Despite that fact that I eagerly awaited the start of the 2014 F1 season and monitored the media throughout the winter break, the Melbourne Grand Prix was actually a bit of a disappointment.

I had to watch the highlights on BBC1 on Sunday afternoon because I don’t have Sky. I had to negotiate with my wife and her visiting family to ignore them for an hour and a half to watch the TV on my own.  I only mention these things to evidence my commitment to the sport.

When I reappeared to be asked if the viewing pleasure was great, I had to respond that I was underwhelmed, which was a shame given that I’d just been rather antisocial.

It wasn’t because Vettel and Hamilton had cars that weren’t reliable enough to get to the end of the race – it was because the sound of the cars was all wrong and somehow uninspiring.

The aggressive, distinctive and loud howling of the V8s has been replaced with a muted thrum augmented with much whistling of turbo chargers. I have written before that the bellow of a V8 is deeply satisfying, almost spiritual for a petrolhead; an F1 engine was the ultimate rip-snorting evolution of the beast. An F1 V8 had a noise that was exciting and assaulted the senses; the equivalent of a Motorhead concert in musical terms!      

The new engine regulations for 2014 have seen the 2.4 V8 replaced with a 1.6 turbo assisted V6 supported by electrical energy recovery/boosting systems; the engineering challenges for the teams have been huge and the cost staggering.  But from a personal perspective, the result is unfortunately something a lot duller. The grand prix was not without incident, breakdowns, crashes, safety cars and rule infractions but for me, it was less engaging than it should have been.

I never really appreciated just how important the noise was to the enjoyment of the F1 spectacle. Some sounds are so distinctive, like the Merlin engine in a Spitfire; you just know something very good is coming. And on that subject, I have heard it reported that paying fans at the circuit, couldn’t actually hear the cars coming!

F1 V8s had a similar impact to a Merlin engine on my excitement levels but not anymore, now the auditory drama has gone.  To reuse the musical analogy, think Motorhead playing an acoustic set – okay but not right.

Over the last decade I have watched almost every single race and I am now thinking that this season may end that commitment - Formula One might become Formula Gone!

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My ten year old son Matthew is doing something for Sport Relief that, in my opinion, is genuinely impressive. He is going to swim 1.5km in our local pool in Daventry on 23rd March – that’s 60 lengths. 

This challenge is one he has set himself of his own volition and without any input from his parents (although we did have to register him).

From a personal perspective, I was a much older teenager before I was capable of swimming a mile so for him to be prepared to have a go at ten is amazing.

He is taking it all very seriously and is doing, and planning more, training swims between now and the event. He is raising money for the Sport Relief charity and in that regard you might just be willing to help.  Here’s a link to his Sport Relief Giving page;

 https://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/MatthewBaldwin10

As a parent you get used to your child’s abilities, attitudes and interests; but sometimes they surprise you and in doing so make you proud. And I am proud, so in my best cockney geezer;

“Go on son, give it some!”

I’ll be giving it some too, both in terms of dad style encouragement from the poolside and in terms of my hard earned cash.  He has set himself a target of £100 and he’ll blow that target to pieces for sure. The only question is by how much?

You can help if you want to. 

And if you can’t, you can always wish him luck here, or on Facebook.

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UPDATE: Matthew swam his 1500 metres in 42 minutes and raised an excellent £326 via his Sportrelief charity page. I was impressed and more than a little proud too. Well done Son!

My view is that time and technology don’t improve everything. A short while ago I took to my virtual pulpit and preached about real books over Kindlethings; this time the post is about music.

I start with a confession; I still buy compact discs (CDs) and I struggle to embrace the culture of downloading.  With music; aside from auditory pleasure, I like to have something physical to engage with as well. I value the packaging; I like to read the inserts and look at the pictures in the same way I did when my music came on vinyl and in sleeves that were gatefold.

Those thinking I am some kind of technological Luddite, please note that I was prepared to move on from LPs because CDs were just a better proposition.  Whilst the size/shape of the plastic wasn’t precious, the experience of engaging in some way with the band was – CD covers/inserts fulfil the requirement; a download doesn’t.

My opinion is that CDs are a better value proposition than downloads because you get something physical/tangible for the same cost. Practically, you can sell a CD on (or a charity shop can do it for you) if you tire of it or realise you made a bad buying decision; you can move the music from home to car and from person to person easily; you can still upload it to your smartphone or digital personal stereo if you want to. If you crash your electronic impression, you can create a new one easily. I know all about cloud storage, I know that cars have auxiliary sockets for ipods (and the like) and I accept that you can have in-home stereo set ups that are part of your computer network to allow you to pipe music all over your house…………………but I don’t, I haven’t and I can’t.     

Downloading bothers me for a few reasons;

• Advocates commonly download individual tracks instead of albums (and for me that’s like thinking you’ve read a book when you’ve only bothered with a couple of chapters)
• Often downloading is done illegally and that’s not ideal for the health of the music industry
• A download is a bit like a digital photograph in that there’s a risk that once you’ve taken it you never see it again

I’ll accept that a CD collection does come with some challenges:

• There is the requirement for physical storage space (which in my case is a significant requirement, much to Mrs Baldwin’s chagrin)
• If one doesn’t alphabetize one’s collection it becomes impossible to find anything (but the process of arranging your CDs is slow, painful and suggests one might suffer from OCD)   
• One’s CD storage units really need to match; if IKEA ever discontinues its Benno range, I will have to visit a store and protest by chaining myself to its railings.
• If you like your music conveyed to you in a randomised way e.g. ABBA one track, Motorhead the next, then you might want to use the shuffle functionality on your ipod/docking station to make life easier than switching CDs every song. Just buy the CD in first place before uploading it to your personal stereo!

My sales pitch (or preach) for CDs is drawing to a close but I want to make some final observations; if you are with me on this subject, make your stand too because there is a significant risk that the compact disc will vanish.  Visit Amazon, or pop into HMV if you have to, and buy a few; put it on your list of things to do tomorrow. By the way, if you like AC/DC, note that HMV has a good sale on right now – most of the back catalogue is available for £3.99.

CDs have a cost to make, distribute and stock; they need to sell in enough quantity to make the record companies money. If they don’t, the decline of the medium will just speed up. In the not too distant future downloading or streaming music on demand will be the only way to listen to new material. And that would be a damn shame!

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Here is something that arrived in my inbox today, have a read and see if you cringe as much as I did. Just for clarity, this is presented verbatim!

Anglian is the largest home improvement company nationally we do around 4 million pounds of sales per week has a region we are around 370 thousand a week. We are looking for Sales managers direct sales people and marketing managers to join our ever expanding company. We have the largest proactive marketing teams which include field marketers telephone marketing head office marketers leaflet distributors and internet site so will attend are confirmed to the company standard. The company also put on monthly and yearly incentive of which you have a chance of winning 5* holidays ranging from silver to platinum. This is a employed post so you get a weekly basic and bonuses. full company training and support will be given. For more information please call P---a on 0780------8 or E-mail your CV to p---a.w---s@angliangroup.com.

Some observations; my marketing and communications skills could certainly add some value to this business. If the literacy skills evident in this email are reflective of the company as a whole – the task is huge.

Based upon this note, the person who contacted me (name obscured to preserve her anonymity) is illiterate and has the proof checking skills of a six year old on a spinning roundabout.

If I could be bothered, I’d count the number of spelling/grammatical errors. As it is, perhaps I’ll set my ten year old son a comprehension test instead.

If this note is supposed to make me think working for Anglian would be anything other than bloody depressing, it has failed. To be frank, I’d rather punch myself in the face repeatedly (or join the army so that people could shoot at me) than apply. Honestly I’d be embarrassed to admit I worked for this company; in fact unemployment would even be preferable!

If you are interested in being paid weekly, worked like a slave, given horrible targets to sell/market the worst of product ranges, please contact me and I’ll pass on P’s full email address.

Finally, if an Anglian Group marketing manager ever reads this post; for God’s sake find a way to stop your people sending out messages on behalf of your company without making them follow some kind of review/approval process…………….

Unless of course ghastly communication is just indicative of the ghastly level of customer service one might expect to receive if one bought something from the Anglian Group.  If that’s the case, this piece is arguably on brand!

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