So here I am trawling through the non alcoholic beers and wondering why they all are so disappointing (apart from the obvious lack of active ingredient).
I am at a disadvantage straight away as I am more of an ale drinker, and most of what I have come across in our local generic supermarkets – and for that matter pubs – are lager based offerings. I think it is a shame as I would have though more hops and flavourings from ale based process might give something less insipid.
But then most of the non alcohol brands are continental brands so I should not expect anything else.
At least one thing has changed – there is a slight amount of choice in comparison to the old days. Historically, those of us of a certain age will only remember Kaliber – take a moment to enjoy Billy Connolly and a very large glass http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd1BW931bLw
Sounds good doesn’t it? You can drink as much as you like.
Well, no. First, it was not cheap enough (it was a premium product) to drink that much and secondly it tasted awful. There is something about the earlier non alcohol ‘beers’ that gave them a kind of horrid aftertaste (a bit like de-alcoholised wine, but that is another thing altogether).
Thankfully, there seems to be a few now that may not be anything special but at least have a cleaner taste – Becks Blue for instance which seems reasonably well distributed. But they are deeply unsatisfying and come in tiny little bottles. I mean, this is my second problem. After a couple of mouthfuls they are gone. A pint should last you at least half an hour, sipping and enjoying and otherwise there is no real point. And just because it is not alcohol based does not mean you should not be able to enjoy it slowly with your still alcohol drinking friends and family (my problem with the juice option – I drink them far too fast and sit looking at the empty glass while everyone else has hardly started).
So here are my solutions so far.
The old pint of iced water with flavouring thing… Well at least it is a long drink.
Friends I know do the old Soda and Lime and it is a good option; fresh lemon is good too. Pretend it has vodka in it or something. I find it quite funny that when I order it in my local that the other regulars assume I am on antibiotics. Better than if the Lovely Wife were to join me (she hasn’t) as they would probably assume a bun in the oven.
Then there is my old friend shandy – yes, the good old combination of some kind of beer with lemonade. I ‘m not cheating here by the away, I mean non alcohol beer plus lemonade. I have no idea why it took me so long to get to that one – it seems obvious and frankly, there is no difference as far as I can tell between a zero alcohol lager shandy and one made with a generic real lager.
So I’m off – I now have the solution for the long drink that feels like a pint but isn’t one. An old and obvious solution of course but those kinds are precisely those that are staring you in the face.
Mind you, it does make me burp a lot.
I will give an honourable mention for the Erdinger non-alcohol Weisbeer (purchased in that haven of the middle class that is Waitrose), which rather sweetly does not even call itself non or low alcohol beer but markets itself as an ‘isotonic drink’ – and, glory of glories – actually is rather nice. In fact, when Lent is over I might want to continue to drink this as an alternative to the standard fizzy drinks, if only to freak them out at work when they think that it has all become too much and I’m really drinking beer at my desk.
Has to be done, you know.
Which I think brings me to the thoughtful point (finally, yes there is one).
Too many of these products really are just attempts at alcohol replacement and not an attempt to produce a drink people might want to imbibe for its own sake and that is why. Inevitably, they are a disappointment.
That is a shame really as there is a lot of room out there for new, tasty and (kind of, at least in terms of vitamins etc) healthy drinks – something a bit different.
So I’m continuing to explore, and that is helping with the loss of the nice pint or two of beer I am looking forward to reintroducing – in a responsible way of course – in a few weeks. But I would also like to find things that are better for me that I could look forward too just as much as that nice gin and tonic. But then, I do set my sights a bit high.

I’m still possessed by the subject of anger this week.

OK, anger is a bit too strong and it the feeling is not aimed at anyone in particular. It is just aimed at things. Computer like things… Yes, it is time for my compulsory blog computer rant. But I have been observed recently to be showing the set jaw and unblinking ferocious stare that means I am suffering from G.M.T.I.S… Graham Mild Transient Irritation Syndrome.

Those people who know me better (poor things) probably would put this down to a ban on alcohol for Lent this year as an attempt to save the recycle men from back strain as they empty the bottles into the lorry (or some other such reason) but honestly I do not think this is the problem.

In fact while the Lovely Wife might say that I have not been excessively grumpy for me most of the last couple of weeks, I have been relatively relaxed about the whole thing. In fact I have taken it up as an opportunity to sample the delights of non alcohol beer (the old less than 0.5% alcohol category) in the attempt to find one that is not completely disgusting. I may have found one, but more of that next week.

No, the subject of my wrath has been that old classic – Information Technology. More precisely, why the damn things never work in a straightforward manner and seem mostly set up to be user unfriendly, and to obstruct any kind of simple action. It does not seem to matter either while it is ignoramus here (that I freely admit to be) trying to do something at home on my own pathetic variety of out of date appliances, or the massive corporation I work for, the least effective part of the system seems to be, well, the system.

Oh, how my heart sinks when we have some new improved system rolled out at work. After twenty years of this I know what is coming. It is not going to work properly for at least three to six months at which point it just about reaches the level of functionality the previous system had achieved. I wonder whether I should just book the time with Support in advance just to save time in sorting out the numerous bugs. The latest innovation to make our lives easier is an improvement to our expense reporting system – it doesn’t work of course. It is inflexible, irrational (it does not seem to understand that currencies are different) and only runs on an obsolete software platform.

Wonderful, the future is here and it looks like everything else did five years ago.

Although when it comes to obsolete platforms, I seem to have been competing here at home and definitely have the edge I feel. The death of my home PC last November has had me scrabbling around with what I had available or could upgrade to avoid a major new expenditure. Surface my ancient Apple iBook from the IT graveyard under the wardrobe. Surely a ten year old machine could not be my saviour? After all, the only thing I want from it is to run iTunes to manage my various branded mp3 devices…

Well, it started off well enough. I managed to fit extra memory (thanks to very helpful YouTube videos) and an airport card; and it worked. I was very happy. Then the problems began as I realised my foolish naivety. Of course I couldn’t run a very advanced version of OS X; and therefore I cannot use higher than version 9 of ITunes; which means the effort was pointless as all of my devices need version 10 or higher. There’s no way out; upgrade or die.

Yes, I know I would have researched it better, so the waste of time (and minimal expense) was entirely my fault but I was just swept up in the euphoria of getting something to work, albeit pointlessly as it turned out. It is even more pointless now, as the charger has decided to fail – incidentally my main problem with anything Apple, the charging leads, powers supplies and batteries are just rubbish – so the whole point is a moot one, and I am not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse.

But honestly, I think that is the last time I start playing with technology in a foolish belief I can achieve anything. So from now on I will just have to cope and save up for the inevitable new device.

Unfortunately I cannot do anything about the work systems other than try not to be abrupt with my support people and realise that they hate the ‘upgrades’ even more than I do.

After all that rain it rather lovely to have the spring flowers out – the latest being the Magnolia trees. I feel sorry for the Magnolia. Unfortunately, the name now just seems to conjure up the bland monotony of the paint job just before you sell a house because it is unlikely to cause offence. Which is a bit strange, as it is a spectacular tree at this time of year with its huge, ephemeral flowers – beautiful for the moments they are open until the first decent rain shower or strong wind, at which point the show is over and scattered on the ground.

But while they last, just like the blossom and the daffodils you would think the magnolia would contribute to a smile inducing epidemic of goodwill.

Well, I did see a lot of that – and related over enthusiastic wearing of summer clothes, the teenage hot pants outside Tesco on Sunday being particularly brave – and/or picnics etc at the weekend. But I also seemed to run into a lot of anger, and it made me wonder about the nature of that anger and what, if anything it sought to achieve.

Two incidents in particular stuck in my mind. First was a young man who was having a tantrum. Sorry if that sounds a bit condescending, but there is no other way of describing a young adult jumping up to take some sort of frustration out on a ‘For Sale’ board as he passed it with a fist, almost knocking it over. It was too early in the day to be sports related so I’m guessing relationship issues, but hey, we all have those. As it happens there was an older man parked nearby in a car, and he clearly said something because the next thing I knew the young man was over there, unleashing angry abuse at the car’s occupant. I think he thought he was being scary or something. I just wanted to laugh because the poor lad’s mouth, flipping up and down in the urge to get all the anger out so quickly just made him look like Beaker from the Muppets.

Eventually he gave up and stomped off, leaving some sad head shaking in his wake both from both myself and the car occupant (who had remained calm throughout the torrent).

Then there was yesterday morning, where I saw a cyclist slapping on the window and shouting at the driver of a car while we all stood stationary at a roundabout. Now, I have a lot of sympathy for cyclists (many of my friends are enthusiastic ones) and a lot of car drivers simply don’t pay enough attention. But there is a line.

As it happens, I’ve seen this cyclist a lot on this route, and he cycles aggressively and he had been weaving his way through the traffic a moment before without any really need I could see, but that is not the point.

In fact, I don’t see what the point was.

As with my check shirted Muppet two days earlier, nothing was achieved from this outpouring of anger. Did it make him feel better? I doubt it. People talk about letting off steam but it is just an excuse – and anyway a boiler just builds up pressure again, the furnace is still burning after all.

Would shouting at the driver make him or her drive better? Again, I doubt it. It just makes them upset and mad in their turn, and they’ll take it out on their co workers, other road users and their family, spreading the hate.

So, where do we get this idea that we have the right to abuse another human being? In my opinion both of these cases were abuse, nothing more and nothing less. If that cyclist had been acting the way I saw him act with say his wife, or child, it would have been considered outrageous and most people would be calling for the police. But just because it is a complete stranger it is somehow OK to lay into them.

I am not sure it can be OK, in any circumstance, if we ever want to profess to belonging to a civilised society. That kind of observed anger is an animal response and it just begets anger and retaliation. It never leads to anything positive.

Anger can be positive as it provides drive and determination and if channelled appropriately. I can be angry at Government policy, or corporate activity I don’t agree with, or the actions of an individual stupid driver, but I should channel that anger into informed peaceful protest, action at the ballot box or purchase choice or a quiet word of admonition. My mother always used to get the job of taking stuff back to a shop or ‘complaining’ in any context because she never raised her voice and frankly charmed them into not only refunding but also often ended up with some kind of bonus on the side because people were so grateful she  was so graceful about it.

Slamming on a window and shouting abuse at the entrance to a roundabout is, in my opinion, self destructive and stupid. Calmly pointing out to someone they almost killed you is much more likely to get a shocked response which just might stick in the idiot driver’s head and make them remember to be more careful next time. I mean it.

I need to remember to do it myself. Because the red faced blustering and ineffectual monster I turn into when I lose my temper really has no place in the world. I need to act with a lot less anger and self righteousness and a lot more grace.

The Lovely Wife and I have been catching up with some of the DVDs people have generously bought for us for either Christmas or my recent birthday, and although it means some of the stuff we have recorded off the TV is worryingly building up in backlog on our hard disk recorder, we have been mainlining the BBC ‘The Human Planet’ from a few years back.

It was a series I just missed at the time but I am wondering how I managed to do that considering just how great it is and why everyone should watch it, if only to get a better perspective on what a way of life actually is and how wonderfully indomitable and adaptable we are as a species.

For anyone who has not seen it, the programmes are based around five or six ‘stories’ revolving around people who are living in the environment that the episode is featuring; e.g. desert, or grasslands. As with all of the BBC Life productions there is an element of dramatic staging, but a lot of that is through editing and John Hurt’s marvellous narration – another of those people you can listen to for ages without being bored. But no amount of editing can really detract from the stars of the show – the people featured and the diversity of their lives.

I confess I thought myself widely read, but I am amazed and stunned not to have heard about some of these groups of people and just how interesting their approach to life is, whether living in huge tree houses in the jungle, to hunting with eagles while on horseback or even walking calmly towards a group of fifteen hungry lions and intimidating them enough to push them – albeit briefly – off their kill. We have been impressed by the way us humans have been able to manage conditions that seem insurmountable.

I find it terribly reassuring – and provides some reinforcement for a personal view I’ve had for a long time – that humans are almost impossible to eradicate (short of destroying the actual planet to make way for an Interstellar bypass).

We are too adaptable and if a calamity does overcome most of us, some of our people – because they are all our people – will survive somewhere and build a community that will sustain. They will do this because our biology and intelligence provides the basic tool and all it then needs is focus. If you know that if you do not find water within a few days you are going to die, that pretty well focuses your mind and ingenuity on finding water. Everything else is secondary.

And someone will find a way to succeed, and the rest learn will learn (quickly, if they want to survive and flourish).

The other thing that strikes me with most of the stories is the humour that is present, no matter the adversity. That is another thing we all possess and another great gift for survival I think we often overlook. It binds us together, and from the interactions with the film crews it is clear that while culturally the groups are a long way from understanding each other a lot of humour does cross over very well. It provides a basis for acceptance.

From these interactions it is also clear how much the local people are in charge. They have to be – they are the experts, and the oh-so clever Westerners with their knowledge and equipment are very much in the hands of those who live this life that they are peeping into.

Now, let’s be clear that I’m not advocating living in tree house and it will be a while before BBQ spider turns up on my snack menu. But I do feel I have learned that the concept of focus is a good one. My life is far too complicated, built on a fragile structure of created concepts and technology which means I am terribly dependant on many people who I have actually have no relationship with to go about my daily business. I don’t think that is necessarily progress or entirely healthy.

Things can change and change quickly and we can change quickly too and move with the times. But like the warriors facing down the pride of lions we cannot do it on our own and hope to succeed.

*The Doctor, The Ark in Space (1977)

When you talk to your older relatives it is sometimes hard to picture them as children or teenagers. Like all of us they have misadventures they might have gotten up to in those early years – and in wilder times sometimes wilder adventures were possible.

As I watched my Nana get older and her memory of what happened just yesterday become increasingly transient, still a certain glitter in the eye started to appear.

As our memory of today sometimes begins to fade, the longer term memories of our formative years seems to come back into clarity, and many a giggle was induced by asking my Nana to talk about her earlier days.

That glitter look is one that says,’ as I’m telling you this, and I’m not an old woman sitting in a chair I can hardly get out of, but I’m my 16 year old self again, and I’m enjoying it.’

I tried to get that look from my Nana as much as possible over the last few years of her life, and she was always ready to oblige. Some aspects of her childhood were unlike mine or most other people I know – I had the advantage of a proper schooling and was not forced into work in my early teens, for example.

Other things were perhaps more consistent with perpetual experiences of that age; how, for example, do you bunk off work to spend the afternoon in the back row of the cinema with that handsome young sailor (who would in due course become my grandfather) without (1) losing your job at the hotel and (2) without your father finding out?

My Nana was up to it though. Cue giggles.

Her hard start to life helped create some interesting attitudes during wartime too. One of her favourite tales was as a teenager working as a maid at the Grand hotel near Newcastle Central Station during the war. One day she was cleaning at room at the hotel when a bomb went off nearby. Taking cover as glass from the windows saturated the room, she rose, unharmed but furious; she had just finished cleaning the room, and now there was all this cursed glass to clean up!

But her favourite story was about turnips, or rather a particular turnip.

Growing up in a large and poor family near Marsden in South Tyneside, you had to take what you could get. That included what came free to eat, including the blackberries that a lot of people ignore nowadays. But they were seriously worth grabbing, and one year when she was eight or nine my Nana was sent out on the mission to get as many as she could. Unfortunately for her, the kids from Sunderland a few miles down the coast had been let out of school earlier than her and had stripped the brambles bare by the time she was able to get to them.

Downhearted, my Nana started out for home, desperate that she had nothing to bring her family.

On the way home she passed a field of turnips. They were beautiful turnips, big and ready to harvest.

Surely this was the one and only opportunity she would have. Not as sweet and special as blackberries, but still…

So my Nana used her hands and dug up the biggest turnip she could carry and scarpered. She raced towards home with her prize, but it then started to rain heavily, and in a mix of both hiding her theft and, as she indicated to us, protecting her prize from the ensuing downpour, she took off her one and only coat and wrapped the root vegetable in it.

So she arrived home, soaked to the skin and with all her clothes covered in mud, proudly bearing a stolen turnip.

Of course she received a beating for the act; that’s just what happened at that time.

But my Nana always brushed that off (as she dabbed the tears of laughter away) because, as she explained, afterwards the family went onto eat the turnip anyway.

And then she would look at me with a twinkle in her eyes and grab my wrist with a tiny hand that still had a grip like iron. She would pull me towards her so she could whisper:

‘And do you know what?’ She would say,’ I still love turnip today!’

It is now a few weeks since my dear Nana passed away and it seemed a safe time for me to reflect on my relationship with her and share some of the things she taught me.

My Nana managed to make it to her early nineties and while she had faded in recent years, she always knew who we were and could be enticed to enjoy life a little even as the quality of it faded.

She had taken to hardly eating anything but could usually be enticed through treats she never could have had as a child – dates, strawberries and good fruit cake predominant among them. The last few years present requests has been for my Lovely wife to work the baking magic on cake, with extra glace cherries, because my Nana always liked those. My Nana had never been one for possessions, but a box of chocolate liqueur chocolates always seemed to meet the need at Christmas. That was interesting for me, as she hardly touched a drop of alcohol and always warned me off it, but providing it was wrapped in dodgy chocolate and sugar, all seemed to be fine.

All this sweet stuff would be would be washed down with a constant supply of tea. Nothing written about my Nana is complete without the mention of tea. I felt misty eyed this week when in clearing out our loft I came across several albums of PG Tips cards – in the days when opening a packet of the Chimpanzee sold tea (wince at the terribly inappropriate adverts, younger friends http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzEBLa3PPk ) that gave you one or two cards each box to go in your collectors album. I do not know how long they ran for – but I have a few starting with ‘Inventors and Inventions’, moving on through ‘Olympic Greats’ and of course ‘Wonders of Wildlife’.

The fact that most of these albums are almost full (and like most collecting schemes you often wondered if it was deliberately impossible to complete them so that is no mean feat) speaks to my Nana’s ability to consume tea (possibly egged on by an excited card collecting grandson).

Incidentally, I even had cause to use one of them to look up the inventor of Cats Eyes as part of a discussion with the lovely wife on the subject of incredibly simple but amazingly clever inventions.*

Going back to sweets and chocolates; they were a part of who my Nana was to me. As a child when we would go round I always knew that there would be a bowl with some Quality Street or Roses in it, or possibly some chocolate éclairs. If I did not take advantage of the delights these posed they would be pushed at me before I left. There was to be no escape. At Christmas, alongside the more expensive presents from my parents there would always be a plastic bag from my Nana, filled with the things that really make children happy – a collection of chocolate bars and sweets (OK, there would be some fruit and nuts in there too, but we can brush over those).

It was a small but reliable treat, and I miss it.

I think that apart from being just naturally generous, my Nana also had it hard and that crafted this delight in treats. From a poor South Tyneside family, she was the second eldest girl and their mum died while my Nana was about 11. So with her elder sister they effectively had to take over the maternal role while her father struggled to make ends meet. They really had nothing at all, rent money included, so I think in later life she always appreciated what she did have – and in the gentlest of ways remind me of just how lucky I was. But never in a preaching way and she never, ever complained about her own life.

In fact, laughter was the usual thing that came out that she talked about the hard times. She might have been a tiny woman with a backbone of iron but my Nana had a wicked sense of humour. There were some stories that, even in the difficult last few years, that if brought mentioned caused her face to light up and she would begin to laugh.

Until she had to wiped the tears of laughter away and fortify herself with more tea.

I’m saving a few of those stories for next week, when I will reveal (and I do not think she would mind one jot) that maybe desperation in her younger days had once caused her to slip over into (very) petty crime…

So next week, the tale of the Great South Tyneside Turnip Robbery will be told.

*Cats Eyes were invented by a certain Mr. Percy Shaw in Yorkshire in 1934.  Well done him.

Long nights in Belgium hotel rooms on business are giving me the opportunity, should you want to call it that, to catch up with some of the DVD box sets I have had lying around for a while. I know, that based on what seems to be the hot ticket seems to be at the moment that I should be watching Breaking Bad or maybe The Walking Dead. But no, in the face of all the arguments I’ve been ploughing my way through The Tomorrow People. Notably the original and best (although the last descriptor has to be qualified as we will see) version from the 1970s, all 68 episodes of it (yes really, they made that many).

For those that are blissfully unaware, this is a kids series for Thames television that revolves around, at least in theory, a bunch of teenagers who are the next stage of human evolution (God help us) Homo Superior. They have telepathy, telekinesis (where the plot requires it) and can jaunt (i.e. teleport) all by force of mind alone (and some technological help, again, when the plot requires it).

They cannot kill (they keep having to remind you of it) but that’s alright because, with a rather shocking exception or two, most of the adversaries are rubbish. Plus our heroes have TIM on their side – who I remember loving as a kid – the friendly bio-computer who is probably the best written character in the show.

It’s rubbish of course. The acting is appalling (it really stands out when someone with talent – a very young Nicholas Lyndhurst for instance – turns up. But I shouldn’t criticise too much – the scripts are worse. The special effects makes contemporary Doctor Who look like Gravity and the tone is dreadfully uneven with the serious stuff mixed up with entirely unfunny slapstick humour. Main characters come and go with no warning and often no explanation, while through it all John, the eldest tomorrow person, looks on and the actor Nicholas Young, puts in a stoic performance as everyone’s serious big brother and the least convincing teenager ever portrayed – even at the beginning of the long run.

So why do I have a huge soft spot for tosh like this?

Well, first off it is hilarious.

Real laugh out loud ‘what? Really? You’re kidding’ sort of stuff. The fashions in particular are worth the price of entry alone, and it is hard to believe that some of the stuff they have to wear was ever trendy even back then (another series worth watching again for the fashion victim factor is Buck Rodgers in the Twenty-Fifth Century with the truly awful 80s idea of future fashion – hint, ladies assume its skin tight and/or very short and made of foil). No one in it seems to take it seriously – really, most people seem to be having a laugh (which jars terribly in the one episode where a sympathetic character actually dies). And buried in this are some actually good story ideas, and as the series goes on they do get better. And the title sequence and music, by Doctor Who veteran Dudley Simpson, is still brilliant and chilling. Look it up.

In the end it is mostly pretty positive stuff, and two things I still love. One is the late Philip Gilbert, who is the voice of TIM and later turns up in breathing form as Ambassador Timus of the Galactic Federation in numerous stories. Both characters – clearly connected, are effectively the Doctor in some ways; a bit like the friendly uncle in an Enid Blyton book who you know can fix everything but has to leave it to the kids because he has to be elsewhere. The actor clearly loves the part and milks it for all that it is work, and the series is better for it. He even gets the very last line, and it is a positive one too.

The other thing is the one story that gave me nightmares back in the day, and on seeing it again, it still stands up. The Living Skins is from the last series and details the efforts of balloon aliens to take over the world by turning themselves into one piece jump suits that you never want to take off – because they have taken over your mind. There is one sequence when a couple of the jumpsuits attack the youngest – who was my age at the time, always helps with impact – Tomorrow person and TIM, and while it sounds ludicrous, it is incredibly creepy.

So I suggest you take a long, hard look at your oh so comfortable onesie.

Did it just twitch there in a sinister way?

Some people will have been seeing this January as a month of rain and flooding. There has certainly been plenty of that and we have had some hairy moments with surface water, floods and crossing fords. Then there are those who just saw it as the month for detoxification and trying to recover from the Christmas season. It has been an odd January and an odd winter. This year for me, January has been the month of the Kingfisher. For those that know St. Albans will also know Verulamium park, the 1920s park that is the best place for a long walk on Sunday afternoons before adjourning to one of the many fine pubs the town also has as a result of being one day’s coaching ride from London. At times the park can be like a motorway of romantic couples and terrifying small children on scooters determined to take my legs off at the ankles. The ducks and swans have become used to the excessive human presence or possibly are just addicted to bread. But some of our animals are just a little more nervous, and the flash or iridescent blue and orange that is a kingfisher is something we have normally only seen a couple of times, and outside the busiest zones. But not this January as this seems to have changed albeit probably for a temporary period. If you want to see a kingfisher at close quarters come to Hertfordshire. I have been quite amazed that every time I have gone walking or running down the park, I’m seeing this kingfisher. Well a pair in fact although usually only one at a time. To add to the pleasure it is at close quarters and they are ignoring the people watching them fish. That said most people seem oblivious to one of our most beautiful birds. So why are they there suddenly, after two or three sightings in the last 10 years? The zoologist in me says enjoy it while it lasts. The river is extremely high and up and downstream it is unusually deep, fast flowing and cloudy. Next to the artificial lake however, the river Ver is slowed artificially and is still clear enough that the birds can see their prey. So for now, until the river has gone down, I predict that our azure dressed guests will hang around because this is the only place on the river they can actually fish. Which is great for me, as it provides a great excuse to (1) stop for a rest on a run to watch in fascination as the bird skips along a branch, plunges into the water and comes up with a fish, and then carefully manoeuvres the prize head first into its beak (2) I can bore anyone who also has stopped to watch because they are observant enough to notice armed with half remembered zoology twenty year old degree knowledge topped up by Chris Packham on BBC2 ‘Watch’ programmes. (Disturbingly I have noticed that while I have always felt I had modelled myself on a mixture of my childhood heroes – Tom Baker’s Doctor Who and David Attenborough, in that order. However I seem to be taking on Packhamesque mannerisms at far too rapid a rate. Just as well I do not like poodles; otherwise I would be very worried.) The demographic of my fellow kingfisher watchers also interests me. They seem to fall entirely into two groups – photographers, and older couples who actually are bothering to look around them on their romantic constitutionals. These are the kind of people the lovely wife and see and think ‘I hope we are like that when we are their age’ not realising that this milestone may be closer than we think (or might like). So I think when the weather changes (let’s assume it does, if only for those who live on flood plains) then my pretty birds (look see, I’m already getting possessive) will be back off down their country homes and again we will only see them once in a (brilliant) blue moon. Maybe our Mandarin ducks will come back to make up for it. But that’s for another week, closer to our anniversary.

In ‘An American Werewolf in London’ a couple of American backpackers try to take shelter in a pub near the beginning of the film as they try and cross a generic bit of  Yorkshire, and it is now dark. As they enter The Slaughtered Lamb – which is full – all the talking stops and the locals stare at them with a distinctly unfriendly look.

The boys leave, and so the story starts properly.

Now, of course the reason for the unfriendliness is due to fear of strangers and more pertinently the werewolf on the loose but this kind of silence as a stranger walks into a pub is observable in real life. Oddly though, I almost feel more like this every day as I walk around London or anywhere else in the South East where people are always in a particular hurry. No one belongs and no one offers casual friendship, often not even the politeness of a word or eye contact and not even in some cases when the people who meet in this way are acquainted. We’ve been blanked many times by people we thought we knew well, and have probably done the same to others, as we rush off to the next terribly important thing we have to do.

Thankfully, at the weekend when we walked into a pub – the Fighting Cocks in Stottesdon, Shropshire to be precise – we had the opposite. We had smiles, several of the staff chatted with us pleasantly, seemed genuinely interested (and did not seem to mind the mud we brought in, only enquiring had we walked or biked). Behind me a teenage girl (one of several on the waiting staff) asked Derek – the old boy digging into his Sunday roast cheerfully behind us – if he wanted dessert and then suggested the treacle tart; positively received. Clearly he is there every Sunday at least.

Meanwhile the family who had come to celebrate Grandma’s birthday had to deal with the crisis of the unstoppable smoke alarm (well that is all we could glean) but could not get any signal on their mobile, this being middle of nowhere. So they asked the pub if they could use its landline, and got an immediate ‘of course answer’ – cannot see that in central London except in the direst emergency.

I have sometimes wondered what is going on here. Of course the phone borrowers and Derek are locals and the pub lives or dies on them. They could be related for all I know. But they treated us just as well. And it is not just a single pub experience. In fact what this most reminded me of is how we have been treated while on holiday on some of the smaller Islands round Britain, such as the Isles of Scilly or the Outer Hebrides.

In all of these cases, after several days we found people showing us cheerful recognition in a way I normally would only expect from people we knew really well. Now, I am under no illusion that this was anything but surface, but in context it is important. In some of these places, including rural Shropshire in inclement weather become quite isolated. Where we were staying this weekend had a ford to cross and several footbridges had been washed away; there are many places where flooding or snow would effectively cut off a village at least from any motor vehicle. Islands have it even worse, and at sea the weather can be changeable and unpredictable.

So it could easily be that when we are staying on a lovely but tiny island such as Lundy (off the Devon coast) in April, it could quite easily be that the island could be cut off for several days. At that point, the only people you can rely on are your fellow islanders, permanent and temporary. Someone gets ill – is that person in the holiday cottage a Doctor perhaps? Or a just a strong pair of hands to help clear a blockage and/or a soft pair of hands to help look after children who cannot now get to school as the ferry is not running? That stranger who has just walked into your pub might be incredibly useful to you, perhaps a literal lifesaver.

I think a lot of people who live in places that can be potentially isolated understand that (consciously or otherwise). Where we have no need – apparently – to rely on each other, we ignore each other except for the times we have no choice and for our closest friends and family for whom we might make the effort.

The lovely wife and I do have a plan to go and live in the country in our latter years. I hope we can learn to be the kind of people that when a couple of drenched backpackers turn up lost and helpless on our doorstep we welcome them in with honest hospitality and do not cast them out again to the mercy of the wolves.

Last week I was waffling on about the soundtrack of our lives and the effect on personal music tastes and it started me thinking – and laughing – about the very special edition versions of songs that exist in my experience and probably in my experience alone.

It is an area I feel of true nostalgia in that the past gave far more opportunity for creativity due to the limitations of the technology that we used to play and listen to music. Nowadays, with digital precision the mp3 players spool out the track as the artist intended far too reliably.

But when I was a kid, and we were reliant on vinyl and cassettes, then all sorts of interesting effects were possible.

The very first cassette tape I was given by a friend at school was a recording of Queen Greatest Hits volume one, on an incredibly cheap Agfa cassette. The friend concerned had done his best to fit the album on as neatly as possible (although it does not – so my experience of “Save Me” always has it cutting off just before the end) and I more or less wore it out over the years.

The main oddity of this recording was the sound system he had recorded it off was only going through on one half of the stereo. So I was getting only half the track, the right hand side. In most of the songs it doesn’t matter, but Freddie Mercury just isn’t for part of ‘Now I’m here’ and for a while I assumed that ‘Bicycle Race’ had a bell, then a gap of silence and then another bell… Which sounded odd and therefore it was never a favourite track.

I know better now of course. But my one sided version is still the original in my head.

The other classic recording mistake is, of course, the needle jump. As you try lovingly to transfer from the precious vinyl to the cassette, unless you had the best equipment going (I didn’t) then it seemed inevitable.

I am pretty sure all of us of a certain age have our own examples; my best one is my recording of the 7” of ‘Sexcrime (1984)’ by the Eurythmics. OK, it is a pretty stuttering track anyway, but my version quite literally jumped all over the place, no matter how much I tried to clean it with one of those soft yellow cloths that as far as I could tell just added yellow fluff to the dust and the scratches.

Moving away from our own recordings, the other area where our own individual versions of songs exist is in the misheard lyric department. Those cases when for twenty years you think the singer is saying one thing and when you finally find out the lyrics it’s something completely different. Usually something that has the potential to completely change your view of the whole song (a possible disaster scenario).

Thankfully, I am a lyric listener so if it tends to sound odd I usually seek out the words pretty quickly. I know a lot of people though who are less focussed on the words than the music and most of them are a little surprised to find out what the song is about. As a sideline there is that wonderful class of songs that sound cheerful and upbeat but are actually either really rude or depressing – a good example of the latter being the rather odd ‘Hello; this is Joannie’ by Paul Evans, do go and weird yourself out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRfS10Ae46o

One of these that always stuck in my head as a kid (and I have to sing my lyric to, just like Kenny Rodgers’ “four hundred children and a crop in the field” – don’t ask) was The Kane Gang’s 1984 hit ‘The Closest thing to Heaven’ which to this day I am sure is really the closest thing to Hebburn, an unprepossessing suburb of Newcastle next to Jarrow.

And they were from the North East too so it is entirely possible that this is the lyric, and everyone else has got it wrong.  See for yourself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qTPj-pDmQ

If I lived there, I think I would definitely adopt it as a local anthem.