Brennig Jones (and friends)

It is 08.30 Saturday morning and the Joneses are abed, but not asleep.

Soph is watching BBC News whilst eating Vegemite on Toast; Bren is tapping away on his laptop having exhausted all of his Bloglines feeds. A quick cruise through The Daily Mail Online might be in order soon, just to raise the blood pressure a little.

We are going away today. Not for long, just an overnighter. But we will soon be travelling northwards to The Land That Time Forgot; to a place where Magicks and Cavemen and Demons dwell. No, I’m not being all ‘halloweenish’, it’s just how life is in Worcestershire.

We’ll be coming back tomorrow.

So I (Bren) should get up really. There’s a yard to get to and at least one horse that should be exercised before we make the trip and it should be Tom.

Yesterday I took Vin out for a hack through a couple of villages. We explored lanes that neither of us had been down and discovered a couple of gorgeous hamlets tucked away in a little valley.

It really was too cute for words; incredibly pretty scenes – in a chocolate box kind of way; little clumps of centuries-old cottages framed by the many-shades-of-brown Autumnal range of colouring that London-based fashion designers just don’t get.

Vin didn’t get it either. Oh he looked and gawped and stared, but he didn’t get it. Vin’s due for a clip this week, Tom is going to need a second clip if the current warm spell continues.

I schooled Tom in the indoor arena after I’d put Vin to bed. These two horses are like chalk and cheese, but Tom is good for me. Were Vin has taught me to be defensive, Tom says ‘go!’.

We should jump today, Tom and me; a little course of 3′, maybe eight or nine fences. We need to practice rhythm and balance in the canter (Tom has a minor tendency to lean inwards on the right rein, and I need to get the fold right over the fence).

Anyway.

Lying here in bed, listening to Sophie’s stomach gurgling away as it digests the Vegemite (and/or the toast) I’ve been half thinking about the Halloween thing.

I nipped over to the font of all bad knowledge, Wikipedia, and the website didn’t fail to disappoint me once again.

Unbelievably Wikipedia calls Halloween ‘a holiday’.

What? Really? When did that happen?

Because in my language ‘a holiday’ is a special event for which one gets time off work.

So when did Halloween become ‘a holiday’? And in which country is Halloween ‘a holiday’?

Please?

When I lived in the United States, Halloween sure as hell wasn’t ‘a holiday’, so has it happened since?

Or is this another of Wikipedia’s many ‘black holes of information’, where good data is automatically sucked in to some kind of Good Information Wormhole, leaving just the crud and the ridiculous behind for people to read?

But the point of this small diatribe is to mention that I’m considering a Get Halloween Back To Basics Campaign; what do you think?

Halloween used to go like this for me:

1. Apple-bobbing in the kitchen
2. A trip to the fun-fair (if it was in town, but if it wasn’t))
3. Home-made toffee apples
4. Erm…

Knocking on doors and Trick or Treating didn’t happen. The thought of tip-toeing up Grumpy Mr Garner’s footpath, knocking on his door and asking for a trick or treat is too scary to contemplate; he would have set his dogs on us.

And also, Deaf Old Mrs Baker would (had anyone been so bold) have wielded that broom handle that she kept by her door and would have caused many bruises and contusions on our skin.

So why, I wonder, are GMG and DOMB expected to be all sweetness and light these days?

Surely (and don’t call me Shirley) they are entitled to remain isolated in their homes being as grumpy and as surly as they want to be?

Who has given the chavs of today the right to go disturbing people in the comfort and security of their own miserableness?

I really don’t care too much because when the snot-nosed, glue-sniffing, OAP-botherers come around this evening we won’t be here.

Ha ha!

Happy holiday!

I worry about Soph. Or, more accurately, I worry about how The Great British Public treat Soph in her workplace.

To me it seems wrong that people can (and do) go in to a library and treat the staff in a manner which, if the treatment were reversed upon them, would cause them to complain and (rightly) say such things are unacceptable.

To me it is wrong that teenagers can verbally abuse librarians, call them names like ‘Fucking slut’, can swear at and be disrespectful to the staff and yet, just get away with it.

To me it is wrong that my wife has to endure this on an almost daily basis.

To me it is also wrong that the staff in the library have no sanction – or are not permitted to take any sanction – against people who behave in this manner.

To me the county council (the employer) is being negligent; is certainly not protecting staff from abuse and harassment.

To me it is strange that if a member of the public should abuse or harass a member of railway staff, the abuser is automatically ejected from the premises, automatically charged with a public order offence, automatically sent to court and, if found guilty, automatically banned from using that service as well as gaining a conviction and a fine.

To me there is no difference between a member of railway staff or a member of staff in a library; they are both public servants and therefore of equal value.

To me, if an employer (either via a combination of weak, ineffective management and a blinkered attitude) fails to protect and support their staff, that employer is being (there is no other description that fits) grossly negligent.

It seems to me that a grossly negligent employer is open to all manner of legal action.

Does it seem that way to you?

Oxford cyclists.

Aren’t they amazing?

Last night as we drove in to town – in the pitch black and the pouring rain – we encountered many members of that unique category of the human race, road users who believe that not only are the laws of common sense something that can be completely ignored, but who also believe they are above the requirements of the Road Traffic Act (1988, as amended by RTA 1991).

What an amazing breed they are.

• No lights (front or rear)
• No hi-viz clothing
• No hardened headgear (p.s. wooly hats actually don’t count!)

Away they trundle, bobbing and weaving unsteadily in and out of lines of traffic in a manner that would earn a person taking their CBT (the most basic moped driving test) an immediate fail for being dangerous.

I realise that some motorists are below the acceptable standard, but at least they’ve passed a test somewhere along the line. I find it impossible to believe that a large proportion of Oxford’s cyclists have passed their Cycling Proficiency Test.

Take the girl out on her bicycle last night.

Three quarters of the way down the street in which I was driving, I saw a parking space on my side of the road.

I checked the mirrors, nothing there, switched the indicator on and gently braked in a text-book position to begin the parallel-parking manoeuvre. I checked the mirrors again, put the car in to gear and began to reverse in to the vacant space.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a sudden movement behind me. Instantly I stopped the car in the middle of the road and got out to check what I had seen.

About 24 feet behind the car, on the ground, was a young girl – early teens – on a bike that was plainly too big for her. Her preferred method of dealing with the common situation of cycling towards a reversing vehicle is, it seems, not to apply her brake to reduce speed and come to a halt, or to manoeuvre out in to the road and pass the vehicle, but to throw herself off the bike and in to the road.

Amazing.

Why didn’t I see her in the dark and in the rain before I began the reversing movement?

Because she had no lights and no hi-viz clothing and yes folks, it was bloody dark.

Doubly amazing.

Yes, she could have made a loop out to the side of my car, there was sufficient space for her to pass easily (a car’s width), but instead she threw herself in to the road.

Mind you, talking of ‘could have’s', she could have put a fucking light on the front of her bike and worn a hi-viz vest.

But then again, common sense seems to be in short supply in some people.

Like, for example, the other two Oxford cyclists we saw who ignored a red light at the start of a set of road works, and rode down the middle of the single alternating lane of traffic right in to the face of oncoming vehicles.

Amazing once again.

Increasingly, there are voices in the media being raised against the recklessness of the cycling fraternity.

Is it any wonder?

This is going to make me unpopular. That’s a cross I can bear for speaking my mind.

One person – just one person – has been costing this country over £100,000/year, every year, for a spell of greater than 10 years.

Is this person a Member of Parliament claiming a full set of expenses and allowances?

No, actually this person is unemployed, yet has so far cost the British Taxpayer over £1,000,00.00p, on what is a continuing spend.

Is this person Royalty?

No, despite costing this country the annual equivalent of a minor Royal, this person is one of the proletariat.

Does this person have major physical or mental disabilities that require intensive, round-the-clock care and support?

No, this person has no physical or mental disabilities. He does, however, require substantial care and support.

This person is Mr Paul Mason, a 48-year-old from Ipswich, Suffolk.

The reason Paul Mason costs the British Taxpayer over £100,000/year is his weight. Paul Mason weighs 70 stone. That’s 980 pounds, or 445 kilos. Or half a metric ton.

It is reported (and I’m deliberately using these careful words because, as we know, the British press is very adept at conjuring up ‘statements’ from thin air), that Mr Mason does not want to lose weight.

What I can report with absolute certainty is that just three years ago Paul Mason weighed a mere 50 stone (that’s 700 pounds or 318 kilos). So in 36 months this gargantuan person has added an additional 20 stone (280 pounds/127 kilos) to what was his – even back then – morbidly obese frame to become classified by Suffolk Health Authority as ‘Super Obese’.

A 20 stone (280 pound/127 kilo) increase in 36 months?

That is ridiculous.

And something else that’s ridiculous is spending £100,000/year on keeping this person’s life comfortable or, to put it another way, spending over £1,000,000 on maintaining Mr Mason’s ability to continue over-eating.

Instead of giving this guy so much financial aid and physical support the Health Authority, Local Authority, Central Government and Benefits Agency should all be turning off the fiscal tap that is pouring food in to Paul Mason’s overworked gullet.

Instead of supporting his lifestyle they should be invoking severe and critical intervention; should be putting this person in to a position where he has to stop over-eating and, with help, commence a fitter lifestyle.

If Paul Mason wants to eat himself to death (which is plainly his choice) then he should be allowed to carry out that act; however the British Taxpayer should not be assisting him in his bid to commit suicide by food, because that cannot be legal.

If, however, Paul Mason wants to change for the better, I’m all for the provision of intervention to facilitate that.

And before anyone says that Paul Mason has an illness I’ll just say one thing.

Bollocks.

He is no more ‘ill’ than a habitual nail-biter. His compulsion to eat and eat and eat and eat and eat is just down to a lack of willpower which is only equalled by his complete and utter lack of interest to take – in his earlier years – any form of physical exercise. It’s just down to laziness and a surplus of very bad food.

In 1990 Paul Mason weighed 30 stone (420 pounds/191 kilos), yet in the space of less than a year he shed 1/3rd of that tremendous weight; not through the sudden desire to take healthy exercise, but because he was in prison for a year for stealing mail when he worked as a postman.

Now that is positive intervention – 30% weight loss in a year? That’s the kind of help and support that Paul Mason needs.

Paul Mason is a fat, lazy person.

Is this awful of me?

Maybe it is, but balance that statement with the simple fact that the physicians in the Health Authority can find no health-related reason for Mr Mason’s chronic over-indulgence.

But what is even more awful is that each year for the last ten years the equivalent of three Nursing Sisters’ salaries has been spent supporting Mr Mason in his attempt to live off the fat of the British Taxpayer.

And that one, simple, fiscal fact is, frankly, even more obscene than he is.

For the Greenies:
The average car in the UK emits 260g of CO2 per mile. The People’s Republic of China, meanwhile, builds one new, large, coal-fired power plant every week, and every year adds enough new large coal-fired plants to power the entire British Isles. Your Prius isn’t going to offset that. Wake up.

For those who complain about the nanny state:
The Great British Public eats too much, drinks too much, smokes too much and drives their cars carelessly and too fast. If you don’t think the Government shouldn’t do its reasonable best to curb these excesses, then you shouldn’t expect the NHS to pick up the bill when we can’t handle things ourselves. Telling people they should act responsibly is not nanny stateism, at least not when the vast majority of the members of the Great British Public are mindless morons who shouldn’t be left in charge of their own destiny, let alone sharp knives.

For those who set foreign policy:
Why the hell are you spending British lives and tax-payers money (and spending both at an obscene rate) to prop up a corrupt, backwards and medieval regime in Afghanistan? Are the people you foreign policy twunts spending lives and money to support that good? Do they support universal suffrage? Equal rights? No, actually. They support and promote none of these things. So you twunts are supporting this bunch of bent foreign politicians because why? Because they’re the best there is? Really? Do I look that fucking stupid?

For the husband of HRH Princess Anne (The Princess Royal), a man who, defending why his department at the MOD has presided over 700 Married Quarters remaining empty for an obscene length of time because there were no carpets. When you said:
“Carpets are a difficult area. There is a risk attached,” what, precisely, were the risks of carpets you had in mind that are capable of keeping over 700MQs empty for over a year? Come on. I’m waiting.

For the politicians:
You’re had it your own way for far too long. Lack of transparency, absence of accountability and having the ability to make your own rules up whilst telling us to apply a more stringent set of values is no longer acceptable. If you don’t like the terms, conditions and fiscal rewards of being a Member of Parliament, leave. Leave now. And do not pass ‘Go’ and do not collect any kind of financial reward. The number of highly-principled, honest MPs with a high moral value seems, sadly, to be outstripped by the greedy, thieving bastards who are so devoid of moral character they shouldn’t be in a position to make any kind of legal decision.

For BT:
I pay you for a service. If you can’t deliver the service for which I pay you (the same service which you claimed you could deliver before I signed the contract), I don’t expect you to give me a substandard service and a bucketful of weasely, mealy-mouthed words; I expect you to give me my money back. This is not good enough:

Twunts!

I have just finished writing a feature for an Italian magazine on the Spanish village where I used to live.

Seems a little bizarre to me; a well-bred Milanese output of lit-print wanting the gen on a small village high in the mountains in Southern Spain, where the winter is so severe they celebrate New Year in August – because the village is usually snowed in for Christmas and New Year.

Anyway, I’ve been stuck on that feature for a few days; finally, this morning, I could read it and declare it finished. So it’s gone and I don’t want to pick up another piece of writing for a couple of hours because my head’s still full of that piece.

Instead, I’m immersing myself in music and flicking through photographs as I listen.

I used to be a real photo-nut. My Pentax SLR went everywhere with me. I was never much of a developer; I was content to spend ages waiting for the right shot, but mixing and fixing and washing and developing and all that stuff? Nah, not interested.

These days I have a little digital non-SLR which has done what I wanted very nicely.

Until we started shooting indoors much more; that’s when my current camera started to show what it couldn’t do very well.

I suppose the logical transition is to a digital SLR but I’m wondering if it is actually *worth* it.

Do you get the faint taste of indecision here? Now then, what else can I be indecisive about?

Oh yes. Video editing software. Any clues? Not looking for much, something cheap and cheerful should do it (I hope).

Right, it’s noon. I need to go and sit on a couple of horses.

Later.

This very disturbing CCTV capture comes from the Russian city of Perm (no dear, it’s not a hair style).

It shows what we’ve all done, just jogged across a pedestrian crossing to get to the other side in a hurry.

Except this time, the bus behind that car has had a brake failure and…

p.s. What I find really interesting is that in Russia it’s OK to video a street scene, whereas if you try that in London and you’ll get the Plastic Police (PCSOs) on your case telling you that you’re not allowed to do that here

By Brennig, aged 12-1/2

Where the hell did it go?

One minute it was Friday night and Soph and I were sitting in front of our Microphones, giggling (as we do). The next moment there’s GMTV on the bedroom TV, Soph’s in the shower and I’m lying in bed wondering what I can do to avoid getting up.

Hmm….

Saturday:
First thing in the morning I drove to a place just outside Chippy (as we locals call Chipping Norton) to walk a cross-country course where Tom and I were scheduled to compete the following day. It was a very long cross-country course walk: an hour and 20 minutes.

The fences were all fairly straightforward and included drops, steps, hedges, walls and the usual assortment of cross-country obstacles; there was a nasty little timed section that began after fence 3 that included a gate to be opened and closed whilst mounted, but that was the only real technical obstacle.

I came away – if not bursting with confidence, at least – thinking that Tom and I could have a good crack at it.

Then I drove to the train station to pick up K who came out from Oxford to ride Vin and then Tom.

While she cracked on with Vin, Becky and I went up to the yard’s cross-country course to watch Sammi schooling her youngest, prior to a one-day event.

I don’t know what happened precisely, but whilst watching Sammi something in my head started wibbling at the thought of taking Tom around a course of cross-country fences the next day – so soon in to our relationship. It was only a little niggle but it definitely began then.

When Sammi and her ginger ninja had finished working, we all tottered back to the yard. K was finishing with Vin so I untacked him, groomed him and rugged him up while she tacked up Tom.

It was very interesting to watch K work with Tom, he’s a very different stamp of horse and a very different character to The Vinster, but it was lovely to see how hard he tried for her.

Afterwards we cleaned and oiled the saddles and both bridles, then sat and drank tea and generally gossipped (about Vin and Tom obv, K’s recent trip to southern USA and her overall progress on her Doctoral thesis).

I dropped K back at the train station and made my way home where Soph soon joined me from her day in Stratford with friends.

We went to bed and were very rude and then we fell asleep. I got up later, made us mugs of tea and we sat on the couch in our bathrobes and watched Harry Hill’s You’ve Been Framed, Harry Hill’s TV Burp and Harry Hill’s X-Factor.

Sunday:
I woke up and the wibble had grown overnight. I did not feel confident about the cross-country.

You see, if you’re in the dressage phase of a one-day event and you screw it up you just get a barrel-load of penalties, but you get to go home safe and sound at the end of it.

If you’re in the show-jumping phrase of a one-day event and you screw it up you just get a bundle of jumping penalties as the timber falls in the arena, but once again (usually) you get to go home and have a cup of tea at the end of it.

But if you’re in the cross-country phase of a one-day event and you fuck it up you get very seriously damaged, and so does your horse. Those fences don’t move and hitting the ground from a significant height at a speed of 30mph can break bones and do more soft-tissue damage than you can shake a stick at. As I can testify.

So I wimped right out of the cross-country.

I don’t know why, I just felt less than 100% confident and that, believe me, is no mental frame to go cross-country in.

We bumbled around the house, eventually leaving to forage in Costa for Latté. How the times of being a hunter-gatherer have changed!

While Soph sat and sipped and read I may have fallen asleep whilst listening to The Bitterest Pill.

After a while we packed up and headed down to the Little Chef just north of Oxford which surprised the hell out of me by listing on the menu: ‘Mushroom and Pepper suet pudding, served with a vegetable mash and peas’.

As a vegetarian, how could I resist? It was excellent winter nosh.

When we were stuffed to the brim with food and hot chocolate we drove down the Oxford ring-road towards the cinema.

We were ridiculously early, so we detoured to the garage to clean the car and briefly considered calling around to see if Mike and Jenny were in. They had a lucky escape though because we decided they didn’t deserve such punishment.

We sat in the cinema car-park and read for 45 minutes before going in to see an Over 18s showing of UP.

Can I just say here that surely – surely – that’s the only way to see this film?

A cinema-full of kids would surely ruin the experience completely? And they wouldn’t get half of the gags.

And was it wrong of me to start fancying the adult ‘Ellie’ character around the time she got married? (only people who have seen the film will be able to understand the magnitude of this question)

It is, though, a very good film. Do go and see it. Without kids, preferably.

When we got home we had an episode of Angel before falling in to bed and instantly becoming unconscious.

Neither of us wanted to get up when the early morning alarm went off, but we did. Eventually.

So yes, it was a nice weekend; restful, peaceful.

But no cross-country games because I had a crisis of confidence.

On that score, I have decided to take Tom on a cross-country course this Thursday. Hopefully this should get my confidence back up to where it used to/should be.

I have also decided that Tom and I are going to ride out – at least once – with a local Bloodhounds hunt.

And now I need to write, otherwise my deadlines won’t be met and I won’t get paid and all manner of nasty things will happen.

But while I’m writing I’m wondering about digital photography and whether I should upgrade or stay with my current set of hardware.

Anyway, that’s me.

How was yours?

Well, no. Actually it’s in your ears if you already listen to the internet entertainment phenomen fenomen phenomenonen phenomenon sweeping the world, that is also known as This Reality Podcast.

If you don’t listen to it here’s what you are missing in this week’s Fanfarlo special:

Four excellent tracks:
* Australia’s The Good China and We Found 3 Whistles
* The UK’s Fanfarlo and I’m A Pilot, followed by
* More Fanfarlo and their current single The Walls Are Coming Down, and
* France’s Josephine Ancelle and Si C’etait La.

We also bring you an interview with Justin Finch of Fanfarlo.

And as if that’s not enough, we also serve up the début of our new feature: The Cheese Game.

Find it on the internet at http://bit.ly/prRXx or pick it up on iTunes at http://bit.ly/25zMa8

We have a dog and we love dressing him up in ridiculous things.

We also love bending him in to all sorts of strange contortions and leaving him on the bed for the other one of us to find.

The aim, you see, is to invoke as much mirth and merriment as possible, because we both love laughter.

And laughing.

We are such simple fools, obviously, that laughter entertains us and provoking laughter in each other gives us a little thrill.

So I thought I’d show you just how simple we are with some photographs of the poor old dog (after we’ve had a go at him, obv).

1. Hairdresser Dog

2. Poorly Dog (he’d fallen down whilst drunk)

3. Hungover Dog (there’s a bit of a theme developing here)

4. DJ Dog (wearing one of the new podcast T-Shirts too!)

Simples.