Pig Sty Avenue

  lcl newsnight , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . I took this back in July.

A few months ago, after she’d once more hit the headlines, I asked my son Alexander – keen musician that he is – what Amy Winehouse’s music was like. “I think it’s not bad,” he said. A more cynical parent might translate that as “dunno”. I decided to find out, but then forgot. Last night, she was all over the telly for all the wrong reasons , again, and I resolved again to have a shufty behind the news and the striking looks. Easier said than done, as I was away from home and straightforward access to the Internet. Aha! “Virgin Bites”, on the phone. So I downloaded the MP3 of Back to Black (the single) last night, and got around to playing it this morning waiting for my lift into work. It blew my socks off. What a lovely big fat smoky voice, somewhere between Billie Holiday and Shirley Bassey: and some more. And an excellent arrangement, production, the whole bit. One listen, and that was me. I envisage that voice keeping me company in Libya. It’s not all...

Mickey Rooney and the rest of the cast were fab, btw. The Bairn loved it. And at the curtain call, you would have sworn he and Mrs Rooney were an ancient Actor-Manager couple, rather than inhabitants of Hollywood. I'm re-reading and enjoying absurdly Le Carre's Smiley books, have many-another call on the chronology, can't be arsed blogging: so More Later.

baby , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ .

Quite often, listening to a 20th Century English composer on Radio 3, I've foolishly wondered, "is that the fella who Powell based Hugh Moreland on?". I say "foolishly" because it would take no great effort to research him. I've put an end to that foolishness now. It was Constant Lambert . There's more detail here . And The Grauniad wrote a piece, (omitting Powell, you'll notice), on the 50th anniversary of Lambert's death. Reading about him, he sounds a lot like Hugh Moreland - I bet he'd be a great laugh in the pub. There are lots of bits from his Romeo and Juliet at eMusic, here . And if you like the sound of that, you can get it here . Rio Grande was the piece for which he was best known in his lifetime, but he wasn't too happy with that ( according to Ashman , writing for the Guardian) and would have preferred to be remembered for Summer's Last Will and Testament . (The text of the original play by Nashe is here , with p...

Here's what wikipedia has to say about it. I like the quote from Tom. "Antiseptic" is how The Eagles sound, generally. (You can get a snatch of that particular bottle of TCP here ). Here are the lyrics to the chorus: Now the sun's coming up, I'm riding with Lady Luck, Freeway cars and trucks, Stars beginning to fade, And I lead the parade Just a-wishing I'd stayed a little longer, Oh, Lord, let me tell you that the feeling's getting stronger. There's a kind of hook in there: the line "Oh, Lord, let me tell you that the feeling's getting stronger"; it doesn't scan, so the singer has to take it at a rush. Fourteen syllables. The Eagles' version had " Lord, don't you know the feelin's gettin' stronger": eleven syllables: they didn't get it, did they? Probably thought they were improving on the original. Driving home from your lover's bed in the dawn, on a freeway, in a 1955 Chevy. This is the...

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2017; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3669889/Cinderella-Mickey-Rooney-takes-the-Mickey.html I was looking at the poster, waiting for the Metro the other day. It got me to thinking about those Sunday afternoons, watching old films like Boy's Town on the telly, amidst an atmosphere of roast beef, cabbage and Reveley's pop. Well, why not? The Bairn's just about old enough to go to a Panto. Mr Rooney certainly is . And that's the three of us new to the art form because I've never been to a Panto, either. It'll be a right laugh. And something for The Bairn to talk about when she's old - say, in 2080, she can tell people that she went to see a man at the theatre who was born in 1920. Furthermore, he'd been married more times than her Dad; which is saying something. I bought the tickets on line just now. Review to follow.

Because it came up somewhere else ; because there have been no pics here for days; and because I'll find almost anything else to do when I should be working.

"Language Learners - especially adults - bring a variety of beliefs to the classroom. According to Hosenfeld (1978), students form 'mini-theories' of L2 learning. There has been relatively little research into the nature of these theories and even less about how learners' beliefs affect language learning. " (Ellis, 477) Now we get down to it. The learners I have in mind ( a group of about 30, at CEF level B1-C1 approximately) have this weekend taken an IELTS test. I'll have them do part (at least) of the placement test I've designed. Then, I'll interview several of them, with a semi-structured interview to ascertain their attitudes to test taking in particular and to language learning in general. I'll also ask the whole group to complete a straightforward questionnaire on the same subject. What I'll then have is a whole load of cross-referable data regarding ability and attitude to tests and language learning from which I can draw infere...

This is another note to myself, to check this out when I get time. Time? Ha ha ha ha...

First I got a Kinja card . And that led me on to this , which is great fun. I'm a bit sceptical that readability can be ascertained by means of the algorithms they give. But if they are right, then small children and thick people would be scoobied if they tried to read Pig Sty Avenue. I can live with that.

I've been a fan of Tom Waits since I saw him on a chat show in the early 80s. He caught my attention by saying from the outset that the only reason he was there was to plug his new album Raindogs . He drawled rather than muttered, but another guest (I seem to remember it was Ian Hislop) suggesting he plug it a little more loudly, whereupon Tom said "I'll plug it any way I goddam want." He went on to play a song from Raindogs , (I can't remember which one now), and then sort of beckoned the audience to come closer and said, "Come on, come on, let's have some old songs..." And then he played The Piano Has Been Drinking . Brilliant. I bought Raindogs the next day, Asylum Years a week or so later, and subsequently Swordfishtrombones and (as soon as it came out) Frank's Wild Years . My own wild years started soon after that, and I stopped buying any records, though someone gave me a home-recorded tape of Bone Machine . In 1998 I went abroad ...

Is what I said when it clicked where this photo was taken. I'd googled it as war hebburn - I'd a notion to have a local WW2 pic on my desktop. This came up, and it wasn't what I'd set out to get but I liked it and used it as wallpaper. A bit later I was looking at it again wondering where in Hebburn it was... and then it clicked. That building in the centre middle ground used to be a bank. To the right of it is St Aloysius' presbytery. The fenced slope is the northern end of the Station Rd bridge. Just behind that, to the right of the presbytery, is what I think was then called The County Hotel, (now reincarnated as Martha's Vineyard and in danger of losing its licence ). The buildings to the left must have been demolished years ago. The people must be waiting by the railway lines - probably for the arrival of some big cheese. The photographer could be on a train, or perhaps some other structure like a signal, next to the line.

If you click on that wee picture of Closing Time's track listing, you get a nice big readable version. I was ripping most of my CD collection onto the new laptop, and realised that the cases of most of them hadn't been opened since I'd ripped the discs onto my former laptop. So, Closing Time arrived today (of which more, later), and of course I ripped it and synched it forthwith, but I also scanned in all four pages of the CD insert. Because that's what we're missing if we've moved on from vinyl (and now I understand why some people prefer it). You had something attractive and interesting to look at with an LP cover. Also, you could make joints on it. A CD cover is too small, and of course you only get the little icon once it's ripped, and there's no trace at all once it gets to your MP3 player - on mine, any way.

...in the early mediaeval period .

molly camera phone (17) , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . Seriously, though, I'm going to start snapping away with the camera(phone) a little more. You take good photos with the cameraphone by luck mostly, because of the 2s (at least) time lag between button and shutter. But that's no excuse for not getting photos. And as for Flickr. Hmm...

Battles are my fave band of the moment. They feature in last week's Grauniad Podcast . Also the Morrisey/Immigration fandango , wherein, like Father Ted, he insists that he is "not a racist" .

"It's immaterial ."? No it's not. Fuck off.

These words came back to me this morning, as I listened to the news of the homecoming of the mohammed-teddy-bear teacher on the radio. Apparently, the big cheeses who went out to secure her release, were a bit shocked to find that there were others petitioning for a re-trial with a view to getting a harsher sentence. As Lord Ahmed is reported as saying in The Grauniad, "There was clearly division in the regime. There were some who wanted a retrial and editorials in newspapers saying 'shoot this woman'. Others say this is an embarrassment." "But surely it would make more sense..." was something one would say during the first few weeks in Libya when confronted with another insane bit of logic from the-powers-that-be, (hereinafter, tptb). After a while, you'd stop saying it, and acknowledge illogicality as part of the territory, and enjoy cynical laughter when you heard newbies saying it. I think it came back to mind because these big cheeses from the Hou...

This lad seems convinced, anyhow. It's quite likely. They were certainly breeding in N Yorkshire a couple of years ago, according to this BBC report . The World Owl Trust says : "We regard the confirmation of the Eagle Owl as a resident breeder in Britain as an exciting event on a par with the reintroduction of the White-tailed Sea Eagle and reinforcement of the Red Kite population..." Amen to that. I'd love to see one. I wonder if they take magpies, the local bullies of the birdworld. The arrival of bubo bubo would be like the arrival of a Terminator. We could stand to lose a few pigeons, too.

...about a notion I had sometime back to restore my collection of Tom Waits albums , (on CD). So I'm going right back to the beginning with Closing Time . Amazon have produced a discography , too. Something more significant had also been forgotten. In conversation this morning, Herself and I realised that it's our third wedding anniversary tomorrow, and that neither of us has so much as bought the other a card. Oh dear! It could have been closing time for me, with weeks in the marital freezer. Luckily, the lapse being mutual, there were no tears or recriminations.

Pig Sty Avenue is three today! That's rather whiskery for a blog, eh? Back in November 2004 , we were getting ready for our wedding, I was having a break from Libya, and The Bairn was a twinkle in my eye. I notice that I was wowed by the concept of In Our Time as a podcast, and that I couldn't do an embedded link. Now, there are masses of podcasts from the BBC . And I can embed my links like nobody's business.

I quite like this blog , but can't tell its author 'cos she's disabled comments. So if you read this, Cate, and didn't intend to prevent comments on your blog, then fiddle with the settings, eh?

He's got it all wrong, here . We should be getting Mourinho at Newcastle. Allardyce should go away and manage England. Or, if the fuck-heads at the FA don't want him, he should go away in any case. And where will Shearer fit into the fandango , eh? There are plenty of candidates, and there's obviously going to be a big reshuffle in British football overall in the next few weeks and months. My favourites are Shearer for The Town and Mourinho for England. At least they don't do that indecorous gum chewing .

Looks as if it might be fun.

English teachers abroad might often lead dull lives, but there's always the prospect of the unexpected happening . It's a salutary lesson to keep your wits about you. "Ted" would have been safer, though you can't fault her pedagogy, objectively. At least, being from Liverpool , imprisonment shouldn't be too much of a shock to the system.

South Tyneside Council, arboricides that they are, now want to sell off the Sports Stadium in Shields at Gypsies Green , and change the site into a hotel for people in suits. This is part of the process that results in fatsos sitting by the telly watching England lose at football. Some people have got together to try to stop them, and they have started a blog. There'll be petition-signing outside Morrisons in Jarrow next Saturday . Please give them your support.

You know who they are: think that a couple of hours in Asda is a good day out for the kids, and fill several trolleys with trans fats and processed sugar. Today I tried to get the lift to the platform at South Shields Metro: with The Bairn in her pushchair the stairs are out of the question. An old man with a stick got to the lift just before me and pressed the button. After a few seconds the door opened and four immensely fat and immensely stupid faces peered out. An adolescent girl, I think it was, amongst them spoke for the rest of the family when she said "Oh fucking hell we're still on the ground!" With no word to me or the old timer, she pressed a button and the door closed again. After a few minutes, the lift still hadn't moved. Then we heard a distant voice inside asking for help, the door was stuck... I gave up and went to get the bus instead, leaving 120 stones of blubber in the lift to ponder why it hadn't used the stairs, instead of breaking th...

2008 is on the horizon, and I'm going to keep an eye on ITT during the American Presidential election. (Thanks to Michael for linking to the Guiliani-has-spent-too-much-time-with-his-Sopranos-boxed-sets story). Also I've dusted off a copy of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail , in behopes it will cast some light by means of historical parallel, and because HST is sorely missed.

It's not very often I find myself agreeing with a fella who is not only ex-Man U., but Sunderland Manager as well. However, Roy Keane sums it up well, here . "Too many big heads" was just one of the thoughts that occurred during the match last night. Another one was: a fucking crap pub team . And: s choolboys all chasing the ball . Oh yeah, and: millionaires who should stick to flash cars and whores, that's all they're good for . Wankers. And don't even get me started on the fucking manager ... As for Croatia: they defended efficiently, kept possession, and took their opportunities to score. That's what we call football . Remember that? FFS! Actually, a few weeks ago I asked my Croatian mate Ognjen why the team were so good, and he said that it was because of the sport and leisure provision: every village or small suburb has its leisure or sports centre, everyone's doing sport. Unlike the English, a bunch of fat twats sitting on our fat arse...

...Or something. Now, I've had a chance to read this Libya In From The Cold article . It's quite interesting but misses a number of points. For example, in dealing with Libya v Al Qaeda, it completely ignores the recent al Zawahiri tape on the matter. But the general picture is correct. So far as exploitation by foreign capital is concerned, Europe is miles ahead of the USA: the best example I can think of being the provision of English teaching, which is an exclusively British/Irish affair, on the ground at least. The quotation given as the title of this post is food for thought, (given what I've blogged elsewhere about the battling bureaucratic leviathans); it'd be interesting to see Lisa Anderson 's rationale for that view, though.

Padraig at the Crossroads , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . Great minds think alike.

This bears out a rumour: that a new coast-road is to be built in Tripoli. It'll involve a hell of a lot of bulldozing. It's to be hoped that the Medinah will be skirted. I'm linking also to this article , which might be interesting, as a note to myself to come back to it. Do you like the picture? I like the picture. A little lad, fucking about with his toy, and no idea of the wide world. Maybe he'll grow up one day.

Vanity gets coupled with stupidity.

Umm-al-Maa, Oasis, Libyan Sahara. , originally uploaded by Libyan Soup . Beautiful. I love the way the sand dunes in the background look. I saw this when I was revisiting the libya.alt group on Flickr. Another reminder that I didn't do enough exploring on my last trip, and, inshallah, must remedy that next time.

Of course, one can speculate about what labour opportunities Sri Lankans will have in Libya . What skills do they have that Libya needs? And does it mean one'll be able to get a decent curry?

The national side beat Saudi 2-1 on Sunday. With ten men .

Through the google Jarrow blog alert, I came across another local blog . It made me think about taking up fishing again... After a gap of thirty years, it's true, but wtf? My Abu Ambassador reel is somewhere at the Aged Parents' house, and that was once a state of the art, pricey bit of kit. Hmm. Masses of whiting. 15 minutes walk away... That would be another handy string to the self sufficiency bow. Lovely.

I have the technology. I've downloaded some free audio software , now I need to read through this how-to site . And I've opened a Box.net free account to store it - though the free account limits me to a 10mb file - which means a couple of short bits of music and some chat. I've been impressed with the quality of the recording on my mobile , which means I can do interviews when I'm out and about. This is going to be fun, but there's a professional angle too: I want to use the podcast format as part of the repertoire of teaching.

Reuters carried this report . AFP managed to get a couple of quotes from one those exotic creatures beneath the waves . I'm guessing, but I suspect that there is a pro- and anti-tourist battle going on in the hidden depths, and it's a battle in a war between "progressive" and "conservative" factions.

...the BBC have used one of my photos !

In the same inbox, I get a link to a story about the marvellous future for Libya's tourist industry, and another link to a tale of arsey immigration authorities, which "reflects confusion in government policies" . Being a European involved with Libya is a bit like sailing over an ocean: what you see is peacable, beautiful or dangerous by turns; but the point is, you have only the dimmest idea, can barely imagine, what is going on beneath the surface. There, huge beasts are eating vast quantities of little fish and knocking seven shades of shite out of one another. Perhaps it's something to do with a significant route for advancement being through a centralised bureaucracy. Talented people will gravitate to it, and commence careers of hidden but bloody and bitter office warfare. Only a theory, but one based on the fact that at least twice, I've had my classroom eyed up greedily by apparatchik warriors. In one case, we were shunted out of a perfectly adequate tr...

hedgely road off licence , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . So who used to own it?

I was burning a joss stick, and the smoke caught in the back of my throat. And I wondered, if you did that a lot, inhale incense that is, would you get some kind of medical condition? And that got me to thinking, is there such a medical condition as priests' lung, contracted through not only incense inhalation, but also spending an inordinate time in old, dusty and perhaps damp buildings?

This is a link to something they do called Atlas . I can't stop playing it. Brilliant. And (ahem) Little Gwion tells me that the peeling away, multilayered nature of the vocal is reminiscent of some aspects of the affects of salvia divinorum usage. Or something.

Were brilliant on Jools Holland last night . Here's their myspace site . Something else I need time to check out. Also, Soil & "Pimp" Sessions , who were on last week.

infant literacy , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . This photo is The Bairn's concept. Also, I'm very enamoured of having bluetooth on the laptop and on the phone - easy to snap away and upload the results, however shite, without the intervention of a large quantity of spaghetti. We have a wireless router now, also. The more wireless we get, the better I'll like it.

It's amazing how quickly we move on with technology. This was only a couple of years ago, yet it looks really digitised because camera-phones hadn't even heard of a whole megapixel. Or something.

Apparently. Though at time of blogging I'm without audio, so I'm really just making a note-to-self to check this out with ears on.

Being the Pig Sty Avenue Podcasting Corporation. This is a project I fully intend to resurrect as soon as I get a bit of free time. Today, in connexion with that placement test, to record the sound files for the listening, I downloaded Audacity , which at first blush looks as if it'll be just the job for building a podcast. And, also time permitting, I'll spend some time surfing for new podsafe music. It'll be a hoot.

Great stuff. And now back to the boxed set(s).

... when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." During my last stint in Libya, over a shisha pipe and crown (alcohol free) beer, my colleagues and I would ponder when Al Qaeda would turn its jaundiced, long-sighted eye onto the dear old Jamahiriya . Years passed, and nothing happened. But now, when I'm going back, we get what looks nastily like a threat to open up a new front . Oh, bugger. There's a bit more detail from CBS . But Rotterstint seems to get to the bottom of it.

It’s a right laugh, this. When I first started teaching ten years ago, leaners went from Beginner (no English) to Elementary (a bit) to Pre-Intermediate (getting there) to Intermdiate (lift off!) to Upper Intermediate (might reasonably try to get an English teacher out on a date) to Advanced. They might then think of the dizzy heights of a high IELTS score or a Proficiency exam. Either because the world’s become more complicated or because my understanding of it is more sophisticated, this will no longer do. There’s Skills for Life which ranges from Pre-Entry, through three Entry Levels and onto Level 2 (it goes beyond that, but after Level 2 you’re as near to a native speaker as makes no difference). And there are IELTS scores 0 to 9. And the Common European Framework: Three bands, A-C, each divided into two (why not just A-F I don’t know) and each has a friendly name (from “Breakthrough” to “Mastery”). ...And then City and Guilds International ESOL , from Prelimi...

Nik Peachey's blog is interesting - but I need more time to have a good shufty. And I love this English phonology guide which actually shows the external mouth movement. Teaching pronunciation can be great fun. One of the few times in life when you can usefully say to someone: read my lips! Or something.

India sniffs at Libyan gas.

The Bairn Birthday , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . Her second birthday. I've just gotten around to post-processing the photos.

Many's the would be efl teacher who've been lured by Nova's fancy website into going to Japan to have an adventure. You don't even need to have any teaching qulaifications, just an English medium education up to a degree. Friends who've taught in Japan tell me that nobody lasted long at Nova, but that it acted as a conduit into the wider efl Japanese sub-culture. No more: it seems to have gone tits-up . The teacher's are in a predicament . Skint, dodging the landlord, needing to borrow cash for your air-fare home from people you hardly know... Happy memories! EDIT: thanks to Michael for this link (from 2004) which give a straightforward view of working at Nova.

psychosis III , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . Get a head in your garden shed.

I hate the term "wishlist" . But it's a handy concept, nonetheless.

You couldn't say that South Tyneside has a lively blogosphere. So it's interesting to come across a new blog , almost accidentally, even it is from South Shields. I had a quick shufty. Here, I think that the person actually intended to say "say what you like, you silly shite..." but wasn't very good at texting. Mind you, Internet presence from the North East can be very uneven. Here's a story about a load of pictures of Reyrolles, which manages to NOT show any of them. Instead you get a web address (not a hyperlink) which if you copy and paste it sends you to probably THE most annoying site on the internet. Javascripts leaping up all over the page, pleas for hard cash, advertising, and an astonishingly unhelpful set of links to photos. Oh shit! Look at the time! The Sopranos!

...is how I'd describe South Tyneside council. The trees in Jarrow precinct have been there since the early 60s. They had plaques by them to tell you when they were planted by the children of various schools. Those kids could be grandparents now. It's an unlovely spot. The trees were all that prettified it. And now, after forty-something years, they've been chopped down and then uprooted. The plaques torn off clumsily by a mechanical digger, getting bent in the process. I don't know if there's a rationale, or plans to plant new trees. The old ones had been there most of my life, and their removal is unsettling.

...is what scientists had when asked to say what would be a safe amount of alcohol to put by in a week, and they came up with the good-old "21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women, first introduced in 1987." Ha! In other words, they were just making it up. Which, of course, all boozers always suspected. Hands up: how many otherwise honest people have consistently lied to their doctor over the years about how much they soak up of a weekend? It's an aspect of managing our lives which we've given over to people in authority. Any boozer knows when they've drunk too much because the next day they feel like shit and/or their nearest and dearest isn't speaking to them. And if that's happening to you regularly, then you've got a problem. You don't really need a numpty in authority to tell you. Cheers!

The Italians have returned!

Every once in a way you get a reminder that canny auld Jarra hasn't really changed. Here's a family who had their monkey puzzle tree nicked out of their front "garden". Maybe it was a militant group of garden designers, taking direct action against dubious horticultural aesthetics. They are surprisingly expensive . Maybe there's a dearth of the buggers. And we should cash in by sowing some Araucaria araucana seeds at the allotment, and flogging them on a couple of years down the road, at a considerable profit, to numpties who watch those poxy "garden makeover" programmes on telly. Or something.

My old school is getting a makeover . I know a lot of people around there, the Deneside Club is where I had my first pint. Herself and I were talking about the possibility of maybe moving back there one day, and with that in mind we went home via Durham Drive the other day. Suddenly, The Bairn cried out in the back of the car, apropos of nothing, "Bad karma!". Hmm. Maybe we won't move there after all. This is Durham Drive, taken from Fellgate Metro station. Does look a bit dull, doesn't it? Maybe The Bairn's right.

Khadijateri gave me the link . It's a hazardous business , however. It was also a bit of a shock to see that "elegant" Janzur has its own website .

No matter what, it's going to take a little while to make it familiar.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me." That's from the opening chapter of Moby Dick. Melville had it taped here. If you update the activities, and replace the phrase "get to sea" with ...

This is a note to myself to print off this article , read it and follow up the references. And whilst I'm on, I need to get a good look at Vygotsky's ideas, too. (That's him there). AND I'm going to be doing all that here. The academic blog is to be cast out into that cold hinterland where disused blogs go, only an occasional googled idea giving them life and human contact. Ditto Little Gwion . (Yes! It was me all the time!) It seems a waste to spread one's virtual life across cyberspace in three blogs when one will do. Or something.

The row between Martin Amis and Terry Eagleton certainly has entertainment value, but the remarks which started it are VERY disturbing. What Amis said, last year, was: "There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan." He later explained that he "was conversationally describing an urge - an urge that soon wore off." Now if I heard some twat in the pub blithering on like this I'd either have a big row with him, or on the basis of not throwing pearls before swine, ignore it. But Amis isn't just some-twat-in-the-pub, no matter how much he sounds like one: he's a very gifted author who enjoys considerable stature in the literary life of this country. He should k...

This is an interesting book . I have seen a more polemical analysis, but can't find the reference now.

It makes sense to have links, of course, Libya being only an hour away from Malta, and a couple of hours from Italy. And that's what these "co-operation talks" are partly about . Big business can never be happy with "pariah states" because it's difficult to sell them stuff. And the "migration", that's a thorny one. Libya has an open-door policy for all Africans who want to go to there to work. Standards of living are relatively high, but not as high as Europe, and I met a few black Africans who clearly saw Libya as a stop-over before crossing the Mediterranean. The EU big cheeses no doubt want to put a stop to that sort of malarkey. Globalisation! It's a laugh, isn't it?

Yes. I can. Early in the new year. Inshallah.

Thinking about prepping business English materials... Here are some topic areas: Marketing/Sales/Promotion Presentations Meetings and discussions Globalisation Production HR Transport Management Accounting and Finance Company structures and strategies Operations Communications: email; telephone English Social English And here are some links: The World Service: business English BBC Podcasts: The Bottom Line Business Daily Business Emporium Business English links from EnglishClub.com That's enough to be going on with, isn't it? Well, I could throw in this tit-bit, about reform of the Libyan banking system , if one is going to get all communicative and relevant...

I really must get around to buying this book . And this picture's brill, isn't it? I found it when googling "shock doctrine".

Whatever the Chancellor says later today, we're in for difficult times . In practical terms for those of us who labour, by hand or by brain, this means there'll be trouble getting more wages, and cutbacks in jobs and resources, especially in the public sector. You can probably put money on ESOL for adults coming off very badly against the NHS and mainstream education in the approaching scrambles for diminishing sacks of cash from central government. The latest rumour at our place is that everyone will have to re-apply for their own jobs, there'll be a subtly re-worded job description, which means they get less money, (if they are re-employed at all). And this was all thought out by some twat in a suit before the likelihood of any economic downturn began to show itself to a discerning proletariat. ESOL provision in English Further Education colleges seems to have reached a high water mark two or three years ago. The tide's beginning to run faster now, and won't eve...

Forsooth! Formerly Miss Kinks (if memory serves) and originally The County Hotel. Or was it? I like the way it's referred to here as a "drinking den" .

My mate works for Macmillan and put me on to this . Handy if you're considering a career shift, taking the Capitalists' Shilling.

Never heard of it. Until now . Several interesting ideas. We live and learn. It's not that straightforward - several plants seem to go by this name. Wants a bit of time to research it. Nymphaea Caerulea looks like the thing. It could be the source for Homer's Lotus Eaters . Nelumbo nucifera is related and has similar properties. I doubt that it would thrive this far north of the Nile, however. The Tyne's chilly in winter.

Twenty odd years ago, I would cycle into Town along the River, and listen to Grace Jones, The Smiths, and Tom Waits on a Walkman - which was then rather cutting edge. I aspire to do so again. Here's a link showing the route , plus a nice loop for Town based cyclists.

They make it sound quite good . But there are some nasty little shits living here.

Football's a great communication device. It crosses continents and cultures. You might think that you've got nothing in common with a conservative stay-at-home Muslim until you find that he's a big fan of Alan Shearer. So, I'm thinking, if students take an interest in our Premier League, then it's only good manners to reciprocate. The big cheeses in Libya are Ittihad , who are into the last 16 of the Arab Champions League . Which is nice. They are also going strong in the CAF Champions League.

As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.

Despite being a horny-handed son of the Tyneside soil, and having some bolshevik tendencies to boot, I've always been a fan of the novels about rich English people in the 20s and 30s. Here's an interesting article about that milieu , with the names of several authors I haven't read.

...is what my students wrote on the scrolling marquee of the classroom pc on my last day there. I blogged about that here and got two rather irksome and thoroughly ignorant comments: people will read what they want into almost any text, for better or worse. I thought that post reflected the ambiguities of the country, and my own equally ambiguous feelings towards it. The first commentator was clearly unable to detect ambiguity and decided to take umbrage: if it's not unstinting praise, it must be fearsome criticism. The cunt probably prowls the blogosphere searching for things to take umbrage with. Anyway, for various reasons, I'm taking an interest in matters Libyan again. Foreign interest continues in the oil . Of course. And the regime is keeping a high diplomatic profile . This is the chair I used to sit in, in the garden at the house I shared in Zawiyah. It's empty, you'll notice, for now.

...looks as if it might be quite interesting.

I used: 5 rashers of bacon, chopped four medium potatoes 8 medium plum tomatoes, peeled cup of fresh, chopped basil one large onion olive oil cracked black pepper Method: Fry the bacon for a few minutes in olive oil. Slice the potatoes approx 1/8th" thick. Place half of them in a layer at the bottom of a roasting dish or large casserole. Slice the onion and put on top. Put in the tomatoes, slicing them down the middle if they're big. sprinkle on the basil, add the bacon, and finish off with another layer of sliced potatoes. Sprinkle on olive oil and pepper. Cook on gas mark 6 for approximately 1 hour. (After which the potatoes and onions should be al dente; you could cook it for much longer and more slowly if you wanted to). DO NOT cover it: the top layer of potato should go crispy. I used Kestrel potatoes, but main crop (King Edwards, for example) would have been better. I should explain that Panacalty (there are many spelling variants) is a North East England dish...

I've spent most of the day on this load of old toot . I really am beginning to go through the motions here, having lost all interest in ESOL teaching as practised in FE colleges in the UK. I'm itching to get on with Second Language Acquisition theory for the MA, but I need to get this Cert in FE baloney finished first. It's a chore, I can tell you, with all the charm of ditch digging in the rain.

...is blogging again. Very scatological. A parent can relate to that.

I could begin to blether-on about the misuse of the word "binge" by the media here, but I won't. Today. Maybe we're going to have an election next month. I hope so, elections are great fun, giving an appearance of meaningfulness to our participatory democracy. Or something. Headline grabbing about "binge" drinking is a fair indicator that Papa Gordon is tempted to give it a go. And this is a Middle England issue. I was visiting Newbury a few months ago and commented on how pretty the town looked, and was told that the flipside was a no-go area at night for anyone over 30, because of all the drunken carrying-on. It made me smile. At least we don't have that problem round here. To be sure, there's a river of drink consumed most weekends, but Jarrow and Hebburn town centres are such bleak spots after dark that no one, young or old, pissed or sober, would want to spend any time there, annoying passers by. So, badly thought out 1960s "redevel...

I've sown hundreds of fenugreek seeds in the greenhouse (which is going to have heating over the winter). I got the seeds from the Chinese supermarket in Town, and soaked them for three days in a small bucket of water: they are hard and unseedlike in the packet, but resemble wheat seeds after you soak them. I scattered the seeds on, and raked them over roughly, so that some are on the surface, others will be a little below. After 48 hours, most of the ones on the surface are sprouting, so I'm anticipating a good germination ratio. (I knew they would sprout. In Libya, I put some in a tin on soaked tissue paper: they indeed sprouted well and I'd trim them to put in salads as one would with cress. After a week or so of this hotel-room farming, though, I looked into the tin and was disgusted to see hundreds of little beetles squirming around the seedlings' roots, like that insect motif in Blue Velvet .) The bed in the greenhouse is garden soil which hasn't been c...

There are more than enough hatching eggs available on eBay. Here , for example. And here . The only question now is one of timing. It's probably too late to start this year. But if we get the eggs and incubate them in February, then they should be ready to lay next spring. Or something.

Yesterday was our first real Autumn day. I love it. Maybe it was the difference in the air, but when I was getting a cup of coffee at the wee shop in college yesterday, I overheard the woman there discussing "change" with another customer. "You can never have too much change." And I drifted away, as if stoned. Change . It's not so bad. I've got less hours at work, which means less money. But it also means more time with The Bairn, and with the allotment.

"You cannot breed your own black rocks..." That's from a supplier of black rocks, mind. I'm wondering, why? If you have a barred plymouth rock hen, and a rhode island red cock, why not breed your own? All googling brings one back to the Muirfield Hatchery . I've tried ringing their local agent , without success. Relatively local - well, 45 minutes drive away - are these people in Haydon Bridge . Actually, I'm rather glad to have reached some Internet parameters - this is something that'll need to be sorted IRL: hard cash passed into a shit covered hand in a bleak Northumberland farmyard. Or something.

Level 1 cinema space Baltic (1) , originally uploaded by WYGD . I took The Bairn to the Baltic yesterday, for a show of Flickr photos, including some of mine. The photos were shown in the cinema, and it was a bit freaky seeing them so big.

The Old Man has suggested we get a Rhode Island Red cockerel and a couple of Barred Plymouth Rock hens, and then breed our own Black Rock hybrids... Though this seems to suggest that you can't do that.

Peyote , originally uploaded by Drunken Monkey . They are beauties, eh? And a snip at 20 Euros.

I took this with the cameraphone, so the quality's not great. The cleft was infested with woodlice.

Little Gwion tells me that he's writing a film script, with the putative title When Mary Jane Met Sally D. He was off his head, of course.

Few blogs, and no news outlets will not refer to this story , so let's get it out of the way. At the end of our working day, most people head for the exits asap. But last night was remarkable because we started to discuss this and all continued to debate it, whilst our own hearths or the pub beckoned unsuccesfully. One person thought they couldn't have done it, one person thought that they probably did, (me, as it happens), and the rest were thoroughly nonplussed.

Silly sheep , originally uploaded by jakerome . There's quite a long back-story, if you don't know Flickr.