Keris Stainton's Blog, page 35
August 13, 2012
Radio 1: a love story
*cue Our Tune music*
On Twitter yesterday, Jenny Colgan tweeted a photo of a bunch of Radio 1 DJs from the 80s and reminded me of my 80s obsession with Radio 1. The only times I ever bunked off school were Radio 1-related. I remember faking illness because there was something I wanted to hear (and there was no iPlayer back then, kids!). It must have been 1984, cos I remember listening to Culture Club’s The War Song lying on my bed with my legs up the wall.
In 1985, Simon Bates had an interview with Wham! that ran every morning for a week. He said he’d be giving away tickets to The Final concert at Wembley. I bunked off every morning and sneaked into my aunty’s house to listen (my mum was at home, my aunty wasn’t). I somehow managed to miss the competition. (The interview was good though.)
In 1987, we went on a school trip to London and Pippa Taylor and I sat on at bench at Seven Dials to listen to the chart rundown. (It was Tuesday lunchtimes then, yes? With Gary Davies? I bloody loved Gary Davies. I hunted out this jingle yesterday and it made me cry. Really.) I looked in a London phonebook for a G Michael, rang it and asked if George was there. (He wasn’t.) When I came out of the phonebox, a man went in and found the purse I’d left in there. He gave it back to me, thank goodness. I literally don’t remember a single other thing about the trip.
In 1988, I bunked off school to go to the Radio 1 Roadshow in Southport. Someone came into the crowd and asked for volunteers for Bits & Pieces. Do you remember Bits & Pieces? I LOVED it. And I was really good at it. Even though I was shy, I was desperate to get on and do it. When they told me I was going to be on, I rang home and said something like “I know I’m supposed to be at school, but I’m actually in Southport and I’m about to be on radio, can you record it? Yes, yes, you can tell me off later…”
(Thanks to the fabulous website, Radio Rewind, you can hear Bits & Pieces. Not the one I was on, obv – I no longer have the tape – but still.)
Anyway, when the DJ interviewed me (I’m pretty sure it was Steve Wright, but I’m not 100%, which is mad considering how much I loved Steve Wright. You’d think I’d remember), he asked if I was a Bros fan. I answered, “Brosette, yeah.” How did he know I was a Bros fan? I was wearing (fake) Doc Martens, cut-off jeans, a white t-shirt and a bandanna. Shut up. Also, just a year later I would move to London and spend many, many hours standing outside Matt Goss’s house where wearing that outfit and/or calling myself a “Brosette, yeah” would have been the kiss of death. (You can read more about it here. You know you want to.)
So I won Bits & Pieces. Oh yes. And then I was carried offstage by Gaylord the Gorilla. Oh no.
Gaylord was actually Phil Cornwell, who you may remember from Stella Street or, more likely, as Dave Clifton on I’m Alan Partridge. Which puts me just three degrees of separation from pretty much everyone in Hollywood. Result.
Anyway, as with so many experiences in my life, I’ve always remembered the embarrassing Brosette-yeah-bloke-dressed-as-a-gorilla part of the experience and it was only yesterday following Jenny’s tweet that I thought I loved Radio 1 and Bits & Pieces and I went to the roadshow and won Bits & Pieces. Go, 17-year-old me!
Ooh, almost forgot to choose my tune! It’s the song that was number one that day in London…
August 12, 2012
Customer service: you win some, you lose some
Last week, out of the blue, my Kindle packed up. Lines across two thirds of the screen. I turned it on and off again. I cuddled it and told it I loved it, but nothing. I got home and contacted Amazon Customer Service. Have you ever contacted them? On the site, there’s an option for them to call you and literally as soon as you click on it the phone starts ringing. Amazing.
So I told the guy what was wrong and he said it was a hardware failure and, since my Kindle was out of warranty (I’ve had it for two years), I’d have to buy a new one, but they could offer me a discount on whichever one I wanted. I said I’d have to think about it. I thought about it for a while and then I rang up and ordered a new one.
Again, the two people I spoke to at customer services were wonderful: polite and efficient. I was probably on the phone for no more than 3 minutes. They said the Kindle would be sent by free delivery, so it would be with me by next Friday (i.e. the 17th). It arrived yesterday. And before it had even arrived, I went on the website to send a sample to my iPad and the option was there to send it to “Keris’s 2nd Kindle.” Fab.
We ordered a new bed from KandCo on 27 June. They would contact us to arrange delivery within three weeks. Got back from holiday to find a delivery card through the door with ‘Bed’ scrawled on it. They hadn’t been in touch. Couple of days later, two men in a van turned up to deliver the bed (they still hadn’t been in touch). I had to turn them away since we had nowhere to put it while we still had our old bed. They said that was fine, the company would be in touch re redelivery.
Got rid of our old bed. Nothing from KandCo. Emailed customer service. They wrote offering a 20% discount on next order, no info re delivery. I phoned last week, someone would get straight back to me. This morning I got an email to tell me the bed had been returned to the warehouse and the order cancelled. Sorry!
On the upside, I can use the 20% discount to buy the bed again. But delivery is within 3 weeks and we’re sleeping on a mattress.
August 11, 2012
August 10, 2012
Baking is not my strongpoint. Or is it?
No. No, it’s not. But I did at least buy a muffin tray and a cake tin this week, so at least I’m showing commitment (I’ve always borrowed them from my mother-in-law in the past).
I bought them because Harry wants to make almond cake (which he tasted in Majorca and loved) and I wanted to make the Rhubarb Tarts I spotted in this book.
There’s one, in the middle. We went and bought all the ingredients, apart from cassis (the recipe only called for one tablespoon, so I wasn’t going to buy a whole bottle for that). The recipe states ready-made puff or shortcrust pastry and Asda only had puff, so that’s what we got.
Harry and Joe joined me in the kitchen to “help” and off we went. It was an extremely easy recipe, but I knew almost immediately that there wasn’t enough pastry – we managed to get ten circles out of the sheet – and that the instruction to roll it out to 1cm thickness was baffling. For one, it was already rolled out (recipe calls for “one sheet”) and if it had been 1cm thick, there would hardly have been room in the muffin tray for filling. (It’s possible that this is a problem with a tray, but even so – 1cm can’t be right. As you’ll see.) We chopped up the rhubarb, mixed the butter, sugar and almonds and then put the whole lot together and stuck it in the oven.
After 25 minutes, voila!
The hell? One of them was a total write-off…
Hello. Haven’t I seen you on Embarrassing Bodies?
But one of them looked just right (almost)…
It looked even better when I popped it out of the tray, so I took it outside for a photo sesh…
And then I ate it. The boys weren’t all that bothered about what the tarts looked like. Harry declared his a 7/10, but Joe said, “It’s really yummy, Harry!” And he was right.
August 8, 2012
Flying visit to London
When I blogged about our visit to the National Media Museum (as I’ve only just realised it’s now called – doh), I forgot to mention that we watched the Olympics opening ceremony and Rebecca Adlington’s bronze-winning swim in the cinema there. It has Super Hi-Vision and fancy schmancy surround sound (that’s not what it’s actually called, you understand) and it was just amazing.
I loved the opening ceremony anyway and Harry had watched the Bond and Bean bits over and over and it was even more amazing on the big screen – thanks to the surround sound, you could really feel the atmosphere. On the way home, David and I started talking about how it was a shame we weren’t going to the Olympics, how it was most likely a once in a lifetime experience for the boys, etc. And then we decided that we’d try to go. We didn’t mind to what even, we just wanted to experience it.
We couldn’t get tickets to anything (I know this is not news, but ohmygod the ticket website is a nightmare), but then friends pointed out that we could see the Men’s Triathlon in Hyde Park for free. So we booked the train and, on Tuesday, off we went.
We met lovely Anne-Marie and positioned ourselves at the barrier to watch the cycling bit. The crowd was huge and the atmosphere was great – strangers actually talked to us! – but, as with the Tour de France – the bikes go past so ridiculously fast, it’s almost literally blink and you miss them. Luckily they go round a couple of times, but even so… fast. We left Anne-Marie to watch the finish on the big screen and headed off to do some tourist stuff, since the boys hadn’t been to London before.
I’d booked the London Eye (with a flexi ticket, since we didn’t know what time we’d be getting there) before we set off and we planned to do a bus tour too (I bloody love a bus tour, me). That didn’t work out since the tubes were borked after we left the Triathlon and by the time we got to the river it was too late for a tour. From the London Eye, the boys spotted a fair, which turned out to be London Wonderground, so obviously we had to go there. (I went on the Cyclone rollercoaster with Harry. I tried to video it, but it’s mainly me screaming and saying “Are you okay? Are you okay?” because Harry looked properly terrified. When we staggered off, he said, “That was BRILLIANT!” Grr.)
From there, it seemed natural to keep wandering down the South Bank and we ended up at Gabriel’s Wharf, where I think both boys would like to have stayed forever. Then we got a bus up to Kings Cross, back on the train, and, eventually, home to bed. It was such a brilliant day that we’re going to do it again soon (apart from the Triathlon!).
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Time for a time out
I’ve been noticing that I’ve been going into even more of what David calls an “intertrance” lately, staring at the computer until my eyes start to burn. Doing the Bermuda Triangle of Productivity thing and then “Ooh! Pinterest!” and back again.
And it’s just ridiculous. Because even as I’m doing it, I’m thinking of all the things I need to do offline. All the books I have to read. The stuff that needs doing in the house. The children I left lying around somewhere. It’s a really bad habit and one I decided to try to quit.
I thought at first I’d set an alarm for, say, 45 minutes because often I feel like I’ve only been online a little while, but it turns out hours have passed. But then I thought ‘there’s probably an app for that.’ And, lo, there is. It’s called Time Out. It’s free. And you can change the settings for how long you want to be online before being reminded to hop off and how long you want the break to be.
I set it for an hour online with an hour’s break. When the hour’s up, the screen starts to dim and then, once you’re on a break, it shows a bar to tell you how much of your break is left. You can, of course, turn it off or quit the break or whatever, but what I’ve noticed is how many times I just pop to the computer without even thinking. At least seeing the powered down screen makes me pause and wonder if I really do need to do whatever (let’s face it, it’s probably check Twitter).
Funnily enough, it’s powering down right now, so I’d better… argh…
August 6, 2012
Inside the toddler mind
I love this. So very Joe, particularly “whatever mommy is eating”. His ‘whine region’ is way bigger though.
{via Swissmiss}
Fun with a Praxinoscope
No, I didn’t know what one was either (unless you did – did you?!). I thought this was a zoetrope, but no, it’s a Praxinoscope. It was dead easy to put together and looks brilliant.
It comes with a few pre-prepared animations and then some blank discs so you can draw your own. Harry wanted a Kirby one, inevitably.
It didn’t work brilliantly because the drawings were to different and so it just looked like he was leaping about, but H was still impressed. We’re got a few more, simpler, ideas to try.
August 5, 2012
52 Books: The Twice-Lived Summer of Bluebell Jones by Susie Day
I still have to write about the books I read on holiday – and I’ll get round to it eventually – but I wanted to mention this book, because I read it this week and absolutely adored it.
There’s a fantastic review here by Luisa. I agree with every word, which is great cos it saves me having to write a review. But you really must read it – it’s gone straight onto my all-time favourite books list (and shelf!).
