» Shoplifting

Prog Rock Thievery
Sad, I know, but if you lost a couple of Rush cassettes sometime in the mid '80s after a young relative of yours used your house in Middlesbrough for a party ... I confess, 'twas me.
(Fri 11th Jan 2008, 20:04, More)

» Karma

A long time ago
In a galaxy far, far away (well, at school), we had a teacher called Mrs Knaggs. Knaggs by name, not *quite* Knaggs by nature - she had a well fierce reputation, and did indeed have many shouty moments, but if you were on her good side she'd happily regale you with tales of how she couldn't go on the pill because she'd had a thrombosis, so used a Cap instead, and how she fitted it by lifting her leg up the side of the bath.

So this one time, well after school had finished, we'd been at band practice or some such activity, and were having a lark running in the corridor on our way home. All smiles and schoolboy pranks as we ran towards the door ... and then, out of nowhere, comes Mrs. Knaggs. The loudest "Oi!" I've ever heard, and immediately both my calves cramp up in the most agonizing pain, dropping me to the floor, poleaxed. I didn't even hear the rest of the telling off it hurt so much. The second she stopped, so did the pain.

Witchcraft or Karma? You decide. Although I've long since left scholastic endeavours behind, I don't run in corridors any more.

Anyway, she eventually married the deputy head, changed her name and calmed down a bit. I sometimes wonder if he was ever privy to a glimpse of her insertion technique....

Length? About 20 yards before I get cramp.
(Fri 22nd Feb 2008, 18:34, More)

» Hotel Splendido

Dead dogs ...
There was the hotel in Egypt. We should have known it wasn't the "popular" place to go when the coach dropped us (and only us) off after visiting every other (very popular) hotel in the vicinity. They first put us directly above the kitchen, which opened at about 5 in the morning to lots of clattering and banging. The room they moved us to was quieter, but still had walls covered in squished mosquitoes. The pool was suspiciously green, and the bar frequented by strange, gay men from Liverpool, trying to pull the waiters. The hotel was a mile or so from the Pyramids, and the main desert road from Giza to Alexandria passed close by. The hotel sign on this road had the corpse of a dog huddled at its base.

None of this would have been *quite* so bad if it hadn't been our honeymoon.

Length? 16 years in October.
(Sun 20th Jan 2008, 17:35, More)

» Best Films Ever

Looks at DVD shelf ...
As Van the Man once said - "It ain't why why why why why why why it just is."

So these "just is" wonderful movies.

Withnail & I
Ivan the Terrible
Battleship Potemkin
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Ghostbusters
American History X
Southern Comfort
2001
A clockwork Orange
Sexy Beast
Apocalypse Now
Brazil
Sin City
King Kong (the original)
Lost in Translation
The Godfather (I, II but not III)
Any Miyazaki ...
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Nosferatu (not the Klaus Kinski remake)
Fitzcarraldo
(Thu 17th Jul 2008, 21:20, More)

» Phobias

I'm not afraid of heights...
...but I do get the serious colly-wobbles when I look up at very high things above my head. I'm fine and dandy when I'm up there, but standing on the ground staring up at them is just horrible. The Eiffel Tower is especially bad, as you can walk underneath the damn thing and gaze right up through the very workings of the metal monstrosity. Places like cathedrals have the same effect - "Ooh look at the lovely detailing on the ceiling" "Where? Oh f..... ".

Mrs Newell and I were thinking of having a trip to New York this year, a place not known for it's low-rise architecture.

And touching rough metal sets my teeth completely on edge. There's a film with Nicolas Cage in it where he has to use plastic cutlery, and David Caruso tortures him by making him eat off the proper steel stuff. Crap film but I know the feeling.

Oh, and wasps. But they're not so innocent. Guilty as sin in fact, the yellow and black bastards.

Not so much the length, but the height that's the troublesome thing ...
(Mon 14th Apr 2008, 18:30, More)