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.