We are the public, we are the future, or something. And let’s do some consulting.

Write to the BBC Trust and tell them they are wrong (if anyone can work out how to spell the Family Fortunes  “Err-Errrrr” then that might be a good subject line.

The email address is trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk do this now.

Here is the email I sent…

Hello,

It is with regret and disbelief that I send this email upon hearing
the confirmation to axe BBC 6music.

In the last two weeks I have finally taken the plunge from streaming
digital radio from the internet or watching/listening to them on
freeview to buying a small portable DAB radio. Despite all the
channels seemingly at my disposal, the only two I ever really listen
to are Radio 4 and BBC 6Music. It seems now I’ll have a one station
radio.

I don’t know whether I fit what the demographics tell you, but a
station that plays good music without the pressures of the charts or
commercial oldies is important, even a necessity for me. Radio 1
doesn’t speak to me any more, Radio 1extra doubly so (is this being
scrapped also?).

I’ve been a fan of 6music since its launch and I really think the
decision needs to be reconsidered. I’m sure the BBC needs to make
cuts, but chopping out what is a small, but vitally important station
that keeps alive the chance for new bands to be heard is a mistake,
not only for the corporation, but for music as a whole. It’s just
about the only station left that plays rare/independent tracks and has
DJ’s with some personality.

I sincerely hope that you at the BBC Trust refuses to let 6music go down.

Terry Saunders

Now, no one please point out how we all go up in arms at a niche radio station being axed but stay strangely quiet at earthquakes in Chile and wotnot… ok?

Even though they’ve been around for probably ten years now there is still no way in the wealth of human experience to get used to the fact that someone might be walking towards you, talking at you, even looking right at you, but not be talking to you.

And those bloody bluetooth ear things, no one is that important that they need their phone strapped to their ear at all times. In fact, people that important pay people to answer their calls for them.

Anyway, I hate them.

Then I got an iPhone.

I’ve never had a phone that I play music on before, normally using the old fashioned phone and ipod, or even more old fashioned walkman and phonebox.

But now I can be listening to some music and it’ll fade without warning. Then it will fade in a samba guitar strum. I find myself thinking, I don’t remember Queen’s Headlong having a samba guitar strum, then I realise that the ringtone I set when I first got it out of the choice of one and a half ringtones it gives you.

I can answer it by pressing a button that doesn’t look like a button and suddenly the world is in my ear. It’s easier than taking the phone out of the pocket, then pulling out the earphones then bringing the phone all the way to my ear.

So I start talking, I can hear them, they can hear me. All is good with world.

And then it dawns on me, I’m one of them. People are looking at me, am I talking to them, no, but yes I am, but no I’m not.

Ive taken to going mysteriously quiet on the phone whenever someone walks past me, fine for my awkwardness, but less so for whoever I’m having a conversation with.

The other day, on the phone to the mrs in such a manner I was getting on a train, happily walking up the Paddington platform chit chatting away, I boarded to see about twelve people on the carriage, all facing my direction. I stop talking, almost trying to whisper without moving my mouth, like I was in a bad film.

But Claire was just asking if I was ok, am I alright, etc, etc. Possibly thinking I’d failed to mind the gap or had fallen over.

As I sat down in my seat I ripped out the earphones and told her I was fine, but very nearly looked like a wanker, it was a close call.

so from now on, if you call me, expect a delay in me answering as I use my arms to lift the phone all the way to my ear…

Not much to say on the matter, if you like iPhones you’ll know what’s good about them, if you hate them then you know what you hate (the capital P, perchance?I’ve had a)

After a week or so I can’t help but have a niggling disappointment. Push Mail. I’d wanted this on my old phone for ruddy ages. I spend so much time constantly loading the email, pressing refresh, seeing if there are any (often not). But now I can get it to tell me when there’s email, none of this “can you please check every five or ten minutes?” rubbish, but when one comes in, I get it.

Now I can get on with things

Only it doesn’t work like that, well, it works exactly like that, almost too much like that, but I hadn’t realised what a crutch I was using it for. whenever I was bored (fairly often), in a social situation where an awkward pause was appearing (quite often), to avoid looking like I’m on my own somewhere (all the time), I’d get my phone out and check my email. Yes there’d often be no new ones to check, but the action of getting it out, loading it up, pressing refresh usually bought me enough time to distract myself, think of something to say or wait for the other person.

But now that is an exercise in futility, I know there are no emails because I would have had a little buzz in my pocket if there were (and believe me I’ve checked how quick it comes through – it’s quick, there are dozen emails in my account in the last week with just “test” in the subject line, like some kind of quick draw Western shoot off).

So maybe I’ll turn off push mail.

nah, I just use my new K.I.T.T. app and pretend I’m Michael Knight instead.

Writing a blog everyday I run about the run is bound to get boring, or it would if it wasn’t for my social awkwardness.

today it all seemed to be running smoothly (hahaha) when my hideous competitive streak set in, which was then joined by my default feelings of utter inadequacy.

It was all set off by one woman, running towards me in Greenwich park having clearly been running for some distance but with good posture, little sweat, an armband thing for her ipod and proper clothes. It forced me to look down at myself, some tracksuit bottoms handed down from my girlfriends cousin (it’s a point in a mans life when the hand-me-downs are from younger members of the inlaws family), a tshirt that is older than [INSERT SOMEONE FAMOUS AND YOUNG HERE THAT WOULD BE FUNNY, I COULDN'T THINK OF ANYTHING... GIVE ME A BREAK I'VE JUST COME BACK FROM A THREE MILE RUN*] and my trusty hat.

I want the proper running tights and yellow thing tops and things on my wrist for my iphone to sit in. I swear that when I run past these people (and Greenwich Park has a lot of cunting runners) they pointedly avoid eye contact, with my beard and scruffy clothes, am I a tramp running from the police? Am I taking the piss out of them? Am I running? If I am then they certainly don’t want to be associated with me.

I kept on going, feeling shit but plodding along. Then, round the back of the park we met again, like bond and his nemesis, only this was when I was going up (and she down) the hill that kills me – she still looked fresh faced, I now looked like a tramp running from a sex attack and the police.

There was another runner in front, I was determined to overtake, using all my Formula One knowledge of overtaking moves, aerodynamics and wind resistance, I copied Renault and cheated, cutting out a corner and winning.

Hooray

Pathetic

I’m running the marathon for mind – it’s going to hurt (but be funny) please donate some of that money stuff here virginmoneygiving.com/terrysaunders

*I was going to put Jack Whitehall down as an old as my tshirt reference, but checking wikipedia I see he was born in 1988, I was eight then, the idea of me wearing a tshirt that I had when I was eight is laughable, but not in a funny way

More specifically, primary colours. Now, in terms of doing painting I don’t know any of the colour theory shit, I just slap it on, realise its shit, try again getting slightly less shit each time until finally it’s a brown mess, or slightly not shit.

We were told to bring paints in the primary colours (red, yellow and blue to those reading that are under five) and were given an A4 print out with a wheel on to colour in, like what five year olds get.

but I was doing remarkably less well than a five year old. My red, despite actually being called “primary red” was kinda pink. The yellow had run out totally . But the blue was fucking great.

I was very tired after a weekend away and was being a bit too groggy this morning, I swizzled the brush tainted with cleaned the shitty red paint but then realised I had nothing to wipe it on. Everyone else (as ever) seemed far more organised, with paints that had the colours in them that it said on them, jars for water, more than two brushes (I had brought only two, both massive) and kitchen roll.

I knew that no one would begrudge me a couple of squares, but felt all too tired and fragile to ask and so just stared at the now wet brush, trying to wring it out with my fingers and in the process getting non red red water all over me.

I eventually succumbed and asked someone for some kitchen roll, then only took two squares and spent the rest of the lesson rationing myself.

and this kitchen roll was no Bounty.

I painted on some of the blue, it looked good. Such a good blue.

Then the yellow, only I’d run out and so was leant some more by the teacher, feeling like the like the fool of the class again I accepted the yellow paint only to find it was all sticky and shit.

I threw it into my colour wheel. It looked oddly blue (a very nice blue, mind you).  It was now looking like a big mess, I’d only put the primary colours in, and not even started mixing, and yet the colours on my page where not the same.

Do you ever have those days where your brain is just making you more stupid than you actually are?

I just stared some more, feeling that kind of helplessness that those kids in class that always got things wrong and then just stared into space must have felt.

I wanted to go home, is that allowed?

I was then told that the wheel should have taken minutes and I should have been well on the way of the next task, to paint a skeleton (or part of one) using only primary colours, the yellow for the highlights, red for the midtones and the lovely, lovely blue for the other one… shadows?

I was leant some proper red and I started, as ever having grandiose ideas to what I was going to end up with, but somehow just drawing what looked like a very colourful shit on my page.

The teacher was going round giving everyone “Well done’s” and “I like what you’ve done here’s” and I just got a “hmm” again.

I aborted my leg and went for the pelvis, that obvious bit of bone that is a unique shape, it was so bad he asked me which bit I was drawing.

We did the gathering round and looking at everyone’s stuff and I just hid at the back looking in wonderment at everyone elses, just using primary colours can be great, but my brain just won’t make that connection.

I sulked home, on the way over the park I slipped and fell over in the slight mud, a proper wipeout, but felt lucky that I hadn’t hurt myself, esp with this marathon training to be getting on with.

then, after dusting myself down, I took a step and fell over again. Hurting my leg a bit.

Grr.

That’s the last art class yarn for a while, two weeks left of the term but some other comedy type work has had to take over from bettering myself (or making myself feel shitterer). Can enrol for the next term, but aside from obvious entertainment and standup material reasons I’m not sure I can see much point.

–

I’m running the marathon for mind – it’s going to hurt (but be funny) please donate some of that money stuff here http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/terrysaunders

This was because I was at Oxtalls Tennis Centre in Gloucester trying to become a line umpire.

Why?

Why not?

It started a few months ago when hurriedly writing a story for the last ever laughterinoddplaces. A story that had been knocking around my head for a while about a tennis official which ended up being called Hawkeye.

During the writing of it I realise that i don’t know nearly enough either the rules of tennis or how one becomes an official. So I done me some googling.

And it turns out that all you have to do is attend a half day recruitment day, then you get to go on a one day course and you can be an official line judge type person at proper matches and everything.

So I applied. And then promptly forgot about it.

A few months later I got a reply offering me dates for the course. And so I found myself this afternoon fretting about whether my definition of “comfortable clothing” was the same as theirs and if they could legally make me do it in my pants.

But other people were in jeans and I saw my name printed on a name badge and immediately relaxed

There were quite a few people there, of quite a few ages. I helped myself to the free coffee and sat in an empty chair with a feeling of anxiety. It was starting to dawn on me that this was serious.

We were given a brief intro to our teachers, and they were proper. Not tennis hobbiest, but people who have travelled the world, called the line at many Wimbledon finals and been to the Olympics.

I felt less and less like taking the piss and more and more like being slightly sick.

We were told how to stand. There’s an “at ease” pose (hand behind back, legs apart). This is for when there is no play happening and the line judge is quite literally at ease (aside from the fact their probably bricking it, what with all the pressure and balls).

Having to comically bend over when the player bounces his ball (sorry, it’s hard not to sound like a carry on script) a line judge then adopt the “Ready” position, hands on thighs, eyes forward.

If a serve is in then there is a safe hand signal. If it’s out then one must shout “FAULT!”

Then we were told we’d be going out on court, to be tested.

and herein lay the problem, I am not really a shouter. In life I rarely shout. Maybe a toestubb or burnt omelette might make me yell, but the yelling these people were after was another level entirely. Unless I purposely kicked a wall before every serve, or burnt some eggs during a particularly long volley I had no chance.

and it might sound odd, but there was no warmup, it was from a classroom where I’d not said a word since a polite “thank you” for being given my name badge to shouting at an almost stranger surrounded by fit people.

And there’s another problem. Fit people, people with pecs and abs and other one syllable words to make me feel inferior, they don’t like line judges, the boring officials that they are. So you can imagine how they feel about wannabe-ones.

I clam up when around sporty people at the best of times but now I was being asked, nay told, to shout that they’d done wrong louder than I’d shout if I’d found my wife somehow sleeping with me from the past.
We had to test our shouting skills. I yelled. A squeaky

“fault”

crept out and fell on the floor with a puff of dust from the hitherto unused area of my vocal chords designated for shouting. I tried again, better, less dusty, still a bit squeaky.

By my third go I tried to shout from the diaphragm and bellowed a

“FAULT”

that surprised not only the teacher, but me and a flock of seagulls.

Then we had a shout off, one group against the other, it was getting truly fucking nervewracking. And everyone was taking it so seriously. My turn came, it was odd, for a person who makes a living speaking in public, I was not only terrified but also completely clueless at which kind of font the “FAULT” would come out of my mouth in?

It turned out to be a squeaky comic sans kind of shout, I helped our team lose the first battle of the day.

Then we were going to have balls hit at us by people called Rafa and Andre and Roger (and tim) and I had to watch the line, if the ball was in (or on the line) I’d do the safe signal. If it went out I’d shout “FAULT”

It was equally terrifying, exhilarating, easy and hard. they come quick, and sometimes right at you. And after a flurry of ones easily in or out, when one is near the line there’s a real panic of what to call.

and I just couldn’t take the piss, like I’d like. I thought it would be funny to shout “FUCK” but I don’t think anyone would have laughed. I felt like I should have been making lots of Louis Theroux gurns to the camera, but there was no camera, so I gurned within, and shouted “fault” again and again.

We spent the rest of the afternoon doing just this from one end and the other. I think I was calling well, but would never shout loud enough.

The teacher was big welsh man with a baritone voice that would make eardrums bleed at a whisper. I just couldn’t compete.

and my shout was erratic, every now and again a comic sans would slip in.

But by the end of they I thought I’d done ok, and was looking forward to maybe getting the chance to do this for real in a much more nervewracking situation.

We all went our separate ways and, if nothing else, I promised to have a little more respect for the line judges in the future.

UPDATE: I didn’t get to the next stage, being sent an email the next day saying “We understand that you may be disappointed not to make it through but the standard was very high this year”

I can’t even shout FAULT loud enough, there’s an irony there somewhere.

Of course, the funniest thing is, after going through all this… I don’t even like tennis that much.

One is scary to win the other is scary to lose.

I’ve not really been running for a little while and my latest health kick (star jumps, situps and pressups every day and a distinct lack of drinking) soon slipped into a coma (starbursts, sitdowns, pressing curry and drinking) but now it’s back.

Not only do I have to raise a load of money for Mind, but I also have to beat my current super record of 2.54 miles ran in one go in 24min 15.289sec back in April.

those of you with a bit of background knowledge of marathons will know that 2.54 miles is nearly 0% of a marathon, and that left me knackered.

Luckily, now with new iphone I have an app called RunKeeper that tracks where I run, how far, how fast and gives me lots of graphs and numbers (that you may have worked out I like.

So today I set off, with a new ipod playlist and satellites tracking my every move.

I even done some weaving to try and see if it would pick it up on the map, it didn’t really, I’ll need to weave some more.

Then maybe I can spell something out.

Anyway, here is where I ran. Notice the big gap when I got up a hill and thought I was going to die, but carried on walking, then realised I wasn’t going to die so started running again.

Best song on the playlist for running to was Headlong by Queen, but I think I started running a bit camp and kept shouting “Haha” as I tried to remember where in the song that bit is (3:56, fact fans).

Anyhow, if you want to give Mind some money to watch me try and kill myself come marathon day then please go here… http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/terrysaunders …and give big.

The idea was to make a collage of the naked pictures we’d drawn a few lesson ago. We were told to bring a newspaper (weirdly specifically told to bring ‘yesterdays Guardian’) to make it with, along with some PVA glue.

Upon arrival we were told that we couldn’t use colour, only black and white bits of paper, so text, or B&W photos. I spent the first twenty minutes or so just going through and ripping out nice bits (and reading the paper, I hadn’t even looked at it since buying it in the newsagent the day before on the way to avoid a beating)

When I’d amassed a nice pile I commenced with my first mistake of many…

I seem to have a link between brain and paper missing, a truly vital link, the one that works out what things might look like before they are done.

With pencil this matters less as the eraser is my friend, on computers it’s even better thanks to the undo button.

Charcoal has proved a problem, with me drawing lines willy nilly and then immediately regretting the grey sludge on the paper.

I fared worse with glue and paper. Once it’s on there’s not really a lot you can do with the soggy mess other than let it dry and hope it catches fire or something.

So, I began with that first mistake, to do the mattress that she was lying on. I thought I’d be clever and use blocks of text going one way for the top and another way for the sides, making a 3d effect.

At least that was the plan, it actually looked like I’d stuck an article in a scrapbook all wonky.

Then i started to add the lady on, using tiny squares from a photo of a crowd, thinking that each head could be a strand of hair.That didn’t work.

I saw a face in the cryptic crossword and thought that would make a humourous head before cutting out words from an advert to be the arms.

It didn’t look as envisaged, unless i’d envisaged someone dropping their recycling on a wet pavement.

I hadn’t looked at anyone elses work when I decided to use tiny heads for nipples, and then, on my way for a coffee I decided to check out the competition. I was in for a shock.

the others had used the dark and light scraps as tonal shades (as I’m sure was intended in the exercise) and making proper drawings with it, whilst mine was the photofit of a ransom note.

I was so embarrassed I really wanted to rip it up and run away. But instead I made more hair by using strands of black photo but only glueing at one end.

When we did the group gathering round to look at everyone’s work I was dismayed to find people saying nice things about mine, they are clearly either idiots or liars.

I thanked them… then ran away

I was on the way to take my better and lovelier other half for a birthday dinner and was nearly carrying flowers (but I was late for the train and was not – I did buy some in the end though… don’t judge me).

My back has been sore from some heavy (not really) lifting (not really) at the weekend and I really needed to sit down on the train.

The carriage was full of people and there were no totally free seats, instead of my normal quick thinking of checking out all the people I could possibly sit to (no one scary, no one sexy in case i look scary, no kids, no one with knives, no one smelly, no one sexy in case I am smelly) I just took the nearest seat.

It was occupied by a manthug who had spread his tracksuited legs right over his seat and into what was now mine, leaving me with maybe a third of the seating that I had probably paid for or something.

I have a tactic to deal with this. Like in judo when you use your opponents energy back on them I use latent homophobia.

The trick is to make body contact so that thug man is touching another man (albeit inadvertently), so I make sure my leg is up against his and push everso slightly.

Manthug will then usually process the following flowchart in his mind

Man is touching me… am I gay? If no move leg.

And so I get my full seat.

I don’t know what went wrong on this day, maybe I met my homophobic nemesis, maybe my bad back meant I misjudged the amount of squeeze I gave, either way I got careless. Manthug looked at me and said “Do you want a fight?”

Actually that, not an “oi”, or a “do you mind?”, or even a “hello”. but right in there. I said no, looking at him with a rollie stuck to his fingers, scabs on his lips and a vacant half stare I figured I’d use my wits like Odysseus.

He then said something along the lines of “a bit of a squeeze” but less jovial (the actual words have been muddled in my memory as fear was setting in.

I said “Yeh, it is a bit.” Meaning that the trains really don’t make these seats big enough do they harumph? But then I realised that he had been complaining about me squeezing and I had just said “Yes, I’m squeezing your leg like a gay man” or “Yes, let’s have that ding dong.” or words to that effect.

He said I was taking the piss, I stood up for myself and said I was just sitting down, he was all over the seat. There was a pregnant moment as the rest of the carried eagerly anticipated/dreaded the guy without flowers being hit by the man who definitely didn’t have flowers.

Amazingly he then said get out of the way and I shifted over with a “sorry mate” and he stood up by the door for the rest of his journey.

Slightly shaking I realised I’d won (unless he punched me as he disembarked… he didn’t) and in celebration I spread myself liberally over both seats until a businessman got on and I awkwardly shifted over, apologising.

It was notably different form the previous couple of weeks as there was a) no charcoal involved and b) a naked woman.

I’d never done life drawing before. And as the woman disrobed in front of me I sharpened my pencil and tried to come up with some other double entendres.

We had a few exercises to deal with, firstly there was two minute poses wherein the model would adopt a (naked) pose and we had two minutes to draw it.

Whether this was a test of art skills or psychological profiling I have yet to ascertain as looking back at these drawings shows I neither drew breasts or head on any of them. Is this how I objectify women?

Well, partly the breast was a typical repressed english embarrassment. I tried to draw them on one of my drawings but the first attempt was so laughably carry on pert confessions of an art student that I rubbed one them out immediately.

the next exercise was again lots of different poses in quick succession but differed from the first excercise in that there was a stool (of the sitting kind, it’s not that kind of art class) and we had to draw one picture over another.

Good in as much as it makes you think quick, see how different poses give different movement etc etc. But bad in that what I’m left with is a huge scrawl of legs and stools that next to the first picture is painting me as quite the psychopath-in-waiting.

then it was time for the meat of the lesson, she lay down on a tatty mattress for the remaining hour and we drew.

Again I left the breasts til the absolute last minute at one point making eye contact as he energetically jerked my hand on the easel with (i’m afraid to say) my tongue sticking out of my mouth slightly. She looked slighty scared. but, in the reverse of the spider adage “they’re more scared of you than you are of them” I was terrified. Every time I tried to draw her face she looked like a monkey.

I looked at her, she didn’t look like a monkey.

I drew her, she looked like a monkey.

I rubbed it out, looked at her – no monkey

I copied exactly what I saw with my own eyes – monkey.

She was going to have to look at this. I cut facial features to a bare minimum and erased the banana I’d put in her hand.

As the lesson drew to a close I realised that I’d exhibited some classic diversion tactic by spending more time trying to copy the pattern on the mattress than actually drawing in a nipple. I think I need help.

On the way home, naked drawings rolled up tightly in my bag, I felt relieved that nothing too untoward or embarrassing had happened.

Then, after stopping off in Marks & Spencers to buy some bread I got distracted by a man talking to me, I pulled out my ipod headphones to be told I’d dropped something, I turned around to see a woman helpfully bending down to pick up the piece of paper. Then stopping as she saw the scrawls of a woman-hating killer on them

I grabbed it, ran into my flat, ate some bread and so far have killed no women.