Sunday shorts: Saturdays (reprise)

I hope your Sunday reprises your Saturday.

For what good it will do

I wrote to my MP in the week. I expect nothing to come of it - I live in a constituency so blue you wouldn't believe it. And, if his voting record is any indication, the incumbent MP just does what he's told and follows the party line at all times.

I've written to him a couple of times before, and received boilerplate letters in response that look and feel like they were written by Conservative Central Office. But I had to try again, because I just feel so bloody angry about Partygate, the lies, the sneering entitlement, the fake sincerity, all of it. All of it.

Here's what I wrote. I'll let you know if I get anything back...

Blue Friday: Just Make It Stop

I should probably stop this series - I'm not altogether sure it's good for my state of mind. But there are just so many wonderful sad songs, like this beauty from Low:

About that new word game

I don't want to spoil anyone's fun. After all, the New York Times will probably do that. But Wordle, for all its brilliant simplicity and superb execution, is just written in Javascript. So, if you have some basic knowledge and interest, you can take it apart yourself and see how it all works. I naively hoped that maybe the app was making API calls to some online dictionary to source the words but no, there's just a big long list of over two thousand words (nearly six and a half years worth), in plain text, in game order. So I can tell you what today's Wordle is, and tomorrow's, and the day after's, and so on. But that's no fun for you, and only brief fun for me, so...

Far better to dissect the code to refine tactics, right? I don't know about you but I already have a default first guess word and I'm not precious so I'll share: out of lazy habit, my first guess has always been SPARE, my thinking being that these are common letters. It's an approach that has served me well - if I get a few hits, great, I build on that. If I get no hits, I usually try TOXIC next, as a way of trying out two other vowels and, since frequent letters aren't helping me, a couple of less common letters.

And yet the letter distribution chart compiled from the 2,315 words in Wordle's list suggests that the most common five letters in the solutions are E, A, R, O and T ... so I should probably start with ORATE.

The next common letters are L, I, S, N and C. Now I don't know about you but I can't make a valid word out of those (sorry, residents of Lincolnshire but Lincs is a proper noun, and an abbreviation, so seemingly not Wordle-compliant - and by the way, the list of permissible words is just another long hard-coded list). But go further down the table, as far as thirteenth most frequent to bring in D and Y, and you've got a good candidate for second guess of LINDY (not a proper noun, apparently, despite it's origins). And if you want to go as far as sixteenth, you can mop up all the unused letters so far except for S with CHUMP

So, ORATE, followed by LINDY, followed by CHUMP. After that, you're on your own...

Of course, the interesting thing about Wordle being Javascript based, and the code being client-side, is that there's nothing to stop you, me or anyone else cribbing it for their own version. Then the New York Times can do what they like with it, and you could keep playing your own clone. But again, where would be the fun in that..?

Other interesting notes from the source code? Well, there must have been a test day, or day zero, because there was a word (CIGAR) in the list before the day 1 puzzle solution. Oh, and the least frequent letter by Wordle occurence is not Q, X or Z but J, only appearing 27 times in 2,351 words.

And finally, one of the strengths of Wordle is that there's just one puzzle a day and you have to wait 24 hours for the next one. But if that's not enough to scratch your itch, or you've missed days, you can play every game to date again at the Wordle Archive.

Tube Tuesday: Billy Bragg

Following on from my earlier post enthusing about the YouTubing of The Tube, here's the first in an occasional series plucking gems from Jools and Paula's back catalogue.

It's Muriel introducing today's spot though: from episode 1 of series 2, broadcast 28th October 1983, and featuring "Britain's most sought-after support act": an impossibly youthful Billy Bragg (25 at the time). You all know the song, of course, but it's nice to see it was still new enough at the time for Bill to fluff a chord change part-way through.

Twenty-two in '22: Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing

I've set myself modest reading targets in each of the last three years and failed every time (I managed 17 books in '19, 11 in '20 and 18 in '21), so I'm determined to read twenty two books in 2022. I'll review them all here.

2/22: Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing by Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse

The blurb: Two comedy greats talk life, friendship and the joys of fishing...

Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have been friends for 30 years, but when life intervened, what was once a joyous and spontaneous friendship dwindled to the odd phone call or occasional catch up. Then, Glory Be! They were both diagnosed with heart disease and realised that time is short. They'd better spend it fishing...

So they dusted off their kits, chucked on their waders and ventured into the achingly beautiful British countryside to fish, rediscover the joys of their friendship and ruminate on some of life's most profound questions, such as: How did we get so old? Where are all the fish? What are your favourite pocket meats? What should we do if we find a corpse?

Following the success of the BBC's Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing series, this wonderful book by two lifelong friends is a love letter to the joys of angling, the thrill of the catch and the virtue of having a right daft laff with your mates. On the fish, the equipment, the food, and the locations, Gone Fishing is the perfect book for fans of Bob Mortimer, Paul Whitehouse and for anyone who wants to read a brilliantly written and endlessly funny joint memoir on life, friendship and joys of fishing.

The review: I bought The Man Of Cheese a copy of Bob Mortimer's wildly popular autobiography And Away for Christmas; so popular is it, in fact, that my gift was the third copy TMOC received over the festive period. I've since remedied that fail with a far better present, but what I should really have bought, if I'd wanted to be a bit more original, is this. For whilst Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing does have an autobiographical element, and does tie in nicely with the comfort-viewing TV series that shares its name, it's principally a book about fishing, and the joys thereof. Oh, and being with your mate too, but I'll come on to that.

There's a very clear split in the book regarding who has written each piece, and clearly Paul does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to writing about fishing, its history, techniques, and types of fish. Now I am not an angler - it's thirty years or more since I last sat at the riverside with The Man Of Cheese and hooked roach after roach out of the excellently named River Wantsum. But that in no way diminished my enjoyment of this book. As Bob is quick to point out, a day fishing is about more than the fish, it's about being outdoors with your mate, enjoying the peace and beauty of a rural setting, talking nonsense (or, perhaps, not talking at all), maybe retiring to a nice pub afterwards... sounds good, doesn't it? And that's a strength of this book - it enthuses about the attendant joys of angling so much that it would make anyone fancy a go.

If Paul carries the fishing aspect of the book, Bob carries the humour - that's not to say Paul's sections aren't funny, because they are, but they're also weighted towards the fishing. Bob doesn't have Paul's fishing experience, so compensates with humour. I particularly enjoyed his comedy names for the dishes he describes in his section on heart-healthy riverside cooking options (tuna Melanie with trapped potatoes, anyone? Or Boots McFoolish breakfast porridge?)

The thing is, this isn't a life-changing book. It isn't going to dazzle you with its prose, nor - for all its humour - is it a comedy classic. A totally objective review would probably be for me to award it four out of the possible six stars, describe it as "serviceable" or some other faint praise and summarise it as a satisfactory commercial exercise, cashing in on the success of the TV show. All of those things are true. But it's more than that, of course. Yes, it's a love letter to fishing and an outdoor life, and that's a big part of the appeal. But it's even more than that too. Mostly, for this reader at least, Gone Fishing is the anatomy of a friendship between two men, one that started in youth and has matured in middle age. At a time when what it is to be a man is so ill-defined, lambasted or pilloried, it is truly rewarding to see a genuine, heartfelt and lasting male friendship served up on paper, for us all to enjoy. And for that, it is more than the sum of its parts, and warrants an extra star.

The bottom line: come for the fishing, stay for the friendship - a life-affirming read.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★☆

Sunday shorts: I Love Perth

It's about Perth, Australia, not Perth, Scotland. But that's nice too.

Revisiting The Tube

With massive thanks to Khayem at Dubhed for bringing all this to my attention.

[09-Feb-21 EDIT: sadly the YouTuber that digitised the whole of The Tube has since taken it all down, presumably because The Man™ got on his case. I've updated the videos here with clips from other sources, where I've been able to.]

A YouTuber by the name of Lol-Z has digitised every episode of seminal 80s music show The Tube. And oh, what a rabbit hole it is - a time tunnel back to the music of the day, the comedy, and just how we used to live. It is utterly brilliant. I cannot imagine being short of something to watch for weeks, months probably.

I've written before about how The Jam gave their last ever live TV performance on the very first episode of The Tube, so I won't revisit that. But there are plenty of other highlights, uncovered already from just this evening's cursory scan through. How about the first televised sight of The Smiths, from series 2 episode 2, first broadcast on 4th November 1983, as part of an interview with Geoff Travis:

Or for later in the same series, playing live on episode 21 broadcast 16th March 1984, a programme in which they shared the bill with Howard Jones, Escape Club and Madness, no less. Here they are with Hand In Glove, Still Ill and a frankly exceptional Barbarism Begins At Home:

And if The Smiths are dead to you now, how about REM's first live UK TV performance, from series 2 episode 4 broadcast 18th November 1983, in which they rattle through Radio Free Europe, So. Central Rain and Talk About The Passion. Jools introduces them as being from Atlanta - between songs, Michael says, "We're not from Atlanta, we're from Athens." As if anyone watching in the UK in 1983 knew there was an Athens in Georgia...

Or how about The Style Council, a week later, demonstrating how far Paul had moved on from that Jam swansong the previous series? Performing My Ever Changing Moods, Headstart For Happiness and closing the show with a cover of Chairmen of the Board's Hanging On To A Memory, this was a very clear statement of intent that the audience seem ever so slightly confused by:

And here they are again, eleven months later on series 3 episode 3 broadcast 19th October 1984, showing just how much further they'd gone, with Shout To The Top, A Man Of Great Promise, Strength Of Your Nature and a cover of Defunkt's Razor's Edge:

And especially for Rol, here's the late Meatloaf from the tail end of series 3, in an episode broadcast 8th February 1985. Hard to imagine Meat shared the bill with Amazulu and The Durutti Column at any other point in his career:

Strikes me watching some of this back how TFI Friday that followed in the 90s wasn't actually as groundbreaking as many remember it - they were just updating The Tube, weren't they?

Another thing that strikes me is the sudden recollection that teen me had a little bit of a thing for how Paula Yates looked in the first half of the 80s. So shallow. I was not her type though...

Anyway, you can and really should go and peruse the whole Tube catalogue on Lol-Z's YouTube channel. IMDB can help with episode broadcast dates, should you need them. But hurry - as Khayem said this morning, this lot might not be around for very long. Now excuse me, I may be gone for some time...

Sunday shorts: Intuition Told Me, Pt. 1

Because it's nice to have some Orange Juice with your Sunday breakfast, right?

RIP Tiny

Marvin Lee Aday, aka Meatloaf, has died, aged 74. As ever, the Beeb have a fine obit. RIP.