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23:41
27 Jul 2008
Hacked Off Hacks Flock To The Fox
How do you get an entire newsroom of sports journalists to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox?
Take away their tabs.
You should have seen the uproar earlier this week when everybody arrived to discover their computers had been rolled back from IE7 (tabs abound) to IE6 (no tabs at all).
Apparently our computers have all been switched from a "news desktop" to a "BBC desktop", which, I'm reliably informed, was necessary to make sure we all had some software or other. Various bits of software are only compatible with various "desktops", thus ours had to change.
None of which makes any sense, or forms any comfort, to a room packed with print hacks turned web journalists, all suddenly confronted with about 17 tiny windows clogging up their taskbar, rather than their previous, efficient collection of tabs.
"You know you've got Firefox on your PCs?" I ventured.
I spent the next ten minutes orchestrating a Damascene conversion as, bank by bank, we woke a slumbering Firefox 2 point something on every single screen. Then, as the scale of this monumental shift became clear, I spent another five minutes getting everybody's favourites imported from IE to Firefox.
And I don't even really like Firefox that much. It's as good as IE, as far as I'm concerned, but I use IE at home and had been contentedly using IE7 at work till someone came along and took it away.
Problem is, if you're reporting on an event, you usually need all kinds of info at your fingertips - for example, at the athletics this weekend, I needed race start lists, schedules, IAAF world records and 2008 season bests, my own article on the live site to check it was updating okay, a comment/contribution page for people to write in, and the text box for any texts arriving. Nobody wants a separate taskbar window for each of them, so Firefox is up and running at my desk too.
As ever, in the name of progress it's the smallest changes which have the biggest effect, and suddenly IE6 rears its ugly head. There are at least 70 members of staff and I've only converted about 15 so far - the second wave begins this week...
Today we properly launched our Monkey campaign for the Olympics. I was in work at around 7am getting various bits and pieces prepared, then just before 8am we unleashed the two-minute promotional video on the internet masses. I wrote a short blog entry as well, giving people who see it the chance to tell us what they thought.
The divide in opinion is brutal.
We knew this was going to happen - some people in our department love Monkey, while others have, to word this carefully, had some questions after it finished. But nobody has just seen it, shrugged their shoulders and wandered off again. Which I personally think is always a sign that something has gone right, and it feels like that same polarisation of opinion is coming through online. Most people seem to either love it or hate it.
So much so, in fact, that I started keeping a tally next to my desk earlier:
The tally has generated much interest all day, with colleagues eagerly counting up each side as they walk by. We really, really care what people think about this. We've all got our own opinions but nobody has known how the video would be received. Words can't express how happy I was when the first blog comment came back positive, and that's not to say I don't want to know about the criticism - I've read every single comment as of this moment in time, and digested every view.
By the time I left work, Monkey lovers had a healthy double-digit lead, but since then almost another hundred people have signed in to have their say on the blog. Frankly, it's heartwarming that people on both sides care so bloody much that they're prepared to come in and fight their corner.
Some people have mounted passionate defences of the BBC's remit to commission creative works from top British artists, and expressed horror that, in their view, some of their fellow Brits are so closed-minded. Others have demanded to know why the corporation appears, to them, to have forsaken British athletes and a sense of the "real" Beijing for an animation they think has more in keeping with CBBC.
If only viewers cared so deeply, either way, about every title sequence. I can't remember any of the Olympics intros of years past (my only real memory of Sydney is watching Cathy Freeman win the 400m on our tiny television at school), but I swear that even if I hadn't been heavily involved with this one, I'd remember it in four, eight or 12 years' time.
Me personally? I'm a fan, but it took me a bit of time. At first I was surprised that the gold-infused, celebrating-athlete approach was being binned in favour of a monkey with a stick, but now we've released the finished product into the wild, I'm proud to be even vaguely associated with it. For me it's the music that does it. Watching the animation with no sound doesn't have the same effect - the audio adds so much.
This is the comment that most sticks out from the ones I've read today:
Well done, BBC, for doing something a little more interesting and unexpected than shots of the city, shots of the athletes, shots of children smiling. It's very refreshing and it makes me very excited about what you will do in 2012. Keep up the good work.
We've barely had time to draw breath since launching our 2008 model, and already the heat is on for London. It's been a huge effort this time around trying to make our Olympics site absolutely sing ahead of Beijing - the map, Monkey, vast numbers of stories, blogs and columns, strong relationships with athletes, embedded video and more (our Flickr feed, for example, passed one million hits last night, which is fantastic.) Doing that in four years' time, with the Games in our own country, is going to be phenomenal.
Despite my endless letters of complaint and my propensity to swear, outrageously, at things that annoy me, I'd like to think of myself as a genuinely caring person - a good Christian, and all that.
However, there comes a point when you let your guard down. It's like recycling. 99.9% of the time I recycle and I'm completely pro recycling. And then sometimes, I don't bother to walk (the, what, extra meter) to the recycling bin and I throw something recyclable in the normal rubbish bin. Guilt kicks in, and invariably I'll pick the said rubbish from one bin and throw it into the other.
This morning, there was a spider in my bath. One of those small-bodied, long-legged affairs. I considered pottering to find a glass, rescuing the creature and popping it outside. But I was running tight on time, couldn't be bothered and so grabbed some toilet roll, pinched the said spider and popped it in the bin. Yes, I know, I'm cruel and heartless and there are small children crying now (not to mention Ollie).
But all is not lost. As I stepped out of the shower, Incy Wincy had climbed out of the bin and was some way up the wall. Clearly I hadn't employed a sufficient degree of "crushing" to the poor beast and it survived the adversity of Tesco's bog-standard recycled paper. So, wrapped in a towel I obtain a glass from my kitchen, capture Houdini and release him / her in the pot of geraniums on my balcony.
I should be pleased. By 8am I'd already done one good turn and rescued one of God's Creatures. But instead, no, the damn thing just made me feel guilty for not rescuing it in the first place.
There's only one moral. We really should be good in this life, otherwise someone – or something – will always catch us out.
On Sunday it'll be exactly a year since spectacular flash floods hit Berkshire on 20 July 2007. At the time I was working for BBC local radio and, the following Sunday night, got so bored in front of the TV that I started adding photos of the floods - sent in by the public - to a custom Google map.
We published the map on the BBC local website for Berkshire the following morning, and it got incredibly positive feedback, especially when we added more features like video from YouTube and News 24 (as was), audio from BBC local radio, and flood warnings plotted along each river, then colour-coded according to severity.
The flood map even helped me get my next job. I'd wangled my way into a meeting of BBC Sport's Olympics team, two days before my job interview in London, when the map cropped up in a presentation, and many nice things were said - even though nobody in the room knew I'd made it. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the map became the cornerstone of my pitch for the job!
What better way to celebrate the map, then, than by making another map. The 2008 model is BBC Sport's map of the Beijing Olympics, and so far it's also had plenty of really nicereviews, both from the good folk who come to our website for sports news, and from mapping experts who've seen it.
This one wasn't quite a Sunday-night-with-crap-telly job. I sorted the editorial side - in other words, what you should see on the map, how it's all worded, which pictures we use and all that - but some very clever people made the graphics and coded lots of clever tricks into it, things I can only dream of doing myself. You can read more about how we put the map together on the Olympics blog.
On Friday evening I was getting into a lift to go home, and another gentleman just nipped in before the doors closed. On the way down to the ground floor, he turned to me and struck up conversation:
"Are you Ollie?"
"Er, yes! Yes, I am."
"Yeah, I recognised you from your photo on the blog. I've been having a play with the map and I can't find the cycling venue, where is it?"
"It's to the south-west of Beijing, a few miles out of the centre. There's a few cycling venues all clustered together."
"Ah, cheers. Thanks!"
And with that the doors opened, and he left. I mean... is that map fame?
Played 18 at the Northolt Golf Club today and shot 75 on the par 58 course, i.e. 17 over.
Really pleased with my short game today - I think all but three drives went awry somehow, but my pitching and putting was the best it's ever been. This is the remorseful cry of every golfer I know, but if only I could marry the good driving days with the good putting days, I'd be showing the Shark a thing or two up at Birkdale.
Also worth noting that for the first time ever (I think), I've birdied the same hole twice in succession. I took two at Northolt's 2nd on Monday, and two again tonight. And then lost a ball there when I played it as the 11th, so normal service has now been resumed.
I'll be playing another 18 with Amy J near Cheltenham tomorrow, bringing my total number of holes played since last Saturday to 81. I don't do things by halves - when I like golf, I really like golf.
One of the distinct disadvantages of being ill is that, first, you have to give in, stop being stubborn and resign yourself to working from the sofa. That hurts, almost has much as my body right now - and trust me, given the colour of my tonsils, that's a lot. Second, daytime television. There is nothing on. Nothing. I mean, not one decent film (even on Sky) or anything. Currently stuck with Neighbours, and Mrs Kennedy is still in it. It's amazing how some things don't change.
I'm standing on the 2nd tee, alone. There are no other golfers on this nine-hole course. But there are, up ahead, two chavs on the 2nd green. One of them has the flag, and they are running away with it. Now they are hiding in a bunker, waiting for my tee shot.
As a result I can report that it is difficult, but not impossible, to outlast a pair of chavs by feigning a combination of indifference and preoccupation.
I should be grateful to them, though, for they showed me I could succeed at the highest level. If I can par the 2nd with two chavs up to no good in a neighbouring bunker, I'm sure I can tee off in front of hundreds of enthusiasts, several screaming "In the hole!" in exuberant fashion. In fact, I'm fairly sure I heard the female chav yell something similar.
So, continuing this series of portraits of London golf courses then. If you missed it, we debuted with the C&L Country Club, another nine-hole course and Northolt GC's nearest neighbour. The C&L scores well on course variety, challenge and enjoyment, but struggled on the look of its facilities and lacked bunkers. Let's see how Northolt matches up.
There are nine holes - just the two par 4s and seven par 3s. The 1st and 4th are the longer holes at 273 and 252 yards, with a ditch running through both.
The course is open all week and you can get on it from 7.30am each day, when the gates to the car park are opened. If you're incredibly keen on that pre-work round, call 020 8841 5550 the day before and you can arrange for them to open up earlier in the morning. The course shuts as soon as it gets too dark to play. A weekday nine holes costs £6.90, slightly cheaper than the C&L.
These nine holes aren't quite as challenging or well-presented as the ones as the C&L, but they're not without merit. Several holes make it all but impossible to tell where you're driving, usually because the flag has been hidden by foliage but occasionally because it has been hidden by locals lying in a nearby sand trap.
When you see the bunkers, these people will go up in your estimation. You wouldn't want to step in one, let alone hide in one. Sand is notable by its absence and the weeds have taken a hold, though the owner - more on him shortly - says bunkers are top of the list to do up. So by the time you visit, they might be gleaming white vistas.
The things in this course's favour are the cost and the utter lack of other golfers. When I got there mine was the only car in the car park. This had the notable disadvantage, once the chavs had made for the exit, that I played the 3rd and 4th while waiting to hear my car alarm go off. But the only other golfers on the course were the owner and his son.
When yours is the only car parked, it is fair to call the car park "spacious". Like the C&L I'm sure it gets busier at weekends than at 6pm on a Monday, so I can't judge the course on its vacant fairways during my visit. The clubhouse has a nice bar and looks the part.
One thing the C&L can't match is the welcome I was given. The owner invited me to play the 9th alongside him and his son, then sat me down for an enjoyable hour-long chat afterwards. He's a very likeable fellow - doctor by trade, who bought the course as premises for his medical teaching as much as the course, given he'd only made four trips to a driving range before he took over at Northolt GC. But he's learnt to love the game and plays every day.
He also bought me a Diet Coke, so he's immediately in my good books. Meeting the owner did wonders for my opinion of this course.
The punters
Delinquents necking in a bunker with a flag don't qualify as punters, per se, so I'm ruling them out. Other than that the only "punters" were the owner and his son, so if you want a quiet golf course - with the occasional pikey intervention - then play here on weekday evenings.
The bunkers are in a state of disrepair, so avoid playing into them at all costs. Ditto the ditch which runs through the course, from whose tepid, stagnant pools you're unlikely to want to pluck your ball.
Generally a straight drive will see you through every hole, although one or two holes obscure your view of the pin to make club selection trickier. With trees sprinkled only lightly around the course, you usually have a decent line to the green no matter how disastrous your tee shot.
The greens are in fair to decent nick but tend to be flat and straightforward, which for many of us is quite a pleasant experience. Only one green, the eighth, offers undulation of any degree.
1: (4, 273yds) The first hole is the longest and dog-legs to the left at the end. The tee, right outside the clubhouse, invites a rollicking straight drive, but mine started left and stayed left, ending up in the trees - fortunately, since they killed the ball and stopped it heading into the ditch. With that in mind you might want to leave the driver in the bag and lay up.
2: (3, 162yds) Obviously you'll be unlucky if you, too, have to play this hole with faux-Burberry caps poking out of bunkers. It's almost impossible to get a good view of the green from the tee, thanks to a hedge and a small, reedy pond in front of the flag (had it not been stolen), so you won't be able to get a good feel for distance by sight alone.
3: (3, 141yds) The third is not so dissimilar to the 2nd, except minus the lake and hedge, with the addition of more bunkers. I say bunkers, more holes in the ground in which associated foliage and water has collected. To be avoided. I plonked a 6-iron straight onto the green and managed to hole the putt for birdie.
4: (4, 252yds) Plays alongside the 1st, again with a mild dog-leg left. Since no trees guard the dog-leg you could reach the green if you properly tonked a drive, but beware the ditch, which is pregnant with larvae at this time of year and no place to lose a treasured "lucky" ball. Mine frolicked gaily over the quagmire with its second bounce and nestled in a gurt big hole in the fairway, from which I took a free drop, finishing in four. At this stage I was a miraculous one-over for the round.
5: (3, 171yds) Your drive ought to be a straightforward up-and-down, along a tree-lined corridor opening out to a large green. Instead I scuffed a 5-iron low and right into a tree 20 yards away, then my second hit the tree in front of it and finished 30 yards further back, next to the 4th green. My third landed on the 1st fairway, at which point I just wanted the hole to end.
6: (3, 162yds) This is another simple par 3 if played properly. My drive looped away to the right but I exaggerated this when I went looking, and uncovered a further three balls in plain, open sight, before I found mine far nearer the green than I'd supposed. I spent five minutes wondering why these balls had all been abandoned in the style of 28 Days Later before it occurred to me that chavs probably chased their owners away...
7: (3, 113yds) Deceptively short, he said, bitterly. My pitching wedge from the tee didn't make it over the pond that guards the green. The car park is on the right so you can check your car's not been keyed by vengeful youths. (Alright look, it's not that bad, I'll be quiet now.)
8: (3, 172yds) Good hole, this. Along the right hand side you've got a fence and hedge, with the park the other side. So many sirens were going off that it felt a bit like ghetto golf, and I wanted to stay left in case I sliced and hit a paramedic or someone in riot gear. My drive duly finished 20 yards from the green, but I couldn't chip immediately as a woodpecker had taken up residence four feet from the flag.
9: (3, 130yds) The last is another simple hole, although both the owner and myself pulled our drives long and to the left. Happily my recovery chip was better than usual and I got down in two for a solid, but somehow unsatisfactory 10-over finish. Disappointing to have haemorrhaged 10 shots in the last five holes.
This course is best for...
... picking off the local wildlife, human or otherwise, with a 5-iron. Alternatively, it's great to have the course to yourself in the early mornings or evenings.
Golf is the game of titans, most frequently played by muppets.
This muppet spent yesterday braving the elements at Harvington, near Cheltenham, hacking around a small but perfectly-formed 18-hole course, alongside Cheltenham resident and erstwhile friend of Dayorama, Amy J.
I'd let you know how we got on, but Amy J had been given the responsibility of scoring - a responsibility she later revealed she'd never shouldered before.
It is the first time I have seen a golf scorecard on which every single score has been recorded next to the wrong hole, with a couple of scores made up having not been noted at the time. So it's a less than reliable indicator of success.
In summary, we had more than our fair share of pars on the course - largely comprised of par 3s on the front nine, with a sprinkling of par 4s on the back. We left satisfied that we weren't terrible at golf, just not brilliant either.
I had sufficient faith left in my ability that I spent Sunday afternoon exploring the first of at least six golf courses within five minutes' drive of my new flat in Northolt. I've been trying to find out all about these courses online, but it seems incredibly difficult to find good, all-round reviews of London's local golf courses, written by players like me, who always thought the Daily Mail's "Keep a Six Off Your Card" competition meant 7s and 8s were allowed.
With that in mind, I present the low-down on my first London golf course: the C&L Country Club, just off the A40 to the south of Northolt. Hopefully if you've come to this site searching for more info about the course, this will help! Leave a comment if any of the below is helpful, it'd be good to know. Here's a Google Map if you want to find the course:
Bear in mind that the expanse of land Google has labelled "C&L Country Club" is actually a different course, on the other side of the road from the C&L. From the A40 you head south and turn right, not left.
There are nine holes - five par 4s and four par 3s (one of which becomes a par 4, thanks to an extended tee position, on the back nine) - all packed into what is essentially one large field. The par 4s are all a fairly healthy length, and the par 3 2nd will test some people at 210 yards.
The course is open seven days a week. At the time of writing weekday green fees are £7 for nine or £11 for 18, or £9 and £15 respectively at weekends, which in London golf terms is very, very cheap.
Overall
I like this course. The accoutrements that come with a golf course - buildings, paths, signs etc - are not in the greatest shape but then we don't want that. Better facilities invariably attract better golfers, and with that the spectre of scratch golfers idling restlessly on the tee while you and your partner create a latticework pattern on the fairway 50 yards ahead.
The holes offer a surprising level of challenge considering the lack of space to work with, and the price is more than acceptable for what you get.
Clubhouse and facilities
The C&L Country Club is without doubt the least country club-like building I have ever seen, although there's plenty of parking (at 4pm on a Sunday, at least).
I only got as far as reception, which smells as though someone has detonated a bottle of talcum powder at close quarters, so I can't comment on things like food and drink.
But it's the building's exterior which gets me. The ancient green lettering picking out the name, the roof, the general not-quite-dilapidated-but-close feel - none of it screams "country club" which, to me, implies a mansion, posh leather chairs, a fireplace with a rug that used to be alive, and an 18-hole course the size of Equatorial Guinea. Do not come to this golf course expecting the tee markers to have cost more to make than your car.
The punters
This is a hopelessly subjective issue, but you might want to know who you'll be apologising to when you invade somebody else's fairway in search of that errant 3-wood. In the C&L's case, the clientele seem to be very much casual golfers. Spikes and collared shirts don't appear to be enforced, so for once in my life my golf shoes put me at the top end of the spectrum for attire.
What was far more surprising was that I might have been the best golfer on the course. That's not a statement I've ever even contemplated before. I am not a good golfer, so I never expected to find myself top of the tree (even if this was a fairly dire bunch), being waved through by fellow polite-but-crap combatants. Everybody seemed friendly and seemed to be enjoying themselves. There were plenty of children enjoying a game but nobody was causing too much of a hold-up.
Here we go then with a short hole-by-hole breakdown. The headline is that this course challenges me, which is not hard, but I imagine it might challenge you, too, if you're not close to scratch or anything silly like that. Big greens and inviting fairways crop up often, but some holes offer a long, narrow drive with the danger of losing your ball forever in either a field of cows or the A40.
1: (4, 314yds) A dog-leg right. Assuming you're not good enough to apply draw, fade or any of that fancy stuff, hit it straight down the fairway to give yourself a decent lay-up towards the green. Don't scuff your second shot six feet to your right like I did. The green sits in a lovely little wood in the middle of the field, home to the 1st, 5th and 8th greens. There are some rather nice bullrushes on the left, which sounds incredibly unimportant but just adds a little something.
2: (3, 205yds) Long, simple par 3. Tonk it as far as you can in a straight line and you can't go wrong. I left my drive a little short with a 5 iron, then ended up chipping over the green and messing up the chip back. I should never have left my sand wedge in a bunker in Buckinghamshire 18 months ago - my pitching wedge tries, bless it, but it's not the same.
3: (4, 280yds) The tee box is in between the 5th tee and 5th fairway, so for God's sake check before leaving the 2nd green. This is the first straight par 4, with a fairway which narrows slightly before opening up to an inviting green. Fairly simple if you don't wildly hook your shot under the penetrating gaze of two gents who've just let you play through, like me.
4: (4, 279yds) You now head back the way you came, with out-of-bounds on the left and the 3rd on your right. Time for my tried-and-trusted approach of playing a hole one fairway to the right, which was quite an effective tactic but may not please those who let you play through, only to find themselves showered with your next drive. There are some trees on the left where I think the couple in front lost a ball, so watch out. (You might be able to find it and nick it.)
5: (4, 269yds) I like holes which make me think on the tee. This hole feels claustrophobic because it swaps open, expansive fairways for ginormous Leylandii on the left (beyond which lies a field you can't access) and a small pond in front of the green. So there's plenty to think about and I put the driver back in favour of a safer 4-iron. Beware the water - if you miss the wet stuff in front of the green, there is more in the trees behind it. I thought I'd lost my ball in that wood, went in, found it, went to fetch a club, came back, and realised I'd lost it again. It took another five minutes to remember where it was. How embarrassing.
6: (4, 345yds) Another narrow drive, this time with the A40 to the left, though I imagine it's further away than it sounds. Certainly I've never suffered a golf ball strike driving to or from Northolt, and with the calibre of golfer on the course this afternoon, wayward drives must be a regular occurrence. The green is tucked away behind some trees to the left, so you'll probably need three to reach it unless you're clever. I hit a tree with my second shot and played my best shot of the day, a low wedge through more trees, to set up a putt for par, which thundered into the hole then back out again.
7: (3, 129yds) From the 6th green, climb up the hill to find the elevated 7th tee, looking down on a pretty comfortable par 3. Big green, high tee position, grab an 8-iron and let fly. Should have parred this, somehow contrived to three-putt.
8: (3, 197yds) By this point, having packed a lot of hole into the rest of the field, you can hear the course designer thinking: "Hell, I've got to get two more holes in here." This par 3 is still quite a challenge - it curves off to the right and you can certainly go for the green, but it's guarded by trees on the right. I inadvertently elected to approach the green from the other side of those trees, in the middle of the 6th fairway, showering the group behind for the second time.
9: (3, 115yds) The final hole is a wedge off the tee, which I mishit completely, and that will explain why it landed on the green. Two putts and I had my only par of the day.
This course is best for...
... an entertaining, challenging and cheap nine holes with a few friends, where time isn't an issue and you don't want to feel pressured by proper golfers.
If anyone read my facebook status yesterday, it was quite simple: I need a hug. And a drink. And sleep. No particular order. I think, quite possibly, I may have been overdoing it somewhat. Away for the past 7 weekends, all-nighters at work, busy days and generally I haven't stopped. That was, until last night. When I arrived on my parent's sofa. And collapsed in a heap. I still feel (and look) pretty rough this morning and so the name of the game this weekend is to do nothing. De nada. Zilch. Well, other than buying some work trousers and washing my car and a host of other things. But that's effectively nothing. Oh and in other news, the HMR&C have paid off my HK tax. So my father and I are, for once, quits with regard to money. It's a miracle.
So, I was reading an article on Swan Upping on the Thames. On the third week of July, the annual ritual of Swan Upping - the so-called census of swans on the river, establishing ownership of the cygnets - will take place. I always thought that swans belonged to the Crown, but it turns out that's wrong. Traditionally (and we're talking laws dating back to the middle ages) all unmarked mute swans are owned by the Crown. However, in bygone years, wealthy individuals bought the right to own swans. Today, only two livery companies retain this right. Representatives from these two companies, along with the Crow, take part in the Swan Upping and round up the birds, ringing the birds accordingly and thus establishing who owns parent and cygnet alike. In the C21 century, when it really is at no odds to anyone who owns a swan (on the basis that we don't trade them in the same way that we may have done in the past), it's a fascinating tradition which makes me proud to be British and one we should maintain for ornithological and conservational reasons, let alone the fact it's completely bonkers for a group of civilised human beings to slide around in rafts catching birds.
Good to see, Mr Williams, that the Dodge has recovered well enough to deliver you straight to the heart of the jams. It looked faster on the bricks.
Also, delighted that your trip to the Brooklands Museum has left you with a lasting thirst for vehicle knowledge, which I’m more than happy to indulge. Here’s yer beast:
Despite the unseasonable weather, it would appear you’ve caught The Sun’s latest open-top publicity bus doing the rounds. The above shows it enjoying a day at the races in some rather more prestigious company, that of London General’s showbus open-topper, and two rather fine vintage Leyland PD3s. (Mr Williams will recognise the latter from Reading Football Club’s premiership promotion tour in what now seems like 1485.)
The written-press has long been in love with the heavily branded bus to take it to the people. Even the broadsheets have dabbled from time to time; probably the first time their readers have been aboard a bus. Whenever there’s an event to be owned, or word of a big campaign to be spread, out comes the bus to cock its leg up the British public.
Only recently have the buses tended to be relatively contemporary as The Sun’s latest toy. Their previous model was, I think, an old London Metrobus (yes, great potential in that model for rival papers), dating from the ‘80s. For the bus enthusiast, it’s a disappointing move, as some interesting gems had previously found their way into the role. I remember trying to coincide my diary with a tour of The Daily Telegraph Reading Bus (for kids), a Bristol Lodekka of more than usual significance to the bus world.
I didn’t manage that, but like it did for Mr Williams, the motorway brought a chance encounter many years ago. This time, it was The Mirror’s “Fun Bus”, another Lodekka, my all time favourite type of course. Yellow, boldly branded, it would have been 20-odd years old at the time. Like so many Lodekkas, it’s still going strong today, now enjoying a third lease of life abroad. Last I heard, it was in sunny Belgium, being used as a bus once more. It’ll be 40 years old this year…
I wonder if The Sun’s new motor will still be enjoying the sun in 2048?
I passed this coming back from the hockey yesterday, in traffic which stretched all the way from the Silverstone turn-off (surprise, surprise) to High Wycombe.
Presumably The Sun had parked the bus up at the British Grand Prix for the day. I'm guessing it was not party to any recent On The Buses tours, but I'm hoping Mr Sheppard might know a thing or two about it. It did look pretty good!
If Shep were to go into business as an operator for one of The Sun's rivals, he could variously own a Mail Bus, an Express Bus, an Independent Bus or a Metro Bus. Now all we need is a newspaper entitled The Bendy...
So on the back of yesterday's girls' final at Wimbledon, where to next? Centre court for the men's singles battle royale? Silverstone for the British Grand Prix? A hop across the channel for the Tour de France?
Nope. It might not be everybody's first choice given the options, but I pitched up at Cannock hockey club at 9am on Sunday morning to meet the British women's Olympic squad.
I know a few of the players already, particularly Crista Cullen, who I've helped to put together a series of diary pieces for the BBC Sport website. She's the Patrick Vieira of the British side, a defensive enforcer with an eye for goal, distinctive for her height and presence on the pitch.
Crista is the star of two new BBC Sport guides to the sport - one basic guide to what hockey's about, and a separate, more focused guide on the short corner. These replace a set of fairly old guides featuring Anna Bennett and Jonty Clarke.
I'll be honest, this was not the most straightforward shoot. The squad were taking part in a scheduled, intensive training session from 10am-12pm and 3-5pm - the sort of training session which you might be able to disrupt a bit with cameras in three years out of four, but not in the July of an Olympic year.
So we had to grab Crista and a couple of team-mates at the end of each session and, with immense pressure on time, turn around the filming incredibly quickly.
Luckily, it helped that Crista and co were very much up for some filming. She was a particular fan of the headcam, a bullet camera strapped to a baseball cap with a little rucksack containing recording equipment and batteries. Put the cap on and the tiny camera records a hockey player's-eye view of proceedings - the same technology we used for Helen Reeves and the slalom kayaking a couple of months ago.
Continuity is normally quite a big issue for television, but the obstacles to continuity today were so insurmountable that we'd discarded the concept by about 4pm.
The weather wasn't just changeable, it was wracked with indecision, throwing down rain one minute then erupting into bright sunshine. This poses a major challenge in the television edit suite, because half the shots look as though they're from a nice, sunny July day, and the other half look miserable and wet.
The GB squad changing kit midway through the day didn't help either. All morning they were playing in white but, when we got back for the afternoon, they'd swapped to red. So not only are some shots bright and sunny while others are drenched in wet, the squad intermittently veers from red to white and back again.
Somebody clever is going to need to put these together, and that happily rules me out. I'll post a link when they're online.
The latest edition of Oxford Today, the Oxford University alumni publication, describes the latest Oxford Science Blog. Found here, the blog aim to provide leading and contextual information regarding current research taking place by Oxford's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences and Medical Sciences Divisions. Aimed at journalists, but clearly interesting to the wider public, the blogger's aim is to make the "invisible science" at Oxford, "visible". And that's a rather good phrase to describe blogging as a whole. We expose, via this medium, topics, thoughts and feelings that we would otherwise hide. But anyway, the purpose of the credit, was that the founder reckons it takes about "one hour every weekday" to keep the site maintained. One hour? As I return from my brief few days away, to be pipped at so-called "connect five" by both Ollie and David, it's clear that this is the case. I should get my act together and return to the fold.
What is interesting, is that there is now a site that lists all University blogs. Now, "in our day", I know very few people that blogged at Oxford. It is now three years since Ollie, OJ and I finished our undergraduate studies, and such a change. I recall when OJ went to Princeton, he was mocked for his blog. In part, I suspect this was the dire layout and content (sorry, OJ, but I think everyone will agree that it wasn't the finest), but above that, the idea of blogging was not accepted, it wasn't the norm and Dayorama was certainly seen as pioneering. The first, and last accolade. And so, times change.
Rain has stopped play at Wimbledon. Now, there's a surprise. I need a drink and some sleep. I may stop, one of these days. I was up at 5.45am this morning and went for a 4.5 mile run. Some could, at a push, say I was a little mad.
Did you know, the cat is the fastest thing in the Universe?
Neither did I, until this week. Granted, little Basil and I have had our moments of apparently high-speed cat-and-mouse drama over the years, but like most things in the feline world, there's a whole lot more to the story that only the cat knows.
To unlock your pussy's full sprinting potential, all you need is one Drontal cat-worming tablet, then you're away. And so's he.
Ever since we took delivery of one of these things (yes, just one is sufficient to render your cat worm-free for a year - and just as well at that price), I've been engaged in a war of tactics to try and get the bugger inside the cat. Basil's natural suspicion of, well, everything, means the suggested administration via the food bowl is never going to happen. The moment he spots the alien yellow pill amongst the Premium Cat Crunchies, he assumes a conspiracy and runs for it.
Instead, we attempted a little game one night last week, whereby Basil ended up securely wrapped in a towl he's been playing with, before being swiftly hoisted by Auntie Bryony to the location of the little yellow pill. Uncle David would then take his cue to begin a little tickling under the chin, thus releasing the jaw in order to post the tablet onward to its journey within. Perfect...
... except that Basil appeares to be acrobatic as well as athletic. Within nano-seconds of spotting the familiar yellow circle on the horizon, the cradled head leapt from its towl and scarpered.
With a bit of ingenuity, I decided tonight that maybe food could be the answer after all. Capitalising on all Basil's known weaknesses, I crafted a menu of irresistable human food that just so happened to have excellent credentials when it came to concealing a little yellow pill inside. First, I'd give a small helping - sans tablet - just to establish goodwill. Next, a grudging dishing out of seconds, again sans tablet.
Now for the trick.
Basil loves nothing more than the feeling of eating something he shouldn't. Surely, some carelessly abandonned 'leftovers' on the kitchen table would slip down a treat - tablet and all? Bingo. Bryony and I watched triumphantly from afar as greed took its hold, and Basil began his forbidden feast. Hearts racing, we watched as he ate his way around the dish, getting ever closer to the crucial little cube of roast pork... We wondered if he'd spotted our ruse. No, no... he's got it! He's chewing! It's in - he's swallowed!
We watched with delight as we saw the satisfied cat swallow the meat, blissfully unaware of our attention. For that moment we each rejoiced - Bryony cheered, I whooped (probably the roast pork), and Basil, well he looked as if he was about to release the ultimate burp of satisfaction.
I suppose in a way, he did. With utmost dignity, he leant forward and lowered his head to the ground, before releasing a little yellow tablet - still immaculate - slot machine-like from between his teeth. The bugger.
I bet he thought he'd won as he watched me face the indignity of picking up that little yellow pill and dropping it into the bin. I bet he thinks that's the last of it; that he can happily drag his backside towards his wormy future without fear of being held down and force fed fake smarties.
Sadly for him, he's wrong. You see, there's some old KFC bones in that bin. Smelly ones, just the kind he loves to dig up. Lid's off... Humans are all asleep...
If I wake up to find the house littered with the colonel's secret recipe, it's the first time I won't complain.
I've never been - never even thought of going, though I'm not sure why that is - and was first off the blocks with my enthusiastic reply. I was terrified I'd just signed up to pay hundreds of pounds but it turned out the tickets were just £28 each, which seemed a bargain then and even more so in hindsight.
"You realise it's for No. 1 Court, not Centre Court, don't you?" Said my colleague, sensing a Wimbledon virgin. I nodded sagely, grabbed the tickets, and ran back to my desk to find out what the difference was. So I wouldn't be seeing the singles finals, I concluded. No great loss, I'm sure there will be some decent matches on my turf.
How inadvertently right I was, too. OJ (for it is he) and I took up our seats in row D, gangway 2, just ahead of the commencement of the day's proceedings. First up on court would be Mansour Bahrami and Henri Leconte playing an over-45s doubles round-robin match against former star Brit Jeremy Bates and his partner Anders Jarryd.
Hmm... Bahrami and Leconte, eh. I'd heard those names before. Then I remembered - they had cropped up on TV year after year, performing wacky tricks like returning overheads while reclining in line judges' chairs and such like. They single-handedly propel the genre of comedy known as Tennis Slapstick.
Even in the warm-up, Iranian Bahrami and Frenchman Leconte were up to their tricks:
Not a game went by without comedy intervention from the pair - shouting at each other, shouting at the crowd, borrowing a pair of spectacles from a gentleman in the front row, pulling the net down to win points and forever baiting Bates. "Is it windy today, Jeremy?", a sentence which loses all comedic power when not hollered by a Frenchman across the net in an otherwise perfectly silent show court, just as the Brit is about to serve.
The highlight of the match was produced by a member of the crowd shouting something at Leconte, who responded equally vituperatively. Settling back down for his second serve, Leconte turned, adding, "You have a beeg mouth!", then unleashed an almighty second serve straight into orbit, coming to rest on the roof of the court opposite. It was a good 30 feet above ground by the time it reached the net, and almost cleared the entire arena, accompanied by an annoyed grunt.
A short time elapsed as Leconte and Bahrami gesticulated, and then the umpire, restraining himself somewhat, came over the tannoy.
"Leconte and Bahrami are challenging the call. The ball was called 'Out'."
The audience tittered itself senseless, then joined the players in watching the big screens at the side of the court. What on earth could the Hawkeye producers, whose computer-generated replays allow players to challenge decisions, do with this? The ball had passed straight out of the stadium with nary a cursory glance at the ground - would this break the entire system?
An anxious 20 seconds passed before the screen burst into life - with the text "Original call stands", and no replay. Chickens.
Robson, waiting for her show court debut with all British eyes upon their last hope of a homegrown success at this year's tournament, must have been backstage dreading all this. Every laugh, every gag, every French expletive must be a dagger to the heart when you're 14, full of nerves and minutes away from walking out in front of the nation.
She later said she felt sick on seeing the packed arena, but showed very little sign of that with a superb first set, blowing the challengingly-named Lertcheewakarn out of the water.
Cracks appeared in the second set, notably Robson's tendency to eject screams of anguish in moments of extreme pressure, but she tidied it up in the third and pulled away for an ultimately comfortable win.
The screaming I will allow, because without doubt her best characteristic is that she does not grunt.
Lertcheewakarn was up the other end giving it her best Sharapova impression, oinking with every service return like almost any other player in the women's game. Robson, by contrast, was silent for the entire first set and only the steam-from-the-ears squeals of anger with herself broke the tranquillity in sets two and three. Not one grunt. None.
That's enough to win me over as a fan on its own, but she also plays some incredible tennis. OJ and I will both admit that we expected a girls' final to be a little lacking on the talent front, as much through nerves as through any unpolished ability. But both players turned it into a superb, gripping contest, full of sweeping, powerful baseline strokes. All this with the added excitement of neither player protecting their serve overly well - in most Wimbledon matches a 3-0 lead in a set means it's as good as over, but not in this one.
Robson, who has since promised to "take Venus down" should she get a wildcard for next year's senior event, has set herself up as something Andy Murray hasn't offered us - a likeable Brit. I want Murray to do well and I definitely want to see him in a Wimbledon final, but I don't think I'm alone in finding it hard to warm to him. Robson, by contrast, had me ooohing, aaahing and crunching my fist into my knee with frustration before the first set had finished. You don't have to be arrogant to be confident.
I was already fairly convinced of that before I hopped into a car alongside Graham, the retired mechanic who built the vehicle you see in the picture.
That car's got a bit of a Vauxhall, some Sherpa van and a sprinkling of Suzuki Sprint propping up its ancient chassis. But my God, it can go.
Graham ambled along the tarmac in it as he told me about its unlikely component parts, then gave the pedal a light feathering to take us trundling along the bottom of the remainder of the Brooklands track.
Old auto racing tracks had steep banking round the corners, a bit like a velodrome, something you don't really see at modern circuits. So we rumbled across a delapidated mixture of weeds and tarmac as the little tour continued.
Then Graham turned the car around, waited for a distance flag to be waved, and unleashed all hell upon us.
As he shoved the pedal quite literally to the metal of the engine framework, the car thundered its way up onto the banking. Weeds and cracks in the road were no boundary to Graham and his need for 1930s speed.
As we hit top speed in our open-topped car and I clung to the door for dear life, for the first time in my life, I found myself grasping in terror for a seat belt. The angle increased, my fear increased, and then I realised about ten people were watching - so I tried to force a rather weak, impoverished smile.
It was all over in about 20 seconds but was genuinely one of the most exhilarating things I have ever done. Afterwards, Graham insisted - with a sly wink - that we had only been doing 45mph, but I suspect that is an underestimate to say the least. That said, it's nothing like the 140mph the top drivers of the era would have reached on the banking. How that felt I can only imagine, but my stomach churns at the thought.
Brooklands is also home to one of the first Concordes, Delta Golf, which saw very little active service before sitting, bereft, at Filton for years.
When Concorde was retired from service, Delta Golf - long since stripped of all her parts for use as spares on her sisters - came to Brooklands and was given a thorough refit. Now she stands proud in British Airways livery, with a museum and authentic fully-fitted cabin inside.
I sat in the cabin alongside about 25 or 30 fully-grown men as they played a short video commemorating Concorde, culminating in a sequence of footage set to the sound of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now".
My colleagues are usually hardy, chirpy, masculine souls, all football this, F1 that, beer-and-the-game the other. But some of them came off that plane genuinely on a bit of an emotional downer at the demise of Concorde.
Our F1 correspondent even surprised me with his knowledge of aircraft. Somebody mentioned the "Russian equivalent" of Concorde not doing so well either, and I had barely got the word "Tupolev" out of my mouth before he'd finished my line: "TU-144".
The TU-144 was Russia's version of Concorde - it looked strikingly similar but had a few fairly crucial differences in terms of how it was built. Read the Wikipedia entry for more details and the TU-144's similarly chequered history. Then click here to see a TU-144 lying dormant on the tarmac at a Russian airfield. Technology, eh!
Funny that Shep, in the last Dayorama post, should mention bus garages. (Although let's be honest, if we were offering odds, you would not have got much return for your money.) I enjoyed dinner this evening with a man whose job it partly is to oversee the construction of the new East London bus depot. I must pair these two up at some point - they would have much to share.
While I've been a rather quiet blogger of late, my camera phone has been diligently recording events for later transcription. Above is my beloved Dodge Caliber, enjoying a bit of a refit at the excellent Amalgamated garage in Piddington, near High Wycombe.
I've recently come to think of the Dodge as feminine. This is odd as she definitely started off male when I bought her, to the extent that she initially bore the name Dennis, rapidly discarded in favour of simply being known as "the Dodge".
For the last 18 months the car has existed in a sort of androgynous stasis, very much an "it", but - and particularly in this photo - the car almost seems to be batting her lashes while awating fresh tyres.
I'm sure various friends would have much to say about my owning an apparently transgender car. Save it, folks, I've made all the jokes in my head already.
In other wallet-busting news, aside from the £200-plus spent fitting new tyres, another three-figure sum has been laid out getting it/her serviced and a new wing mirror fitted.
Back in March this year I went down to Minehead, in Somerset, for a week, and duly had my driver's-side wing mirror torn off the car by some hooligans.
In bloody Somerset. Not in London or the south-east, traditionally acknowledged as a fairly likely place to have your car butchered by inebriated muppets, oh no. Somerset. My car avoids the obvious and goes for an unexpected but spectacular mullering by chav escapees from the local Butlins.
Three months of driving around with a mirror gaffa-taped to my door later, I finally got a new one installed, at great cost. The difference it makes is staggering. Since March I have grown accustomed to shifting in my seat, squinting and craning my neck to achieve the optimum field of vision from the square-inch of mirror that remained exposed alongside the reams of tape. Now I'm back to enjoying the full, glorious technicolour blurs of hedge, central reservation and flashing speed gun that once made my heart sing.
As a final note, hello to Adolfo Flores, who was lucky not to have his email deleted from my inbox on the grounds that he has the name of every spammer who's ever emailed me.
"I'm from California and I found your post while I was looking for something that would help me with the piece of chicken bone I swallowed," says Adolfo.
"I went to the doctor and they said they couldn't find anything on the x-ray and that if it persisted to seek help in the emergency room with a nose and throat specialist.
"I can breath fine so I guess I'll wait, just wanted to thank you because your post put me at ease."
It's a pleasure. I don't know if they sell Mr Kipling's Bakewell tarts in California, but I strongly suggest stocking up.
We all have a little somewhere we dream of visiting one day. A place of mystery, a paradise to explore, the ultimate dream destination. Another world.
Here’s mine.
If you’re thinking it’s only a bus depot, you’d be wrong; in fact, it’s not even one of those. In reality, it’s the old Stage 5 at the back of Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, home to so many productions which have gone on to become household names. Star Wars fans will unwittingly have seen its innards many times, and if that’s not impressive enough, it was home to three of the biggest films of the 1970s. Hence the buses:
By the early ‘seventies, “On the Buses” had established itself as one of the most popular situation comedies this country had produced, and the globe had ever seen. It sold almost seventy episodes worldwide, and grew audiences in the millions at a time when television was still finding its feet. Its simple premise - two busmen, chasing after dolly-birds and slacking off work – was very much a product of its time; it struck a chord with the ordinary being on the street, and so it worked very well.
With such winners in the home, the nation’s love affair with the cinema was on the rocks. Film producers were quick to recognise that television could yield ready-made audiences for their work, and capitalised on the success of many a hit television series by turning it into a movie.
Like many of the movie spin-offs, “On the Buses” and its two follow-ups, “Mutiny On the Buses” and “Holiday On the Buses”, were made on something of a shoe-string, and were each shot in just seven weeks. Unlike most of their counterparts, writers Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolf resisted the temptation to sew together huge chunks of script (or even storylines) from previous episodes, and so the audience was offered something a little bit special.
For a three-year old Mr Sheppard, entranced by repeats of the films on his parents’ television, they would quickly become his world. They were my first real glimpse of what grown-ups might get up to at work (and not too much of a skewed one, it’s turned out), an introduction to the notion that adults could be naughty, too. And, of course, they’re entirely to blame for a lifelong interest in buses.
The numerous power-cuts of the early ‘eighties meant only two things to this small boy: no dinner, and no “On the Buses”. Most days, I watched one or other of the films. I’d make each one last for hours, rewinding the tape time and time again whenever something funny happened. I didn’t always get the joke, which is probably just as well. Very quickly, grown-ups around me concocted elaborate stories to shield me from the worst excesses of my new found role models; for years, I was kept under the illusion that Jack was taking his money to Ladbrokes to book a holiday…
I remember the day I was told “On the Buses” wasn’t real. Apparently, all the people I’d come to regard as friends were just… pretending. Stan and Jack weren’t really busmen, but actors Reg Varney and Bob Grant, and they didn’t really go to Turnaround Betty’s house for ‘tea’ between shifts (I’d suspected that much already). Nor had they really been replying to the many letters I’d sent them, lovingly posted into the outside world with all innocence through my own letterbox; my sisters had written those replies to stop me from being disappointed. Boy, was I disappointed now.
The critics’ appreciation of the “On the Buses” trilogy, like the Carry On films, varies from the sneering to the resigned. Whether or not they’re jam packed with artistic merit is an irrelevant debate in some ways; they were designed to give a laugh to the punters of 1971, and they’ve been doing it ever since. Audiences have always loved them - Jeremy Dyson’s nail-on-the-head article about British movie spin-offs reckons the first “On the Buses” movie outshined the best of the Bond films in terms of box office takings.
And the full force of that love came pouring out last Saturday, as the “On the Buses” Fan Club took to the streets of Hertfordshire to revisit some of the locations from the film, 37 years on. When the club’s founder, Steve Holden, first floated the idea of an “On the Buses” day, we expected that a handful might respond. As it was, a hundred tickets were sold, and a similar number of expectants made their way to the reserve list.
People of, quite literally, all shapes and sizes, and ages, showed up from afar for a chance to talk about the films and see where it all went on.
Of course, some people had to go a bit too far…
If you’ve seen the films, you wouldn’t have to stray too far into Borehamwood and Shenley before you spotted something you recognised; it all feels oddly familiar. Odd, too, to be travelling those same streets on the back of a bus; where Arthur loses Olive in the sidecar, or the spot where Blakey gets splashed...
So there it is: I’ve seen the world.
Well, almost. Stage 5, of bus depot fame, doesn’t look quite the same any more. After “On the Buses”, the decline in the British film industry continued with inevitable consequences for studios like Elstree. Thanks to a few dedicated campaigners, a small part of the studio remains alive and well, still making household names of projects like “Big Brother” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”.
I adopted the annoying stance of reading over the shoulder of the person sitting next to me on the DLR yesterday. An article discussing the following blog, I Hate The National Express, caught my attention. It's certainly worth a read for a chuckle about the general ups and downs and woes of commuting. However, wouldn't it be rather lovely for a change if we, as a nation, were praising something rather than complaining about it? It's arguably the hottest day of the year so far for 2008 and we have a Brit in quarter-finals of Wimbledon. Now, surely that is something to smile about?
