, Robert Palmer and The PSBs

One of the great things about working part-time is that once I've dropped the Earl off at the school gates I can mosey along to the shops, which at 8:51am are usually pretty darn empty.  One of my least favourite things about shopping is crowds and supermarkets are the worst, especially in stores such as Asda where gits tend to either block whole aisles with their trolleys or plough straight into me whilst conversing on their bejewelled iPhones to an unknown person about something important, such as the cost of shellac nails.  Anyway, today I didn't buy any food items, but purchased the items you see below (actually there were a few other things for The Earl, but I don't really want to write too much about him on t'internet.)

So, Duchess, why on earth have you  bought a pink segmented lunchbox?  Well, it was on a rollback and I thought that it would prove useful in a picnic situation; also, I think I'm gaining a fetish for plastic storage, don't ask me why, but one of my kitchen cupboards is full of it.  Er, the facecloths are because they're a great way of cleansing one's face whilst carrying out simultaneous make up removal and microdermabrasion.  The hair colour is because mine looks like a choc ice has been placed on the top and I'm choosing the darker hues of blonde these days because I think that it more closely resembles my natural colour and the regrowth is better.  I could write about the dish brush, but that's beyond boring - zzzzzz.

I am sitting here listening to the greatest hits of Robert Palmer on YouTube; I seem to recall that he was royally taken the mickey of in an episode of The Mary Whitehouse Experience back in the early 1990s because I recall my brothers both laughing their smelly socks off about it.   I have always liked Robert Palmer's blend of blue eyed soul fused with synth and steel drums; I think this sound emerged because he was on Island Records, along with label mates Bob Marley, U2 and possibly Pulp, although I'd have to look that one up.  I recall that we were moving from a rented flat to our house on the day he died back in 2003 and later reading that he was buried in Switzerland in a designer suit (er, he was probably encased in a coffin too, the Swiss are very precise about such things.)

If we're talking about music, you're probably more than aware that I like 80s stuff and one of my favourite albums from that era is the Pet Shop Boys' Introspective album which was issued in 1988.  My best friend at the time had it on vinyl and we used to sit in her room listening to it whilst sticking mousse in her hair prior to getting the diffuser out (a total retro cliche...) My favourite track was Left to My Own Devices and I still love it, the lyrics are pretty much me to a tee.  The version of I'm Not Scared is brilliant too and Patsy Kensit's short-lived band Eighth Wonder had a hit with the single in the same year if my memory serves me right.  That was of course, before she appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? and wept copiously about her family's criminal past which I'm pretty sure was well-known prior to the researchers digging the relevant paperwork up.