Finished With Aplomb

I started this blog back in 2012 with the intention of publishing something every week, which I managed to keep up until 2017 when I missed a few weeks. 2018 was less productive still, there were more weeks when nothing appeared than those when something did. There are two obstacles to my publishing something every week, a lack of inspiration and a lack of time (if I’m honest, sometimes a failure of will to make the time).

But just because there isn’t a blog every week, it doesn’t mean I’m not writing anything. I’ve been writing articles for Romford Football Club’s matchday programme for longer than I’ve been blogging, and that means between forty and fifty pieces of about 800 words each between August and April each year. And this season I have ended up with the task of writing match reports for the programme and website, and for Saturday home games at least, for The Non League Paper. In a recent programme, I found that I had contributed seven of thirteen pages of text, or somewhere approaching 5,000 words. In what I hope is an instance of justifiable self-plagiarism, a somewhat cut-down and revised version of this blog is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of Romford's programme.

Add to that another new responsibility – I’m now jointly running the club’s website, for which I’m writing content such as match previews and news, in addition to the match reports – and I seem to be constantly pecking away at my laptop's keyboard.

Does all of this mean that I can call myself a journalist? Possibly, yes, if one uses the commonplace definition that journalism is writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites. Having work published in a national newspaper, even if it’s a niche publication like The Non League Paper counts, surely?

The wordcount - 120 - means that the report in The Non League Paper is very much
a cut-down version of the one that appears on the club website or in the programme.

Like a proper journalist, I’m not averse to using a bit of journalese. Read any newspaper and you will come across examples of it, words and phrases rarely used outside their pages. Only in newspapers are small children ‘tots,’ experts – especially scientists – ‘boffins,’ and any dubious activities that involve alcohol ‘booze-fuelled.’ The sports pages use expressions that the average fan rarely – if ever – utters, and football reports are no exception.

Match reports, including those that I write, have their own particular jargon, so teams that hold a three or four-goal advantage have ‘an unassailable lead,’ while their hapless opponents have ‘a mountain to climb.’ Some of the terms favoured by sports reporters are increasingly anachronistic. Strikers are sometimes deemed to have ‘turned on a sixpence’ before scoring, despite the fact that the old tanner probably went out of circulation before the forward in question – and probably the reporter – was born. 

A sixpence, forwards for the turning on of.

Shots that rebound off a post are normally said to have ‘struck the post’ as though there was only one, rather than two, or ‘hit the woodwork’ despite the fact that few goalposts outside public parks are actually made of wood anymore. 

Another somewhat inaccurate description used when a shot strikes the frame of the goal – another phrase rarely employed outside the sports pages – is that the forward was ‘denied by the woodwork’ as though the post or bar had made a conscious effort to prevent the ball entering the goal. Meanwhile, ‘aplomb’ – meaning composure or assurance – is a word that hardly ever makes an appearance in ordinary conversation, but features regularly in match reports, and on occasion on Match of The Day, when describing a confident finish.

How appropriate is aplomb in this report, I wonder? How hard did the writer have to try to get it in?

My first encounter with the word aplomb came in my childhood while reading one of the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge. In Jennings Goes To School, the eponymous hero is called upon to summon the fire brigade by using the telephone. The headmaster, while making it clear that boys may not usually use the telephone without permission, praises Jennings, saying that he rose to the occasion “with exceptional verve and aplomb.” I immediately filed that away for future use, and am always pleased when an occasion arises to use it.

Another word which one seldom encounters these days outside of reports of football matches is the preposition, cum, used to join two nouns. Most often in match reports it will appear between ‘cross’ and ‘shot’ to describe a ball driven in from the flank that either ends up in the net or forces a save from the goalkeeper over and above a routine catch, and its use indicates that the reporter, and quite likely the player who delivered the cross-cum-shot, is unsure which it was intended to be. Cum does of course have another, rather more earthy use, hence when it appears in print it is likely to provoke some sniggering from readers, especially those not of the vintage for whom the word, in the context of a football match, is wholly unremarkable.

Good to see The Mirror keeping the traditional use of the word cum.

I confess  that not only do I find journalese fascinating, but that I resort to the odd example of it in my scribblings, thus ‘much-travelled’ is employed to label players who have had more clubs than Gary Player (one for the youngsters there), and ‘won’t live long in the memory’ is often used to describe games that fail to rise above a certain level of mediocrity. ‘High, wide, and none too handsome’ gets the occasional outing when describing a wayward shot at goal, while ‘we’ve all seen them given’ gets wheeled out when a penalty appeal is turned down, and mass confrontations are inevitably ‘handbags.’

A problem with writing match reports is the unavoidable need to refer to one team or the other frequently without simply repeating their name. A similar issue is faced when referencing certain players – particularly goalkeepers. Here, the reporter tends to resort to what is referred to as ‘elegant variation.’  It is my convention to refer to Romford as Romford in the first instance, and then Boro (the club’s nickname) in a single sentence, and similarly Romford’s opponents first by their given name and then by some alternative. In this way, Felixstowe might be The Seasiders when mentioned a second time, and then the visitors. In desperation to avoid repeating a team name, this may mean resorting to something as hackneyed as ‘the men from Suffolk,’ or -in desperation - ‘the team in stripes.’ Variation it may be, but elegant? Not always.

While reporters are resorting to well worn, tried and trusted expressions to describe events in games, the subs (sub-editors) on national newspapers are more inclined to look for new, memorable, and pithy, headlines. Except there is rarely anything new under the sun (or should that be under The Sun?). When Celtic were beaten at home in the Scottish Cup by Inverness Caledonian Thistle in February 2000, one headline writer came up with what he thought to be a new, Mary Poppins based gag, to wit, ‘Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious.’ Original, one might think apart from the fact that back in 1960s, the headline on a report of a Liverpool match against QPR in which Ian Callaghan scored a hat-trick read, 'Super Calli Scores a Hat Trick, QPR Atrocious.'

Still, both are better than The Observer’s effort after England beat Spain in a penalty shoot-out at Euro 96 – ‘Seaman Sinks Armada,’ and infinitely preferable to the Daily Mirror’s ‘ACHTUNG! SURRENDER! For you, Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over!’ employed before the semi-final against Germany, although they might have got away with it had England actually won.

I have not yet managed to emulate Martin Lawrence, who once wrote match reports for Romford’s programmes and managed to include the word ‘crepuscular’ (relating to twilight) in one many years ago, and to date, ‘aplomb’ is not a word I have managed to incorporate into any of the reports that I have written, although I live in hope!

Meanwhile, my wife has recently started a writing course; she asked me if I would like to do it as well. I declined, “I’m writing enough as it is,” I said.

From Outer Space To The Centre of The Earth

In the last couple of years, I have seen more gigs, shows, concerts, and other types of performances than I probably had in the previous forty, and 2019 was another bumper year, with 23 shows, featuring 35 different bands, orchestras, and solo artists, at 17 different venues.

Rather than review each event, here’s a sketch of the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Best show:

A tough choice this. Marillion were a surprise delight, as was Howard Jones. Tubular Bells for Two – whom I saw a couple of years ago and were delighted by – were excellent, and Steve Hackett was – as usual – brilliant. But for best show it’s a toss up between RPWL, the German prog rockers who started life as a Pink Floyd covers band, but in 2019 toured in support of their new album, Tales From Outer Space, and Steely Dan at Wembley Arena. Playing at the tiny Boston Music Room in Tufnell Park, RPWL performed a masterly collection of songs old and new; a really great show. Steely Dan, however were on another level. The death of Walter Becker in 2017 means that Steely Dan are now effectively Donald Fagen plus backing band, but what a great show they put on! And supporting them was another of my long-time favourites, Steve Winwood: truly a great night’s music.

RPWL

Marillion

Best venue:

In recent years I have developed a preference for standing at gigs, and the Islington Assembly Hall has become a great favourite of mine. I saw no shows there in 2019, so it’s another old favourite, the Hammersmith Apollo that tops my list this year, with a more than honourable mention to The Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane, where I saw an opera (Jack The Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel), a musical (The Man From La Mancha), and a recording of the BBC’s Friday Night is Music Night featuring a host of artists who first found fame in the 1980s

Rick Wakeman performing Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

Biggest surprise:

I haven’t seen Marillion since the 1980s, when Fish was still with them. I’ve not listened to a great deal of their material since Steve Hogarth took over singing duties, and I’ve been fairly ambivalent about what I have heard, but I saw them with an orchestral ensemble at The Cliffs Pavilion in Southend and they were quite superb. I confess that a good deal of the material was new to me but it was almost immediately familiar, and the song they closed with – This Strange Engine – has to be not just one of the best tracks they have recorded, but one of the top prog songs of all time. Howard Jones was a similarly surprising delight, as his show featured old stuff – much of it reworked, with Jones accompanying himself alone on piano – and new material from his latest album, Transform which impressed me to the degree that I immediately bought it. Another surprise was a ballet. My wife has become a bit of an opera and ballet fan in recent years, and I’ve seen a few with her, one of which was the ballet Don Quixote which we saw at The Royal Opera House, and which I found enchanting. A problem I have with operas is the surtitles at operas, which tend to divert my attention from the stage and give me a bit of crick in the neck; no such problem with ballet where I can give the dancing my undivided attention as there’s no singing in a language I don’t understand!

Howard Jones, with guitarist Robin Boult

Best support:

Support acts are a mixed blessing; I’ve seen some great one’s over the years and some that have been dire. Kanga, who performed a set of electronic stuff in support of Gary Numan at The Cliffs Pavilion, was ok for the first five minutes, but then I grew steadily more and more bored. The Temperance Movement, who supported Blue Oyster Cult, were ok, and China Crisis (supporting Howard Jones) were better than I’d expected. Most times at gigs, the support act is someone I’ve never heard of, such as Harry Payne, who opened for Marillion and was excellent – I could have done with another half-an-hour of his material. He would have been the best I saw in 2019, had it not been for Steve Winwood, although I would have enjoyed him even more if he had performed more of his solo material.

Least best show:

I’m loath to categorise any of the shows I saw in 2019 as bad, but there were a couple that were underwhelming. Actually, on reflection one was pretty poor, and that was Jack The Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel. Now, I quite like opera, but I’m no expert and it isn’t my first choice for musical entertainment, although I do like Rigoletto and Carmen (albeit not the performance I saw in 2018, where the set was a minimalist let-down and rather dragged the music down with it), but the Jack The Ripper opera was unremarkable at best. Most operas have at least one piece that you can’t get out of your head afterwards, but The Women of Whitechapel was pretty tuneless in my opinion. It was possibly the longest three hours of my life. If the show is ever revived, take my advice and avoid it. Don’t Fear The Reaper is one of my all-time favourite songs, and I saw Blue Oyster Cult perform it way back in the 1970s at what was then known by its proper name, the Hammersmith Odeon. I saw them again at the same venue in 2019, and quite frankly I think they must have performed the same set as I’d seen last time. According to the website setlist.fm, Blue Oyster Cult have performed The Reaper 2,299 times, and I think it showed. Don’t get me wrong, Blue Oyster Cult are undoubtedly a great band, but at times that evening I felt that they were going through the motions somewhat.

Spookiest moment:

My wife and I are great fans of CJ Sansom’s Shardlake novels, and the most recent – Tombland – is set in Norwich at the time of Kett’s rebellion, and in the novel Shardlake stays at The Maid’s Head, a real hotel that is still operating. Val and I stayed there for a couple of nights in July, and it is a charming hotel, well worth a visit, as is Norwich generally. 

The Maid's Head, Norwich

When we visited the cathedral, we heard some singers; they turned out to be The Spooky Men’s Chorale, an acapella group from Australia’s Blue Mountains, who were performing in Norwich that evening. We went to the venue’s box office, but the show was a sell-out. We loitered in hope of some tickets being returned, and two were – by separate people – and spookily, next to one another. The Spooky Men’s Chorale’s repertoire consists of original songs, Georgian table songs, and what they call ‘inappropriate covers’ which included a highly original version of Bohemian Rhapsody, All in all, a great night, and a surprising delight.

Best t-shirt:

I have mentioned before that I have a real weakness for merchandise at gigs, specifically t-shirts. Merchandise is a major source of income for smaller bands, so I justify my purchases on the basis that I’m really supporting the artists. Eleven were purchased in 2019, with Steely Dan’s offering, and Roger Hodgson particularly good, but the best was undoubtedly the IQ Christmas effort.

This time last year I had 11 gigs lined up and eventually saw 23; at the time of writing I have tickets for 11 more in 2020; I doubt that that will be the final total!

January

La Traviata – Royal Opera House

 BBC Concert Orchestra - Friday Night Is Music Night – Hackney Empire

February

Blue Oyster Cult – Hammersmith Apollo. Support from The Temperance Movement

Steely Dan – Wembley Arena. Support from Steve Winwood

March

BBC Concert Orchestra – Double Acts – Royal Festival Hall

That Joe Payne plus Doris Brendel – Zigfrid von Underbelly

April

Don Quixote – Royal Opera House

RPWL – Boston Music Rooms. Support from Aaron Brooks

Jack The Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel – The Coliseum

May

Tubular Bells For Two – Queen Elizabeth Hall. Support from Gypsyfingers

Roger Hodgson – Royal Albert Hall

Howard Jones – London Palladium. Support from China Crisis

June

The Man From La Mancha – The Coliseum

July

The Marriage of Figaro – Royal Opera House

The Spooky Men’s Chorale – Norwich Playhouse

Rick Wakeman: Journey To The Centre of The Earth – Royal Festival Hall

In Tune (BBC Radio 3) – Imperial College Union

October

Gary Numan – Cliffs Pavilion, Southend. Support from Kanga

Friday Night Is Music Night: The 80s with Carol Decker, Johnny Hates Jazz, Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, Jimmy Somerville – The Coliseum

November

Marillion – Cliffs Pavilion, Southend. Support from Harry Payne

Steve Hackett – Hammersmith Apollo

IQ – The Garage, Islington

December

BBC Singers: Contemporary Christmas Carols – Temple Church, London

Every Home Is Wired

They say you don’t get anything for nothing in this life, that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Being mindful of all that, you can imagine that I was somewhat sceptical when I received an email purportedly from Google offering me a free Google Home Mini, then retailing at £49.99 on the basis that I was a good customer.

Despite the fact that I, like virtually everyone else, use Google a lot, I’ve never really considered myself a customer, so the email naturally made me somewhat suspicious. My first inclination was to dismiss it as a phishing email and simply delete it, but since it was addressed to me by name and quoted my credit card details, I decided to investigate a little further. It dawned on me that the fact that I rent Cloud storage from Google was what made me a customer, and the fact that they weren’t asking me to subscribe to anything, pay anything, or even provide credit card details over those they had quoted to me, convinced me that this was a legitimate offer. So, I accepted.

A week or so later, my device arrived and I set it up. Now I have to admit that I feel a little self-conscious about uttering ‘Hey, Google,’ and asking the little grey pebble in the corner of the lounge to provide me with a weather forecast, or last night’s football results – I still prefer to type my question on laptop or tablet - but my wife seems to have taken to it, even if mostly she uses it to set alarms.

Still, whether I use it or not, it’s not taking up much room, and it’s harmless, and occasionally useful isn’t it? Or is it? There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence (or conspiracy theories, depending on your point of view), that all these home assistants, whether it’s the Amazon Echo, the Apple HomePod, or any of Google’s range, are spying on us, that the big tech companies are harvesting data on us.

Rumours have gone around for years that Facebook and others are using our smartphones to listen to us and target us with advertising based on what we are talking about, and conspiracy theory or not, I’m sure we’ve all experienced that somewhat unsettling experience of an advert popping up on our social media timelines for a product that we’ve talked about, but not actively searched for online. Coincidence, or something more sinister? The big tech companies have largely denied listening to users – for the avid conspiracy theory aficionado, denial is proof, of course – but Google have admitted that their contractors have listened to recordings to better understand language patterns and accents. Which makes sense, that to improve their service, they would listen and learn.

Even if Google is listening to me, do I care? I’m not discussing affairs of state, I’m not a celebrity whose gossip might be newsworthy, so if Google, or Facebook, want to listen to me discuss plans for dinner, or attempting to answer questions on University Challenge, then let them listen away.

My Google device did take me by surprise a while back by demonstrating how carefully it listens. I was watching Have I Got News for You, and one of the guests was talking about Google Hubs; ‘Hey Google,’ they said, ‘play some soft rock music.’ Seconds later, my smartspeaker was playing ‘This Is Not America,’ by David Bowie. Spooky.

My Google Home Mini is the closest I have to anything resembling the much vaunted, but seemingly slow to take off, Internet of Things. I see the value of connecting things like the central heating and lighting to a home network, and being able to control them remotely, or verbally, but I’ve yet to see the benefit in food blenders, coffee makers, toasters and fridges that are ‘smart,’ frankly I’d prefer those devices to stay dumb – and mute, for that matter.

Looking back over the technology that has come and gone during my lifetime – the 1980s were full of such items as fax machines, video recorders, compact discs, and the short-lived and ill-fated video disc, all of which have either disappeared from our daily lives or are going that way – and it is now impossible to even attempt to guess what we now think of as cutting edge that will still be around ten years hence. Google Glass came – and went – in the blink of an eye; not all technology is useful, popular, or successful, and even now I can imagine future generations laughing at the idea of speaking to a device and asking it to tell you the time, or what’s on TV.

Spotify, Amazon prime, and Netflix - to name but three such services - now mean that a fast, reliable broadband connection is almost a necessity, and it is difficult to see the day dawn when that is no longer the case, although we said that about fax machines. It’s undeniable though that catch-up and on demand services have supplanted many forms of physical media, although my personal preference remains CDs so far as music is concerned, but there’s a catch with all that and it hits us in the wallet. The TV Licence is £154.50, a cable or satellite package with broadband is say, £90 a month or just over £1,000 a year; add Netflix (a minimum £72 per annum), and Amazon Prime (£79 a year), because there are programmes exclusively available on those channels that you just have to have, and that’s nearly £1,400 for 12 months, just to watch TV.

Think about that: £1,400 per year, to watch TV, and five nights out of every seven you’re sitting there saying there’s nothing on and ending up watching repeats of QI on Dave. Which is why in our house we have just binned the Virgin Media TV package we have. This might strike you as perverse considering the hoops we had to jump through to get it in the first place (see my blogs on the subject, Virgin On The Ridiculous, Parts One, Two, and Three, although there never was a Part Four when I actually got it installed), but night after night I do sit there complaining there’s nothing on and finding myself watching a repeat of QI on Dave, or if not that specifically – and this is the crux – I’m almost exclusively watching channels that are available on Freeview. So, come the beginning of February I’m saving myself £500 a year by reverting to the free-to-air stuff.

Step by step, every home is being invaded; every home is wired. And every home is paying a princely sum for the privilege. It starts off small, a little here, a little there, a little on the things you think you can’t afford to miss, and then suddenly you’re paying a King’s ransom for stuff you don’t use, don’t really want, and definitely don’t really need, and the shocking fact is that a lot of it you can get for free, and the stuff you have to pay for you’d not really miss if you had to give it up.

Google’s decision to give me – and goodness knows how many other people – a free Home Mini may genuinely be a reward to loyal customers; it may just be a marketing tactic to expand their market, or it may be a step in the tech giant’s home invasion.

“This will be the future, Every home is wired” – Steven Wilson