evergrowingbrain

John and Rose

2012-02-15T15:44:00.001Z

My wife's grandparents died a couple of weeks ago, aged 89 and within a week of each other. The funeral was tody and I wrote this and read it at the service.

If I could live my life in my own home
For all my days the minimum of tears
To know that I would rarely be alone
Success and joy, then rest for many years

If I could choose to live to eighty-nine
See all with happiness and health abound
To know the one I love is always mine
Together visit all the world around

If I could choose a time to say goodbye
Ready to go, to have no fear or dread
To know my time is up, no need to try
to understand what may now be ahead

A week apart, united now above
Eternity together with my love

HS2

2012-01-11T15:37:00.000Z

Dear My MP,

As a constituent of yours, (and I believe you serve us extremely well) I would be very interested to know your stance on the new High Speed Rail Link being proposed between London and Birmingham.

It is my view that this would be of very little benefit to anyone other than those commissioned to build it, and although I believe that investment is vital to getting the country competitive, and money spent in this country will largely move back into the economy, and back into the public purse, it strikes me as a ridiculous thing so spend such a collosal amount of money on.

Rather than speed up (marginally) the journey times between our major cities, why not pump the money into alternatives to travel which would render these journeys un-necessary or at best unprofitable, such as communications technology and the encouragement to use it?

Britain needs to remove its dependency on the business hubs, and encourage industry to move its operations into other areas. Rather than continue to rely on 5 or so main city centres, the same people could be doing the same jobs from other places with minimal impact on their productivity, and major positive impact on their personal lives and pockets.

So many issues, from season ticket prices to overcrowding to city parking and congestion/pollution would be solved by changing the mentality of business leaders from the 9-5 city centre based routine to a flexible, family oriented, location independent way of working. The technology exists to make this happen.

Yours sincerely,

me

The beetles on itunes

2010-11-16T19:00:00.002Z

This blog will look rubbish as i am writing it on my iPad.

You can see how important the beetles were to apple by the fact that despite the fact that although they will add a capital letter to Reading and White, when i spell beetles correctly it insists on correcting it to beetles. You cant see that i spelled it beetles that time, no autocorrect was needed.

What amazes me is that anyone was bothered about this amazing announcement. Who was waiting for their back catalogue to be released on iTunes, as that was the only way they might hear is band? Obviously someone, as i predict that they will shoot to the top of the iTunes chart.

I decided quite a long time ago that the beetles were ok, obviously important in the grand scheme of things, but not really my bag. I therefore bought the cd of the number ones when it was a fiver, and it has been occasionally on my iPod. And i probably listened to it too. It was a long time ago. Why, after so long being unable to, are people right now downloading this music, in poor quality, being the slaves to a corporation (what happens in 10 years time when your computer has died and apple have lost all records of your transaction?)

I have a pair of shelves stuffed with CDs, and recently threw out the cassette tapes that represented my childhood in dodgy music (fuzzbox anyone?) and I've downloaded thirteen tracks in my whole life. A charity itunes only belle and sebastian album, blur's popscene, and in a futile effort, frank sidebottom's posthumous release. I don't need music that urgently, and i don't want it in a metaphysical form, in poor quality. I'll wait until it arrives, often until it is available at a price i like, and i will enjoy it when i have it.

The story of the over-polite 20p piece

2010-10-16T17:53:00.000+01:00

So there I was on a train to Edinburgh, found my seat and whipped out my book. I’ve explained to the Japanese couple that yes, their tickets are fine for this train, and it seems that the people who booked the other three seats in the set of four with a table that I’m currently enjoying haven’t shown up, so please do sit with me.

It all starts with the eating. They’ve bought food. (its a three o'clock train – I picked it so I would have time for lunch, and get to Scotland by the time I’m ready for dinner). He starts with noodles from Tupperware, which although very easy to eat messily, he’s an expert, and I need pay little attention. She’s playing with her phone and singing a little ditty.

This is when he pulls open a bag of rotisserie chicken. Just the same as the noodles, he’s an expert at eating chicken, but being a chicken eating expert is quite different from being a noodle eating expert. Eating chicken without the use of cutlery is a tricky business – ask anyone in my office when I’ve been to Waitrose for lunch (30p bread roll, £1.35 chicken quarter (gives me the opportunity to say “breast please” to the nice lady at the counter) and a squirt of the barbeque sauce I keep in my locker – that’s a good value lunch) and they don’t have any plastic knives. The expert chicken eater knows that the best way of extracting as much meat from a chicken is to really get your lips and teeth round it – right in, lots of sucking, and right out again. Having to sit opposite a man with a fiver’s worth of chicken (it was Iceland I think – that’s a lot of chicken) and a wife who wasn’t hungry (she had a few noodles) on a four and a half hour train ride isn’t fun.

I decided to join them (not by stealing some chicken) and have a little something to eat, so I whipped out my wallet and as the trolley man came over, I fumbled with the (ludicrous amount of) coins, and a 20p piece slipped out of my hand, and fell behind the lady sitting next to me. Neither of them seemed to notice at the time, and I was not reliant on this particular 20p to enable me to purchase the bottle of diet coke and packet of crisps I felt would be sufficient to satisfy my need for sustenance, so I didn’t think too much of it.

When the lady got up to go to the toilet (or just to stretch her legs – I didn’t follow her or anything) I reached down and found the 20p, but I noticed that the man saw me reach down and find it, so I didn’t feel able to just pocket it – what if he thought it had fallen out of her pocket? With their limited English, I could hardly explain to them what had happened in any detail, and anyone who’s been to a party with me that ends in any form of parlour game will know that my skills at charades leave a lot to be desired. All I could do is place it on the table, and shrug, as if I didn’t know whose it might be.

He obviously was in no position to confirm or deny ownership of the coin, by the time it was on the table she wasn’t either. There it stayed, mocking me for the final hour and a half of the journey. All of us were far too polite to do or say anything about it. After he packed away ready for our landing north of the border, she spun the coin on its end, oblivious to the awkwardness that it had caused (if only in my own head).

She took it with her I believe, and it was a small sacrifice to pay for ensuring that my, and maybe every Englishman’s reputation of politeness, a lack of greed, and a friendly smile, would remain intact.

Travelodge - Sleep Tight

2010-08-09T17:50:00.002+01:00

Isn't there an L missing in the middle of that word? Seriously I’m worried about the ability to spell in our fine hotels.

Did I say fine hotels? I must have been thinking about another place. But then, what do you expect for £19 a night? Here’s what I didn't expect:

• To have to share a room with a Scotsman because half our booking had been lost.
• Identity theft (This was a while ago, but never trust a hotel that uses one of those carbon copy whoosh-whoosh machines in the 21st century)
• The lack of a bathmat or a second towel, there were 2 of us in a double room ffs.
• A rather funky smell (that’s funk as in Michael Jackson’s “funk of 40,000 years”, not as in Wild Cherry’s “play that funky music”).
• An additional £10 to park (at least I got a view of the multi-storey from my window; I could check the hubcaps were still attached hourly).
• The fact that my foot went through a massive tear in the sheet, but it was too late/I was too tired to whinge.
• Did I mention the smell?

I was going to write something really witty about the “sleep tight” slogan, as it is probably the cleverest thing I’ve ever heard. But I can’t do better than your own intellegance, so think about it for 3 seconds. It’s great.

Marathon day.

2010-04-25T14:13:00.000+01:00

My regular reader will know that I’ve been training for the London Marathon this year, (although not wanting this to become a running blog I’ve not done many posts on it recently) but you’ll have spotted on the twitter feed to the right that I’ve spent the morning not running the London Marathon. A couple of runs ago I had some pain in my knee, and then it got worse, and I had some physio and it got a lot better, but still not right at all, so I decided to hand in my number and I’ll do it next year.

Although I’m sure I would have got round, had I dosed myself up with painkillers, and gritted my teeth, I feel I have nothing to prove by running marathon number 6. I had one goal this time, and that was to break through the 4 hour barrier (the right side of 4 hours that is) and I was pretty confident that this was not going to happen today. Another years training, and no injuries in 2011 and I’ll do it easily.

Harder though was deciding not to go and watch – the wife was running, and I got up early to give her a lift to kennington (after suffering the so called “rail replacement” bus which did nothing of the sort yesterday I didn’t want her to have to struggle just to get to the start), but we agreed that I could stay at home and get the washing up done, and have another go at the pitifully easy unless you are me third level of Tom Clancy’s HAWX. (I get great value out of computer games, by virtue of being absolutely awful at them).

Imagine wanting to do something, finding you can’t, and then going to see 30,000 other people doing it. Even if a dozen of them are friends and one you love more than anything else in the world – I just didn’t fancy it. So I stayed in, put my feet up, caught up on a load of telly and wrote this.

Anyway – I’m off to mow the lawn. I’ve had a text off the wife – she knocked a couple of minutes off her PB, which is awesome, and means she can do London for the next two years.

I was lucky enough...

2010-01-31T19:14:00.000Z

A few years ago, I happened to become a passing acquaintance of a local celebrity. She was the newsreader for BBC Wales and she went to my circuit class. I lovely friendly girl, it was some weeks before I realised who she was (she had her hair down on the TV, when she let me know what was happening for 10 minutes every morning, and up in the gym, which had as much of an effect as batman putting on his mask. It took someone else pointing it out to me for me to get it.

We were talking about music (slagging off the choice of music we trained to) and I mentioned some of my favourite bands at the time, and she used the phrase “I was lucky enough to interview Daft Punk a while ago” by way of an interesting and relevant anecdote about interviewing a pair of French guys who spent the majority of their careers dressed as robots and never got out of character.

What she meant by this, was “because of my doing a job which means I get to do things that other people might be jealous of, and I recognise this and deliberately suggest it was good fortune that enabled this event to happen, even though it is for more about talent and pushing yourself than pure luck” or something like that, but I appreciated the effort she made to put me more at ease.

I was tempted to use the same phrase when talking about my visit to the Ivy the other day, but it’s not really in the same league.

Although my wife and I are doing ok, and can afford to do certain things with a fair degree of expense and luxury associated with them. I’ve told you about other visits to some of London’s top restaurants, gigs, theatres and it is great to have this lifestyle, but it is only because we’ve worked hard, and been careful about how much we do (it’s not like we do this sort of thing every week) but if there is something we want to do, and we can get tickets or a reservation, we’re “lucky enough” to be able to do it.

The phrase may well be more apt in my ability to get a reservation which wasn’t in the middle of the night – I was lucky enough to be back at work soon enough after Christmas to get onto the website just as the booking opened for when we wanted to go. The second the restaurant opened – we were in, and we had to be out again within a couple of hours.

For the not unreasonable sum of £102, including service and cover charges, we ate a massive three course meal, (I couldn’t even finish my main course) and drank a bottle of fine English wine, (the advantage of ordering the English wine was that it looked like we were ordering it because it was the English wine, but it was also one of the cheaper offerings on the list.) we were treated like the celebrities who may have been at the next table (the whole cast of Eastenders and the top 40 might have been there and I wouldn’t have recognised them) and everything was the perfect example of its genre – the best soup, the best curry, the best crème brulee, and the best doorman showing us the way to the theatre as we left, while also opening doors on the chauffer driven Bentley for some proper VIPs.

I can’t see the Ivy getting a Michelin star any time soon – too varied a menu, and not the sort of elegant meals you might expect (thing good size but exceptional quality pub food) but they certainly deserve their special mention in the guide, although from our experience, the reference to its appearance in Ricky Gervais’ “Extras” is unnecessary.

Then we went to see The Misanthrope – Keira Knightly’s new play. But that’s another story.

Will 3d get me back into the cinema?

2010-01-19T19:00:00.001Z

I’m not a very tolerant person. It doesn’t take much for me to get annoyed, although usually it is out of my control, and only for a short period of time. A few examples:

• French girl sitting behind us at the theatre, trying to translate The History Boys to her boyfriend whenever there wasn’t anyone actually talking at the time on stage.
• Polish girl sitting behind us at the theatre, whispering all the way through the first half of Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the theatre (they’d gone by the second half thank goodness)
• Two guys shouting at each other just in front of us at a concert at the Koko by The Go! Team. (This was a REALLY loud concert, but their piercing conversation cut through it like a car alarm in the next street).
• The girls in the cinema when we saw Let the Right One In, who had read the book and were comparing notes on what might be about to happen.
• A car alarm in the next street.
• The woman attempting to sing along to Belle and Sebastian really badly in Bath.
• The LG mobile phone belonging to a guy in the next team over in my office playing the first 3 notes of the theme to The Goodies exactly every 2 minutes to tell him he has a text message. Just one text message, but it needs to remind him about the fact every 2 minutes until he returns, the battery goes flat, or I remove the battery, as one time I had to open the message and it was something I really shouldn’t have seen (nothing filthy, just something work related I shouldn’t have known about). I had a quiet word, and he’s been a lot better about taking it with him when he goes to meetings now, as he is a nice person, and on discovering that I was sensitive to this particular noise, he agreed to consider my feelings and make my life more pleasant.
• Playing a game against someone who assumes you are as aware of the rules as they are, or even worse, against someone who’s played it so often they tell you to “put that question back and ask the next one – I know the answer to that one”.
• The blackberry belonging to a senior manager in my team, which make a submarine style sonar “ping” every time he receives an email. I’ve twice asked him politely to put it on vibrate, or change the setting so it doesn’t tell him in audible form what he should already know by seeing the email appear on his computer screen. Despite me telling him that this is the equivalent of someone scraping their fingers down a blackboard, he tells me that he doesn’t want to have to change the profile every time he comes into the office, so I am now threatening to raise a formal grievance against him, as he is deliberately causing me stress by his refusal to amend his behaviour. I’ll keep you updated on my progress... (I have nothing to lose here – he’s not my manager, and I’ve already exhausted his decent DVD collection – as the last one he lent me was so unpleasant I had to stop watching after about 10 minutes)
• The slightly translucent/light patch of the screen of one of the screens at the Clapham Picture house.
• And finally (in this list – I could go on all week) the 12 year old kid sitting in front of me in the crowded cinema in Brixton, watching Avatar.

In a sold out cinema, there is no escape, and the only thing worse than sitting behind a kid who was so enthralled by the wondrous visuals provided through his 3d specs that he had to talk to his mother, all the way through the film, would be sitting in front of them. Over two and a half hours this continued, and the worst thing was, that after some polite shushing from me, and some dirty looks from some of the others around us, I actually got mum’s attention and asked “can you not talk please, it’s really annoying” and mum’s attitude was that talking at the cinema was not only quite acceptable behaviour, but that I was a terrible person for not remembering what it was like to be 12 and going to the cinema and being excited about it. So I stabbed them both. (I didn’t – recent comments have made me realise that you aren’t allowed to make jokes of this nature on the internet. Poor Giles Coren.)

Terminator 4, Harry Potter 6, Transformers 2 – all would have looked good and sounded great in the cinema, but I quite happily waited till they came out on DVD, because my recent experience at the cinema has been so poor. In my house no-one kicks the seat, eats smelly/noisy food (whoever decided nachos were an appropriate cinema food should be forced to swim through them) or whispers in a way that they think is so quiet I won’t notice, but actually it means the person they are whispering to has to whisper “pardon” so they have to whisper the whole thing again, very slightly louder. It is probably worth noting that the picture quality, thanks to Blu Ray and the whizzy things modern televisions do to prevent motion strobing, which a cinema screen can’t do, is actually far more satisfactory in my lounge than in any cinema.

If the movie industry insists in keeping film watching a social experience (it isn’t – for the reasons I’ve already discussed) for the first 3 months of a film’s release, then I’ll wait, unless I’m really desperate. Seeing a film in 3d might make me more likely to want to see it at the cinema, although I won’t go out of my way for it on a normal film. Avatar looked good, but using 3d as a reason to get bums on seats makes me think it wouldn’t have managed to do so without the 3d. It’s a good film, don’t get me wrong, but with hindsight I’d have happily waited for the 2d DVD.

TV didn’t kill radio.
Talkies killed silent movies.
Colour mostly killed black and white
3d won’t kill 2d. Computer generated artificial depth and falling ash that you think you could reach out and touch, is no match for great storytelling and artistic cinematography.

The blue chick was pretty cute though.

Leaving FaceBook

2010-01-15T19:31:00.001Z

I've left FaceBook. Yay! As the mighty Lily Allen said in her last tweet, "I am a neo-luddite, goodbye".

My profile will be active for 2 more weeks, and assuming I don't pop back in again, it will be deleted at the end of the month.

I realised FaceBook was not doing me any good for a number of reasons; here I intend to explain some of them.

1 - I was spending too much time there. I was certainly making too many comments on other people’s comments and updates. I did cut back when I looked at the screen of one friend who’s timeline was riddled with my ugly mug and my inane commentary of my life, but I was certainly a heavy user.

2 – I was getting friendly with people I had no business getting friendly with. Vague acquaintances with whom I was “FaceBook friends” ended up being disproportionately interesting to me. The photos of the children of people I used to occasionally see while nightclubbing became the highlight of my visits.

3 – I resented people who aren’t on FaceBook. A far closer friend who was on FaceBook, but didn’t update, I would get very annoyed with, as I wish I could have been as “involved” with them as I was with the people mentioned in “2”. This is no way to continue a friendship.

4 – I lost a large element of conversation with real life friends who were also on FaceBook. I’d not tell people what I’d been up to for fear of telling them things they already knew, or I’d reference things they’d mentioned that I had no business knowing otherwise and look like a total stalker.

5 – I lost track of who my friends actually were.

I also had concerns over privacy, got annoyed with some people for over contributing, and others for not contributing at all, and many for offering to throw sheep at me, so I thought I’d disappear and not worry about these things any more.

I’m considering my twitter future too, but I enjoy the wonderfully selfish way that works – far less about friends, more about followers. If you don’t like what I say, don’t follow me. I think there are about 6 people who enjoy my 140 character rubbish, and as long as they continue to do so, I’ll keep on going.

If you were my FaceBook friend, give me a call, or drop me an email. I’m not that hard to find, and if you were really interested, you might see me down the pub, or invite me and the wife to tea.

women, run raster!

2009-10-20T20:04:00.000+01:00

I’ve only twice ever beaten my wife in races, and both times, she was really unwell, so they don’t count. In every other event we’ve run together, I’ve usually seen her getting further and further away, until she is a little black and white speck in the distance.

In the latest of these – the Cabbage Patch 10, a pleasant 10miler up and down the Thames – I had a bit of time to think about it. Why am I slower than my wife? She’s got shorter legs, less muscle and she’s a girl, and girls have always been slower than boys by about 10%. I have no excuse.

Or do I? In one hour and 26 minutes, I had a lot of time to think about why our ladies aren’t regularly beating our men, and I don’t get it.

Girls are smaller than boys, so therefore have less to carry round the distance. Remember all the tiny (by height) weightlifters at the Olympics? Its all about power to weight ratios there, and the same should be true with running. I’m slower than her because despite my best efforts I weigh over 12 stone, and she weighs less than 9. If I was 25% lighter, it would be 25% easier to run.

Girls, by virtue of being smaller, are also more aerodynamic. My broad man’s shoulders, wide, lovehandled midriff, massive thighs and big spiky hair, can surely be only causing enormous wind resistance, not to mention my ears, which despite the best efforts of Chepstow’s finest plastic surgeons, are still far from flush against my head. You know how a formula one racing car is all pointed at the front – Girls come with two ready made pointed bits at the front, specially designed to help them cut through the air.

Evolution will have also enabled girls to become natural runners, as they will have spent their entire lives running away from men, as if they were caught, the natural brute strength of the man would win through, (don’t hate me for thinking of this, we’re talking cave men here) so in the last million years, surely women should have evolved a natural speedy defence against (sexual) predators.

Men also have an enormous natural disadvantage, when it comes to running, two in fact, in the shape of testicles. Watching the world gymnastics championships, it would appear that the events have been adjusted to protect the testicles of the men involved, and this has become another reason that man and women aren’t able to compete on a level playing field. I say allow the men to compete against the women on the beam, and penalise them (hurrah – appropriate use of the word penalise!) if they don’t do the landing on their butts and swinging the legs behind and moving to a handstand. If they do, and they can do the rest of the bouncing around as well as the girls, give a guy the beam gold medal – he’ll deserve it. Having a pair of balls swinging around, getting in the way of the legs, which are after all the most important aspect of the running equipment. What do the girls get in that area? Nothing but a little natural lubrication.

Add to this small feet (less blisters), long hair (better removal of sweat from the face), less leg hair (wind resistance again) and I’m amazed I’m not getting beaten by all the girls in the race, not just most of them.

So, to conclude, I’m going to race against the men from now on. I have no excuse for the fat guy I saw enjoying a cigarette at the end of the Thanet 20, while I’d still not got to the 19 mile mark.

Original Flavour

2009-10-18T15:43:00.001+01:00

I was sent to the shops to buy some toothpaste, but what to buy. I was looking for something minty I guess, but I found something more unusual.

Toothpaste in “original” flavour. What retro wonder is this – was there something in it when the Victorians first started using soot to clean their teeth? Then I thought, no – people were cleaning their teeth long before black fingers... Maybe original flavour is referring to the original flavour – what was the very first flavour to be tasted? I couldn’t imagine toothpaste coming in Mammoth flavour, or “gathered berries” flavour. Maybe mother’s milk flavour? (Doesn’t bear thinking about...)

Then I sussed it – the only other time I have seen original flavour before – Doritos. No-one wants toothpaste to taste of a mildly spicy and salty corn snack, so I moved on.

Regular flavour? Great regular flavour?

I guess no-one wants their toothpaste flavour to become more or less intense as the tooth cleaning experience goes on. Therefore, in order to eliminate irregular flavour syndrome (think a poorly stirred curry paste, or a sudden mouth based explosion as you accidentally crush a cardamom pod – neither are what you want while brushing your teeth) so for this particular brand, regular flavour is what they sold it on. Still didn’t give me any ideas on what it might actually taste of, so I opened the box, pulled off the lid, removed the teensy bit of tin foil (imagine how nasty that would be if you brushed your teeth with a mini foil grenade waiting to electrify your fillings?) and tasted some.

It was kind of minty, which I liked, so I bought the one next to it that someone hadn’t already been tasting...

Brands and Bling part two - doing it properly

2009-09-14T19:27:00.001+01:00

another one from cheekbone magazine.

It doesn’t look like I’m going to be turning pro any time soon – I’m pretty sure I came in second place in the “vitamin water” competition! (out of 7, and I used the Burberry frock picture, which can’t have helped, the eventual winner was very good (but already known to the water people) and had amazing legs.) there were very strange things going on with the voting (at one point 3 entries were virtually tied on 1987, 1986 and 1985 votes, and then after I’d totally given up to them, they whipped all their dubious votes away, and I was back in second place, but had no time to re-ignite my campaign) and I’ve let them know I ain’t happy, but ho-hum, they might send me some posh squash.

I spent a proportion of my last blog entry slagging off designer labels (which may also have not gone in my favour), or – more specifically, slagging off the way certain sections of society wear certain brands of clothes, and the way those brands overdo it, because they realise the brand is the important aspect – not the actual item of clothing.

Since then, I’ve been shopping, and I’ve bought the most expensive pair of jeans I’ve ever bought. In fact – at face value, (and we’ll come to the question of value over cost later) I’m now kind of having a go at being exactly the sort of person that I was so rude about the other day. I could go into scientific reasons why I’m experimenting with this, trying to learn something from my previous ravings, but it would be lies. I love these jeans.

I’d been after a pair of black jeans for ages, since moving to blue about 5 years ago from only doing black for a long time as I was allowed to wear black jeans and not blue when I was in the sixth form at school. Doing my usual scouring of TKMaxx (where I got my nice blue French Connection jeans for about £25) and having spent £60 each (full price) for my current “best” jeans (Duck and Cover and SuperDry) I’d drawn a complete blank on any black ones. Diesel came close with some nice grey ones, but they never quite fit, and certainly the ones in TKMaxx were never in my size. I had some old Cyberdog ones too, but they’d faded badly and I’ve lost so much weight since then you could have fit the wife in there too.

As I may well not have a job in a few days (another story) I decided to spend spend spend in case I couldn’t justify spending any more being one of Brown’s 9million, or whatever the final second great depression figure comes to. If I’m going to be in the dole queue, I might as well look awesome while queuing.

Justifying the expense by going out to by a £350 coat (Hugo Boss) but discovering it wasn’t as nice as it looked in the picture, I glanced at the shiny (they weren’t actually shiny, that would have been nasty) piles of jeans at the Armani concession in Selfridges, and went for it.

Being in Selfridges at about 5pm, wearing my best (Tommy Hilfiger – another TKMaxx bargain) suit and being as beautiful as I think I am (confidence is a great substitute for being genuinely good looking – ask David Tennant) left me getting knowing nods, and the occasional “good afternoon sir” from the polite and probably quite bored staff. The other great thing about trying on clothes in the Armani bit is you get to use their secret changing rooms. Where Hugo Boss have a velvet rope you have to ask permission to cross, at Armani they have secret doors behind the full length mirrors. I felt proper special.

Being able to fit in a pair of designer jeans was good enough, (I’ve gone from a 38” to a 33” waste with all the marathons) and being able to afford them was the clincher. £135 later and I’m getting even more respect from the staff, as not only do I look awesome, but I look rich enough to buy something substantial enough to warrant the enormous yellow bag I was presented with.

I then proceeded to abuse Debenhams one day sale (which I think is into its third month, although that might just be how often I go to Debenhams) for a couple of t shirts and a semi formal shirt, and completed a busy week for the bank card with a few more TKMaxx bargains on Saturday (Bench hoodie, a couple of loud ties, a work shirt, and a stunning Calvin Klein jacket – all heavily reduced – not least the jacket – from £325 to £69.99 – superb).

Based on how often I buy casual clothes (I’ve been more excited about suits and ties for a few years, give or take a healthy smattering of football shirts – I really should lay off the chavs!) I think I can justify this particular £250 splurge.

As for the jeans themselves – they are, as I said, more beautiful than a baby’s first smile and an autumn sunset put together, and I feel pretty amazing when I wear them. The branding is subtle (all in black, with a matt black whatever their logo is on the butt pocket (which is also going to make sure I don’t sit on the leather sofa in them at home as there’d be an Armani shaped dent in addition to my usual groove, and no-one wants that.

So yes – as well as the fact that I love them for being a really nice pair of jeans, I also love them for being a really nice pair of Armani jeans. Don’t judge me.

At least I didn’t go to Armani Exchange – the shop for people who want to wear Armani, but can’t quite afford to.

Cheekbone Magazine - Brands and Bling - overdoing it

2009-08-18T19:40:00.002+01:00

This blog - first published at cheekbone magazine
http://bit.ly/cheekbone

In 4000BC, Tutankhamen died, and contrary to the “Two Ronnies” sketch (two old men watch a funeral procession with about 8 limousines, and one asks “how much do you think he left?” and the other says “all of it – you have to”) he took a large proportion of it with him. In 4000BC gold was wealth, so to show your wealth you wore your gold.

Wind forwards by 6000 years, and has anything changed? The idea of the status symbol is still with us, and we choose different ones to show (or enjoy) our wealth. A big house. A nice car. A massive TV. All very well, but if you are walking down the street (and not therefore in the car/house at the time) how do you show your riches to the people you meet?

Big question – why would you want to? How others perceive us is an important aspect of our self worth. It is only human nature to want to be as good as we can be, and there are only so many ways we can do that.

When I had my first tattoo done, my mum didn’t speak to me for a week. Never mind any other aspects of my life (I’d passed my degree, got a job (it was a terrible job) and was generally happy) but a small, easily hidden logo on my shoulder for some reason made me a colossal disappointment. I’ve had two more since, and she actually likes the third, so hopefully she’s realised there are more important things in my life than the indelible scrawlings of a Welshman on my arms.

As you might have noticed from my tweets, and you’ll soon realise from this blog, I like to look my best, whenever possible and I don’t see why you shouldn’t too. It is only in the last 5 years that I’ve felt nature has given me the chance to do so (I grew up very spotty, I’ll tell you about the cosmetic surgery next time, and a lot of running has finally got my body looking passable – although the grey hairs might need sorting pretty soon) so what do we do?

We dress and we accessorise. It would be a very strange world if we all made like Adam and Eve, so we put on clothes, make up, product, shoes, and jewellery. With the right mix, we can look pretty awesome, but it doesn’t take much to overdo it and look terrible.

Think of the brands we associate with chav culture. Burberry, Von Dutch, Kappa, and to some extent, D&G, Calvin Klein, (depending on how they are worn) all have one thing in common. The brand is the first thing you see about them. Burberry’s ghastly beige check, Von Dutch’s Signature, Kappa’s reclining pair...

The reason people are wearing these brands, is so others can see they are wearing the brands. There are far nicer clothes out there, just as well made and just as expensive, which in this reporter’s opinion (not being someone that I imagine these people are trying to impress) would look so much better.

Vicky pollard is wearing that track suit because it shows that she can afford that track suit. Maybe this will impress people, but she isn’t exactly aiming particularly high. The same goes with “box fresh” shiny trainers – you keep them looking new, so people think you can afford a new pair of trainers every week.

Jewellery is another example - I’ve seen boys on the bus wearing earrings, which I would imagine are vying for the world record of “largest cubic zirconium”. What this might mean to his 14 year old mates, is that he can afford about 10 quid’s worth of earring, what is says to me is that he’d love to have a Beckhamesque diamond earring or two, I have a good feeling (based on the fact that he’s not being mugged, and most tellingly, he wouldn’t be riding on the bus if he could afford the real thing) that it’s the Zircon he’s gone for.

Next example, the Bluetooth headset. You don’t look cool – you don’t look popular as you need to be able to answer the phone to any of your 250 friends – you look like you have a lump of technology hanging off your ear. Are you are a paramedic? Are you on call to avoid nuclear meltdown? Are you Alison Lapper? You don’t need to be able to answer the phone that quickly. People seem to think that a Bluetooth headset shows status – what it shows is that you can afford to go down Carphone Warehouse and pay 15 quid for a Bluetooth headset. You look like an idiot.

Finally we come back to King Tut.

There seem to be a lot of people who choose to wear all their jewellery all the time. Looking like Mr T is only cool if you are Mr T. No one thinks you are a better person because you weigh yourself down with heavy metals

There are others who'll take it another step further and think that wearing heavy gold earrings is so important, they’ll destroy their ears in the process.

I’ve seen women re-piercing higher and higher as the original holes have extended so far the earring has eventually fallen all the way through. Not an attractive look.

So the message is simple – less is more. Keep it classy, and take this advice from my step mum – the classiest person I know:

On choosing a new car, she went for the Si (sporty model – but not the most expensive) over the Ghia. She could afford the top of the range, but looked at the badge, the chrome and the logo, and told the dealer “it’s a little vulgar”.

She was quite right.

Happiness in Magazines

2009-08-03T19:32:00.000+01:00

In a fortuitous bit of eBay bidding, I am now the proud owner of a magazine rack. I also owe a friend at work about 19 cups of tea. When you get the chance to buy a “designer” magazine rack for 99p, you take it, but then you have to pick it up from Sevenoaks, but – hey – Al lives there! I’ll drop him a grovelling email while he’s on holiday, and before I go on holiday, and forget a few pertinent facts (like how he might have a life, be on holiday for longer than I thought (he wasn’t but I didn’t check) live in a completely different part of Sevenoaks, (the magazine rack was actually in a village where Sevenoaks is the nearest town), and hopefully when I get back from holiday there it will be, all chrome and shiny and waiting for me.

The plan worked beautifully. It sat on my desk all morning, and drew a few comments, and I explained to the office that we have a problem with magazines. That sounds like I’m referring to magazines like the man who hangs around outside the tube station has a problem with cough medicine. This is actually as true as the original meaning I had when I wrote that sentence, that we have too many magazines for our (yeah right) minimalist lounge.

Lisa the hardcore runner, and me the casual runner and potential triathlete, means we have plenty of copies of Runners World, Running and Fitness, Triathlete’s World, Triathlon Plus, Triathlon 220, Cycling Plus, Lisa’s gardening fixation (in combination with my sister-in-law’s) means we have a pile of Gardeners Worlds, I enjoy Empire, and generally have a few months worth hanging around, as by the time we get round to watching a new film, it will be because it is out on DVD, Lisa was given an Okapi at London Zoo, so we have their magazines, and finally I subscribe to FHM.

It was the admission to buying FHM magazine (I know that would make “For Him Magazine magazine” – kind of like when people refer to their PIN number but I think FHM has moved on since when it launched, as pretty much the first proper magazine for us guys) that raised most eyebrows in the office. The question asked was “how old are you?” My reply was that “I’m 32 and I like Girls Aloud” which is both true, and a damning review of FHM magazine. Maybe a couple of years ago, but not anymore.

Back in the day, FHM was to men, what Cosmo was to girls. As likely to have a picture of a guy on the cover as a picture of a girl, the articles ranged from cookery, books, investigative journalism, and fashion. Yes – there would be photo shoots of the model or singer of the moment, but it was all part of the mix.

I probably started buying FHM a few years in, and I’d occasionally buy the competition – GQ (for richer men) esquire (for older and richer men) Loaded (for men who only bought magazines for the photo shoots) and then, a few years ago, a couple of weekly magazines came out – Zoo (from the makers of FHM) was originally a quarter of FHM (literally – the same stories, often the same photos) for a quarter of the price and Nuts (from the makers of Loaded I believe) was Loaded’s equivalent. Very quickly, both degenerated into a cacophony of girly photos and unpleasant pictures of people with skin missing (who wants to look at that?) with a TV guide and some out of date sports news thrown in. One stand up comic described them as “porn for men who are scared of vaginas”. They are both still around, and I guess they are doing ok. In London we have a couple of free pretenders – Shortlist (which I never pick up) and Sport (which I do if it doesn’t have cricketers on the cover), but I have no idea if they are making money yet.

FHM went a little down market for a while, moving further into the “Loaded” territory of page 3 type shots, celebration of laddishness (drunken stories, confessions from girls, verging on porno mag letters page faire and sex tips (and not a great deal else if I remember correctly). I’m guessing that it is this FHM that my work colleagues were referring to, and they would be right to mock my continuing devotion to such a publication.

Just over a year ago, FHM realised that its readership had grown up. Nuts and Zoo and Loaded were still bridging the gap between the adolescents realisation that girls aren’t smelly, and the ability to actually see real ones in the nude (or buy proper pictures of them from the top shelf – although they all have access to the internet, I’m sure there are some pictures of nudey girls there somewhere...) I think it started when one of their regular columnists left, and as his parting shot, he confessed to all the things he did on the expense account (including getting a Ukrainian prostitute to give him a receipt saying “taxi - $100” while researching Chernobyl) and FHM realised it should grow up too.

I’m just the kind of guy who grew up with FHM, through my university years, sharing the purchase with like minded 19 year old blokes, and can now afford my own (although I always share my used up copies with those less fortunate), and FHM have realised this, so they have grown up with me. I’m probably still a bit old for FHM, but then, I recently watched and enjoyed High School Musical 1 and 2 (three was bloody awful though), and – as previously stated I like Girls Aloud (good songs, great production, and yes – 5 pretty girls (even the ginger one)) and I like FHM’s interesting mix of serious articles, reader interaction, jokes, heroes, fashion, reviews, cookery (yes – they get a chef in each week), gadgets and yes – Pretty girls.

But no nipples.

National Lampoon’s Animal House

2009-07-18T14:12:00.003+01:00

First of all – the context. How much you enjoy a film, is largely to do with how you see it. When I first tried watching The Crow it was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and I watched it while tidying my room. I didn’t think much of it. One of the greatest modern film noir horror stories, was lost in my distraction and the situation. There are films to be focussed on, and films to be treated as Saturday matinees.

Also I am a 32 year old English guy, who has never seen Animal House.

Knowing my wife would never sit down and watch it, I snuck it in between other things – while she was in the shower, doing her bit of the cooking, or on her way home from work. In 4 instalments, I watched the film, alone, and generally in the early evening. I gave it my full attention, and was well aware that this is reckoned to be a comedy classic. Empire gave it 4 stars out of 5. “Arguably the most influential comedy of our time.” So my expectations were pretty high. IMDB users have given a score of 7.6 out of 10 and they aren’t generally far off.

For the 4 people who read my twitter feed (and the 62 people who think that I might buy their porn/dating/entertainment services if they follow me too) I put a few of my thoughts down for them as I watched. My first tweet was “12 minutes in. Not laughed once yet. Should I have?” I mention laughing – I mean internal laughter too. I hadn’t identified a joke, or a comedy situation by that point. Of course, I then identified that certain other things had been referencing this film – most notably an episode of Futurama called “robot house” when Bender enrols in Mars University. One of the robots spends the whole time in a little beanie hat, which now becomes funnier, as I have now seen the reference material (I laughed a lot after first seeing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as it made the Simpsons so much funnier.) Next tweet, after the Futurama reference, was “36 minutes, I sort of smirked”. I have no idea what I smirked at. Following this – “This film is so bad, I’ve stopped forward winding the adverts” (in my defence it was on at 3am on ITV4, so the ads were entirely pretty girls trying to get me to ring premium rate phone lines).

I suspect this was the first film to dare to show pretty girls with their tops off. However – the accessibility of boobs is now so easy, my standards are considerably higher. My tweet that the “topless pillow fight would have been better if they weren’t all wearing MASSIVE granny pants” made me realise that this is something that would have been cutting edge in 1978. I remember when “Y Tu Mama Tambien” was on in our local cinema, and some of the scrotey kids came in, knowing it would have some nudity – they went straight out again when they discovered the main reason for the 18 certificate was a pair of teenagers masturbating into a swimming pool. I guess they would have loved a topless pillow fight – granny pants or otherwise.

I went a little controversial on my next one. “Belushi. Only remembered as good because he died early? With him on the guitar smashing at parties though”. Everyone who has ever been jealous of the smarmy bloke who plays the guitar and has the girls cooing on his every note has wanted to do that. Otherwise, he is playing quite the most charmless and one dimensional character I’ve ever seen in cinema. Deeply unpleasant and unlikable. Anyone whose party trick is crushing a can on his own forehead gets no sympathy from me.

I was now a good half way through the film, and had not identified any plot. I found myself entirely sympathizing with the group of new kids – who have somehow made it to college (later I discover this is the only reason they aren’t being drafted to fight in the Vietnam war, which I can sympathise with, but if going to college is the only way you are going to avoid getting killed in a ludicrous conflict, then surely you’d do all you can to stay there), they are searching for acceptance, friendship and like minded people. Unfortunately for them, they apparently only have two choices – the posh, rich and intelligent kids, or the complete brain dead losers. There was apparently no third choice. The posh kids wouldn’t have them, and the losers couldn’t care less, so the join Delta House, (I still can’t work out where the name “Animal House” came from. I had always assumed it was the name of the fraternity, or at least a comedy misnomer, used in the film – I guess it was descriptive, but maybe it would be explained in the deleted scenes on the DVD?) who are already on “double secret probation” (what the hell is that – how are you supposed to know you are in trouble if you aren’t told about it – that’s like smacking the kid “when Dad gets home”. He won’t know what he’s being punished for!) After various illegal activities, underage drinking, underage sex, hints at date rape (we believe his conscience got the better of him) horse murder, in addition to academic infarctions, such as NOT GOING TO ANY CLASSES or having grade point averages of less than zero, they seem somewhat surprised and shocked when they are expelled.

I did identify a few attempts at humour in the process:
• The inability to open a bra strap has now become such a cliché – and I know it wasn’t a new joke when this film used it – that it is purely not funny.
• The moment when Belushi’s character puts pencils up his nose while in the Dean’s office might have been funny, if he’d removed them on replacement of the Dean’s glasses – although maybe the fact that I was expecting that to happen makes it funnier, although not that much funnier.
• Sex with 13 year old girls isn’t funny either.
• Blatant racism in having a bunch of white kids walk into a bar full of black people, and immediately get threatened with flick-knives, - is that funny because my preconceptions are that this really isn’t realistic behaviour?
The closest thing for me to an actual comedy moment, was when the house was being emptied and a cow was led down the front steps.

In protest at their expulsion, our (anti?)heroes decide to get their revenge, ruining the homecoming parade, an event that the good people of the town were very much enjoying, they assault, molest and pretty much attempted murder their way to notoriety, finishing off with driving their “death wagon” or some such into the platform holding the Dean and his wife. How am I supposed to have any sympathy for people who have no idea that they are in control of their own destinies, that they are guilty of all the charges against them, and completely deserved everything that happened to them? If there was any sense of injustice against Delta House, it might have been a different matter, but these idiots did themselves no favours at all.

31 years have not been kind to Animal House. I grew up with Alison Hannigan doing things with her flute in American pie. With Terrence and Philip singing about inappropriate relationships with their uncles in South Park the Movie. Having your trousers pissed on by a drunken lout (and accepting it) is gross, but not funny. Humour has moved on, and maybe going back in time to where it all started was never going to work for me.

Is it right to love something for what it was, or what you remember it for? Yes – totally. You can’t say 10 Million Years BC is rubbish because Jurassic Park looked so good. Maybe if it was 1978 and I was a bit drunk, at the cinema with my friends, and I’d not already seen Austin Powers, Superbad, or Clerks, maybe that would be the time and the place for me to enjoy Animal House, but I think for me – I’m never going to get it.

Next time - The Goonies - One 90 minute knob gag.

Michael Jackson's “Bad”.

2009-07-09T17:36:00.001+01:00

Like many others, I was saddened and surprised to hear of the untimely death of Michael Jackson. I was a fan. I had the albums, some of which had been purchased multiple times across various formats. I even bought “Invincible” (how ironic a title for what would become his final release) although I waited until it was £2.99 in the Tesco bargain bucket before buying, on account of being pretty sure it would be a big old pile of bilge (it was – I don’t think I even stuck with it till the end of the initial listen – it is there for completeness, although I don’t have all the Motown stuff - I’m more of an Epic fan myself).

I suspect I’ve mentioned before, that it is very hard to give an album purchased at the age of 32, when you have several hundred (it might be into the thousands by now) albums to choose from, any real love and attention. I love the Pet Shop Boys enough to buy their albums on the day they come out, in special edition form, even though I know they’ll be discounted soon enough, but I don’t think I’ve listened to the new one more than half a dozen times.

I have a theory on value for money in purchased material. Consider anything you buy (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) to be worth one pound per hour’s worth of entertainment. Therefore, if two of you watch a film twice (ever) it is worth £8. (2 hours x £1 x 2 people x 2 viewings). That copy of Invincible is worth about 75p, my Pet Shop Boys CD is worth about £8 already, as Lisa’s given it a couple of listens (we saw them live the other day, stunning show, and Lisa needed to research the new stuff). My copy of My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade” is probably worth £20 already (it is so good, I listen to it all the time and relive my angsty youth.)

My cassette of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” must be “worth” hundreds based on this scale. It’s 1987. An unusual looking guy in an amazing outfit has made a great album. I know it is – my friends (HannaH for one) have been going on about nothing but for months) and I want it. There is only one problem.

I’m 10.

My pocket money is about 50p a week, and I suspect I’m hopelessly addicted to Mojos. I don’t have a tape player. Or any tapes. Every so often we’ll go to Monmouth shopping, and I’ll pop into Woolworths, and covet the cassette of this album. It calls to me. I want it, but I can’t afford it.

January comes, and its my 11th birthday. Mum takes me to Monmouth. We have about half an hour before the shops close, and the January sales are still happening. I’ve asked for money for my birthday, with a view to adding up the (hopefully) £5 notes I’ll get from all my relatives, in order to be able to afford my dream. I believe I totalled £30.

First we go to Woolies – £5.49p later and I now own Michael Jackson’s Bad. Then it is time to find something to play it on. There is a midi system in the lounge, but a boy needs music on his own terms.

Off to Dixons (that’s what became Currys Digital in the 21st century kids), and we find just what we’re looking for. Radio and single cassette. £25. It’s probably a Matsui, the cheap as chips anybrand that only Dixons sell. After some (attempted?) negotiating with the staff, (the sale finished the day before, but they strangely left the sign up, I’m not sure if they agreed to the price or mum advanced me the next ten weeks worth of allowance) it was mine. 5.55pm, they shut up shop, and back to the car and home.

That cassette was my pride and joy. I listened to it so many times I learned the words by heart, then I looked up the words in the 2 feet of folded inlay card (downloads are killing inlay cards) and re-learned them correctly, then went back to what I’d worked out originally, as I couldn’t sing the actual words and make them sound like MJ did. (how is that “Come On” how?)

Of course then I started finding out about the man. The Oxygen tent. The chimp. The llama, the elephant man’s bones, the plastic surgery. None of that mattered. It was all about the music for me. I got blank tapes and recorded the albums of Off the Wall and Thriller (since purchased on CD – in case the copyright police are reading – home taping isn’t killing music, it is freeing it to a whole new (poor) audience, and we’ll buy it eventually).

Dangerous was the first CD I ever owned, and was held very highly in my affections. I never truly loved Off the Wall or Thriller like I love Bad and Dangerous, because I wasn’t there. (I remember staying up late to watch the Thriller video on channel 4, but mostly because it gave me proper nightmares. In my defence – I was only six.)

I never did understand hysterical fans. Those who would scream and cry at concerts, who’d queue all night for tickets and (now I know) wee into bottles all day to ensure their place at the front of a stadium concert. I’ve done my fair share of front row gigs (and I did queue all night at Wimbledon once) and it is pretty amazing getting that close to the action, and being able to reach out and touch your heroes. There was quite a tear in my eye when the Pet Shop Boys launched into “It’s a Sin” the other night. (IMHO the best pop song ever written – sorry MJ).

I registered for, but didn’t attempt to buy tickets for MJ’s comeback gigs. I would have loved to have seen a fully in-form Michael Jackson performing the hits and reminding the world why we loved him, why we ALL bought Thriller, and nearly all of us bought Bad. Somehow I knew it wasn’t meant to be. Every expected gig and personal appearance for the last 15 years has ended in disappointment, and I didn’t want my memory to be of that. I also didn’t expect the gigs to happen, but not for the reason they didn’t happen.

I’m not going to go too far into the negative aspects of the Michael Jackson story. I hope he was innocent, but anyone who lets kids who weren’t their own share their bed is more than a little odd, and I hope and believe in his mind anything that happened was completely innocent – but I agree with my big brother that someone really ought to have pointed out that this is not the done thing. People will make assumptions - there will be smoke. In many aspects of his life, no-one was able to tell him when to stop. From spending money to having sleepovers, I have a horrible feeling that if someone told him this wasn’t the best course of action, then he would have found someone who thought that it was.

As has been the case with many who have been taken before their time, the surprise seems to be mistaken for additional grief. I’m sad, but I’m not 36 hours of blanket news coverage sad.

I think the media are making sure MJ will be remembered as a Groundbreaking Genius, with one or two issues in his personal life. This is probably fair, as this is the only thing which is beyond reasonable doubt. People ask why he paid $20,000,000 to have a child abuse case dropped. If someone had reason to accuse me of such things (I don’t share my bed with anyone except my wife) and I could pay an equivalent percentage of my personal wealth, probably the price of a packet of crisps at the time to make those accusations go away, I think I would.

I listened to the first “side” of Bad on the tube today. I still love it.

I still can’t make the lyrics I’m hearing to “Speed Demon” make any sense at all.

That makes me love it all the more.

Iceland - All in One.

2009-06-03T21:54:00.006+01:00

Day 0

Got all the way to Heathrow (about an hour and a half on the tube with massive amounts of luggage) to be told by the nice lady at Icelandair that our tickets were for Sunday. Not for Saturday. Felt like a proper pair of chumps, then got back on the tube (about an hour and a half with massive amounts of luggage in mid-day heat) and went home. Lisa did some gardening, and I drank beer and watched the cup final. Result. (Unless you are an Everton fan - which I was for the day).

Day 1

Got all the way to Heathrow (about an hour and a half on the tube with massive amounts of luggage) and were very happy when the nice man at the check in desk accepted our passports, took massive amounts of luggage off us and allowed us into the depths of Terminal 1. Had enough time for a sandwich, the purchase of a duty free filter for my camera (circular polarizer) and ogling over a Ferrari (one of those you give us £100 and we won’t call you in a month to ask you where you want your Ferrari delivered things) and we got on a nice big plane to Iceland. A pleasant flight (Lisa watched all the tourism videos, I watched Moulin Rouge (I’d seen it before, but Mei was right – it is “a big camp mess”)) and we landed in Iceland.

We got the flight bus to the centre of Reykjavik, and then took a couple of proper busses to our hotel. When the nice people of Expedia tell you it is in central Reykjavik, check. Nice hotel – in an industrial estate, next to a shopping mall. (It was v cheap though). We didn’t do a great deal on the first night, other than discover that the shopping mall (and all its food outlets other than pizza hut) was pretty much closed – being Sunday night and all so we found a Chinese fast food type place called “Nings” which served both tofu and chicken, thus satiating both of our food based needs.

At about 22.30 we adjusted the curtains, as we realised the sun wasn’t really going to set, being early June and only a few degrees south of the arctic circle – it doesn’t seem to get dark here. Goodness knows how gloomy it gets in the winter.

Day 2

A lovely breakfast, (the hotel was mysteriously empty, but we’ll discover why later) and we walked out to the bus stop to get a bus into the town centre. As we’d discovered, the buses run very much on time, but not very often – and the 2 – our bus to the city, was expected at 41minutes past the hour. It didn’t come. And neither did the 24, the other bus that should have stopped there too. Something was up. We checked the timetable. Then we checked the guide book.

The Icelanders seem to celebrate Whitsun a week late (or more likely the British can’t cope with Whit Sunday falling in June and not May, so moved the bank holiday so it was still the last Monday in May) so we were waiting for a bus that doesn’t run in the mornings on bank holidays. So we decided to walk. In inappropriate footwear, we strolled about 6 miles round the beautiful waterfront of western Reykjavik, admiring ducks, geese, lapwings (we think), footballers (both young girl and fully grown men – I think it may have actually been the national team in training – they were in the gear, and very good, and they do play Holland at the weekend) and bulldozers.

Eventually we climbed a hill and got to the Pearl. A restaurant/observation deck overlooking the city to the North, and the domestic airport to the South, and offering such exciting choices as a very impressive (although we learned – artificial) geyser, a small Viking museum, and a very reasonably priced bottomless bowl of soup and all the bread rolls you can stuff in your cheeks. (That is quite a few). Stopping here to do our best hamster impressions, we did everything listed above except the Viking museum (I’ve seen the film) and then carried on our merry way.

Reykjavik is a very pretty city, and seems to be a delightful mix of Scandinavia and America. Huge American cars mix with little European ones, and Mexican restaurants sit alongside those serving nothing but fish. Being a public holiday, people were cruising the streets in their cars, kids were doing that thing that kids do when they aren’t very good at skateboarding, but they insist on practising in public, as if they either enjoy falling on their butts with a hundred people watching, or they believe that one day they will pull off the perfect bluntside 720 switch purely by accident, and at least someone will have seen them, and won’t beat them up for lying about their coincidental skateboarding prowess. It was baking hot in the sun (it must have been at least 15 degrees) and the queue for the ice creams was insurmountable. We decided not to attempt to surmount it, so had some cartons of strawberry squash from the supermarket instead.

We sat and watched more ducks, where the sport amongst the tiny children was not to feed them, but to throw bread into the water. The ducks were not interested in the slightest. (this was in “the pond”). Then we walked to the remnants of the Icelandic arts festival, where some caravans had been mutilated into mobile artworks (to good effect) and wandered back to the aforementioned Mexican restaurant.

The number 2 bus was running by the time we were done, so we took it back to the hotel.

This was all yesterday now. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about our fun day, when we left Reykjavik behind, and took a reasonably priced car to Iceland’s top tourist attraction.

Day 3

Another big breakfast (when that’s the pre-paid meal, you make the most of it) and the man arrived to take us to the car rental place. I’m always concerned when renting a car – the miser in me needs good value, the tall person in me needs a car big enough for me to drive without the need to stick my head out of the sunroof (think Dino out of the Flintstones – that’s me in a DeLorean, Ford Ka, Lamborghini Countach and (amusingly) a Ford Focus). 41€ seemed like pretty good value for a small car, and I was there when the (very useful) man at the hotel called to book the car, so he had me and my ludicrous height to use as reference, so I was in safe hands. When we got to the rental office, there was a Blue Chevrolet Lacetti out the front, and I was hoping it would be ours because a – it is big enough (we have quite a lot of luggage) and b – it is EXACTLY the same car used in Top Gear as their “reasonably priced car”, which they then give to celebrities to thrash around the racetrack (one memorable scene springs to mind when Lionel Richie was overtaken by his own front wheel, while sparks flew off the bottom of the car...) so I was very happy when I was told that yes – this would be our ride for a week.

Last time I hired a car, it was a Massive ford mustang, and the first thing we did was navigate our way down the Las Vegas strip with the roof down, which came in handy when kind Americans needed to point out to me that I was drifting between two lanes, and should really learn to drive. Fortunately as the only person driving a convertible with the top down on that cold Vegas morning, it was completely obvious that I was a tourist, so I had a readymade excuse and we all got out of the city in one piece (actually if we all got out of the city in one piece it would mean we all got stuck together and left the city all stuck together, and that would have been far from satisfactory and undoubtedly have added to the extra they charged me at the end of the rental period for not filling it completely with gas.)

This time of course, I was ready. I knew the sort of mistakes a foolhardy Brit would make driving on the right (I mean wrong) side of the road would make, so I gauged where the lines should be, and I got Lisa on “drifting” duty, and I realised that I was sitting on the left side of the car so everything is backwards, so I put the car into R (it’s an automatic, which means I don’t have a bruised left hand from attempting to change gear using the electric window controls, but I do have whiplash from putting my left foot on the clutch which isn’t there but the brake pedal is, and you stop really quickly when you press the brake like you’d usually press the clutch) and we pulled out and onto highway 1.

There is only one big road in Iceland. It is road number 1 and it goes all the way round. Unfortunately we needed to go to the south, so we took highway 41, which is also a road, but only has two lanes. This is fine, and it got us to the Blue Lagoon by about 11am (saving us 26€ in bus fares – another good reason for hiring a car) and in we went.

Iceland is blessed with a lot of geothermal activity. Yes this means that the middle part of it might as well contain dinosaurs, as no-one is allowed there without one of the 4x4s from Jurassic park and Pete Postlethwaite with an extraordinarily large gun as a guide except for about a week in the middle of July, when it is fair game and some towns are in grave danger of being washed away when the volcanoes hit the glaciers and all the ice melts, but it does mean they have a quality source of clean energy.

If you imagine all the hot water that is produced by sizewell B in Suffolk, and deciding to fill a quarry with that hot water, and then charging 20€ for people to swim in it, then you are a sick and twisted human being who ought to be stopped immediately, possibly by Daniel Craig, but that is what they did with Blue Lagoon, except with geothermal water. Yes it smells of eggs a bit, but the combination of creepy warmth, lots of salts, and the encouragement of the staff in smearing white goo all over your face while you float in the water makes it a pretty amazing place to be. We loved it, and may well go back for more next week. They had steam rooms and saunas and a waterfall which pummelled your back and neck in a quite exquisite way, and we even didn’t wait an hour between our very enjoyable lunch (sandwich and Skyr and coffee) and jumping back in the water. I’m not sure my splashing around with white goo on my face counts as triathlon training though.

We tore ourselves away from there, and were back in the car, pausing only to take some photos of the creepy surrounding area, then we decided to take a more direct route to the south east, towards our destination of Vik as the main road would take us pretty much back through Reykjavik, which would seem very like going back on ourselves and wasting time. Bad idea. You remember when I said about Iceland only having one decent road, and then the other road to the airport being a bit small? Every other road looks like I made it. Think a light scattering of stones, and you are pretty much there. Our “short cut” took us though about 30 miles of crawling along, fearing for the underside of our nice car, with only the occasional monster truck overtaking us making us feel in any way that if we broke down we’d not be sitting in the car feeding biscuits to the arctic foxes.

About 14 hours later (ok it was about 2 hours later) we’d enjoyed some nice views we might not have otherwise seen, but we were driving through Reykjavik, in fact – we were driving past our hotel of the previous night, and on our way to Vik.

Day 4

Remember when I mentioned the town that will be washed away when the volcano’s eruption melts the glacier and all the water comes down? Well – that is Vik. Apparently the 200 or so residents regularly practice running up the hill to the church, just to prove they can. I don’t know if there is a time involved – if they have a 5 minute warning between the mountain blowing its top and having to be in the graveyard, but the residents all looked pretty fit. Although one of the waitresses wasn’t as svelte as she might have been, she might have moved in recently, and I’m sure they give new residents a grace period by which they must be at the required fitness level. Obviously the tourists can swim for it – we didn’t have any drills while we were there, although on climbing the hill (we weren’t racing – so I didn’t time us) I was very tempted to start clanging away on the church bell (I have no idea if this is the signal – it would be a bit mad to have the signal at the top of the hill – you’d lose the first 5 minutes waiting for the fittest person in the village to get to the church to ring the bell to let everyone else know they should have run to the top of the hill 5 minutes ago. Maybe I’m thinking about this too much.

The first thing we noticed as we drove towards Vik was a nice line in rocks at one end of the cliff – legend has it that three trolls were pulling their boat in to shore one morning, and were caught by the rising sun, turning them to stone. I like legends like that. Apparently 25% of Icelandic people believe in trolls. (I have a feeling they might have said that mostly because it makes them seem a bit mad, and kind of cool, or they might have misunderstood and thought they were being asked if those horrible little plastic people with the crazy hair existed, which they obviously do).

We were certainly glad of our decision to hire a car, rather than use our original option of the bus. Not only is it giving us the freedom to drive ourselves around, but the hotel in Vik is about 3 miles to the east of the town, so we would have been pretty fed up either staying there for 2 days, or walking a 6 mile round trip every time we wanted to go anywhere interesting. Not that the hotel wasn’t interesting – more big breakfasts, cute waitresses who we annoyed by asking them to find food that wasn’t on the menu for Lisa (vegetarianism hasn’t made it as far as hotels on the south coast of Iceland – Reykjavik has a few veggie restaurants (what would I eat?) but the hotel in Vik had three choices, 2 meat, one fish, so Lisa had soup and a feta salad. I had a steak.) there were oystercatchers nesting in the lawn out the front – they had two very cute and fluffy baby oystercatchers with them, and they made pleasant squawking noises – and they had 4 hot tubs (which we didn’t partake in) so we wouldn’t have gone completely mad, but being able to drive to the village, and climb their hills, walk on their freaky volcanic black sand and visit their little church was certainly a bonus.

In the afternoon, after coming down from the aforementioned hill, we ate at a very sweet little cafe (we’d had coffee and a cake there in the morning) finding a huge veggie pizza, and a very good burger/fries combo on offer. This was about 3pm, so we were back to the hotel by 5, and we did a marathon of “lost” and had a fairly early night! (that was also when I wrote to you about the blue lagoon).

Day 5

Checked out and on the road – a pretty short hop to glacier country. Further to the east, the roads became quieter, (I was driving pretty conservatively at about 80kph, the limit being 90, and in about 100km we were overtaken by 3 cars and a lorry.) I don’t believe there is an Icelandic word for traffic, but if there is, I doubt it is used very often.

A glacier is basically a very very slow avalanche. You’d have to be very foolish to get caught by one by surprise. The ones where we stayed were actually going backwards at the time (partly as it is summer now, and also due to climate change (man made or otherwise). It is very odd to see what looks like a pair of enormous ice creams, melting their way down the side of a pair of mountains.

Our “glacier view” room was a little disappointing (how often would you have to look out of the window at the mountain to get an extra £20s worth of value out of a view, even if you could see it through the clouds, which enshrouded the room for about 90% of the time,) but the walks around the nearby waterfalls and the view over the glacier were all quite superb, so we were very happy overall.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about walking on the ice, and some other things (mostly involving ice).

Day 6
In an attempt to get us up early in the morning, we’d booked an ice walk, starting at 10am. Stuffing ourselves silly with the best breakfast yet (this one had donuts and chocolate chip cookies) we put on all our clothes, and off we went.

Step 1 – put on crampons. Remember roller skates in the 1970s? I don’t, but we still had some hanging around in the 80s when I was a lad. These were similar, clamp them over your own shoes, and tighten the straps, but instead of creaky wheels with rusted bearings, we have metal spikes sticking out in all directions.

Step 2 – take off crampons and get in minibus (no-one wants a minibus with a messed up floor) and a short drive down some hideous un-driveable dirt tracks.

Step 3 – off the bus, and a short walk to the start of the ice. Then on with the crampons and our guide distributed ice axes all round (nice). At this point we were walking on what seemed like a dirty gritty beach like thing, but you didn’t have to dig far to discover the ice wasn’t too deep under our feet.

Just a few steps further and we were on the glacier proper. Starting off pretty filthy – left over ash from quite a few volcanic eruptions (as the snow falls, the ash forms layers through the glacier, as it melts, the ash forms a nice black crust on top) – we learned the basics of crampon walking, and how to hold an ice axe without swinging it into the face of the person walking behind, and we started tramping around the glacier.

When ice is that old, and that compact, it takes on a very different form to what I regularly use the bread knife to scrape out of the freezer. The tour was called the “Blue Ice Discovery” package and every crevice and occasionally just on a cleaner bit under our feet, displayed this weird effect – totally solid, brilliantly transparent, shockingly blue crystalline rocks of ice.

Although our tour was a very sedate one, our guide did demonstrate one of the more freaky aspects of the glacier. Every so often there would be a sink hole – a place where a natural fault in the ice had opened to create a hole where the melting water would pour through. Break off a chunk of ice, and chuck it down there, and it kept on rattling until you didn’t hear it due to it being too far away, not because it had got to the bottom. I remembered him packing a rope in his rucksack – I’m not too sure how useful it would have been had one of us fallen. We didn’t get close enough to find out!

Lunch at their cafe, and then we were still feeling energetic to try the third of the available walks around the hills and waterfalls that surround the glacier. This one was a little more heavy going than the stroll around the base of the hills the day before – this time it was up and over the hill overlooking the glacier, with spectacular panoramas of the glacier itself, the mountain where it all started (the highest in Iceland – next time we’ll be doing the 10-15 hour guided climb up to the top) and the flat, river filled plains where all that water meanders down towards the sea. Another waterfall on our way back, and we felt we deserved our dinner. (which had mysteriously transformed from me having the most expensive roast lamb in the world (it was superb though) and Lisa having the soup, to the place suddenly having an extensive and varied bistro menu, with several veggie options, and a far more reasonable price tag too.

Day 7

Checking out of our hotel, the nice girl at reception gave us a discount for the lack of a view, and the fact we had to use a different room in order to obtain hot water for a shower, although it was still the most expensive place we stayed, and we were back in the car and onwards towards the most easterly point of our little journey.

At Jokul, the glacier ends in a lake of its own making, which is deep enough to allow the ice to break off and float down to the sea in massive blue icebergs. The enterprising Icelanders, realising they can’t charge just for standing by the side of the water (I’m sure the British would try if they could, but Iceland seems to suffer from all the best tourist attractions being natural wonders, which is probably why they need to charge a little (but not that much following the financial crisis!) more for certain things) have set up a tour using amphibious landing craft to drive the tourists into the lake and motor around the icebergs, hopefully spotting a seal on the way (we’d already seen one bobbing around in the water).

Out we went, all life jacketed up (there is nothing cuter than a 9 month old baby in a life jacket) and we chugged along (wheels still turning) keeping a safe distance from the ice (iceberg 101 – nine tenths of them are under the surface of the water) while a pair of inflatable dinghies buzzed round, spotting underwater problems, but also passing our guide a basketball sized chunk of iceberg which looked like one of the examples of a perfect (and freakishly large) quartz crystal you see in the geology section of a museum. You could look all the way through it, it weighed more than it seemed like it should, and when she broke off chunks for tasting, - well – it would have cooled your drink and lasted a lot longer than what my freezer produces. Very strange.

We didn’t see any more seals, but I took about a thousand photos of icebergs (I’ll try and edit them down to something a little more manageable for showing you all)

In the evening we checked into our room (the cheapest, and also the nicest of the trip) ate an early dinner (they found a veggie special for Lisa, while I had a FANTASTIC arctic char (trout to you and me) with a citrus crust – honestly – it was some of the finest food I’ve ever had.

Day 8

I’m going to rattle through day 8, as we didn’t actually do a great deal. A drive back past our haunts of the last few days, and back to Kirkjubaejarklaustur – yes I did just copy and paste the name from the hotel booking form. We did another epic walk round the town and over the hill, including bothering some sheep (they were standing on the major attraction of the town, a giants causewayesque effect of basalt columns tessellating perfectly to form the “cathedral floor” hidden in a field, climbing a cliff, enjoying the view, scrambling back down the other side of the hill, eating dinner at a former nunnery (served by two very surly young ladies, but fortunately cooked by some very talented young men) and back to the hotel, where we finished series 4 of lost, (the hotel boasted 7 TV channels, but 6 of them were not working. – so glad we brought the laptop with us!)

5 days in Reykjavik still to tell you about – I’ll try and get it all down this evening, but you might have to wait until we get home!

Day 9

Another early start, as if we wanted to cram it all in, we had some serious driving to do. Of course, when I say we, I mean I had some serious driving to do, while Lisa had some serious passengering, which involved some not so serious looking out of the window, some rather serious map reading, and some extremely serious telling Dave to drive on the right side of the road you freaking idiot – isn’t the fact that you are on the left of the car and that bus is on the wrong side of the road giving you enough of a hint.

Back past Vik and then a right turn towards Gullfoss and Geysir. These were two of the places we’d had recommended by friends who had been before, and we’d seen pictures from Gullfoss on Jill’s FaceBook so it had to be done. The down side was that to get there from Reykjavik would have been another day’s excursion, and a colossal bill (would have been cheaper to hire another car and drive ourselves) so we took the crazy detour down the less than satisfactory road and crawled our way there.

Gullfoss is magnificent – the best waterfall I’ve seen (and I’ve been to North Wales AND Niagara) with enormous cascades going down big drops and rocky bits and wide bits and producing enormous clouds of mist and pretty much being spectacular and amazing. We’ll be home soon, and I’ll get some photos uploaded. (my) Words can’t describe it. Or if you are really lucky, we’ll come and visit and bring the laptop. You have a week to spare don’t you? Only a few miles up the road was Geysir. Although the original one after which all the others were named is broken (people chucked too many rocks into it) it had a little brother which goes mental about every 10 minutes, sending a plume of boiling water about 30 feet into the air. Shame the whole place smelled of rotten eggs though, but you can’t have everything.

Having only spent about an hour at Gullfoss/Geysir (thus further justifying the decision not to do a separate excursion) we got back to the car hire place in time to drop it off, and get a lift to central Reykjavik, where our apartment was waiting for us. We have a little kitchen, a massive bed and a 32inch LCD TV with DVD, so there will be no excuse for boredom! We went out and ate at our favourite Mexican restaurant (I had fish and chips, Lisa has quesadillas)

Day 10

The whale watching tours can’t guarantee you’ll see anything, but they offer another trip for nothing if you don’t see anything. Therefore – we needed to go early enough in the trip to ensure we’d be able to take them up on this offer. Maybe they have enough people on weekends and day trips it becomes an empty gesture?

We turned up in time for the one o'clock sailing, paid in Kroner (so much cheaper than paying in Euros!) and enjoyed their small but entertaining and informative museum (in the hold of an older ship, which was the holding area and visitor centre – good use of space) until they allowed us onto our boat for the day – a solid ship – probably big enough for about 200 visitors – although I reckon we had 100 on our voyage – which was probably about right, as we all crowded to the front of the outside deck as soon as we got to the feeding ground.

Still within sight of Reykjavik, the guide gave us a quick setting of expectations – allegedly it took them over an hour to see a single whale (enough to satisfy the money back guarantee) – so obviously anything better than that would be a success. Introducing Lisa to the “clock” system of knowing which way to look (obviously – being a chap, I was well used to identifying which direction to look, based on the numbers of the clock) the cry of “12 o'clock” went up and as we looked – there, not quite on the horizon, was a whale doing the “breaching” thing – leaping out of the water (although disappointingly not roaring, (although I’m well aware that the shark in “Jaws 4 – The Revenge”, was a shark, and a fake shark at that and therefore not a whale and definitely a load of old bollocks))

We got closer in, and saw a number of minke whales, just bobbing up to breathe in front of us (and when the wind was in the right direction – we smelled them, which was not fun – they were extremely stinky whales), a few of us (including me, but not Lisa,) saw a pair of porpoises jumping (at one o'clock) out of the water and disappear – not to be seen again) and then, disappointingly without a cry of “thar she blows!” we saw a huge spout going up on the horizon – a humpback whale, which also seemed to breach, and we could see it was massive. The captain put his foot down and with just the sort of lurches that make me rather unwell (I’m fine on little boats, but this one was making me pretty queasy) we headed off at full speed to attempt to catch the humpback. Whenever we saw the spout again, it wasn’t any closer, so off we went again, at full speed. We never did catch up, which was probably for the best, as I have a feeling he was trying to draw us into some sort of whaley ambush, and we’d have been beaten with their tails, scraped across their barnacled bellies, and speared by the narwhals tusks. Instead we ran out of time, and had to head back to the harbour – taking a slight detour to the island of Lundy (Icelandic for Puffin) where, with the aid of binoculars, we saw many puffins doing their thing. In a very cute way.

One of the advantages of the hotel where we stayed was having a kitchen (which I might have mentioned before) so after four hours on the boat, and with half a flapjack and a snickers to feed me, we got some pasta, sauce and cheese, and made ourselves a huge portion each, then hid in the room for the evening, watching Withnail and I on DVD.

Day 11

Lisa pretty much took me to Iceland for the horse riding, so off we went. Icelandic horses are unusual for many reasons. They can never leave Iceland – if they do – they can’t ever come back. This is because they don’t have any horse diseases in Iceland – they’ve stayed quarantined, and a pure breed for a long time. As another result of this, they’ve developed their own weird and wonderful ways. Most horses have 4 speeds – Walk, Trot, Canter and Gallop – those who have read my early work will have heard about how I’ve cantered twice, the first time (in Australia) ended prematurely as Ben was a lazy old bastard, and the second time (in New Zealand) ended prematurely as Caruba was an obstinate bastard and threw me off.

Icelandic Horses have an extra speed – somewhere between the trot and the canter, there is a Tolt. One pair of legs is trotting, and the other is cantering, resulting in a smooth but medium fast motion. Lisa needed to give this a go, so off we went and gave it a go, Lisa doing a 3 hour ride, and me deciding not to chance it, and taking a 2 hour session. I can’t tell you much about Lisa’s other than the fact that her legs were heavily chafed, and she didn’t stop smiling for several days, but mine was great fun – only 6 of us including the instructor, and plenty of opportunity to trot and tolt (we knew we were tolting, as the incessant spanking of the saddle against my butt ceased for a few seconds (being at the back of the group, as soon as the front horse slowed down, so did mine – the instructor gave me her whip for the journey back, which certainly helped)). We also had time to look around and enjoy the scenery, which was more of the weird moss covered lava fields, and we gave the horses a short rest (after leading them to water) half way through.

The best bit was as we were heading home – with little warning the guide told us we’d have a go at galloping, and with a kick and a shout (and a touch of the whip for mine) we were stampeding up hills at full speed – hanging on for dear life and grinning from ear to ear. Lisa doubts that we actually galloped (she didn’t) and I maintain that the solid 1234, 1234 rhythm of the hooves was all I needed to know. Loved it.

In the evening we found the hotel’s communal hot tub empty, so we had a go, sitting in warm bubbles on a cold day, looking out over the city.

Day 12

We had a bit of a quieter day - legs still aching following the riding, so we stretched them with a day wandering around the town – we visited the cathedral – a bizarrely beautiful concrete beast, unfortunately swathed in scaffolding and tarpaulin at the moment, it erupts from the pavement like an organic space shuttle, very beautiful, with the most magnificent organ we’d ever seen. A font carved from about a tonne of crystal, and a gravity defying pulpit finished the place off fantastically. We took the lift up the tower, and looked out (through the scaffolding) on 270degrees of Reykjavik.

All done there, we popped to the bus station (exciting) and upgraded our tickets back to the airport to enable us to detour to the Blue Lagoon, then wandered back and stopped off for a drink at Damon Albarn’s Bar – He bought it, possibly while drunk, at the height of the Britpop years, and it is rather cute (if a little full of people with iMacs and pretention) and the wine was reasonable and cold.

In the evening we cooked more pasta, and watched the Da Vinci code on DVD. (Not as bad as we were expecting).

Day 13

Our last full day was spent visiting Vithy, a small and uninhabited (they tried, but gave up) island, a short and infrequent boat ride from Reykjavik. Obtaining a return ticket including a coffee and a waffle (for only about an extra pound) we first of all sat in the sun and enjoyed a coffee and a waffle (with jam and cream!), then walked pretty much all the way round the island, enjoying seabirds, hairy horses, pretty flowers, beautiful cliffs and rocks, a few ducklings, and a small shrine to the Virgin Mary. A very pleasant way to spend the day. Discovering (as we so often did on this holiday) that it was 4pm and we’d not eaten anything (other than a coffee and a waffle) since breakfast, we took the boat back, found a bus, and got off outside a pizza place Lisa had her eye on and stuffed ourselves silly.

Day 14

One of the advantages of having a major tourist attraction just by the airport is that instead of checking out of the hotel at 10am, then having nothing to do but carry enormous amounts of luggage around for 6 hours until your flight leaves, you can check out of your hotel, put your luggage straight on a bus, go to the Blue Lagoon, where they look after your luggage while you splash around, have saunas, wine, facials, and a waterfall massage, then you get your luggage, check it for drugs and bombs, get back on the coach, get driven the other 10 minutes to the airport, and get on the plane – relaxed, clean and smelling vaguely sulphurous. We were home by 10pm, and can’t wait to get back there.

Thanks for listening. – I’ll be back to whinging about my daily life before you know it.

EnvironMentalism – or – Shouldn’t the Netherlands be underwater by now?

2009-05-25T14:58:00.003+01:00

Shouldn't this be Holland by now?

Jeremy Clarkson wrote a recent article about how he recycles; amongst other more unClarksonesque character traits (slowing down for school zones, smiling at pensioners) even though he’s not sure about his reasons for doing so.

I’ve been trying to do my bit for a while. The easy things – recycling, driving a bit more carefully – getting the insulation sorted, and turning the thermostat down (and putting on a jumper when necessary) but most of this is for selfish reasons. It keeps the bills down, keeps me out of petrol stations, and stops me needing a bin that takes up the whole (pretty small) kitchen.

I’ve been doing some reading recently, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that humankind’s impact on the planet isn’t quite as devastating as was once claimed. Having a quick search on the internet – I found sites such as this, which are pretty heavy conspiracy theories about how governments and industry are making up the whole climate change “myth”. It seems that they believe the melting of the ice caps, depletion of the ozone layer and the overall increase in the global temperature are cyclical changes, which have been used as an excuse to increase taxes, control oil production, and generally have an excuse to change how we live our lives – increasing control and surveillance (microchips in wheelie bins anyone?)

There are a few pretty undeniable facts (unless you are a creationist – they’ll deny anything) which certainly add weight to their theories.

A few thousand years ago, there was an ice age. In fact I seem to remember (from books – I wasn’t there) that there were four of them. Mammoths and rhinoceroses were woolly (I can’t get my spell checker to make that word look correct. I want an h in there). In between each ice age it goes to figure that there was a warm bit. Maybe this is just one of those warm bits.

The thermometer was only invented pretty recently – certainly not while ice ages were happening. When they mention that it is the hottest day “since records began”, they mean – “recently” or “in the last few hundred years”, not “since man didn’t have to wear clothes as it was so freaking hot” or “since man had to find a decent tool with which to remove the wool from a mammoth cos it was a bit nippy out there”.

Melting the ice in my cocktail doesn’t give me a wet hand. Melting the North Pole won’t raise the sea level. However – melt the South Pole, or big chunks of Greenland, and you might be in trouble. Of course – if the temperature is hot enough to melt so much ice, it is probably going to be hot enough to evaporate some of that extra water – creating more clouds, and making it rain more, filling the rivers and the oceans and raising the sea level. Maybe. I don’t have a doctorate in enviroclimatology – can you tell?

We aren’t the only ones producing greenhouse gasses. Even Greenpeace admit (possibly the wrong word – they are stating facts as they understand them.) that natural sources of greenhouse gasses are causing a large proportion of the changes. Methane is twenty times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – and there are massive amounts of that under the oceans and generally locked away. Imagine if it all bubbled to the surface of its own accord. Then there would be trouble.

Here’s a theory – lets but combi boilers into the atmosphere – gathering the methane, and burning it into CO2 – hey presto – each methane molecule becomes a CO2 molecule and a bit of water, and that CO2 is far less of a greenhouse gas. (I have no idea how much oxygen would be needed in burning off all the atmospheric methane – possible more than we have to breathe. Please don’t take this idea seriously until you’ve done the appropriate calculations. It might end up like the environmental equivalent of the (awful) movie “vertical limit” which I’ll spoil for you now – it is apparently worth sending 20 mountaineers to their deaths just to save one relatively pretty (but also pretty inept) girl.)

Remember when we were first told about this impending catastrophe? It was about 1990, and the figures quoted were that fossil fuels would run out in the first 25 years of the 21^st century, that sea levels would rise significantly within 10 years, Holland, Norfolk, and large chunks of other low lying countries would sink – (of course – New Orleans did – but this would be due to a hurricane – not a gradual increase in sea levels – they were a bit mad to build a city below sea level anyway, and it did give the media an excuse to come up with a new phrase – climate chaos.)

It doesn’t help that with approximately 436 24 hour news channels, we now discover every detail of everything that happens everywhere. With more cameras than there are atoms in the universe (ok I made that up) we see all these horrific images of polar bears looking like the Glacier Mint advert – floating through the ocean on their own personal iceberg.

Every time a bit of ice falls into the sea – we know about it. Maybe this is because of the MTV generation. Who wants to watch a glacier form over 10,000 years, when you can watch one melt in 30 seconds? Which is exciting – which is more fun? Glaciers may well still be forming – the ice will refreeze, and the polar bears will find some more to sit on, and keep on eating the seals.

I don’t think there is 100% certainty that we’re making all the difference. Of course – I also can’t deny that we aren’t helping. Setting fire to large chunks of the world, and killing the aspects of it that would be helping produce the oxygen we breathe are undoubtedly really stupid things to do. So I’m going to keep on doing my bit.

Except for carrier bags. We're always being told about "fixed carbon" and "carbon capture" - what better way to fix carbon than to make carrier bags out of it, and leave them lying around my house. we should be stuffing our cavity walls with them, and insulating our lofts with them. Every extra carrier bag is another 0.000001 tonne of carbon fixed.

Recycling raw materials. Not filling holes in the ground with potentially useful stuff. Not burning fuel we don’t need to burn. Using power obtained in a more natural way. All these things make sense to anyone – whether you think we are to blame or we aren’t – these are easy things I’ll keep doing – they certainly won’t do anyone any harm.

And the world would be a better place with more polar bears. Unless you are seal.

The fickle world of Football

2009-05-13T21:40:00.003+01:00

I’m relatively new to the world of football fandom. I started really paying attention to West Ham about 10 years ago. I’d always known of a loose family tradition (loose in terms of my dad going when he was a kid and local, and when going to the football (and no doubt having a fish supper and paying for the bus home) would give you change from half a crown.

When growing up in Gloucester (where the locals seemed more interested in getting muddy, losing teeth, and allowing their friends to use their thighs to change the shape of their ears) I encouraged my dad to take me to a match. Not a West Ham match necessarily, but any match. Hereford wouldn’t have been that expensive, but it never happened. Moving to Dorset didn’t help either – nearest team – Salisbury. Indeed.

It went to the next level when I was living in Cardiff. The Welsh don’t do football. They seem to do egg chasing quite a lot, and although they have a national football team – Wales, but no-one goes to see them. They have a mighty stadium (which they borrow off the chunky blokes) and even when they play against countries the rest of the world has heard of, like Germany, only about 19 people go, as they think that 19 people paying £30 a ticket is better than 70,000 people paying a fiver. When I was there – they had better ideas, and would at least half fill the stadium by charging a tenner.

My first match was Wales vs. Norway (I think Wales lost one nil – it can’t have been very memorable. OK I’ve just gone and checked – it was one all – so I saw a goal. Nathan Blake scored. Un-memorably. It was in 2000. It’s unusual for me to check facts, but I’m probably going to put this on a football forum. I think this completely vindicates my dad in not taking me to a match earlier in my life. If I can barely remember my first football match, at the age of 23, what hope was I ever going to have at 9. None.

I won’t bore you with a lot of inbetweens, but this season I shared a West Ham season ticket to West Ham with a guy I met on the internet. I’d been to a few games, and decided to extend my investment. We split the big games, (although neither of us could do arsenal, so I took Spurs instead) and my last big one was Liverpool last weekend.

I’d noticed a strange phenomenon with West Ham, and other teams who don’t always sell out their games.

1 – West Ham charge more to get in when it is a game against a big team. ManU, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs and I think they reserve the right to add another to the list – often the last game of the season.

2 – These games almost always sell out.

3 – West Ham are far more likely to lose these games.

Therefore:

4 – More people end up paying more money see the team lose.

It made me wonder what the motivation of going to these games is. Of course, last season, we beat Man U and Liverpool. Last season, these were heroic victories, and if I’d known then what I know now, I would have spoiled the end of the result for myself (knowing the result before you get to the game would be very odd. It would make football like WWE wrestling. Of course, going to see man U at home is pretty much like that – but it doesn’t stop about 400,000 people doing it every couple of weeks...

That is the motivation. Not seeing your team lose, but potentially seeing your team win, and win big time.

My dad once told me he’d rather see us lose, than see a boring nil nil draw. I laughed at him. Surely it is better to get a point than to get no points.

I took him to the West Brom game in March. Thinking this was a good opportunity to see us win, and it was cheap (£35 a go seemed cheap enough) and it was his birthday.
Worst. Game. Ever.

I think that match will go down in premier league history as the most boring game played. Neither side could be bothered. West Brom were resigned to go down, but defended a lot, West Ham had reached the safety zone, but didn’t realise European football was an option, we’d lost our star striker, and didn’t really have a clue. There were two highlights for me – I got to spend some proper time with my dad, which we hadn’t done for years, and Carlton Cole was sitting in front of the executive boxes above our heads, and someone in the crowd shouted “wake up Carlton” and he did. For about a minute. Dreadful.

Last week it was the Liverpool game. A sell out. Cheapest seat was £45, and much singing of “sign on sign on with a pen in your hand ‘cos you’ll never get a job” and “the referee’s a scouser” and other songs I wouldn’t repeat on the internet (my mum reads the internet!) and a scuffle in the stand above us where a Liverpool fan seemed to be doing a bad job of blending in with the crowd when Gerrard scores their first, we didn’t really turn up, but it didn’t really matter. Yes it was a demonstration of “men against boys” and yes it was obvious why they are second in the league and we (by then) were 9th, but one of the great things about being a West Ham fan for me, is that no-one expects you to do any better.

When we lose three nil to Liverpool, or draw nil nil to the whipping boys of West Brom, the response is the same. “what do you expect – its West Ham”. I’ll be doing a whole season ticket to myself next time. I’m hoping of course, that I’ll get the opportunity to see us turn over some of the big boys, but I’m also expecting a hatful against Birmingham and Wolves too.

iPhone Defence

2009-05-08T18:32:00.002+01:00

It’s about time I did a boring iPhone blog. The BBC went mental on iPhones for a while, then they went mental on twitter, I’m on both, so I think I should go mental on one (and mention it on the other). People are consistently knocking the media (and notably the beeb) for the coverage of a product that isn’t really doing anything new. Everything the iPhone does was already possible on other phones.

I’ve had my iPhone for a few months now. I’ve commented on other blogs about how it may not be the best phone (it can’t hold a call in our own lounge for longer than 25 seconds) the best web browser (it can’t manage java/flash – in fact – many websites are now reverting to not using certain technologies to satisfy the iPhone’s browsing deficiencies) the camera is only 2 mega pixels, you can’t do picture messaging (until July, but a friend of mine has the new software and we still can’t work out how it works), you can’t forward text messages (which would have been very useful with all the superb swine flu/Maddie MacCann/Alan Shearer jokes going around at the moment) it will cost me £730 over 18 months (but I was paying £25 a month anyway and now I get so much more) it doesn’t do turn by turn GPS navigation (it can find me on the map though!) and you would be lucky if the battery lasts longer than 8 hours (but that is only because you use it ALL the time, as it is SO useful).

Useful. That’s the thing. What the iPhone manages to do, is make everything it does fit together, and make life easier. My last phone (Nokia n80) had Wi-Fi, and would do 3g browsing – (although 3 would have charged me a fortune to use the net over 3g) and was a pretty decent phone in itself. But none of it was particularly useable. 3 main (tiny) buttons for doing everything on the screen, and a pretty small screen at that, meant it wasn’t amazingly usable. Nothing seemed to communicate internally. I never fathomed out the music player (or how to get it talking to the computer).

The iPhone is usable. No need for a manual (although my Dad had taken his iPod back to the shop and got a refund as his episode of Mastermind winning/Sinclair Spectrum game writing brain couldn’t get round the easiest operating system in the world and put music onto the bugger.)

If you receive an email with a link to a website in it – you click on the link and it opens the browser. If the website contains a phone number, press it and it dials. If it contains an address, press it, and it shows you that address on a map. Press “route” and it will GPS locate you and show you the best way to get there, (by car, walking, or even public transport – the only thing that it doesn’t do is buy you a ticket for the train, but it will tell you how long the train takes!). you can then click on the map, and go back to the website for the business you are headed for.
The music player is amazing (obviously) and web browsing and the like work really well and really quickly.

Its sleek and feels nice, and has a shiny black back with a chrome ring round it, and a shiny black apple logo on the back. It slips into the pocket and even when listening to music on it, I forget I have it there.

So why are there so many accessories available for it which protect it from the elements? Several colleagues in the office have iPhones, and they were comparing the cases and protective shields they had bought, to keep their iPhones shiny and new looking. All very well, but I had to wonder who they were protecting it for?

What is the point of buying something so nice, so tactile, so small and light, and then putting it in a leather case, and putting an extra layer of plastic over the screen – or surrounding it in latex? If the designers had meant it to look that way, they would have sold it to you with a condom on (the phone – although mobile phone salespeople should use condoms as often as everyone else, if I was aware of them wearing one while selling me a phone, I probably would politely make my excuses and leave the shop...).

Remember the grandparents who left the plastic wrapping on the sofa, or worse – had a “best” room in which you must never enter? Who are they saving it for? If I have something nice, I want to use it. If you put it in plastic it may stay nicer for longer, but it will be in plastic. If I scratch my screen – so be it. If I have my phone on my desk and the back gets scuffed – that’s ok.

In 18 months, I don’t want to be able to trade my phone in for a better model, for someone else to enjoy my old phone in pristine condition, at the detriment of me ever enjoying it in that condition...

Sorry – I’ve gone off on a massive tangent before I even started talking about what I intended to talk about. That’s the way of these things though.

If you’d spent over 700 quid on something – you’d sing its praises too. If you had decided not to do such a thing (especially if you’d spent your money on a nice Samsung camera with a phone attached like the nice indian fellow at 3 told me I should) you’d be looking for an excuse to knock it too.

I'm getting old - but not there yet.

2009-04-21T21:56:00.003+01:00

I’ve realised I’m getting old – I’ll come to the symptoms later, but I’m not young any more. Ask me how old I am and I’ll actually do a mental calculation based on my date of birth. I don’t include the quarters or halves any more (although I did relatively recently – I think turning 30 killed that one off).

Yes – here I am – a guy in his early thirties, married and settled and not really wondering what to do next. Kids aren’t really on the horizon (although many of my friends are now totally in the family way, (one of my best mates just popped number 2 and 3 – twins – a boy and a girl – I can’t imagine what they are going through!) and of the 5 of us who were in our student house, we have 6 kids between us, ranging from fresh to primary school (and one Artemis Fowl book away from being a full on evil genius – she’s got the genius aspect down pat)) which is fine by me. I have far more interesting things to do at the moment (which doesn’t mean that what my friends are doing isn’t interesting – I have to be careful with such statements – like when I suggest that my life is more than just running marathons – am I implying that other’s lives aren’t?) oh my goodness – I’ve just had to count up all the brackets so I know how many I need to close now... I don’t need to close any – just a full stop will do.

I have more than my fair share of grey hairs, but I have done since I was about 22, so that doesn’t make me any older (or feel any older or look any older really), but still less than my mum had at this point.

Our age is defined by our peers. (it isn’t, but that is the stance I’m taking to make this mean anything.

Of the 5 of us in our student flat, I am the second youngest, both in years, and in peer years.

The youngest (age) is the oldest compared to us, as he has the oldest and most established kids, is onto his third house, and has started and sold a business.
The second oldest, matches his actual age, with the twins, and the other one. Third matches third again, with a single kidlet, and has been married for ever (pretty much since the first week of university they behaved like they’d been married for many years.
The second youngest (peer) is also the second youngest (age) – me.

The oldest – (age) is the youngest (peer) as he is single, childless, living in a rented flat, free to jetset round the world doing what he loves, and I envy him daily. Although he did go bald at about 21. Not fair.

I have the Lady GaGa album. Not only do I have it – but I think it is rather good. I called it rather good, and not – well dub – so I am a bit old, but not as old as some. I pay attention to the charts, but only because it is news these days, and the BBC tells me I should pay attention. I certainly wouldn’t buy something as it is popular, but I am pleased when something I like becomes popular. I’d only heard of Lady GaGa because she was popular, but I like her because I like her. I liked the Noisettes before they were popular (some might say before they sold out to the man and mazda) so I am still pretty cool (re – young) there too.

I also – ahem – listen to radio 4. The radio station – not the dubious 90s indie band. I know they are dubious as we have at least one of their CDs upstairs, and the wife has never suggested we listen to it – so they may well be a guilty pleasure of hers. This is a tangent.

If it is 6.30 pm, and I’m in the kitchen, I’ll switch on the digital radio (young) and listen to radio 4 (old) but only for the comedies. I’ll pay attention to the news at 7, but as I am not by brother, and mid 30s going on retired and sitting in a rocking chair with my pipe and slippers, I will TURN IT OFF BEFORE THE ARCHERS STARTS. This is something I associate with age. My grandparents listened to the archers. I understand my brother also listens to farming today, but I also understand he needs to get a life.

Therefore I am still young – in the grand scheme of things. I am closer to birth than to death (I hope) and I’m certainly closer to the start of my career than to the end (I hope too!)
Next time we’ll move on to my parents, and I’ll look like I’m still in nappies compared to them.

Paris post mortem

2009-04-10T17:54:00.004+01:00

Ok - it has been a few days, and I’ve had my chance to go over it. As you'll have seen from the twitter feed - I didn't have the best of times on Sunday, finishing a tad over my target time of 4 hours, in 4.46...

The wife kicked butt of course - smashing her pb, and her target time of 3.45 by a good 2 minutes.

So where did it all go wrong? I talked it up pretty well I thought, but I didn't have it in me on the day. Here’s the blow by blow account - set your excuseometer to full.

Preparation - not too bad, but as previously discussed - it is a fine line between training fully, and getting ill with me, and I chose the healthy option - if I felt my health dwindling I cut back the training. Other runners get injured - I seem to get ill.

Night before - not a bad night’s sleep, there were some noisy shaggers in the room next door, but my ear plugs soon sorted them out (you'd be amazed how much it spoils the mood having ear plugs flung at you via a balcony and an open window).

Morning of the race - my normal upset stomach didn't materialise until it was too late to do anything about it - I was in the queue trying to get into the 4 hour pen when it kicked in an I felt quite uncomfortable. mind over matter, and it seemed to go away

The start - while I was still elbowing my way into the pen, and well before the actual start, the organisers decided to open the front of all the other pens, allowing all the 4 and a half hour runners to surge forward, before all the 4 hour runners were in there. By the time I got in, there were a good 5000 "slower" runners in front of me all shuffling forwards. I could see the people with the green flags, showing they were the 4 hour pacemakers about 200 yards in front, so I aimed to keep them in view.

The first 5k - just trying to get any sort of flow on in my running was impossible, as I was struggling to avoid slower people in front of me, and faster people behind me did their very best to elbow me out of the way. the usual people running as groups didn't help, and my only choice (if I wanted any hope of hitting my target time) was to keep running at my 9 minute mile pace, and if that meant going sideways, then so be it. I know this is a bad idea, but I knew it would be cutting it fine to get me on pace, and losing even a few minutes early on would have left me needing to run ludicrously quickly (for me) for another 23 miles, which wasn't going to happen.

First water station - absolute hell. For reasons best known to themselves - the organisers put this at a narrow corner, and the entire race stops to grab a bottle of water, and half a banana. (This in turn means the cobbled street is covered by wet banana skins - which isn't such a problem, as running at this point was not an option.) another 2 and a half minutes wasted. I had a gel and tried to make the most of the rest, which I didn't need

10k - well behind schedule (about 5 minutes) I attempted to up the pace a little, but not too much - as in London last year I’d caught up 3 minutes by the half way point, and it wore me out just to put on that much of a burst of "speed".

13 miles - shocking. feeling tired, no energy left and not really worrying, but a tiny bit worrying pains across my ribs (I won't call them chest pains, as I never thought my life was in danger) I was 10 minutes behind schedule. realising I was exhausted, and to get a sub 4 marathon would have meant smashing my half marathon PB (and then some) and to get a marathon PB I would have to pretty much get a half marathon PB (my half marathon PB isn't that great) and feeling the way I did at that point it was NOT going to happen.

14 miles – still going, and seeing what happened. I was running – or doing what I call running. Most others would still call it jogging.

16 miles – barely moving. I saw the 26 km marker twice, and started wondering if I was hallucinating (I decided I just saw 25 and mistook it for 26 later) this was the point at which we went through underpasses, tunnels, and last of all the scene of the crash that killed the Queen of Hearts (TM). Walking through the airless tunnels, with the occasional word of encouragement from my French counterparts, I could hardly face another step.

17 miles – walking, and not on the official course, I had a nice stroll along the banks of the Seine, admiring the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and the Statue of Liberty on the river (not hallucinating – look it up), I scanned for a metro station. If I’d seen one, the emergency 5 Euros would have been utilised to get me back to the Arc de Triumph. Fortunately I didn’t find one. With 9 miles to go, I wondered about walking directly to the arc, but my sense of direction, in addition to my sense of shame (one of the advantages of getting sponsored, and of going on about it so often to the world and his wife about my fifth marathon, and telling the parents how they could track my progress online, and imagining them watching my chip be scanned through every 5km point (actually they were shopping, but I didn’t know that) so I told myself the following.

9 miles isn’t that far. That’s a jog home from work.
I would only get lost trying to walk back
I would look like a right old quitter, trudging the streets of Paris in my vest and number.
Even if I walked the 9 miles – I’d get there eventually, I’d get a medal, and I’d finish the marathon.
Finishing 5 marathons is still pretty cool, even if one of them (ok – 3 of them, almost 4 of them) was pretty rubbish by my standards

Onwards. Back on the course

20 miles – walking and running, I kept on going. 10k – is 10k, and I can do that standing on my head.

22 miles – bumped into a fellow club member – it was nice to see her, and we chatted for a while, I made sure that she wouldn’t slow down for me, and I did my best to keep up with her.

23 miles – The Marathon De Beaujolais Neuvoux were advertising their race, by giving away wine. Nice, warm red wine, in little glasses. Two years ago, I was tempted, but I was taking it seriously that time. With nothing to lose, other than my lack of a headache, I accepted the offer of a cheeky beverage from a beautiful girl dressed as a nun, then went to catch up my team mate.

24 miles – the stand for the Marathon De Medoc (another heavily wine based marathon – 26 miles, 26 vineyards) provided more red and another one offering cold white wine (my favourite wine of all) and I was much happier. With 2 miles to go, I kept on jogging along. I passed a pair of camels at one point. The wife has no recollection of them – I may have been elsewhere at the time, head wise.

26 miles – no chance of a sprint finish, I posed for the photographers (they missed me completely), crossed the line, accepted my medal, and had a look around for the wife. No sign of her, and it was beyond the 1 hour cut off period we’d set for giving up meeting at the finish, and heading for the hotel, so I headed for the hotel.

I’d just showered by the time she got back – she must have been on the train behind me. We exchanged stories, and that was that.

I’m giving myself 18 months without running another marathon. Another small marathon will probably happen at some point. Maybe Leicester again (although hilly, I can train up for that) maybe Abingdon (a good one for a PB) or maybe somewhere else. I’ll keep on supporting the wife, but my body needs a break. It needs adrenaline, and the speedier events such as the triathlon and 5-10k races will be much better for me.

12 hours to go

2009-04-04T19:38:00.003+01:00

Resful day - check.

Drunk plenty of water - check.

Big pile of pasta - check.

I think i'm ready. we've spent the afternoon watching an entire series (nearly) of the office (US version) and generally lying around - we had a short walk this morning to the Gardin De Luxemborg at ate bread and hummus, and drank orangina, and we had a lovely swift meal at the same italian restaurant we ate at last night.

I'm as ready as i'll ever be.

I'm making sure i keep the pressure on myself - not in a bad way, but i'm very much aware that this is likley to be my last marathon (certainly for a while) and i want to give it my best shot. i know that i am my own worst enemy. I'll get about 3 miles in and want to give up, i'll get about 13 miles in and reckon i can do it, then i'll think i need a walking break at about 16 miles, and thats where it could all fall apart.

in my long runs previously, i've been getting much better at only walking when i really have to - crossing roads, avoiding pensioners, and that is pretty much it. my own laziness will be the killer, so i won't let it beat me. i'm more aware than ever before, that i really should be able to do this. if that fat guy can beat me in thanet, then i am capable of a lot more.

people occasionally suggest i should be able to go a lot faster than i do, and i agree, but for some reason, i don't seem to be able to. sometimes i wonder if illness while i was younger had adversely affected my abilities, or if my running style isn't as good as it might be, or as efficient. i really don't know - but looking at myself in the mirror, i'm lean, i'm gorgeous, and i'm ready. i can do this.

I'll be disappointed if i only finish. I'm sticking to my 5 minute 40 second kms (i have a nice wrist band to show me the actual times as i'm not too hot on my 5 minute 40 second times tables. curese the french and their sensible metric system - 9 minute miles is so much easier!)

i'll be happy if I get a PB (that would only need me to finish in 4 hours and 12 minutes, which means i could lose 30 seconds a mile and do it still) but i know i can get that sub 4 hour time.

I'll be back tomorrow evening to tell you how i got on, and to give you a damn good excuse as to why i didn't get it!

until then,

au revoir!

Free Hotel Wifi!

2009-04-03T20:11:00.003+01:00

Woo hoo!

I'm online, and i can therefore bore you some more.

Went to the expo, got our numbers (lisa had someone else's for a while, but we sorted that out) and i bought a new gel belt, the only item i couldn't find before we left).

We've luckily ended up staying opposite 2 very nice looking italian restaurants - just had a lovely pizza for dinner tonight, and we'll probably go back for the essential pasta tomorrow night.

gosh everything is expensive here - our currency is obviously having a shocking time. We decided against having a glass of pop with dinner, as €5 for a coke is taking the mickey (although it would have been pretty mickey inducing when we were getting €1.5 to the pound!

anyhoo - we're going to watch some TV shows we downloaded earlier and get an early night - it is said that the night before the night before the marathon is the important one. i know i won't sleep well tomorrow whatever happens, so this is my only chance!

until later

d&L.

All running done - just the marathon now

2009-04-02T12:55:00.004+01:00

Yep - the slightly too fast 2 and a half miles I ran yesterday were my lot. Training done. i'm not getting any fitter between now and sunday morning - I just need to rest - relax and above all, not walk for 6 hours up and down massive hills and steps like I did 2 years ago.

The down side is, the weather forecast is suggesting it will be pretty warm - 19degrees c might not seem that warm, but it will be enough to make me need to take headache pills before, and probably during the race, and be careful to have plenty of water all the way through. I'll be doing the wet hat trick too.

We head for paris tomorrow morning - stupidly early, need to leave the house at about 6! ghastly. (althogh only an hour earlier than a normal workday). Then we'll pick up numbers and t shirts and other goodies at the marathon expo in the afternoon, and scour the local area for pasta restaurants. We'll eat something else tomorrow, but the pasta is a vital aspect of our preparation for sunday.

We've both been off the booze since monday night, and we'll stick to that till after the race, although if i've sprained an ankle, or am feeling really dreadful, i reserve the right to have some wine/brandy/cider which i know will be offered between miles 22 and 25.

I have no idea if i'll be able to get online and twitter or facebook while we're away. it will all depend on free wifi... Ill keep scanning on the iphone and try and say hi when i can.

We're home on wednesday, and have a single day in work on thursday before another long weekend. bliss.

Anyway - thats all your getting, blogging, packing and eating in one lunch hour isn't going to get any of them done properly.

Catch you soon!

And wish me luck - I'm going to need it!

Tamarind – The second best Indian Restaurant in London?

2009-03-31T22:09:00.003+01:00

As I did before in my last restaurant review – the context. This is my third visit to a restaurant of this class ever. We’ve been to Benares twice, both on very special occasions, and yesterday for our third anniversary we decided to try Tamarind.

This year’s Michelin Guide left Tamarind without the Star they have held for a good few years. The comparisons to Benares on the reviews we checked while researching the most expensive dinner for two we’d ever eaten were generally favourable, and the Michelin inspectors agreed, Benares retaining theirs in the 2009 guide, but what went wrong at Tamarind?

We have no idea of course – we don’t know how good Tamarind used to be, but based on the expectation that they’d be trying extra hard to impress the customers and any potential inspectors, as well as making sure they offered extra special value, so the time was right.

We checked the online menus, and the prix fixe deal looked just right. Two good looking courses, with all the trimmings, and a bottle of wine per table, (Minimum 2, maximum 6) for £28 per person. How mad is that? If you are heading there with 4 of you – make sure you sit in two tables of two – as otherwise, you’ll have to share a bottle of the finest Viognier we’ve ever tasted – (Viognier is my favourite wine for 2 reasons, one – it tastes great, and two, with its distinctive aroma of apricots, you might actually be able to tell what it is if tested (that’s a wine fact people!) and you wouldn’t want to share something that good.

The prix fixe menu had to be requested (and they ceremonially removed the brass plates we had in front of us in an attempt to shame us into going for the a la carte...) but along it came, and was exactly as on the website (always nice to know that the online descriptions are accurate) so we were easily able to order swiftly – the wife had the veggie option, (Potato cakes, followed by grilled paneer)I had the meat. Chicken thingies – they were kind of like little chicken dumplings, with micro herbs and for my main, (after checking that the three items listed on the more interesting part of the menu were indeed a course, and not a further choice. I was briefly tempted by the chicken tikka masala (sold a bit more interestingly than that, but that is what I imagined it would be) but instead chose the supreme of chicken, lamb kebab, and broccoli kebab.

Coming with naan, rice, lentil sauce (dhal? you can tell I’m not an expert can’t you!) and superb mixed vegetables (I let the wife pick out the cauliflower, but I was happy with the rest) this seemed far more “authentic” than Benares – when I say authentic, I’ve not been to India, but I’ve been to Brick Lane, Tooting, and Birmingham, and this was more like a souped up curry house experience, than a posh restaurant with a spicy twist, which was my impression of the other place (as we carefully referred to Benares under our breath when within potential earshot of the staff...)

Of course – being a two course set menu and not three, we were presented with the desert menu and being careful to not order the selection below the one I did order – mine was an £8 glass of dessert wine, above an £88 bottle of dessert wine – I chose to add to the copious amount of alcohol already consumed, while she had a delicate sweet carrot dish (which we’ve seen referred to as Carrot Fudge on other menus) and we did a small amount of swapping (they bought me an extra spoon – it would have been rude not to use it), and finally, before the bill, petit fours of mint leaves dipped in white chocolate, and cashews dipped in dark chocolate (my non-chocolate eating wife forced a mint leaf down, but I was left to “suffer” the rest – wow!)

As I paid (used the joint account card to pay) the bill, Mrs Evergrowingbrain checked out the little girl’s room, then with a flourish and a pinch of fennel seeds as we left, our third anniversary was duly celebrated.

At £88 for the two of us, including the totally worth it service charge – they were excellent – always there, but never there too much – it still isn’t the sort of thing we’d be doing every week (or every month) but as a special occasion, it was certainly special, which is just what you want from a restaurant, that – in this armature reviewer’s opinion, will not be out of the Michelin guide for long.

Personal taste, and a bottle of wine in place of a couple of desserts, were all that separated the two restaurants, if I was taken out next week - it would depend what I wanted - a curry - Tamarind wins as the best example of the genre, but Atul's flair for "Modern British Indian" will have me visiting Benares again too.

2 more runs till the big one

2009-03-26T19:55:00.002Z

I thought I’d better write about running again, as it is both the most interesting thing I’ve done for a little while, and also the fact that I have recently publicised this blog on my running club’s website! All very well, but if they have to dig down to find something running related, underneath all the rest of the drivel you have to put up with.

I never promised a specific subject for this blog – it’s just what’s on my mind at the time – and very much – if I don’t have anything worth saying, then I won’t say anything at all.

I’m just back from a 9 mile run – my normal route home from work. As some of my longer marathon training runs have been deviations from this route, with extra bits added on to the beginning, so I might do five miles round the city, before doing the remaining 8 miles home on the normal route – doing it this way, I’m not as tempted to give up half way round – as half way round is still 6 miles from home, I’m not home and having to run past the front door – and keep on going. The other good thing about ruining this way, is that when I only need to do the 9 miles, if feels pretty easy – by the time I was getting to Stockwell, I was exhausted before – now it is barely 4 miles in, so I’m feeling chipper, and can sprint over the junctions, instead of taking the excuse to stop and walk.

I am loving the fact that I can run 9 miles and hardly notice – I’m going to be making sure I keep enough of a level of fitness that I’ll be able to run home once or twice a week (when I’m not cycling to work of course).
It’s not the best way to think about things, but I weighed myself just now – I’m floating around the 12 and a quarter stone mark – not quite down to the 12 mile “fighting weight” I was hoping for, but close, and I’m still off buying chocolate for lent. (I’m off buying chocolate – if others offer to buy me chocolate, or I find chocolate lying around the place, that is fair game – waste not want not. The 2 massive chocolate chip cookies I ate today, were both valuable for me for the run, and stopped me needing a (far too common) second packet of crisps in the afternoon. If the dreadful hardship of jogging home once in a while means I can eat massive amounts of crisps and chocolate – then bring it on.

I’m quite happy with how the training has gone – I’ve been more mindful of my body this time round, taking care not to become sick, which was very much the problem with my first marathon (Paris 07) and my third (London 08), illness meaning I missed big chunks of vital training, including not as many long runs as I should have completed. This time though – I’ve been more consistent, and my only missing period was about a week ago during my taper time, so I’m not overly worried about that. I’ve done 261.5 miles so far this year, and with 7 miles on Sunday, and a run from work half way home on Tuesday (I can’t do the full 9, as that would be too much in the week before the big one) and I’ll be ready for Paris.

I’m not convinced I’ll get the sub four hour time – but I’m very confident I’ll get a massive PB – and I’m focussed on pushing appropriately hard all the way round – pacing myself properly, never walking through laziness, and above all remembering.

This is what I’ve trained for. This is all that matters. If I feel awful, can’t walk, or don’t run for a month afterwards, but I get my target time, then it was worth it.

And don’t drink the wine they offer at 23 miles. That won’t help at all.

We’re starting to get our lives back now too – with time for the family (mummy’s visiting once we get home from Paris, and big bro is visiting this week). I’m also going to tell you about a fab day out I had with my dad last week too – but another time.

Conspiracy Theory

2009-03-19T13:10:00.003Z

When I got my new bike, I had a call from my step dad, suggesting that I shouldn't get the clip-in pedals where you attach yourself to your bike, enabling full 360degree (why is there no degree symbol available on the keyboard?) power, not just pushing down on the pedals, but pulling them round. My wife, brother and best mate have all had issues falling off bikes (at zero speed, just embarrassingly not being able to put the foot down) due to being clipped in.

Slight tangent – I’ve not been able to get a proper definition when referring to cycle pedals. Officially I’m getting “clipless” pedals, referring to pedals which don’t have a toe clip, a toe clip being a sort of cup/strap affair which you clip your toe into enabling the pulling up on the pedal as well as the pushing down.

Normal pedals (like on every other bike) don’t exist in the cycling world, otherwise they would be “clipless” (I think they are actually known as platform pedals or something like that) therefore pedals where you actually “clip” yourself in to the pedal, using special shoes with plastic attachments screwed into the sole, (and you know you are clipped in, as you hear a clip sound and you feel all clipped in) are known as “clipless”. I believe this is so that proper cyclists can feel superior to muggles in having their own, contrary language to speak which makes completely no sense to the casual listener.

Back to the step father - he thought I’d also end up falling off and damaging myself (potentially under a bus), but I want to give myself every option of becoming a mediocre cyclist (I’m currently firmly in the “poor” category). I thanked him for his concern and advice, and promptly visited the cycle shops of London in an attempt to buy pedals and shoes.

Evans Cycles Clapham were shocking - the guy I spoke to didn't have a clue, but seemed too proud to admit this (he was a mountain biker) and ask his colleagues to assist, or admit to me he wasn't the best person to advise me. They probably had suitable equipment, but I didn't buy them, as he'd all but talked me out of it.

Bikestore at London Bridge were lovely, offering excellent advice, and telling me just what I needed to get. after sending the girl upstairs to check stock 4 times, we discovered they didn't actually have any shoes (not in my size anyway) so I left empty handed again.

Evans Victoria were very good - I tried some shoes on and they were too small, and they didn't have the size up, but now I’d make the decision, I was able to go mail order.

Wiggle came up with the goods, and a box containing shoes and pedals arrived at work only a couple of days later.

While my enormous brain was pondering this state of events, I worked out that my step dad must have contacted every cycle shop in London, ensuring they came up with plausible reasons not to sell me dangerous shoes. He even kept the reasons varied, and as planned, I gave up without anyone needing to repeat a story.

Step dads however have no power over the internet (I’m guessing he's sent photos of me to all the shops, but the internet never saw my face) and I thwarted his plans.

I've been out on the pedal/shoes combination a few times now, and the closest I came to falling off left me leaning gently on a parked VW Beetle, and all was well. I fell off twice while not attached to the bike, so the pedals must be a good thing.

As you'll be aware - I’ve entered a triathlon. I need to improve my cycling and my swimming (my running is beyond help) hence the mad shoes, the carbon fibre bike, and the occasional trips to the local baths.

Unfortunately, it seems the stepfather has decided I shouldn't swim either. My risk of drowning is too great for him to allow me to train for the triathlon.

Last week, he arranged for a ladies only aqua aerobics session to be taking place exactly as I wanted to visit for my lunch hour.

This week however - I arrived an hour ago and noticed no lanes marked out and no-one in the pool. I got to reception and found a concerned staff, who asked if it was my intention to swim - I said yes, with a knowing "but you aren't going to let me are you" tone to my voice, and she kindly explained that they weren't sure when the pool would be re-opening. I smiled and told her I’d return on another day.

As I left - I noticed the fire doors were all open, and two more staff members were walking towards the water's edge carrying buckets and sponges.

I checked the timetable (that I took following the aerobics based thwarting) and noticed that 11-12 was OAPs only.

My step dad is retired, although he's not over 60. He’s quite unwell and lives over 100 miles away.

Did he really bribe a pensioner to make my leisure centre un-usable? I wouldn't put it past him.

10 Friends is plenty

2009-03-15T17:43:00.002Z

I read an article on the BBC about how social networking is changing the way we interact with our friends. There are people claiming 700 or more FaceBook friends, and a socialite who held a party for 800 of her closest friends.

I recently culled my FaceBook friends – and got it back down to around a hundred. I’m going to have another round, and get it down further – there are still people on there who I worked with many years ago, and all I get from them are messages about them hiding Easter eggs on each others’ profiles (so they are next).

The BBC article reckons most people can count their true best friends on their fingers. I did a ready reckon, and I think I’ve got it down to the fingers of one hand and another finger. My brother, Dan, My mum and my Dad, my friend Pam, and my stepdad Pat. I defined it like this – If a week went by and I didn’t hear from them – I’d be very worried. Between me speaking to them on the phone, texting, emailing – and twitter/FaceBook, I pretty much know where they are on a daily basis, and I’d miss it if I didn’t. The wife doesn’t count – as she’s above all that.
The next level down is just – friends – and is basically the other 3 boys I lived with at uni, and their wives, one old workmate, and 2 school friends of Lisa’s and one of their husbands (the other isn’t part of a couple, but there is no way of defining that in the way I just did) one whole family who've always been close to ours, – and I’d probably add the rest of mine and Lisa's extended families in there too (but family is a bit different too – there are obligations there. I love all my cousins, but I hardly have any contact with one side, and if I wasn’t related to the other half, I doubt we’d be friends (very little in common, but that makes it all the more fun when we’re together).

The being together bit is very important. Whenever (and it isn’t often) we do meet – whether for a holiday, down the pub, or just passing and dropping in for coffee – it is as if we’ve always been best friends and everything is groovy – that’s what being friends is all about. Work colleagues are included here too.

There are of course another class – as Homer’s bar buddies referred themselves – well wishers, cronies, chums and acquaintances. Many of my running club buddies will fall into this category – when I see them we’ll have a great time (particularly at the social events) but if they were gone – I’d not miss many of them. I’m overanalysing here I know – and as I’ve just publicised the running aspects of this blog on the Windmilers message board, I’m considering if this should be published. I don’t want to upset anyone who considers me a closer friend to them, than I consider them to me. (Joanne, Michelle – you know I love you both. I’m generalising here).
The big question is the next level. Here we have the people I wouldn’t call ever, people who’s funerals I wouldn’t go to, but still people I’d be u[set if they died. The most important criteria of course, when I culled this lot, was whether I would be upset if they did the same thing to me. As I’ve blogged before – there are people on FaceBook who’s updates I thoroughly enjoy every time. There are old friends I love to hear from if only in an “I’ve been playing footy” or “I’m playing a computer game”. It is great to know they are happy and doing ok. And I’d miss them if they weren’t letting me know this. I like to think they’d miss mine too, and none of the ones I culled last time seemed to notice (I certainly didn’t get any upset comments, or requests to be friends again, so if they were upset – they didn’t whinge about it to me.

That’s also why twitter (a new addition to my social networking) is so good – I like Stephen fry, so I watch his updates. Stephen Fry doesn’t know me from Adam, so why on earth would he be interested in mine? He’s recently offered to start following his followers, if you ask him to. He has over 300,000 followers, and he’s now following over 55,000 of them. Therefore, he’s not watching their feeds, or anyone else's. He knows he’s using it for his own publicity – I’m not vain enough to want that – I’m pretty vain of course, but without cause. Is it possible to be vain and famous? Or is does fame mean you don’t have to worry about being vain – your vanity is justified.

If someone wants to watch me, but I don’t want to watch them – this is possible. I believe FaceBook might be working on a one way process in the same way, but until then, I’ll risk upsetting people. Sorry to pretty much everyone I went to primary school with, and anyone I worked with years ago, but don’t work with now.

Builders Breakfast/Hoisin Duck

2009-03-11T11:18:00.005Z

What they've done with the Builders Breakfast crisps, is taken a pack of smokey bacon crisps, and stuck a lable over them with "builders breakfast" and relied on the power of suggestion to add a hint of sausage and beans (apparently - I listened to steve wright in the afternoon when they launched this whole concept) to the overall mix.

Maybe the fact that i've had a cold since 1997 doesn't make me the best person to be taste testing these crisps. we went on a wine tasting afternoon at Vinopolis at new year, and i was having a particularly snotty day, so didn't really appreciate all the subtler nuances of each bouquet... i still sneeze approximately 19 times each morning, and have a pack of tissues within reach at all times, (although i'm not as bad as my dad - who has absolutely no sence of smell - he's great come baby changing time, not so great when the electric shower has smoke belching out of it).

Hoisin duck tasted of neither duck nor hoisin. actually - it is Crispy Duck and Hoisin, as i've just noticed on the crumpled pack (filled with snotty tissues) still sitting on my desk.

they were vaguely meaty, with a very slight barbecue sauce flavour. basically - if they'd slapped a crazy label on a pack of BBQ crisps - and told me it was crispy duck and hoisin, then i'd have been fooled.

I guess the fact that i'm going on about it means they've won, i've bought them, and now i'm talking about them - marketing excec puts a big tick in the box.

two more to go - onion bhagee and chilli and chocolate... i'm scared.

Fish and Chips

2009-03-10T22:15:00.003Z

Walkers fish and chips flavour is very odd - pleasant enough, but certainly not reminding me of fish and chips. of course it has been a while since i've had fish and chips, but i've stolen the odd chip when they come into the office, and i have an imagination.

bizarrely I licked my fingers about an hour after eating the crisps, and they tasted exactly like licking my fingers after eating fish and chips.

weird.

i had "builders breakfast" the other day too - i'll tell you about that soon.

Cajun Squirrel

2009-03-10T09:18:00.004Z

We finally found the kerrrayzee new crisp flavours on sale in reasonable size bags, and I kicked off the taste test with "Cajun Squirrel".

Unfortunately, no squirrels were harmed in the making of these crisps, which is a shame, as it both meant there are more squirrels around to dig up our garden (and attempt to poison themselves by eating our bulbs) and it also meant Lisa could try them too.

Result - sort of like a watery version of the chilli flavour ones - no discernable squirrel flavour at all, and not spicy enough to be truly cajun. pleasant enough though - I'll eat the second pack, but i was expecting more. I remember Hedgehog flavour - now they were far nicer. 4/10

general update

2009-03-07T16:09:00.004Z

Tried a long run home last night, but wore the wrong shoes, got from the office to the thames to westminster bridge to tate modern to oval, but then got the same blisters as before - all the way down the right side of my left heel. not fun. i jumped on the tube in pain, and got back home and picked it all off - it will be fine to run again tomorrow, and was fine for cycling today (did 24 miles - to richmond park, round the park twice (once in each direction) and home again.

I'm enjoying the cycling, we had dan and Kev with us too, and they left me for dust (as did lisa as usual!) i need to get out more, and start cycling to work more often too. 18 miles a day (9 there and back) would get me used to it. I'm definately "all the gear - no idea" at the moment, but i'll improve - that was only the third time i've been on a bike with drop handlebars and clipped in pedals (i've still not fallen off - my main problem is getting myself attached)

I'm upping the distance for tomorrow to 11 miles, which should be peasy! my total for the week will be 23 then, which is fine based on my hard week/easy week philosophy. next week i have to do 17 on thursday, which will be my last long run before heading to paris.

Music to slit your wrists to.

2009-03-05T16:20:00.002Z

“No-one listens to me – I might as well be a Leonard Cohen album” Neil the Hippy.

I know when Lisa’s annoyed – I can tell by looking at her iPod (and she let slip this morning too) and seeing if she’s listening to “The Holy Bible, by the Manic Street Preachers.

When I was younger, and living with parents, it was useful to have a method beyond the usual slamming of doors (occasionally punching holes in them) and shouting about how much I hated them (I didn’t really) to show how upset I was. I’d generally put on my 7inch single of Alice Cooper’s “Poison” – at full blast. Later I graduated to Bon Jovi (I know) and eventually Nirvana. Anything loud and shouty seemed to extend my own anger and share it with the world. This is not, it seems, how Lisa sees it – as she isn’t a 14 year old on the top deck of a bus (walking along in the street, sitting on a park bench) she doesn’t play her music loud on her phone for the world to hear – neither, as she said she would certainly do when she first moved in with me, does she hide in her room with it on the stereo at full blast. No. Headphones are fine – this is personal anger, and this is how she deals with it. This morning it was cancelled trains, and arriving at work to meet the new boss an hour later than planned, and I imagine, not as well prepared as she might have liked.

Meanwhile, I locked myself out of the house this morning – with only my car key for solace – no phone, no money, no axe (I tried a brick to the window – basically my home insurance is only going to be useful for fire damage – no-one is getting in without the key. I ended up driving to Kingston to meet my father in law, who found the spare key they have (thank goodness) which I then used to get in. I was frantic and fuming and generally in a right old state – I tried putting the radio on, but DJs don’t know how I’m feeling and nothing seemed suitable (the kooks when you are pissed off are even more annoying than when you are in a good mood!) so it went off again.

I needed something hyper – something loud and fast and funky, a soundtrack to my frantic quest for the spare key – music to drive a mini round the streets of south London with a mission to. I’m thinking Pendulum, the Propellerheads, or the Prodigy (who all begin with a P – so do the Pet Shop Boys, but they wouldn’t have been right for the moment).

I love The Prodigy – when you are in the right mood, they are the perfect soundtrack. I was once late for work in Bristol as I was so carried away by their noise and their beats (at full volume in the car with me singing along – the Fat Of The Land album) that I missed my turning on the M4 and had to go an extra 10 miles to the next one, before doing a U turn and doing another 10 miles back. I loved it.

I usually like my music to reflect my mood – when I’m in a good mood. Pendulum are great for open road driving – or walking to Upton Park on match day. Does it Offend You? Yeah? Likewise.

However – when I’m feeling depressed – I don’t reach for the Cure, Leonard Cohen, or the quite superb White Lies (a fantastic album about death and its associated subjects, murder, suicide, the afterlife). Recently I’ve been far more likely to reach for Lily Allen’s “it’s not me, it’s you” with its jaunty beats, happy melodies, and jolly subject matter such as having boyfriends who don’t satisfy her in bed, or “fuck you” which kind of speaks for itself. I want music to change my mood, to bring me round. Not to enhance my feeling of gloom or anger.

One album I keep coming back to is My Chemical Romance – “The Black Parade”. Not a duff track on it, and every song is a rock anthem about what its like to be young, having no-one understand you, deliberately upsetting parents (Mama is my favourite track – “mama – we’re all gonna die, mama – we’re meant for the flies, and right now they’re building a coffin your size, mama – we’re all gonna die” ) its loud for when I’m angry, it’s funny for when I’m happy, and I love it because it can take me between one and the other – which is exactly what I want it for. Cracking stuff.

Usually – I listen to music because I want to listen to it specifically – I very occasionally will use the shuffle feature on the iPod, but if something isn’t high on my agenda, I’ll skip it, and skip the next one until it plays something I want to listen to – by which time I could have scrolled through and found something myself. Apple’s Genius feature is pretty good though – analysing your and other’s listening habits, it creates a playlist based on a song of your choosing – listen to Belle and Sebastian, and it suggests Franz Ferdinand (also from Scotland) Camera Obscura (also mellow and indie) Los Campesinos (also someone no-one else has heard of) and others of a similar nature. It will (if you let it) also recommend other music you might like, although if I bought everything I liked I’d have rooms full of unlistened to CDs, and no money.

Originally I was going to use this to review a certain album, but we’ve had a glut of good ones recently, and the concert season is underway soon too – starting with Franz Ferdinand on Monday in Hammersmith. See – I do do things other than running – I’m trying to focus on some of them too – otherwise this will just end up as another running blog – but I’m more interesting than that. I hope.

yay! 20 miles v2 - done!

2009-03-02T20:21:00.005Z

20 miles round the Isle of Thanet - Done.

i'm happy enough that i finished and very happy that i got round in 9 and a half minute miles - pretty consistantly. I'll need to go faster than that for my sub four hour marathon... another 30 seconds off each mile? i have 5 weeks more training - 2 weeks of hard work, and 3 weeks taper.

I think i can still lose a tiny bit of excess weight - (before you tell me not too - when did you last see me with my shirt off?) which i could feel wobbling while running. however, based on the fact that when i was going past the 19 mile mark, i noticed a chap who had already finished (in his shorts, medal round his neck) and he was about 16 stone, and was smoking a cigarette?

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG???

I'm 12 and a half stone - haven't smoked since a crafty one while very very drunk in hong kong (and that was a marlboro light - smoking one of them is only the equivalent to being in the same room as a joss stick) and i've been running for 4 years... (properly)

i know i still need to push myself more, and my most important aspect for the Paris Marathon is making sure i make every step count. never giving up, and RUNNING the whole thing.

but still - another step in the right direction - i'm not too bothered that i was a bit slower than 2 years ago over the same distance, as it was really hilly on the new course, and i think i did both my long training runs too fast before my first marathon.

i'll find a way of doing another massive run in a couple of weeks - i don't have any more races, but i enjoy the long ones home from work, dodging the tourists and bothering the taxis at crossings.

i'm sitting here with a glass of Cava, and about to watch a silly film. no running tonight - we're doing a speed session tomorrow, and i have a long one on thursday planned. add in a bit of cycling, and maybe a swim on wednesday, and i'll be a proper adonis before you know it.

blisters

2009-02-20T09:34:00.004Z

one of the problems of having to wear smart work shoes by day, and relying on my trainers to get me round crazy distances, is that it is hard finding work shoes that fit.

for years i was exactly a size 10, and could get any shoes, and say "size 10 - they'll be fine - try them on you say? well i want to make sure you have made them right - i know my feet are a size 10, so if they don't fit it must be something to do with your poor cobblership"

you know how mars bars aren't as big as they used to be? so they can avoid putting the price up all the time, they just shave a gram off here and there and keep the price constant. (allegedly). Marks and Spencers have started charging more for larger bras as they cost more to make. understandable.

i have a feeling a similar thing is happening with shoes. my last two pairs of work shoes have been size 9 and a half. half sizes are awfully fashionable at the moment it seems, and i tried the size 10 and my feet rattled around.

what i suspect is that my feet have been downsized as part of the reaction to the economic downturn. (they can't be making shoes bigger - that would be crazy).

if you look at big fat people on uk living or channel five's "the man who had to be hoisted out of his house using a crane" you'll see their feet are a relatively normal size. it is impossible to have fat feet - certainly the bit of the foot that actually get walked on, occasionally you'll see a strap digging into the top bit of the foot...

I've lost 3 stone in the course of my running career, but none of that excess weight was ever on my feet.

the result of course has been that my work shoes aren't quite the snug fit they used to be. even though they are a smaller size, they still aren't quite right - one pair pinches the sole slightly, and the other is too harsh at the ankle.

this has left a strange incompatibility between my feet, which seem to be attempting to adjust to the bizarre dimensions of M&S and Clarke's shoes, and my trainers (which are still a size 10, and still seem to fit perfectly).

9 miles into my planned 12 miles home last night (office to westminster to london bridge to home - lots of tourist dodging up and down the thames path) i started getting pains in my feet, along with a more normal headache (too much coffee and screen time) . the feet were hurting while i walked to help out the head, and the head was hurting while i run to help out the feet.

as a result of this catch 22, i took a slight shortcut on the northern line, and ended up doing 10 miles instead of 12. i have a couple of days off the running now, but i'm hopefully doing a long bike ride tomorrow (proving to my friend Kev that even though i have a carbon fibre bike, he's still MUCH faster than me.)

quick update

2009-02-18T14:46:00.006Z

Yes - I did the speed session yesterday - it felt pretty good, and I'm putting 6 miles down on my (sad and lonely) spreadsheet.

Tonight I'm eating loads and drinking more, as my free evenings are precious!

Sorry this one isn't very interesting - I'm at work and very busy, but didn't want to let you down. I might still get round to reviewing the (rather good) Lily Allen album, although my attentions have been drawn recently to the (also rather good) Morrissey album.

Catch you soon.

First 20 miler - done.

2009-02-16T09:05:00.005Z

My time in yesterday's 20 mile race was nothing to write home about - it was all I could manage to keep moving by about 17 miles in, and only the Reading Roadrunner behind me, who kept shouting at me every time i slowed to a walk (and sprinted past me at the line!) kept me going at all.

of course - this was never going to be a PB - coming off an 11 mile week (laziness) then a 5 mile week (snow and illness) and then doing a 9, a 4 and then the 20, I'm very much getting up to distance.

the big test will be as follows.

will i do the speed session tomorrow? (my legs are feeling ok today, but i suspect they'll get worse) - the answer is yes I will - Lisa will see to that - and we have Kit to sell!

Will I run home on thursday? - yes! i'll tell everyone in the office, and (I'll make myself believe that) they'll laugh if I chicken out. I might even put in an extra loop and make it up to 15 miles or so. (you never know)

Then i'll be able to do a social 7 miler with the club on sunday, and maybe have a long bike ride on saturday, and all will be well with my training.

Sorry this blog is getting quite running focussed - it is starting to take over my life at the moment - I'll try and review the lily allen album tomorrow as some light relief.

Multisport

2009-02-12T15:37:00.004Z

Looks like I'm giving myself a focus.

London Duathlon - Entered

I did it last year on no training and a hybrid bike without a top gear in trainers. I fell off the bike and limped home, bleeding - finishing with the wheezy kids and the old and infirm. If i can't improve my PB this year following training, on my Carbon Fibre monster of a bike weighing in at only 8kg) and with the full knowledge of what that hill will do for ones ability to brake at the bottom, then there is something wrong with me (of course there is plenty wrong with me, you don't need to tell me that, but nothing that will stop me threatening lisa in the duathlon)

Swanage Triathlon - Considering.

I need to do some research, as it could be as hilly as a hilly thing, but with people usually doing 750m swims in less than 30 minutes (and as quick as 15) i'll need to improve on the 500m in 25 minutes i did in the pool on monday. I have plenty of time to do so, and i can swim without affecting other training too much. Cycling to work more often (i.e. at all) will improve my biking, and after the marathon in the spring, I quite fancy trying to improve my shorter (5-10k) runs.

I think i'm talking myself into it - i'll need a wetsuit though - and to practice my swimming in the sea too!

Its all scary...

Much Happier

2009-02-11T14:45:00.003Z

my self analysing in the blog entry of a few days ago seems to have done the trick, and got my mind in the right place.

yesterdays 9 miler felt good, and i actually thought that i could have carried on (with a gun to my head, i might have got to the 20 mile mark that i'll be attempting on sunday)

Speed session tomorrow in the park - should be fun (although i think they are shooting the deer at the moment so it may well be closed and we'll be running the streets...)

I'm having tonight off - although i ought to be doing something to counteract the meatball sub i had for lunch!

Feeling good

2009-02-10T11:30:00.005Z

I've been sneezing all morning, it is raining outside, and the forecast is for "sleet" but i feel brilliant.

Tonight i'm running home - and nothing will stop me. i have my waterproof top, my gloves, and my headband, and its only 9 miles.

The main motivation for me running home though is my new work shoes. running 9 miles in my nice comfy trainers is childs play compared to walking for 10 minutes to the tube, and 10 minutes at the other end. they are cutting into my ankles something chronic.

as you'll have seen yesterday - it is all about the phsychology - make me think i'll enjoy the run, and i'll run. and i'll enjoy it.

how i'll get on with my 20 mile race on sunday is another matter - but one step at a time!

Training Update

2009-02-09T14:28:00.002Z

You may have spotted on my new Twitter feed (bottom right) that I didn’t run home on Friday. Sometimes it is best to listen to your body, and all through the weekend I had that feeling that I might be about to go down with something – but then I’ve been feeling a bit like that since the beginning of December, when I had 2 days off work with flu, and I’ve been a bit coughy, and rather phlegmmy every since.

Usually I really enjoy running (in fact I really enjoy any physical activity) but my mind works in a strange way, and seems to think it enjoys sitting on the tube/playing computer games/watching MasterChef more. (one of those is true, but I also enjoy being gorgeous, and running is the only thing that keeps me from being an amorphous sofa bound blob, washing myself with a rag on a stick.).

So I scratched Friday’s run, and went home on the tube – as it often is when I should have run home, it was a hellish journey, and I didn’t get a seat until Stockwell. And then I had to elbow a pregnant pensioner aside to beat her to it – and it was one of those really solid fold down ones.

On Sunday morning – I felt pretty up for it – my mind was back in the right place, and I was looking forward to a bracing 11 miler. About 3 miles in, I was stopping to walk, feeling weird, and wheezing like an asthmatic with a really good idea in a 30’s comic.

Lisa took pity on me, and walked me back to the car. I drove home, while she got a proper run in by running home. I wasn’t happy.

Whenever things aren’t going my way in any of my chosen ventures, I start to reconsider my motivation for that venture. You can tell I’m having a terrible time at work, because I’ll go and buy a new synthesizer, in the mistaken belief that I’ll become a pop star instead. (I sold loads of these recently and bought a new TV – a 37inch LCD doesn’t give me delusions of musical talent).

When I’m having a bad time running (I have a marathon in 2 months, and my first 20 miler is on Sunday, and in the last 2 weeks I’ve run a total of twice, covering about 16 miles between those two runs – I’m calling it a rest period, but its not going to help my chances) I start to question my motives for running. I enjoy it (most of the time) but what am I going to achieve? Maybe I have really high standards, but will I one day look back at my running career and be pleased that I ran 4 marathons (yes – I’m already very proud of that) or will I be disappointed that after 5 years of running, I never progressed further than “mediocre” (this is what I’m worried about).

I don’t have the dedication to improve hugely, and even if I did – where would it get me? I don’t have an enormous desire to be “a better runner”, I just have a desire to be “fit and healthy and happy and beautiful” and I’m mostly there.

I took a year off the marathons (well – about 8 months off between finishing the last, and starting the training for the next) because I realised I was losing big chunks of my life to running. When you need to run 15-20 miles each weekend, its quite difficult to visit the family, go out with friends, or sit in front of a computer, or with a guitar on my lap being creative (which is actually the easiest thing to fit in around the running).

I went swimming at lunchtime today, and loved it - 500 metres in all manner of unidentifiable strokes in about 25 minutes. (I only have 2 gears in swimming – swimming and hanging onto the side of the pool panting. Technically there is another – drowning – but I’ve avoided that one so far)

I also bought myself a swanky new bike the other day, and had a great time being shown that all the lightweight carbon fibre in the world won’t make me faster than the wife when it comes to powering up the hills in Richmond Park!

I want to do a triathlon. It’s a goal – it impresses people (as much as having run marathons) and it is something I can do that Lisa can’t do (she can swim, but only in a splashing about trying to make sure her contact lenses don’t float away type way).

I’m hoping that by starting off as a mediocre runner, and adding the ability to cycle in a pretty mediocre way, as well as training really hard to be a mediocre swimmer, I will then become more than the mediocre sum of my mediocre parts, and become a passable triathlete.

All the way though – I’ll be making sure I enjoy all aspects of the training – keep healthy and happy and beautiful (beeeefcaaake!) and have plenty of time for being creative.

procrastinating about running

2009-02-06T15:09:00.004Z

i have a cold. i'm supposed to be running (quite a lot) tonight. i'm torn between the need to get the mileage back up after the filthy weather we've had this week (which means i've not run since 11 miles on sunday, and that was my first run for a week).

i'm supposed to be doing about 16-18 miles this week, as a preparation for the 20 mile run on the 15th. that isn't going to happen.

i'm resigned to running home - which is 9 miles, and if i'm feeling ace i might do some detours, but 16 is not likley. i'm doing at least 11 on sunday (maybe a tiny bit more) and i've done one 16 and one 14 so far.

i'm more concerned that i'm going to make myself (more) ill by running in the cold. in fact - looking out the window, i'm trying to work out if it is raining. if it is raining i'll be on the tube.

i've just checked at the window. its not raining. i have no excuse. i'll run home, and wipe my nose on the back of my glove. i'm confident i'll enjoy it once i get out there - its been a horrible week, and the escape from the office with the cold wind in my (currently almost flowing) hair will be wonderful. can you see what i'm doing here? working psychology on myself. i'm almost fooled.

been busy

2009-02-04T09:54:00.003Z

I'm thinking about moving to smaller - shorter posts - if I think of something more substantial, i'll write it, but i'm finding it hard to find the time (and the inspiration) to get a good rant on.

Of course - I've also been very busy writing a novel. It is top secret, but I can tell you it currently has 18000 (very short) words, and far too much use of buts and ands, and i'm probably about half way through. thats all i'm telling you for now.

we've had loads of snow - so i was working from home yesterday and the day before. its affecting the marathon training - i'm supposed to be running home from work tonight, but it was so icy on the pavements back at my end of town, i'm not sure how far i'd get before fear of a broken ankle would force me to jump on the tube...

Socks for Christmas please

2008-12-24T11:53:00.001Z

Parents are hell to buy presents for. You can't surprise them. Only disappoint. I should have got the message when I found the present I’d bought for one parent in the jumble sale pile within 2 weeks. there I was thinking she takes baths, so I’ll buy her some nice bath stuff (a whole range of bubble baths from boots, on a nice decorative hanging shelf type thing).

of course, what i didn't realise was that she likes posh baths. with posh soaps. and my definition of posh soaps was wildly different from hers.

What do you get for the man who has everything? Penicillin.

I'm doing all right. I want for nothing. if a new record comes out and I want to hear it, I’ll pop along to HMV in my lunch hour and buy it. I’m beyond the point where I have to justify the expense. (CD or lunch... hmmm let me think). I also would generally want to buy it now. I’m impatient - I wouldn't want to know that the Killers new album was available, and I hadn’t heard it for 6 weeks.

When you are poor, then presents are easier. I’d be wondering about buying something, saving up for it for weeks, or, if it was released before Christmas, I’d ask the parents nicely, and hope they sorted it in time. I may not have yet watched Batman Begins on Blu-Ray, but I’ve had it since the day it came out. It has been available to me for that time, and that’s the important thing.

I also have a problem with other people shopping for me. If I’d asked my Grandma to buy me batman begins on Blu-ray, one of the following two things would have happened.

• She’d have bought the DVD, as she has no idea about high definition, Playstation 3s or 1080p LCD televisions.
• She’d have paid WHSmith £25 for it, instead of ordering it online for £15 (still expensive but cheaper than 2 cinema tickets, and you don’t have to spend so much time shushing chavs in our lounge.)

(It is my prediction that WHSmith will follow Woolies and Zavvi into administration in 2009, as they can’t keep getting away with relying on high profit impulse buys, instead of the high volume sensible prices that play and Amazon are doing (relatively) well with. Mark my words. Go on – get marking!)

Wasting other peoples money gets my goat even more that wasting my own.

I was thinking about gifts that would be appreciated, and surprising. Gift vouchers are always nice (although it took me months to get through the WHSmith ones I got last year for the above reasons! They went mostly on newspapers and magazines.)

I think next year I might give everyone an hour’s computer lesson, where I tidy up their machine, get them AV and patched up, and leave them with instructions (and my phone number) in case anything goes wrong. I’m obviously not accessible enough based on the fact that my dad had gone to Currys, bought an iPod, failed to get it working and took it back to Currys, all in the space of an afternoon. I’d not received the text saying “how do I get music onto an iPod from my computer?” in time apparently. Don’t ask me what he did when his computer got a “virus”.

As a gift to you all now – here’s a computer lesson. Hopefully many of you are far beyond this level, but here goes, in no particular order:

• Install ONE antivirus product
• Keep auto update active on Windows.
• Make sure windows firewall and spy ware monitors are on.
• Don’t download compressed (zipped) files, unless you are totally confident of where they came from.
• Keep a backup on a totally separate disk (not a partition of the same disk) of anything important. Set a reminder on your computer, or in your diary to do it, as often as needed. A £15 pen drive would probably be big enough for most of your documents.
• Once a month(ish) run “disk defragmenter” and watch your PC speed up.
• Don’t open and print every email you receive.
• Don’t forward on virus warnings. 99.9% of them are bogus. Why would the Australian police force care if your adobe acrobat was up to date, and why wouldn’t they spell check the warning?

Next year – if you have the means, and were wondering what to give me for Christmas, here are some ideas.

• Advice – there are bound to be some things about which you know more than me. Help me out. Teach me psychology. Help me understand Sex in the City.
• Skills – sew my buttons onto my shirts. Turn up my trousers. Make me curtains. Tile my bathroom. Paint my doors.
• Time. It takes me ages to buy socks. I’m a man, so every shopping trip is a special and deliberate one. If I need socks, I’ll make special trip to the sock shop, deliberate about which ones to get, queue, pay, go home, wear them twice, and then wonder what happened to them. (I’ll let you fill in the Blackadder quote yourself.) Buy me socks, just when you are passing the sock aisle. Keep them cheap – I’ve not yet identified the difference in quality between yesterdays Tesco socks, and today’s Jasper Conran.

Happy Christmas, and a merry new year. I put them in the right way round. Why would anyone want anything other than a merry new year (unless they were planning on running a 10k race on New Year ’s Day?

...for fifteen pounds a year

2008-11-20T18:06:00.004Z

"i'll sell your memories
for 15 pounds per year"

Muse - The small print

I'm sitting in the spare room, and writing this as avoidance for making music. I used to sit in a dark room for hours on end, eating pringles and getting knobs all greasy. you can hear the results on my myspace page. you'll notice no updates over the last few years though.

Its all the wife's fault. wedded bliss is not good for making music. which would i rather do, get frustrated with my synth for not making the right bleepy noise, or sit in the lounge with a glass of wine, my beautiful wife, and a film?

Lisa's out right now, and i'm still not making music. the thing is, times change... i'm off in a bit to make some pastry, get a pasta sauce on, and attempt an apple tart (ambitious).

Its not just the time aspect though - its about inspiration, as Mr Bellamy says - he'll sell your memories - for 15 pounds a year. he has things to sing about, to write about - and even if they aren't his, they are still being sung. when he became all loved up, he moved from love songs to fears of the apocolypse. smart.

it doesn't always work though. Alanis morrisette is shit while happy. Her first album, is great, and now she's divorced, I understand her latest is back up to the same standard, but the less said about everything in between the better.

The man behind Spiritualised was lucky enough to be critically ill recently, and when he work from the coma, wrote his (second) best album to date. they'll never top "ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space", although I am probably biased towards that one, as for the first 6 months of lisa and my relationship it was our choice of snuggling song, and there are many happy memories associated with that time of my life.

I sold a large chunk of my music setup recently, and in addition to a new tv, I bought a new guitar. (i'm so domesticated, I got one to match the lounge's new decor - although that means it lives in the lounge, so i play it more often, so thats got to be a good thing.)

Its about 9 years since i last wrote a song, and nearly as long since I really sat down and made some music at all. yet still I can't sell the remaining 2 keyboards, drum machine, 2 effects units and goodness knows what else i have hanging around. its a shame really, as i really enjoyed it, but I try and be creative elsewhere. It was never going to make me famous or rich.

Benares vs Pizza Express

2008-10-23T11:09:00.006+01:00

Before we first went to Benares, nearly a year ago, I did some research, looking at user review sites, to see what other people thought. Mostly they seemed to be impressed, but I did notice a few bad reviews. Obviously I paid special attention to these, but I soon realised that they weren’t applicable to me. I’ll explain why.

The bad reviews came into two categories. The first category, was “people who were comparing Benares to other top class Michelin star restaurants in London or otherwise”, and thought that Benares was not as good as Tamarind, or Claridges, or The Ivy. This gave me my first reference point. The opinions of people who are able to compare between such venues are of no interest to me, as their expectations will be so much higher than my own, and their desire to put down what others deem to be of a quality, too great. I read them with interest, but didn’t let them sway my judgement.

The second category was “people who are so up themselves, they are not my sort of people”. It’s not so much a category, as a single review, where their entire enjoyment of a meal appeared to be dependant on the fact that when they asked for finger bowls, they were given hot towels! The opinion of people, who would complain about such a thing (in person at the time, and on the review site afterwards,) is of little interest to me, other than to satisfy my own sense of being a normal and rational member of society, who although appreciative of the ability to clean one’s hands is not going to get upset over the manner in which they are cleaned.

I fall into a third category, and I think you should know about this prior to reading my review, so you know if my judgement is of any interest to you. If you would insist on finger bowls, then enjoy my prose, but possibly don’t blame me if I recommend you give Benares your patronage, and they don’t meet your expectations.

My normal eating out is certainly of a higher class than many. I can’t remember the last time McDonalds, KFC, or Burger King (or their poor imitations) passed my lips, but the wife and I will often go to Wagamama, Pizza Express, or if we are in the vicinity, the excellent Mangosteen off Carnaby St is a veritable favourite. The curry houses of Brick Lane and our local Italian restaurants in Tooting have also never so far let us down. If we spend £40 between us on dinner for two, it was because we were really hungry, or shared a bottle of wine, or occasionally both. It is not unknown for our bill to be under £15 if we just want a main and a glass of water.

The occasion for our first visit to Benares was our first wedding anniversary. In April last year, Atul Kutcher had received his Michelin Star, his recipes in the Great British Menu and on Saturday Kitchen had got us excited, and his ability and willingness to make vegetarian food and put it on the menu sealed the deal. What helped too was a superb looking set menu, available lunchtimes and early dinner (until 18.30 I believe) which comprised of 3 courses, various extras, and a glass of wine for £29.99 each. The addition of two glasses of champagne, and the ubiquitous service charge left our final bill just short of 3 figures, but worth every penny.

We returned to celebrate my 31st birthday, although that was just an excuse to go back once they (finally) changed the set menu. I’m guessing it is an attempt to lure people back in following the new year lull, but the changes to the menu meant the price had dropped to £24.99 for the 3 courses, and the only thing apparently missing was that mineral water wasn’t included, where it was before.

We arrived at about 5 to 12, and the restaurant was still being prepared. We were sat down in the bar, given a bowl of complementary spicy nuts, and asked if we wanted drinks (we declined, knowing the wine with the meal would suffice).

Soon enough we were seated in the corner of the restaurant, and provided with menus, wine list and mini poppadoms and chutneys (tomato, gooseberry, chilli, and lime). I won’t repeat myself too much, but I’ll tell you now – everything we ate was the finest example of such a thing we’d ever had. My starter was Lemon Thyme Infused Pollack Cakes with Cucumber Pachadi. Lisa’s Grilled Artichoke Salad with Chat Masala Vinaigrette was amazing too. A generous glass of white wine arrived at this point too (red and sparkling were options).

Main courses of Tandoor Cooked Chicken Supreme with Chestnut Kedegree (rice) for me, and Pickled Pumpkin Risotto with Grilled Portobello Mushroom for Lisa, with a tikka type sauce on both, was accompanied by the lightest, tastiest naan bread.

The most spectacular hot towels we had ever seen arrived once we’d finished our mains, looking like two breath mints on a double tea light holder, the waiter poured boiling water over them, and they expanded upwards to about 3 times their original height into perfect hot damp towels. (Seeing our delight the maitre d’ slipped us a couple as we left!)

Our desserts were worthy of photography, however my telephone’s photography was not worthy of our desserts – see below for the pictures I took. Lisa’s Assortment of Kulfis – mango, pistachio and lychee, complete with flower petals, and my Star Anise Scented Orange Jelly with French Meringue, were almost too beautiful to demolish with spoons, but we did anyway.

Coffee and petit fours followed, (tea would have been allowed) and the meal was complete. Total bill, £60 (we forgot that mineral water wasn’t included) including service charge, which was a delight to pay, as the staff were perfect – attentive without being oppressive, there when you needed them, and invisible when you didn’t, and able to answer important questions (is there gelatine in Dave’s dessert, or will Lisa expect him to share it?) when required.

Obviously, it was all of an extremely high standard, but we were only eating off the set menu, we didn’t explore the £32 Lobster tails, or the £400 bottles of Krystal and Krug, but we left perfectly full (dinner in the evening was cheese on toast!) and certainly satisfied. The nature of the meal got me thinking about value for money, as I often do, so I’ve done some research into what the equivalent courses would have cost at Pizza Express – size of stomach not being a factor – I doubt I’d be able to eat all the below at one sitting.

Intro Noci 1.95
Starter Bruschetta 3.65
Main American Pizza 7.70
Side Garlic Bread 2.10
Dessert Toffee fudge glory 4.35
Coffee Filter coffee 1.75
Wine 175ml Chardonnay 3.80
Total 25.30

It kind of makes eating at the best restaurant I’ve ever eaten at seem a totally sensible and reasonably priced thing to do. Next time you are in Mayfair (Maybe browsing the Rolls Royce dealership next door) and you want a £25quid lunch – see if Benares has a table available…

New Years Eve (December 2007!)

2008-10-17T08:58:00.001+01:00

I'm not a big fan of New Years Eve. I've had some very enjoyable ones, but I’ve had some very enjoyable nights in general, and if I took all my enjoyable nights on new years eve, and compared them to my enjoyable nights not on new years eve, I think I enjoyed the enjoyable nights not on new years eve a lot more.

Don't get me wrong - I like years, and I like nights out, and I like celebrating new things, but put them all together and they are far less than the sum of their parts. The mighty Lee and Herring did a routine about the similarities of celebrating New Years Eve (particularly the millennium) and celebrating the changing of the mileage on the car from 9999 to 10000, cheering the meaningless change in an arbitrary count of a collection of units of time… I’m kind of with them there, although my innate sense of tidiness does enjoy seeing nice round numbers and I do enjoy seeing them all change at once.

For the Millennium, I went out, with some of my closest friends (and 69996 others), to see the Manic Street Preachers at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. It cost £30 a go, and compared to the alternatives, £10quid just to go to the pub, through to £100 to see “some fellahs playing records” as James Dean Bradfield put it, it was a bargain. Feeder, Super Furry Animals, the Manics, and the BBC and all the fireworks on the big screen, gave a great sense of occasion, and we all felt suitably celebrated. I stayed sober – avoiding the ludicrous price of booze at the stadium, and meaning I could drive across town to a party and the lovely Carys (but that is another story).

The next year we went down the civic centre and saw Madness or Shawaddywaddy or some such, and enjoyed the fireworks and sprayed cheap sparkling wine in the air and upset some people who didn’t like cheap sparking wine landing in their faces, and drank some cheap sparkling wine and annoyed Dan by singing the “hey baby” song very loudly so everyone joined in with the ooh aah bit and drank some more cheap sparking wine and went to bed (tired but happy) although I think Dan might have actually gone to the second flight of stairs, thinking it was his bed and wondering why it was so lumpy.

6 or 7 days later, I met the wife and everything changed.

Being in a couple at New Years Eve is great. No pressure to snog a complete stranger, no painful face when you get slapped after snogging a complete stranger, no awkward moments following the snogging of someone who wasn’t a complete stranger, but it might not have been such a good idea to decide to snog them as peer pressure is a terrible thing and you were probably better off just as mates who never snogged at new years eve, instead of being mates who snogged at new years eve and does that mean we should go out on a date, or kiss goodbye after we go out just as friends or should we never speak to each other ever again.

We also found Twisted By Design – the best club night in the world, run by the best DJ/Promoter in the world – Gary Twisted. He also therefore – ran the best New Years Eve in the world. Apart from one, (when we watched the fireworks from an Auckland hotel room) we did all our Cardiff New Years Eves at twisted. Always a great night guaranteed, with the added bonus of ensuring you are by the window at midnight and watching the aforementioned Cardiff fireworks from the warmth of a sweaty dance floor along with the dulcet tones of Half Man Half Biscuit. At £6.50 (for about the last 5 years) it represents perfect value for money – which I perceive as being “would I pay that to go there and do that on any other night of the year – if yes – then its good value for money”.

Then we messed it up by moving to London.

20quid to go to Brixton academy tonight is probably ticking this box for many people – XFM DJs, some cool bands, 9pm till 4am, and reasonably local for us, but I wouldn’t do this any other night, so I wont tonight. Tonight, I have other priorities. Tonight I have the wife, who I may or may not snog at midnight. I have a 10k race tomorrow morning, where I may or may not get a decent time (for me – my last 10k was 2 days after smashing my knee open, so it should be possible to run better than that – even after a couple of glasses of a cheeky Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.) I have a few new DVDs to choose from, and a better than average chance of going to bed with the prettiest girl in the world.

I’m sorry to any single people reading this. I remember how much fun it is not fulfilling your expectations of a night out – let alone a new years eve, so forget about it. It’s only a number. It’s a midnight like any other. Enjoy your evening whatever you end up doing – and don’t do anything you won’t enjoy, just because of the date. The same goes for you loved up couples too.

Happy New Year, all the best for 2008, and sleep well tonight. My resolution is to keep on posting, even if it is only the wife and brother who are reading, I’d enjoy writing this just as much if I had a million readers, or just the two of you. I’m aiming for something new every Tuesday, so slap me if I don’t deliver.

Circular meme email thing. - Jan 2008

2008-10-14T10:54:00.002+01:00

Every so often, you will probably get one of these circular emails – either as an email, a bulletin board notice, or a post to your Facebook wall (or similar). First of all – I have nothing against the person who sent it to me- she’s a great girl and one of by best friends. I liked reading her answers, and yes – I guess I did learn something new about her because of what she said. However – I am a perpetual cynic, and I thought I’d do my best to over analyse the whole nature of these things, and the reasons behind them.

First of all – I suspect many of them to be phishing scams. Some of the questions can only be there for this purpose. If my friends (this is who I should be forwarding this to) don’t already know my birthday or my middle name, it is not the end of the world. If they thought it was useful to know this, they would ask me, or I would have already told them. I won’t be answering these questions – certainly not on the open forum of my internet blog. I try to be more careful than Clarkson, and although all sorts of info is available on me (you can easily find the individual who owns every website address for example), I do my best not to broadcast it all round the place.

Many of the questions don’t have any value at all. Question 2 for example – what the heck are you going to discover about me, by knowing I prefer diamonds to pearls? Were you planning of buying me earrings and now you know what sort to buy for me? Maybe my preference is for an entirely different reason… (More on these sorts of questions as we go down the list…

Some of the questions are almost entirely invalid. It is obviously a list of American origin, (use of the word “Candy”, and the choice of popcorn flavours for example) so I’m guessing some things are just more important for our Yankee cousins to know about their friends.

Anyway – here are my answers – trying to give the information in an enjoyable way, and injecting some personality into them (questioning and expanding on the questions wherever possible), is the only way I can think of that this becomes any more than a bit of an ego trip. The assumption that your friends are actually interested in such information is possibly a little vain (although my sticking this and so much other crap all over the internet is certainly vainer).
If you want to get in contact with someone – just send them an email. If I got a note from a long lost friend, or a current friend saying “hey – I was thinking about you the other day – how are you doing?” I’d be far happier about it than getting (yet) another circular email sent to their entire mailbox. This again does not apply to this particular friend who sent this particular circular – we speak regularly, and I have no objection to being copied in on anything she thinks will amuse me.

1. What time did you get up this morning?

This morning was Monday, so I was out of bed at 7.20, had a vast bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes (own brand) for breakfast, then it was on with the suit and work started with a conference call at 8.30. this is pretty normal for a week day.

2. Diamonds or pearls?

What a daft question. I’m a boy. I guess diamonds, because they are worth more and shiny, and vegan too. I’m not a vegan by the way, but I try to be a bit conscientious of such things and make sure animals are well treated. A pearl is only there because an oyster was uncomfortable. Why aren’t there more precious stones made out of animal’s internal problems. “I bought my wife a cow gall stone necklace for our anniversary” might be just as thoughtful.

3. What is your favourite TV show?

Right now or of all time? Are we talking a single show, or a whole series? Are we talking the best I ever saw, or that I’m enjoying at the moment, or should I treat it like desert island discs TV – the one show I would want to watch forever? I’ll answer them all I think. Right now it’s Ugly Betty/Heroes/Lost/Torchwood/Top Gear, as they are the only ones I’ll ensure I never ever miss. If I really had to choose between them all, I think Ugly Betty would win. Of all time it has to be Blackadder. (I’ll leave it at that cos I can’t choose a series or episode). Best single show I ever saw would be the Top Gear with the journey across the Southern states of the USA. If it was desert island discs TV, I would want Top Gear too, as I can watch them again and again and enjoy them just as much as the first time.

4.. What do you usually have for breakfast?

Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes. Now that is an interesting thing, that you might not generally know about your friends, which you might like to know. Certainly if they are coming to stay, and you aren’t sure what their preference is – oooh – you say, Dave mentioned in that email he usually has Crunchy Nut Cornflakes – if I get some of them in, then he’ll be happy in the mornings. Very nice too, however I’m also partial to a bacon sandwich, the occasional Frostie, or, when in America, fruit loops so don’t bore me with what I usually have. As long as the cereal is not made by the evil Nestle, then I’ll give it a go. Its nice to be surprised once in a while. If you have oat cakes and cheese for breakfast – I’m with you. That’s why we go on holiday.

5. What is your middle name?

Get lost. I’m not giving that away here. If you really want to know, give me a call and ask me, but I guess you don’t really care cos you would have already asked me or sneaked a look at my driving licence already.

6. What food do you dislike?

Cauliflower and mushrooms and most offal unless in sausage/pate form. Anything else I’ll give a go. Some shellfish always seem a bit icky, but as I ate a slug once (while old enough to know better) I won’t discount anything. Now again – this is a useful piece of information. However – unless I’m keeping a reference database of all the answers my friends get, I think I’ll just check with them before I cook them dinner…

7. What is your favourite CD at the moment?

Radiohead’s In Rainbows – although that was last week really. I’ve moved on to Patrick Wolf now. Another good question. When geographically separated from your friends, you lose touch of nice things like music recommendations and such informal conversation topics. It is sort of why I started this site up, so if people did care about my feelings on such mundane things, they could see what I’m reading/watching/listening to, and let me know theirs…

8. What type of car do you drive?

I drive a Mini. This is well documented elsewhere on the website. Her name is Matilda, and she’s my pride and joy, although not so much that I wash her ever.

9. Favourite sandwich?

Ask me this 2 weeks ago, and it would have been a chicken breast baguette, with mayo instead of butter, lettuce and cucumber and freshly ground black pepper from the canteen upstairs.
Ask me this today, and it’s a Cheese and Marmite baguette which I made this morning. Why? Because I went free range, and I know the chicken and the mayo being used in any canteen in the land, are not going to be anything like free range, unless they announce themselves as such. Hellmann’s mayo will be at some point this year, although I doubt the canteen would stretch to such quality.

10. What characteristic do you despise?

I’m assuming this is referring to a personal characteristic of other people. Despise is a very strong word, so I’m going to go for “the characteristic of believing that it is ok to make other people’s lives a misery, because you think it is for some misguided greater good, or for any other reason really”. Thus encompassing Bush/Blair and their “lets kill a hell of a lot of people because that must be better than them having a nasty dictator, right through to the idiots on the bus who think that playing music on mobile phones and generally being obnoxious is absolutely fine – in fact we should thank them for introducing us to their fine taste in tunes.

11. Favourite item of clothing?

The Calvin Klein Boxers that came free when I bought 3 pairs in a shop in New York. They are nicer than any other undies I have ever worn, unfortunately they are also more expensive, and I have a lot of perfectly ok undies, so there is no ability/need to extend this variety further into my general collection. Oh, and I love my West Ham United away shirt, with my name and number on the back. It makes me feel like a big kid and I love it. (I’ll be wearing it on Wednesday for the FA cup replay on the telly)

12. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go?

Very tricky (and very good) question. I’ve just come back from New York, which is probably my favourite place in the world (the only place I’ve been back to 3 times), but if you think of the question as an offer, someone giving me 3 weeks to go anywhere, then I think the South Island of New Zealand would win. We did the North Island a few years ago, but would not have had time to do the whole country justice (we’d have been driving constantly for 2 weeks), so one day we’ll go back and do the rest justice.

13. What colour is your bathroom(s)?

White with blue bits, but who cares? What are you learning about me by knowing such a minor piece of information? Maybe this will become interesting for the one in a million freaks who have their walls in pink sackcloth with burgundy tiles on the floor, and a brown toilet, but they don’t exist in my middle of the road, decluttered, seen too many episodes of house doctor life. Thank goodness.

14. Favourite brand of clothing?

Calvin Klein. See above. I was partial to Cyberdog for a while, but they’ve not excited me for a while, and I’m all grown up now. The only thing I get truly moist about is the lining on a suit, or a particularly snazzy tie. When did I become a yuppie by the way?

15. Where would you retire to?

A sleepy seaside town like Swanage, or a sleepy village like Sixpenny Handley. I’d have to visit the city and annoy people by getting them to stand up for me on the tube regularly though. I don’t think I would retire abroad. Unless my whole extended family happened to be abroad too…

16. What was your most recent memorable birthday?

Probably my 29th. It’s the only one where I can remember exactly what I did. Although I’ve just realised it wasn’t actually on my birthday – it was a couple of days later I saw my first West Ham match at Upton Park. Thinking about it, I can’t remember what I actually did on my birthday – actually on the day – for many many years. Therefore my most recent memorable birthday is my 10th, when I had some friends round, and we watched a film. I think it was possibly the Goonies, but I’m really not sure. I’m also not sure if I actually remember it, or if I think I do because I have photos of it. The more I think about it, I’m thinking of some more… my 19th birthday I was working at Old Orleans, and I actually ate there on a Friday night, with my Mum, Pat and Martyn. It was a great meal (I probably had the rib/chicken combo) and Alica did us a huge (and I believe free) desert. 17th was good cos I had my first driving lesson too, but not as recent as 19th. I’m going to make sure 31 is memorable, as it is on a Saturday for the first time in many years, and I’m having some of my nearest and dearest over for a party.

17. Furthest place you are sending this?

The internet. I’m not forwarding to anyone directly, although I’ll send an email directing them to these answers to Scotland.

18. Who do you least expect to send this back to you?

Tony Blair. (See 10). You see what a pointless question this is when you over analyze it!

19. Person you expect to send it back first?

I don’t expect anyone to after seeing my sarcastic comments about doing such a thing.

20. Favourite saying?

If a jobs worth doing – kill Baldrick before you start. Adaptable for all sorts of situations.

21. When is your birthday?

Yeah. Right. Would you like to know my bank account number too while you are there?

22. Are you a morning person or a night person?

Depends what I was doing the night before. I adjust myself to the needs of my lifestyle.

23. What is your shoe size?

I’ll answer in American. 11. Again – what possible interest would anyone else have in such a mundane fact. Would you introduce yourself at a party with “Hi I’m Dave! I’m a shoe size 11(US)”? No. because the person you are introducing yourself to would say. Hi Dave. Are you a bit odd as well? Of course – as FHM pointed out the other day, the whole blogging phenomenon is a strange one – they asked what would happen if all the bloggers stood in the street and just said it to everyone passing by? (Answer – more stabbings). I think they have missed the point, I’m not forcing anyone to read this crap. It is almost entirely for my own benefit and (in)sanity that I do this. If I want to hear someone spouting their opinions, I’ll go to the labour party conference.

24. Pets?

No. I am neither responsible enough, nor do I have a stable enough lifestyle to even keep a fish. I love cats, but I’m allergic to most of them, and my family are allergic to the rest. One day I might get an iguana, although I think it will be happier in the jungle, so I can’t see it happening. Also, pets eat so much meat, which in turn has to be bred and reared and looked after, the social responsibility of ethically keeping an animal for your/its own enjoyment is too much for me to justify.

25. What did you want to be when you were little?

Bigger. I hated being the smallest person in my family, so the day I felt able to punch my brother in the head, I’m afraid I did. We never (properly) fought again, although you’d have thought he’d learned when he was chasing me round the house, and I ran through the front door, closing it behind me, and he kept going, smashing though it and heavily lacerating his arm. It was a while before the parents left us alone again!

26. How are you today?

Bored enough with my job to have been writing this guff for the last 2 hours.

27. What is your favourite candy?

The common or garden mars bar is difficult to beat.

28. What is your favourite flower?

Chrysanthemums. Cheap pretty, long lasting and come in a variety of crazy colours.

29. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?

13th April. The London Marathon, and my breaking the 4 hour barrier for the first time.

30. What church do you attend?

Why do you assume I attend a church? How odd to encourage me to discuss my religious beliefs by assuming I go to church. This question is almost guaranteed to offend someone. Chapel, synagogue, mosque, hall? Why can’t the question (if it has to exist at all) be “are you religious in any way?” or “do you believe in God?” unless you are trying to stalk me, so you not only know all my personal details, but when I’ll be out of the house on a Sunday morning so you can come round and steal the DVD player… OK. I’ll answer. I don’t attend church religiously, although I do believe in, and have a relationship with God/Jesus, and I enjoy attending church with my Dad when I’m with him. No other vicar compares.

31. What are you listening to right now?

I’m not really listening to it, but I can hear the general hubbub of a reasonably busy office.

32. What was the last thing you ate?

A cheese and Marmite baguette. And a can of tango.

33. Do you wish on stars?

No. is this any star? In Britain I might wish upon a shooting star, should I want to be all romantic with a lady, but as I imagine this is a mostly American custom, I move that this question be stricken from the record.

34. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?

Black. Like Marilyn Manson’s. were you after a more witty answer like “I’d be crimson, because you might not think you need me most of the time, but occasionally, like when you are doing an autumn scene (in crayon) you’ll be glad you had me”? well sorry – you should have phrased the question with that expectation.

35. How is the weather right now?

Very nice thank you. (notice the question was “How is the weather right now?” not “What is the weather like right now?” hence me giving an emotional response, not a physical response.

36. Last person you spoke to on the phone?

The Banks SDM team. It was the conference call I had at 8.30 this morning.

37. Do you like the person who sent this to you?

She’s fab. I just hope she isn’t offended by my taking the piss.

38. Favourite soft drink?

Soft as in fizzy drink - Pepsi max in the morning, Tango in the afternoon. Soft as in Non Alcoholic – Strong black coffee.

39. Favourite restaurant?

Benares. We’re going for the second time ever on Saturday, because I can’t afford to go more often than annually!

40. Hair colour?

On me, Brown with a heck of a lot of grey coming through. Occasionally bleach blonde. On other people, I’d choose very dark brown (certainly on girls. If I had to draw my ideal girl, she’d have long (past the shoulders) dark brown hair with a fringe, although very short hair looks great on girls whatever the colour. The wife’s hair is beautiful, but I sometimes wish she’d be a bit adventurous with it).

41. Sibling?

I’ve already mentioned the brother. I can’t think of a single close friend about whom I don’t know this information though. Test me when you next see me and we’ll find out.

42. Favourite day of the year?

Got to be Christmas.

43. What was your favourite toy as a child?

I can’t think what it might be. I remember toys I wanted, but I don’t remember having a single favourite. It would either be the Star Wars stuff or Lego. Probably Lego actually, although Scalextric was brilliant.

44. Summer or winter?

Winter. It is easier to heat up when you are too cold, than to cool down when you are too hot. Especially when you are wearing a suit on the tube.

45.. Hugs or kisses?

Depends entirely on context. Dan – Hugs. Lisa – Kisses. (thus a stupid question, although I suppose it is inviting a more open answer than the initial thought would imply… maybe it is a very clever question.).

46. Chocolate or Vanilla?

Food or sexual preference?

47. Do you want your friends to email you back?

Always. Why would I do such a selfless thing as tell them all this rubbish if I didn’t expect them to answer in an even more entertaining way?

48. When was the last time you cried?

At the end of Finding Neverland when it was on the telly at Christmas. I always cry during that sort of film.

49. What is under your bed?

A pair of big storage boxes, containing amongst other things, coats I never wear, luggage I only ever take to Glastonbury, and loads of Lisa’s stuff. And a large colony of dust bunnies. And the box to my hair clippers.

50. Who is the friend you have had the longest?

Externally to family (cos they are friends too) it would have to be the whole Weirdo clan. Of course, when you’ve known friends for that long they are pretty much family, which is nice too.

51. Favourite smell?

CK Eternity Moment on Lisa.

52. What are you afraid of?

Being ignored and unimportant. I am an attention seeker, and never like to feel impotent and powerless. The thought of a thousand people reading this while I’m not paying attention excites me. Of course I am realistic about the chances of this happening too.

53. Plain, buttered, or salted Popcorn?

SWEET – for goodness sake you Americans have to make it either REALLY unhealthy, or taste like cardboard. Popcorn plus sugar = joy.

55. How many years at your current job?

2 and a quarter. Longest I’ve ever lasted anywhere, hence my trying to get a change.

56. Favourite day of the week?

Saturday. Proper freedom from all commitments.

57. How many towns have you lived in?

Sittingbourne, Salisbury, Weston. 3. I’ve obviously missed out the Villages and the Cities. I like making questions seem stupid by answering them pedantically.

58. Do you make friends easily?

I don’t think so. I have a very few close friends, and a lot of “people I know”.

59. How many people will you be sending this to?

I’ll point one person at it specifically. Anyone else who sees it will be seeing it on their terms, I won’t be sending it to them.

Why we moved to london (old entry)

2008-10-09T15:37:00.003+01:00

People who don't live in London get annoyed when others (especially the likes of the BBC) go on about London as if the second you cross the M25 you fall off the edge of the world. I can kind of understand this, but there is an answer. London is Brilliant.

I grew up in all sorts of places, but from the age of 7 it was rural Gloucestershire, and from 11-18 it was rural Dorset. And I mean rural – the Forest Of Dean has a dialect so strong, within a year of leaving, I went back and bumped into an old friend, and I could understand about a third of what she says. You can spit into Wales from the Forest, and the residents frequently do. Don’t be surprised if the census form allows you to choose between Welsh, Scottish, English and Forester in 2011.

We moved to Sixpenny Handley when I was 11, a town of about 1000 people, where my Dad was treated as a local celebrity (he was the Vicar) and therefore everyone knew me. Great when it came to getting the plumb babysitting jobs, but not so great when it came to the “sniper” incident. (note to babysitters, if the 14 year old you are looking after (when you are 16(!)) suggests you both have a go on his brother’s air gun in the back garden, you say – no – the super Nintendo is just fine thank you.)

Sixpenny Handley is 15 miles from anywhere. Salisbury, Wimborne, Ringwood, (you’ve probably never heard of the last two, which aptly demonstrates how remote it is. There is one scheduled bus, which takes a detour through the village on its route between Salisbury and Weymouth. The School bus took us the 15 miles to Wimborne Minster, where I attended QE School, until I was 18. Despite their best efforts, I got the Bs at A level I needed to go to University.

Cardiff is a great City – so many of the wonderful things that go with being a national Capital, (nightlife, shops, museums, gorgeous waterfront, beautiful parks) but shared only between about a quarter of a million people. Going from sixpenny Handley to Cardiff was quite a shock. In Handley I’d learned to drive at the earliest opportunity (3 months from 17th birthday to passing the test – with a 3 week gap to have pneumonia in the middle) just in order to be free from the local pastimes of sitting on the bench drinking cider, or (the very entertaining) terrorising the cows on Woody’s Quad Bike. With free reign over Daddy’s Astra, I could visit friends (they all lived in Wimborne or around), go to the shops; see a film at the cinema… In Cardiff, my friends lived in the same block of the halls of residence, a 5 minute walk took us to the cinema, night clubs, girls (not that they noticed) and all the associated fun of the city.

10 years and one engagement later, I realised I was tired of Cardiff. Our circle of friends were now spread far and wide, I was working in Bristol, having exhausted all the IT Company in Cardiff, and we were travelling to London for culture fixes far too often. We might as well move to London. Commuting would take less time and cost less, gigs would cost more, but at least they would happen (too many tours not visiting Wales at all – still a problem.) and so many museums, venues, shops and restaurants that a 30 year old family of two would take a long time to get bored – or more likely the female member of that family would decide she’d rather have ponies than see the New Young Pony Club and an escape to the country would be required (the 10 year plan).

So we found a nice house, in a nice area which we could afford (just!) and settled down. Saw plays at the national Theatre, The Globe, the West End, gigs at Ally Pally, the 100 club and the Natural History Museum, and got membership to the Tate Modern, but ensured we never missed anything at the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy…

Every so often we have the odd moment when it all makes sense, and we bask in that self satisfied glow of people whose lives are going pretty well.

A couple of weekends ago, we had a weekend of those moments. Lisa and I had recently started new jobs, hers a promotion, mine a new start with a new company, and we had a weekend of gigs. Straight from work on Friday, to Mangosteen, the best Thai restaurant in London, then on to the 100 club to see Brakes, preceded by 3 support acts ranging from shouty electro pop, to 2 of the most beautiful Japanese girls playing traditional Eastern instruments to an awesome electro beat backing.

Saturday we had a lie in, got to Camden market and looked around, had a drink at a bar where a work colleague of Lisa’s was DJing, ate huge amounts of cheap food as the markets were closing, jumped on the tube to South Kensington, had a drinks reception in the main hall of the Natural History Museum, before being led to a closed of room where British Sea Power treated us to a free gig! None of this happened in Cardiff (not at that scale anyway) and nothing ever happened in Sixpenny Handley, and we shared a whole weekend of those reassuring moments that everything you’d planned was coming together nicely.

Warning - this entry may give you OCD

2008-10-03T09:10:00.004+01:00

Pierre Bonnard painted a lot of paintings of his wife. Invariably she was getting into or out of the bath. Some might think he was a dirty perv who liked to take any opportunity of catching her with her frock off, and this was the only time guaranteed that she would be in this situation, others (some might call them people who know the truth, or who have researched things more than my usual making of blind assumptions for comedy purposes) believe she had a skin condition that meant she had to stay damp most of the time (this was before Oil of Olay was invented).

I have another theory.

I came up with this one when I noticed that many of the aspects of public toilets were becoming automated, and automated in such a way as to minimize contact with hands. Dirty hands. Hands that have just done unspeakable things with unthinkable areas. I don’t need to go into the detail (although it would be far easier to fill 1000 words if I did).

The idea is, that if the hand drier works without you having to push a button to activate it, you are less likely to pick up the germs from the person who was so filthy to start with, that the hand washing process did not fully remove all the filth. Drying filthy hands is fine, as long as you don’t have to make the drier filthy to do so.

After that, I noticed that taps are starting to have sensors, so they activate only when you wave your hands nearby. There is nothing worse than using a filthy hand to operate a tap, then washing your hands, and re-encrusting your clean hand with the filth that you left behind when switching the tap on.

The toilet flush is now invariably motion controlled, sometimes sensing the motion of the back away from the cistern (or the leaning forwards to achieve a more comfortable position, relieving a trapped nerve, or letting the blood get back into the lower leg and preventing that excruciating post pins and needles hypersensitivity) and risking a monumentally damp posterior, requiring further careful wiping… you get the idea.

This is all, of course – completely pointless. I’ll come onto the reasons for this pointlessness later, but in the meantime, the other aspect of the sensitivity can be addressed – which is the environmental concern.

There are a number of potential hypocrisies involved in being green.

If the solution to using too much water is to have movement sensitive taps, what is the solution to powering the movement sensors?

If I re-use carrier bags, how do I compensate for the additional fuel used to carry them all the way back to the supermarket?

Is it better to have the supermarket deliver to me (using an inefficient van, but doing a big old round trip instead of all those little trips in cars) or for me to go to the supermarket (it is the former, as I have a Mini, and it takes about 20 minutes to order online, plus about 15 to put it all away once it arrives, instead of the 2 hours it takes to drive to Sainsbury’s, park, find a trolley, find every thing I want, then go back and find everything I need, then search the entire place for Marmite, before queuing for 25 minutes to get through the checkout…

If I cycle to work instead of driving, I have to eat the equivalent of a mars bar to replace the energy expended in the ride. What impact do the food miles of a mars bar have on the environment?

Of course, if we thought like that all the time, we’d never go anywhere or do anything.

When I go to the loo, there are any number of occasions where my clean hands have the opportunity to become muddied up. I open the door to get into the loo. This is fine. I open the cubicle door, which is also fine. I then lock the door, which is where the problems begin. The last person to leave that cubicle had no option, but to use his nasty fingers to unlock the door. The flush might be movement sensitive, but the inside of the door isn’t. then, I use my sullied digits to undo my trousers, contaminating not just my hands, but my belt, buttons and undies. Then I sit.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t do anything these days without being entertained while I do it. I can’t walk to the tube without the iPod on and I can’t sit on the tube without a book. And I can’t sit on the toilet without playing worms on my mobile phone.

Never ever touch my mobile phone. It must be the most germ ridden device in the world. Once I’ve dispatched Rockard, Nails, Killer and Deadly, the phone goes back in my pocket, my hands, stink waves emanating off them like Ralph Wiggum’s portrait of Moe the bartender, leave my own trail of residue on the clothing, the door lock, the inside door handle, and (if it isn’t movement sensitive) the tap, and only when I wash my hands, so do I finally become content that I have done all I can to remain clean.

Of course, not everyone washes their hands. Some people walk straight out, gripping the inside of the toilet door (toilet doors invariably open into the room), leaving a malodorous palm print of bacteria for even the most cleanliness minded individual to pick up.

In short, every aspect of our daily lives is dirty. We can’t escape it, and we might as well wrap ourselves up in sterilized Clingfilm and sleep in a bath of alcohol based hand sanitizer.

Or, bringing me back to the bath obsessed wife of Pierre, perpetually bathe – morning noon and night, because only by constant cleansing can we ever be truly clean

Save The BBC.

2008-09-18T10:47:00.004+01:00

Funded through a poll tax (why aren’t people taking to the streets to object about this one – even the blind only get a couple of quid off, and the deaf, who can’t use radio at all get nothing off!) the BBC has a tough job of providing public service broadcasting, and trying to appease the general population, being socially responsible and unbiased, and keeping to a remit of entertaining and informing, within the budget given by the licence fee.

The BBC’s purpose is:

To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain.

Nice and broad and woolly, but succinct and accurate. However – there are a few things that worry me about them. Back in the day, the BBC was quite happy to give us 2 TV channels, and 5 radio stations. They charged us a licence fee, and all was well.

Along comes digital, and the BBC thinks – hey – people can have hundreds of TV channels and radio stations – lets chop up our services and give people more choice. Thus we end up with 7 TV stations, and 9 or more radio stations (I can’t be bothered to count them).

We’ve always had local variations – hundreds of radio stations, and local sections on the core stations too. Very useful for traffic info, and local news is a vital part of any society.

Of course, with digital, they can’t be local any more, so there are 4 (I believe) BBC regions, 1 for each of the countries of the UK.

The wonderful BBC website came along, and became the most trusted news and information service in the country – aided by the BBCs remit not to have adverts. The worldwide brand meant services sprang up around the world, either charging for content by subscription on cable networks, or providing service with adverts. I’m the first to say I don’t want my licence fee paying for some ex-pat to watch eastenders.

Recently the BBC asked for a well above inflation rise in the licence fee, and even threatened that some of the services might be cut if they didn’t receive the extra cash. I’m wondering if the government asked “why did you provide such a lot of extra services? Were you assuming you’d get more money?”

One thing the BBC can do – is take a chance, and make a fortune out of it. The BBC took a dodgy US show and turned it into Robot Wars – selling the format and the shows round the world at enormous profit. Every Attenborough documentary series sells enormously on DVD, and the quality of general programming is the envy of the world – hence their willingness to pay for it themselves.

Yet the BBC still seems to be in a bit of a mess – complaining of a lack of funds, and threatening cuts. Some of the cuts are sensible, moving out of London is a good move – saves them about 10k per employee in staff alone, let alone office space! They’ve stopped paying for movies – except in special occasions, when the public demands them (Christmas, and Ben Hur at Easter I guess).

They don’t bother paying a great deal for football, and on a personal note – I’m glad they have what they do have, as I’m the sort of footy fan who will watch it if its on, but not want to pay a fortune for games of which I have little interest. Some of their staff are on enormous salaries – Jonathon Ross, Chris Moyles, Terry Wogan to name a few – but they’ll be included in my big plans later. Some programmes cost a fortune to import, and much as I love Heroes – I don’t think the BBC should be paying 400k an episode or whatever it was…

How to fix the BBC:

1 – Sell Radio 1 and Radio 2. Both would be viable businesses, and any advertiser would love to get their message across to them, and pay top dollar for the opportunity. In addition – the BBC should use its power and size in this respect to refuse to pay artists for playing their records – it should be the other way round. It would not surprise me to find this already happens – there can be no other reason for Radio 1 playing “the Feeling” 19 times a day.

2 – Bring our correspondents home. The latest News promotions on the BBC are selling the fact that they have about 30 people permanently stationed around the world ready to bring the stories when they happen. Fantastic - but what about the 364 days a year when Indonesia isn’t being bombed? What is this poor girl with the mic and the suit doing there the rest of the time? Not to mention the camera man, director, and goodness knows who else… how about we just pay whoever happens to be out there for a local news company for their report – as and when we need it? Alan Johnson would never have been kidnapped if he’d been standing in front of a TV screen in a Bristol studio, watching Reuters’ footage of men with AK47s telling us about it from the safety of the UK. I’ll agree that a conference call isn’t as good as a face to face meeting, but it is certainly cheaper, easier, and hey – we have the technology.

2a – Shut down news 24. What does this give us that Sky News and ITN’s 24 hour news doesn’t give us. Why do we even need 24 hour news anyway? I’ll admit a lot happens round the world, but why not just repeat the one o’clock news (on the red button) until the 6 o’clock news kicks in and we get an update. If anything massive happens (Royal deaths, war declared, prime minister caught in cupboard with chancellor) they’ll switch off BBC1 and put it on there anyway! Remember when George Best was dying? He took about a week to go, but there wasn’t anything else happening (other than civil war in Africa, gun crime in America, drug running in south America I could go on…) so we had a whole week of “George Best is dying” followed by “George Best is still dying” and “George Best is at death’s door” so when they finally added the second date to his name it was a relief that the tedium was over!

3 – Sell Eastenders. Just palm it off to the highest bidder out of ITV, channel 4 and channel 5. They won’t put it on sky, ‘cos that would be depriving the poor of their fix of people with worse lives than theirs, but there is a fortune to be made, and it isn’t surely in the BBC’s remit to keep top rated shows. Sell it on, and use the cash and the airtime to do something educational or entertaining. Like it says in their “purpose”. It’s worked with Neighbours – no-one misses out, BBC saves cash.

4 – While we are there – sell anything that gets popular. Dr Who, Top Gear, Robin “bloody stick it in the sheriff’s neck and deal with it” Hood, could be made to the high standards of the beeb and by the beeb – then sold at a profit every time. Same with shows like Jonathan Ross. I’ll watch them - adverts or no adverts, or even better – tape them and fast forward through the adverts like everyone else does.

5 – Start charging for non TV/radio output. I love going to the recordings of Radio shows, - I saw (heared?) Arabella Weir interview Paul Whitehouse a while ago. Yes – I’ll be doing them a favour by helping out with their laughter track, but I’ll be the winner, as I’ll get the equivalent of a £10 comedy show for nothing. Charge a fiver a time, and you are sorted. I’ll still go, they’ll make cash. They don’t seem to do competitions any more, so why not sell tickets to the intimate Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig in Maida Vaile? Oh – because I already privatised Radio 1 earlier.

6 – Put adverts on BBC3 and BBC4. They’ve given us these channels out of the goodness of their hearts have they? They must be mad. Get them paid for. Same programmes – same proofing ground for new talent and ideas, and more money for paying for those ideas.

So there you have it. A simple solution – and I didn’t even have to cut jobs, relocate families (except the ones living in Columbia, who might appreciate it), or prevent any of the fine programming being unavailable to anyone with a TV set and a radio, for nothing.

Ash - 1977 - Live at the Roundhouse.

2008-09-11T18:22:00.003+01:00

I’m about 8.

I like Adam and the Ants. A babysitter brings her make up box, and for about 15 minutes before bed, I am Adam. Lipstick stripes on my cheek and everything.

I'm about 16.

I was very late getting into music. by this time, I have about 5 tapes, Kylie, Bros, Michael Jackson, and Hits 8 or some such compilation (it counts as 2) and a couple of 7inch singles. One of them is Alice Cooper's "Poison". Another is my dads, so doesn't count. I know my friends at school are into music, but I don't bother to ask them about it. I know Alf like Genesis (he's a drummer) and I remember Andy has all sorts of things written on his rucksack about Ned’s atomic dustbin, the levellers and EMF.

Music for me at this time is what I hear on top of the pops, recording the charts (being careful to press pause before the talking starts) and reading the reviews (but still not bothering to seek out the music deliberately) on teletext.
CDs are something other people can afford.

I'm 17.

Two of the girls seem devastated at the news that Kurt is dead. I have no idea who Kurt is. Even when I find out, I am mystified as to why it matters. They are in tears. Probably about 2 weeks later I get Nevermind (I’ve graduated to CD) and it becomes my angry music (replacing the aforementioned Alice cooper). I somehow get into Extreme, driving my girlfriend to my first proper gig (in Hammersmith) and falling asleep in a little chef car park on the way back, because falling asleep while driving is not a good way to keep a girlfriend. Living in rural Dorset, the choice of places to go to concerts was limited. My parents would point out that they took Martyn and I to see Status Quo prior to this, but that was their gig. (I still loved it though).

I'm 17 and a half.

It is the height of the Blur/Oasis battle of Britpop, and I'm throwing the same girlfriend out of the front of a moshpit at blur's showbar gig, while the crowd go worryingly wild to Girls and Boys. (This gig gets top billing in Alex James' autobiography as his homecoming gig. it is an "I was there" moment for me.)

I’m 18

Getting into music properly now. Plenty of Britpop, a bit of techno, Orbital, The Prodigy. I take photos at the Prodigy’s gig in Bournemouth. Fat of the Land tour – they are at the top of their game, and I touch Maxim Reality’s sweaty back.

I'm 18 and a half.

Young enough and old enough for the half to be important. I'm working a summer job at Salisbury hospital doing gardening. Not the last time I did manual labour for money, but the only time I stuck it our for more than a morning before walking out for my lunch break and never coming back (call me a snob, but people with degrees in Biochemistry should not be stacking shelves in Tesco. I think the fact that I earn 5 times what I was getting then by sitting on my butt all day shows who was right about that one). I have a walkman (remember them?) Think an iPod with only enough room for one album on it, and there was about a one in 10 chance that it would destroy its own music collection without warning if your pinch roller was a bit sticky.

My walkman is special though. No - not special like the poor souls who shuffled about in the bit of the hospital I was working in. the bit where I felt slightly uneasy when one of the crocodile of patients recognised me, called me by my name, and I later realised I'd worked with him the last summer, selling furniture at the Game Fair. "What happened to you?" I naively asked. "Oh, you know" he muttered. I didn't know. I still can't remember his name.

My walkman has a radio. CDs are something other people can afford. I listen to Radio 1. Simon Mayo has done the golden hour (always featuring Arrested Development - was he on their payroll?) and the daytime show is starting.

Guitars. Drums. It may well have been Jo Wiley introducing Ash, and she mentions that their album is out soon, called 1977 as that is when they were born, they are about to learn their A level results. So am I.

Girl From Mars belts onto my headphones. The sun is shining, I’m sitting on a wall, clipping a bush with secateurs, and a band made up of kids like me (or so I wished) are on the radio, singing about the girl they knew and still think of (ringing any bells – see my previous entries!) I’d been playing guitar for a while, I’d sung songs I’d written myself with Alf on drums, but these guys were doing it, and doing it well.

Girl From Mars got heavy rotation, and it was a massive boost to my day when it came on the radio. Looking at the chart of the year for `1995, it is dominated by Robson and Jerome, Celine Dion, Take That, Simply Red and Michael Jackson. Blur are there at 10, with Country House, but hearing a good song maybe twice a day on radio 1 was worth it, and Girl From Mars became the anthem of my Summer.

On arrival at university, I found myself in a house with 4 blokes of my age, who mostly (apart from Chris, and his continuous rotation of Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”) had great taste in music. I also found myself with a bit of money (I was one of the last recipients of the Student Grant, and the parents were good to me too), and Ash’s 1977 album – on tape (£4.50 on the day of release! Awesome!) Had to be done.

When you are young, and you’re music collection fits on a single shelf, you get to know it intimately. I can still sing Michael Jackson’s Bad in its entirety all the way through – every word and “hee heeee!!!” Extreme’s Pornograffiti visits once in a while like an old friend. Ash’s 1977 was similar, although not on such heavy playback, but the chance to hear them play it in full, 12 years later, had to be done.

Back to a 3 piece, after losing their 2nd guitarist, Ash’s last album didn’t do well. Put it this way, Lisa and I have all their albums, except that one. Free All Angels was probably the last album we bought 2 copies of, unsure at the time of our level of commitment. However – last Friday night, they were rejuvenated, as was the whole of the Roundhouse. We may all be 30(ish) now, but there is nothing like seeing your favourite band of your teenage years, playing their best album, like it was 1995 all over again.

I’m old enough to want to sit down for a gig these days, and Lisa is short enough to want to see too, so the balcony at the venue suits us fine, but if I could have swapped places with anyone in the seething mass of sweaty bodies below us, feeling and acting 13 years younger, 13 years more care free, and 13 years more happy to sit for 45 minutes on the Northern Line, stinking of BO and spilled beer, I would have done like a shot. Then I’d have worried about the wife getting elbowed in the head, and it wouldn’t have been such fun. Some responsibilities never change.

Oh – and they had Stormtroopers too. Cool.

Smelly memories

2008-07-15T18:58:00.002+01:00

It is believed that smell is a major factor in triggering memories. I recall an episode of MASH where a soldier ended up in a state of shock when a smell took him back to the moment when his comrades were killed in an earlier conflict, a memory he had understandably repressed.

Earlier this morning, I was washing up, and as I sloshed the water down the sink, the unpleasant smell of stale Mexican enchilada sauce, diluted in detergent and mixed with all sorts of milky badness, only sparked in me the happy memory of the enjoyable meal of last night. A far more unusual example is to follow though.

On Tuesday evening, Lisa and I went to the Camden Roundhouse to see Reverend and the Makers. It was an awesome gig, great support, great crowd, and the main attraction did not disappoint. We were in the seated area of the balcony, and not long after we found our allocated seats, two chaps came and sat next to us. They were both rather drunk and boisterous, but absolutely fine – in fact – bizarrely, they had been allocated the seats on either side of Lisa and me, so we moved up and they sat together. Just before the second support act finished, one of them went to the bar. The other one started up a conversation with me, the usual male stuff of football – he’s a Newcastle fan, poor thing. He had to shout in my ear, so I could understand him, as the Geordie accent and a very loud three piece rock band don’t make for easy listening for me. This also meant he got very close, and I could smell him. His breath. His general odour. Much to my amazement – I loved it.

He was a smoker. Now since the smoking ban, instead of getting cancer by sitting next to people smoking in venues, we now just have to deal with people wandering our and smoking in the open, before coming back with all the evidence of having been out for a fag: a cold blast of air from the door, a wet coat and the stale smell of second hand cigarettes. Happily, when this chap was talking to me, I quickly realised why I was enjoying the smell (not realising might have put me in a very strange situation of homoerotic lust. The association of cigarette breath at such close quarters, was one I’d only ever previously had with my days of going out on the pull. The young girls of Cardiff and Bristol were often smokers, and I was never in a position to be picky enough to say – “no – I’m not snogging you because you are a bit whiffy”, so I quickly became used to the “kiss my ashtray” effect of being intimate with smokers. I even smoked myself (very occasionally, and only to look cool you understand) so I could hardly complain. There is a wonderful sense of realism involved in actually tasting another person, the intimacy of being so up close and personal, that I can be in such a position, far outweighed any unpleasantness of taste and smell.

Being shouted to by my drunken Geordie friend – took me straight back to all the smokers I ever got off with. Hanna, Emily, Monique, Rachel, and one or two more – all unique in their own way, and all well and truly in my past. I’m married now – and very happily so, to a non smoker. I’ll never again experience the feeling of moving in for the first kiss – hoping I’ve read the signs right, that she’s as interested as I think she is, and experiencing the subtle variations in everyone’s lips, teeth and tongue. It is certainly something I miss – but of course I’d miss far more if I decided to go back to such ways! Our memories make us who we are – and from unlikely sources do they make us remember them.

HannaH - still on my mind after 20 years...

2008-07-14T17:42:00.001+01:00

There are a few people who meant a lot to me in the dim and distant past. Mostly early girlfriends, some proper "Best Mates". Here’s what I know of them so far.

Lucy - Infant School Girlfriend.

Lucy appeared on Friends Reunited a while ago. Mysteriously she appeared about a week after my initial subscription had expired. the cynic in me would wonder if they checked who people searched for, and waited till they had expired before making the profiles available, hence forcing you to renew to contact them. If that was the case, it worked on me - I renewed and dropped her note. She’s ok - I got a polite response back, I replied to this, she disappeared.

I realised that she probably hardly remembered me. She was 6. So was I. She might have had a dozen guys who offered to marry her, bought plastic rings, and got their brothers to do the ceremony in church. I only had one girl. It would seem she meant a lot more to me than I did to her.

Louise - Unrequited at Junior School.

Taking a step back, before the wonders of the internet, I looked up another "old flame" in the phone book. Knowing her family moved to Swansea, Louise Woodcock should be easy to find. I called her mum, got her number, and we had a chat. I was living in Cardiff at the time, and we met up, had some drinks and a laugh. I asked her how she remembered me, and I was just some guy in her class. She was the object of my junior school affections, consistently out of reach as she was going out with a guy from another school. Single when we went out, I asked her if we could give "us" a go. We couldn't. She's happily married with one baby and another on the way now (I know this through Facebook) but although she accepted my friend request, we've not messaged since. It is nice to know she's happy. I like to think she is happy to know that I'm doing ok too.

Toni - Jilted by me at junior school.

I found Toni on Friends Reunited - she left me with a bit of a worry. Throughout junior school, Toni had a bit of a crush on me, and I don't think I ever returned her affection, except on one occasion, which I won't go into detail on, but it got me into trouble with the teachers, and had the potential to scar the poor girl for life.

The question is, when 20 years later, you get the opportunity to apologise for such an act do you:

A - Apologise, and give the victim the satisfaction that not only do you remember the event, but you have felt remorse for it ever since, and can only now beg for forgiveness now we are all grown up and moved on

B - Apologise, thus reminding the victim that the event happened when it meant little or nothing to them at the time, and getting them all concerned about my memories of the event, re-opening old wounds and sparking the need for months of expensive therapy.

C - Don’t mention it, hoping that she has forgotten it ever happened, but running the risk that she is fuming about it, and has been expecting an apology for every one of the 15 intervening years.

D - Tell the internet about it to show I have thought about these things, and to make me seem all sensitive and caring about all aspects of the poor girls feelings.

I chose C at the time, and I have now done D. I'm still not sure either is sensible.

Which brings me on to my current dilemma?

HannaH - junior school girlfriend (of about a week) but regularly thought about ever since.

Hannah used to write her name with 2 capital H's. (It’s a palindrome you see). She loved Michael Jackson, and had a wall of her room covered with a thousand pictures of him. she's the tall one standing next to me in our school photo, aged 11, when I’m all crew cut, tank top and sticking out ears, and she's all youthful beauty, curly hair, and carefully arranged kiss curl on her forehead (MJ style). She probably would get the credit for getting me into pop music (sorry Dad – playing me your Byrds albums doesn’t count).

Other than our brief "being boyfriend/girlfriend" (I have no idea how it started/ended, only that it happened and we played some form of happy families game with another 2 kids (Ian and Jessica?) which I probably decided should be strip happy families game (I was a 10 year old perv - ok? See Toni above) in her room,) I have very few memories of her.

Somewhere I still have a photo of her blowing out the candles on her 4th birthday. I have no idea why she gave me this photo. Of all my old school friends, she was the one I always wondered; "Where is she now? Is she still as beautiful as she was in the school photo? Did she marry; have kids, and most importantly, DID SHE EVER THINK OF ME?"

I now have the opportunity to ask all these questions. She appeared on Facebook. I noticed her while browsing another school friend of that era's friends, and there she was. Married name present, but kindly also giving her maiden name. I sent the friend request, with a simple note "hello to my second girlfriend".

She accepted the friend request, but didn't reply to the note. This was about a week ago. Now I can see her full profile, it is clear she's been on Facebook for a while. Lots of applications, lots of messages, loads of friends. I started finding answers to my questions.

Where is she now? - working on the ambulances, not far from where we grew up.

Is she still as beautiful as she was in the school photo? - (yes. very different (she could have walked past me in the street, or chatted me up in a bar (like this would happen), and I’d never have recognised her))

Did she marry? (Yes she did)

Have kids? (Not worked that out - no baby photos on Facebook, but that’s no guarantee)

And most importantly, DID SHE EVER THINK OF ME?

Based on how long she has been on Facebook, the (now) mutual friends and the extent of her networks, it would seem the answer to that question is an emphatic NO.

I'll write a proper note to her. I might just send this whole blog entry (and bore her silly, but at least get the full message across), but it seems I’ll have to get used to the fact that:

Certain people meant far more to me than I ever did to them.

I'm very egotistical (can you tell). The world revolves around me, and this revelation does not compute with my high opinion of myself. There can be only one reason which will leave me believing I am still worthy of such a position in my own head.

Somewhere out there, there are a thousand people (or so) who are wishing this blog had been about them, and are sorely disappointed that I never even mentioned them once. Sorry girls. In case you are wondering, I’m doing well, happily married, don’t want kids and I clearly never think of you at all.

Social Networking Online (Sept 2007)

2008-07-08T17:36:00.003+01:00

Filling up space with old blogs...

I have about 60 friends on Facebook, and 200 on myspace. I don't know the vast majority of the myspace ones, as they are fans of my music (or more likely I am a fan of theirs, or we are all deluding ourselves.)

Of my Facebook friends, I know all of them. At some point in my life I have met, dated, married, gone to school with, been related to or worked with them all. I like them. there was one chap on my list who I used to work with, but I realised I never got on with him that well, so I stopped being friends with him.

People find it strange that so many of us have people we consider friends who we never meet. (I have had friends who I have never "met" - only spoken to on-line.) The truth is, that Facebook has an equivalent in old peoples lives.

the "Christmas Card Friend".

Every year, my parents send and receive so many cards they have to go out for extra blu tac just to attach them to the doors, windows, mantelpiece and any other appropriate surface. many of these will have a personal message, about how the kids are doing, great auntie Marjorie's latest bunion update and their new address.

Every day when I'm on-line, I check on Facebook and i find out far more interesting and often personal things about my friends. Lisa is glad its Friday. Max is off to Manchester, Dan is tired. Stu is about to sneeze.

If Sarah goes inter-railing, she comes home, and puts photos on-line. I am told this, so I look at them, and share the experience. I can comment on them and welcome her home.

A conversation on Facebook can take several days, and only be a few words, but at least it happens. Many of my Facebook friends aren't people I phone regularly, if ever at all. (I don't phone my grandma, and she doesn't phone me, but we both know we are there, and love each other very much, we aren't any less friends because of this. (she's not on Facebook by the way - but it would be even better if she was).

Long since deleted from this site, is a letter I sent to some of my closest group of friends, berating them for the effort they put into our relationships. Although it would be vain of me to suggest that the timing of this almost ruined Simon's stag weekend, I'm sure it didn't go down well, and I've felt bad about it ever since.

The outcome of that letter, and the replies I received from the lads, was that I realised that friendship is not necessarily about how often you call, visit, write to or email your friends.

It is about being there when you need them, caring enough about them to want to be there, and enjoying whatever interaction you do have, be it an email every 6 months, a phone call every week, or just knowing that Chris and Sam have added "deep blue something" to their favorite music.

I like it that way.

Big Brother Blog - 08/06/2008

2008-06-22T10:53:00.001+01:00

I used to enjoy a blog on radiotimes.co.uk where grace dent gave her opinion on big brother, the apprentice, x factor, and when they weren't on, it was like having an abstract of whatever television everyone else was watching, so I didn't have to watch it, but still knew what was going on. She's writing a book now, so I’ll try and find another way to avoid having to spend the next 13 weeks of my life glued to channel 4 watching 16+ freaks (they've touted them as such) monging round a house having arguments all day, and being heavily edited to make it seem like they are nice/evil/exciting/racist people, dependant on the whims of the director on the day.

I love big brother - I love watching it, and I would still go on it if you offered me. I've not applied since about the 3rd year, when my groovy video (best party clothes, filmed from the top of the church tower,) was totally ignored, but I still think I’d have fun, learn a lot about myself, and end up a washed up z list celebrity DJing at butlins, before begging for my old job back.

my official reason for going in to the house, would be based on a big insecurity of mine, which is that I have such a big ego that I firmly expect that every time I leave the room, the other 15 people (using the BB house example, but it could easily be the office, a tube train, my living room at home with only the wife there) would immediately start wondering:

Where’s Dave?
Is Dave ok?
When is Dave coming back?
Wouldn’t it be great if Dave was here?
I bet Dave would know what to do.
No-one does any washing up any more; I wish I hadn't voted Dave out. Hey lets all go on hunger strike and say nothing but unbroadcastable swear words until they let Dave back into the house.

That sort of thing.

The great thing about coming out of the big brother house is you get to watch the tapes afterwards, and realise just how invisible you really are. One of my favourite moments of previous BBs, was the secret eviction, where they removed two girls and put them in a house next door, complete with full watching and listening capabilities. not only were they not missed by most of the housemates, but one of them promptly watched her crushee (is that a word) get hit on by another housemate, remove the bracelet he promised to wear to show he was thinking of her, and pretty much forget all about her immediately.
After a hilarious "fight" when they went back in, I think they ended up getting married or something tortuous like that. She called him chicken a lot. It made us all want to throw up/shout "SHE'S A PSYCHO!!! RUN AWAY WHILE YOU STILL HAVE YOUR SEX ORGANS IN PLACE" at the telly, and after all - isn't that what the best entertainment should do?

we watched the launch night of this years extravaganza with a glass of wine, an open mind, and the ability to forward wind through the guff and just watch the freaks go in. they seem to have picked the real life cast of Little Britain, right down to the sexually ambiguous Thai midget. now we have the ability to record TV and forward wind through the adverts, dull bits, Davina, people smoking in the garden (guff) I might put it on series link and take 8 minutes to forward wind through each episode until the blonde one decides naked mangling is the only thing that will keep her in the house (as if heterosexual males actually vote in this thing?)

Every year I picture myself in the house (maybe replacing the one I am most like, John Tickle, Craig (didn't we all want to be Craig?) Nadia, and this year, the ultra vain "Dale". I'm not their sort of person. I’d have a terrible time. I’d be rocking backwards and forwards in the corner within 20 minutes drooling and wondering how to get the mobile phone out of my bottom to call Lisa so she could tell me I don't look like a complete tool.

But as I said - tell me I can go in, and I won't even stop to pack.