Quote Of The Week

From Liberty's head of fashion buying, Olivia Richardson, on those new-season platform shoes that not even models can walk in without falling over:


(Photo courtesy of Jezebel)

"I don't think practicality comes into it. It's more of an empowering assertion of your own femininity."

Yes. I've always found being rendered unable to walk very empowering. Also, as anyone who's ever had one too many Diamond Whites will attest, falling over is very feminine. Bonus femininity points if you manage to flash your new-season satin-bowed Damaris knickers* while doing so.


* DAVE: WARNING: PANTS

Credit Crunch Wisdom

Just surfacing briefly from an enormous pile of nappies, wet wipes and tiny garments to draw your attention to some wise words uttered (or rather typed) earlier by my lovely cousin The Bureauista.

If you're looking for a job at the moment, or if you're suspicious about your employer's long-term prospects, take heed:

'The experience of watching a business disintegrate has taught me quite a few things. If I ever go for another job interview, it won't be the training opportunities and the staff canteen arrangements I'll be asking about; I'll be requesting to see the balance sheets and to have a long chat with the company accountant. I'll be asking exactly how much guaranteed business is coming in in the next six months, what contingencies are in place in case a client drops out of the picture, whether there are savings to cover salary payments in the event of an emergency: all things I would never have considered it necessary to ask before.'

All these things are essential questions to ask at interview, or at your annual appraisal, or you may come to regret it very soon...

Read the Bureauista's complete post here.

How To Write Complete Bollocks (And Still Get Paid)

Emblazoned across the top of today's Guardian front page:


(Picture shamelessly stolen from Andrew Collins's blog.)

Here's an excerpt from Catherine Tate's introduction to the advertised 'How To Write Comedy' supplement (most of which, it turns out, has actually been written by Richard Herring):

'I suppose what I'm saying is I don't feel in a position to give advice about writing, because, technically, I'm not a writer.'

No. Still, no reason not to accept a commission to write a guide on 'How To Write Comedy', eh? Especially as you don't actually have to write it at all!

So, given that one of our 'top writers' admits to not being a writer, what are her three top tips for the country's would-be comedy scribes? Something about pacing, maybe? The best way to format a script? How to create a killer punchline? Ways to convey an idea more economically?

Let's see:

Trust yourself. You have to start with what you think is funny before you can have the confidence to write to anyone else's brief.

Have confidence in yourself...good...good... *makes notes*

Give a gag three chances to work, if after three (separate) attempts they're still not laughing, bin it.

Hmm, perhaps la Tate thought she'd been commissioned to write a guide on 'How To Do Stand-Up'. Still, don't let that stop you taking her expert advice about writing to someone else's brief.

Don't take criticism personally, take from it what's useful. Apply it and move on to something better. And be brave. No one got anywhere by being too scared to open their mouth in case nobody laughed.

Well, there's where I've been going wrong: I never realised that writing was done by opening your mouth. Truly I have learned much about the craft, thank you, Guardian supplement!

The title of this instructive piece, incidentally, is 'Joke's On You'. Hmm.


UPDATE: Meanwhile, Billy takes a methodical approach to critiquing the Guardian's 'How To Write A Novel' supplement...

Patroclus And Mr BC Discuss...Lactation

INT. BLUE CAT/QUINQUIREME TOWERS - DAY

MR BC: I'm going to the shops. Do we need anything?

ME: Erm...some milk. And some cat biscuits.

Pause.

ME: And a cabbage.

MR BC: What kind of cabbage?

ME: One with really big leaves.

Not Actually Blue, Or A Kitten

Well, that was quite possibly the most rubbish liveblog in the history of blogging, I do apologise.

Anyway, I am delighted to announce that the Blue Kitten is now in the house, born at 9.06pm yesterday* and weighing 7 pounds exactly. Here's a photo:


She looks a bit gingery there but her hair is actually black.

You can see another pic of the Kitten in ET mode here.

Thanks to you all for your comments throughout yesterday, they were really very encouraging and helpful. Turns out that even the most straightforward birth (as thankfully this was) is a bit of an ordeal, eh?


* Which means she shares a birthday with both Dave and Delirium. Auspicious!

Patroclus Heroically Half-Heartedly Liveblogs Own Labour

Contractions started - most inconveniently, I thought - at 11pm precisely, and have been every 10 minutes for the last three hours. I have a laptop and a supply of chocolate Hobnobs. I expect I'll be here all night.

*Waves to nocturnal blog visitors from exotic timezones*

Don't worry, I'm not going to liveblog any gory details, in fact this may be the last this blog sees of me for Quite Some While...

...unless it all turns out to be a false alarm, of course.

UPDATE 06.55: Not a false alarm, but a bit of a long drawn-out experience thus far. Still, at one point I did make an Excel spreadsheet to analyse the contractions, my nerdiness knows no bounds...

UPDATE 10:08 Ow. Owowowowowowowow. Ow.

UPDATE 11.24: I am 3cm dilated and eating a banana (this is not a euphemism). Fascinating stuff, eh?

Patroclus Reviews A Book, Rants

I'd almost finished Ben Goldacre's new book 'Bad Science' when my cousin popped up to divulge some salacious details of a date she once had with him, which was fortunate, because if I'd known about this earlier my judgment of his oeuvre might have been clouded*.


Goldacre: 'fabulous hair', says source.

But happily ignorant of a number of intriguing snippets of information regarding the good doctor, I was able to enjoy the first 292 pages on an entirely intellectual, rather than visceral, level. Which is good, because Ben Goldacre's entire professional raison d'être is to teach us to use our brains, not our emotions, to assess the science and health stories we read in the media.

I realise I'm probably preaching to the converted here, what with the vast majority of this blog's readers being Guardian-reading (and even Guardian-writing) types who are well aware of Dr Ben's Bad Science column and his apparently single-minded dedication to debunking all those lurid and ill-researched newspaper stories about health scares, miracle cures, fad diets and all the rest.

Anyone who saw yesterday's Guardian front-page story, for example, will know that Dr Ben isn't afraid to explain exactly why so many 'leading' nutritionists and vitamin-supplement advocates are quacks, frauds and charlatans of the worst sort, even if doing so lands him and the Guardian in court.

His book, then, is all about how lifestyle and consumer journalists lack the scientific knowledge and analytical skills to 'see through' pseudo-scientific claims about health risks - such as the supposed 'link' between the MMR jab and autism - with the result that newspapers are full of badly reported, badly researched and poorly-backed-up scare stories that appeal to readers' emotions rather than to their reason.

On a general level, the book not only provides the reader with a battery of critical tools with which to deconstruct and interrogate these so-called news stories - and learning to read between the lines of media stories, as far as I'm concerned, is an essential life skill and one I'll be teaching the Blue Kitten the minute she demonstrates any kind of mastery of the art of reading - but it's also very, very scathing and frequently very, very funny.

For me personally, having worked for several years in PR, I also found a lot of it uncomfortably close to home. Because, as Dr Ben rightly points out, the reason these scare stories end up in the media in the first place is that there's a PR machine behind them, creating sensationalist press releases from 'research' that is at best deeply flawed and at worst completely made up. The aim of this PR machine, usually, is to promote some vitamin supplement, specialist diet or homeopathic remedy as being better than anything suggested by mainstream medicine, the pharmaceutical industry or your own common sense.

Thankfully I've never done PR for any product that actually had a direct effect on life and death - unlike the vitamin supplements promoted by Matthias Rath as being more effective against Aids than anti-retroviral drugs - but I'm uncomfortably familiar with the process by which a press release purporting to be about a piece of research ends up being widely reported by gullible, inexperienced or just plain busy journalists.

I've lost count of the number of press releases I've seen that announce 'important research findings' without mentioning what the research consisted of, how it was conducted, how many people were studied, or who commissioned it whether it was independent or commissioned. And usually, there's no actual research report for journalists and interested parties to peruse, only the press release itself.

This is because very often the research has been conducted by a PR person emailing a bunch of their friends with a poorly-designed survey, and reporting the results as percentages rather than absolute numbers. '65% of Britons have been victims of identity theft' sounds like a good story. But if you only survey 14 people - and only people that you know - then the fact that nine of them have suffered identity theft means nothing. You might have consciously selected people you know to have been victims, for example. Or your friends might consist predominantly of people who spend a lot of time divulging personal information on Facebook, and are therefore pre-disposed to having their personal details stolen.

What amazes me more than the utter lack of any kind of intellectual rigour involved in this PR wankery, though, is the willingness of journalists to report it as bona fide fact. I know that editorial staffs are forever being cut down, and that most journalists don't have time to investigate every story properly. But I don't think there's any excuse for uncritically publishing meaningless statistics as if they were hard evidence of some supposed trend**. It only encourages PR people to put even less effort into their so-called surveys, resulting in an ever-diminishing respect for factual accuracy and an entire newspaper-reading public who think they're being informed, but are actually being fed a diet of made-up rubbish dressed up as fact.

Which, when it's made-up rubbish about identity theft, may not be so bad, but when newspapers report that MMR causes autism, or that vitamin C can reverse the spread of Aids, is not only irresponsible but actively evil.

This post was brought to you by raspberry leaf tea, chocolate Hobnobs, and the continued non-appearance of the Blue Kitten.


* Naturally we're far too classy for kiss and tell on this blog, but I will just say that the phrase 'a bit of public frottage on Greek Street' remains indelibly etched in my mind.

** I read the other day, for example, that according to the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, only 13.6% of national newspaper editors are female, compared with 17.4% a year ago. Along with many other media outlets, the Guardian - Ben Goldacre's own paper - interprets these figures as illustrative of how the number of women in senior management roles is receding.

Now I'm prepared to believe that the EHRC has ample quantitative evidence for the return of the glass ceiling, but this claim in particular is statistically invalid and can't be used as evidence of anything. There are only around 25 national newspapers in the UK. This means that the EHRC's stats show that there's one fewer female editor now than there was a year ago. When your so-called stats are dictated by the actions of one single person, they aren't representative of a national trend, sorry EHRC.

This Post Was Meant To Be About Something Else Entirely

My efforts to bring on labour naturally - in advance of a looming 8am Tuesday deadline for induction - have turned, as you might expect, to the increasingly baroque and desperate.

So desperate in fact that I found myself attempting to spur my recalcitrant uterus into action by reading - or at least trying to read - that 'Wife in the North' book by Judith O'Reilly, which is based on her blog about how her husband knocked her up and made her move 350 miles from London to Northumberland and how unspeakably awful and intolerable the whole situation is.

'Wait a minute!', think I, not for the first time. 'My significant other made me* move 300 miles from London, and knocked me up, AND I have a blog - why haven't I got a book deal?'

The answer (apart from all the obvious stuff, like how this blog has no central premise nor narrative arc, and is in fact a fifth-rate ragbag of poorly conceived rubbish), is that I'm not a former journalist, nor am I chums with popular political blogger Iain Dale, nor therefore am I able to pull any 'strings' among the London 'media power elite'.

(Unless you count that phone call I had with BT the other day, during which I persuaded them not to charge me for selling me their BT Vision service because it turns out that our house is incapable of receiving terrestrial television - you see, this is exactly the kind of unspeakably awful and intolerable situation that would never arise in London, why haven't I got a book deal, etc. etc.)

Nor, to be fair, do I whinge very much about 'having' to move to Cornwall, because Cornwall is every bit as beautiful and idyllic as everyone always says it is, and because I'm quite euphorically happy here almost all of the time, and because, unlike Ms O'Reilly, I am capable of putting petrol in the car.

I did find her book better written than I expected, although the quote on the back cover describing it as 'Cold Comfort Farm with booster seats' is not only deeply misleading but also an outrageous insult to one of greatest and funniest satirical novels ever written in the English language. And I did cry at a couple of the more mawkish bits, but blamed this on hormones. And I do feel sorry for her in some ways, as her husband seemingly did make her and the kids move to an isolated spot in Northumberland and then continued to spend most of his own life in London. (You may feel inclined to draw your own conclusions from this, incidentally.)

But when I got to page 67 and to the third time she complains about running out of petrol in the car because her (absent) husband hadn't filled it for her, I lost patience with her CONSTANT WHINING and threw it on the floor.

Betty recently wrote that Ms O'Reilly seems to think that she is in some way representative of women in Britain today**. Personally I would hope that most women in Britain today are capable of identifying when the car is low on petrol (clue: the red light comes on), and subsequently of driving it to the petrol station and filling it. But then Ms O'Reilly is a Tory, and therefore perhaps more inclined than many to view herself as subordinate to her all-powerful, all-decision-making husband. The Tory worldview of women and their role in society doesn't make me particularly optimistic about our next government, I have to say.

Anyway, I couldn't help noticing that not even the physical effort of dashing a paperback to the floor had succeeded in prompting my waters to break, so in desperation I turned to the next book in the pile of '3 for 2' books I'd brought back from Waterstone's, namely Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science'.

Which is actually what this post was supposed to be about, but I got distracted almost immediately. Dr Ben and his one-man Quest for Truth will have to wait until tomorrow.

Unless I'm otherwise engaged tomorrow, of course.


* I wasn't exactly uncomplicit in this terrible act of coercion.

** I've just noticed that Betty took umbrage at exactly the same bit as I did, heh.

My Condition Is In The Same Condition As Yesterday, It Turns Out

I've scoured all the online pregnancy and birth sites, but nowhere does it say that a good way to stimulate labour is to watch a succession of witty, sparky, visually-gorgeous films in which a deadbeat loser becomes accidentally embroiled in a criminal plot through a case of mistaken identity - with hilarious consequences.

I saw that as no reason not to give it a try, however, which is why Mr BC and I recently dug out both The Big Lebowski (which I'd never seen before) and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (which I had).

Now obviously there's nothing I can tell the highly pop-culture-literate readers of this blog about The Big Lebowski that they don't already know, and what with film criticism being very low on my list of skillz, there's nothing much more I can say about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that I didn't say last time.

So I'm just going to point out that both films have excellent soundtracks, and here to demonstrate that fact is one track from each, which - if you don't have them already - I thoroughly encourage you to download and enjoy at your leisure:


From Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:

Felix Da Housecat - Silver Screen Shower Scene (mp3)
(Buy from Amazon)

From The Big Lebowski:

Kenny Rogers and the First Edition - Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) (mp3)
(Buy from Amazon)


In the meantime, I'll just go back to waiting for the contractions to start...

Displacement Activities

What I have done today instead of having a baby:

1) Went to Truro, had an almond pain au chocolat, lord of all the buns.

2) Discovered there is an archaeological site in Afghanistan called The Minaret of Jam.

3) Decided The Minaret of Jam would be an excellent title for a Fighting Fantasy book:

Deep in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan lies an untold wealth of treasure, sealed in a spindly tower made entirely from fruit-based preserve - or so the rumour goes. Several adventurers like yourself have set off for the Minaret of Jam in search of the fabled hoard. None has ever returned. Do you dare follow them?

Your quest is to find the treasure, hidden high in a tower of pectin, fruit and sugar, populated with a multitude of terrifying monsters. You will need courage, determination and an almost unlimited supply of toast if you are to survive all the traps and battles, and reach your goal - the jam-smeared inner sanctum of the forbidding minaret.

4) Noticed the phrase 'refresh thumbnail' on Facebook's Blog Network app.

5) Added 'refresh thumbnail' to my lexicon of Phrases That Would Have Meant Something Competely Different Twenty Years Ago.

6) Spent a long time wondering how you would go about refreshing a thumbnail.

7) Decided that dipping it in a fingerbowl of icy water and lemon wedges would be particularly expedient.

8) Entertained my friend S. for afternoon coffee and chocolate Hobnobs.

9) Cross-examined my friend S. about her new boyfriend, whom she's been seeing for eight days:


S: ...and we're going to get married and have two kids, so I'm going to have to hurry up and get divorced, and he's going to have the snip reversed...

ME: Does he have a job?

S: Not exactly, but he's designed a chandelier.

ME: Ooh, that sounds good.

S: Yes, it's made of leather and giant penises.

Pause.

S: Modelled on his own, apparently.

ME: Right.

S: You know, for S&M clubs and so on.

ME: Mm.

Pause.

S: He's not actually *into* S&M.

ME: Well, he sounds great.


10) Decided the penis chandelier would go really well with that vagina sofa I saw on Craigslist.

11) Had tea.

Dragons' Den

What with the Blue Kitten now being a day overdue, I've been doing what every expectant mother does in the final, impatient stages of pregnancy: playing Dungeons & Dragons.

As far as I'm aware there's no old wives' tale about fantasy role-playing games helping to bring on labour - unlike, say, eating fresh pineapple, going up and down the stairs and tweaking your own nipples (not all at once, that would be dangerous, plus the neighbours can see through the landing window), but that's no reason not to try it out.

I'd never played D&D before now, not least because a) I am female, and b) I spent most of my formative years incarcerated in a posh boarding school where the prevailing leisure activities were limited to flicking one's hair, wearing cashmere scarves, stealing other people's socks and listening to Chris de Burgh.

(Brrr.)

The nearest I'd got was a brief phase of playing those Fighting Fantasy books in the early 80s, books which Mr BC informs me were aimed at people who had no friends with whom to play D&D; a description that I find almost unbearably sad. My dad banned my brother and me from buying those the minute he became aware of them, but not before we'd gleefully polished off The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos and The Forest of Doom.

Then we got a ZX Spectrum and discovered text adventure games like The Hobbit, which we played for hours and hours in our isolated farmhouse in the north of Scotland, while our peers in built-up areas were discovering the joys of actual fantasy role-playing games that we - or at least I - had never even heard of.

So anyway, here I am, some 30 years late to the fray. And it turns out that D&D is a sort of highly complex mixture of story-telling, dice-rolling, lego, algebra and chess. Although the lego part is only because we're using lego to represent our characters as they explore an underground cave network. Here is my character:



She's called Iolaire, which, as any fule kno, is Scottish Gaelic for 'eagle'. The ornithologically-astute among you will notice that the bird she's carrying atop her oriflamme is not an eagle but an owl, this is because a) I don't have a lego eagle and b) I don't know the Scottish Gaelic for 'owl'. D&D is all about creative improvisation.

Despite being an elf (actually an Eladrin, but I'm trying to not alienate any readers), surely one of the more amiable of the fantasy species, Iolaire apparently has zero charisma, which makes me like her a lot. Her lack of social skills means she spends most of the game lurking about at the back not talking to anyone, and occasionally taking out the odd goblin with a well-aimed arrow.

Here are Iolaire's companions, mobbing a Dark Elf (the emo-looking chappie) in a corner:


Iolaire was right back out of the way (coincidentally the same position I used to play in hockey) at this point, but she still managed to get in the fatal shot. Hurrah!

Dungeons & Dragons has a dreadful, probably unsalvageable reputation for being the preserve of the stinky, socially-leprous teenage boy-nerd, but having played several games of it, I can see its merits on lots of levels.

It's very creative, for a start, as someone (the Dungeon Master) has to make up an extraordinarily complex story - and backstory - as you go along, and you have to decide what you're going to do at any given juncture, and then whatever you decide to do affects the story, and so on. This means it's like being in a film, rather than simply watching a film, which is quite cool.

It's also good for mental arithmetic, as you're forever having to roll different dice and add things together and add other things to that and then subtract something else and divide the result by your fortitude quotient, and so on.

I think a lot of its bad reputation comes from the fact that it's full of elves and goblins and stuff, stuff that people who think they're quite cultured refuse even to countenance, let alone take seriously. But I can't see why it *has* to be limited to wizards and monsters; the principles of the game can be applied to any scenario. The other morning I had a splendid idea for a teenage-girl version, in which one could choose to play a model, or a pop star, or a girl-geek, or a spy, or a mum, or a scientist, and so on, and see how that unfolded.

(If I had my way, probably in a manner that would reveal 'model' to be the most useless and pointless of roles, and 'girl-geek' to be the bestest and greatest, but it doesn't work like that; everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and the aim is to find ways to combine them to best effect. At the end of the day it's all about friendship, mutual respect and co-operation, which is lovely.)

So now I just need several thousand pounds from a games company to fund its development, and an acre of time in which to develop it.

Which, if the Blue Kitten carries on not appearing like this, it may turn out that I do.

Does My Bum Look Big In This?

NOTE TO DAVE: DO NOT READ THIS POST IN THE LIBRARY.

I like to think there will come a time, several months from now, when I will have stopped breast-feeding, my figure will have returned to its former, er, 'glory', and I will be able to wear proper fancy French underwear again.

In anticipation of that joyous day I have spent the last hour perusing Figleaves.com, the underwear-fancier's shangri-la, in search of impossibly beautiful lingerie.

Among all the balconettes and thongs and jacquard and guipure, my eye was caught by something I'd never heard of before. Apparently you can now buy pants that 'enhance your rear profile' with 'firm foam padding'. To be specific:

This shorty by Huit is designed to enhance your rear profile by giving you sexy feminine curves. Cut in a low rise design from opaque jersey, it has firm foam padding at the full coverage rear.

I foresee a day when we will be able to dispense with every physical attribute that Nature provided for us, and concoct ourselves completely out of collagen, bacterial toxins and foam-stuffed pants. Thus arranged, we will march on the world like an army of zombie Mr Blobbys, all padded curves and blank, expressionless faces.

Later, horrified by the continued wilful appearance of blemishes, wrinkles and folds, we will develop the Physical Airbrush (TM), a device that applies Photoshop-like manipulation to what's left of our real bodies, allowing us to strip our limbs down to sticks, remove our lower ribs and replace our skin with a kind of weird shimmering gauze.

Having thus attained the very apogee of femininity, we will collapse en masse to the ground, consumed by botulinum poisoning and too weak to stand upright.

But at least our arses will look fantastic.

Back To Basics, NHS-Style

INT. MATERNITY WING, ROYAL CORNWALL HOSPITAL - DAY

Your unflappable heroine, PATROCLUS, is being subjected to various medical tests by a team of midwives. MIDWIFE 1 prepares to take a blood sample.


MIDWIFE 1: Is this your arm?

ME: Yes.


Disclaimer: I should point out that the standard of ante-natal care in Cornwall is very high indeed, and I have nothing but admiration and respect and gratitude for all the midwives who've been looking after me. Although they do sometimes say some quite funny things.


NOTE TO READERS: Rest assured I am not actually in hospital - I am at home and about to have my tea. Friends and family will be advised by text when anything birth-related occurs! Blog-readers will probably learn of any news in due course either here or chez Mr BC.

Nuclear Chic: New For A/W 08-09

Poor old Gordon Brown, no sooner does he go off on his joyless holidays than the upstart D. Miliband tries to a) usurp him and b) re-start the Cold War.

Now, different people have different ideas about whether confronting Russia is a good idea right at the moment, particularly given that we're already engaged in two wars, and given that we made our own declaration of independence from the moral high ground in 2003 when we (I say 'we', although really it was actually T. Blair and his conveniently nebulous chums, God and History) chose to invade Iraq illegally.

But so far, no one has drawn the obvious conclusion from Miliband's posturing, which is that he is in the pay of a shadowy secret society whose deadly aim is to provoke another Cold War purely for its own ends.

And by 'shadowy secret society' I do of course mean the Victoria and Albert Museum, and by 'its own ends' I do of course mean the viral promotion of its new September exhibition, 'Cold War Modern'.

Yes, what better way to pique the nation's interest in its latest artfest than to persuade the Foreign Secretary to go and declare war on Russia, thereby ensuring column acres of Cold War 'nostalgia' in the media? Before you know it the Daily Mail will be giving away a free cover-mounted DVD of Threads to every reader, while the Saturday Guardian will be inserting glossy wallcharts showing what to do in the event of imminent nuclear attack.

(Bored of knitting your own jumpers from leftover edamame to beat the credit crunch? Have fun with the kids this weekend by building a fallout shelter under your raised vegetable beds! Our supplement shows you how!)

The marketing geniuses at the V&A, meanwhile, are doing a sterling job of making the threat of nuclear annihilation fashionable again, primarily via the time-honoured medium of the enamel badge. For just £3 you can purchase a set of five badges that apparently 'capture the imagination of the Cold War era':


(Click for bigness.)

'The badge designs draw on images from ‘Civil Defence Handbook No.10: Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack’,' chirps the marketing blurb, before regaining a modicum of composure and warning 'Not suitable for children under 3.'

I should say not.

Does anyone from the V&A Marketing Department - or, for that matter, David Miliband - actually remember the Cold War? I don't recall it being in any way imaginative, stylish or exciting: the adjectives that spring to mind are more along the lines of 'chilling', 'unspeakably terrifying' and 'the FOUR-MINUTE WARNING, for fuck's sake'.

Still if it comes down to it, at least the V&A shop will make a few pennies, which does make a nice neat metaphor for the ideological triumph of capitalism over communism - although perhaps not quite as much as this item does.

NEXT WEEK: Miliband declares war on France in a teaser campaign for the National Gallery's Jacques-Louis David retrospective.

Not (Yet) A Recognised Medical Condition

Overheard in the Day Assessment Unit, Princess Alexandra Maternity Wing, Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro:

MIDWIFE 1: Gosh, it's busy today, isn't it?

MIDWIFE 2: It really is. We've got urine coming out of our ears!

Mannequin Pis

Given that Elle Decoration comes out with a 'small spaces' supplement on average about three times a year, I often wonder how they keep coming up with ideas to fill it.

I mean, there are only so many ways you can fit a desk under the stairs, or drawers *into* the stairs, or a mezzanine bedroom into the achingly fashionable live-work space that you created from a disused shipping container.

But this time, the Elle Deco team have surpassed themselves. They've located a tiny Belgian house in which the toilet is next to the bed, and the bed is next to an uncurtained plate-glass, shop-style window:


I know our Continental friends are more relaxed than us uptight Brits, but even so. Would you *really* want this kind of arrangement in your home? (Think carefully, now.)

And more to the point, would you really want to be one of these people's neighbours?

Brrr.

Lucky For Some

Readers may recall that last week an unpleasant spat broke out on the poop deck of the mighty Quinquireme, involving myself, Annie Slaminsky and one Ria Campbell, marketing supremo of a New Online Thing.

Ms Campbell had been politely trying to persuade Annie and me (and, as it turns out, also Hannah and Nuttycow) to test-drive the New Online Thing and write about it in our blogs, but we got the wrong end of the stick and thought that Evil Marketers were trying to take away our souls by pointing at the sky and shouting 'look!' and then secretly hacking into our Blogger accounts and replacing all instances of the word 'yummers' with an inline text ad for Head & Shoulders.

(I think that's how it works.)

Anyway, it turned out that this wasn't necessarily the case, so I thought the least I could do would be to try out the New Online Thing and see if it was any good.

It turns out that the New Online Thing is all to do with karaoke, and is an online version of those private karaoke booths that you see in swanky places in London now (at least I assume you do, I've never seen one, but I'm imagining it's just like in Lost in Translation and you get to go in them with Bill Murray in the middle of the night and nothing much happens until the Jesus and Mary Chain come on and you realise it's the end. Only Ria informs me that if you're in a karaoke booth in London rather than Tokyo, you're more likely to encounter Jude Law - although encountering Jude Law anywhere in London is a pretty safe bet, as he seems to hang over the entire city like an early Victorian miasmatic fog, waiting for some earnest physician - or Heat reporter - to estimate his quotient of phlogiston and thereby assess his value or otherwise to society as a whole.)

But I digress.

Yes. This is an online version of those private karaoke booths, which are run by a company called Lucky Voice, which is owned by erstwhile UK dotcom entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox.

Now I've only done karaoke once, and my rendition of 'Never Ever' by All Saints didn't exactly wow the crowd at my friend Becky's birthday party, so I'm not in a great position to judge the merits of Lucky Voice Online. But I can tell you this:

1. It's free, unlike those karaoke games for the Xbox, etc. that you have to pay for.

2. It has 'Love Machine' by Girls Aloud (which is one of Mr BC's favourites, although I couldn't persuade him to sing along with it), and lots of other songs too.

3. It lets you make your own playlists and organise your own karaoke parties.

4. You probably need a microphone, a big monitor and some decent speakers to actually get the full benefit of the experience.

5. It's free.

6. It's in closed beta testing at the moment, but I have FIVE FOUR THREE TWO ONE REMAINING spare invite if anyone wants one. Just leave a comment or send me an email at quadrireme at gmail dot com and I'll have the butler wire one over to you forthwith.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to bake some HEAD & SHOULDERS FOR ALL YOUR ANTIDANDRUFFULAR NEEDS mini-apple and blackberry tarts.

Bonekickers: Patroclus Weighs In

As Mr BC and I took a shortcut through Truro Woolworths on our way to Caffe Nero for ye traditional Saturday morning coffee and bun*, I noticed that the Series 1 box set DVD of Bonekickers is now available and yours for just £24.97.

Now to some people, Bonekickers was just another TV series. To others, however, it has become a symbol and an icon, not to mention a cipher and a byword, for EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH THE BBC TODAY.

Never in the history of the Guardian's media blog, for example, has a single programme provoked so much ideological warfare among so many. In the blue corner, the cultural relativists, led by Guardian media editor Janine Gibson, with the argument that as long as a programme is enjoyable and people watch it, it has earned its rightful place in the schedules.

In the red corner, the cultural elitists, led by Guardian TV reviewer Gareth McLean, contending that the BBC ought to have some standards when it comes to drama commissioning, and that poorly-scripted, execrably-acted, laughably-plotted, historically-inaccurate drivel has no place in the repertoire of the finest broadcaster the world has ever known.

And for as long as the BBC fails to announce whether a second series has been commissioned, these two factions will remain locked in a largely pseudonymous, vitriol-flecked online battle, neither quite able to claim a definitive victory over the other.

For my part, while I can understand where the relativists are coming from - a lot of people *did* seem to enjoy it, and its ratings weren't terrible, and it's only television, after all - I have to say I'm with the elitists on this one, if only for the reason that the programme could so easily have been a thousand times better. And when I say easily, I mean as easily as doing one or more of the following:

1. Decide whether it was supposed to be self-aware comedy-drama or actual serious drama. Instead, it oscillated between one state and the other so frequently and so ineptly that it became impossible for the viewer to establish just how he/she was supposed to relate to it. Were we supposed to laugh at its evident parodying of Time Team, snicker knowingly at its ludicrous, sub-Da Vinci Code levels of historical accuracy and plausibility, or empathise seriously with the characters as they struggled with emotional baggage, professional challenges, family problems and borderline mental illness? It is possible to become genuinely emotionally involved with a self-aware, self-parodying TV programme - think The Simpsons, or Arrested Development - but only if the characters are lovingly crafted, well developed and behaviourally consistent. Rather than flimsy puppets who are only there to propel a number of ludicrously unbelievable plots towards an all-too-obvious conclusion.

2. Just have the one plot. Maybe, instead of having the team of archaeologists miraculously find (and subsequently destroy) a different priceless historical artefact each week, the programme could just have had them chasing one priceless historical artefact (Excalibur would have been fine) over the course of the six episodes. One artefact, one secret society bent on preventing its discovery, a tantalising build-up of clues, revelations and dramatic tension, lots of flashbacks to relevant historical events - none of this would have met with much complaint from me. But to have them unearth the True Cross one week, Boudicca's mummified body the next, and the corpse of Joan of Arc the next - before finally wresting Excalibur from its secret hidey-hole out the front of Wells Cathedral (and then promptly breaking it) - was taking things far too far, even for those who don't mind the old willing suspension of disbelief.

3. Have believable characters. I'm given to believe that Julie Graham, Hugh Bonneville and Adrian Lester can all actually act, so the fact that the whole programme was simultaneously wooden, melodramatic and implausible (not to mention 'stupid') must have been down to the script and characterisation. No archaeologist, I'm fairly sure, has ever said 'don't mess with me, I'm an archaeologist', or 'ground, give up your secrets!', or 'ride a little imagination once in a while'. In fact I checked with my brother, who has an archaeology degree, and he said that they're more likely to say things like 'who's nicked me trowel?', 'is it teatime?', and 'real archaeology is never as exciting as it is in Time Team'.

Also, archaeologists aren't known for being filthy rich (although they *are* known for being filthy), so you probably won't find too many of them owning penthouse flats on Bath's Royal Crescent. Plus, if you ask me, it's rare to find a woman with monomania; we're essentially multi-taskers, not given to single, overpowering obsessions. Well, about men, maybe. Or our weight. Or, if the chick-lit novels are to be believed**, chocolate, shoes or handbags. But not usually about swords. I find it very hard to believe that a woman could be obsessed with a sword. I could be wrong about this.

Anyway, all these things put together - and this is without even touching on the supposed postgraduate student Viv's total ignorance of anything to do with archaeology or history, or the fact that some bloke apparently buried a WW1 tank single-handedly, or that escaped slaves from America might have planted a Virginia creeper in the shape of a handy arrow pointing conveniently to the door to their secret underground cave, or that an archaeologist, when buried alive in a stone sarcophagus, might seek to keep his spirits up by reciting the dates of Agincourt and the Norman invasion - all these things put together add up to a programme that wasn't in any way clever, or dramatic, or emotionally engrossing, or consistent, or believable (even in a willing-suspension-of-disbelief way). For something that was supposed to be a drama, those are some quite serious failings.

We still don't know whether a second series is going to be commissioned, but if it is, it'll be a sign that the BBC isn't embarrassed to commission absolute rubbish. Which is fine if you think that 'if people enjoy it, that's the main thing', but not if you're relying on the BBC to display any kind of measure of actual critical judgment.

Maybe they're just waiting to see how many people fork out £24.97 for the DVD. I don't think I'll be among them.


* I am delighted to report that Truro Caffe Nero now serves the mighty almond pain au chocolat, Lord of All The Buns. Turns out that all we had to do was ask them to stock it. Woo!

** Do not believe the chick-lit novels.

Hidden Art

Some photos from the Hidden Art Cornwall Design Fair, what the lovely Mr BC and I visited this morning.


It's an exhibition of contemporary Cornish designers and furniture-makers, held in the fantastically falling-apart 15th-century Godolphin House near Helston.


The house has been taken over recently by the National Trust, but is still so decrepit that they can only let 80 people in at once in case the floors collapse.


Neither my camera nor my photography 'skillz' could really do justice to the fantastic juxtaposition of modern design and crumbling late-medieval plaster.


Outside there were tents where you could buy the designers' wares. We bought some coasters from our near-neighbour, Lucy Turner of Higher Market Studios here in Penryn, who rescues unloved 50s and 60s furniture from the local charity furniture shop and turns it into very nice, one-off pieces like this:



It's on again tomorrow (Bank Holiday Monday) from 11am to 6pm, so if anyone reading is in the vicinity of Helston, I'd highly recommend a visit. It's £6 to get in but well worth it.

You can see more photos on my Facebook page here.

Dining Chair Nirvana

Attention, shoppers! Why buy one 'Verdi' dining chair from Habitat for £99.00 minus delivery...



...when you can get FOUR white maple dining chairs from M&S for £74.70 including delivery?



(What's more, with the M&S deal, you and up to three of your chums can play a splendid game of Musical Christine Keeler! Hours of saucy fun!)