The Blueprint Podcast

Episode 83 - The New Applause [ 55:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You might want to run a hot bath before you listen to this week’s episode, because it’s possibly the darkest and dirtiest episode of The Blueprint so far and you might want to wash it off you after you hear it.

We move in and out of various issues whilst involving a strange encounter in the street, which takes us onto the quite unconnected issue of service standards, leading of course to prostitution, sexism, prejudice against millionaires, time travel karaoke.

Eventually we get onto a quirky story involving Lord Sir Alan Sugar of Apprentice and someone who really really liked reading his autobiography. From there we arrive at a groundbreaking new idea to replace boring old-fashioned applause.

Join us next week for more Blueprint frolics.

A dirty alleyway representing the content of this week's podcast

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Episode 82 - How to Offend Pilots [ 55:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A thrill-packed episode this week. We hear news from Dave, who is still in France seeking out Xavier Laurent, and there’s a News Roundup as well as a game of Quotations to task your brain.

We also discuss some quirky stories, including one in which a pilot does something so inexplicable as to make us say bad things about all pilots, possibly risking our future admittance to aircraft. We’re sure that most if not very nearly all pilots aren’t stupid idiots who stumble into planes and press two buttons before throwing coffee around, but the story in question suggests that there’s at least one who does.

Please take a few moments to complete our listener survey so we know what we’re doing right and wrong and to whom.

We’ll be back with episode 83 next Friday so please join us then and tell your friends how lovely we are, because we’re always telling ours about how much we like you.

A cockpit yesterday

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Episode 81 - Entropy Hoover [ 54:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Many thanks to everyone who listened to Episode 80 and the return to the cyberwaves of The Blueprint. A special thanks to our American and Chinese listeners who far outnumbered everyone else (including our home turf in the UK!)

We hope that Chinese listeners were pleased to hear themselves featured in the Who’s The Greatest game we played during episode 80, and that they also understood what the hell was going on.

For the American listeners to our British banter, warm greetings. Please can you send us some American things? For every American thing we receive we will send you a British thing. No cars please, they’re a paperwork nightmare.
This week we’re back with some quirky news stories, a News Roundup and a bit of uplifting chat about how winter makes everyone want to hide in a cupboard until the sun comes out again.

James’ Entropy Hoover is his intellectual property and if you build one you have to give him a wheelbarrow full of money.

A diagram of January

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Episode 81 will be released to the world on Friday, 28th January at 9am (GMT).

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Episode 80 - Swearing [ 1:30:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Blueprint Podcast returns from its absence with a bumper episode in which we introduce two important new features.

1. A new co-presenter

2. Swearing

As well as these exciting new developments we’ve got a cracking game of Who’s The Greatest in which we eventually reach a decision after failing to get to the point for quite some time in typically Blueprint fashion.

We’re back on a regular basis now, so watch out for the next episode of The Blueprint next Friday. Tell your friends about us and we might tell our friends about you.

Malcolm Tucker - swearing par excellence.

Just click on the play button below to hear it, or subscribe via iTunes (for free!) if you’re some kind of fancy-ass technowizard from the future.

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The Blueprint Podcast will return on Friday, 21st January 2011 with a bumper episode. Click here to subscribe using iTunes, or come back to blueprintpodcast.com at 9am (GMT) on 21/1/2011 to hear the new episode.

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Graffiti may stain church for years

Now I’m not religious at all, but I do appreciate a nice building, and for better or worse churches are some of the best old buildings around.

Trouble is, whatever little twat did this doesn’t give a flying one about anything older than they are and will now become a legend at school for their graffiti getting in the local paper. The idea of the police appealing for witnesses seems daft because any other kids who were around at the time aren’t going to grass on 6TBK (or Shorty). They could look out for a big fat kid ordering 60 Burger King meals, but I don’t hold out much hope.

When I was about 13, I offered my newly-bleached school haversack around the class for them to graffiti on with a marker pen so that it would look cool. Previously another kid had tried to graffiti their own new bag with the names of bands they liked and it looked contrived, so I thought my plan was better. The only rule was that they weren’t allowed to write over the picture of Humphrey Bogart that I’d drawn in the middle (it was the 1980s and old films were very cool then. I’d copied the Bogart picture from a Casablanca poster I had on my bedroom wall). It did look pretty good by morning break the same day.

Sadly a lot of my pals used the opportunity to declare their love for their boy and girlfriends, and a few weeks later when they had all finished with each other my bag became a moving noticeboard of heartbreak and shame. It soon looked like it had been censored by the CIA.

In two or three weeks 6TBK will probably no longer love Shorty and start going out with her mate instead. The cops should hang around looking for 6TBK returning to the scene to scribble it out.

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In the absence of any new podcast episodes, I (Chris) thought that I’d throw up some blog entries here instead. Here’s one now.

This morning my train to work is about a quarter full of people who appear to share my Monday morning feelings of muted despair in the face of the week ahead. We are all alone in the same way that we would be in a lift, ignoring each other but probably able to take a pretty good stab at speaking one another’s thoughts.

“I can’t believe it’s Monday already.”

“I felt so upbeat on Friday, but now look.”

“I wasted my free time, and now I have to go to work again.”

“I should leave this job and get a new one.”

“I should leave society and go and live in a camper van.”

“I can’t afford a camper van.”

Most of us work five days out of seven, and then we spend two days tidying up after ourselves and getting ready for the next five. We feel a sense of great accomplishment because we’ve got all of our washing done ready for us to wear and throw back into the washing basket ready for next weekend’s triumph of organisation and good laundry practice. We are pleased that we have five plastic containers in the freezer each holding a meal for us to eat at our desks while our bosses fail to notice or reward the fact that we never go out for a proper lunchbreak.

These things prepared, maybe we can have a Good Week this week. We will eat healthily, exercise in the evenings and get enough sleep. We will keep our homes presentable so that the invisible people who deliver the daily takeaway menus and Aldi leaflets will think that we are switched-on and contented.

But now it is Monday morning, and the train is lying to us. We almost glance at each other as we realise that even though it’s two minutes late, the electronic sign in the station is pretending that or train has already been and gone. We watch the sign cycle through information about trains to exotic places ten miles in the opposite direction and we all experience a sort of damp panic at the idea that our train really has been through the station without us noticing it.

Then we take comfort in each other. Not like how other people’s friends or other people’s families do; not with hugs or reassuring chats, not with offers of help or even vague gestures of support. We just look at each other in the knowledge that we are the same loose group who always get on our train, and we can’t all be wrong.

We’re like raindrops looking at each other to make sure it’s raining. There must be times when a raindrop goes too early, right? There has to be an over-eager and inexperienced raindrop involved in every time we remark that we’re sure we just felt rain and then stand with our palms and faces pointing skyward waiting for confirmation. Perhaps if we could hear better we’d sometimes hear a lone raindrop shouting “Leeroy Jenkins!” and launching itself at the ground while the rest roll their eyes and await the proper signal.

Then our train arrives and we forget that there was ever a problem. It isn’t a big enough story to tell anyone about. Well not out loud anyway. Not unless it happens a lot, at which point you can still only tell each other, but we never speak to the other people who get on our train.

We are strangers who know a few things about one another. The guy with the mod-style haircut probably knows that I have recently given up smoking because I no longer stop outside the station for a cigarette when I arrive. I believe that the attractive but unconfident-looking girl is probably a student because she disappears outside term time and looks a bit too young to be a teacher. It’s like a very low-circulating but equally valid celebrity magazine.

The train driver looks at where most of us are standing and carefully positions the doors of the train somewhere else. We move towards them like the world’s worst tennis players anticipating a ball, as one of us hits the jackpot and finds the door stop in front of us, before realising that the Devil has given us a deal. The one who stands before the door must now stab at the “open” button until the driver activates it just at the moment where we start to feel ridiculous.

On the other side of the door, people who work where we live wait to disembark while one of them casually, then purposefully and finally frantically jabs at the interior version of the door button. Then they emerge, for some reason always appearing surprised, and start their day. In our minds, they get the hell out of our way so that we can get on. Their faces are familiar too, but they don’t belong to us. They don’t get on our train, they get off it.

There are plenty of seats on our train so we all take two and place a bag on the seat next to us, knowing that anyone insane enough to want to sit next to someone is someone we don’t want to sit next to. Most of us fiddle with our phones; some read a copy of Metro left on the seat. Unlike the journey home there are hardly ever any drunks and so nobody speaks to us except for the train conductor asking to see our tickets. Once in a while there are two people who know each other and they come to life while the rest of us silently and passively hate them.

Today the train passed a horse in a small field. It wore headgear but no saddle, and was alone; running in jubilant circles around a drinking trough. It must have thought it was Friday.

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Episode 79 - Roof Monk [ 4:35 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A short episode for you this week, to enable you to live your busy life and still listen to the Blueprint Podcast.

We come to you again from Nottingham, and this week we’ve even got a picture of the hospital, to sort of prove that we were there.

A game if Who On Earth forms the bulk of this week’s bitesized chunk of Blueprintery, and fans of monasteries, monks and roofing will be delighted to hear that all three are involved!

Here's the hospital where we hung out for episodes 78 and 79. It's in Nottingham.

We shall return. In the meantime, why not follow us on Twitter?

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