M&S: what do you think they’d give you if you found a finger?

If you’ve ever thought, “Hmm, I wonder what I’d get from Marks & Spencer if I found a large blue elastic band inside one of their gourmet meatballs?” the answer is “some free food, plus a letter of apology and a fifteen-quid M&S gift card”.

Bad Science (Centre)

One of the things you find yourself doing as a parent is looking for new and exciting ways to be ripped off by visitor attractions. We’d originally planned to go to Edinburgh Zoo, a prime example of the genre (£14 per adult) but a too-early start put paid to that plan. So we went to Glasgow Science Centre instead.

When you visit attractions out of season, you expect the odd thing to be shut. In the case of the GSC that means the cafe, and the observation tower, and most of the main floor (they’re doing it up to put some sort of adventure playground in there). But you don’t expect rude ticket clerks, broken exhibits and a general air of not giving a shit.

For example, there are three wall-mounted exhibits that look like plasma balls, where the idea is that you touch the surface and all the sparks move. Two of the three were broken. There’s a camera system that shows how you’d look if you were a different race. The camera isn’t angled properly and the monitor’s gone wrong, so the first inch of the display isn’t visible. Various fan-powered exhibits’ fans weren’t working. And so on. The decor is tatty, the windows filthy, and the exhibit that summed it up for me was the tunnel that you can clap and/or shout into to get an echo. It was full of litter. Old litter, by the looks of it.

Yours for £7.25 per adult!

A smarter blogger than me would use this post as an analogy for the way in which society no longer values science, or something. I’ll just say that the GSC wants to inspire the next generation of scientists, but I fear it’s only going to inspire them to blow up tourist attractions.

Aw, shucks

The nice people at the Scottish Blogging Roundup have listed this very waste of bandwidth in their awards for top science/tech blogs. I shall now wander off to read the other blogs in the list to see if there’s anything I can nick.

It’s Mondeo man!

Long time readers will know that I have a thing for Saab cars: I think the 9-5 Estate is a work of automotive art, my buttocks reckon the seats are the best in the business and I love the interiors, even when they’re orange – as many were in the 80s.

Despite all of these things, I’ve just got shot of my Saab 9-5.

Unfortunately the 9-5 was starting to cost an absolute fortune. 24 MPG in this day and age isn’t brilliant. £122.50 for six months’ road tax was pretty hefty. And at nine years old, it was just a matter of time before the big bills started. The problem with big cars is that when things go wrong, they go wrong expensively.

So what did I get? The title of the post is what we writers call “a clue”. And here’s another one.

I’ve got a three-year-old Mondeo. A diesel one.

Is it sexy? No, it is not.

Is it as characterful as a Saab? Not on your nelly.

Is it much cheaper to run and to insure, does it handle better, does it go faster where it matters and is it cheaper to fix than the Saab? Oh yes.

So, yeah. I’ve become Mondeo Man. It’s a brilliant car and I like it a lot.

The stereo’s bloody awful, mind you.

Incidentally, if you’re changing cars and want to annoy the dealer, why not get a valuation from Glass’s Guide? Then, when the dealer does the “hiding in the office for 20 minutes” thing before telling you that Glass’s Guide says your car is worth three pounds, you can whip out your printout and go “AHA! YOU LIE!”

They’ll still screw you, of course, but the screwing won’t be quite so bad. And Vauxhall will pick up the tab for the valuation.

Here’s where to go: Vauxhall.co.uk > Finance > Value Your Car. I’m amazed they haven’t stopped doing this yet: at £3.50 a pop it must be costing them a few bob.

Merry Christmas, everyone

Anorak’n'roll

My brother very kindly took me to Cork to see The 4 of Us this weekend. The timing could have been better – the gig coincided with the worst flooding in living memory, with damages estimated at some 300 million Euros, the equivalent of two pints of lager in one of Cork’s many hostelries – but the gig was ace.

Which is just as well, really, as I’ve been a fan of the band since the early 1990s and it’s always been an ambition of mine to see them live.

It’s interesting, though, because with the exception of the bands that become juggernauts, propelled by their own momentum until they die – your U2s, your Rolling Stones – most bands eventually end up in the anorak phase of their careers. I’ve experienced it myself as a musician, supporting reasonably famous musicians long past their sell-by date, the audience consisting of tubby, tired and emotional men in their late thirties wearing anoraks. And this weekend I experienced it as a punter, one of the tubby, tired and emotional men in their late thirties wearing anoraks. The fact it was a rather nice and quite expensive anorak doesn’t matter. It was still an anorak.

I can’t help but wonder, what do the musicians feel like when they look out and see all the sensible rainwear? I remember one casualty who, I’m sure, looked out and saw Wembley Stadium, but I don’t think that’s the norm. Are musicians just grateful that they can still persuade people to pay, still excited about playing new stuff? That certainly seemed to be the case with The 4 of Us – singer Brendan Murphy beamed his way through the gig, clearly delighted – but I still have a mental image of him returning to his hotel and sticking huge pins into a voodoo doll of Bono.

Anyone spent enough time with ageing rockers to comment?

Train in vain

I’m going to Bath next month, and as usual I had a quick look at the EasyJet timetable to see how much it would cost. And then I had a thought. “All the extra security stuff means flying’s 10% travelling and 90% hanging around being pissed off,” I told myself. “And when you fly, you still need the airport bus and the train from Bristol to Bath, so it’s hardly quick.”

I agreed with myself. Yes, flying’s quite a big pain in the arse.

“So why not take the train? It’s not as if you need to nip out for a smoke every 40 minutes any more.”

I had to admit, I made a good point. I haven’t considered taking the train to Bath since several years ago, when I discovered that it would take a million years, cost a million quid and have me cooped up without anywhere to smoke for considerably longer than 40 minutes. I no longer smoke, and there are bound to be decent deals available online.

So I went online. Oh dear.

You’d need to be a very committed eco-weenie – or scared shitless of flying – to take the train over the plane. And if you’re that committed you wouldn’t travel  in the first place, so this post is pretty much irrelevant to you. But if you did want to travel and you aren’t scared of flying, the train can’t compete. It’s not even close.

If I fly, I need to be at the airport for around 8am. Assuming I’m not delayed, I’ll be in Bristol for 10am, which gets me into Bath for around 11am, 11.30am. My total travelling time would be three and a bit hours.

If I get the train, I start later – just after 9am – but I’m on the train for much longer. Assuming I’m not delayed I’ll get into Bath just after 4pm. Six hours fifty-three minutes, says TheTrainLine.com. There are a few other options, but they take the travel time up to seven, eight, even nine hours.

The longer journey might be worth it if there were a big price difference, and there is. Unfortunately it’s in the wrong direction. The cost of return flights, the Bristol airport Flyer bus and a return from Temple Meads to Bath is £67.48. The cheapest train ticket I can find is £125.65. No, that isn’t First Class. The cheapest ticket for that is £294.

To nick a line from someone on Twitter the other day: There appears to be a misunderstanding. I want to travel to Bath. I don’t want to buy it.

Another not entirely helpful live review: Muse

I think last night’s gig in Glasgow may have been the best show I’ve ever been to. The sound was superb – in the SECC! – the setlist was pretty much perfect and the stage was awesome.

Also, I was shitfaced.

Sorry about the poor image quality. iPhone.

(I’m not ignoring your comments on other posts, ladies and gentlemen – just a bit buried under deadline mountain right now.)

U2 make me think about walls

From the Associated Press:

BERLIN – Fans hoping to glimpse U2’s free concert celebrating 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell were outraged Thursday to find that a 12-foot (3.6-meter) metal barrier was installed to block the view for those without tickets.

Both Berliners and tourists alike saw the irony in building a wall around a concert dedicated to the wall that has already come down.

Toddler disproves the existence of God, evolution

Baby Bigmouth is teething again – the big, sore teeth – and proving that God doesn’t exist: no intelligent designer would have come up with a design where teeth take years to come in, causing great pain. If God existed we’d have big holes in our jaws and our teeth would pop out like flick-knives.

It proves that evolution’s bunk too. The noises an angry, teething toddler makes run counter to the survival of the species. It’s a miracle the human race is still here, it really is.