Tag Archives: The Apprentice

Quercus – TV Critic

7 Replies

Things are getting better. I didn’t take any painkillers last night and my hand didn’t hurt overnight. It was also usable this morning. Unfortunately all my other joints were stiffer than usual and getting dressed took a while longer than I would hve liked. That’s the trouble with painkillers, you can come to rely on them. I will just hve to get used to life without chemical assistance.

I watched The Marlow Murder Club this week – a good two part mystery set in the Buckingham town of Marlow. It was very enjoyable – good cast, good characters, reasonable plot, though it did rather depend on a well-worn plot device (which I won’t reveal). I spotted it a little way into the second episode and was able to have a decent go at unravelling it. Do not believe the review behind the link when it says the ending comes as a “genuine surprise” – it doesn’t.

Bear with tools

It’s by the writer who created  Death in Paradise. That annoyed me this week by having a solution that depended on (a) a talking parrot and (b) a solution that depended on you spotting that one item was missing. I felt we didn’t get much of a chance to solve it. I also think that, in line with all the rules/guidelines relating to mysterious orientals, identical twins and secret passages, talking parrots should be banned.

This is the second week where we have avoided The Apprentice, and have enjoyed ourselves much more as a result. The formula is old and dull now, the apprentices are dreadful, Karen and Tim are poor replacements for Nick and Margaret and somebody appears to have told Alan Sugar that he is funny. He isn’t.

Bear in the Garden

Late . . .

11 Replies

I did it again. Approaching midnight and . . . I fell asleep and woke at just after 1.00. I just made sandwiches and it’s 1.27. Is this a good time to write? No. Am I going to anyway? Yes, of course I am.

Having bad habits and ignoring my health are two of my main activities. This is stupid, as it’s not really as if I enjoy siting here struggling. The ideas I had eight hours ago have deserted me and all I have left is an echoing void  between my ears.

The Apprentice is over for another year and Lord Sugar has informed the country that if the BBC ever replaces him on the programme it will be the death of it because no other entrepreneur will be able to replace him.  I think he’s wrong. The programme is currently drifting and looks tired as his scriptwriters struggle to put witty remarks into his mouth, and a crowd of detestable candidates all tell us how good they are.

Tonight’s final was won by an objectionable candidate who defeated an equally objectionable, but slightly less competent candidate. It was like a rerun of my favourite episode of “Which Disease Would You Like?”, the Typhoid v Typhus episode to be precise. To be fair, they could be lovely people, but the format of the show encourages people to be excruciatingly awful.

We stopped watching it years ago but seemed to drift back into it. It’s a decision I regret, but at least it gave me the subject for a post.

Day 20

16 Replies

I sat down with a cup of tea, fell asleep in a draught and woke up an hour later fee,ling distinctly lazy. So I shelved the plans for a healthy vegetarian meal and ordered pizza. That’s twice this year already. It will last for three meals but it’s not the sort of diet I would like to admit to.

Whilst eating pizza I watched The Apprentice, but they seem to be running out of idiots with character/ All they have now is commonplace idiots, and they aren’t very interesting. They have also got rid of all the decent assistants and gone the “no character” route again. Karren Brady actually seems to be getting more boring as time goes on and I don’t know who the other one is. So far I find him virtually indistinguishable from the apprentices.

We are trying a new method at work, loading more on eBay and using less description. It seems to work for some of the big sellers. Most of the stuff we sell doesn’t need  much additional information and even people still ask us about things even though all the information is there. As each email represents time wasted, and therefore money wasted, We might get a few more queries if we cut down on the information we give, but we will be saving time on writing the sales. It will be an interesting exercise.

We’ve exchanged a string of emails with someone today already. It’s not about details, it’s about unrealistic offers. He’s made several offers on something, the changed to making unrealistic offers on something else. We don’t mind doing a deal but we need to cover the costs of running a shop. Some people can’t see this.

We have stopped replying to him.

Sometimes, despite the doctrine that “the customer is always right” you have to put an end to things.

The top picture is a group of pre-decimal halfpennies. There were 480 of them to a £1. They are about the same size as  modern 2p – where there are only 50 to a £1.  That is one way that decimalisation has been an improvement.

The bottom picture is a propaganda Iron Cross from 1914 – highlighting the destruction of Belgian cities, raising the martial ardour of the British and raising funds for charity. When the price rose above £5 I stopped buying them. We sold this one for £40. If only I’d kept buying them . . .

British made propaganda Iron Cross 1914

 

 

Book Review – My Alphabet: A Life from A to Z by Nick Hewer

10 Replies
  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (6 Sept. 2018)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1471167062
  • ISBN-13: 978-1471167065

If you are aware of Nick Hewer you probably know him from either The Apprentice or Countdown. If you aren’t from the UK you probably don’t know him at all.

I saw the book last Thursday when browsing in “The Works” whilst waiting to meet my sister for lunch. It was a perfect combination of interesting and cheap.

Cut into 26 chapters, each one themed around a letter of the alphabet (to emphasise his work on Countdown, I suppose), it builds into an interesting story of his life, though always with the feeling that he was holding quite a lot back. This isn’t really a problem if you are reading for entertainment, but could be a problem if you were expecting a detailed and structured autobiography.

He’s been to a Jesuit boarding school, run a successful PR business, been on TV, lived in France and driven from France to Mongolia in a Renault 4. In answer to your questions – for charity, and no, I don’t know why he used a Renault 4 either.

So, as an entertaining read, for £3, it can’t be beaten. If you want an insightful biography, or it’s full price (£20), I would advise saving your money.

A Quick Post (Again)

31 Replies

Sorry, I’ve been neglecting my reading quite shamefully over the last few months. I do feel bad about it, and will try to visit everyone over the next week or two.

I’m also sorry that I’ve been neglecting the blog and have become very ill-disciplined about it. I will try to do better. The truth is that with winter approaching and a few decent things on TV, I have been watching more TV and doing less writing than I should be doing. I also thought that I ought to spend some time with Julia as I’ve been neglecting her too. I’m not sure she appreciates this – she mostly tells me off for talking instead of watching the TV.

It’s true, I do talk a lot whilst watching TV, but if I didn’t how would I communicate my views that politicians are idiots and most of the writers of TV programmes aren’t smart enough to be politicians?

I’d have to bottle it up and that would cause stress. That would be a bad thing because stress is a killer.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.” as Thoreau is often, inaccurately, said to have said.  Be that as it may, I prefer the inaccurate quote. I may go to the grave with a song still in me, but I won’t be going to the grave with any unsaid criticisms of politicians or scriptwriters.

As for the pressing matters of the day – my camera is wearing out, my computer at work (despite the presence of things my home computer lacks) has no card reader, my car insurance company is trying to raise my premium by 25% from an already overpriced base (and using weasel words to do it, despite their bulldog logo) and it’s Julia’s birthday next week and I haven’t a clue what to buy her.

Even if I did, I would still have the problem of a Christmas present. I hate this time of year. I’m tempted to wrap up my car insurance policy and tell her I’ve bought her a year’s worth of taxi service, but as I already provide that she probably won’t think much of it as a present.

As a further apology, sorry this is a short post but I’m off to watch Lord Sugar abuse another bunch of idiots on The Apprentice.

This confirms all I’ve ever thought about Sugar, the honours system, Karen Brady, reality TV and the sort of idiots who go on reality TV.

They are a complete bunch of something Julia would tell me off for saying if I wrote it here.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Tomorrow’s Breakfast – Overnight Oats

Julia has been very organised today and has already make overnight oats for breakfast. Because it’s going to be near freezing overnight and cold porridge, straight from the fridge, is just what you need on a winter morning.

I would try the slow cooker, but last time I tried cooking as we slept I woke up in a panic, thinking the house was on fire.

27 Replies

I went to Leeds today. It rained. And to make things more depressing I trusted the satnav, which never ends well. If I ever enter Mastermind my specialist subject could well be “Being lost on the Ring Road in Leeds”.

I’m home now and watching The Apprentice. It gives me no hope for the future. If I was the producer I would rewrite it as a horror movie and  kill one every week in a horrible, ironic manner. The one selected from tonight’s show, to make and sell burgers, would be in serious trouble if I had access to an industrial-sized mincer.

To be honest, if I was in charge I’d feed the lot of them through it, including Lord Sugar and Baroness Brady. I give them their full titles because I know, from reading his book, that he considers it important, even if most of us find the current honours system a bit of an embarrassment.

Fair play to him though, if you excel in your field you deserve an honour. Not quite sure what field the Amstrad email phone was a leader in, but the principle is sound.

I like Claude Littner, I’d let him have his own series. Well, with my plan for the rest of the cast you’d have quite a few weeks to fill in.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After leaving Leeds we went to Skipton and visited a farm shop. We bought rhubarb coulis, samphire, marmalade with orange and chilli and a big steak pie. I will try to take pictures tomorrow if I have time after eating. It’s a big pie and will take some shifting.

Today’s photos were snatched during a dry few minutes. Sorry there are no better ones.

Thoughts about renewable energy

24 Replies

I watched The Apprentice last night.

At one time I used to watch in the hope that I might learn something about business. I’ve not learned anything I can use, though I do now know that every year proves there is a seemingly endless supply of idiots.

If I can find a way of converting idiots into electricity I may have found the next big thing in renewable energy.

Talking of which, we drove past another solar farm today.  It seems like every time we drive north from Nottingham we find another new field of black panels. Land use has changed considerably over the last ten years in North Nottinghamshire – first we had willow, then we had miscanthus. Currently we seem to have a small forest of wind turbines springing up and the latest fashion seems to be to cover acres in photovoltaic cells.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Solar farm in north Nottinghamshire

When I see that I feel more comfortable about using electricity, but then start to worry that we won’t need it, because if we cover the land to generate electricity there will be no food to cook.

I’m a bit worried about food, after listening to a radio programme tonight. In order to halt global warming we need to scale back on meat production (mainly on account of the methane produced by cows) and would, they calculate, only have 19 grams of meat a day. That’s 133g a week, about the weight of two moderate burgers.

In the Second World War the bacon and ham ration ranged between 113 and 227 grams. However, there was also a meat ration, controlled by price – between 1 shilling and 1 shilling and two pence (5 – 6 pence in modern terms). I’m struggling to find a comparison of prices – one I found suggests that could be about £1.50. It’s not a lot, but compared to 19 grams a day it’s a positive feast.

To add to the complexity of looking into the future it also seems that grass fed beef (as generally reared in the UK) is worse for the environment than intensively raised beef fed on maize and soya (as raised in USA). It’s not about the method or the food, it’s about the fact that grass fed beef takes longer to grow to full weight, and thus spends more time emitting methane.

Now, methane is the main component of natural gas, so is it just me, or are other people thinking that some sort of gas-collecting nappy on a cow might be an alternative to fracking? Ah, just me…

That’s not the end to it of course, there’s also milk to consider. If they were telling the truth (and I fear they are) we will only have enough milk for four cups of tea a day.

Four cups of tea a day?

I could see myself as a vegetarian, but I don’t see myself cutting down to four cups a day.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Under threat – my cup of tea

 

 

 

 

 

 

.