Bjorn Ulvaeus today writes a very cogent piece in The Guardian, arguing that schools should be a safe haven from religious indoctrination.

At first I wondered Waterloo it had to do with him, but I can certainly see that we should Ring Ring the changes in our schools; kids at school are increasingly subject to extremism, both from Islamists and Bjorn Again Christians, and their mothers don’t know. Moderates everywhere are putting out an SOS - we can’t take a chance on balance in education; it’s a dogfight for hearts and minds out there, and the winner takes it all. So do I agree with Bjorn? I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.

(etc.)

Regular readers will know that estimating age isn’t really one of my stronger points, be it older or younger. You’d have thought I’d learned my lesson by now and enforced some kind of “don’t ask, don’t speculate” policy - but obviously not.

Rewind 10 days or so to the final of the Ashford and District Table-Tennis Handicap Cup (”handicap” in the sense that weaker players are given a headstart against stronger players; I haven’t taken to feigning physical disability in order to win tournaments. Yet.) My team was playing against a side from a local school. We had already lost the match (due to the Ashford and District Table-Tennis Committee making some fairly bad errors when fixing the individual handicaps, meaning that my team basically had no chance from the start and that, even though I won all of my games and put in a “man of the match” performance, I only received a poxy runners-up medal, which was extremely unfair, but I shouldn’t really go on about it, even though really, something should be done about…)

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, we’d already lost the match, but still had the final doubles to play. Since this game was meaningless, we decided to let our team captain’s son play; he’s twelve and improving fast, but this was still by far the biggest stage he’d ever competed on. So it was me and a twelve-year-old playing against a girl who looked about 13 and a boy who was a couple of inches shorter than her. As the senior player, I took responsibility for tossing the coin to decide who’d serve first; I turned to the youngest-looking member of the opposing team (the boy) and said something along the lines of “Right, little fella - you’re the youngest, you can call: heads or tails? You’ve played really well, by the way; how old are you - ten? Eleven?” His team-mates all immediately descended into fits of laughter, and he looked at me as if he were about to throw his T-T bat, ninja-style, in an attempt to slice off my head.

Turns out that he was fifteen, two years older than his much taller female playing partner, that his voice still hadn’t broken and that he was constantly tormented by both schoolmates and fears of his own inadequacy. He probably cried all the way home.

Another spectacular age-based faux-pas, and that boy’s otherwise victorious evening utterly ruined. Still… erm… in my defence (ahem), T-T is a tough game at the highest levels, and if you play with the big boys, you’ve got to be prepared for a bit of sledging…

In tribute to Michael Jackson, I’m pleased to introduce a short-lived* new feature to the site: Taf’s Heartfelt If Slightly Pukey Tribute of the Day - or, as everyone’s already not calling it (although we are for reasons of font size), “Taf’s HISPT of the Day”.

Although I toyed with an upbeat track as a tribute, I’ve gone for “She’s Out of My Life”, from Side 2 of 1979’s breakthrough “Off the Wall” album. In amongst the dancing / entertainment / razzmatazz of Jackson’s career, people sometimes overlook how great a singer and an interpreter of songs he was; you can really start to see his trademark vocal style emerging in full here. And, of course, it’s a lovely song.

Massive thanks to TM both for the idea and the technical wizardry on this one.

(* - unless anybody else particularly famous dies in the near future.)

Not really much to say about Michael Jackson’s untimely death, because it’s probably all being said much better somewhere else. A couple of thoughts though; 1) when someone dies, we should remember the best bits of their life - let’s remember parts one and two of an ultimately tragic trilogy. 2) He was no less than the Elvis of his generation; the foremost entertainer and most famous man on the planet; it’s hard to imagine that anyone will ever be as big a star again.

(Oh, and a couple of side-notes; 1) logged onto eBay this morning to find that EVERY SINGLE ONE of my Michael Jackson-related items had sold overnight; some had been sitting there for 3 or 4 years unsold. And 2) in a case of astonishingly unfortunate timing; at literally the moment the news was breaking, “This Week” on BBC 1 were doing a feature on defence, conducting an interview with… General Sir Mike Jackson.

Our latest tune of the dayorweekorhoweveroftenIcanbearsedtochangeit is by hoary Aussie rockers AC/DC. I’m off to see them at Wembley for my upcoming birthday, which is fitting since the band has, like your editor, been functioning since 1973.

For the uninitiated, AC/DC make Status Quo’s musical development look positively inventive - they’ve more or less been releasing the same album repeatedly throughout their entire career. Their sound is bar-room boogie with birds ‘n’ booze lyrical themes, trademarked by screaming vocals, a twin guitar attack (something which every serious rock band should have) and a clam-tight rhythm section (very evident on this track, “Damned”, from 2000’s “Stiff Upper Lip” set).

Don’t be fooled by the unkempt hair and crazy schoolboy stagewear; AC/DC are every bit as metronomic and precise as Kraftwerk. Their appeal is in the fact that you know exactly what you’re going to get every time; verse / chorus / verse / chorus / guitar solo / chorus / finale. Rock et aussi Roll, mes amis.

Today sees the launch of the now-annual auction for a meal with legendary US investor Warren Buffett. However, speculation is rife that the winning bid will be significantly less than last year’s $2.1 million, because last year was financially the worst in Buffett’s career.

To cut costs, the meal’s organisers are ditching filet mignon for less pricey rabbit pie, and the winning bidder will have to serve himself - a “warren buffet”, if you will…

Here at VP Towers, we’re always* getting requests from readers asking about phobias; what are they? What do the long words mean? What are ten most common phobias? Well, Dr Tafkass will see you now…

Agoraphobia - fear of wool from hairy rabbits
Claustrophobia - fear of Father Christmas
Arachnophobia - fear of countries formerly governed by Saddam Hussein
Brontophobia - fear of heights (but only if they’re Wuthering)
Glossophobia - fear of houses painted in anything other than a matt finish. Especially prevalent in market towns the borough of High Peak, Derbyshire.
Tachophobia - fear of shopping in Matalan
Herpetophobia - fear of domestic cats, dogs etc - but only those belonging to a female acquaintance
Homophobia - fear of Wok-based cooking(**)
Phagophobia - fear of homosexuality
Xenophobia - fear of warrior princesses

It should be noted, not least for legal purposes, that we’re not medical experts here at VP Towers (quite the opposite, in fact) - so perhaps you could help build up our store of knowledge with a few of your own. Assuming you can overcome your irrational, intense and persistent fear of this blog.

(* - this statement should be filed under “complete fabrication” rather than “ludicrous exaggeration”)
(** - 10 VP points for anyone who gets this “gag” without recourse to wikipedia.)

Despite a tumultuous couple of weeks and a biblical hiding in various elections, it looks like Gordon Brown is keeping his job as PM. Which might just make sense; Labour strategists probably figure that they’re facked in the next election whatever happens; better to let Gordo take the rap and then start with a clean slate, meanwhile allowing the Tories to become fully embroiled in the consequences of the financial meltdown during the next term of office.

Nonetheless, I haven’t had a poll for a while, so let’s indulge in some not-particularly-fevered and now-irrelevant speculation as to who the God-fearing, upstanding people of this noble land might want as PM instead of our current unelected jaw-dropping Youtube-gurning charisma-vacuum.

Choices in the usual location to your right (and, in Nick Griffin’s case, to nearly everybody’s right); feel free to nominate your own…

A terrible (or terribly funny, depending on how into schadenfreude you are) story, this… an Israeli woman is today desperately scrabbling around the municipal dumps of Tel Aviv after her daughter bought her a new mattress as a surprise and sent the old one to landfill…. unfortunately, the old one contained the woman’s life-savings of approximately $1,000,000. Eeeek!

It’s a shame that the savings were in dollars rather than Israel’s traditional currency, otherwise this would have been very much a case of “shekel and hide”…

Woo! It’s a new TTOTDOWOHOHCBATCI, and it’s the very first that I’ve managed to upload all by myself**!!!

In a way, it’s a continuation of what Dennis Waterman might call the last choon’s theme, since it’s another late ’70s song showing an older genre being heavily influenced by disco. This time it’s Herbie Hancock - also known as “Mr Hands” (and apparently to his wife as “Mr Co..” - that’s plenty, Tafkass…..)

Hancock is a genuine jazz heavyweight who was keyboard player in Miles Davis’s second “great quintet” before striking out on a solo career. He was always happy genre-hopping despite frequent critical opprobrium, and was fascinated by technological developments like the synthesiser, the vocoder (a machine which synthesises the voice - featuring heavily on this track) and later sampling / scratching.

“I Thought It Was You” is a lovely summery track with an “a la recherche d’amour perdu” lyrical theme (even though he misses an obvious triplet - “The perfume she wore / took me back through a door / I had closed long… AGO?“… erm, “before” might have worked, Herbs…)

The music’s in three distinct parts; bass-funk-tastic verse and chorus (I love the subtle vocoder chord change between the first / second and the third / fourth “I thought it was you”), a brilliant full-on fusion wig-out between verses, and some lengthy vocoder “scat” at the end (which, frankly, I can take or leave).

OK, so it’s not life-changing; but it’s a great listen at this time of year, especially though headphones. Actually, pretty much any music sounds way better through headphones; I much prefer it, as I get an infinitely better sense of the intended stereo effect, of the minutiae of production and of the instrumental expertise on show. On the downside, with the ‘phones on, I tend to prance around like a tit mouthing words, singing snatches of the song slightly out of tune, throwing shapes and doing air guitar moves to songs that no-one else can hear. All good reasons why I haven’t bought an MP3 player yet.

(* - an easy 10 VP points for anyone old enough to get this reference)

(** - “all by myself” in fact means “with the help of a painstakingly-prepared 8-page document written by TM in bright primary colours, using words of one syllable or less, and employing exhaustive screenshots and a full site backup lest I fuck it up. Which I did. Twice. Plus, this morning, a series of spoilt-child-esque “NEVER MIND YOUR JOB, PAY ATTENTION TO ME! I CAN’T MAKE IT WORK!”-style e-mails to aforementioned TM”.)