LOL Marketing

My favourite kind. I tried that waterproof coffee, but it just wasn't for me.

NDC

Headphones On, World Off.

Some time ago I made a very big mistake.

I was out somewhere or other and had a while to kill before meeting with someone who was doubtlessly going to tell me something fascinating about industrial level products (I know, it's very rock n roll isn't it?), so I went to buy a coffee and a sandwich. I ate them and was still too early to turn up at my meeting so I went for a wander round the shops.

They had a Bose shop and, like a sailor being lured onto the rocks by a Siren, I went in.

Now, I love a gadget but the world beloved of audiophiles has long been closed to me. Sure, it's got all the boxes ticked in that it consists mainly of electronics in shiny boxes with eye-watering pricetags and I can appreciate the difference between the really cheap end of audio kit and the next step up, but try as I might I just have never managed to tell the difference between kit costing £50 or £500. I clearly have £49.99 hearing so I have always been sure that I can go into these kind of shops to fondle the gadgetry and pull faces at the pricetags, safe in the knowledge that I won't actually want any of it.

after a couple of minutes of poking about I tried on a pair of their noise canceling headphones, safe in the knowledge that I would not be able to tell the difference between the shiny £280 items in the shop and the ones I'd bought from the interwebz for, ahem, considerably less a couple of years ago.

Under the watchful gaze of the wildly enthusiastic (and technically astute) sales johnny I put them on and sure enough there appeared to be no difference at all. Until I switched them on.

The sound of the crowds milling through the shopping centre disappeared, and I was just left with, well, silence. It was astonishing. The music sounded great too. I was blown away.

Since then I have spent the last few months telling myself that £280 for a set of headphones that I'll mainly use on flights a couple of times a year is ridiculous and trying to ignore the small voice at the back of my head telling me they're worth every penny.

On Sunday I found myself winning an auction on ebay for a pair of the very same headphones. Oops. Even though they were considerably less than new the Beautiful Mrs A almost fell off her chair when I told her how much. She pointed out that I could have bought a pair of headphones for a fiver at Tesco (her expectation of audio quality is even lower than mine). Although she doesn't understand my love of expensive technology, she gets entirely the want of a thing - see here - so all is well.

They're due to arrive today and as long as they're not knockoffs and are functional I think I'll be quietly pleased...

NDC

Lane 1.

The Boy wonder has a thing or two to learn about tradition.

Around this time of year he has a sports day at school. Every year I offer to run in the dads race. Every year he pulls a face veering between disinterest and horror and says no. Every year I turn up and cheer like a nutcase as he hops over hurdles or throws beanbags into buckets, rounding off the day by watching the other poor unfortunate buggers who's children don't know the tradition have to run in the parent's races.

This time however, when I asked the question 'would you like me to run in the dads race?' he said yes.

Bugger.

So on Wednesday, after spending the afternoon whooping and cheering whilst a bunch of enthusiastic kids threw sponge javelins at each other and did the shortest long jumps in the world, the fateful announcement came over the tannoy:

"Would all those competing in the parent's races, please make their way to the start line of the running track."

Ah.

Now, under normal circumstances I'm a fairly easy going guy but I have to say that I have a competitive streak if there's a racetrack involved and this occasion was no different. As I stood on the startline I sized up the competition. There were seven of us in all, most of whom had at least a decade's worth of advantage on me. At that point I desperately wanted to win.

So the whistle went, I ran at a pace that my mind was entirely happy with, but which my legs were apparently less pleased about. I had a couple of close calls but managed to stay upright and staggered across the line in one piece.

Did I win? Of course not. I was beaten by an eighteen year old lad that was injured because his mate had shot him in the leg the day before with a BB gun and he'd decided to dig the projectile out with a knife* and a chap who'd actually brought trainers with him. But I managed to squeeze past the guy who told me on the start line he finished last in the previous day's race, a fat chap who fell over and a couple of others, so it wasn't all bad.

TBW was genuinely surprised that I hadn't won, he did his best to make me feel better but I reckon that lessons have been learnt and next year tradition will be restored.

NDC

* - He was the uncle of one the lads in TBW's class. I saw the wound and I have to say I believed his tale, I just hope the knife was sharper than he was.

Swings & Roundabouts.

Some days my job sucks. 

Other days it doesn't. Sometimes I get to have a meeting in the sunshine and eat a lunch paid for by somebody else in a place like this:

I have to say that those are the days I prefer.

NDC

These Little Piggies Went To Market (Harborough).

You may remember that a little while ago I wrote a post about clutter and sentimentality and stuff (if your memory is as swiss-cheese-like as mine, it's here), one of the subjects of which was an ashtray with a cone and two pigs.

Well here it is:

The Mum came over for Sunday lunch last weekend and brought it with her as a gift. She told me the tale of it belonging to my Grandparents on The Dad's side of the family. They had both clocked out before I clocked in so I never actually met them and now I have a battered ashtray that belonged to them.

It has been broken in the past (there's a reasonable probability that I was involved) and fixed with araldite that looks like it was applied by someone wearing welders mitts. Whilst Drunk. In the dark. A finely crafted objet d'art it is not.

So now it's been passed on to me. No doubt The Grandparents had some attachment to it and I know that The Mum valued it as a link to them, but emotional links to objects are conferred by the owner and just aren't assignable. I can't help but feel a lack of much towards it which is a shame but is the truth.

Maybe it's the chasm of years and lack of memories of its original owners.

Maybe in years to come this tale will become part of the object in some way and a connection will be formed, but for now this will just be two pigs facing a broken cone.

NDC

The Beautiful Game.

In the mornings on my drive to work I try to listen to the radio. I have 3 stations that I generally flick between until they annoy me:

Radio 1 - Could be either the music or Nick Bloody Grimshaw that tips me over the edge. Most likely to be Nick Bloody Grimshaw.

Radio 2 - Could be the music or Chris Evans that makes me change stations. Most likely to be Elton Bloody John.

Radio 4 - There is no music so it's usually John Bloody Humphrys.

However, today was top entertainment. 

Today, on Radio 4 of all places, there was a discussion about the salience of England's final game (due to be played today I believe) in the world cup. There was all sorts of in depth discussion about its effect on the nation's psychological wellbeing and parallels being drawn to tribal warfare, all delivered by a couple of folks who sounded much more likely to be discussing the influence of Byzantine architecture on post industrial urban landscapes than Rooney* being a bit crap.

It felt like listening to Brian Sewell discussing his deep love for Dubstep and Happy House.

NDC

* - OK, it's a fair cop. This is the only one I know.

You Can Take The Boy Out Of Engineering...

Last week I was out and about on company business again. One of the many delights of the job that I do is that you quite often get wheeled around peoples warehouses as they proudly tell you all about their 6 Sigma this or Continuous Improvement that. My job in this particular scenario is to look interested and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES look them square in the eye and tell them that I just don't care.

This particular visit was showing all the signs of being just such an occasion. I stood and dutifully listened to their spiel about Kanban and Ishikawa and kept my thoughts to myself. I even managed to keep my face straight whilst they told me about their unassailable dominance in the narrowboat toilet market (which was, to be frank, an effort of monumental proportions).

But then we rounded a corner and they showed me their engineering department. They had lathes and milling machines (both types, no less!) and surface grinders and EDM machines and a chap in overalls and safety glasses called Dave.

I wasn't allowed in due to their health and safety rules so I stood, just on the boring side of the yellow line painted on the floor, staring in like a fat kid at the door of the cakeshop. There were slip gauges and micrometers and engineering drawings and the evocative smell of cutting fluid. It was ace.

And I bet Dave was looking out at me and thinking "it's all right for you, pal - you'll swan about here for a bit and then get ferried off to a nice airconditioned meeting room and given free coffee".

The grass is always greener on the other fellow's grave, Dave.

NDC