FRIDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2007
St Andrew’s Day

THE UNEXPLAINED
All joking aside, the events I reported happening on Sicily are genuinely mysterious. There’s nothing light-hearted about the spontaneous combustion of domestic appliances, after all. And despite the best effort of everyone from the Pope to the Physics Departments of several Italian universities, nobody seems to know what happened. There have so far been two ‘bouts’ of events. I’ll keep you informed if there’s another.

TRUCKSHUNTER GEMS
I played Road To Nowhere by Talking Heads as being a song typical of a happy marriage between record and promo video. The main theme of the video was - perhaps predictably - scenes of long straight roads disappearing into the distant horizon. The eye-catcher, though, was a small white box in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen throughout the video. Various running figures appeared in it; it was quite mesmeric after a while. At least it made quite an impression on me! You, on the other hand, may have forgotten it entirely. I wish I knew who directed it. Do you?
At home, we have a DVD of some of the promo videos directed by Michel Goudry; they’re truly awesome. Two of them are Chemical Brothers tracks - Let Forever Be features a dozen versions of the same lass doing slightly different things at the same time (if you see what I mean) and Star Guitar (which won a video award) is the view out of the window of an express train where passing buildings are synchronised with the rhythms of the song. And Kylie Minogue’s Welcome To My World is amazing; it’s a kind of repeated short journey around a Parisian neighbourhood - but each time she passes the same spot, Kylie meets up with all the previous Kylies we’ve just seen.
I explained all those really badly, didn’t I? If you’ve seen the videos, you’ll know exactly which ones I’m talking about. If you haven’t, try YouTube!
I also played the BBC’s showjumping theme music for Patricia in Low Fell. Many years ago, I was told that it was called A Musical Joke and was written by Mozart’s dad - but I’m unable to confirm any of that now. Can anyone help me out?

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Yes, Kev, you’re right. Anglo-Saxon ‘hazel wellspring’ is now Haswell.
As for today.....what does ‘bottle’ mean in place-names like Shilbottle, Walbottle and Newbottle?

THE BLOG
I started this blog on 1 November so we’re now a month old. As Morecambe and Wise used to say....’What do you think of it so far?’ (And don’t say ‘rubbish’ - unless , of course, that’s what you really think!) I’d be very interested to know what your impressions of it are - and you ARE allowed to be honest. Does the blog’s content interest you? Should I be excluding some items and including others that have so far remained absent? Am I wasting my time doing it at all? Or should I - we - develop it in some way. I understand, for instance, that there are ways of adding audio to a blog; would you like me to find out how? Would you like this blog to be ‘affiliated’ to the BBC’s other, ‘proper’, programme blogs and thus become ‘official’?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.