All over the house » Archive » Fancy dress

One of my favourite strips so far. Talk like a pirate? "You want copied DVD?"

All over the house » Archive » Fancy dress

Talking like a pirate in a comic.

Today is international talk like a pirate day. I don't think it is an officially sanctioned event though. Nonetheless, today I shall mostly be talking like Captain L. Jackson: "Yaaaarg motherf****r! Get in the motherf***ing boat! What are these snakes doing on ma damn boat!" It has, however, led to much debate over the years at Jenny towers as to how modern pirates might talk. Actual concensus seems to be that a modern day pirate might be dressed somewhat differently and say something along the lines of "you want a copied DVD? Nice price!" Monday's 'All Over the house' comic strip explores this a little; it's an idea we've had floating around for a while.

We've been doing a lot of comics of late because 'All over the house went five days a week from three a few weeks ago. It has seen the viewing figures nearly quadruple, which is good. The golden rule - so I'm told - of setting a comic scedule is make sure that you don't miss any updates. We had a buffer, but Zoë's assignment earlier this week used that up. It wasn't a big buffer after all. So today she will be drawing all five of next week's comics.

State of the Jenny today.

I got a telephone call this afternoon to let me know that more pre orders have arrived. I'm keeping a tally now though it is still daunting how many are still to go to the target of 1,000 sales. Every little helps. I also hope that these aren't orders that will come back making use of the sale-or-return facility. It's still a very nervous time for an author, and for the people who've put up the money to get this behemoth on the road.

I've been distracting myself when I can by doing a new draft of an old book. I always liked the story that was in 'The Atlantic collection'; in some ways it is my favourite book. The only trouble is that I felt a little embaressed about the standards of the writing given how much I've moved on over the last couple of years. So I'm doing a new edition. Not because anyone's asked me to, but because I want to. Some parts aren't needing much, but others are getting rewritten.

This week's other distraction has been Bosun #3 out in the back garden. When I set out to buy one of these I tried my hardest to get one with a sound transom, as a rotton core is the Achilles heel of this type of boat. Unfortunately, what I got was a boat that had had transom rot bodged and hurriedly hidden. It isn't a disaster, but I've slowly been putting what I've found right. I took the opertunity to strip the horrible household emulsion off the transom and sand and repait with proper yachting enamel after effecting a few repairs. One of the first things I noticed when the paint was coming off were some red letters on the original fibreglass surface. On closer examination they spelt out: "The New BOSUN" in stencilled red letters. This confirms what I already knew that this had been a demonstrator for the builders (along with around fifteen other boats) and was used to secure a contract for several thousand of the craft over the years with the Royal Navy and other organisation.

Right now I'm listening to the song 'Happiness' by Goldfrapp. I'm hoping that the Karma is justified after learning of the pre orders. Fingers crossed for the future (and buy my book!)

The banking aftermath.

Some may have remembered the calamity that occured when a chas machine in North Wales ate my debit card without warning. Just for a little closure, HSBC got back to me apologising for the way I was treated, and placed an amount of cash into my account as a way of saying sorry. Apology accepted, and it makes me feel that I bank with a bank that isn't just a faceless hard-ass entity.

RBS, on the other hand, wrote to say that I had been given duff information by their telephone operative, but refused to apologise. They also claimed that their cash machine could not have crashed in the manner described, and the only way it would retain my card was if HSBC had requested it to. All-in-all the biggest sack of BS you can imagine.

Needless to say, I'm happy with my bank, but have simply been reappraised of all the reasons and then some that I closed my RBS account in 1999. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis.

The book comes ever closer to the shelves.

I've spent the last few days helping to mail out Advance Information sheets to branches of Foyles and Waterstones. It's hard work, not least because I've had to transcribe address from an excell spreadsheet into letters one at a time, print, then combine with the Advance sheets and hand address every envelope. There's over 300 branches of Waterstones alone, so that gives you an idea at how longwinded the process actually is. I've also submitted searchable listing information to Amazon and requested that they consider a Kindle edition of the book too.

It is mentally exhausting work. Meanwhile, discounting deals are still in the negotiating stage, so watch this space (or, more importantly, watch Waterstones and Amazon's spaces for discount deals to appear). More importantly, the first advance orders are trickling in. It's all good, even if it feels like a thankless task at this stage. Roll on the 2nd of October and the offial release!

Jenny and Zoë at the Weekend: 4 - Music and Manners

Meanwhile, back on the radio....

Jenny and Zoë at the Weekend: 4 - Music and Manners: "This week, Jenny and Zoë talk about manners, drunk people, employment and why the minimum wage is necessary, before doing a handbrake turn ..."

I got mugged in memory lane.

Last night I decided to sit in the lounge and have a listen to some of the 12" single section of my record collection. It's a big section, and a lot of it is stuff I used to use when mixing dance music. It's been a while, and it is probably quite telling that most of the 12" singles are from the period 1996-2000. What can I say - I was big on dance music at the time. Actually everyone knows that dance music attained perfection in the Autumn of 1999. Everything since has pretty much been a pale immitation, rehash or outright rip-off of something that went before.

Maybe it is just a sign of getting old? Wah! I don't want to be old!

There were quite a few white label promos from my time DJing and radio presenting. Positiva is a label that came up again and again. I found some of the singles that I used to use in my set when playing gigs, and it's strange to hear them unmixed after so many years. I have a recording on CD of one of the last events I played, and it is the mixed version of my set over an hour. The Gods of the turntables were shining that night, and I did very well even by my standards. Is it blowing my own trumpet too much to admit that I have occasionally listened to that mix CD over the last nine years?

The unmixed tunes sound, well, odd to say the least. On the set there was one mix that comprised crossfading between three records over the space of several minutes so that at no time were less than two records playing at the same time. To listen to those records unmixed makes them sound strangely empty when you are used to hearing the mix.

I don't think I could still beatmix. I wasn't that great at it even back in the day, but I got by. For the last five years my two turntables have lived in seperate rooms plugged to a standard stereo amplifier for the purpose of listening to music rather than mixing it. I used to like complex mixing of two tunes, making the most of synthy bits to create more layers to an existing track. Some of the mixes I experimented with were quite different - the James Bond theme from "From Russia with love" mixed into Radio 7 by David Holmes so that the two play over each other for several minutes was one I can remember. I used to love experimenting with old LPs bought secondhand to add samples and vocals to underground dance classics. A part of me wonders if I should dust off my old sound mixer, move the two turntables back together and spin some tunes for the old times. Another part of me warns that I am unlikely to sound as good as I remember sounding.

Does dance music still come on 12" vinyl these days? Probably not as I haven't seen any on this format for a few years. In case there's any youngsters reading: I used to have to beatmix all my records the old-fashioned analogue way by fading between two records, matching the beats using only an adjustment of the speed the turntables were spinning at and my own ear. I used to use computers only to record the line out from sound systems. Even then, there wasn't much an old K6 300Mhz could do except record a *.wav file and later spend hours chopping it to tracks and burning it out at the lightning speed of 2x write to a CDr.


I work for a living these days. Actually, scrub that - I work for myself from home. Living the dream.