Hamilton Saint

Would you care to elaborate? As I was listening to the game on Saturday (vs Walsall), and experiencing these constant little drop-outs of reception, my friend in Wimbledon (UK) was experiencing the exact same problems. That suggests to me that the problem is not with my ISP, or the settings on my PC.

Saturday's internet broadcast of the Walsall game was very poor. There were constant momentary losses of reception (lasting 2 or 3 seconds) throughout the game - very irritating, especially at moments of high drama. This has been happening quite a lot this season. Where exactly should one direct complaints about this?

Good advice. Would probably be a good idea to remove that Getty image forthwith.

Strolling along the High Street in the old city centre is fun. Check out some of the specialty Scotch shops, if you enjoy single malt whisky. There are also some good pubs along there. A hike up to Arthur's Seat would give you an amazing view of the city. If you're a big fan of Ian Rankin's Rebus books, visiting some of the places mentioned a lot in his books might be of interest.

The Beatles and/or Paul McCartney have never recorded Mrs. Robinson. The Beatles never performed it in a concert (they stopped performing in Live concerts in 1966; The Graduate came out in 1967 and the Mrs. Robinson single and Bookends LP came out in 1968 ). The only possible time they might have jammed with it in the studio would have been during the sessions at Twickenham film studio and the Apple recording studio in Savile Row during the filming of Let It Be. But I have never heard of that either. BTW, Mrs. Robinson is a great single (I love the acoustic guitar work in it - Paul Simon), and Bookends is a great album - their best, IMO. And The Graduate is a superb film! One of the best comedies of the 60s. Brilliant acting from Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft. The S&G music works great.

There's a CD collection called Desert Island Selection on the EG label. It is an 11-track compilation of stuff taken from five albums released 1973-1978 (Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, Another Green World, Before and After Science, and Music For Airports). Probably a good place to start. I have 13 of his albums (some are solo discs, some are duets: e.g., with Robert Fripp, with Harold Budd, with Jon Hassell). If you like quirky, upbeat rock stylings like Roxy Music, then the first two solo albums will be of interest (Here Come The Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy). If you like laid-back singer-songwriter stylings, you might like Before and After Science. If you like synthesizer noodlings (what he calls "ambient" music - a kind of intellectualised muzak!), you might prefer Discreet Music (which features a whole side of variations on Pachelbel's Canon). If you like ethereal, spacey stuff, you might like Music for Airports, or the work he does with trumpeter Jon Hassell - Possible Musics, or the keyboard work with Harold Budd - Plateaux of Mirror. Lots to choose from. Maybe start with the compilation and take it from there?!

I picked MLT too. Once it narrowed it down to football, it asked if my player played for Manchester, and then Liverpool, and then Arsenal. When I answered that yes, he was a midfielder, and that he was the best, it then paused and selected Lampard! The long list of players it then offered for me to look at in order to identify my choice did not include the Great One.

How judgemental of you. I would prefer to sit and support my team. You have a problem with that? I chose to walk around Oxford; I didn't choose to stand for the entire game - that "choice" was forced on me by those standing in front of me. I don't mind standing for some of the game - especially during moments of high excitement - but not for the entire match. And don't get me started on the bloke to my left who was screaming obscenities and abuse at Pardew. I think he might have been aware that Pardew couldn't hear him from that great distance. So who was he yelling for? Very ugly - but, apparently, another "super" fan.

Well, I noticed about a dozen rows of "woofters" in the section immediately to my left who were happy to sit for the entire game. But, I suppose only people who insist on standing are "real" supporters, etc., etc.

Well, I had the dubious "pleasure" of attending the Swindon Town game on August 11 '09 during my trip to the UK last summer. I took a good friend (an Everton supporter) to the game and was rather embarrased by the ensuing debacle: not only we were served up a crap performance on the pitch, we were forced to stand for the entire match because the row in front of us insisted on standing. No fun - after walking around Oxford for the whole afternoon.

Even with two and three games in hand over other teams, the gap is just a bit too much. It's possible for us to go on an extended winning streak; but we would also need one of the play-off contenders to have an extended slump. The likelihood of both things happening is low. Ergo, unfortunately, it's a pipe dream.

Brian Eno has created, and contributed to, many great albums. His peak was the middle 70s. I loved Another Green World and Before and After Science. And his mid-70s "ambient music" LPs were excellent: e.g., Discreet Music, Music For Airports, Music For Films, On Land. He's also done great stuff with others (as musician and/or producer): Talking Heads, Robert Fripp, Harold Budd, Jon Hassell. Highly recommended!

The original album was great (I have it on vinyl), but the remastered, re-released version is very different - inferior, IMHO.

I watched The Filth and The Fury last night. It's a documentary by Julien Temple that tells the story of The Sex Pistols. I've always had an intense ambivalence about this band. The film does an excellent job of mixing great live performances with informative historical material. The emergence of the band is set in the wider context of the social and political conditions in Britain in the 70s. Malcolm McLaren comes across as a manipulative exploiter, Sid Vicious is a troubled loser, and Johnny Rotten provides honest, thoughtful reflections on the band's short, tumultous career. "It's better to burn out, 'cause rust never sleeps ..."

We have a metal birdfeeder that is set on top of an iron pole. There is a conical baffle under the feeder that keeps the grey squirrels from climbing the pole to the feeder. It works perfectly. We stock our feeder with black-oil sunflower seeds. In the winter we normally get house sparrows, house finches, black-capped chickadees, northern juncos, cardinals, downy woodpeckers and red-breasted nuthatches. Our feeder has a brilliant counterweight system. You set it so that when birds over a particular weight land on the perch, a barrier comes down and blocks access to the feed holes. This is important because we have pigeons ('rock doves") in the neighbourhood. Without this safeguard, we would have a flock of about a dozen of them in our garden - and they'd clean out the feeder in a day or two.

My father was in the Royal Engineers. He assembled lorries in the Iraqi desert. From there they were driven to the Eastern front - used by our Soviet allies in their push west towards Germany.

Obvious choice is the play-offs. Getting out of this division is the most important goal of the near future. To do it this year would be great.

What annoys me most about this sort of writing is that every sentence must be its own paragraph - as though the reader could not possibly cope with the density of a paragraph that is, heavens above, several sentences long. Actually, the reverse is true; if you put together thematically related sentences into proper paragraphs, the text is easier to read and doesn't seem like a stream of random, unconnected thoughts.

Oh, OK - but you didn't make that clear in your original post.

Try this. http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/FixturesResults/0,,10280,00.html

What team does this Knee Jerk play for? Any good? Expensive?

Yes, the first LP is my favourite, too. I've been listening to them a lot this past week. There is a deep melancholy running through much of their material, so listening to the LPs - as Over The Hill wrote - has been very moving. Matapedia, for example, came out after the death of their mother, and several songs are responses to that.

Perfect!

Yes, that was sad news. The McGarrigle sisters were brilliant. I saw them play live several times; I loved their laid-back performance style - completely devoid of show-biz bs. I suppose their most well-known song was Heart Like a Wheel, recorded by Linda Ronstadt. That was one of Anna's. Perhaps Kate's most exquisite song was Talk To Me of Mendicino from their first, eponymous album. They were well-known within the English folk-rock tradition and occasionally provided balk-up vocals for the likes of Richard and Linda Thompson. Kate and Anna were not that prolific (about 10 albums over the course of their career), so there were often long gaps between recordings. But every album had its hidden gems. They harmonised so beautifully together - like so many musical siblings. Kate will be sorely missed. R.I.P.

COYR!