I really like the music of Neil Hannon, aka The Divine Comedy. He has just released another album, called The Duckworth Lewis Method, which is themed on cricket, which is timely as the England - Australia series, known as The Ashes, is currently underway. There are some good poppy songs, and a few which are quite funny. Well worth getting. Get mp3s here or buy the cd here.

For those who don’t know what the title, The Duckworth Lewis Method, means then allow me to enlighten you. Duckworth and Lewis were two statisticians who worked out a method of determining who wins a limited-overs cricket match when it is cut short (normally by rain).

I managed to step on the earphones for my mobile phone, this somewhat impacted on their ability to reproduce sound. So I ordered some new ones: Sennheiser CX 500 to be exact. You can get them for £35.99 from Amazon, or for £11.99 including postage from Ebay. There seems to be a slight disparity in pricing there…

I thought my old earphones that came with the Xperia X1 were good enough, I’ve only been playing MP3s through them after all. How wrong I was. When testing the new ones a couple of minutes ago I was amazed by the sound quality. The bass reproduction was quite incredible and they do a damned good job of stopping external sounds. Top bunny earphones, alright.

So I go to the partner and say that I never really thought the quality of earphones for playing MP3s was that important, being compressed music and all. He looked scornful and says, “The only people who complain about the quality of MP3 music are those who have just spent £2000 on a CD player.” I may be a superannuated, slightly spent toddler, but I can still learn things.

I highly recommend them.

See my solitude where once was truth now only doubt
Touch my tortured skin torn from within and from without
Kiss my blistered lips, my fingertips frostbitten and gray
Heal my wound within and watch the dead skin fall away.

Many thanks for Neil Hannon for this jolliness. Indeed, if you ever need a really unhappy song then I heartily recommend 'Through a long and sleepless night' by The Divine Comedy. I often listen to it at 3am or just before going to see my psychiatrist in order to feel appropriately miserable.

There is some new music on Sky's television guide; it terrifies me.

Obviously on a hot day like today I am only wearing a nappy, sitting in front of the fan and attempting to relax so as to minimise my body temperature. I'm pretty relaxed. I think, "Oh, I'll have a look what is on the other channels." I press the TV guide button and suddenly there is a blood-curdling, operatic, choral, organ-powered death hymn. When that evil terror blares out at me I am glad I wear nappies.

Last night we went to the Barbican for a concert. The Barbican is a brilliant monstrosity of a building. Walking around there at night when it is really quiet it looks just like a Quake level and I keep expecting zombies to pop out from doorways.

The people we saw were Pink Martini. They are a Latin jazz group and their music was really catchy.

It was a particular pleasure to go into town, have some dinner and a drink and watch the concert, as I have not really left the flat for a few weeks. Too many medical appointments happening to make me feel like a jolly day out in central London.

Last night I went to a concert in the Barbican. The Barbican is a brilliant 60s building in the city of London that has flats and a concert hall. When one walks around at a quiet time of night it is spookily like a level in the game Doom.

The concert included the excellent Souad Massi and the quite brilliant Amadou and Mariam (Mali's best blind singing couple, we are told). Amadou and Mariam were really funky and the whole audience were up dancing around; quite a surprise for that normally sedate venue. There was an awful act between these two, Emmanuel Jal, but I was forced to retire to the bar half way through his set so dreadful was he.

In a change to my normal highly intellectual listening (I was just listening to Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia by the Cuban Boys, for example) I've been provided with a new CD that contains a highly amusing song that has a reasonable number of resonances with my normal existence. Devendra Banhart's song "I feel just like a child" is understandably intelligible for me. I really understand a lot of the lyrics such as: Some people try and treat me like a man/They think I know shit/but thats just it/I'm a child. And when it comes down to to it I have to affirm the fact that, "From being my daddy's sperm to being packed in an urn I'm a child."

Protest songs, such a dreary form of mocking. Sometimes real solutions to real problems need to be provided. The deeply lovely Mr. Hugh Laurie and really rather lovely Mr. Stephen Fry provided us many years ago us with a protest song that provides clear and well-articulated solutions to all of the world's problems. A terribly low quality version can be heard by clicking here. If either of these two chaps would prefer I removed this ditty from my site then I would welcome a signed picture from either (or both) of them with an inscription to the effect of "Stop using our jokes in feeble attempts to have funny blog entries, you rancid toddler. Kisses, Stephen/Hugh" as an instruction in this regard.

London is a completely brilliant place, assuming one can afford it, can tolerate filth and can accept utterly woeful public transport. An associate asks me every time our paths cross if there is a Tube strike in London, no doubt working on the premise that repetition is the finest form of humour.

The strikes are hilariously irritating, but not as irritating as the fact that in a very large, wealthy capital city, the mass-transit system stops running at midnight. I wonder if this has something to do with an out-moded puritan work-ethic; we cannot be out at night as we have to get to work/church by nine the following morning.

Now we have a ray of light, albeit it quite a derisory one. There is talk of running the tube an whole hour later on Friday and Saturday nights. "Big deal", you might be thinking. Well, sadly it is not even that, as in order to do this London Underground and their idle employees claim that in order to run the trains an hour later at night, they'll have to start working an hour later in the morning. The arrogant contempt this displays to those who employ them is astounding.

So, I was highly amused to hear a jolly good song about the Tube courtesy of these good people. You can play the song, or even buy their CD, via their website. There is a Flash version of the song, but who knows how long this link will work for. Some people may find the lyrics offensive, but then millions of people a day find travelling on the tube to be deeply offensive....

When mentioning the ellipsis tease a short while ago I hope it was clear that I had no intention of mocking aphasic people. I also would hate to be thought of as mocking William Shatner, because it is quite clear he can do that so much better himself.

William Shatner is very much on my mind at the moment. I am the proud owner of his latest opus Has Been. This is an album that has more to commend it than the Transformed Man. There are a few songs that move a bit too far into the realm of self-justification, but there is a lot of humour there as well. Two songs really stand out. His version of Jarvis Cocker's Common People is brilliant or at the very least, far less worthy than Jarvis's otherwise flawless rendition. He also did a song with Lemon Jelly the first line from which is the title of this entry. This song counts as good by any definition of the word. I often find it suits those "three in the morning"-style moods. The good Captain JTK also appears on Lemon Jelly's latest album '64-'95 and, whilst I have a slight preference for .ky and Lost Horizons, it has a few numbers one can drink a martini to.

I am off to a Lemon Jelly concert in a little over a month. I imagine I'll be the only chap there in a Liberty-print flowery shirt and I do wonder how many other people will bring their teddy bears.