When I am old, I shall wear purple

A brief moment of calm and internet access. The UK School Games roars into life this morning, but I woke into an autumnal, silvan wonderland: soft morning light easing its way through a host of browning leaves. Rabbits hopped across the lawns…

This year's kit is slightly better than previous years': after dogshit brown (they claimed it was 'champagne'), yoke-yellow and faded lilac, we welfare people have a rich episcopal purple, of the kind Augustus Pugin would have spread over his interiors.

Secret Santa

I got some books in the post today. What am I typing? Of course I got books in the post today. Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and their Tellers (after being wowed by her visit last week) and Sam Leith's mathematics fantasy The Coincidence Engine (you can tell a good bit of nerd-lit by its use of 'engine' instead of 'machine', in homage to Babbage). This is what the Mythopoeic Society says about Warner's book:

Seldom does one find a book with such an impressive scholarly apparatus that is such a pleasure to read, partly because the author’s enjoyment of her subject is so pervasive and contagious. Anyone who is interested in fairy tale, legend, and such underpinnings of the mythopoeic imagination would be well rewarded by From the Beast to the Blonde.

But I also received this gadget, the Chef'n Garlic Zoom, which I expect is a gift from Imaginary Friend, after I admired her one.

It's a garlic chopper with razor blades inside. You run it along like a toy car and get chopped garlic! Genius. Sometimes you need chopped garlic, sometimes you need crushed. I ALWAYS need garlic. And your kids will love to play with this one!

Anyway, you'll have a break from me tomorrow. I'm off to Sheffield to do a site inspection for the UK School Games: I'm the Welfare/fencing representative. So in honour of Sheffield, some music from that city:









The sainted John Shuttleworth, here in his youthful guise as Jilted John:


And a track from Pulp's totally underrated Separations album:

Yawn

Hello all. What a day it's been - no time for anything, let alone blogging, and there's a busy afternoon's teaching coming up. I'm so tired, and I've lost my voice, as is traditional after a refereeing weekend.

I was refereeing a big fencing competition this weekend. I've learned a few things.

1. Rotherham is a horrible dump.
I was supposed to be in a Sheffield city centre hotel, so I went up early, planning to roam round with my camera for a bit of architectural fun. They hadn't heard of me, thanks to the morons in head office. One expensive taxi ride later, I was no longer in the sophisticated bustle of Sheffield, but in a Holiday Inn on an industrial estate (with 'Europe's largest Sexy Superstore' nearby) a couple of miles outside Rotherham, with the rain pouring down.

After half an hour of afternoon TV, the deluge beckoned and I trudged into Rotherham, hoping for excitement, adventure and really wild things. I was disappointed. The town has been closed, apparently for some time. Even the regeneration projects of 2008 have subsequently gone bust. Perhaps the low point of my life so far was eating a soggy sausage roll in the rain, being circled by feral children eyeing every bite through hooded eyes. Imagine somewhere like Crewe or the worst bits of Stoke, abandoned due to some plague, marinaded in rain and despair. It's that bad.

By now soaked to the skin and with ruined shoes, I gave up and plodded back to the prison camp, where Sky News made me angry until other fencing people turned up.

The actual fencing was fine - no difficult decisions and most of the parents and coaches behaved themselves. Refereeing epée can be boring though - when the first fight of the weekend ended 2-0 at the end of time, my heart sank. Still, I saw a lot of people I knew, some of whom I like.

Note to Rotherham Holiday Inn: The Sun is not an adequate alternative to the Guardian. They don't even look similar, for feck's sake, and their editorial lines diverge slightly.