Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in robert_winston's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
2:56 pm	0 TIES http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Winston_(coach) Who is this other Robert Winston? And what about this, from the article: "During his single season, Winston's team compiled a record of 5 wins, 1 loss and 0 ties." No ties! I thought I was unlucky being limited to three ties - this man doesn't have any at all! He won five, lost one and now has no ties at all. I'm not sure about the maths there. What happened to the other four ties? Maybe it means that he lost all five ties in one go. Perhaps the ties came in a sort of presentation pack. Funnily enough it reminds me of a similar incident during my own time coaching a team of student wet nurses for a midwives v wet nurses five-a-side hockey match back in my days as an undergraduate (ah, happy days). The wet nurses had had a whip-around (no cheeky remarks, Davey-boy) and bought me a presentation set of five ties bearing the college wet nurse faculty insignia - a massive lactating nipple. How proud I was to be an honorary wet-nurse! It was one tie from each girl and so as not to hurt anyone's feelings, on the day of the match I wore all five ties, in the manner of a comedy cricket umpire. As play commenced it soon became apparent that the devious midwives had not only recruited burly male midwives (how naive we had been not to see that coming!), placing our team of delicate, compulsively-lactating ladies at a considerable disadvantage, but that they had also found some way of sabotaging our team's hockey sticks! For shortly after play commenced, first Ethel, then Magdalene, then Fenella's hockey sticks all ruptured and splintered. Finally the whole team of wet nurses were careening around trying to score with bendy splintered sticks. This made play very difficult indeed, and we had no spares. At half time I had an idea. I took off the five ties and bound them tightly around the hockey sticks as a means of temporary repair. The girls approved. Though we risked ruining the ties it was a symbolically potent gesture on everyone's part. When play commenced the scheme paid off: the wet nurses turned the game right around and beat the midwives by a narrow margin! Needless to say, however, the wear and tear rendered each and every tie completely unwearable. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 21st, 2004
2:47 pm	SEWAGE Decision delayed on sewage works I forgot to take this decision on time as I am still engrossed in reading The Dan Brown Code, which just keeps getting better. I shall post extracts soon, but this decision awaits. Thankfully the water board appear to have covered for me for now. Decision due on high-speed trains Likewise this one. I'm getting behind. Hoon hints troop decision is made Hoon. That's a great surname isn't it. Hoon. Hoooooooon. "Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told MPs that any decision to re-deploy British troops would be entirely operational and taken under advice from commanders on the ground, and for no other reason." Hehe, 'commanders on the ground', I like that. i.e. yours truly! Pupils await school fate decision Here's one I've enjoyed toying with! I get a perverse kick from spinning out decision-making cases like this for as long as I can. No decision over fire-hit school Hmm, no-one told me it was a special-needs school. That's not that funny, really. I might prioritise this over the troop decision. CPS defends decision on rape case Whoops. I don't imagine the Crown Prosecution Service will be soliciting my advice for a while. Doesn't seem to have gone down that well. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 6th, 2004
4:26 pm	THE DAN BROWN CODE - CHAPTER 13 Chapter 13 Professor Robert Winstone racked his brain. Chief Inspector Horton's question rattled in his brain. Have you recently come into contact with any own-brand products?. The Somerfield incident was some time ago, so he didn't need to mention that. The suit. "There is one thing," Winstone stammered. "Oh?" Chief Inspector Horton directed his eyes at Professor Robert Winstone, then remembered to squint and gazed off into the corner of the room. "My suit," began Professor Robert Winstone, professor of wordology at the University of Oxford, "I think it's an own-brand one." Professor Robert Winstone unbuttoned his jacket and pointed to the label sewn onto the inside pocket, which bore the inscription 'BOATENG'. Horton reacted with grudging admiration. "Well that's certainly no own-brand suit, Professor Winstone, Ozwald Boateng is an expensive designer label." Robert Winstone shook his head sombrely, and started to pick at the threads on the BOATENG label until he managed to detach it, revealing another label underneath. This one said 'GEORGE'. Chief Inspector Horton's face went pale. "George... Asda's own brand clothing label... but why was there a label sewn in there saying Boateng?" Professor Robert Winstone bowed his head in shame. How was he going to explain this? Chapter 14 Paul Boateng MP awoke with a start. Where am I? He was drenched in cold sweat. The smell of disinfectant stung his nostrils. His head was pounding. He looked around. He had been sitting slumped on a toilet seat, presumably for some time, wearing only his shirt and underpants. Where is my suit? he wondered. Where is my tie? He tried to move, but his hands and feet were tied and he lost his balance and fell against the wall of the toilet cubicle. Tied. He looked at his feet - his grey polyester tie bad been used as some kind of rudimentary bond. His hands were tied behind his back, and struggling with his knees drawn up to his chest he managed to get them round to the front. They had also been tied together with a necktie, but this was a tie he did not recognise. Paul Boateng MP listened for any sound of movement outside the cubicle. The coast appeared to be clear. He was going to have to get out of wherever he was and find something to wear. What time of day was it? As he bit into the knots in the neckties in an attempt to free his wrists and ankles, earlier events started to seep back into his memory. And the first face which appeared in his mind was that of Professor Robert Winstone. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 28th, 2004
5:49 pm	THE DAN BROWN CODE - CHAPTER 17 Chapter 17 Renowned Oxford wordologist Professor Robert Winstone slid the key card into the hotel room door. A little green light indicated that the door was unlocked. He turned the knob and opened the door, stepping into the room. The Oxford University Wordology Faculty had provided him with modest accomodation here in Stroud, but Professor Robert Winstone was not a fussy man. He opened the wardrobe. Ooh, a motorised tie-rack. You see how easily impressed Professor Winstone was? His reaction at seeing a motorised tie rack was ooh. And it was in italics. Remember that for later on in the book. He set his small suitcase onto the bed and opened it. The old school tie was still intact, as was the brand new Japanese space-age "indestructable" tie which his counterpart at the University of Tokyo had been kind enough to send him. Professor Robert Winstone chuckled to himself. Chapter 18 "Good morning Mr Trendall," the receptionist beamed at Joffrey Trendall, chief executive officer of Albatross Publishing as he strode forcefully through the lobby of the firm's UK headquarters. Trendall was in no mood for pleasantries. He had a phone call to make. A very important phone call. Chapter 19 The tie rack whirred to life. Professor Robert Winstone spent a moment studying the mechanism and rubbed his hands. I'll try it out with the Japanese indestructable tie, he decided. He slid the silvery tie out of its plastic wrapping and let it slide across his hands. It slithered like mercury. What was this amazing material? Chapter 20 Three thousand miles away, Crad Jupson, Senior Vice President of Albatross Publishing US Inc. pushed open the door to his plush office overlooking the city of New York. God, I love this country, he thought to himself as he surveyed the glorious view. I only hope that I don't get any bad news today. Chapter 21 Three thousand miles away, Joffrey Trendall picked up the phone and dialled a phone number. It was a number he rarely dialled. But he had bad news for someone. Someone very important. Chapter 22 Three thousand miles away, a phone rang. A figure in an office overlooking the city of New York picked up the receiver. "Hello?" Chapter 23 Professor Robert Winstone was confused. When he had dialled the tie rack helpline with a few preliminary questions before entrusting his ties to its inexorable mechnism, he had not expected to hear an American accent. "Hello," he said, uncertainly, "Is that the Tie-o-matic helpdesk?" Chapter 24 Joffrey Trendall dialled a number into his phone. It was engaged. Damn, thought Joffrey Trendall. This is important. Who is he on the phone to? Chapter 25 Crad Jupson's eyes narrowed. Tie-o-matic? Who was this joker? "I think you have the wrong number," he said. He glanced at the phone. Another call was coming through. Chapter 26 Professor Robert Winstone put the receiver down. He was about to try the number again in case he had got it wrong, when the phone rang. Who could this be? Chapter 27 Trendall heard the phone ring this time. He braced himself. He had been secretly relieved when Jupson's line had been engaged. He didn't to have to break the news. Chapter 28 Professor Robert Winstone lifted the receiver cautiously to his ear. "Hello?" He almost whispered the greeting. Chapter 29 "Hello, Crad?" Chapter 30 "This isn't Crad, this is Professor Robert Winstone. I think you have the wrong number." Chapter 31 "Oh, sorry." Chapter 32 "That's OK." Chapter 33 "Bye." Chapter 34 Jupson switched to the other line. I bet this is Trendall, calling from England, he though to himself. "Hello?" Chapter 35 The branch line from Stroud to Cheltenham Spa is a line with much history but very little future. Chapter 36 "Is this Crad Jupson?" The voice was an English voice but it wasn't Trendall's. "Who's calling, please?" "This is Chief Inspector Horton of Stroud constabulary. I have some questions for you regarding one of your clients." Stroud. The town of Stroud held a particular significance for Crad Jupson. A significance that would haunt him for the rest of his days. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 24th, 2004
3:33 pm	Chapter 9 Renowned Oxford Professor of Wordology Professor Robert Winstone gaped in horror at the words which the contorted naked corpses spelled out on the floor of thrillers section of Stroud public library. The first, a man in his fifties, was lying on his side, bent grotesquely backwards so that his hands met his feet forming a circle of sorts. Next to him lay what had lately been a lady in her mid-forties, arms and legs bent at strange angles forming a horizontal zig-zag shape. Next to her, a librarian forming a similar zig-zag shape, this time vertically. A gap and then five more dead librarians forming what were clearly intended to be letters of the alphabet. Together, they spelt the words: OWN BRAND "Ye gods," whispered Winstone. "What does it mean?" Chief Inspector Horton raised a suspicious eyebrow. "That's what we were hoping you could tell us." Professor Robert Winstone cast his mind back to a visit to the supermarket some years previously. His decision that fateful Thursday evening to eschew Loyd Grossman's expensive pasta sauce in favour of Somerfield's own brand had cost him dearly: the flavouring chemicals it contained were resistant to all known cleansing agents, and he had had to declare that pale blue tie a write-off. That was my favourite tie. The words 'own brand' had from that day on signalled doom to Professor Robert Winston. Why have I been called here? Do they know about my stained tie? Chief Inspector Horton gazed uncertainly at the daydreaming Professor Robert Winstone. What is he thinking, he pondered. Has he cracked this mysterious code already? Professor Robert Winstone caught Horton's inquiring eye. Why is he looking at me like that? He's seen that I am looking at him. Horton hastily gazed at the bookshelf over Professor Winstone's shoulder. I'll pretend I was looking at the... he peered at the sign on the shelf... arts and crafts books. Hopefully renowned Oxford wordologist Professor Robert Winstone will just assume I have a bit of a squint. "Hmm, arts and crafts," said Chief Inspector Horton. Oops, I said that out loud! Professor Robert Winstone shifted his gaze back and forth across the Chief Inspector's ruddy face. "Do you have a slight squint, Chief Inspector?" Oh no! Now I'm going to have to pretend I have a squint all the time! I'll never be able to keep up the pretence! "Look, never mind that, Professor Robert Winstone!" Chief Inspector Horton gazed Professor Robert Winstone firmly in the forehead. Damn "What do those words mean to you?" Professor Robert Winstone stroked his bushy black moustache in quiet contemplation. "It would appear that the librarians, seeing no way out of whatever circumstances lead to their collective... deathing... decided to leave some kind of message to the people who would find them." Horton eyed Winstone quizzically in the chin. "And what does the message say to you?" "Well, Chief Inspector," replied Professor Robert Winstone, stooping slightly to meet the Inspector's strangely glassy gaze. "It's only a hunch. But I think I may have the explanation." Chapter 10 The headquarters of the World Dryer Organisation were in a modest office block which belied the... Oh man! Not another cliffhanger! Roll on Chapter 11! (Comment on this)
11:03 am	I stopped by MVC on the way back from Imperial last night to pick up the Star Wars DVD box set, and sat up watching the first one. Why are the enemy spaceships called "Tie" Fighters? Every time a Tie Fighter exploded, I flinched. Ended up having nightmares about this kind of thing: (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 23rd, 2004
1:27 pm	THE DAN BROWN CODE - CHAPTER 7 Chapter 7 "So let me get this straight." Renowned Oxford wordologist Professor Robert Winstone paced the thrillers section of the library again, careful to avoid treading on any of the corpses which littered the carpeted floor. I need to get this straight, he thought to himself. "You're telling me that these eight librarians all killed themselves at the same time?" Chief Inspector Horton peered suspiciously at Winstone. "I never said they killed themselves at the same time. You seem to know more about this incident than I do." "Now look here," Professor Robert Winstone blurted, "I don't know anything about this murder..." "Murder? What makes you think they were murdered?" "Murder, suicide... general deathing, whatever you want to call it! You called me here because I am Oxford's leading wordologist and you have some kind of word puzzle you want me to solve. When exactly are you going to get to the point? I'm a very busy man!" Chief Inspector Horton licked the tip of his pencil and jotted a note in his notepad. "Follow me," he said. With great reluctance, Professor Robert Winstone followed Chief Inspector Horton up a narrow flight of stairs which lead to a gallery overlooking the thrillers section of the library. "Sometimes," the burly Chief Inspector said, "you just have to change your perspective on things." Looking down, Professor Robert Winstone felt stars appear in his eyes. "Are you vertiginous?" the Chief Inspector asked. "That's none of your business," Winstone snapped back, "I am, however, petrified of heights." Winstone felt Horton's gaze on his face and neck. I have to get down from this gallery before I faint, thought Winstone in desperation. "The sight before you proving too much, eh?" Horton jeered. "I can't see anything," Winstone protested. "I... I think I'm going to faint!" I'm going to faint, he thought. "Why don't you loosen your tie?" Horton reached for Winstone's tie. My tie. "Hands off my tie," Winstone growled deliriously. "Snap out of it, Professor Robert Winstone!" Horton grabbed Professor Robert Winstone's head and directed it down, over the ballustrade, towards the eight corpses on the carpet below. "I'm holding you, you're not going to fall. Now look at the bodies!" Safe in Chief Inspector Horton's vice-like head-grip, Winstone did indeed find his eyes focussing again. For the first time he noticed that the librarians' corpses were all completely naked. And not only that. What appeared to have been an arbitrary series of grotesque poses on the floor was not arbitrary at all. The strange contortions of the elderly librarians in fact each represented a letter. A letter in the Roman alphabet. The very alphabet with which wordologist Professor Robert Winstone was most familiar. But even more shocking was that the letters, placed next to one another in sequence, spelled out a message. Gripped with fear as gripping as the grip which Chief Inspector Horton was exerting on his head with his vice-like grip, Professor Robert Winstone started reading one letter after another. When he had got to the eighth letter, he had read the whole message. The implications were staggering. Earth-shattering. Crumbs, thought Professor Robert Winstone. Chapter 8 Five hundred miles away and three weeks previously, Reverend Brian Hamlin set down the garden shears and mopped his brow, when... The suspense is killing me! I'm going to have to start reading every other chapter to any kind of sense of it all! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
8:45 am	ANOTHER SEWAGE DECISION A former politician is supporting the decision to pump raw sewage into the sea off Guernsey. Yup, another one of mine. Following a very similar recent spot of decision-making, I was hastily recruited to do some top-level sewage-related decision-making on Guernsey. Looks like I've ruffled a few feathers again. Just as well my standard terms absolve me of all responsibility for the consequences of my decisions! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004
3:14 pm	THE DAN BROWN CODE Someone left a book in the lab last week. I decided that if no-one claimed it, I'd have it. No-one did, so I did. It's called The Dan Brown Code, about an Oxford professor of "wordology" who finds himself caught up in a strange quest involving secret clues hidden within a series of airport blockbusters. The Dan Brown whose books feature within the story is presumably a fictional construct as the novels he is said to have written sound too preposterous to have ever been published. That said, I'm finding it eerily resonant. Here's a passage I've just read: Mrs Maude Havers hit the accelerator and the two-tone Vauxhall Astra veered diagonally across the rush-hour traffic. The centrifugal force thrust Oxford wordologist Professor Robert Winstone deep into the fake leather upholstery, and he fumbled for the seatbelt. What is she playing at, he thought, and What have I let myself in for? He looked at the Holy Water stain on his pink silk tie. That wasn't going to come out. He had had it dry-cleaned before. There's no way the dry-cleaners will get a second stain out without rendering the tie unwearable. He cast his mind back to that time, several years ago, where he had almost lost his life, and his tie, deep within the bowels of Bethnal Green Public Library... "Pay attention!" he exclaimed, snapping out of his revels as Mrs Maude Havers gunned the Vauxhall Astra down Chaucer Road, only narrowly missing a small child on a tricycle. "You might be the finest librarian in Stroud, Mrs Maude Havers, but you should not be behind the wheel of a Vauxhall Astra!" Mrs Maude Havers muttered something inaudible in response. "Anyway, where are you taking me?" Oxford wordologist Professor Robert Winstone looked at his Transformers watch. A distressing accident in his childhood, an accident he would rather forget, had long since caused the plastic Autobot covering to seal shut permanently, rendering the watch unusable as a timepiece, but he considered the wrist-worn toy an important talisman. Mrs Maude Havers shifted abruptly down to third gear. The change in velocity was gut-wrenching. Is she out of her mind? He looked over his shoulder. The Stroud constabulary couldn't be far behind, and they would have alerted Scotland Yard by now. Now, I'm sure the name Robert Winstone is a coincidence. Perhaps the author was trying to evoke a combination of the suave charm of Robert Redford and the gritty determination of Ray Winstone. But the stuff about his tie is just too close to the bone. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 16th, 2004
2:44 pm	QUESTION Is it suspicious if a lady can undo a man's tie with one hand? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004
11:58 am	TIE FIGHTER First of all, thank-you to the anonymous reader who sent me the parcel containing all those ties. However, I'm sorry to report that I was opening the parcel whilst walking to the faculty and managed to drop the entire contents down a manhole. I broke a small branch off a tree and managed to fish them out, but it's not a pretty picture. The ties are now covered in streaks of mud and dirt and other strange contents of London's sewers. Sorry, anonymous reader! After ruining all those ties I finally got to the faculty. They have installed new revolving doors and I managed to get the tie I was wearing trapped in the mechanism. The spinning doors pulled the tie tighter and tighter around my neck until I couldn't breath. Thankfully Nigel in reception rushed to my aid, cutting the tie in two with a pair of scissors. I was saved from strangulation, but, needless to say, the tie is now irreparably damaged. I still have the other ties which are muddied beyond recognition but all still in one piece. I have numbered them: Which one do you think I should wear? Though the ties are unsightly and smell, and are probably rather unhygenic, especially for a man in my line of expertise, I can hardly sit here open-collared, especially now the weather has taken a turn. Anyway, for the rest of the morning I reviewed some of the news stories my press people have forwarded to me. As you may know, I am a freelance decision-making consultant to many important organisations and individuals who would rather delegate difficult or boring decisions. Thankfully, I remain anonymous, but I thought the few readers of this page would enjoy a little guide to some of my recent decisions - some popular, some not so popular! Company quizzed on sewage release Thames Water, faced with the problem of what to do with all this sewage during torrential rain, thought to themselves: "This is for Professor Robert Winston to decide." I sat in on an extraordinary meeting and decided, "Pump roughly 600,000 tonnes of the stuff into the Thames." Archbishop's parish move praised Fairly easy one this - Dr Hope just couldn't make his mind up. I said to him: "David (you don't mind if I call you David, do you?), step down, you'll be happier for it." Airport 'grows' despite decision Hmm, not such a great decision here. Well, not exactly a bad decision, but kind of a fruitless one. The Coventry local authorities weren't sure whether to let the new terminal get built - I decided against it, but it looks like their plans to thwart business there will need more extreme measures. I got paid in ties for this - they gave me a £300 tab at Tie Rack. Sadly, as I was crossing the runway on my way out, the bag of ties was sucked into the engine of a small jet aircraft. Needless to say, not one tie escaped the inevitable shredding in the engine's blades. No decision on RAF civilian jobs What happened here, you ask? Simple: their cheque bounced. Show me the money, RAF, then you'll get your decision - that's the way I work. (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 26th, 2004
4:55 pm	WHAT'S NEW God's biscuit, I've been busy lately. Loads of stuff to prepare for the start of term, papers to mark from the end of last year. I hate being an examiner. I had to compile the paper in a rush and couldn't think up any good questions. One of the questions I hastily came up with was, "Where do babies come from?" Annoyingly, as this was a paper on embryology, most of the students assumed this was an abstract trick question, when really I just wanted a birds and bees answer. In fact, the closest anyone has come to a correct answer is some joker who has written "from mummy's tummy". Bloody students. I went out for a drink for the first time in ages the other week, to a pub in Canary Wharf with some of my fellow academic luminaries, and my best mate Davey-boy. Davey-boy didn't get on so well with the luminaries, and most of the conversation (which dealt largely with the ins and outs of the latest developments in experimental obstetricy by Professor Soren Toivanen of the University of Oslo's radical new embryology department) went right over his head, and his contributions proved irksome. But what can I do, he's a mate. An American girl with curly auburn hair kept glancing across at me from the bar, animatedly typing text messages to someone on her mobile phone. She probably recognised me from the television, or maybe even from my blog. I wish she'd come across and joined us. Might have broken up the tension between Davey-boy and the luminaries. More tie disasters. In an attempt to counteract the strange curse which limits my maximum number of serviceable ties to three, I went to Tie Rack at Victoria station and bought ten in one go. Ten ties, in all colours of the rainbow, made of super-reinforced silk. I managed to get them all the way back home in one piece, and then realised I had locked myself out. I noticed that an upstairs window was open, opposite a tree in the front garden. I was in luck. The branch closest to the window was still a good twenty feet away, but I had a plan. I climbed the tree and, sitting in the branches, knotted the ten super-strong ties together, fashioning a multicoloured rope. I tied one end to a sturdy gnarled bit of tree, and formed a loop in the other end with which I lassooed a gargoyle (moulded in my own likeness by some postgrad students as a birthday present a few years ago - bless those students and their wacky schemes!). With this taut line now in place between tree and house I was able to tightrope-walk across to my study, undo the lassoo from the gargoyle, retrieve the spare key from its hiding place inside the plastic womb-cross-section model on the mantlepiece, nip back outside, climb the tree and undo the other end of the tie-tightrope, which I then took inside and untied into its ten constituent accessories. Needless to say the strain, wear and tear had rendered each and every tie completely unwearable. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, July 30th, 2004
1:06 pm	COMPETITION Apparently a "blogger" (like me!) has been trying to contact me requesting that I deploy my decision-making proficiency in the name of some tawdry contest. I didn't get the email, as when Gladys was running through my emails the other day and said something about "a Ward", I thought she was talking about an award, so I de-prioritised it. You see, when it comes to accepting awards I face something of a conundrum. Much as I would like to take the glory and recognition, I still resent the fact that the decision to give me the award has been taken by someone other than myself. Anyway, I have had a look at the link which this "wardytron" (if indeed that is his real name, which I doubt!) sent me, and it is an interesting diversion. It reminds me of some cases of mixed race twins (i.e. one twin white, the other black), usually the result of botched IVF treatment, which in turn lead to complex legal proceedings under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. So if I did have a black twin, it is very possibly that he would look like cricketer Clive Lloyd. It might have been nice to have shared some of his sporting dexterity, as I'm hopeless at cricket! :) Anyway, on to my decision. I have decided that Sammy Davis Jr and Barry Chuckle (if indeed that is his real name, which I doubt!) are they most striking negative look-a-likes, so wardytron may award himself the roll of Toffos. (Comment on this)
10:55 am	DECISIONS DECISIONS You know, it's funny. Despite my decision-making prowess on the behalf of others, I am absolutely hopeless at making decisions for myself! For example, I spent nearly an hour this morning trying to work out what tie to wear today. And I only have three! (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
5:27 pm	Welcome to my weblog I thought I'd try out this blogging thing which everyone is on about at the moment. I'm not sure what I'll end up writing about most, but I suppose that's for me to decide, really, isn't it? (Comment on this)