Rathbone's Ramblin'

[Epykat]

[rathbone]

I was sitting in the pub with a Rizla paper stuck to my forehead. Because there was a ladies darts match on, Neil and I had to abandon our usual table and were sitting with the three vicars.

"Am I human?", I asked.

The guy with the cropped hair and the baseball jacket with the large 82 on it said I obviously hadn't looked in the mirror today, and everybody laughed.

I hesitated to ask if I was male. Because the darts match was blocking the entrance to the men's toilets, everyone had to use the ladies loo and I'd already been twice.

"Real or fiction?"
"Oh, definitely fiction", said Father Richard.
Father Graham looked dubious and the Reverend Graham looked as if he resented this invasion of the holy corner. The three vicars regularly drink together. Father Graham is young, bouncy and red-headed. He's the priest at St Mary Magdalene and knows all about the Da Vinci Code. The Reverend Graham is minister at the Free Church and tends to be grumpy. Father Richard is a thespian, leads the local amateur dramatics and occasionally gets bit parts in "movies". (Recently he's been in Gangs of New York and Saving Private Ryan.) His parishioners call him Father Lovie.

Father Graham confirmed that I was a quadruped, but the Reverend said I wasn't a horse. Neil confirmed I was a dog.

"Am I the Hound of the Baskervilles?"

"Yeah, a bleedin' horror", said No. 82 to further laughter.

No, I wasn't the Hound of the Baskervilles.
I quickly established that I wasn't a literary character, wasn't live action and was a cartoon character.

"Am I Deputy Dawg?" No.
"Am I Mutly?" No.

"You're on Sky", No. 82 said helpfully. "You've got a mini-me."

"Look", I said, 'Do you want to join in?"

"Okay", he said, coming over and joining us at the table.

"Then I must be Scooby-Do", I said, triumphantly, reached for the Rizla, wrote Torvill and Dean on the next sheet and stuck it on No. 82's forehead. Let's see how he likes being bisexual.

[arachnid]

[rathbone]

[Epykat]

[arachnid]

[rathbone]

[arachnid]

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

There was hardly time for anything else this week, what with this Radio Free Porty malarkey.

First there was the 'read us a story' idea. You've got Liz, Dave and Jimjam to thank for that. "What could be less in danger of infringing copyright than reading your own stuff", they said. "But it's a load of old cobblers", I replied. "No it's not", they insisted, so now you have it on the airwaves.

My apologies to those of you who have been listening in. I've never tried recording like this before and the editing leaves a bit to be desired. The elder Rathbonette says that I need to loosen up as well: I sound too much like an old vicar on Late Call. I need to be more like Desmond Carrington.

The first take was going along quite nicely and then a car alarm went off in the street outside, so I had to abort that. The second one was interrupted by the phone. The third by the gas man coming to the door and the fourth by Mrs. R. flushing the loo. I had just started on the fifth when the central heating switched itself on and the noise from the boiler firing up registered on the screen. So what you have is the sixth go. No wonder I need to loosen up.

The silly little jingle on the intro was made by taking random loops out of Garageband and overlaying them. (I chose them by using the numbers of the day, month and year of my birthday. I thought it would be a total mess, but it's only a little mess.)

Now that the thing is up and running, the same Liz, Dave and Jimjam have asked if I could post a little synopsis of what each episode is about, because they haven't yet been able to catch a full broadcast. (They always keep coming in in the middle) So just for them there is now a synopsis thread on the Radio Free Porty site.

Then came hunting down new music.

Thank you, the Copyright Police!! I knew there was a positive side to all of this. I've had a great time this week listening to all sorts of things I would never have heard if I'd stuck to the mainline sources.

Just to name two:

Catholicplanet.com offers christiam mp3 downloads (from down here, not up there.) The Catholic Jukebox is a gas.

You Know Sean is also worth hunting down. Anyone that can produce songs with titles like: Bangladeshi Ladies' Deaf Club; Gimme Gimme Gimme Some Peace After Midnight and Keith You Need To Wash Now is definitely worth a listen. To judge from your accent, Sean, you're from around the Lothian area somewhere. If you're out there, come on, favour us with a set!

You can get carried away hunting for stuff.

www.redferret.net offers "1 Million free and legal music tracks, and it probably isn't kidding.

Eric Brown on www.kittyspit.net has a great site, with lots of obscure categories.

musik.agula.org is a weird and wonderful italian site catering for artists who want to have free distribution of their work. They think that there are enough people out there who want their music to be accessible to the widest audience possible without artistically limiting how their creations are spread around. They do a nifty little line in football songs.

www.archive.org is an on-line library of live recordings available for royalty free, no-cost, public downloads. They only host material by artists who like the idea of non commercial distribution of their material.

Legal Torrents.com is a collection of Creative Commons licensed, leagally downloadable, freely distributed, creator approved Jazz, House, Funk, Techno and Electronic music.

Which is where I came across this:

This little mark included in a website indicates that the music is freely available. Other Radio Free Porty DJs take note. It makes hunting for stuff so much easier. It's called the Creative Commons

The outcome of all that is Cajun Corner, a collection of Cajun and Zydeco music which will soon be winging its way to Dada. As far as I am aware, everything on it is either Creative Commons, or specifically stated to be copyright free.

I'll end with a few quotes from some of the artists on Cajun Corner:
The Yard Dogs: " The internet has brought the music to the people!"
Chardoe: "I'd hate to sell out to The Man."
Alan Kerley: "Availability is awesome."
Bob Nation: "Frankly, I wouldn't sign a record contract. I do not play at a level that would justify that action."
Son Setz: "I probably wouldn't sign with a record company. I'll take my chances in the street, thank you."
Chairs: "The internet has taken power away from the music industry and people no longer have to put up with the options set by large record companies. We just make music for our friends."

Thanks again to the Copyright Police. You've broken my dependence on the major labels. I'm having a whale of a time listening to the music made by my friends.

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

We've got some french, cast iron saucepans and frying pans. They've got wooden handles which screw on to the actual pan by means of a metal rod which runs the length of the handle. Good for stopping your hands getting burned, but they do have a tendency to work loose

The frying pan is brilliant for cooking mushrooms, which is what I was busy doing during the week. I had just got them to that slightly slimy stage where they glide right off the pan and on to the plate, so I lifted the frying pan off the stove and started to turn round towards the worktop. Unfortunately, the frying pan also decided to turn round. The whole top of the pan rotated on the handle, allowing the mushrooms to glide off onto my right foot, causing me to drop the pan. On its way down, it knocked the handle off the imitation drawer front on the sink unit.

The floor was quite clean and most of the mushrooms were saveable after a quick run under the tap and a wee re-fry. Regretably the same could not be said for the drawer handle.

It was a nice wee mahogany and brass number. Easy enough, I thought as I tucked in to the mushrooms; I'll take a wander down to B&Q at lunchtime and pick up a replacement.

I haven't been to our local B&Q for a few months. It's had a refurbishment over the summer. They've put in a mezzanine with all the kitchen & bathroom things now upstairs. Everything has been moved around. It took me ages to find the bit with all of the drawer and cupboard handles. There were round ones, square ones, long ones, short ones, ones with twirly bits and ones that looked like rugby balls. There were no mahogany ones with brass bits.

I wandered back to the house and got in the car. Off to Homebase in the next town up. Nothing doing. Off to Wilkes. Nope. MFI? fat chance.

An hour or so later I gave up and returned home. On to the Internet. Do NOT Google "Knobs".There were round ones, square ones, long ones, short ones, ones with twirly bits and ones that looked like rugby balls, but none of them were designed to be attached to kitchen units.

I finally decided that the only thing was to replace the handles with new ones, so I counted them. Thirty Four!!!! How many cupboards and drawers do we have? Rechecking and finding that there were really thirty four, I was off again to B&Q and spent this week's emergency allowance on some fairly basic turned wood handles that would not look too out of place on the Units.

By this time I was getting worried that Mrs. R. would get back before I'd replaced them. That gave me about an hour or so. Two hours and a long explanation later I was still trying to work out how to get the front of the sink unit off without having to unplumb the sink and washing machine.

Four hours later I had finished fixing the new handles.

I now have thirty three rather nice mahogany and brass kitchen cupboard handles and a greasy stain on the right leg of my chinos.
The former are on pBay being offered to a good home, while the latter are sitting in the washing basket awaiting the next accident.

[foxy]

[rathbone]

"Timbuktu's off."

Typical: he had to wait until the second pint to tell me. Jimjam has been my best mate for nearly forty years now and he still does that. You'd think that by now he could just come straight out with it.

And in the Champions as well. It made me wonder why we always meet in the Champions. Granted it's a great wee pub, but the choice of beers is pretty limited. If you don't like Sam Smith's, then you've had it. It's the kind of pub that came straight out of Dickens -- any minute now Nancy and Fagen's urchins will come dancing through singing Consider Yourself Well In, Consider Yourself Part of the Furniture. Surprising, then, that it was built in 1988. We seem to have an affinity for ersatz pubs. Before the Champions it was the Frigate, which was everything the name implied -- All figure heads and rigging and a hearty yo ho ho.

Jimjam is a man of projects, and when he has a project he usually carries it through. Diving off the Pont Du Gard, no problem. Snorkling off the Great Barrier Reef, easy peasy. Hiring a Harley and riding down from Seattle to San Fran -- a doddle.

So when he suggested going to Timbuktu, it was taken as read that he'd pull it off. And of course, because my injections were fully up to date after Kenya, then I would be expected to tag along.

The intention was to make the Festival Au Desert next January.

To get there we'd have to fly to the capital city of Mali, Bamako. That is about 1000 km southwest of the festival. The flight arrives at around 3 am and the airport is 10 or 20 km from the city. To get from Bamako to the festival we would have to ride in a vehicle that is hired with driver. (I have horror stories of that sort from Kenya) The ride from Bamako takes about 2 days. The first day is along the national highway which is paved. Around the middle of the second day we would reach Douentza and turn off the main highway onto a rough washboard road which the military built about 5 years ago. Towards the end of the second day we would cross the Niger river on a ferry. The landing point is about 10km south of Timbuktu. The festival site is located in the back of beyond, about 70 km from Timbuktu. The ride there is rough, there is no actual road, the vehicles just head out across the desert

During the day there are camel races and traditional music and dancing. There is a market area with stalls. The tents that are provided are of loosely woven cloth, similar to burlap, held up by a wooden pole in the middle and secured to the ground with stakes. There is no floor. At night the wind picks up and the sand blows in as a fine dust through the loose weave of the tent walls. By morning you are covered in a layer of dust. Food is served 3 times a day in a covered restaurant where everyone sits on woven mats to eat. The washrooms are disgusting. Peeing in the desert is definitely the preferred option.

The mainstage music takes place in the evening. The artists are mostly groups from Mali and neighbouring countries. The music starts at around 8 and ends after midnight. Everyone stands on a sand dune in front of the stage.

So you can imagine my disappointment to be told "Timbuktu's off."

The reason being that the only scheduled flights to Bamako mean that we would have to arrive a week before the festival started and leave a fortnight after it had finished. That's a lot of hanging around the desert looking for an oasis, and quite an excuse for time off work.

But...... and Jimjam always has a but..... his other big project is fixing up his Airstream.



He bought this Airstream about three years ago and has been ‘fixing it up' ever since. He promises that it will be finished by January 2007 and then we can head across the Sahara in it from Morocco.

I keep my fingers crossed.

[Epykat]

I'm beginning to think that you're beginning to think you're Ewan McGregor (with clothes on.........obviously)

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

[foxy]

[Epykat]

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

[Epykat]

[mr magnolia]

[rathbone]

[foxy]

[Epykat]

[Poppy]

[Pal of Porty]

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

[Dadaist]

[rathbone]

Happy New Year
and better late than never, here's the promised photograph of next door's festive lights:

[Dadaist]

[foxy]