Boring music- 2

I have been taken to task for omitting to mention the composer of the piece which languishes below.  Mea culpa.  I was busy with the sick bag.


No, it isn't Michael Nyman.  No, it isn't John Adams nor Philip Glass, nor Gorecki, nor yet even Vangelis.


It is actually Schubert, on this showing the unacknowledged Father of Minimalism - his Notturno, from the Piano Trio D897.


And forgive me, but I think it is bilge.  It is the sort of stuff which gives music a bad name.  Nothing happens.  There is no development, no progression, and no argument.  There is just a silly little irritating motif which repeats over an ever more florid succession of piano arpeggios. It is, in short, wallpaper for the ears.


The only good thing you can say about it is that it would better than gas if you were having a tooth out. But only just.

Boring music

The DJs on Radio 3 first thing in the morning are starting to sound suspiciously like Classic FM apprentices.  Perhaps they think nobody is listening to the little snippets of music that they sneak in while they nip off for a coffee between pre-recorded trails for future programmes by people with very odd regional accents indeed, but the old Classic FM training is evident, as is the secret Playlist 100 that they all seem to work to before 10am.  If you have never heard Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, or that dreadful thing he wrote for 16 soloists whose title I am too embarrassed to try to remember, just tune in to Radio 3 any morning before 10am, and in any single week you will hear them both so often that you'll be heartily sick of them by about Tuesday.

But this movement has them all in raptures at the moment.  The first time I heard it I was shocked into disbelief. It sounds like the worst kind of film music imaginable, or something by one of these minimalist composers who leaves the laptop to get on with the job while he nips our for a restorative skinny latte and a pastrami on rye.

This stuff is so empty that if I met Marshall Macluhan in the chippy tomorrow I am sure we could have a very interesting conversation about The Media and the messages.

But make up your own mind.  Is this stuff really worth four minutes of the rest of your life?

Midsomer Murd.....argh, splat

We like living in Knotty End.  We have no intention of upping sticks and moving to any of the Midsomer parishes, where average life expectancy is, according to reliable statistics from eminently trustworthy government sources, about 13.7 seconds, so we just keep tabs on the place from afar, by means of the Electric Television.


And tonight's Midsomer was a cracker.  Stiffs all over the place, as usual, and an increasingly asthmatic Barnaby still rushing around and raising his eyebrows interrogatively at every other member of the cast (the director doesn't tell him whodunnit, you know - you can tell by the look of surprise on his face when a 15-year-old PWC slips him the vital last piece of the jigsaw. It keeps him on his toes.)


Barnaby really should watch more telly.  It was obvious who The Creeper was in the first reel (as we used to say in the days of celluloid), but we mustn't let that spoil the fun.  Plot is irrelevant in a Midsomer episode, for Midsomer has become a soap, and like the best soaps it is much better watched with your eyes closed, so you can concentrate on lines like "rough as a bag o' scratchin's" (courtesy Corrers), or, tonight, "The cat has a phobia.  She won't use the cat-flap" (mouthed by the Chief Constable's wife under relentless cross-examination.)


The script-writers for the Midsomer soap are really getting into their stride.  They have realised that Barnaby will never progress in the police service until something is done about his daughter Cully, named after a 16th kitchen-cleaning servant and a failure at everything she tries, except perhaps getting stuck down potholes, and who has now disappeared, thank the Lord, but next in line will have to be the dimwit he married who,  on the evidence of tonight's drama, has difficulty knowing which way up to hold her fork at dinner.  And when your husband is mixing with the nobs, the least you can do is learn how to balance a pea on the back of your fork in case you are ever required to deal with one of your Chief Constable's balls.

Kate McGarrigle, d 18 January 2010

The Knott End Folly

Early in 2007 plans were approved for what Wyre Borough Council’s planning officer described as an ‘iconic development’ of 34 flats, oops, sorry, apartments, and offices on a site previously the bowling green belonging to the Bourne Arms, at the point where the River Wyre meets Morecambe Bay in Knott End-on-Sea.  


Now Wyre BC lives in Poulton, on the other side of the river, so it knew it wouldn’t have to look at this 'iconic development' every day as Knott End residents would, and it therefore had no qualms about approving a plan which nobody at all in Knott End wanted and which the local town council had strongly opposed.  It thought, with that superior wisdom which falleth from heaven on all planners and planning committee members on the day they qualify or get elected, that  the 'iconic' three or four-storey structure – which would have towered above the historic Bourne Arms next door as well as new bungalows across the road – would look very nice indeed from Fleetwood over the river and persuade coachloads of Glaswegian bargain-hunters to buy another bag of chips while goggling at it, thus bringing in much-needed revenue.







And in due course the bowling green went and building began...


In a couple of months the builders went out of business, having failed to notice in time that their contractual obligation to strengthen and maintain their bit of the sea wall was going to cost them an arm and about fifty-seven legs.


Somebody else (it is rumoured) took over – and went bust in their turn, and nothing has happened now for well over a year.


It’s grey and drizzling this morning, so I thought I’d just stroll round and see if this 'iconic development' is still there.  


Unfortunately it is.

Virus hoaxes and round robins

There are two types of e-mail I will not accept any more, and people (sadly, mostly silly women) who send them to me are going to have their e-mail addresses blocked, because these wretched e-mails are just as pernicious time-wasters as the phone-call pillocks who ring you from somewhere far away to tell you you have won a minor planet in Alpha Centauri if you change your telephone service supplier.

The first is the virus hoax.  Computer babies believe them, and pass them on to their entire address book in a  panic.  These hoaxes always say that your entire C: drive is going to be wiped if you open an e-mail with such-and-such a name.  Good friendships have been lost this way.  Write back politely to people who pass on this rubbish, explain why it's rubbish, and persuade them to send your note back up the chain. Tell them to Google a couple of keywords before passing on a panic, for it could save a lot of friendships.

The second is the jokey stuff, or the save-the-earth stuff, or the premature babies stuff.  These girly messages which tug at your heartstrings and say "pass on to everyone in your address book" are as bad as viruses because they proliferate exponentially, wasting bandwidth, clogging up the Internet and costing people time and money.  Passing them on will also lose you friends (and get you blocked), because your sentimental attachment to a cause could be a cause that is somebody else's shibboleth, and people don't like you to assume that they think like you you do when privately they think you're a complete twat.

So next time you are persuaded to pass on a "tell all your friends" message, ask yourself "will I have any friends left if I do?" - and don't do it.

And get Net-wise. Talk, for example, to a child.