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Just in time for xmas!

October 28th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

A portrait of Peter Gabriel, painted 300 years before he was born?

I know it might sound like a lot of money, but if anybody has the odd three million quid to spare I quite fancy getting my hands on the newly-discovered Velazquez painting. Its a real bargain when you consider that there are only 98 known works by Velazquez and £3 million is a mere fraction of what was paid for Damien Hirst’s shark. Come on – I named my cat after Diego Velzquez, I obviously deserve it!

If nobody in the family manages a record-breaking lottery win before the auction I just hope the buyer lets the painting be displayed at the National Gallery or the Prado or somewhere else where the public can see it alongside some of his other paintings.

Apart from its rarity, it looks like a very good piece of work. Maybe not as striking as his portrait of Pope Innocent X and looking in need of a bit of a scrub, but still wonderful.

The subject is unknown, and suspected to be Philip IV’s master of the hunt, but I think we can all see that it is really a portrait of Peter Gabriel.

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Smashing Ideas

October 27th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

Today I finished reading The Smashing Idea Book, which I got through Amazon’s Vine programme.

One of the many little pleasures of Vine is that I get to read things I would not normally have the chance to. There is no way I would fork out over £20 on a text book in a field I am neither studying nor working in, so getting these does broaden my horizons a little.

I don’t get carried away though. Also on offer was a Beekeeping for Dummies book. I don’t think I need to broaden my horizons quite that much, although seeing it on the list did make me wonder just how much of a market there is for such a book. Just how many budding beekeepers are out there?

But I digress… here is what I thought about the book: [Read more →]

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Time flies at the Crawley Observer

October 26th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life, Politics

From the front page of the Obby, 26/10/2011

Breakfast was made much more amusing today courtesy of the Crawley Observer and what the youth of today would no doubt call an epic fail.

In such a busy environment as the Obby offices maybe it does only feel like a few months since May 2010…

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Ties that bind

October 25th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

Over the weekend we went back to Essex for some family visiting. Sitting in Mum’s house I was looking at the many family photos that adorn the place and noticed that there were two photos I was in that must have been taken some time apart. I was doing the usual comparison of how much I had changed but suddenly noticed that one thing wasn’t so different – I was wearing the same tie in both.

I have more than one tie. In fact I have more than one full tie rack, but whenever there is the sort of occasion where a nice photo is going to be taken I seem to always go for that patterned orange tie. I still have it, and it is going to be hard to resist wearing it the next time I pose for a formal photo.

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The Eurovote

October 24th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Politics

What a good evening it has been this evening. In the early evening Jayne and I watched Cop Out on DVD (v. amusing. Both enjoyed it, and it only cost three quid) then I listened to the end of the West Ham game on Radio Five Live Extra (One-nil to the Hammers) and rounded it off by watching the vote in parliament on Sky News where the Tories are stating their now-traditional civil war on Europe.

Not a good day to be a Tory MP really, with that terrible balancing act between keeping on the right side of Cameron and appeasing the local association, and if you decided to vote ‘for’ you find yourself in in the lobby with such a likeable crowd… (Redwood, Dorries, Paisley, Chope, Carswell, Cash, Hooey, Vaz)

I see from the list of ‘rebels’ that Crawley’s Henry Smith provisionally voted ‘for’. I say provisionally because I haven’t seen the list of who voted against, so can’t be sure that he hasn’t done another of his hyperactive abstentions.

Yet again, I found myself watching it fixated not so much on the issue of the day so much as the sheer idiocy of having business at that time of night combined with the amount of time it takes to vote on a simple yes/no matter because of having to traipse through lobbies instead of pushing a button and getting an instant result.

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Holy Flying Circus

October 24th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

I just got round to watching Holy Flying Circus, which I recorded on Wednesday night. I expected to enjoy it, but didn’t expect to find myself laughing aloud quite so much. It really was a joy to watch. (Still available on iPlayer until next Saturday)

The casting was superb, which made everything else work. Darren Boyd in particular was spot on as John Cleese. Liberties were taken with events, people were stereotyped, but it all worked because it was all treated like a Monty Python production with all the post-modern breaking of the fourth wall that involves.

The show featured a couple of characters with speech impediments (always a feature of Python) and all the main female parts were played by men so it was absolutely in the Python spirit.

It was also good to be reminded just how far we have progressed in the last 30 years. I can remember that there really was that much fuss about what is, in reality, a very inoffensive film. OK, so we still have unelected bishops as part of our parliament and huge chunks of our taxes going to faith schools to prop up the churches, but at least there is debate about that now and you can complain about it without being seen as trying to bring about the end of civilisation.

It all made me feel like watching Brian again.

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Thwarted

October 21st, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

I had an idea the other day which could either be a separate blog (a chance to revisit WordPress.com or Blogger) or a regular post on here which would be dull enough to drive away half of the few remaining readers I have. It was one of those things that I would find useful myself, and might be of interest to one or two other people even if a turn-off for everybody else: cryptic crossword tips. Unfortunately things haven’t worked out quite right. [Read more →]

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First day of term

October 18th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Work

Today was one of those days when a whole new tranche of graduates joins the company. As with policemen and teachers, as you get older the graduates seem to be younger every year. When I went to lunch I walked into the staff restaurant and thought I had taken a wrong turning into a school dining room or something.

All day they have been herded around in groups between various induction events, carrying their company carrier bags full of leaflets about pension schemes or whatever. I’m now bracing myself for when they start getting sat down at a desk to work because I work in the IT department and there is a very real possibility that some of them have never seen MS Office 2000 and many of them will have forgotten what Windows XP looks like.

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Bad History

October 17th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

I recently read a book called Bad History: How We Got The Past Wrong by Emma Marriott. It was another of those books I got through Amazon’s ‘Vine’ programme. Here is what I wrote about it: [Read more →]

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One year on

October 17th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life

The den last October

This time last year we were living out of boxes, getting ready to move house. It doesn’t feel like a whole year (well 51 weeks today) since we moved here.

Today I spent a very large part of the day moving my desk about 2 metres. It took so long because I had to take a couple of shelves down and put them up in a slightly different place, but that involved taking all the books off them and then putting them back afterwards. I am beginning to think that maybe I should thin out the library a bit, but that is easier said than done.

Although I have accepted the principle that I have too many books, I find it hard to pick any particular ones that I really don’t need or want. [Read more →]

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