The Musings of a Red Dalek

The Musings of a Red Dalek http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/ My personal weblog with the usual stereotypical posts about life, the news, politics and technology. But I do try to make it fun too! en-gb Nucleus CMS v3.64 © Dominic Self 2004-2010 Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://dominicself.co.uk/images/graphics/reddalek.gif The Musings of a Red Dalek http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/ <![CDATA[Deal Or No Deal]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/04/deal-or-no-deal http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/04/deal-or-no-deal Deal Or No Deal. Rather snobbishly, we decided that the American variant must be greatly inferior to its European counterparts: flashy, over-the-top displays of enthusiasm in a big studio with models and whooping and a large 'DEAL!' button prop. Sure, Noel Edmonds might be insufferable, but at least he brings a measure of calm to the serious business of picking boxes at random for half an hour.

Then we watched some of it. And you know what? American Deal or No Deal is (or rather was, since it's been cancelled) genuinely entertaining. It's fun enough to watch - at least, it's fun enough to watch when you've got several bottles of wine to hand - despite the ludicrous deliberation over 'strategy' which still goes on. Game shows are supposed to be about exaggerated silliness - that's why they're fun. And in our state of mild intoxication, we decided we wanted in on some of that fun ourselves. So naturally we agreed to meet two deals later in our own custom-built studio (my living room) and play our own Deal or No Deal, complete with sound effects, an interactive game board and 24 prizes of varying quality.

(I say 'we', but it was mostly Charlotte who pushed this from drunken concept into we're-really-doing-this. She is awesome.)

Feeling lucky?

The Banker calls

A tense game board

Some of the glamorous prizes on offer

For the record, as the lucky contestant I walked away with a book of Charlie Brown philosophy and a new found appreciation of how weird we all are

(This is probably something which Tash hadn't warned our new lodger about - her friend Sarah - although she adapted into the role of 'supportive relative' perfectly.)]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/04/deal-or-no-deal#c Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:01:33 +0100 <![CDATA[Berlin]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/04/berlin http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/04/berlin Ampelmann, ate a healthy amount of currywurst and schnitzel, had a slight overdose of Nazis\Communist history (there comes a point...) and also went out to Potsdam for the day on trains with absurdly upbeat jingles. (Seriously, watch it: why is it so happy?)

All tourists fall in love with Ampelmann

Little bits of remaining wall

Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt. Obviously.

Beer tasting with friends from Groupon in Germany

I seem to remember it was pretty cold by this point!

[Quietly adds Berlin to my list of potential cities to flee to if London is flooded or attacked particularly badly by zombies.]]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/04/berlin#c Mon, 9 Apr 2012 13:18:54 +0100 <![CDATA[Out of Office]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/03/out-of-office http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/03/out-of-office
OK, that might not seem like much, but that's only because a small number of rites - things like 'your first kiss' and 'having a baby' and 'dying' - have long exercised a grossly unfair stranglehold over society. It's high time we busted open this restricted market, opening it up to unrestrained competition between rites large and small, so that 'out of office reply' can seem legitimately exciting. And it is legitimately exciting, because it marks the fact that I'm (finally) going on holiday again! To Berlin! Hurrah!

The past couple of weeks have been quite lovely - a combination of the sun and a general return of people back to the metropolis. So Joshua, Robert and I could while away a Sunday afternoon in the William IV beer garden, and Tash is around to hustle coins for the Mayhew from me outside the Kensal Rise flea, and Grace and I can have impromptu cocktails and ice creams and Buffy. (There are a couple of things wrong with that sentence - including weird tense shifting, and the fact that Buffy is hardly very summery, but I have to get up at around half 4 tomorrow morning so maybe we can let this pass?) I was also really glad that Oliver and I made it up to Cambridge again for Bill and Sharon's wedding reception. Any couple whose honeymoon plans explicitly include a train museum are, of course, awesome

]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/03/out-of-office#c Sat, 31 Mar 2012 23:41:31 +0100 <![CDATA[An exclusive chat]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/03/an-exclusive-chat http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/03/an-exclusive-chat

Lunchtime by the river

Hello! You look happy.
Wait... are we really using this format? Isn't it borderline psychotic?

Aren't we all borderline psychotic? And Tim Harford gets away with talking to himself like this every week in the FT. Is that an ice-cream?
Of course. One of the new perks of our new office is a strategically parked ice-cream van right by the river.

Lovely. But you can't survive on ice-cream alone.
We've also got nice people selling soup, and Borough Market for lunching.

Is everything really going to be about food? What else has been going on?
Well, there was egg hunting with Abbi two weekends ago...

Enough about food already!
No no - not eggs to eat - but big and beautifully designed eggs scattered across London for charity. Emily and I joined a long list of people who helped Abbi out on her quest to photograph them all.

What a good friend you are.
Aw, shucks. But not really - we had the easy day, when it was all sunny out and not pouring with rain. Plus, let's balance it out with the fact that I got my first tour of the Mayhew from Joshua that day. He's only been working there for years.

Well, better late than never. Any other friends you've belatedly caught up with recently?
Funny you should ask: this week I caught up with Matt, Caroline and Laura one night in The Banker -

- The Banker? -
Oh, that's our awesome new post-work pub. And then Oliver and I went to Camden the next night for Italian food and a jug of sangria.

Oh look, food again.
Yeah but come on: Camden! Sangria! It's such a soothing mental balm of happy memories and tasty indulgence.

Sangria does seem to work for you.
Tell me about it. This week is a year since I persuaded Grace along.

Aw, that's sweet. You should mark this anniversary by conspiring with her uni friends to turn up unexpectedly at the weekend to say hi.
Great minds.

Anything else?
I went to the opera? Aida at the Albert Hall. It's an amazing space, although I don't think opera is really for me - at least, it's nothing like booting a flagging reading list up a little bit by reading Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop, which I also did recently.

What did you think?
Well, Angela Carter will always hold a special place in my heart. And although this isn't my favourite of hers, for some reason discovering that it was published way back in 1967 (I thought it was later) improves it for me. You can just feel the sexual revolution running through it, tearing through the old world without knowing where it's all going to end up.

Oh, to be young 40 years ago?
Not quite. Nostalgia is bad enough without imbibing the nostalgia of your parents' generation too. But I do wonder what the next lot will make of us.]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/03/an-exclusive-chat#c Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:15:42 +0100 <![CDATA[Oh hai blog]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/02/oh-hai-blog http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/02/oh-hai-blog Groupon Getaways site at work - and I have to say, the concept of a holiday is now an especially tempting one. (Berlin, April, here we come.) And while we're on the subject of work, I need to plug for Rodizio Rico where we had a big Getaways team night out on Thursday night. I'm not normally a massive fan of buffets, but when paired with endless meat delivered to your table all night it was gluttonous and amazing. Very indulgent, but I think we all felt it was deserved

Oh hai Prince Charles Cinema

You remember The Room, right? That fantastically awful cinematic phenomenon? Well, good, because now I don't have to explain how excited Grace, Charlotte and I were two weekends ago to see Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero introduce a special screening at the Prince Charles Cinema. Tommy himself seemed, well, what was hopefully somewhat in-character crazy, and the film itself generated an even more raucous reaction than usual. I've never had to be warned "not to throw metal spoons" in a cinema before, but given the quantity of plastic which was hurled over my head I'm glad they did.

And because I don't want you to think that I'm so jaded I can only enjoy bad things ironically, here's something good which I very much enjoyed on its own merits: The Ladykillers. Normally I claim not to care very much about actors when watching something - if they're any good, you should be too immersed into their characters to notice - but I have to admit that this is harder to maintain in the theatre when actions are actually there in person. And so it was particularly cool to see Peter Capaldi (who is great) do his thing as Professor Marcus (who was also great).]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/02/oh-hai-blog#c Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:01:41 +0100 <![CDATA[On The Lion King (mostly)]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/02/on-the-lion-king-mostly http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/02/on-the-lion-king-mostly
But good things have happened over the past month! I had drinks in the (surprisingly plain) bars of Parliament one night, which (and this is distinctively unsurprisingly) feels exactly like wandering around a Cambridge college. (I even bumped into someone else from my year at Caius... draw all the obvious conclusions you wish.) Abbi and Paul also returned from their second wedding in South Africa, so we had celebratory return pizza, and later a touristy trip to the Greenwich observatory with Jen - last seen on this blog a little over three years ago!

I also had a lovely catch-up lunch with Melissa - feeling slightly wistful that I wasn't involved in her new and exciting projects - and spent last weekend lazing quite a bit with Grace in Warwick. And watching The Lion King at the student cinema. Which, um, was brilliant. Good children's movies are utterly wasted on children: they totally fail to appreciate all the Hamlet allusions, and I'm pretty sure my single-digit-self was foolish enough to miss the goose-stepping Nazi hyenas entirely. If you take anything from this mess of a blog post, take from it that you should make a date to re-watch The Lion King.]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/02/on-the-lion-king-mostly#c Sun, 5 Feb 2012 21:12:49 +0100 <![CDATA[Off we go]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/01/off-we-go http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/01/off-we-go didn't spend the first ten minutes of the year running around in the road and bashing my nearest and dearest friends over the head with pillows\balloons. I could easily get used to its replacement, though, which involved cake, wine and a just-delivered-in-time Indian takeaway at Charlotte Speechley's housesitting gathering. And some inspired make-up artistry from Amy, too.

Since then I've pubbed with Sanna, dined with Oliver and Abi, drank with Joshua and Robert and manuevored my family and Grace's family to go and see News Revue together - not to mention going back to work for more dutiful and honest labour - which is hardly bad going for the first week of 2012. If I just declare the year a success now and stay in like a hermit I could also make good progress on my new years 'resolutions', which it usually never even occurs to me to make but this time have somehow solidified enough in my mind to be real. (I will read more books than last year, again. I will not keep conveniently forgetting that I'm supposed to be flat hunting. I will sign up to Code Year and learn something new. There, that's enough. Any more and I'll be forced to resort to that all-encompassing fallback target which we used to pull out at school when things were desperate - "I will improve my handwriting" - which no one ever really meant because anyone with bad handwriting is secretly proud of the idea that they are too busy to shape letters properly.)

I saw The Iron Lady today, which didn't do very much for me even though it was all very well made and everything. I think I just enjoy more plot and narrative beyond the framing device of "an aged and dementia-suffering Margaret Thatcher remembers the greatest political hits of the 1980s", and would have probably enjoyed a film more which focussed tightly on a smaller period of her life. (Then again, I might just have enjoyed a film more where young children sitting behind me didn't keep asking questions about what was going on. Hey ho.)]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2012/01/off-we-go#c Sun, 8 Jan 2012 23:22:42 +0100 <![CDATA[Dominic's Big Review of 2011]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/12/dominic-s-big-review-of-2011 http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/12/dominic-s-big-review-of-2011
January
SexFest On Tour gifted the art of midnight pillow fighting to Barnet's streets, and kicked off a month of some fabulously geeky activities. I'm talking about going to see The Room for the first time, starting Firefly with Jamie and Katie, hosting a Dr. Horrible sing-along in my front room, another evening of Science Museum Lates and - of course - getting memorable one-on-one time with Psychic TV. Tash K introduced me to Sherlock, Charlotte Speechley and I saw The King's Speech, and I happily failed to kill Matt and Caroline whilst cooking them breakfast.

Sunny California: this was my Februrary

February
In early February I said my goodbyes in unconventional ways: probing local homoeopaths with Tash K, and a memorable and mostly hilarious SFX Weekender with Abbi, Paul and David. And then I packed my bags and left for a month in America! Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco... and all the way showered in hospitality by friends and family who took me everywhere from a lecture theatre in snow-covered Harvard to a kayak on the glistening Pacific Ocean. An amazing time, leaving me with some very happy memories.

March
Tugging me back home, though, was a [date / casual sangria evening] (delete as applicable) with Grace. This went well. Later on we actually watched Eat, Pray, Love to make sure our relationship wasn't based on hating a film unjustly... and it wasn't. I also saw CULES perform up in Cambridge, danced for the Wii a lot at Emily's 18th birthday, went on the March For The Alternative, hosted more Geek Corner - with cake! - and conducted the first ever dominicself.co.uk Readership Census which revealed that over half my readers belong to Ravenclaw. So no surprises there.

April
When Joshua 'brings work home with him' it's cuter than most, and we spent a day obsessing over Munchkin the kitten during the hot and summery April - perfect for a NOMAD outdoor cinema evening of Strictly Ballroom, too. There was also my first visit to the Tricycle of 2011 (Brontë) and the annual QPCS extravaganza (West Side Story). Online, I had a tweet illustrated by the marvellous Irkafirka and also got into Kiva, the micro-finance charity. Plus, more smiles in more diaries

May
Jimmy Buchanan died in May this year. His funeral was a tribute to how many people loved him - a rare and wonderful chance to see so many old faces again. Thankfully, there was also an end to every conversation collapsing into "so, about the AV referendum..." as I hesitatingly made up my mind and voted, safe in the knowledge that it was about to be massively defeated anyway. (It was the same story at Joshua's Eurovision night, but with much more fun and laughter.) This month I also found my cocktail soulmate in Matt, attempted some couples badminton in Abi's back garden, was treated to a recording of QI courtesy of Jamie, saw Mark Thomas at the Tricycle and finally got to meet, argue and drink with the one and only Henry Balkwill. Oh, and I also completed my last little bit of work on School Wars and at long last joined the massed ranks of smartphone addicts.

June
Retro family fun in Clacton: a day at the seaside, complete with sandcastles, arcade machines and dodgem cars! Later in June my birthday was a joyful mix of picnic, pub and Pizza Express, and the very next day (because I was all old and everything) I started work at Groupon. In a proper office and everything. (Just six months later, it's incredible to look back to my first day and see how much has changed.) I also played some competitive games of Hungry Hungry Hippos in Cambridge, watched some classic films (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, When Harry Met Sally and Alien) and went along to my first of Jaf's gigs one night in Camden.

@giantlawnmower; @reddalek

July
Plenty of summery things: my second Puntcon in Cambridge, Saoirse's 18th birthday picnic in Green Park and the QPCS Summer Fair, where Grace and I progressed from participating in the annual debate to judging it. Talking of Queens Park, my old Humanities teacher dropped in for a visit one lunchtime, as did a rain-swept Sanna and Theo, while Rishal and I saw the final Harry Potter film together. Caroline and I admired Matt and Laura's new flat in Balham, Saoirse and I saw the Out Of This World exhibition at the British Library, and Robert returned from America for an excellent Corrib reunion. Also, in the category of 'things I managed to miss out on until now', my boss bought me my first jägerbomb!

August
Talking of 'firsts', Paul's Stag Night was in August, where we all discovered Joshua's violent masochist side during paintballing. I caught up with several people I see rarely - lunch with Ellie, traditional 'how are you?' drinks in The Island with Harriet - and once again stole Oliver's air bed one weekend. Saoirse made amazing gnocchi for her dinner party - during which, so far as I remember, we actually avoided violent argument about the riots - and the days were generally long and warm enough for plenty of (Tastecard discounted

) meals out.

September
After a year of talking about it, it was gratifying to finally be able to hold a real, physical copy of School Wars in my hand as Melissa celebrated with not one but two book launch parties. This month there was also a memorable evening in Robert's flat, reunions with a Irfan, Sophie and Maryam, an accidental gatecrashing of Marion's birthday party (at which I convinced an irritating interloper that Charlotte Speechley ran BBC2) and - in competition at least for one of the geekiest activities of the year - a tour of the London Underground headquarters at 55 Broadway. Katie and I embarked on another television odyessy together - Fringe this time - and Grace and I spent a day rambling around Box Hill armed with some very precise instructions, galvanising hunger for a pub lunch and lots of goodwill. But the biggest event of September has to be Abbi and Paul's wedding, for which we all got dressed up and then danced all night.

October
If you've been following the story of Abbi and Paul's marriage through the months, you'll appreciate the all-important final stage which was finally accomplished at a dinner party in October: eating off their wedding plates for the first time. With Grace gone to uni, Charlotte and I huddled in the pub to compare survival notes, though she was soon back for a weekend riverside stroll in Greenwich anyway. At work, the infamous Hell Day brought the team closer together, I had my final Tricycle visit of the year seeing Walk In The Woods for my dad's birthday while mum, Katie and I also delighted in Matilda The Musical. And, to even more delight, this month I also unearthed my dad's Rag and Tag stories from a rediscovered audio cassette

November
All of the old arguments about schools were back with a flourish one morning in early November, as Hannah and I were invited into Latymer to argue our case before a room full of students. Abbi's birthday was celebrated with plenty of wine and cheese, Warwick student life was interrupted by me for a weekend, the indomitable Team Awesome enjoyed a heady mix of pizza and cocktails, while Simon and I laughed a lot at In Time. And not to omit a sustained Plants vs. Zombies addiction, a lovely sangria night with Lucy and Grace, finally getting Nic to North West London and the Groupon Editorial Christmas party!

Our Site Editing team

December
OK, December deserves an apology, because it proved to be so busy that I didn't get a chance to blog. Not once. So I never wrote about the fourth Secret Vegetarian Festive Dinner (complete with masks and an erotic reading of What A Duke Wants), finally seeing The Ides of March, the happy night in the Chamberlayne with Grace, Charlotte, Alex and Rosie, or even the surprisingly amazing company-wide Christmas party in Shoreditch. I didn't get to rave about Black Mirror, tell you the story of how I ended up carrying Arwen's fish home on the Tube at midnight, be quietly chuffed about the Editorial Awards, or thank Ellie for hosting an exceptional Christmas dinner (& drinking games) for us all. There was also lots of family stuff (as befits the season): my parents' 25th wedding anniversary, deciding to watch The Godfather, Christmas Day itself - with a narrow victory for my team in the all-important quiz! - and a lovely day trip to Suffolk to see the other half of the family.

Oh, and Grace and I also embarked on an ambitious project to watch all of Buffy... but with only four episodes down so far, that's really a journey for another time.

Happy New Year to everyone!]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/12/dominic-s-big-review-of-2011#c Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:20:21 +0100 <![CDATA[Zippyboats]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/11/zippyboats http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/11/zippyboats Recently Seen:

Walk In The Woods at the Tricycle for my dad's birthday, an updated production of the 1988 play about the power play between two US and Soviet arms negotiators. Despite its depressing poignancy in capturing the futility of most international diplomacy, I was still bathed in warm nostalgia for the Cold War, and enjoyed it as much as I always enjoy the Tricycle: lots. (Yeah yeah, I was two years old at most at the end of the Cold War, but I can still induce faux-nostalgia in the same way that I can 'miss' British Rail sandwiches.)

This month I also went back to News Revue with Grace and saw In Time with Simon - a silly film which is not even particularly well made but entertaining all the same. We even laughed at the ending, where the characters actually go to the trouble of explaining to the audience why their plan wouldn't work and then proceed to carry it out anyway.

A weekend of catching up: Simon and Nic

Recently Been:

Abbi's birthday lunch a couple of weeks back was a very happy haze of wine, cheese boards and wrapping paper going up in smoke. (Top tip: candles are made of fire!) We also had 'Team Awesome Pizza Night' after work - 'Team Awesome' being my not-very-creative name for one of our regional teams which has stuck through the lack of a more creative alternative emerging - which moved seamlessly and very pleasantly from the 'pizza' stage to the 'secret underground cocktail bar entered through a fake fridge door' stage. And let's not forget the evening that Lucy, Grace and I went out for numerous jugs of sangria - a set-up which, admittedly, sounds worthy of a sitcom but was actually entirely lovely. Apart from the discussion of variable rents across the country, which made me weep inside.

I feel leaving this photo uncaptioned may be the wisest course

We also had our Editorial Party on Wednesday night, which was lots of fun but introduced me to the odd spectacle of a lot of colleagues saying "I should probably go home, I've got work tomorrow..." to each other. And - last but definitely not least - I spent last weekend in Warwick! Well, I say 'Warwick' when actually I mean Warwick University campus, which (as everyone knows) is essentially Coventry. But never mind that, because I got to meet the legendary Block 14, enjoy multiple pub brunches, visit Leamington, sample the student union bar and enjoy a moving rekindling of my relationship with Network West Midland's buses. (They still don't tell you where you are. They still come on an 'occasional-to-never' basis. They still charge you an exact fare only in coins and print a paper ticket. They are still home to tinny phone music from bored youngsters and to be honest I'm not even sure they've been cleaned since the last time I was on one. But I won't deny we have a bond.)

I won't pretend there was a linking thread through this post, but at least I used full sentences

Other cool things this month: playing Plants vs. Zombies, finally finishing The Scramble For Africa, upgrading to Spotify Premium and many, many burritos.]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/11/zippyboats#c Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:03:49 +0100 <![CDATA[Retro Comprehensive Evangelism Day]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/11/retro-comprehensive-evangelism-day http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/11/retro-comprehensive-evangelism-day
Having taken the morning off work, Hannah (in the @HforHannah sense) were welcomed into Latymer Upper School - as ambassadors from state school world - to talk with, and be questioned by, a group of Year 10 students. (In this we were merely following in the footsteps of other QPCSers who have done the same thing in previous years, like Marion and Miles.)

I wasn't going to blog about the students too much, but suffice to say they were all engaged and open to discussing the whole state/private divide. Which is actually pretty brave of them, given that my aim is always to plant the idea that it doesn't have to stay that way. You don't have to send your own children to the same kind of institutions you were sent to - it didn't happen to me, for a start. But it can't be a 'sacrifice'. We have to prove that comprehensives really can do education better, and that starts by standing up and putting a human face on a system which will never compete in power and prestige. So, yes, it was really good to speak to them - and kudos to Latymer for allowing the whole exercise in the first place.

There was a slight weird coda to the day, too. Through an unexpected work connection I ended up seeing Andy Burnham speak in Tower Hamlets tonight, and after asking my obligatory question about schools he gave a long answer which effectively summed up School Wars! Nice to know these things are all a little bit circular

Blurry photos from the pub will recommence next post. Which may or may not be written entirely on the Tube home...]]> News & Politics http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2011/11/retro-comprehensive-evangelism-day#c Wed, 2 Nov 2011 23:24:48 +0100