(Not especially) sweet music

To a rehearsal of Bach's B Minor Mass last night.

There's a member of my choir called Chris who I always thought was a bit odd.

Anyway now he seems to have decided to inhabit a woman's voice: he was singing alto.

It didn't go especially with the shaven head and beard.

Trouble is, he was sat right behind me, his voice is about twice as loud as all the other altos, and, while in tune, it doesn't exactly have a nice tone to it.

Still, I manfully struggled on with the bass part, and overall it was quite a successful evening.

Strictly's Alesha

The lovely Alesha (as opposed to that other lovely, Alicia) has been very badly treated by commentators on Strictly.

OK, so she's not as much of an expert on dance as Arlene, who she replaced.

But surely there's room for someone who's been through it (and won), knows a fair bit about the subject, speaks for the viewers, and (yes, I admit it) is rather attractive as well.

Anyway, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and her contributions have been good since joining the show.

So be quiet, Alesha knockers!!

Not very magical

No doubt all my regular readers are wondering what I thought of Derren Brown's lottery stunt during the week.

Well, I wasn't particularly impressed.

I didn't see the stunt live (I think I was out for choir at the time) but I saw it on the Net later. I thought it was quite a good trick, but clearly it could be done by some sort of camera trick, or a time delay between the lottery draw and Derren's show.

It always strikes me that the essence of magic on TV-as it could always be a camera trick-is to convince the audience that it's 'really happening'. One way of doing that is to have a studio audience, which DB didn't do:it was just him on a studio set.

I watched the follow-up show last night on which he promised he would tell us how it was done. Of course, he didn't. It was just some nonsense about mathematics and the power of the subconscious. I shouldn't have believed he was going to give away his secret.

So how was it done? Clearly DB had to have an assistant quickly produce a set of balls matching the winning lottery selection: easy enough. These then had to be substituted for the balls on show on DB's set without the TV audience seeing. The trick here, it seems to me, was to have a slight time delay between DB's performance and broadcasting it. This was observable from the slight delay in the TV he was watching with the lottery results, in fact DB referred to a slight delay himself.

Then, at a crucial point (ie when his assistant has the balls ready to substitute) DB's broadcast goes 'live', leaving a couple of unbroadcast seconds in which the assistant quickly switches the balls.

Seems logical to me, anyway...

Happy days

I used to meet my mates Herb and John for a pub lunch every month or so. One of our haunts was the Royal Oak at Lasham - a nice little village near us with an airfield (from which quite a few people go gliding, as well as ordinary flying).

On one particular occasion we had a very nice lunch, and a couple of pints of course; when we were done, I got in my car to drive home.

Anyway, the next thing I remember is that I was driving along a very flat, very wide road, and there was an aircraft driving alongside me.

Well, of course, I'd driven onto the airfield.

Luckily I quickly found the way out, and no harm done.

Family history

As you know, I'm doing quite a bit of research on the history of the Sheraton family: not just my branch of the family, but all of it (I imagine we're all related if you go far enough back, but of course it's difficult to get the evidence back in the 1700s and before).

Anyway, one particular branch of the family which I've inevstigated seems to have been quite wealthy, owning farms etc. They moved from Co Durham to Shropshire in about 1830, and had a house at St John's Hill, Ellesmere. Some of that branch went to Liverpool and became merchants. They then seem to have died out round about 1920.

The first thing which I found today is that there is a house called Sheraton House in St John's Hill, Ellesmere, and English Heritage have it on their books as a listed property. I'm sure it's the same house.

Then, amazingly, on looking for further information about the house, it turns out that it is currently for sale! £795,000 for a six-bedromed detached house, and it looks lovely in the pictures.

Of course, I don't have that sort of money to spare, but if I did, and if I was thinking of retiring to that part of the world, wouldn't it be wonderful to own a house called Sheraton House with a genuine family connection?

I can dream, anyway...

Stupid stupid stupid

I went to the gym the other week (that's not the stupid bit).

I felt a bit hungry, but I remembered that they had some sort of vending machine with sports drinks and snacks like cereal bars.

I thought I could manage a cereal bar, so put my money in the machine and pressed the buttons.

Unfortunately I must have pressed the wrong'uns, because what came out was something quite horrible.

It was from the makers of Lucozade, it aimed to provide energy, and it was a sort of gel, the basic content of which was glucose.

It came in a tube, and what you had to do was to cut the end off and sort of squeeze it into your mouth.

The taste was disgusting (just sweetness), the colour and consistency bland (think wallpaper paste) and overall it just provided calories to make you fat without any of the offsetting positives in terms of appearance, taste and feel of, say, a nice bar of chocolate.

Now here's the stupid bit: as I had spent good money on this rubbish, I consumed it.

No-one will ever read this (except me of course)

Just got back from holiday and back to work tomorrow: a pain, but it gets me out of the house.

Had to get the AA out to sort my car, as the battery had gone flat in our absence.

Next job is to replace the car, possibly with a Jag.