Last week The Times launched a cycle safety campaign. Their Save Our Cyclists campaign has garnered plenty of support from cyclists including myself. I signed up and gave them a small summary of my experiences of cycling in London. They were nice enough to ask for more and ran the following paragraph as the experiences of one Alex Ingram of Hammersmith aged 30 who commutes daily to Kew Bridge:

In the seven years that I’ve been cycling in London I’ve been run over twice. My first accident was in 2007, at a T-junction. A young mother drove out of a side road and knocked me flying into the air. I was lucky — I was only bruised. My last accident was in July, when I was run over from behind by a pair on a stolen moped at a busy gyratory in Hammersmith. I’d been scraped across the road on my right-hand side. I was rather lucky.

Lucky, you might wonder? What’s lucky about being run over twice? Well, despite suffering pretty nasty road rash (which took months to heal and has left some scars) in July and awful bruising (which only healed after a few months) a few years back I’ve not broken anything worse than a front fork, some cranks and a pair of glasses. It could have been so much worse. The page my story was printed on shared its space with those of my fellow cyclists and that of James Cracknell. They had proper accidents, the changes they experienced were not just in the mind.

For sure, having been run over – both times – I did not emerge the same person. The first time I found that I changed my riding habits completely. I had been becoming an ever more confident road cyclist, delighted by my shiny new racer and was developing a love of speed. I cannot see how it was my fault to be hit by a driver who put their foot to the floor and accelerated out of a side road into my bike. Yet at the same time my head decided I was too vulnerable and I shied away from enjoying the sport I have always loved. So my immediate reaction to that accident was to cycle less. I regret that.

However, I have always balanced my love of the road with an understanding of the complexity of risk and danger. James Cracknell says “If you are cycling without a helmet, you are being selfish to your family and friends”, he’s wrong. What you are doing is taking a view of the dangers and risks. Now, yes, if you’re going to cycle across America on major roads shared with trucks driving at speed a helmet is effectively mandatory. Arguably so too would be a support vehicle. However, when I ride a Boris Bike (no, Ken Bike, dammit!) and dart a few miles in the middle of a city I simply should not need a helmet. I ride with a helmet on my own bike because it’s more convenient to me to have one, I ride without on a Boris bike for precisely the same reasons.

What was my reaction to my second accident, as an experienced victim of London’s roads? Well, I took things more seriously. I made sure I got checked over, I took some days to let the impact and the most important effects of shock, disorientation and fear to subside along with the auto-immune response, though I think I felt a bit off for a good few weeks thereafter. What I didn’t do was let it affect my cycling. I felt defiant to have been run over again. Road rash was the most challenging thing. Being disfigured on your face, even temporarily has weird psychological effects. No healing is fast enough. I found myself ringing up NHS Direct in a panic one evening. Had someone offered me a leaflet to reassure me and tell me how to heal my wounds I’m sure I’d have felt better. I can see why an accident can make so many change their attitude to something they love.

Weirdly I also wound up learning to drive not much later, and in the process found myself really improving my skills on the road. My instructor was also sensible enough to help me take the skills I learnt as a cyclist into my driving.

Kaya Burgess should be commended for being open and responsive as a journalist in explaining his aims for The Times campaign. His opening piece on Mary Bowers’ accident and its aftermath is a heavily moving piece that explains eloquently why so much of the campaign is necessary. The problem we cyclists face is that we are the victims of chance events which are only predictable and understandable on long timescales. In the timespace of a humble ordinary commute we are only a few glances, one missing signal or a piece of crap road design away from danger.

You could get feart and argue cyclists shouldn’t place ourselves in danger. But to me, cities, roads, these lands are for people. Danger for cyclists means danger for pedestrians equally. And that means we should ensure that when we need to restrain the freedom and simplicity of the motorised brigade to let a vibrant set of users make their city come alive you bite the bullet. Maybe you do build weird cyclist only bridges. Maybe you reallocate road space. It might be tight in London, but that shouldn’t mean we can’t find the space for a single dedicated East-West route for bikes. And if we really can’t, why not take the vision of Crossrail into another mode and make something elevated or tunnelled if we must. Cyclists aren’t going to go away. My favourite cities that I’ve visited lately such as Bilbao delight in understanding that you actually do need to spend money on infrastructure and planning. I don’t want to live in the decaying ruins of a city, I want to live somewhere that changes.

I’m not convinced that The Times campaign has a monopoly of wisdom. Quite the opposite, in fact. It has based itself neatly around the aims that many – especially in London – have had for some time. Elements of what it proposes such as a cycling budget of £100m a year are eminently sensible. However, I do think it could be a lot more ambitious.

It’s a step – for sure – to move up from a laissez faire attitude that cyclist safety is a matter only for cyclists into believing in interventions. However, it’s a further step to match the efforts of our neighbours. We must finally learn from our European neighbours that standardised junction design makes sense and that road space must sometimes be reserved for cycling alone. We should be willing to make it a lot harder for cars to be in our cities. And we must, we must not rest, not for one second until anyone, even a small child feels safe cycling in our communities. We don’t have to tolerate even a single cyclist death in London, if it Paris doesn’t. Cities are for people. The cars are merely for a few who can afford them. We must all be able to get around, and safely.

So, when did I first join twitter? And why? Well it’s almost four and a half years ago now, or 13,639 tweets ago. My friend Ian (@maniacyak) had recently joined and had been mentioning it for some time. I was massively sceptical as to why I would use twitter when the only use I could see for it was updating my FaceBook status. I couldn’t see the use in yet another social network. Here’s my first tweet:

plotting how to use 240 litres of compost

— Alex Ingram (@nuttyxander) June 13, 2007

Boring, isn’t it? It drew comments on FaceBook and no response whatsoever on twitter. I duly followed @maniacyak back for snaring me in and then a few of my other friends joined over the coming months, but I hit a problem. I had nothing interesting to say I wouldn’t rather blog or place on FaceBook, and not enough interesting people to say it to or to read things from. I’d log on to twitter.com every so often read the few tweets that had appeared since I last logged on and then leave.

I didn’t tweet properly until part-way through the following year, 2008, when I finally realised that a few more people were joining. There were two things that held me back from tweeting much at that time, the lack of an audience and the lack of a client. Now, sure twitter had a mobile website of sorts, but I had a paltry Nokia N80 then a reasonable Nokia N95 8GB. It was only by the spring of 2009 that a twitter client of any quality appeared on the Nokia platform in the guise of Gravity.

Maybe I am laying on the “you young kids, I had it hard in my day stuff here” heavy but I do find it interesting that the first two years I used twitter I had to use it without an app. Indeed, at one point I was sat away from an internet connection wanting to tweet but being unable and did this:

This and some of the things I used to post on this blog make me realise now that on reflection I always had plenty of things that would have been well expressed on twitter but just didn’t have the network or the apps to do it with. Witness, for example my comprehensive blog response to 9/11 or the phlog I updated when I first moved to London which frankly would have been a lot better on twitter.

It’s striking to me just how complete twitter is now, and how obvious it seems in retrospect. The whole system achieves a lot and I do puzzle at those who haven’t found some use for it, not necessarily that they might use it just as I do, especially as that changes from month to month. Much as FaceBook hit a point where suddenly it seemed like it was rare to find someone without an account rather than with, twitter has in the past year started to feel like it was a complete network.

There’s a flip side to this. Many of us who’ve been on twitter a while have felt safe in it as some kind of tech-savvy web-savvy haven which goes up against the mainstream. Well, bad news, for a while now it’s just been another tool everyone uses. Folk like Rupert Murdoch will join in their masses throughout this year, but there’s nothing wrong in that. Likewise, I fear twitter has of late uncorked my thinking, writing, expressive internet muse and I’ll be blogging a bit more regular again. Might be something wrong in that. There was an argument in here somewhere…

Twitter’s great isn’t it?

So, to kick off here are the six albums from 2011 that I really enjoyed in 2011. There are lots of surprising omissions from this list, as a lot of artists that I really like and even saw live such as St Vincent, Amon Tobin and Devotchka had new albums this year. But, much as I enjoyed a few tracks from each of their albums I didn’t actually get into them as albums. It really was in many ways a year of rather disappointing albums. However, these six are really damn good. None of them are début albums, though some marked new directions whilst others put a level of polish on that made for supremely easy repeat listens. There is an order to this list and I’ll go in reverse order.

6 – AM & Shawn Lee – Celestial Forces [spotify]

I’ve been listening to a fair chunk of multi-instrumentalist and sometime Ping Pong Orchestra man Shawn Lee for a while and have liked the odd track but never quite fell fully into any album (other than the Bully game soundtrack). This transatlantic collaboration with AM produced a surprisingly great record with a genuinely warm down-tempo retro sound and some pretty melancholy lyrics. I could happily rest in many a park over the summer with this coursing through my ears.

5 – Pete and the Pirates – One Thousand Pictures [spotify]

I came to Pete and the Pirates due to becoming obsessed with Tap Tap, lead vocalist Thomas Sanders’ side project last year. Somehow, I never quite took to Pete and the Pirates the same way but with their third album I think they’ve captured some of that magic into their main sound, perhaps because they’ve dropped the guitar sound a bit further back in their mix to focus on Sanders’ rather appealing vocals whose higher notes just reek beautifully of the angst of young men. What grounds this album nicely is the way it picks up from ordinary lives and paints them into exciting little moments of melodrama. And there’s a lot of singable choruses. This is the kind of We All Drink And Try To Have Fun music Hard-Fi wish they were. And yeah, maybe it’s a bit more mainstream than normal for me.

4 – The Advisory Circle – As The Crow Flies [spotify]

The Advisory Circle is one of a number of particpants in the Ghost Box record label and is actually a moniker for one Jon Brooks aka King of Woolworths whose earlier works I’ve mentioned here before. There is a theme of Public Information Films, 70s discomfort (perhaps even 70s disco) and intricate electronica with odd perhaps found, perhaps not spoken word sections. I think As The Crow Flies is a simply perfect album, one of those rare items I can point to that got influenced massively by Boards of Canada but is also a little weirder, a little stranger and entirely itself.

3 – Andy Meecham – Monophonic Volume 1 [spotify]

Andy Meecham – Oberheim Sem (Taken From Monophonic Vol.1 on Nang Records) by Exploding Art Promotions

Now Mr Meecham is another man known in many guises, one half of Bizarre Inc and hence also half of Chicken Lips I first came to and worshipped him seven years ago for the first Emperor Machine album. He’s now releasing under his own name (!) and setting himself the stiff target of making tracks using a single synthesiser, rather than the massively indulgent synthrepair.com reliant range of synths he was using on the similarly retro Emperor Machine project. This is absolutely glorious progressive synth stuff, with the same intriguing Radiophonic hues throughout that made me love Emperor Machine so much and yet refreshingly new in direction and tone. I can’t wait for volume two.

2 – Metronomy – The English Riviera [spotify]

Alright, I admit it, I got snared in by The Look as a single. But then I wound up buying the album a few weeks later and was utterly bewitched. This is a fascinating album in many ways. It represents a different, certainly more broadly appealing sound than their earlier work, though it had me diving back for their earlier far more electronic and angular work. In a year when England didn’t really have a summer this let me have one every single time I played it.

1 – Misty’s Big Adventure – The Family Amusement Centre [not on spotify but their earlier stuff is]

I’ve been raving about Misty’s on here for about five years now. A few albums and a world of grumpy fun later they wound up having to finance the release of their latest album themselves in a fan funded campaign on pledgemusic. Quite why that should have happened escapes me, as this is easily their finest album and it’s probably no exaggeration to say I’ve listened to something from this most days since I got it.

Why is this? Am I just a crazed fan then? No, The Family Amusement Centre is the perfect balance. Yes, Misty’s are not creating perfect happy accessible pop songs. Yes, they do purposely make pretty odd songs. Yes, Gareth’s voice is not quite that of an angel. But, thing is, Misty’s are a band packed full of musical talent and knowledge who’ve just kept going and are always a blast live. Just Another Day and Cheer Me Up leapt out from the album to soundtrack my summer. They’re not entirely happy songs, but they are optimistic despite talking of life in it’s complexity.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, I am a massive Misty’s Big Adventure fan. Yes, I paid something like £60 to get a special box set from the band when they were seeking support to get this put out. But no, I did the same for They Might Be Giants and their new album was, frankly, crap, so it’s not just my emotional and monetary investment combined. Yes, they’re a bit odd. Watch my playlist of their fantastic live gig in London in November.

FURTHER DISCLAIMER: I’m sure Misty’s next album will be even better, save your money for that.

Want a Biscuit? You can’t have one!

As a family those next few hours, few days seemed impossible. There’s no map, no plan. You stare at the clock and time just stands still. You lie down but you don’t rest. You think but you don’t understand. The kettle is on more than it is off. At first I was just stuck in shock, I was numb. I wasn’t truly sad, I wasn’t truly happy; I was just worried about how those around me were coping.

Those classic stages of bereavement (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance) are there, but they’re not some simple progression or even a cycle, they just fire up as and when they see fit, and not one-by-one. And you all as a family go through them at different rates at different times. I think it’s important to understand just how lonely the bereaved feel in such a situation, together or alone. Indeed even feeling alone when they are together. You know that what’s happened is unusual and that as much as it shocks you it shocks those you tell more. You want to talk but you don’t know what to say, as much as if not more than those who want to help. Maybe you saw some of the struggle, but even you never quite feared it would come to this. The normal pain and empathy of bereavement is suddenly shrouded in so many questions. How? Why? What led to this? But there are no answers. There will be no trial, no retribution.

The days passed, we made it to the end of the first week. Suddenly we realised we’d been away from the world and that real life was carrying on without us. Work got me back a few days later. But still the funeral had no date and there were countless things to arrange. Time was measured not in days of the month but in days since. I persisted in this state for a further couple of weeks before the funeral hit, which was a day of endless and raw emotion.

But then, as everyone else got back into their lives and I mine, then, then was when the full scale of what happened hit me.

Getting up was intolerable, thinking a trial, joy was sucked from everything and I just wanted to hide in the dark. I was truly depressed. I think that was hard to avoid – perhaps impossible – I hadn’t wanted to wall off my emotions because I wanted to mourn but those emotions were too much. After a manly struggle I shouldn’t even have attempted I bounced around a few counselling services and my GP over the course of a couple of months before googling, finding MIND then ending up with a call early the next morning and counselling once a week for a year from the following week. From then on, I knew I could keep going; I had a rhythm and structure to work through.

So where am I now? I am not today the man I was before all this happened. I never will be. I’m not sure I even want to be. And the last few months, having had that year of counselling have been some of the best of my life. Yes, some days it all comes rushing back. Today was one of those days. Even just trying to write this stirs up many powerful emotions.

I could say so much more – I’ve deleted as much again from this blog as I’ve posted – but it would probably explain less.

So my thoughts are with Gary Speed’s family and those like us. Suicide sadly isn’t as rare as you might think. I know many people touched by it just like me and I knew many of them before it touched me. Of course we don’t like to talk about it, and it doesn’t define us, but to hide it away and to never talk of it would be even worse. Those who talked of it, who I met, or read of in books made it easier for me to cope. I hope in writing this I can do a little of the same.

And if you ever think you need help, feel no shame. No-one will think ill of you for trying to be well. Ask for help, talk to someone, take the time.

Rest in peace, Rosey.

Love, your nephew.

Alex

Just as I started to get myself together in the ambulance I started tweeting about what happened, and I’ve just consolidated all of those tweets into a nice little timeline on Storify.

Sat here in bed at the other end of the day I feel very positive despite all that’s happened. Strangers and friends alike were kind, the emergency services looked after me well, without any rush, and work were pretty understanding. Haven’t gone back to see what state the bike’s in yet, but apparently it wasn’t too bad, most of the damage basically happened to me as I flew over the handlebars having been undertaken by a moped which landed on me with it’s two occupants.

If I do have a bit of anger, it’s this. I know I was run over by someone breaking the law, who the police are trying to track down. But I also know that there are people driving today with well over 12 points on their license, and there is a lot of talk of smoothing the traffic flow in London. What smooths the traffic flow when a mindless accident like this in a major junction blocks off two lanes and doubtless caused tailbacks for quite some distance? We can’t get away from sharing the roads with each other, if you really worry about congestion, lobby for safer streets for everyone, a few more people on a few more bikes having a lot fewer accidents and I think we all get to win.

I can’t wait to head out for a ride again myself.

ADRIAN ROLLINI TRIO – Girl With Light Blue Hair

I first hit upon this because it was a Raymond Scott cover, but as a piece of three handed jazz it’s pretty amazing to my ears. For one thing Rollini looks outstandingly nonchalant whilst banging out what is actually a really complex tune on some pretty unwieldy instruments. For another it’s aged bloody well.

Adrian Rollini Trio-Limehouse Blues

It would be great to one day track down a copy of Adrian Rollini’s 1948 Mercury EP and get a copy of this that wasn’t a poor left channel only recording.

Adrian Rollini Trio – Jazz Me Blues

And you’ve just got to love it when the tubular bells kick in here.

So, my big big target for the rest of my life is to track down a copy of this CD. It’s out of print, and I can’t find a copy anywhere. Any help appreciated.

The Bobby McGee’s – L.O.V.E. [youtube] [spotify]

I missed mentioning The Bobby McGee’s debut album on here, it’s a roughly right synthesis of their live act into an album but is a bit less forceful and fun in some ways. Still, a great listen.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home [youtube] [spotify]

I should hate this, it’s quite sickly, but I found myself not quite knowing what it was yet hearing it for about six months so when I finally tracked down what it was I was quite happy. It’s hardly the most profound thing but it’s the most forgivably hook laden thing I’ve heard in some time

The Raveonettes – Blush [youtube] [spotify]

And I haven’t become obsessed by The Raveonettes before because?………………… No. I don’t know either. It has to be admitted that they have A SOUND but it is a rather good, desperate and longing SOUND that I rather like.

To My Boy – Model [youtube] [spotify]

Would you believe I loved this before I saw the Bertha referencing video? (“Miss McClackerty, what are we going to do?!”). This is bloody solid great robust keyboard laden indietronica in the manner of A Scholar And A Physician, but before they got there.

Air France – Beach Party [youtube] [spotify]

There will never be a more glorious cover of Lisa Stansfield.

King Of Woolworths – Delia Derbyshire [we7] [spotify]

The legend and achievements of Delia Derbyshire in the Radiophonic Workshop are ever more striking when compared to modern electronic music, and whilst one could watch one of a thousand different youtube clips there is something about this tribute from the King of Woolworths (also to be found in other guises) that captures the beauty of her sound perfectly without being her sound.

Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine – The Only Living Boy In New Cross [youtube] [spotify]

I’ve lived in London for over six years now, still never got to New Cross, not sure if this makes me any keener to get there.

The B-52′s – Rock Lobster [youtube] [spotify]

I loved the B-52′s when I was a kid, their music was fun and catchy but pretty challenging in other ways. So when I saw this on the Rock Band 3 playlist I was pretty happy. Not so sure my friends were and I can be damn pleased none of them have videoed and later shamed me with even on of my awful attempts at this fantastic song.

Sparks – Looks Looks Looks [youtube] [spotify]

You know you’re a fatally doomed muso when… you get into the likes of Sparks. But I have and they’re great, and this showtunes styled song pretty much captures all the wonder in barely 215 seconds.

Dorothy Collins – Crazy Rhythm [youtube] [spotify]

Dorothy Collins is one of those early pop music curios it’s worth going back for. Partly because her association (and marriage) to Raymond Scott yielded some rather singularly bizarre songs but also because she herself sang almost as a one women andrews sisters. I am also enormously keen on her Science Songs work such as the epic It’s A Magnet.

The Andrews Sisters – The Sabre Dance [youtube] [spotify]

I shall restrict myself to the comment I made on blip.fm: ilovethespellimunderwhenthedrumsbegintothunder

I’ve made a Spotify playlist in my finite wisdom which you can hear by clicking on this. If you don’t have a Spotify account go and get one already, though I will link to YouTube and a couple other services below as necessary to give alternatives. I remember the bad old days when I’d say what I liked then some poor soul would ask for a copy and I’d have to work out how to share music in a quasi-legal fashion. Hurrah for progress!

[youtube] [Spotify]

Spoon – Written In Reverse

I’m going to start by cheating. This I actually heard first in late 2009 but I like it too much to skip it. Spoon’s latest album Transference has moved on their sound nicely whilst hanging around in the same groove that’s served them well. I’ll forever associate this song with a chaotic day which wound up with me having to give my boss’s presentation at couple hours notice. It was a day of downpours, stiff challenges and a pretty handy fast bike ride home in the midst of a downpour. Screaming Arggggggggggggggggghhhhhh whilst riding along just firmly lodged the song back in my head at the time.
AND IT WON’T LEAVE (not that I’m complaining)

Meursault – Crank Resolutions

[YouTube] [Spotify]

The second Meursault album did cause a bit of a ruction in bits of the web I read over the rather more ragged production. It has to be said that at low volumes it does make the songs a bit more unengaging, so this is never going to work in the background at work or in a shop. But when you need to hide in headphones or relax with your hifi then you just disappear into the sound field and it’s glorious.

Sleigh Bells – Run The Heart

[YouTube] [Spotify]

Sleigh Bells OR RATHER SLEIGH BELLS SEEM TO SPECIALISE IN THE LOUD AND OVERDRIVEN SOUND SOMEWHAT. Of all the tracks this has stuck with me best as the multitracked Ahhs seem to fit nicely over the buzzy guitar. I fear this just appeals to my not so inner going with the flow indie hipster but the album is just fun.

Lady Gaga – Telephone

[YouTube] [Spotify]

For me Lady Gaga used to be what I listenned to in the office along with Scooter to ensure that I left when I was working late on something tricky. Telephone changed that because I realised I actually quite liked the overblown glory of it. You can watch the official video but I have to admit that it was watching the Chatroulette version that finally made me realise the genius. Don’t watch that if you’re squeamish.

Fan Death – The Constellations

[YouTube] [Spotify]

Alex likes chronically hipster girl duo with electronic and string backing. SHOCK. Fan Death may have turned up about a year too late and got overlooked but I actually found myself listenning to their album a fair chunk against my expectation. Veronica’s Veil and Reunited remain very very good songs as well.

Crystal Castles – Not In Love (Robert Smith Mix)

[YouTube] [Spotify]

Crystal Castles and Robert Smith is a pretty killer combination. Though in a way it’s a shame this isn’t a duet. Easily the best thing Crystal Castles have ever done. And maybe Robert Smith as well… much as I love Friday I’m In Love.

Edwyn Collins – Humble

[YouTube] [Spotify]

Many things were bad about the world in 2010 but Edwyn Collins being able to record such a great album as Losing Sleep was one of the great things.

Brian LeBarton – Threshold (8 bit)

[YouTube] [Spotify]

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was in many ways the film I was waiting for but in other ways not. This chiptune version of Threshold showcased all that was right in musical form about the thing. Simplistic, fun, referencing so much I’ve always loved and yet being new and shiny in it’s own way.

The Moulettes – Bloodshed In The Woodshed

[YouTube] [Spotify]

Now strictly, this isn’t a new song as I’ve ranted and raved about Modernaire on here before and they had it as a sultry electro number that remains one of my favourites. Now that Ruth and Hannah are focussing on The Moulettes they’ve reworked it and it’s now more of an epic folk song, where it works better with the lyrics and melodrama taking the focus. Fans of The Decemberists should give the album a spin. Well, anyone should really. The only loss is the miming of every murder method including “hit you with a big rock” which was always fun live. But I guess Hannah’s hands are rather full what with the Cello and all now. Going a Gathering also well worth a watch on that youtube link.

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – In Motion

[YouTube] [Spotify]

Another film soundtrack moment, this time for The Social Network which was easily my favourite film of 2010 for all that I also saw Jeff Jarvis give a good 10 second rant saying it was NOTHING like Zuckerburg in real life. The film gave me many flashbacks to my university days and that sense that if there were more time and money then someone’s crazy idea might take off in the labs one day. Also it gave me a flashback to being told I should listen to Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails. Well, at least one of those is dealt with now. Everything about this is right.

Kelpe – Margins

[YouTube] [Spotify]

I spent a lot of 2010 listening to very retro sounding music that wasn’t quite of 2010. Kelpe meanwhile seemed to be in the same place with this wonderful summery yet retro track dominated by some heavy percussion and a strong bass line. The only thing wrong with this was that it turned up in September and thus failed to soundtrack my summer.

Jam On Bread – The Pros And Cons Of Having A Beard

[last.fm] [Spotify]

“They like to call me jesus/Which I thinks a bit off/I’ve got a bit of facial hair/but I’m not the son of god”
It’s hard sometimes having a beard y’know. Daily oppression, weird looks and food getting stuck are just some of the upsides but as Jam On Bread correctly points out it’s the messianic comparisons that are most irritating. Sometimes. On the other hand I quite liked being The Ginger Messiah. You’ll either hate this or be a beard fetishist/owner.

Pagan Wanderer Lu – Even The Cacti

[We7] [Spotify]

“When you’re working spreadsheets for the man it’s hard to feel you’re part of a divine plan”
Good old Pagan Wanderer Lu (PWL) has been one of my key musical fascinations for a few years now, this didn’t make the latest album which I loved BUT for a myriad of reasons this album offcut is what grabbed me the most by the end of the year. Probably just the rising synth line and the note about failing to consume fruit (and yeah, consume rather than eat, that’s the point isn’t it). Maybe just me on this one.

Daft Punk – Derezzed

[YouTube] [Spotify]

The Tron2/Twon soundtrack didn’t yield a large number of gems BUT this is easily the best thing Daft Punk have released since Discovery. FACT. Would have like the full chiptune version though.

Now you can all bemoan my musical taste in the comments. I’ll redeem and/or further damn myself with the Not from 2010 songs of 2010 in a week or two.

2010 has been a bloody weird and at times bewildering year. Sometimes too busy to talk about, sometimes too painful and occasionally I’ve just been too lazy. There’s been some good along the way; losing all four of my wisdom teeth has to go down as one of the highlights.

So, what next – politics, cycling, music or eBooks? Hmm. Something anyway.

So here’s what I’d like to see:

Tories governing on a minority basis with confidence from the Lib Dems.
But with an all party economic council, embracing and extending that which Nick Clegg often spoke about in the debates to include the various Scottish, Irish and Welsh national parties and the Green.
From that supply coming from across the house and an agreement that the queens speech shall be drawn from consensus policies drawn from all parties.

Then three sets of reforms.
Firstly, a wide ranging set of procedural reforms of the House of Commons, to be implemented over the summer. These would be measures to make the chamber adequately respond to the three party nature of politics, and would put the leaders of all opposition parties with more than a dozen members 3 questions and a guaranteed question for all other parties. Also to ensure that the calling of members of debates ceases to be based on their relative seniority in the chamber but instead on a mixture of good judgement and pre-agreed order debate by debate.
Secondly, an examination of the democracy of local and regional government within England, aiming to empower the London assembly and review the voting system for councils.
And thirdly, a referendum on the proposals for AV+ from the Jenkins review. Should a vote on that fail either in the house or in referendum, then a requirement for a commission to re-examine the topic to present proposals to parliament within a year such that there is genuine reform within this parliament.

And all of this under a fixed term four year parliament with an agreement for fixed term parliaments hereafter.