On becoming Victor Meldrew

At the weekend some friends kindly invited me to join their team in the pub quiz at the Plough, our favourite among the excellent pubs in the village. One of the questions was 'which situation comedy drew the largest audience of 2000 when its final episode was shown?' Friends was considered - but surely 2000 was too long ago. Cheers too - but that finished well before. I muttered something about 'couldn't it be a British sitcom?' but this was generally ignored. It turned out to be One Foot in the Grave.

For those not familiar with the show, it featured Victor Meldrew, an everyman character for whom everything goes wrong, and the whole world is constantly presenting reasons to be a grumpy old man and moan.

All of this is just introduction to why I believe I took a step into Victor Meldrew country yesterday.

The field in question (neither house shown is ours).

Alongside our garden is a large field, which for many years has been a hay meadow. Lots of local people walk their dogs around it (you can see the tracks made by their walks in the picture above); the children played in it when they were little. Most recently we sledged down it. I was coming home around the field when I noticed something odd. There was a signpost in front of our neighbour's entrance into the field. But you couldn't read the sign. It was right up against the gate, facing the gate. 'Strange,' I thought. Until I got to our own entrance. There was a sign there too.

It turned out to be from a firm of solicitors, informing us that the field was to be used soon for livestock, and we had to stop using our entrance. This was sad - but not the end of the world. It is, after all, not a public field. However, what kicked the Victor Meldrew gene into action was the phrasing of part of the notice. It informed me that fencing would be erected shortly 'across the entrance you have made onto the land.'

This might seem totally innocuous. But that entrance was already there (and already old) when we moved into this house nearly 13 years ago. I did not make the entrance, and for some reason, the solicitor's snotty wording really got up my nose. Victor would probably have phoned to complain, but I thought solicitors would prefer something in writing, so I dashed off a fax, telling them off for their presumption. I haven't heard back yet. I don't know if I will.

On reflection, I'm glad I was restrained enough not to accuse them of libel - after all, they are solicitors. I don't know if it is libel to accuse someone of something they didn't do on a public notice. But I am glad I indulged that Meldrew moment. It might not have achieved anything, but it felt good.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

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