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The Omid Djalili Show

2007-11-17T12:18:00.000Z

BBC - Comedy - The Omid Djalili Show
BBC ONE, 9:30pm, Saturday 17th November

The Omid Djalili show starts a six week run on the BBC tonight, having survived the criticism that it may make light of serious subjects such as terrorism with, for example, a sketch called Suicide Bomber School. I am personally a firm believer that comedy can subtly eat away extremist and erroneous views by magnifying them beyond the point at which we identify those views as being our own, but there is always a line below which such comedy will be seen as tasteless and that line is not easily defined. The BBC may, therefore, appear brave to give Omid a Saturday night slot on their flagship channel, but Omid has been staying on the right side of that line in his stand-up routines since he started touching on such material, following the 9/11 bombings, in 2001.

Omid is a serious actor as well as a stand up comedian, his own web site includes a show reel of some of his more serious roles. Perhaps Omid would rather be known as an actor than a comedian but he has always had a natural ability to entertain, my earliest memories of him are from a Baha'i youth conference in London in the mid 1980's where he performed some sketches with the help of Inder Manocha, now also doing stand-up routines. My brother and I did some break dancing at the same event.

That conference was before Omid took on stand-up comedy professionally and so his material has matured a lot since then, but as a long standing fan and admirer of Omid's talent and radiant joyousness, I am very familiar with most of Omid's stand-up routine, some of which is to be repeated yet again for this tv series. Hopefully a prime time BBC ONE airing for this material will be a last stand for some of the older routines and more newer jokes will be developed. The old jokes are still funny to watch, but I don't need to see them performed because I have seen them so many times that they are imprinted in my mind. That said, I do have a desire to see his "Indian bingo caller" resurface, though I doubt that will make it into this show.

The Omid Djalili show starts tonight at 9:30 on BBC ONE and runs for six weeks.

As if there wasn't enough drama...

2007-10-31T10:36:00.000Z

As many readers will know, my wife Ladan - who is in a minimally conscious state - became seriously ill on the night of 17th October (Wednesday) and I was also shocked the following morning by the news that my good friend Manoocher was in a serious car accident at much the same time that Ladan became unwell. I was contacting Diana (his wife) and other people to find out what was going on. I soon became reassured that Manoocher was doing well and that his manager, Bryan, seemed to be doing a sterling job of looking after his needs. But it was reported to be a very serious accident

A few days into our hospital stay I also had a little car crash of my own, I was driving up toward a junction on an A road where the oncoming traffic can turn across the main carriageway onto a central motorway when the road is clear or the traffic lights display a green arrow. The lights were green for me and I saw a car pull up to the lights in the lane for turning across me ahead. Having two sets of lights green in front of me and knowing I had right of way I proceeded at about 50mph toward the junction but as I reached it I saw that the other car started turning into the road. I have previously seen the results of other accidents at this junction and they have not looked good. Not only was I about to hit a car at 50mph but there were also a bollard and a lamp-post to the side of the road that I have seen other cars damaged by. I have also had a similar accident, many years ago, at 40mph and then I was knocked unconscious for a while, suffered temporary amnesia, and was in a lot of pain for about 5 months. "DON'T DO THAT!!!", I shouted at the top of my voice as I slammed on the breaks unsure that I was going to see another thing in my life, feeling it ironic that Manoocher had just had a car accident a few days earlier. If you have never been in a car cash there is a strange sensation that you may be unaware of, and that is that time almost stands still for a few seconds. I swerved to try and get in front of the vehicle to avoid the passenger who was in my initial line of travel, then realising that, in spite of having had some kind of impact, I could still steer the car I looked for the bollard and lamp post and aimed the car for the kerb such that I thought it would not hit either, but knowing that the kerb was unavoidable. Kerbs can throw a car over or send them into dangerous spins, sometimes into other traffic. One last deep breath. A terrible smell of smoke. The road was louder, but I was sitting, the wind had been knocked out of me but I was still okay in my car, conscious, half on the kerb, the right way up. The other driver admitted it was his fault and seemed thankful that I had managed to manoeuvre such that everyone was okay. The other driver was planning to drive back to Cambridge following the crash so I hope there was no serious damage to his car. It was a very close call, the car is almost certainly a write-off, even though it drives, the side is dented from wheel-arch to wheel arch and the door is bent out of place at the top, but with everything that was going on the last two weeks I haven't taken it to the garage yet. Ordinarily this would have been a frightening event in itself, but under the circumstances I just drove back to the hospital where I spent the rest of the night by Ladan's side, which I enjoyed doing on the occasions I did it in the hospital, I would pray and just enjoy being quietly together through the night. A few hours of near-normality!

It's getting hot here, so wrap up in blankets...

2007-10-15T21:43:00.000Z

Blog Action Day...

How to Save the Environment at Home

51 Things We Can Do to Save the Environment

The BBC Green Room

Amy Sahba's Marathon Fund Raising

2007-09-22T10:33:00.000Z

Link: Team in Training

Amy Sahba is the sister-in-law of the best man at our wedding and moved to New York several years ago to work with CNN. She is in training to run a marathon in which she hopes to raise $1,800 toward research into blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphona and myeloma.

This is cause very close to my heart and even closer to Ladan's, with both her and her father having suffered from leukemia in their lifetimes. I have made a small donation myself but have little to give at this time in my life, so I am encouraging others to please support Amy, with however little or much you feel comfortable offering, in her marathon endeavour.

Simply click here to read Amy's donation page and to make your offer. Many thanks!

Google Earth takes to the skies

2007-09-10T16:37:00.000Z

The latest beta version of Google Earth, available from http://earth.google.com/ has two new sky related features.

I was wondering if anybody had found a hack to make it feel like you were flying a plane over Google Earth scenery, and I was pleased to find that Google have done it themselves. If you hold down CTRL+ALT+A (according to their instructions) you launch a flight simulator, choose your aicraft from two available, choose a starting point, and you can take to the skies. I have tested it by crashing into some trees in Venice. Details on all the controls are here.

On my computer CTRL+ALT+A didn't work, something to do with having a British keyboard layout, but using the right hand (as opposed to left) CTRL with A (no ALT) worked instead.

There is also an option, which I have not tested yet, to explore space. You choose a location on earth from which to look at the skies and then click the sky button, from there you can explore our solar system and much of the known universe beyond it.

Extrapolate and Laugh

2007-08-23T12:14:00.001Z

Lately a few things have happened to me which I felt would be well placed in a comedy, with just slight alterations to the course of events. A couple of weeks ago I went to pour tomato ketchup along side some chips on my plate, noticed it was a little runny, casually closed the lid and shook the bottle, only to have the lid fly open and the ketchup follow it out of the bottle and onto the walls, appliances and furniture in the kitchen. I am sure this has happened to most of us, but I seem to be having a season for these things.

I am not very good at having fresh fruit in the house, I either eat it all on the day of purchase or leave it to rot in the bowl. Somebody told me about Sainsburys new range of frozen fruit, conveniently frozen fresh fruit, cut to edible chunks where appropriate. I keep some in my freezer and eat it when I feel like having something fruity. Recently I decided to get frozen blueberries for the first time, having enjoyed many blueberry flavoured foods through the years. They were a little blander in taste than I had expected but still refreshing. The fruit was all I had eaten that afternoon and I was about to leave the flat when I wondered if I should brush my teeth, I remembered that I was out of tooth-paste and headed for the front door, I had a sudden change of mind and decided I could squeeze something out of the tube if I tried, so I went to the bathroom and beheld my mouth in the mirror, a bright glowing hue of blue. How embarrassing it would have been had I walked out of that door without cleaning my teeth and mouth!

As most readers know my wife is in a nursing home and from time to time we have a doctor or a consultant come to see her for something. A few weeks ago we were expecting a consultant and I was washing some jugs in the sink having just given Ladan a fruit drink. All the sinks in the care home are low so that wheelchair users can reach them easily, which also means that any splashes are aligned on the trousers to appear that an accident has been had, especially when your trousers are a light beige colour, as mine were that afternoon. How ironic it would be, I thought, if the consultant would arrive just after I have managed to splash water onto my trousers, I quickly grabbed a hair dryer to start drying them off when there was a knock at the door and the consultant walked in with a nurse. Ladan was up in a chair near the bathroom and the chair has wheels so I quickly positioned myself behind the chair and moved Ladan with me, in her chair, as I moved around the room to keep my trousers hidden. After a short while I was asked to get something that was on the other side of the room, I kept my body turned away from the guests as I walked to the drawers, then quickly moved into a new position concealed behind Ladan's bed when nobody was watching and handed over the item. Several minutes later the water had dried enough that it was no longer visible and I noticed this. I looked down several times, trying to be subtle, to check I was right about this before proudly coming out from behind the bed to let my dry trousers be seen again.

Last year I was given a very nice pair of shoes by a relative and recently they started deteriorating. A few months ago the front of the sole had come loose from the rest of the shoe and I fixed it with super-glue. Many years ago I went to have shoes fixed under similar circumstances by a shoe repair specialist and he did exactly the same thing for four times the money, so since then I have resolved just to do it myself when required. More recently the same thing happened with one of my shoes shortly before I had to attend an interview. It would be embarrassing to attend an interview with shoes that were falling apart but I used super-glue before heading out and was optimistic that they would stay together, there was no time to get a replacement pair of shoes, even though I had now accepted that my sentimental attachment to this pair of shoes was no longer justified. I went to the interview, there were two people conducting the interview and I was behind a desk, there were some other people sat waiting further down the room, too far away to hear us but close enough to see. As the interview neared its conclusion I went to bring my feet forward and failed. My foot would not move. I used a greater force and my foot still remained fastened to the floor, not only was the sole glued firmly to my shoe, it was now fixed firmly to the floor too. I tried to look completely focused on the interview while I used more and more force to try and kick my foot free from the floor, eventually my foot flew forward and the people sat in the distance were sending some very strange looks in my direction. The interviewers seemed not to have noticed anything. I got some new shoes pretty quickly after that, I couldn't help imaging the scenario of a boy trying to impress a girl on a first date and, after a lot of kicking around under the table, walking out of a restaurant with a carpet tile stuck to his shoe.

Fingers crossed, I'm back again.

2007-04-29T20:48:00.000Z

Somewhere at the end of December/start of January my laptop was balanced on Ladan's bedside while I attended to something for her and one moment later it was on the floor and the screen had gone off. I tried to resuscitate it several times but it remains in a severely disabled state unsuitable for blogging.

Ladan's kind and generous uncle Shahram said that I could have his old notebook computer and finally, as of a few days ago, I have it. It took a while to make it work well but... all staying good, I'm properly back in business.

I lost a lot of personal data including email and a huge mp3 collection, as well as some projects I had been working on, so if I haven't replied to something for months then you will know why.

Among the lost data was some recorded material for a Baha'i podcast I was about to launch, I was excited about it having kept my Baha'i blog up to date for the best part of a year without fail, but, alas, the flaw of being a one man show hit me when my computer gave up.

Some of you may have noticed some Internet presence on my part, but it has been from numerous computers and I wanted a solid platform from which to get back into blogging. Now I have it, so, without further ado, I'm off to give a Ladan update on our main blog...

Sorry State of Affairs

2007-01-08T14:32:00.000Z

I'm sorry if this isn't of interest to you but the BBC have an article about how the word sorry has lost much of its sincerity in Britain...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6241411.stm

Blog Issues

2006-12-19T10:19:00.000Z

This is a techy grumble. My blogs are still damaged by Google's new beta version of blogger. If you read their blurb on progress you would think that everything was close to perfection. If you use he new blogger in the most simple of ways then there are indeed some nice new features available to you, but if you use FTP to host your own blog then the new blogger just introduces a few cosmetic changes, including the formatting of the atom XML feed. I had decided to transfer over to WordPress which would remain more under my control but the import feature of WordPress does not work with Blogger Beta. So, my site remains a little damaged for a while until I can find a work around for the cross-blog links to work again. I am concluding that while Blogger is an excellent entry vehicle into blogging, I have always felt it wins over Yahoo, MSN and MySpace in many ways, but at the end of the engine is still remotely-hosted, and somebody else controls your blog presence.

War is Depressing

2006-12-18T20:50:00.000Z

The war on Iraq is a sad state of affairs whatever your perspective on the rights or wrongs of the invasion and the continuing presence of foreign forces to assist in the rebuilding of the country, but this video, which claims to show US soldiers teaching Iraqi children a little English, is heart-destroying.

Google damaged my blogs

2006-11-26T14:38:00.000Z

Anyone who uses blogger will be familiar with the way that Google have been encouraging us to switch over to their new beta version. Well, I finally gave in and now the links to my other blogs, in the left column of each page, do not work because the "atom feed" created by blogger has changed its format. That probably means nothing to most of you, but hopefully we will get around the problem soon.

That obligatory map for blogs...

2006-11-02T23:47:00.000Z

It it's in red I've been there...

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Being Fooled by the Signs

2006-10-09T21:56:00.000Z

Over the weekend I made a brief trip to the South East corner of the country to meet my Mum at Heathrow airport and bring a car load of our belongings back with me. I set off from Ladan's room at just after 6am and enjoyed the wide empty roads before me as the crisp light of dawn arose around me.

When I was about a third of the way down the country a sign above the almost deserted motorway informed me that there was a queue ahead and that I should slow down to 40mph. Skeptically, I started slowing down only to find that the next overhead sign, just around a bend from the first, said "End" meaning that I had passed the congestion.

I wondered, for a moment, what had prompted the sign to flash such an unlikely warning at me, before forgetting about it and pondering more interesting and important facts such as when and where I would get my breakfast. However, it was not to be the first overhead sign to flash nonsense warnings at me during my 14 hours of driving that weekend, I was warned numerous times of imminent danger by overhead signs on the A1(M), the M1 and the M25 and on every single occasion the warning was false.

There were a couple of occasions on the M25 where it is possible the traffic conditions had been different a few minutes earlier, but for the most part the warning signs were not just wrong they were verging on the impossible. The last instance of this that I experienced was on my way back where a sign warned of congestion ahead and suggested I slow down to 50mph, doubtful I ignored it and decided that I would only take notice if the next sign repeated the warning and recommended a drop to 40mph... actually the next sign did repeat the warning and suggested 30mph. The road was flowing so well that with all my experience of false signs I merely ensured I wasn't above the speed limit, then the next sign was blank. Either it wasn't playing along with the previous signs or it knew that nobody was taking any notice and took a "What's the point?" attitude to giving any kind of warning. Of course, there were no delays and the next sign said "End".

I am reminded of the parable of the boy who cried wolf. During my journey I saw a few accidents and delays on the opposite carriageway. One man I saw sent a cloud of smoke across the road as he burned his tyres coming to a sudden stop from over 70mph... had he seen a warning sign about queues ahead or were they only telling lies this weekend, or had he indeed seen so many false warnings that he had decided not to take any notice anymore.

I have no idea why the overhead warning signs were so outrageously wrong this weekend, but it is dangerous for them to be so. The overhead signs are a means of communicating important information to drivers but if the drivers lose their trust in the communications they are receiving then the communication becomes useless and it can no longer be used to improve safety on the road.

Back to Lady's Gift Road for a night

I had intended to get back to the old flat, pack our remaining things and give it a good tidy before collecting my Mum from Heathrow airport. I had forgotten how much stuff was still there and so I didn't even finish the packing part, though I did pack as much as I would be able to bring back the following day. My Mum is in the country for a few weeks and should be coming up to Newcastle to visit me here soon. On Sunday morning I had the pleasure of seeing my brother Robert, his partner Anne and my nephew Finlay for the first time in over a year. It was a relatively short time before I felt the need to get back on the road but it was really great to see them all. Finlay is so very cute and cheerful.

Unfortunately I will need to make another visit to the flat to get the rest of our things from there, I had hoped this trip (my second quick visit) would be the last so that next time I go south I might just spend my time visiting friends or family rather than packing and loading. Hopefully the next trip will be the last.

Some things I haven't done.

2006-10-04T18:30:00.000Z

My name is James Herbert, I am responsible for this blog, but not for any of the following...

I am not the author of lots of horror books, some of which have been made into movies. This man is.

I have never set foot inside Yale, let alone lectured as a Professor of Art History or Visual Studies. This man has.

I have helped produce a few short videos but cannot claim to have produced lots of R.E.M. pop videos, which this man has done.

I might have a clever idea now and then but I'm no expert in entrepreneurship and definitely not management, whereas this man is a professor of both.

I have never been a member of the of the Clinical Engineering Association of South Africa, let alone the President of it's National Council.

I have read a lot about the human brain in recent times but I haven't gone for a Ph.D and specialised in cognitive-behavior therapy, unlike this man.

I also did'nt work as the production manager on such big motion pictures as Die hard 2, Demolition Man and The Goonies like this man did. Nor did I edit the movie version of Dirty Sanchez or help edit Troy and Die Another Day like this man.

googlewhack pericarditis

2006-10-01T21:55:00.000Z

Pericarditis is the inflammation of the pericardium, which is the membranous sac that surrounds the heart. Pericarditis can cause chest pain which can become more severe with breathing or movement. I was diagnosed as having pericarditis once, though the doctors were unsure if it might be pleurisy, so at the time it was recorded as pleuropericatditis.

A "Googlewhack" is a two word search in Google which returns only one result. At the time of writing "Googlewhack pericarditis" is an example of a googlewhack, but it won't remain that way for long, especially since I've gone and blogged it.

googlewhack pericarditis - Google Search

007 Confusion

2006-10-01T13:06:00.000Z

The film's an error, a continuity error.

I've always enjoyed the Bond series of movies but when Pierce Brosnan was swapped for Daniel Craig I started having my doubts over whether or not I wanted to see the next movie.

The problem I first had was that the new bond did not have the same cool, collected yet highly aware persona of the previous Bonds, but that concern was soon lessened by the revelation that Daniel Craig is playing in a prequel (Casino Royale) to the other James Bond films and therefore he can have a much rougher character.

Ofcourse, this makes Casino Royale a different kind of 007 movie from all the others, because we are watching a man still learning the ropes as a 00 agent, rather than Britain's top ranking secret agent that James Bond has become for the rest of the movies.

I have watched the trailers get better at www.casinoroyalemovie.com, trying to convince myself that it could be a good film, perhaps a film that shows the mental torment that built Bond to be what he became, but watching the trailer has left me unconvinced and I have suffered having to see Daniel Craig come out of the sea in his swimming trunks several times (apparantly he's already winning a gay following for the next Bond film).

But what most bothers me about the new bond film is that they haven't made it easy to accept Daniel Craig as the new Bond because the decision to have a prequel - that might have justified having a different kind of Bond - throws up continuity errors before the film has even started. The most obvious of which is the role of Judi Dench as M, a character who was introduced as a new M in Goldeneye.

I hate spending good money on a film where the plot doesn't hold up to scrutiny or a twist is made far too obvious early on, at least we've been pre-warned that this film is not going to have the same stunning visual effects and funny one-liners, and we know it doesn't fit in properly with the series it is supposed to prequel... so can it possibly offer anything that should pull existing fans of the James Bond series into the cinemas?

If you can answer yes, please tell me why.

Omid Djalili Uncovering Iran

2006-09-26T11:17:00.000Z

BBC Radio 4 - Uncovering Iran: From Tehran with Laughter

Omid Djalili presents a programme on BBC Radio 4 looking at comedy in Iran. You will be able to hear it on their website for a few more days.

The documentary lasts about thirty minutes and has many clips from Iranian comedians.

My family and physical assault

2006-09-15T10:27:00.000Z

Over the last ten days I have been blessed with two family visits, one from my two aunts and another from my Dad, I have also stood as witness in a magisrates court against the man who was arrested for assaulting me in Peterlee back in February.

The visit from my aunts was a short, pleasant and unexpected suprise, they came up for an afternoon, spent some time with Ladan and I and took me for a very delicious meal at the Cafe Royal in Newcastle. My father's visit was timed to coincide with the court case in Peterlee. Somthing that these visits reminds me of, for which I consider Ladan and I to be very lucky, is that my whole family and some of Ladan's are very supportive of my own continuing love and support for Ladan.

Our trip to Peterlee was an interesting experience, it was my first time inside a court and the actual process of giving evidence and being cross-examined was significantly less intimidating than I had imagined, I was suprised to find that when the solicitor for the defence put a question to me I was allowed to give a full and elaborate answer which would have been more useful for the prosecution than the defence, rather than the "yes or no answer, please Mr Herbert" that you often see on television and which could have given a stronger impression of holes in the case. The main argument against the prosecution was that I could not be certain who had assaulted me as he had hit me from behind and broken my glasses so that my vision after the assault was impaired. Because the attacker had been both unpredicatable and threatening on the night and because he seemed to have several friends and/or family members there I did not want to hang around to the end of the case to see what the results were, due to computer problems the witness serice have been unable to tell me what happened yet, I should know by early next week.

Here, for anybody who doesn't know what I am talking about but is interested, is the report iof the incident that I wrote previously in my main blog...

"I had just got myself some cheap comfort food in the form of a chicken burger and chips and was walking back when a youth started walking the same way, I didn't think much of it at the time, in fact he had some features in common with a friend of mine which reassured me that I shouldn't think of him as being dodgy. Anyway, as we got out of the centre of the town I was initially about 20 metres ahead of him a a less well-lit area with nobody else around and I noticed his shadow rapidly getting closer, then he hit me in the side of the head knocking me into the road, he ran off into some trees opposite the road. I got up and picked up what I could find of my broken glasses and shouted after the guy asking why he had done it, he didn't reply. As I continued along the path he came out from the trees so I stepped in to a driveway and knocked on a door, he went back into the trees and shouted something like "don't call the police", a couple of ladies then came along and asked what was going on, they walked with me down to the entrance to the hospital car park, at that point the youth came out again running after me and I ran into the hospital - this is a hospital next to the rehab centre Ladan is in - there was some bleeding around my eye and so I asked them to take a look at it, the security guard described somebody acting suspiciously outside the entrance and called the police with my consent, the police came and took the guy away for questioning, I spent much of the rest of the night giving statements and getting my eye checked in the A&E department of another hospital as the one in Peterlee was too small, it is okay mind, my glasses damaged the surface layers of my eye so I needed to take some antibiotics for a while, and I still have some scarring and tenderness around that eye."

welcome to relaxingTV.com : your everyday vacation

2006-09-04T15:08:00.000Z

welcome to relaxingTV.com : your everyday vacation

Here's a novel site I just found, they have several free video clips of relaxing scenes, such as plants waving in the breeze, the sea crashing against some cliffs, sunrises, sunsets, and the classic fireplace videos. You can enjoy a few moments of something different and you may well wish you could book a holiday in Hawaii afterward.

Pluto is Dwarfed

2006-08-26T18:52:00.000Z

I used to be keen on the stars and planets, as a child I spent many a night looking at the craters on the moon in my 40x magnification telescope. I always planned to have my own observatory built into our mansion when I became a multi-millionaire... I would have observed the nine planets of the solar system and taken amazing photos of them through my enormous telescope... well, I guess that just won't come to pass now as there are only eight real planets in our solar system. Pluto has been voted out by a group of about 2,500 scientists meeting in Prague! They've tried to lessen the blow on Pluto a little bit by introducing a new category of "dwarf planet", of which there are now at least three in our solar-system including Ceres between Mars and Jupiter.

Link: BBC News Story: Pluto loses status as a planet

Joseph, the Persian Tenor

2006-08-21T17:37:00.000Z

Here's a cute video that may bring a smile to some faces, particularly Persian faces...

THE UNIVERSAL LOVE: A BAHA'I VIDEO - open for votes

Broadband Deals

2006-08-15T12:10:00.000Z

Once you have learnt where the on switch is on a computer everybody asks you for advise on how to do things such as how to make a website that will bring in millions of pounds a day, how to use Microsoft Excel on Windows to print a Document that was written in an Arabic version of Quark Express on the Apple Mac, and how to take remote control of US Satellite Defense Systems. Another among such common questions is the matter of which UK broadband service provider to go with for personal use. I chose one fairly recently so I do have five suggestions here...

Firstly, I don't believe in less than 4GB usage per month as being worth while, so prices I mention are for packages offering more than that.

1. PlusNET. £14.99/month + BT Line Rental
This service has a 4GB limit during peak hours (4pm-midnight) and no limits outside those hours. You are don't even have to commit to a year but you have to pay a deferred activation fee when you leave which could be as much as £47. I'm with PlusNET, so if you join them by following this link you will save me a few pennies a month (only pennies).

2. Sky Broadband £20.00/month (£5.00 if you already subscribe to Sky) + BT Line rental
This is a great deal, you get almost unlimited use, you get Sky TV and you pay less than many other companies charge for broadband without the TV service. The actual package is £5.00/month for Sky subscribers and Sky subscription starts at £15.00 for which you can get all the best entertainment and documentary channels. (£20.00 activation fee)

3. NTL/Telewest. £17.99/month
If you don't have a BT telephone line then cable is the way to go, it's slower but its unlimited and cheaper than paying for a BT line and broadband on top of that. Cable only covers some of the country, availability is limited. Unfortunately "cable is not available in [my] area", though it is on the other side of my street!

4. Talk Talk. £19.99/month
It's almost unlimited and the price includes your BT line rental, you also get great deals on your phone calls. The catch... it's an 18 month contract and you will be using Talk Talk instead of BT for all your phone related matters.

5. BT Broadband. £22.99/month + BT Line Rental
One of the things about broadband is that when something goes wrong you want it fixed, and the people who are best at getting things fixed when they go wrong, generally speaking, are BT. They are the more expensive option but they are reliable and they are in control of everything you are using, if you use BT and have a problem then it will never be a third party's fault.

Ali, Simon and I visit Lake Windermere

2006-08-06T21:54:00.000Z

Following on my theme of visiting interesting places in the rain, Simon Batchelor chose to jump on a train to Manchester and then, with Ali Khosravi, meet me in Windermere in the Lake District while the clouds and rain minimized the view of the spectacular hills and countryside around us. Below is a picture from our cruise of the lake:

It was Thursday last week that we met up, Manoocher (see below) had left at 01:30 that day to have NTL sort out his Internet and TV problems in Oxford later that morning. I headed out in the torrential rain storm that often greets those who step outside in this part of the world and raced out toward Hexham, knowing that the scenic route I had chosen, though fairly short, was likely to take a while to get me to Windermere.

Scenic is an understatement here, the rain was not quite as bad once I was halfway west across the country but even with the remaning downpour and cloud the scenery I witnessed as I drove up and down a winding road that passed through Alston was breath-taking. The road goes 1900 feet up into the hills and one could easily die for a view of the scenery up there, not just because it was so spectacular but moreso because the road made several 180 degree turns past deep drops and if I had taken my eyes off the road and onto the scenery for more than a passing glance I would surely now be lying in a VW Coffin somewhere south of Carlilse.

Then came the road from Penrith to Windermere and for the most part that was a much safer affair, though it would have been easier to drive in an Automatic with all the clutch control and gear changes, again this road took me 1500 feet up into the sky with the green mountainous terrain of the northern Lake District rolling up and down along side the lakes. Amidst this beauty I wasn't too worried about how long the journey was taking and I was suprisingly calm about people driving their vans at 20mph in front of a convoy of 15 cars without pulling over. I mention this drive for one reason, it was spectacular, the A roads between Penrith and Windermere and between Hexham and Penrith are very beautiful drives, espcially, I would assume, for passengers.

The scenery wasn't really my reason for going to Windermere so finding myself in a wet and windy place that was beautiful but not really as stunning as the drive was of little consequence, I was really there to see Ali and Simon. We're not seasoned Lake District tourists as yet and so we weren't sure what to do in the wind and rain, all we really knew was the kite flying was out. We booked tickets for a lake cruise up to Ambleside and then played a few games in an arcade, which Ali won, of course, before boarding our crowded boat. Initially we headed upstairs where I gave everyone a free demonstration on how to fall over on a non-slip surface, hitting my leg hard against a chair as a bonus feature of the display. Once I had got up and hobbled over to a covered seat Ali and Simon felt it wiser to keep me downstairs in a dryer environment.

On arriving in Ambelside our tickets allowed us to disembark, walk around and enjoy all the joys and wonders that Ambleside had to offer and catch another boat back to Windermere. Since the ship's crew could only think of one hotel and bar as representing all that Ambelside had to offer we decided, however, to stay on the boat and return to Windermere straight away. On our return journey Ali and I ventured up onto the top deck again and, being much emptier on the way back, I elected not to do a repeat demostration of falling over. The picture above was taken through a downstairs window on our cruise of the lake, below are some other photos taken from the ship.

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Lately Simon has had a liking for finding a beautiful place outdoors to sit and say some prayers, so we drove south from the harbour at Bowness in search of a quiet secluded spot by the lake. Simon and I both like to say the longest of the Baha'i healing prayers at least once each day and so I asked if I may say it, while Simon was all for it Ali was somewhat hesitant with the cold wind chilling his Persian blood. Noting Ali's hesitance Simon said a shorter prayer than he had planned while I proceded to follow with the long healing prayer, Ali then followed through with three of the longest prayers left in the Baha'i religion, namely the Fire Tablet, The Tablet of Ahmad and The Tablet of Visitation (of Baha'u'llah). It was a very special moment for us, although we were brought together as friends by our faith it is rare that we do anything particularly spiritual when we are together. Here are a few shots from the area where we were sat:

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Cold and hungry, as we were by then, we set off to find somewhere to eat and found a small restaurant serving local fish over which we shared our last couple of hours together.

Being dark as well as wet I chose a less scenic route home, rather than 90 miles in 2 and a quarter hours, which was my journey to Windermere, I drove 120 miles in just over two hours. I stuck to the main roads but am sure there was a quicker route, one of the great frutrations of north-east England is that there are few sign posts even on the A routes, and with the rain very heavy again on the eastern side of the country I wasn't in the mood for turning down small country roads looking for a place I could stop and check the map, so I just drove until I hit the A1 somewhere 45 miles south of Newcastle.

Simon and I have discussed the possibility of another trip to the northern part of the lakes in a month or so. We'll keep our finger crossed for an Indian summer in the north west.

Manoocher Visits

2006-08-06T21:41:00.000Z

With the Newcastle summer subsiding Manoocher hopped in his car and drove up to enjoy the surrounding countryside with me in the rain. Above is a picture of us enjoying the rain at Bolam Lake in Northumberland, below is a picture of Manoocher enjoying the rain at the Penshaw monument near Sunderland.

The Penshaw Monument was built in 1844 anddesigned by John and Benjamin Green, that's all I know about it and I found that out from the BBC local website, there was no information about it at the actual site.

More photos of our two small excursions can be found here.

Summer Reaches Newcastle

2006-08-05T14:08:00.000Z

As the temperature crept close to 20 dregrees centigrade a few weeks ago most northerners could be found taking in the sun in their T-shirts and complaining that it was too hot for work. Coming from the south-east corner of England I was still wearing my (almost trademark) pullover and jacket as the temperature hit the early twenties and the sun shone on these well-watered lands.

Shortly thereafter the residents of Newcastle upon Tyne were found lacking in vocabulary to describe true warm weather, reaching as high as 28 degrees centigrade, feeling especially hot when, for a few days, the breeze from the north sea seemed to die down. I duly removed my jacket and declared that even I found the weather to be summer-like.

Alas those two warm weeks are now ended and the rain has returned. Still, it was enough for me to stop missing the sun for a while. When you watch the weather forecasts and see the "maximum temperature" in the shade, you don't appreciate that in addition to the north being several degrees cooler all the time it is also the case that in the south-east the shade keeps you from feeling the full warmth of the sun and so it feels hotter than the forecasted temperature when you are out, whereas in Newcastle the shade often shelters you from the winds coming in off the north sea's shore, and it can feel cooler than the forecasted temperature when you are out of the shade.

So, it seems that these tough-as-titanium northerners have had their one true weakness revealed, they cannot stand the heat. But try coming up to Newcaslte in the winter and dressing down like they do in the city, virtually naked in the cold and the rain, no south-easterner could possibly survive it. So, if global warming eventually triggers another ice-age then it will be the northerners who will survive most easily.