NigeBlog

This is the Barker-family.info web site, the personal pages and projects of Nigel, Jan, Emily, Lucy and Georgina Barker.

Prestonpans, Prestonpandemonium, Monkey Loft Comics, Three Harbours Art Festival, Nulsh, Malcy Duff

Prestonpans, John Rattray, Book Crossing, Comics, Comics Quiz, EC War Comics Index, I Love You Toast, Toast in the Post

If you can see this text then your browser doesn't support or isn't configured for Cascading Style Sheets, or, erm, our template is broken again, so this page isn't appearing as we intended ...

NigeBlog

Friday 1st August 2008

The Zinefest last Saturday was a lot of fun and made me want to put more effort in to selling stuff, just so I can stock Stuart Murray and Olly Paterson.

Stuart is a postman, a teddy boy and a chronicler of Glasgow's rough pubs in In Pubs. I'm sure he is going to be a big star. I'm not sure if he thinks what he does has anything to do with comics, but I do.

Anyway, tonight I found myself stuck in Waverley station for an hour and decided that I deserved a pint. I bought my drink, but all the tables were at least partially occupied. I sat next to John, who was just like someone out of Stuart's book. At first I was a bit scared, when he asked me if I was of the Rangers persuasion, but when I told him I worked in the NHS he warmed to me ("I love Gordon Brown").

I couldn't always tell what he was saying so I can't really document his crazy, booze addled conversation, but I was reminded of how much time I spent talking to scary, bonkers people in pubs when I was younger.

Thursday 31st July 2008

We want David for our leader. Link.

Sunday 6th July 2008

We all enjoyed our day day out in Carlisle yesterday, a bit like a day trip to Coronation Street, everyone we met being so friendly.

The first thing we saw off the train was the record fair at the County Hotel, and the first stall we saw was all punk rock -- the Adicts, Crass, the Damned etc. etc. The music playing in the hall was the Rich Kids, Elvis Costello and the Jam, which made me think the punk rock guy was in charge of the tape machine, but then on came Kokomo by the Beach Boys. How do they decide who is in charge of the tunes ?

I bought No. 1 Rare Groove Hits for £3. Bargain !

And Carlisle has more punks than Gorgie. Is Carlisle the most punk rock town in the UK ?

Sunday 29th June 2008

This just in from the humour can be funny department: Did you know Beth Ditto's dad invented the shorthand for representing repeated entries in a column ?

Glastonbury really rocked my Sunday. May the BBC long continue to cover this great national treasure of ours. And with that clever blue button you never have to suffer Biffy Clyro when you could be watching Mark Ronson.

Friday 20th June 2008

One consequence of commuting fifty miles to work is that I can be a bit too tired to blog in the evening. Another consequence us that I do get loads of time to read. I can now read a book in a week.

This week I read Garnethill by Denise Mina, an amazing, intense read about murder and abuse in Glasgow, just what you need for the 08:00 from Waverley to Queen Street.

Sunday 27th April 2008

My pick of the weekend's papers -- this review of the new James Kelman. I really enjoyed How Late It Was, How Late, but I agree that this exercise in natural kid language might be "great when dipped into at random, but [...] intolerably wearisome when tackled at length".

Wednesday 23rd April 2008

A fire alarm, a patient in handcuffs and poop in the corridor -- just another day in the NHS. It wasn't like this at the Royal Marsden ;-)

Saturday 19th April 2008

I've got my right arm back after four days of excruciating pains. Thank you Ibuprofen Heat Patches.

We all enjoyed Dr Who tonight. Emily came up with a good name for the Ood's facial appendages -- tonguetacles.

Friday 18th April 2008

Today I voluntarily walked away from a job where I was quite contented for only the second time. Goodbye ST Microelectronics.

Saturday 12th April 2008

A successful trip to the Glasgow Comic Fair -- 118 comics for £70.

Sunday 6th April 2008

I am just so incredibly happy about my new job.

Saturday 5th April 2008

The Guardian Guide were a bit mean about Russell T Davies' writing today. I thought tonight's first episode was most excellent. And I think there's a lot of chemistry between Catherine Tate and David Tennant. And I thought Sarah Lancashire made a rather good villain. And usually I find her really annoying. And I usually find Catherine Tate really annoying. So well done Russell and the BBC !

Friday 4th April 2008

I passed a phone interview and I have a new job. Starting on 21st April in Glasgow. Interviewing for your next job really is much easier when you're still in work. Gah ! I'm just so happy.

Thursday 3rd April 2008

Really enjoyed this article in the National Geographic. We usually assume stuff from China is so cheap because they are evil and care nought for human rights and have child slavery. But at least part of that cheapness is down to the huge scale of things over there. Imagine a whole city given over to making buttons. Or playing cards. Wow !

Monday 31st March 2008

I saw this rather disturbing story on the cover of the Metro this morning -- One sausage a day ups cancer risk. Gah ! I like bacon and sausages. Maybe I should have stayed a vegetarian ;-)

I love the canteen at work, but top of the menu today was Kilted Sausages. And what are the kilts made of ? Bacon. Don't they read the newspapers ?

Sunday 30th March 2008

My favourite story from the weekend's papers -- Organic food 'no benefit to health' in the Observer. I always knew dirty carrots were a waste of money.

Saturday 29th March 2008

Selling comics to the art lovers of Leith for seven hours was an exhausting, but rewarding experience. I had a rather unrealistic sales target in my head, but it felt good selling some of my small press faves like Bedsit Journal, Five Days out of Seven and the Blackest Gnome.

Like the hapless Apprentice candidates selling fish I did just about manage to break even, but I think I probably enjoyed the experience a bit more. If I wanted to "Make money, make money and make more money" I probably wouldn't be selling comics -- now that would be a good Apprentice challenge, "I want you to choose three of these self-published comics and sell them at an Arts Fair in Edinburgh".

Thanks to Out of the Blue for a very well organised fair.

Thursday 20th March 2008

The journalism in Private Eye isn't always of that much interest to me, but I was quite interested in this story about the dogs who found traces of Maddie in the McCann's car and buried bodies in Jersey -- or did they ? Link here.

Thursday 13th March 2008

Best day off ever -- I took the kids to school and nursery for the first time in ages, bought them books at the School Book Fair, ate loads of my wife's traybake, worked on Prestonpandemonium, and my laptop suddenly works a whole lot better now it has an extra 256MB of RAM.

Thursday 28th February 2008

Thursday night is skills night. This week I spent my time looking at some problems in Perl and awk.

1. Use awk to only write lines where column 3 matches a pattern or is greater than a value

$ cat test.txt | awk '$3==3 {print }'

$ cat test.txt | awk '$3=="text" {print }'

$ cat test.txt | awk '$3>3 {print }' | awk '$3<9999 {print }'

$ cat test.txt | awk '$3>3 {print }' | awk '$3<"a" {print }'

$ cat test.txt | awk '$3~"ex" {print }'

2. Use Perl to only write lines where column 3 matches a pattern or is greater than a value

$ cat test.txt | ./column_match.pl

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    while ($line = <STDIN>) {
      ($col1, $col2, $col3, $therest) = split(" ",$line);
      $col3 > 3 and print "$col1 $col2 $col3 $therest \n";
    }

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    while ($line = <STDIN>) {
      ($col1, $col2, $col3, $therest) = split(" ",$line);
      $col3 =~ "ex" and print "$col1 $col2 $col3 $therest \n";
    }

3. Use awk to average the values in a column

$ cat test.txt | awk 'BEGIN { count=0; total=0 } {if (($3+0)==$3) count++; total+=$3} 
	END {print "Average ", total/count }'

4. Use Perl to average the values in a column

$ cat test.txt | ./average.pl

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    $count = 0;
    $total = 0;
    while ($line = <STDIN>) {
      ($col1, $col2, $col3, $therest) = split(" ",$line);
      $col3 > 0 and $total += $col3 and $count++;
    } 
    $average = $total / $count;
    print "Average $average\n";

Tuesday 5th February 2008

We were all looking forward to Pancake Day. I came home, put some oil in the frying pan, turned up the heat, put milk in the jug, added flour, ... now for the eggs. Except we have no eggs -- they all got used on Yorkshire Pudding Day. D'oh !

Monday 4th February 2008

And lo the IT gods did decree that a server would come falling out of the sky with an almighty crash. I have often seen servers bent all out of shape from being dropped but today I was the one doing the dropping.

Sunday 3rd February 2008

I still had 133 to dispose when I sat down at my laptop tonight, but 90 minutes later I have made it -- zero inbox heaven and a day ahead of my target date. Hurrah !

Wednesday 16th January 2008

What I feel about football makes no sense. I have no grudge against Sam Allardyce or Newcastle United but when he got the sack last week I said 'Har har !'

Tonight when Kevin Keegan got the job Jan predicted that tears would be shed, and by half time in tonight's MOTD ( West Ham's 1-0 FA Cup 4th round defeat away to Man City -- ho hum ) she was proved right.

Tuesday 15th January 2008

We've been desparatly watching films to try and run down our LOVEFiLM queue and get Sopranos Series 6 Part 2 despatched. Sunday was Being There and last night was Little Otik

Being There was Peter Sellars last film and a fitting tribute to his great comic acting talent as he plays the grown up little boy lost in the world of Washington poverty and politicking.

Jan Svankmajer is everyone's favourite Czech stop-go animator and Little Otik is the story of a couple who really want a baby but get a monster made of wood.

My favourite columns from the weekend's papers: Nick Cohen on why environmentalists might suffer a downturn in their fortunes if the economy turns sour -- here; and Jay Rayner on why we can't all afford organic chicken for dinner -- here.

Saturday 12th January 2008

Today was Barker family funday, so we went swimming, made trifle and watched the The Simpsons Movie. All us Barkers are big fans of the Simpsons ( or the yellow people as our children like to call them in an annoying show of cuteness ), but Georgie had fallen asleep by this point so she missed out on popcorn and Lidl pretzels. I enjoyed the film but felt it didn't quite meet my very high expectations or live up to its trailer, which we also watched tonight.

In the run up to Christmas Channel 4 showed the very first season of the show and I enjoyed that early, crude animation style. The computer animation in the film is very slick ( like Futurama ), but a bit busy for the small screen and without some of the underground comics feel of the 1989 version.

To complete our perfect day West Ham beat Fulham 2-1, Lawrie Grant ordered two tables at Prestonpandemonium III and I sit here eating something called Baumkuchedn-spitzen, which is basically tiramisu in chocolate.

Manchester United beat Nigel Pearson's Newcastle 6-0 so it should be a good Match of the Day in the morning.

Friday 11th January 2008

I recently finished reading Tomasson and Buist's Battles of the '45, an excellent overview of the whole Jacobite campaign, with good coverage of our very own battle of Prestonpans. With much of its research coming from British Army records it provides what I consider a balanced account, but then I am English.

So, Cope was a good general, who did everything he could at Prestonpans ( as his military tribunal found ), but he was let down by the quality of his troops. I don't know why this should be so important to me 262 years later, but I feel much more comfortable reading this than reading that the highlanders were great soldiers, their leaders inspired in their plan to outflank the redcoats and Cope an incompetent who had to lead away his men in shame.

Tonight we watched Reverend and the Makers play out the Jonathan Ross show and it occured to me I can no longer tell the difference between real pop music and the joke pop music they have in the Mighty Boosh. I really am a 40 years old dad.

Thursday 10th January 2008

Nigel vs. email.

I have an embarrassing 508 messages in my inbox -- my friends at lifehacker would be ashamed of me. So my plan is to reduce this number by 20 a day. Come back in 25 days time ( 4th February ) when I will have achieved the fabled zero inbox.

Saturday 5th January 2008

Watched M. Night Shyamalan's The Village tonight on the BBC. I first had this film explained to me a couple of years ago -- I had missed its cinematic release completely -- but it sounded too silly to ever make it in to our DVD queue.

Apparantly the plot is lifted from an old Twilight Zone and the twist is staring you right in the face ( hey, what's the most ironic explanation for how this situation could come to pass ? Well, that's what has happened ), but it was still a suitably distracting way to pass 100 minutes on a Saturday night.

Wednesday 2nd January 2008

Happy new year everyone. As is traditional, some resolutions:

drink more booze -- Jan and I have become such lightweights
appreciate Scotland more -- I've chosen to live here after all
stop taking sugar in coffee and don't eat a ton of chocolate to celebrate the kids going to bed each night
listen to the radio more -- its less distracting than dumb telly
enjoy the kids more -- weekends are for riding bikes and swimming, not tidying bedrooms and reading about cricket
and be less pissy with the kids -- they're learning to be pissy and sarcastic from a master
... and perennial favourites, stop picking my nose, make more of an effort to keep in touch with friends and family and blog more often !

Saturday 22nd December 2007

I was really looking forward to eleven days of being a full time parent and husband ... right up until it was time to walk the kids round to a neighbour's house for some pre Christmas cheer. Regular readers of my wife's blog will know that Georgie has can be quite strong willed when it comes to walk time, but I hadn't really experienced this for a while and today there was no Jan for backup. Georgie wanted to wear mittens and carry a Christmas card to post in the letter box. Unfortunatly Georgie wasn't able to carry the Christmas card while wearing the mittens. Raised voices followed and in shame I abandoned the mission. Jan deals with this sort of situation five days a week, so half an hour later we set out again, this time with both parents providing the escort.

Now this is the sort of parenting failure that can really get me down, but today I learned a vital lesson. Actually Jan drew me a diagram and spelt it out in simple language -- when I'm miserable and grumpy all my little friends are miserable and grumpy.

Post script: the Christmas card never did make it in to the post -- sorry Angela.

Saturday 1st December 2007

Selling comics to the people of Prestonpans is a bit like teaching crows to fly underwater -- a lifetime's work that produces little in the way of results. Today I was at the Pennypit Centre for the PSNYC Christmas Fayre. Due to conflicting reports of when the kick off would be, and our busy day ( three Christmas fairs, two as punters and one as a vendor ), I arrived with my suitcase of comics and newspaper bags in a room already mobbed with women and small children.

The kind lavender bag ladies showed me to my pitch, stuck conveniently behind the queue for the tombolla. Parents tend to steer their kids away as if I am trying to sell them drugs or pornography ( I'm not ), but despite everything I did manage to make five sales, and hey, I enjoy the challenge.

Sunday 12th August 2007

And so I am 40.

I have a very sunburnt face from this afternoon's barbecue at Yellowcraigs beach. It was really nice to see the kids playing on a traditional sandy beach. We hadn't packed towels or swimming costumes because the forecast was for rain. The raincoats came in handy later as we walked the mile or so back to North Berwick in pouring rain. Our plan was to walk the John Muir way along the coast but as the path disappeared and the beach turned away from North Berwick we decided to take our chances crossing the North Berwick West Links. The path through the middle of the golf course proved much better going for the buggy than the beach but we knew we shouldn't really be there.

As we dragged our sodden children past some golfers practising their swings one of them commented on how it was lovely weather for a stroll. At least we weren't paying £150 for the pleasure.

Thanks to Jan and the girls for working so hard at making my birthday special.

Monday 2nd July 2007

A week ago I had no work, now I've got two contracts. Right now I've got eight days work ( with an ISP in Livingston ), and then next week I start a new three month contract with an electronics design shop in Edinburgh. Thank you everyone who kept the faith.

Friday 22nd June 2007

While I've been unemployed Life on Mars, the Apprentice and Celebrity Masterchef have all started and ended. Thankfully Channel 4 show no sign of running out of episodes of the Simpsons.

On Tuesday I interviewed at a big city council. I kind of got the impression that they weren't really considering me when they were saying things like 'Thanks for coming all this way.' Hey, it's not that far and anyway if I was working here I would be making this journey every day.

I have another interview this Tuesday, a bit closer to home.

I haven't always managed to maintain a positive outlook this last few months. Thank you Jan for helping me stick with it.

Monday 4th June 2007

Sometimes something so bizarre and wrong-headed happens that you wonder if the world will ever make sense again. Tonight the closing credits in Eastenders scrolled up the screen rather than flashing up in tasteful clumps of two or three. Is this dumbing down or an attempt by the production staff to go back to the glory days of the 1980s ?

Tuesday 15th May 2007

Personality test questionnaire based on Georgina's ABC book:

Apple or Doughnut ?
Bear or Eagle ?
Car or Egg ?
Flower or Hand ?
Goose or Iguana ?
Kitten or Lemon ?
Nuts or Oranges ?
Puppy or Penguin ?
Rabbit or Tractor ?
Strawberry or Umbrella ?
Vegetables or Watch ?
Wolf or Xylophone ?
Yawn or Zigzag ?
Yacht or Zero ?

Sunday 13th May 2007

So West Ham won and stayed in the Premership and Sheffield United lost and didn't. Well done Curbs, Tev and the rest of them.

Neil Warnock was the lowest paid manager in the Premiership. Sometimes you've got to be careful what you wish for ...

Saturday 12th May 2007

Links of the day:

101 ways to improve your blog

Five ways to improve your life -- Living within your means is a great idea, but it helps if you have some means ;-)

Friday 11th May 2007

On a Friday night Jan and I like to listen to Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour on Radio 6. Tonight's subject was booze and this song by Charles Aznovour (his first hit apparantly) has got be one of the darkest things I have ever heard. And its so obsure you need to go to a Bob Dylan fan site because it isn't in any of the usual lyrics sites.

I'm glad I don't hardly drink any more.

And was that the darkest episode of Eastenders ever or what ?

My favourite bit of this story which I'm sure will be all over the Internet in the next few days -- 'There was like a metal gate.'

In the style of Gordon Brown, 'Today I announce my candidacy for the position of Lecturer in Computing Technical Support at Jewel and Esk Valley College.'

And now for some good news and a subject close to my heart -- peace in Ireland. Who could ever have foreseen this happening ?

Thursday 10th May 2007

Tonight Emily and I made flaneur drawings inspired by this video ( first ten seconds blank -- stick with it ).

Lucy did her best ever picture of a person, with unfinished Sun by Emily.

Monday 7th May 2007

Just sometimes I'm funny #2 ...

Yesterday we were watching Calamity Jane on the tv. Jane sees Adelaide Adams on stage for the first time, and I say 'So they had that burlesque in the olden days then ? '

Arf arf.

Bonjour Christopher ! Enjoyez vous le Paris !

Website of the day -- like Napster used to be in the olden days, a place for folks to search for 'free' mp3s: http://www.g2p.org/

Saturday 28th April 2007

My helpful children: Jan is changing Lucy's nappy. Georgie runs across the room, throws a packet of nappies at Jan's head and declares 'There, that's better.'

The funny games my kids play: Lucy says 'Yeah', Georgie says 'No', Lucy says 'Yeah', Georgie says 'No'. Repeat for next half hour.

Wigan 0, West Ham 3 -- Don't ever give up believing.

Dr Who Evolution of the Daleks -- Worst episode ever ! I think they may be running out of dalek stories.

Wednesday 25th April 2007

Jan and I both had bad dreams last night that disturbed our sleep and prevented us getting started with the day this morning. I dreamt that the police were searching the house, and I had the thing they were after right in my pocket, and had to get out of the house to dispose of it, but always looking over my shoulder expecting someone to be watching me.

This is obviously open to a psychological interpretation, but actually I try really hard not to have anything to feel guilty about. Perhaps it had something to do with my late night peanut binge. I certainly felt like I had a dry roasted hangover this morning.

Lucy is a changed person this week. We always hoped that nursery would be a boost to her language skills but the effect on her confidence and the amount she speaks has been immediate. And she is very, very happy to be going to 'school' at last.

Thursday 19th April 2007

Finally I have a working web interface to our mp3 jukebox. Big thanks to mp3act -- you rock !

Now to find some way to tag the 1500 files that we have without ID3 tags ...

Wednesday 11th April 2007

Lucy and Georgie are ill. I still haven't got a job. A certain ennui fills the Monkey Loft.

The last few days felt like a proper holiday -- like the only reason I wasn't in work was because it was Easter. The Barker family treasure hunt on Good Friday was great fun if ultimately unsuccessful and swimming with Lucy on Saturday afternoon was a wonderful bonding experience and a rare chance to give one of my kids the exact thing they have been nagging me for.

Then Georgie got ill on Saturday night and Lucy got ill on Sunday night and neither of them are really better yet.

The final Life on Mars was a little disappointing. Sam chooses to live in his fantasy world because it feels more real to him than the real world. This isn't a legitimate choice for anyone living in the real world with real friends and family. I think the writers got it wrong. The truly satisfying ending would have been for Sam to leave the dreamworld behind forever, returning to the present with some ambiguity in the interpretation of his experience -- more like Tony Soprano's recent two episode trip to dreamland.

Thursday 5th April 2007

Yet another uplifting blog -- I mightn't have had any work for the past nine weeks but at least I gave blood without fainting yesterday.

I told my 'donor carer' that I had fainted last time and she checked my record and saw that I had been a bit faint my first time as well. What I didn't know is that it is three strikes and out -- if I faint again then they ain't going to take me again. What pressure ! If I'm going to get the top prize for 50 donations then I have to not faint at every one of the next 43.

Armed with this information I realised I had to be strong ... and I was. I've never felt so good after a donation.

Wednesday 4th April 2007

Last night's dream: I'm having a quiet few beers in Antigua with Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. We're all coming to the end of our bowling careers but looking forward to our last few games in the World Cup. They reassure me that although I didn't get as many wickets as them I am still getting picked for England at the age of 39 so someone must really rate me.

I wake up feeling elated that I am still a part of the England team. I guess its a metaphor for all the good things in my life ( wife, children, friends, house ) and that sometimes you need to feel appreciated. Thank you Mr Sandman.

Saturday 17th March 2007

As a postscript to yesterday's outpouring of self pity, the real lesson of adulthood is of course that we just have to get on with it ... so, I continue to get up in the morning, apply for jobs, work on my skills and enjoy the time with my family.

You never know, I might get a call on Monday saying all this credit check nonsense has been a big mistake.

And West Ham might win at Ewood Park today.

You never can tell ...

Friday 16th March 2007

A single phone call can spoil your whole day. Lucy had done very well in her language tests at hospital and we were on the bus home when I get a call telling me I haven't really got a new job -- I've failed the credit check.

This is particularly galling because both Equifax and CIFAS say my credit report is good and anyone failing me is misreading it.

I think it was Public Enemy who summed it up best -- 'Those suckas have authority'

When you're working, and you have a beautiful family, and a big house, and you can pay all your bills, the world feels like a good place, and you try and sell your kids the idea that hard work will get them the things they want, and you can't really remember why you bought all those angry punk rock records when you were a kid.

But actually the things that make all this possible are very fragile, and Kafka and the rest of them were right, and if the gods of bureaucracy don't look upon you favourably there ain't nothing you can do about it.

And just to ram that last point home, developers have somehow got permission to build houses on the field behind my house, which will presumably spoil our view of the battle site and the railway and forever burden us with negative equity.

Thursday 15th March 2007

Just sometimes I'm funny ...

Me: What's your new reading book about ?
Em: The Romans. I think its the Romans. Its either Romans or Romance.
Me: Are they wearing sandals ?
Em: Yes.
Me: Its the Romans.

I've just finished reading Achtung Schweinehund: A Boy's Own Story of Imaginary Combat by Harry Thompson in just three days, some kind of record for slow reader me. The book is about Harry's hobby of collecting, painting and playing with toy soldiers, something which I was fairly interested in from about the ages of eight to 18. Fortunately I managed to see that this tragically uncool hobby wasn't for me shortly before I started working at Forbidden Planet and gave my life to comics.

One question arising from the book: Did FP really sell wargames out of the basement of Denmark Street ?

Saturday 10th March 2007

Lucy and I went to the Hillhead Comic Mart today, a round trip that took nine trains:

Despite the travails of the epic journey Lucy and I had a very pleasant day and I bought a huge wadge of comics for £22.

Thursday 8th March 2007

Five weeks and one day since I left dns I have a new job. Periods of inactivity are the downside of IT contracting and things were just beginning to get us down. Thankfully fortune shone on us this morning.

Being out of work put a lot of things on hold. The last five weeks have been spent reading about TCP/IP and Check Point rather than the Fantastic Four and Tracy Emin. I've enjoyed the extra time with the girls but I'm looking forward to things getting back to normal.

Monkey Loft Comics will not be at Hillhead this Saturday, but Lucy and I will be.

Monday 22nd January 2007

So much for the more frequent blogging -- but at least I'm making good progress on one of my other projects.

So far this year I have read the selection of old Marvel giant monster comics in Monster Masterworks ( which I haven't read before ) and the first fourteen issues of the Fantastic Four. Those old FFs rise in my estimation on each reading ( I think this is the fifth ). Sue falling for Namor, Doom coming back from oblivion again and again, the FF in Hollywood, the power of hypnotic suggestion and strange radioactive forces -- these comics have got it all and it doesn't matter that they make no sense.

I've also been enjoying Fantastic Four the End by Alan Davis, Love and Rockets and, of course, Peter Bagge's latest.

News from London is that Diamond are to make the rest of their London crew redundant if they don't accept relocation -- the hell of Warrington beckons ? Sorry Pat, Wack, JRN and the rest.

And news from Glasgow, there's going to be a comic mart on 10th March at Hillhead library and you can bet Monkey Loft Comics are going to be there ...

Monday 1st January 2007

Today we made our traditional expedition to Birslae Brae ( see January 2nd 2006 ). Unfortunatly it was a bit too cold and wet and poor old Georgie cried all the way home. On the way back we saw the devastation caused by last night's wind with the back fence down at the other end of the Court, trees and branches down all over the Pans and huge bits of polystyrene blown in from the building site.

As is also traditional some New Year resolutions -- for 2007 I want to:

Thank you Jan and the girls for a wonderful 2006 -- here's to the next 365 days ...

Tuesday 26th December 2006

As I write this Lucy and Georgie are performing their own version of Sartre's No Exit, the pair of them sitting in a doll's buggy and fighting over a tiny plastic figure of a bus conductor.

I didn't cook Christmas dinner this year as I had a sore tummy. Jan was magnificent and delivered us roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots, nut roast, two types of stuffing, mash and sausage in bacon.

Santa was very kind to me this year. I got shelves, pinstripe pygamas, Mickey Mouse business card holder, olives, chocolate, herb garden, Mind Hacks, Chumbawamba potato bag and How to Cook Dinner for Eight.

All five of us have really appreciated our festive time together and I'm off work until January 3rd. Hurrah! Merry Christmas Everyone!

Wednesday 15th November 2006

Survey of men's scarf prices in Princes Street:

BHS £12

Gap £29.99

H&M £4.99

I bought mine from H&M on Monday lunchtime and it has protected me from the cold and torrential rain this week.

Sunday 30th October 2006

Clocks going back weekend used to be my favourite weekend of the year - you get an extra hour in bed and if you don't put the clocks back straight away then you seem to magically get the extra hour again and again through the day.

Well, things are a bit different when you've got kids. Ours didn't understand that they were supposed to stay in bed and it wasn't really 7 o' clock. Worse, our television isn't working at the moment - the co-ax from the wall to the Sky box is bust, a replacement was supposed to arrive yesterday but didn't - so we couldn't even watch Match of the Day or send the kids off to watch CBeebies.

So we got up early, did chores, went Lidl shopping, cooked Sunday dinner and the day started to come good. Emily and I spent the afternoon bagging comics and the only time I enjoy getting my hands dirty is sifting through dusty old comics. In the evening we were reduced to watching David Attenborough's Living Planet DVD and Georgie got very excited at seeing birds in flight on the television.

And West Ham beat Blackburn to end their record run of bad results. It was turning in to the best Sunday ever.

But my favourite bit was this little exchange with Emily. Em had said "I hate you" so I reminded her that we didn't like her saying that and I was very pleased that she had stopped saying it a few months ago. To which Em replied in her sweetest sing-song voice:

"Nigel, I didn't say it because I didn't want to hurt your feelings but... I really did hate you."

Priceless.

Sunday 3rd September 2006

I've fainted about a dozen times in my life. Today was the first time nurses were on hand to elevate my legs and fan my face. I gave blood today and for reasons unknown my pint pumped out in double quick time. The downside of this was a sudden cold sweat and nausea but Jan and the girls nursed me to a full recovery this afternoon.

I've been meaning to blog for about a week now that Lucy can draw. Well, Lucy can draw - heads with eyes and noses and mouths and hair and arms and feet. And she can do forward rolls too, something I couldn't manage until I was almost 13 following a whole year of secondary school gym class.

I have a proper blogger blog now. If you want reviews of comics then I read plenty. It remains to be seen whether I will actually produce reviews of them on a regular basis:

http://monkey-loft.blogspot.com/

Monday 14th August 2006

Thank you family for a lovely birthday. Cool presents included Forgotten Victory by Gary Sheffield, Usurper CDs, Dr Who game, Peter Bagge postcard, JMW Turner mug and enormous inflatable airship. We spent the afternoon in sunny North Berwick and then gorged on takeaway Indian food. Nice.

In the evening we watched Punk: Attitude, the film about the strange ideas of my youth by Don Letts. In my head I'm working on a new web site called Punk's Not Dad. It hasn't really got beyond a name yet, which was inspired by the punks of Gorgie who I see taking their kids to school and nursery. This was my Punk's Not Dad weekend.

As I write this Steve Lamacq is playing Container Drivers. I am lost in music.

Sunday 7th May 2006

The books I intend to read this year.

To give myself the best chance of actually completing the monumental ( for me ) feat of reading 12 books in a year I thought I had better limit the page count to ten a day, so page counts are in brackets below.

1 Loveley Bones (328)
2 Dracula (448)
3 Frankenstein (224)
4 Great Gatsby (180)
5 Brave New World (256)
6 Martian Chronicles (240)
7 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (96)
8 Call of Cthulu (448)
9 Ragged Trouser Philanthropists (608)
10 Down and Out in Paris and London (240)
11 Candide (112)
12 Where I'm Calling From (438)

Total pages 3618.

And I'm doing brilliant. I've read the first four already ( 1, 2, 3 and 7 above ). Now to find our copy of Brave New World.

Sunday 23rd April 2006

Joke of the week:

How many kids with ADD does it take to change a light bulb ?

Hey ! Lets ride bikes !

Saturday 22nd April 2006

Spent last night in the Monkey Loft and had the most vivid dream. I was on the train and in a big rush to get home but I was so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open. I had to change at Haymarket but while I was making the connection I noticed I was in a tunnel and there isn't a tunnel at Haymarket. When I got on to the platform I realised I was at Doncaster station. I still couldn't keep my eyes open but I saw there was a big childrens book and toys in a package that I thought would be a nice present for my kids. But when I got home the kids weren't really interested, especially when they saw that the package had a label on with a Prestonpans address - it was a present for some other children right here in the Pans. I felt ashamed that I had stolen someone's present.

Then there was a knock at the door - it was a large Indian man and he wanted his stuff back, he had recognised me in the street. I gave the present back and apologised profusely but I felt very guilty.

What does it all mean ?

Sunday 29th January 2006

Happy Chinese New Year ! We just has a most pleasant afternoon at the Festival Theatre watching the New Year show put on by the Edinburgh Chinese College. Kung Fu, men skipping, wannabe Chinese pop bands and then Auld Lang Syne to make it feel like a proper New Years party.

Its official, no more getting up early. On the few mornings I did actually manage to get up early I felt really positive, but I didn't actually manage to produce any work, like writing or studying, I just did the washing up and read the paper. Jan and I are night people. Most of the redesign of this web site was done between 10:30 and 2am. Getting up early just wasn't right for us.
Next week the alarm will be set for 6:30. This should allow time for a bit of washing up and a more relaxed getting the kids ready for school, but without me dropping off during the Larry Sanders Show every night.

Emily has a lot of problems making her mind up at the moment. A couple of weeks ago she shouted at me all the way home, after she didn't get the cake she wanted from Greggs, when she changed her mind after the order had gone in.
Today she wanted her usual smarties cookie from Millie's, but two silly little girls, who were behind us in the queue, started teasing her that they were going to have the last two. Now if our kids had been doing the teasing, I would have left the cookies for the other girls, but as it was our kids had done nothing wrong except get wound up, so they got the last two and the other girls were left crying to their mum.

Thursday 5th January 2006

Work wasn't much fun yesterday with no Zoumana for company. I was off again today for Jan's trip to the dentist and our big family trip to Edinburgh to pick up the two pictures from the Royal Society sale. I think part of the problem yesterday was failing to get up early. We didn't get up early today either despite Jan setting the alarm for 5:15. I think tomorrow we might go for a more realistic 6:15 start.

You might be saying what is all this rubbish about asking Sprites to return lost items, but it is funny that the credit card who's absence on Saturday morning will have cost us at least £50 showed up on Monday just sitting on the shelf, too late for us to be able to use it to protect the overdraft.

And currently two of our favourite timepieces are missing: my radio controlled watch, last year's father's day present, and Emily's new mooing alarm clock.

And the laptop on which I am currently composing this entry didn't work for two days because I was unable to wriggle the power cable in to a position which would actually supply power, but tonight the Sprites decided we could have it working again.

And the work Jan did last week editing the particulars of our house ready for sale has disappeared without trace from laptop, file server, sent mail and rsync history.

Now Jan has redone the work maybe the Sprites will let us have the original back again.

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Watched Ricky Gervais talking to Larry David tonight. Thought it was funny them both agreeing on the imnportance of naturalism in comedy, an element that seems to be missing completly from Curb Your Enthusiasm. I like the show, though not as much as Seinfeld or the Office or Extras, but do they think they don't need to bother with acting for it to be funny ?

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Noticed this warning on the bag of Lidl Macadmia nuts that I have been munching for the last week or so. "Sharp rim ! Recommended not to be eaten direct from the tin." What tin ?

Tuesday 3rd January 2006

Back to work tomorrow.

Apolgies for the paragraph below. Do not read if not in posession of a strong constitution.

Georgie was sick in my mouth on Saturday night. A uniquely unpleasant expeience. At first the sweet milkiness seemed bearable but within about 10 seconds the stale aftertaste was too much and I was outside dry retching in to a flower pot.

Monday 2nd January 2006

Yesterday was the best New Year ever. We packed up a picnic and went on an expedition to Fa'side House. We didn't make it all the way to Fa'side because we didn't fancy walking along the busy top road, but walked up the hill to the petrol garage where Bonnie Prince Charlie watched the Battle of Prestonpans and then along to Birsely Brae where something to do with witches happened. It was a brilliant sunny day and the views of the Pans, the Firth, Edinburgh and Fife were spectacular.

Tomorrow we have to rush to the bank to try and get some cash in to the current account now that the sprites have let us have our credit card back. I obsessively pay off credit card debts by transferring money out of the current account. This would be a good plan for reducing the credit card interest we pay, except I invariably miscalculate and we either have to rush about trying to cover our commitments or miss them and pay bank charges. Well no more; one of my resolutions this year is to leave a lot more cash in the current account put a stop to this madness.

Saturday 31st December 2005

As is traditional, a look back at the year just gone and thoughts for the year to come:

2005 was pretty good. We got a new baby, Georgina, Lucy started really showing her personality and Emily started school and learned to read and write. Jan and I had a very special vacation in New York and we're in the process of trying to buy a new house.

For the new year I want to:
· Keep on getting up early - it makes me more productive and I am more grumpy now when I don't get up early.
· We need to find some way to get Lucy to talk a bit more.
· I want to stop shouting at the kids. I think this will help them to stop shouting at us.
· I want to manage the current account better, we start this year in exactly the same state as last year, trying to rush cash in to the current account to meet 1st January commitments. The overdraft is not free cash, it is there to protect against expensive bank charges.
· I want to keep in better touch with my friends and family, OK so I say this very year.
· I want to update my blog much more frequently.
· I want to pass some certification exams this year, the three Solaris certs and CISSP.
· I want to write lots of content for these pages.
· I want to do my 12 book project.
· And most importantly I want to be the very best husband and dad I can be.

Happy New Year everyone.

Monday 26th December 2005

What went right and wrong with Christmas dinner:

Right
Nut roast - onions, lentils, mushrooms, Lidl nuts
Gravy - benefited from cooking for 90 minutes
Sweet potatoes - so easy, just stick them in the hot oven for 40 minutes

Wrong
Forgot to do stuffing
Forgot to serve roast potatoes and parsnips - bit of a Mike Baldwin moment
Carrots a bit hard

Emily didn't fancy Christmas dinner so she had crackers - not that unusual, but it did lead to this rather amusing misunderstanding - she was dictating her Christmas blog to me today ...

"For dinner we had crackers" says Em.

"I'm not putting that - you had crackers but we all had roast dinner."

But Emily insisted we all had crackers and of course she was right and I was wrong - Christmas crackers.

Saturday 26th November 2005

Well, its been a little while. Since I've been away we've bought a house, Emily got a brilliant school report, Lucy has been in the loft and Georgie can smile and laugh and coo.

After months of reading productivity blogs, this morning I became a true productivity hacker by getting up at 5am, doing the washing up, writing this and watching a baby day be born. I didn't manage to get cauliflower curry made for tonight like I planned, but hey, its the first morning of getting up ridiculously early.

Sunday 6th November 2005

Listening to Aphex Twin. Music sounds very classical and composery with lots of clanks and chimes as well as beats. Emily and Lucy jigged around to Beethoven today in a house that we were viewing. I was very proud. Resolution - must learn more about classical music.

Woke up this morning with a visit from an old nemesis with whom I last did battle almost three years ago - the hangover. Not much has changed in the time he has been away - main symptoms are still sore head, nausea, nervy confusion, paranoia, guilt and exhaustion. A few years ago my cure of choice was V8, before a big night out I would always make sure I had a can in the fridge for the morning. Last night wasn't really a big night - we went to a bonfire party at a friends house and I had a couple of bottles of beer and a few wee drams of The Glenlivet. I guess I just have no stomach for booze these days, because when I woke up this morning I thought there was no way I could be a dad today. But the kids slept late, I drank a pint of water and orange juice, took two Ibuprofen, ate two bacon rolls and had a mug of Lift, and by 11am some sort of equilibrium was restored.

Last Thursday Emily and I weighed ourselves on our super accurate digital bathroom scales. Emily was a very respectable 3st 3lb. I was a very scary 14st 11lb. Just now I weighed myself and I'm only 14st 1lb - not quite as scary. Maybe Emily had her foot on the scale last week.

Monday 31st October 2005

Listening to Yo La Tengo, The Fall, Cat Power and Pavement. Started the annual web site redesign project. Next home IT projects on the horizion is an LDAP address book.

Took Emily guising tonight. Emily was a bit too shy to sing the song she had been rehearsing, but then I was a bit too shy to really make very much conversation with the neighbours despite them asking us in. The greatest challenge is not passing your own insecurities on to your kids.

Current obsession is Northern Ireland after our recent trip to Belfast. Reading Making Sense of the Troubles by Kevin McKittrick. It is very depressing that there are people living in our own country who hate their neighbours so much.

Monday 24th October 2005

The girls are so excited when I get home at the moment. I love it that Lucy shouts "Daddy!" when I walk through the door - every single night. It was a horrible rainy day and a change went wrong at work ( not my fault ) but trying to balance my attention between Emily and Lucy was very satisfying. Georgie hasn't worked out how to act cute yet. In fact she has slept all evening.

I'm more interested in travel now than I have ever been in my life. We've just been watching a tv show about massive abandoned grain silos in Buffalo, upstate New York and talking about the massive German hotels built in the 1930s.

Sunday 23rd October 2005

A perfect weekend. We had been going to take the new SuperBuggy on its first trip on a train to Edinburgh, but persistent rain dissuaded us of this idea. Instead we tidied the house, did little jobs and played Scooby Doo snap. Nice to just take it easy after all last week's gadding about.

Listening to De La Soul via FreeAmp as I write. We had been listening to Aphex Twin but the drum patterns were probably a bit too exciting for Georgie. For ages we have been listening to mp3s using Xmms in a VNC window which seemed like a cool solution, but using FreeAmp to play files on an SMB mounted drive is probably more user friendly and therefore better.

I had been predicting that Dr Fox would win the the tory leadership contest, based on the principle that the most rubbish candidate always wins, like Haguey and Duncan Smith. I hope my other prediction that somewhat fewer than 50000 people die of bird flu in Britain will prove more accurate.

Thursday 29th September 2005

I can't stop thinking about Bob Dylan.

I have never seen him play live, but often in reviews people seem to think he is taking the piss, and I thought that came through in some recent concert footage in the Scorsese doc. It occured to me that if you had played to 250,000 people at the age of 22, on the same stage as Martin Luther king, and then been booed for 'selling out' by taking a backing group on tour, then you might be inclined to take the piss sometimes, when people are still paying to see you 40 years later.

A few years ago, inspired by the Music issue of Granta, I decided I would have my own 1960s, compacted in to a year, and I would do this by buying Bob Dylan records, in chronological order, one per month. Well, I never got past the first two. They were rubbish. He didn't start making good records until he went commercial and all his old fans hated him.

Which made me think about my own attitude to music when I was a bit younger. I remember reading in the NME that the Thatcher government was 10% weaker every time the Jam were at number one. I really used to believe that Michael Foot would replace Maggie and it would all be down to us kids buying Clash and Specials records. But it didn't happen. We didn't kick out the tories for another 15 years, by which time politics had been completly expunged from pop music and the NME was no longer a broadsheet.

Yet somehow, being 'for real' is something that young pop musicians still have to strive for. Go figure !

Tuesday 27th September 2005

Found two wrapped biscuits in the street on the way home - a Blue Riband and a Fox's Digestive bar. Picked them up and pocketed them. Sometimes you think you're a proper sophisticated grown-up and sometimes you're just a little kid again.

Enjoyed second part of Scorsese's Bob Dylan thing more than last night's. Partly because Georgie didn't cry all the way through it and partly becuase i think Dylan is pretty much unlistenable until Like a Rolling Stone.

Thursday 22nd September 2005

Another month passes with nothing for my loyal readers. I've just bought a Creative Muvo from an Amazon reseller. It took a few days to get it working but it seems fine now. I'm happpy of the pocketful of mp3s.

Work going well. After six years of trying to learn Perl I have actually produced a real Perl script that does proper work for my employers.

For once Jan wasn't on baby duty last night. Georgie was an unhappy, crying girl for most of the night and Jan was the one that slept through. A humbling and worthy experience - one I will have to repeat some time.

Jonathan Woodgate - ha ha !

Tuesday 23rd August 2005

My paternity leave finishes tonight. Two weeks is the longest I have ever been away from work in my whole life, apart from when I was unemployed for a year. I love work ( sad but true ), but I also love my family very much. Just now I feel I can really appreciate all my girls for the people they are and for the ages they are, and it is lovely.

Don't worry - this page isn't about to get all soppy and profound - the next posting will be about football or cricket or the usual rubbish - after all, West Ham are fifth in the Premiership and we are three matches in to the Ashes with the series still level.

Sunday 7th August 2005

England won the second test at Edgbaston this morning. Overnight Australia had been left 102 to chase with two wickets remaining. Warne stepped on to his wicket, but Australia were able to reduce the deficit to two runs before Kasprowicz was caught for the final wicket. Once Australia were within 20 runs I thought we had lost it, such are the joys of being an English cricket fan.

While I was in the loft yesterday, retrieving cribs and baby clothes, Emily came upstairs to tell us that there was a mouse in the garden. It sounded like a made up story to get our attention, but she insisted, so we went and had a look, and there in our back garden was a tiny little gerbil. At first we thought we would look after him until someone came and claimed him, but after checking with the neighbours we have decided he is ours. Emily suggested the name Reggie which seems just perfect for a gerbil. He is currently living in a recycling create in the kitchen but we have ordered a cage for him off eBay and a book on how to look after gerbils.

Now we just await our next family member showing up on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday 3rd August 2005

BT laid off 250 contractors this week. I wasn't one of them. Hurrah ! I've got work until at least 2nd December.

Tunes on my memory stick this week: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music ( which I just sold on eBay ), The Futility of a Well Ordered Life ( an Alternative Tentacles compilation ) and DJ Shadow. Windows tip: if you highlight two folders of tunes and click 'send to removable drive' then the tracks of the two albums will be interspersed with each other on the memory stick, creating a more interesting listening experience e.g. old folk record, old folk record, punk rock, old folk record etc.

That Silver Surfer DVD is even worse than I thought. Not only is it a bootleg, but it goes thk thk thk all the time as the stuck on paper label catches in the drive.

Monday 1st August 2005

New eBay parcels today - two Warren Spirit magazines and a Silver Surfer animated DVD. I now have all the Spirit mags, I only needed the first one. The two that came today were in really excellent condition, Very Fine I would say, but then I've never been too good at grading. The Surfer DVD unfortunately is a home made copy. I don't want to leave negative feedback for an item that dispatched quite quickly, but it is a disappointment.

Monday 18th July 2005

Feeling very positive today - had a lovely, quiet, family weekend and my boss is back from vacation and I am feeling all warm and fuzzy about work again. I produced loads of content for the site last week - all the comics stuff - and my biography is now in the Google cache, which should make it easy for anyone who has lost touch to find me.

My wife's blog is really well written, often very uplifting and frequently updated. I need to aspire to at least two of these qualities, after all, it is me with the ambitions to be a writer.

Sunday 17th July 2005

Things I might want for my birthday number one: the Russ Cochran box set of Weird Science Fantasy ( to go with my sets of Weird Science and, erm, Weird Fantasy ).

27th June 2005

OK its been an eternity since the last post, but here's me resolving to do better.

Since the last post Liverpool have won the European Cup and been given an extra English place in next year's competition and West Ham have won promotion to the Premiership. Tim won the Apprentice and Jan and I have been on our New York vacation.

Random bits of content number one - All the books I read last year ( 2004 ) :

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Brass by Helen Smith
Doing It by Melvin Burgess
1979 by Rhona Cameron
Lanzarote by Michel Houllebecq
Danny Boy by Jo-Ann Goodwin
Straw Dogs by John Gray

9th May 2005

Ten days without posting. Has apathy set in ? My excuse is that Dreamweaver has been broken, but now it is fixed and I am back. In general, things have gone well in the last ten days: West Ham have made the Championship playoffs, Paul was ejected from The Apprentice and Labour won the general election.

Music on my memory stick this week: