First barbie of the year

My bro-in-law unhooked his chefs whites and made one heck of a barbie in our dripping back garden yesterday. Burgers, tuna steak, haddock, mackerel, couscous stuffed peppers... and so on to gluttony and happy food related death. Shame we couldn't barbecue the Thickie. She would have been quite tender and tasty as the 'cue wasn't too keen to light. Covered in sweet chilli sauce, her meat would have been a rare and fragrant treat.

Slow cooked dog. Good enough for Korea, good enough for me.

The sound of the draburbs

My boss, who is moving to Dagenham (out of choice), has christened it “The Drabbest ‘Burb”.

I can’t think of anything that could possibly contradict this description. Admittedly, in its favour, there are the tube stations, for easy exit, it features numerous fast food outlets (most with home delivery and mainly decent without troubling the word “gourmet”) and there are few rather nice parks, Parsloes and the un-aptly named Central Park (inaccurate for the fact that it lies to the north east of the town, AND is about as far as its more famous counterpart as you can possibly get). And it has been a safe enough place for us to reside for the last eight years.

My boss, on landing there for the first time, also described it as “an area without stimulation”.

Can anyone knowing the UK capital well come up with a more drab ‘burb? Cos I grew up in suburban west and have lived in southeast and inner east London and I can’t think of anywhere – least of all a whole town - that’s drabber. Oddly enough though, I do rather like living there. Maybe I reflect the town as much as it reflects me.

TV programs and foreign dubbing. How to please no-one

So, we find a Freeview box which manages to access and output the Audio Described audio track available on British TV. Great.

Then we find it in Aldi for £39 and don't end up paying the Dick Turpin inspired price charged by RNIB (£89). Great.

Then we plug it in and it all works finely and dandily. Great.

And when the audio-d happens it is fun and really, really great. Great.

All great, fab, cool and hip If you don't own a blind wifey or can actually follow any film which runs at anything faster than Brokeback Mountain, you won't realise how non-ironic I'm being here.

So, armed with your electronic joybox, you turn on a program without audio description. Nothing new under the sun there then. Not great, but what we've experienced since the dawn of TV so no reason for boo hoo hooing. There will be more A/D coming along soon if the media slaves remember they are dealing with a "disabled" audience who aren't all planted in wheelchairs or stuck with ear-trumpets. Stick wavers and dog-shaggers exist and are cooking in the unappertising stewpot of "disabled" punters who rather inconveniently won't go off the pub for an uber-bender and just die. Anyway, I ranteth somewhat excessively. (But its my blog so ner ner na-ner ner).

I can only assume them that there is a whole jungle's-worth of happily brainless media-chimps that haven't yet been trained in the "wake up and smell the coffee" philosophy of programme making. (I will do this, by the way, for a small consultancy fee. I like the small of the gravy pouring off this particular traiin).

You watch a programme (in this case "I am the Elephant Man", about a Chinese geezer with elephantistic tendancies, or whatever technical term which accurately describe his mis-shapeness. Large chunks of the program contain dialogue in Chinese, which sort of makes sense as it is the Elephant Man and his family doing much of the talking.

So, how to blindos fare compared to our mutt 'n' "pals" in the disab scene? Badly.

Deaf person switches on subtitles and has everything subtitled. The Chinese translation either comes up as an English voiceover - which is subtitled, OR a load of white subtitltes appearing for the benefit of all viewers who don't understand Cantonese.

Its the OR that matters.

Since there is no audio description for this program, if you press the A/D button on the Freeview remote, without much surprise, nothing happens.

So...what you get, is a program where half the Chinese is translated into English and spoken by a translator. And half the of the Chinese being subtitled (which benefits everyone - except the blind person who doesn't get a translation of any description.

It just so happens, in this case, that the hero of the programme, the Elephant Man himself, becomes silent to a blind person. Because, although a deaf person gets the benefit of added subtitles, plus the added-in subs for the benefit of the great unwashed, a blind person gets nothing but pure Cantonese.

I have two solutions - and for once, coming from me, they aren't even the slightest bit sarcastic.

1. All TV producers and program makers should agree that having three quarters of a program made watchable, or indeed, listenable, means that actually, in reality, the whole of the program becomes pointless. Either translate all of the non-English segments of the programme with an interpreter, or put a full A/D soundtrack on board for so that a blindo can opt into the verbal translation experience.

2. Oh dear, gnashing of chimp teeth. I can hear tthem crying that this would be awfully expensive wouldn't it? Er, nope. You make subtitles already, Mr Programme Maker. So, simply feed the text of this through a half-decent text-to-speech voice, such as Realspeak Sarah, who isn't massively different in sound to Charlotte Green. And off we jolly well go. The audio description track comes for free anyway. Make some use of it then. And stop chucking out programmes that are worse than useless because they are three-quarters baked and therefore promise a gift which doesn't transpire to owt. All or nothing.

Thanks.

Hello John, gotta a new mo-ta!

I’m about to be the proud best man to my mate, who is a 70s car nut, and ideally, he would like to be transported to his nuptial ceremony in a motor born before the days of lead-free petrol. So it was with a sense of serendipity that both of us should stumble across this rare and wild beast in the centre of where it was probably made.

Therefore, as a relic of Dagenham’s finest export, I give you a (somewhat rusting – no, completely red-flaked), Cortina Mk III estate. A car I’m very familiar with indeed having been driven to school in one for three or so years in the early 70 when I was but a nipper.

Built in a time before accountants were moved to the design department.

It’s just a shame this one is is more rust than car.

Suburban dliemma: blinds

Please tell me, is £1000 too much to pay for blinds?

They are blinds. Yes, venetian, wooden, slatted blinds. But light-stoppers. Curtain-replacers. Nothing that a couple of heavy blankets and some good quality string couldn't achieve.

We have a small 3 bedroom house. A very SMALL 3 bedroom house.

It has eight windows, one of them minute.

£1000. For flip's sake. Am I being a fuss-budget or am I about to be ripped off?

IKEA is where I'm going after I die. Celine Dion and Mariah Carey records will be playing over the tannoy on perma-loop. There will be no meatballs. There is no Swedish shop. There is no exit. There isn't even directions to a non-existent way out. Sartre mange le coeur, buddy.

But even I reckon a trip here, just a little weeny visit, with drugs and social workers to hand when required, would be preferable to paying this amount. They are very cheap in IKEA. Well, not very cheap, but not £1000 either.

Please tell me I'm not being screwed. Thanks.