MSN Music UK as a source for classical music downloads (updated)

Good points:

• Integrates well with Windows Media Player, when it works.
• Might work - a bit - if you confine yourself to the classical top ten.
• ... er ....
• That's it.

Bad points

• Absolutely everything else imaginable ...
• ... like quality. support, cataloguing - you name it.
• It's vile.

Summary and recommendations: a terrible terrible terrible system for classical music. I have, hurrah, run it down to my last few coppers and I would not buy another item there if it was the last classical music resource on the planet. An absolute stinker. Marks out of 10? Oooh about minus 15.

Go to classical.com or eclassical.com or, for a more limited range but great quality, something like the lovely linn.com (utterly wonderful St Matthew Passion), or any one of dozens of other suppliers - but please please do not do what I did, which is to lazily use MSN Music UK because it's just a couple of clicks inside WMP. It is irretrievably bad: classical music buyers should not touch it with a bargepole.

GAH!!!!!

Update (30/10/08): I hate it when this happens after a good old moan, but in all fairness I have to add that support seems to have improved a lot since I last tried it. Just after writing all that above I emailed them (having had a hard time finding the address, but hey) moaning about two trashed tracks - one undownloadable and one that downloaded but was badly enough damaged to be unusable. These two problems wrecked two large-scale works that I wanted to buy.

Imagine, given some very ropey experiences with them in the past, my surprise and delight to get two emails in quick succession, apologizing for the problems and refunding my money for the whole album in each case. This is pretty good, I think. I mean I'd rather they could fix the track and tell me how to get it to download OK, but this is a very respectable second.

I still can't recommend this service for classical music because of the horrors of its cataloguing system, and indeed, the failed tracks. But I am feeling very much more impressed by the standard of support. Did I get lucky, or have they overhauled their procedures?

Anyway, I have now put it to the Big Test - two performances of Beethoven 9, each with an undownloadable last movement. (Yes, indeed, Colin, that's about as much use as a chocolate teapot.) These two have been an irritant for a long time and the last time I asked for help it was dire. I am only trying again now because I was so impressed by the much better handling of my more recent complaint. Watch this space ...

Update (21/11/08): Perfect silence from Customer Services. I sent them a polite reminder the other day. The silence remains undisturbed.

Is this bad?

I just emailed our Anglican chaplain for this site - who happens also to be an eminent medical professor here - and offered my buglistic services should he require them for Remembrance Day, since, after a gap, the 11th itself falls on a work day this year. I've already got a gig to do it on the Sunday (9th) at the local church so that's OK.

Long-memoried and patient readers will know that I have a minor bee in my bonnet about trumpet players and this tune (or Taps or your own local equivalent), and the sense of duty/service/history/whatever that it offers us. Here I am babbling on about it almost a year ago.

My question is this: was it self-indulgent and putting-yourself-aboutish of me to have offered? I mean on the one hand if he doesn't know he's got someone on site who could do it then he can't say either yes or no: without the information, no decision; and with that knowledge one assumes he's professional enough to just decide depending on his requirements for the day, not on my having volunteered. But, but, but, on the other hand I cannot quite shake the disquieting feeling that it's a bit "look at me", and that an equally good outcome might have been for me to just shut up and leave well alone. You know, fat bloke blowing Wretched Bugle - is it a bit showy-offy? Sigh. Dunno.

I'll be interested to see how the Revd Prof responds. What do you think? Good call, or leave the WB in its case and make a nice cuppa instead?

Update (Friday): I have heard back from Revd Prof Nick and it turns out that there's nothing particular planned for the 11th here, so I can stop worrying. I feel/hope that I did the right thing by offering, and anyway I've got a nice job doing it round the corner, so I think I can put the whole worry back in its box for at least a year (and possibly longer!)

Kansas comes to London

I am extremely excited to have checked the Lovely Lunchtime Lutherans' website this morning and found this:

Friday 28 November: The Kansas State University Trumpet Ensemble Lindsay Bennett, Alex Cook, Alan Martens, Paul Mueller, Samuel Mustain, Rebecca Ronen,Eric Starnes, Brian Stuckenschmidt, Brian Williams trumpets. Coordinator: Gary Mortenson Stanhope: The Australian Fanfare; Altenburg: Concerto for Trumpets; Viitasaari: Aba-Zulu; Basler: The Ascension; Trad. Arr. James Olcott: Shenandoah; J S Bach: Fugue in G minor (The Little); Morales: Infinite Ascent

Between you, me and the gatepost, I have been not entirely uninvolved with the effort to bring the KSU ensemble over. That is not to claim I made it happen or anything on that scale: good Heavens no, they'd still very much be here without me weebling on. But I have been tangentially involved in one or two things and the St Anne's gig is, to some extent at least, the result of me running my mouth off at various fabulously influential top people (you know who you are). I am very, very, very much looking forward to this visit. The ensemble are great, Gary is one of my favourite people on the planet, and he's bringing his lovely family too. I met many of the trumpet ensemble last year in Paris - I think this year's group is around 50% the same people and if Paris was anything to go by they will be a delightful group and it will be musically excellent. The icing on the cake is that Ibrahim Maalouf is also coming over for one day - the one, I think, that they will be spending at Camden School for Girls. Ibrahim is not only a thoroughly Decent Sort and Good Egg but can also Play The Trumpet More Than Somewhat and it will be 101% excellent to see and hear him again.

To summarize: seeing the KSU Trumpet Ensemble "in print", as it were, on the St Anne's website has rendered me into a quite marked state of happiness. It's seriously, seriously good.

If you are in or have access to London do come along to the St Anne's gig. It's at 1.10 on Friday 28th November, it's over by 2.00; it serves coffee and biccies, and you can bring your lunch - what could be nicer?

Onwards and upwards!

Vogel's a bit fargled: blogapology

I'm sorry that this blog's gone so quiet at the moment. There are couple of other things on which I've had to concentrate, and still do, and I just can't find the time to sit down and really write, or even edit, for a decent-length session. Avebury Day Two is the next big or biggish thing I want to do, but I reckon that it'll still be a fortnight or more before I can sort that out, even though it's very close to being finished.

In other news, I've been to several very nice concerts at St Anne's, played in a Rite of Spring with Salomon, and weathered various work crises. (It's unlikely that I'll get time to write separately about all, or maybe any, of those things. Two very different summer holidays will, though, get wroted up. I hope.)

My breadmaking career continues to flourish. I spent a while consolidating my (very advanced) skills in making straightforward white or wholemeal loaves then decided to branch out a bit. My first less-straightforward attempt, a five-seeds wholemeal loaf, wasn't 100% successful: it looked a bit, er, odd and collapsed, and seemed somewhat dense in parts (aha, yes, the image of its creator, thank you so much) though to be fair it still tasted great. My guess is that the yeast was a bit unenthusiastic - it was from a part-used sachet that I'd resealed, but perhaps not quickly or well enough? Oh well. Straight back on the horse (no Tamsin, it's a metaphor) and Attempt 2, while still not actually flyaway-fluffy, was much more how I was hoping it would be.

Emboldened by this I went on to a white loaf with apricot and almond and this was a truly delicious first-time success. Indeed I made another of these loaves on Sunday and that was very nice too. I am far too timid to progress through Mr Panasonic's cookbook any faster than this current crawl, but that's fine. I love my breadmaker!

Synod What You Do, It's The Way That You Do it (and that's what gets results); or, See, I Mitre Guessed; or, Oh For A Crozier Walk With Thee.

(OK I acknowledge that as an ignorant and blasphemous peasant my right to comment on matters ecclesiastical is a touch limited, to say the very least. But hey: my blog, baby. Now read on.)

I am bouncing around with delight - but not surprise - because I learned today that someone whom I rate extremely highly has just been appointed a Bishop (or, technically, a Bishop-elect pending consecration in January). This is very, very, very cool. An endorsement from me is probably roughly equivalent to priestly-career-disaster but, really, she's brilliant and it was a deeply satisfying moment to hear it from my friend Alex S, whom I must also thank for inspiring me towards the "mitre" gag.

I actually heard this lovely news on Monday  but couldn't post it till today because I wasn't sure, having foolishly not checked with Alex, whether it was absolutely 100% official and OK to comment on in "public" (ha!). But it is. And I say yay, and woo, and all manner of hurrah, and well done Jana.

Onwards and (most certainly) upwards!!

Normal service will be resumed. Eventually.

I apologize to my many millions of readers for the current slow rate of posting to this blogological emuārs writing webbity entity thang. I am having a bit of a busy time. It's blogologically frustrating, because I have a whole load of things that are nearly finished and that I'd like to post, but I don't have the time/energy to do the last 3% and get them finished and up. I will, one of these days. Gulp.

In the meantime, I bet you're thinking I wonder if Vogel has a photo of young persons emerging from a railway tunnel in France while riding a strange rail-bikoid thing and, d'you know, oddly enough I do, and here it is. It's a splendid, unusual thing offering lots of fun and, yes, even a touch of exercise: if you ever get the chance to do this - they call it Vélorail and there are about forty sites in France - please do not miss out!

More soon, or soonish, I hope.

Avebury: stoned-o-blog™ day 1

Monday, 18 February 2008

Thanks to a lovely intervention from our dear Daughter of Middleness, the Iarlles Loötës, we are off on a quick hol. The sweet child, perceiving her parents as stressed (ha, nonsense, I am hardly warmed up yet) announced that we needed a break, and proceeded to fix it up. Just like that!! How is this possible? It is entirely alien to my way of thinking. I mean, for all I know she was also cooking an omelette and playing the Neruda Concerto while dictating a foreign policy memo to the Pope, and I am quite impressed as it usually takes me fourteen months of sweating, swearing, screaming and gibbering to seriously contemplate booking a holiday, never mind actually picking the phone up. For this one all we had to do was chuck some things in a bag and point the car westwards. It's, like, cool.

So here we are in a very nice National Trust cottage (I really must now and forever abandon my regular 'joke' of substituting Front for Trust as it is not that funny, disconcerts the careless eavesdropper, and frightens the horses) in Avebury. Why Avebury? Well, if you don't know what is special about Avebury you should probably read about it here or here but, to give you the executive summary, it is (a) a sweet little Wiltshire village right in the middle of (b) a humongous great Neolithic stone circle with massive earthworks. If that's not a pretty strong USP then I do not know what is, Tamsin. Dear reader, please click the picture at the top of this piece and note the monster stones and earthworks just behind our cottage. This is a truly incredible place.

I've been here as a teenager (yes ha ha indeed Colin, just when the stones were new, see me afterwards) but not since, so I was very excited when the Iarlles announced that we were coming here. I will (I hope) come back to this issue of Avebury and why it's so great.

Meanwhile, back in Muesli Hill, it is Monday morning and we are attempting to leave. This leaving/packing process is not one at which I am very good and I'd be a lot happier and nicer had I not stayed up late last night trying to get some work done. (More of this particular problem one day, if I do not forget, or can be bothered, or do not think it will induce terminal boredom in swathes of my massive readership.) So tensions are already running high when my work rings with a web problem. I think I am going to be treated to the sensation of my head actually erupting right off my shoulders and whizzing round the room like a suddenly-released party balloon. However, it is a very legitimate call concerning something which I would much rather sort out myself, and with a quick bit of typy-clicky-savey stuff I can rescue a stupid situation which is not of our making but will harm us if left unresolved. (Long story: can you say "careless silly bad incoming link from PDF in major scientific journal who should know much, much better"? Good good.)

Anyway with that fixed we were set to go, and did. It was the usual slight drag getting out of London (remind me never never to try the North Circular south of Hanger Lane again!) but OK once we had, and when we left the M4 at Junction 16 it suddenly all became rather pleasant.

With a 3.30 move-in time for the cottage we were not in a rush so we stopped at a village pub, the White Horse in Winterbourne Bassett. This made for a very pleasant start to the holiday - nice food and people, lovely location: we ate out in a conservatory, serenaded by birds singing in the garden.

Then we popped into Devizes and did some shopping - the usual Sainsburys kind of stuff but also a pet shop to get Daisy an extending lead, and so on. Ooh yes, the pet shop had a very nice wire-haired dachshund and his nephew who was small and cute. We didn't really see much of Devizes but it seemed pleasant, and we may be back there.

Once that was over we moved in, picking the key up from a clever digital lock thing which is quite a neat way of doing unattended handovers. The cottage is gorgeous. It's called Fishlock's Cottage and is the easternmost cottage in Avebury, still well within the henge. It's the first time in goodness knows how long that we've been in a one-bedroomed cottage and it's very odd, but nice. Fortunately we know that the kids are all OK or at least OK-ish and the whole thing has been constructed along the lines of allowing us a guilt-free break, so here we are.

There's a main cottage with a later extension to the west, that is, to your left as you look at it . Though it must have formerly been quite cramped as a single dwelling, the main part now contains only the large living/dining room (is that what estate agents call a through-lounge?) on its ground floor, and upstairs the one bedroom and the bathroom, so it feels about right. The kitchen is in the new extension along with the heating equipment, cupboards, a useful back door (which it makes sense to use) and so on. So it's really a very efficient, nicely-shaped little house which was just perfect for us. Apart from the kitchen window (and possibly one piddly little window in the living room), the ground floor only looks southwards, where there is a field and the earth banks and ditches, but essentially sees no stones. From upstairs the story is different: the nice, light, airy bedroom looks both north and south, and has an excellent view of several stones and, come to think of it, quite a bit of the whole monument. In the field behind the house are a few stones which are not part of the ring per se but are part of the monument, and it is quite exciting that they are so close. (You can spook yourself about whether they get even closer in the night, but that's another story!)

It's pretty much impossible to resist the urge to walk round the henge, so we didn't: and very pleasant it was too. We'd left it quite late but, rather than spoiling the view, this made us beneficiaries of the most wonderful sunset which seemed to go on for ever.

It is utterly, utterly fantastic to walk round the stones - you get a wonderful feel for how the place is and the great variety between different sectors as you travel round (most of) the perimeter. I cannot really explain what a bizarre, beautiful and fascinating site Avebury is. It's really a seriously amazing place to be.

Eventually, of course, it did get too dark to be wandering around a non-flat area covered in stones and big drops. It's a very odd moment when you've been concentrating on the sky, which is still light, and then you suddenly realize that your feet are in the dark! Anyway,off we went back home to the lovely Fishlock's and that was pretty much that.

It honestly feels like a real privilege to be staying in this little house. Its position, actually within the stone circle and practically girded by hugely impressive earthworks, is - haha - unparalleled. What a spot to spend a short holiday.

While we were shopping in Devizes the question of tonight's dinner had arisen and my Dear Wife Bless Her had asked me what I fancied for our first meal in Fishlock's. There's only one correct answer to this: "steak". So we bought some nice steak and now, later, having enjoyed our walk, we're now seriously in Steak Mode: it's extremely delicious and the mountains of onions, a mandatory part of the ritual, are just perfectly onionoidal. Ah yes. We have definitely arrived in Avebury.

StoneDex™

The summer

Oh dear. After a couple of days of lovely sunshine it's now really quite yuk. I was going to walk somewhere this evening and now I'm not. How very very depressing.

I do hope that was not the entire summer that we've just experienced ... I hope it is sunny and pleasant where you are today!

Women Bishops in the Church of England

OK, this is not a club of which I am a current member (I had a junior membership but I think it lapsed) so you might argue that I am not entitled to an opinion. On the other hand rightly or wrongly it is the established church in this country, our Head of State is its boss, and so maybe its doings are of more interest to me than if that were not the case. Or maybe I am just interested anyway. Whatever.

What, exactly, would be so very bad about women bishops in the CoE? I simply don't get it.

Two comments:

1. My view (for what unbelievably little it is worth) is that it has everything to do with patriarchal misogynistic oppression and nothing to do with any real theology. The latter, I worry, gets used as a front for the former. I see antis talking on TV and, like the gay-haters, they are never people I can imagine wanting to talk to or being comfortable with. And yes, as I'm a sad old lefty I suppose this sort of harrumphing Middle Englandism is pretty much bound to raise my hackles. Even so.
2. For a laugh, compare the differing treatments of this story in the Guardian and the Times - I feel they pretty much sum up the whole thing:

Guardian
Church of England: Archbishop confronts Anglican rebels
Williams challenges legitimacy and authority of breakaway faction

Times
Church of England clergy plan mass exit over women bishops
1,300 write protest letter to archbishop

Slight difference in viewpoint there?

Ho hum.

Welcome to the End-of-Week Collapse-a-Tron™

Thud splat crash thunk.

I thank you.

PS More soon.

Three yews

When I was little and I went to the village school, the walk there from home was full of fascination.

To describe it in detail would require many pages but for now I just want to tell you about one element of this walk. This is a group of three yew trees, the Triangle Trees, which stood about half-way along the path that cut off a big bend of the road between the level crossing (or, after 1964, its site) and the road/drive junction just near Lady Pease's house. The cut-through was probably only a couple of hundred yards long, but very useful.

The left-hand side of this path (heading towards school) wasn't very interesting. There was a tidy fence and beyond it the tidy grounds of the (rather grand) Hall. On the other side, though, was an intriguing wonderland. Towards the station end were some quite tall trees, then some lower scrubby wooded stuff, and then, before a more open (and hence less interesting) area, the three yews standing at one edge of the wooded part.

These three trees were very different in character.

A friendly, unchallenging tree stood right by the path, maybe just a yard or two off it. I cannot possibly convert into adult measurements my child's perception of its height, but it was really, by any standards, a pretty short kind of tree, like the runt of the litter or perhaps the baby in this little family. Being close to the path, and short, and friendly, this was a much-climbed tree, and its highly-polished limbs, glossy and smooth like artshop woodwork, or perhaps something sculpted or moulded, bore witness to this. Oddly, I can't remember ever seeing kids there apart from my own group of friends or my brother and his, but they must have been there or else the limbs would never have acquired that expensive bronze-cast look.

You could be up this tree in a couple of seconds. You couldn't design a quicker tree to climb: it was more like a particularly easy kind of ladder. Once you were up there, you couldn't really do much - there were no other positions to change to, no alternative branches to sit on, because you were either up it, or down, and that was about it. Nevertheless, it was quite a pleasing thing to have climbed up: you got a minor sense of accomplishment at merely being off the ground; you had started a climbing session, and therefore warmed up and reasserted your professional skills. You were up in something which might be a gatehouse or outlying fort, guarding the approach to the larger trees behind. You had a bit of a view, up and down the path. The flattish top was almost a comfy chair. This was an OK place to be.

Come down now from this first tree and stand by it, with your back to the path. You're facing the railway embankment which is maybe sixty yards away. Right in front or you, roughly fifteen yards off, are the other two trees of the group. They're equidistant from you and very close to each other so it's a long, thin isosceles triangle. A small path leads from the single, gatehouse tree to this pair, and once there you see a little, worn area between the trees, like a rather underused meeting place. In practice it's probably only there because that's where you climb from - there are better and more exciting places round here for a den, so I don't think it's that.

Arriving in this tiny clearing you might think you have a choice: the tree of the left hand or that of the right. Like so many seeming choices this is an illusion: only the right-hand tree is for climbing. I don't know how the left-hand one got so unclimbable. Was it the result of some biological accident, or did it decide decades or longer ago that it just didn't like kids? For whatever reason, it's become a perfect example of feedback: it's horrible to climb, so people don't bother to try, so it doesn't get smoothed and shaped by climbing the way the others do, so its unfriendliness is reinforced by new (awkward, spiky) growth - and so it goes on.

I've only climbed this tree a few times and it was no pleasure - you'd do it for the challenge or for the feeling of defiance, but not because you were going somewhere nice: far from it. Your dirty, tricky, painful climb is rewarded by, well, nothing much - suddenly you can go no higher and you're just left clinging uncomfortably to the trunk, a sense of arrival markedly absent. You're here but you're nowhere and the density of growth round you means there's almost no view. It was time to climb down before you even got here, you unwelcome visitor, and when, very carefully yet still covered in scratches, you reach the ground, you can't really see why you bothered with this tree at all. Face it: you hate each other.

The remaining tree, the one on the right, is a very different proposition. This friendly tree wants to be climbed. It's not as worn as its little relative by the path, but it does have some of the same patina, the evidence of generations of kids finding their way up it. It's not huge, but it is a proper climbing tree. There are enough good branches and enough gaps that it's an easy, interesting climb, and when you reach the top it opens out into a space like a living room, with maybe four or five places to sit. You're left in no doubt: you are here. You have a nice view too: the path, the little welcoming gatehouse tree, your hostile prickly neighbour, the woodland around you. It's a very fine place to be, and sitting up here you suddenly become rather adult and important, as if you should start calling meetings and discussing strategy. Actually, you should just enjoy being here.

The Bread Man Cometh

I have had a birthday sometime recently and my Dear Wife Bless Her gave me a Panasonic bread making device. I am so chuffed with this that I can hardly write. I had been dropping hints about such a kitchen wonder for some time, as my Dearest Muvver and my Bruvver of Height and Clevernosity are both satisfied owners of this type of machine; however I got busy/distracted with Other Stuff™ and had more or less forgotten so it was a genuine surprise when it was piped in by the servants' fife band and carried by Mr Thompson wearing a croissant costume. (He gets some strange ideas.)

Anyway anyway. I didn't get to try it out at once due to the continuing issue of Other Stuff™. Last night, though, I finally did. So I read the instructions very carefully and went through the detailed startup procedures with great precision. (Put ingredients in machine, turn on. Kind of thing.)

Then I got lost in an orgy of catching-up TV thanks to Mr Branson's Disk-Based Recording Device With Multiple Tuners. Specifically Family Guy and Heroes, a slightly odd juxtaposition but hey. I was just dozing off nicely when I was awoken by the unmistakable and utterly wonderful smell of delicious new hot fresh bread that I made. This is so brilliant that it's brilliant. Of course my skill in the culinary arts is well-known so it is hardly surprising that my first loaf (pictured above) was such a particularly fine example: these complex machines clearly need an expert hand at the helm.

But wow. I made bread. Me. Bread. I am soooooo pleased!

Knighted!

I don't normally blog about work much, for a variety of reasons, but I am really quite excited that my boss got a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. He's already an FRS, which to those in the know might be at least as big a deal, but in terms of public recognition the knighthood is obviously a huge issue.

Of course it would be foolish of me not to acknowledge that this is probably good for those of us who work for him, too. I am quite sure that anything like this is good in a number of ways which I need hardly spell out here. But, self-interest apart, it's jolly exciting news, and well done Nick! :)

PS God save the Queen! (a Smalle Flourisshe of Trumpettes shall Here be Sounded)

Lottie gets a degree; national half-holiday announced, commemorative coin struck

Yay! Woo! My middlest of daughterosities has got a 2:1 and is therefore going to Cambridge in the Autumn to train as an undoubtedly excellent secondary school teacher.

This is very very very good. I mean, to be honest I thought that this would happen, as the portents were good, but it's still a very different thing to have it confirmed that it's in the bag. Yeah baby. Well done Lottie.

I go on Friday night with a Ford Transit van to collect Lot and 93 tons of stuff. Cardiff University has been a big success for her and I'll be sad to bid it farewell.

Graduation is on July 14th and we'll be staying in a nice B&B. More on this, and other matters, in other writingistical events to come.

Yay!

Woo!!

Onwards and upwards!!!

Oh dear, gig-free zone

For the best possible reasons I am currently missing an incredible run of St Anne and St Agnes lunchtime concerts. This is very annoying because, I have explained ad nauseam elsewhere, they're an important part of how my week is structured.

On the other hand, I am doing lots of things which are nice, important, or whatever and which need doing so I cannot really complain.

I was particularly sad to miss last Friday's because my old friend John K was playing in it with a piano quartet. However, I had worthwhile stuff to do then as I do/did on these other occasions (work stuff, being in Banff, retrieving Lottie from uni, having lunch with a friend etc etc) and there is no point in obsessing about it - I will see him next time round.

At the moment it looks like my next chance to go to a gig will be Tuesday 24th June or maybe the Friday if the Tuesday is tricky. I am pretty sure I can hang on till then without going completely bonkers.

Warning - Train Weasel Alert; or, the Ethics of Some People Defy Belief

This train is overfull: people are standing at the ends of the carriages.

I've just watched a deeply loathsome weasel of a business type doing the most incredibly unethical thing of trying to keep the seat next to him empty. He's at a four-person table - all unreserved - where three seats were taken: he was in the aisle seat and "guarding" the empty window seat. Nice.

This creep lied to the first person, a black woman, who asked him about it. Then he initially lied again, but backed down gracelessly, when someone a bit more assertive (and whiter, but I am sure this was not a factor, yeah right) tried some time later. He had a very lame story about how someone had been sitting there and he thought they were coming back, but I am absolutely 100% certain that this was the purest b*ll*cks. The stuff spread out on the seat and table, making it look occupied, was all his as became clear when he had to shift it all to let the second lady sit down. Indeed, just from my memory of comings and goings as people boarded - as it happens, I was on first - I'm very clear that no-one had sat there at all on this service. Which is how Mr Weasel planned to keep it.

What a weasel, what an utter creep. Of course you'll never read this, oh weasel of seat D31 on the 1545 Piccadilly to Euston train, and even if you did you probably wouldn't care anyway, since you've obviously already decided that your desire for space for your weasel laptop and your unethical business weasel papers is far more important than anyone else's need to sit down on this ghastly overcrowded train. You horrible, horrible creep.

I don't like to be vindictive but I confess I am tempted to hope that your hard disk fails, soon, and badly, and that your last good backup was made on or before 28th August 2006. You weasel, you miserable miserable weasel. I've never met you but I really don't like you.

Update: you have been saved by the delete key from a looooong piece debating the rights and wrongs of this in more detail: my tendency to be ridiculously judgemental; the nature of Cosmic Justice; the question of in what scenarios the Train Weasel's behaviour might have been reasonable; an ting.

I spent hours on this but, on the final re-reading, came to realize that it contained nothing of merit.

Woo yay let's hear it for the delete key!

Bl**dy amateurs!

I was incensed to stumble over this piece of part-time strawberry yoghurt criticism published by the Times, of all people! Why (oh why) can't they stick to their core areas such as harrumphing and crosswords?

Gah!

I am tempted to write to them and say "listen, buddy boy, I'll stay out of newspaper publishing if you stay off my manor know what I mean sunshine wink wink alright guv'nor" but I won't as it would terrify them too much and that would be unkind.

But the approach, darlings, the approach. Tsk.

Onwards and upwards!

Strawberry Yoghurt - Tesco's Finest Strawberries and Cream Yoghurt

• West Country Yoghurt blended with Channel Island cream
• Blended with a dense, juicy compôte of Senga strawberries

Strangely inelegant English with those two "blended withs" fighting each other round a corner there. Oh well.

I have written elsewhere about my former and misguided concerns about Tesco, whether (or not) they are ripping the heart out of the British high street [note 1], whether they really do or do not fly around at the dead of night in black helicopters [note 1], machine-gunning [note 1] small shopkeepers and food producers whose apples are too irregular in shape [note 1] or whose organic apples are too regular [note 1]. Or whatever [note 1].

Now, however, I realize that Tesco's are actually the loveliest and friendliest company on the face of the planet, and I love them, and they have never ever done anything even faintly bad nor would they ever. No. Indeed no. Indeedy notty.

This change of heart is of course in no way influenced by:

a. the discovery that they are suing people left right and centre for saying "boo" [note 1] and

b. the fact that at long last they have brought out a Tesco's Finest Strawberries and Cream yoghurt as I have been hoping for some time that they would [note 2] [note 3].

So, with my blogulistic integrity clarified and reinforced, with free speech campaigners applauding rapturously from the sidelines, on with the show.

This is a delicious yoghurt. Creamy but non-slimy, light texture. Loads of fruit including satisfyingly big lumps of strawb. Edgy, not too sweet (despite the scary sugar figures, see below). Senga strawberries are apparently praised for their fruitiness and juiciness (which is odd when you'd think that characteristics like, say, a love of classical music and a bright green colour might have been so much more obvious to go for) but, whatever, they do seem very nice in this yoghurt. It also has a nice non-alarming colour (Geiger counter not required) and indeed does not list colourings so maybe we are actually seeing its real or real-ish colour.

A truly delightful dessert. Eat it overlooking a sunny view with a nice drink to hand: or indeed at any other time and place.

Ratings

A fine, fine yoghurt from this most excellent, caring and non-suing of shops. (Practically a family business anyway ... remember little Kevin Tesco, how sweet he was in the nativity play at the old infant school? And Nan Tesco, how she used to knit those socks for our lads in the front line. Don't forget dear old George Tesco, a stately figure on the way to skittles, in his top hat. My how we loved them all. Please don't sue me.)

Flavour: 8

Fruitiness: 8.5

Knowledge of Beethoven: 0

Magical Senga effects: 9.5

Grellt: 8.9

Sploorn: 3.1

Slime factor: 0

Corporate slime factor: oh no I said I wouldn't do this and please see [Note 1].

Overall: 8.6 and please don't sue me, I'm sorry I done it, I'm sorry I done it (I. Dury)

The Obsessives Corner

150g pot

Strawberries 18%

125kcal per 100g so

190kcal in this 150g pot

Or to put it another way (useful Tesco food info panel):

Vegetarian (how excellent that they actually confirm this! Others please note.)

Calories 190 = 9% RDA

Sugar 16.8g = 19% RDA

Fat 9.2g = 13% RDA

Saturates 5.4g = 27% RDA

Salt 0.2g = 3% RDA

Scary, huh? A fifth of my daily recommended amount of sugar, in one delicious yogo-hit. Makes me think, possibly a touch more than I actually want to.

Notes:

Note 1: GOAK HERE.

Note 2: No goak here.

Note 3: Oddly I found sources on the net that suggest this yog has been around for years. Not in the Tesco's I know, is my only possible response. Hmmmph strange. Ah well.

Another Virgin Trains triumph

I should probably give this up one of these days. It's too easy to take the you-know-what out of the people who run the Virgin Trains website, because they make themselves such fabulously easy targets. And why, you ask, does it matter? Because things like this, which are easy to see and rant about, are, I feel, symptomatic of the deeper, sometimes more concealed malaise which afflicts the whole site, which is acute carelessness. I've just spent a few more happy minutes trying to make it work properly, understand the engineering works, buy yet more tickets, and sure, the spellings don't stop it, but the rubbishy untested thinking does. And orft we jolly well go ...

Please see the attached timetable links below, giving details of the revised service that will be operating on Saturday 14 & Sunday 15 June.
14 June Nouthbound
14 June Southbound
15 June Nouthbound
15 June Southbound

And a woo wah yippee-aye-yay!

I wonder who proofread this.

Teh Interwebs (v2.0)

Actually I was very very excited to hear that the Worldly WideWeb of Network Sites has now officially been moved to version 2.0. This is great progress!

Will they have to deliver a new cable modem to my house, do you think, or is it more like one of these "automatic software download updaters" which I gather are nowadays all the rage? Maybe my old wiring will not cope with all the new Version 2.0 data and I will have to have it replaced, preferably with the much bigger (or "bigger" as we technical people call it) Purple Sprouting Broccoli cable well known to motorway drivers, where it breezily waves in lush pastures, just waiting to be plugged into roadside information systems. Marvellous.

It's going to be great! Version 2.0!! Just think. It's bound to be much better than all the rubbish we now have. I can hardly wait. If a few more things in my life could also get moved to Version 2.0, that would be so good.

Yours,

Vogel (v1.9b)