Frantic corybantic antics

The Goat has been busy. Too busy, in fact, to put in writing those delightful little quirks of Life in the Lands of the Sand. The latest ignominies perpetrated by that old faithful Red Triangles Bank shall, for the time being, go unblogged. So too shall the Goat's most recent experiences with Itisalot.

Most of the Goat's frantic lifestyle derives from living in the Crumbling Villa and working in Abu Dhabi. This eats up about 14 hours a day, leaving six for sleeping and the remaining five for shopping, eating, cleaning, blogging and shoring up the Villa's most urgent crumbles. Yes, that does add up to more than 24, which illustrates the point.

Since commenting on a previous blog post about how the commute was made marginally more tolerable by having the BBC World Service on the radio, the Goat was astonished one evening to encounter classical music on 87.9MHz instead of 'Outlook'. He actually phoned the radio station broadcasting this music to be told that "We've stolen the frequency from the BBC. Shhh!"

It turns out that without notice, Auntie Beeb - or at least the Foreign Office, which apparently is the entity that funds the World Service - stopped renting the VHF band in the UAE, and listeners are obliged to use Short Wave on a variety of frequencies that change throughout the day. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi Classic FM broadcasts on 87.9MHz in Dubai, 91.6MHz in Abu Dhabi and 105.2MHz in Al Ain. Although until last week the Abu Dhabi signal was so feeble it was amost inaudible even in the Capital.

Classic FM in the UK was once described by one of the presenters as "A rock-music station that plays classical rather than rock music." Is Abu Dhabi Classic FM essentially the same station? Certainly the station's theme tune is the same, and the playlist generally comprises bite-size chunks of mostly well-known pieces of music composed mainly by dead guys in wigs. Cue Monty Python's "Decomposing Composers" song.

Not that the Goat is complaining. It beats the pants off boom-tsch boom-tsch boom-tsch boom-tsch and tech-tech-tech-techno pop, and takes some of the sting out of the daily commute. Longer tunes mean a lower deejay/music ratio, and this is generally a Good Thing.

Some observations. Three-in-a-row plays take about 20 minutes, and then there's a distinct lack of back-announcing by the deejay. What was that tune? It sounded like Mozart, or one of that crowd (thank you Tom Lehrer), but from which five-act opera that he wrote when he was nine? It is immensely irritating to get to the end of a long series of pieces, only then to cut to the news or other public announcement.

And to the presenters: please, please, please note: Playing classical guitar is not something John Williams does while he's not conducting the Boston Pops. John Towner Williams wrote the music for Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Schlindler's List, ET, Harry Potter and Superman; John Christopher Williams is the guitarist and former member of Sky.

Finally, the cacophone is a theoretical musical instrument that should not be given any air time. Its name is derived from either of two origins; possibly both. Experimental music, including playing all the black notes at the same time, torturing tuneless scratching out of a violin, and beating a trombone with a hockey stick, have no place in the Goat's music collection.

Oh, and the Goat's musical taste is somewhat eclectic. Look at the screenshot from his Facebook page.

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Happy eightieth birthday, Tom

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I first encountered Tom Lehrer at the age of around 22. Unlike most of his fans who seem to have been inducted during their Bright College Days, I'd already graduated and had a proper, albeit poorly-paid, job. During the week I lived and worked in Sevenoaks in Kent, having left My Home Town in search of gainful employment (as per Norman Tebbit’s dad), but most weekends I stayed in a disreputable house in Portsmouth with my old college buddies. We would have drunk lots of beer if we hadn't all been so cripplingly poor. Instead, we painted wargaming miniatures and indulged in table-top wargames, roleplaying and computer games. Does anyone remember the Sinclair Spectrum’s 'Elite'? A quarter of a century later, I’m pleased to report that we now all have lives, thank you. But I digress. Occasionally during our riotous evenings in this hotbed of celibacy someone would pull out an ancient vinyl disc of An Evening (Wasted) with Tom Lehrer, and very soon I found myself singing along.

As Lehrer points out on the album soundtrack, The Elements 'may prove useful to some of you someday, under a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances', and this is indeed what happened. I learned it, and have performed it live for Redditch Choral Society, Tinker's Farm Opera, and even the Doha Players. The latter was part of my bit for a revue show; other bits included When You are Old and Gray, I Hold Your Hand In Mine and the extremely dubious Masochism Tango.

It came as a shock to a pub pianist in Loughborough to discover, when he played We’ll All Go Together When We Go, that at least one of the patrons – you can guess which one – knew all the words and the tune.

At one point I even borrowed a copy of the 'Tomfoolery' vocal score and jotted down the alternative lyrics in my copy of Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (and Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle) (Pantheon, 1981, ISBN 0-394-74930-8). Not that I can read music, of course. My own ability with reading the blobs is extremely limited. I learned to sing most of Tom Lehrer's works by listening to my three CD set of Tom Lehrer Revisited, An Evening (Wasted)... and That Was The Year That Was.

So who enjoys Tom Lehrer? Typically it’s college students, even after they’ve grown up and got jobs, mortgages, families, a semi-detached Ford Mondeo and 2.2 pinstriped garden gnomes. Apparently, those who can appreciate the vocabulary and still enjoy scatological humour and smutty innuendo.

That’s me, that is. If it’s also you, this link might prove entertaining.

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Message by owl

I spent too much of the National Day weekend doing a chore that I've been putting off for too long. There is a decade's worth of pigeon poo all over the flat roof of the Falling Down Villa. I took a shovel, broom and a load of bin bags aloft and shovelled shit until I'd run out of empty bin bags. Getting the full bags to ground level resulted in some nasty rope burns. The polypropylene line was way too thin for a controlled descent. After lowering the bags to the ground with the tow rope out of the Goatmobile and much profanity (some of the bags burst, being Al Cheabo gossamer-thin), it looked as if I'd made hardly any progress at all in removing the guano.

Having shovelled for several hours, I fervently hope that the plague of pigeons may be over. I found some 'bird scarers' in the West Marine catalogue and asked Beloved Wife to arrange for a couple of them to be Shop 'n' Shipped from the good ol' US of A.

Pigeons are allegedly petrified of birds of prey, being both birds and prey. An oversized long-eared owl with yellow, staring eyes ought to put the willies up any self-respecting pigeon. It went up on to the roof last weekend, and is currently on top of the parapet. The message delivered by this particular owl should be clear and unequivocal. It involves pigeons, sex and travel. If they don't get the message, the pigeons are going to be subjected to the Lehrer Solution.

Detractors of scarecrows have observed that birds get used to a scarecrow, so the instruction booklet that came with the plastic bird of prey suggests moving the owl around periodically. Added to this, the head is on a rotating bearing, meaning that the slightest breeze has the owl apparently looking all around, impersonating Linda Blair, and therefore ought to be suitably scary.

There being no limit to the ingenuity of pigeon-haters, there's a different model as well, just in case the pigeons suss out that Linda Blair is in fact made of plastic. The latter consists of a plastic owl's head to be mounted on a stick (stick not supplied), and a four-foot wingspan. This owl flaps its wings in the breeze and also sports the obligatory scary stary eyes.

It remains to be seen how effective the owls are long-term. But I don't recall any evidence of pigeons at Hogwarts.

Unwanted gift

Free: Several hundredweight of pigeon guano. Pick your own.

I have been on the roof of the villa, resetting a tripped aircon outdoor unit and replacing the wire netting over the light well to keep the flying rats from roosting and reproducing just outside the bathroom window, with all the miasma that this implies. The entire villa roof is coated with a generous layer pigeon poo, dead birds and eggs.

As for keeping the birds away, I'm open to suggestions. Concealing myself in a hide with a Thermos, some sandwiches and a sawn-off shotgun is probably not the best solution. In Mirdif there is probably an ordinance forbidding use of ordnance.

Alternatively...

Spring is here, ah, spring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year
Is the spring. I do. Don't you? 'Course you do!

But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
That makes every Sunday a treat for me...