for my next trick, I'll need a volunteer....

This time last year, I was limping due to a combination of plantar fasciitis and muscle soreness, both brought on by running.  The PF had been bothering me since the summer, but the muscle soreness could firmly be laid at the feet of the Robin Hood Half marathon.  I took something like 5 minutes off my personal best for the distance - to 1 hour 51 minutes and 59 seconds - but inevitably had to pay the price over the course of the next four days.

Over the course of the following twelve months, my body has given me enough messages that even someone as stubborn as me has been forced to pay attention and to cut back my miles.  At one point, I was reduced to a single, pathetically short and painful run of about three miles each week.  Since then, I have slowly been able to build myself back up to three runs a week and a max distance -- so far -- of about five and a half miles.  The thirteen point one miles required to complete a half marathon are sadly out of the question for me at the moment as my body simply cannot stand the workload any more.

Of course, that doesn't mean I wasn't involved with the race at all..... my running club was in charge of the relay event, and I volunteered to take help.  The relay is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: people enter teams of four people, and everyone runs a leg of about three miles, before meeting up about a kilometer from the end and crossing the finishing line together.  That was the plan, anyway.  As things turned out, there were problems with the buses ferrying people about, and not everybody made it to that last rendezvous point in time... not that it really mattered, as the main thing was surely just taking part and having a bit of fun*

* tell that to the team who challenged the result, refusing to believe the evidence of the finishing chips that told them that another team had crossed the line well in front of them... they were a team of fun runners too.

C. volunteered too, and our job was to turn up at 0630, help set things up in the tent and to get people signed in, and then to take the runners doing the second leg on the bus to the change-over point, supervise the change and then walk the first leg runners back to the rendezvous point.  It was a bit chaotic from the moment when our bus driver clearly had no idea at all how to get to the change-over point through all the various roadworks and traffic restrictions, and we had to keep hopping out and moving bollards to get him the wrong way through a one way system.  The change-over point itself also had absolutely no markings, so it was something of a job to pick out the relay runners from a crowd of 10,000 other runners and make the handovers.

It was fun.

The best part for me was watching the whole field go through... twice... once at the three mile marker as we marshalled the first relay change-over, and then at the final rendezvous point a little after the twelfth mile.  It was a real privilege, actually.  It was a beautiful day, but I got to see the first runners coming through the three mile marker in a time of a little over 12 minutes (12 minutes!) and also to watch some of the incredible wheelchair racers, seeing close-up how rigid their chairs are and how hard they rumble across the asphalt of the road... not to mention how inspiring it is to see guys with no legs competing in a race like this, full stop.  Lots of the early runners at the front of the field are very serious and have little time for crowd interaction as they chase their time, but as you go down through the field, you see all sorts of people of all sorts of shapes and sizes and all kinds of motivations... and many of them are really appreciative of a little cheer to spur them on their way.  Top tip: always wear a running shirt with your name on because it gives spectators something to shout at you as you go past.  I know from my own experience last year that every single time this happens, it gives you a little bit of a lift.

Knowing this, I tried to shout out as many names as I could... even if it was to shout out "GO ON ROBIN" to the many, many people dressed as Robin Hood (they were attempting to set a world record, apparently).  I can remember running this a few years ago and being really annoyed by the Macmillan cheerleaders who were all over the course and armed with clappers and lots of enthusiasm.  It's not that they made loads of noise, it's that they made a load of noise for their runners and then stopped.  If you're running just behind a Macmillan runner, that's a little depressing.  I also remember one of my colleagues saying that he ran the half marathon here once about fifty yards behind a guy with one leg.  He said that by the end, he was itching to run up to him and push him over, because over the course of thirteen miles, he'd really learned to hate the way that people would cheer the guy with one leg... and then stop as he ran past.  I was therefore determined to clap for anyone and everyone who ran past me.  No exceptions.  This meant that I did an awful lot of clapping and now have a case of clapping RSI.   No matter.  It's a small price to pay.

Of course, standing about a kilometer from the finish, you get to see people right on the edge of their endurance as they push on towards the end.... some people are too lost in their own private world of pain to respond or to even notice that you are encouraging them, but lots of other people give you a friendly smile and push on.  You see the best of people here too, whether it's the two guys practically carrying somebody that neither of them know, just so he can make it to the finishing line, or the guys finishing strongly who use what breath they have to exhort the people that they're passing to keep going.  I must have clapped and shouted encouragement at people for about five or six hours, and I loved more or less every moment of it.   I think some people liked it too.  Perhaps not the guy at mile three who was struggling with the pouch of water he'd just picked up at the drinks station.  They're a bit fiddly, but he just couldn't open it.  He shot me a filthy look when I cheerfully told him as he passed that it was an intelligence test... and he was failing.

I really enjoyed the day.  Lots of my friends and colleagues set personal bests, and one fellow member of our running club completed her first ever full marathon to raise funds for the local autism charity that has helped her son.  Her time of 5 hours and ten minutes hardly matters, but she did brilliantly.  We handed out free corporate relay pasta to finishers of the full marathon simply because it was otherwise just going to be thrown away and we stacked chairs and tables and generally tried to make ourselves useful.

It was exhausting.  By the time we got home at about three pm, I was only fit for a quick bacon sandwich and then a couple of hours napping with the cat on the sofa.  By 2130, I was fast asleep in bed.  Volunteering, I think, might just about be more tiring than actually running the damn thing.

I've not entirely given up on the idea of running more of these.  Time will tell if my poor, feeble body is still up to the task.  You know what, though?  Even if I can't, I reckon I'll do more volunteering.

Especially if they're going to give me a really plush hoodie every time... albeit in a lurid lincoln green kind of a colour.

A good day.

I want to feel small, lying in my mother's arms....

Earworms of the Week

"Catholic Girls" - Frank Zappa

I've got to be honest with you, I don't often feel the need to listen to Frank Zappa.... even if I retain a huge soft-spot for "Bobby Brown Goes Down" (he can, after all, take about an hour on the tower of power...). But, you know, sometimes there's nothing else for it.

Mind you, this isn't an especially subtle song:

All the way
That's the way they go
Every day
And none of their mamas ever seem to know
Hip-hip-hooray
For all the class they show
There's nothing like a catholic girl

But, you know, the tune is so damn perky that it's irresistible.

“Bad to the Bone” – George Thorogood & the Destroyers”

Because it reminds me of travelling in the back of a big truck called Denver through the deserts of Namibia.  Specifically, it reminds me of a particular hipster friend of ours who we will be spoiling when we get over to New York in early January.

“Fire” – Kasabian

They're six-fingered gibbons from Leicester, obviously... but I caught a snippet of this song on the radio the other day and I have to admit that it has a certain lumbering charm.

“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” – R.E.M.
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" – Tight Fit

There was a slightly odd moment in Stewart Lee's performance at the Nottingham Playhouse last Sunday where he was heckled by someone in the crowd singing the chorus to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".  As well as remarking on how incongruous it was when talking about an Australian animal, Lee proceeded to grill the heckler on how much he even knew about the song.  Not much, apparently.... and Lee seems to know an awful lot, from the original artist, through the various covers (including the Tight Fit one) and on to songs that reference it, including the R.E.M. one.  I'd never actually thought about that connection before, but it sort of makes sense, and now obviously both songs are playing in my head.

“Gentleman and Players” – The Duckworth Lewis Method

The cricket season is over, and Trent Bridge have sent me the renewal forms for my membership and the ticket applications for the match against India next July.  The seasons roll around too quickly, eh?  Cue cricket earworm.

“Rattlesnakes” – Lloyd Cole & the Commotions
"Rattlesnakes" - Tori Amos

C. doesn't have all that many popular musicians that she will say that she really likes.  She seems to have a soft-spot for the White Stripes and retains an affection for various cheesy French artists, but it's Lloyd Cole that she really seems to remember most fondly.  I had "Strange Little Girls", the Tori Amos album of covers, on in the kitchen as I was cooking the other night.  "Rattlesnakes" is on there, and C. obviously knows the song well... but it did prompt a discussion about which version is the better.  I like both, but think definitely prefer the Tori Amos cover.  C. is a little more old school and prefers the original.  In the end, I just put on the Arctic Monkeys.

“Do I Wanna Know” – Arctic Monkeys

Once in a while, you hear a song out of the blue that really gets you moving, right from the very first listen.  It doesn't happen very often, mind.  For me, the last time was for "Kemosabe" by Everything Everything earlier this year, but before that it was "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" way back in 2005.  That had me rocking in the shower, which happens even less often than that.... Anyway.  I bought their first couple of albums, but sort of drifted away after "Humbug".  I really, really like "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High" from their new album, so I took a chance (and a price-point of £4.99 helped too) and bought it.  It's excellent.  They might be based in LA now, but that quirky English phrasing of the song lyrics is still in place and it's altogether excellent ("...like summat in your teeth").  Well worth a listen, I would say... even if I elected to watch Chic at Glastonbury this year instead.

“Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying” – Belle & Sebastian

Of all the songs to get stuck in your head all week, something by fey indie wastrels Belle & Sebastian wouldn't seem to be the most likely, but here we are.  Not that I'm complaining, I'm a fan... it's just that you'd expect something more obviously catchy, wouldn't you?  This has been slinging around my head as I've cycled into work along the river every morning.  I don't wear headphones or listen to music when I'm on my bike, in the main, so my brain has free reign to let rip with whatever springs to mind.  This week, it's mostly been this.

“Rewind the Film” – Manic Street Preachers

I go back a long way with the Manics.  I bought "Generation Terrorists" back in the day, and first saw the band at Reading in 1994, their first gig without Richie (who was in rehab and hadn't yet disappeared, although that wasn't far away).  "The Holy Bible" was released the following Monday, and I can remember stopping at Milton Keynes shopping centre on the way home from the festival to buy a copy, only to discover that everything was shut because of the Bank Holiday and I was just going to have to wait (imagine that now! shops shut!).  "The Holy Bible" remains by far my favourite of their albums.  It's fair to say that the band have come a long way since then, and "Rewind the Film" barely sounds as though it's been recorded by the same band.  The ferocity has been replaced by reflection and regret.  I love it.  Some will no doubt mourn the loss of a band that no longer exists, but I think that if this is the sound of a band approaching late middle-age, then they're doing just fine.  I'm not the same person I was back in 1994, so why on earth should we expect them to be?  The title track in particular is a majestic piece of work: guest vocals are provided by Richard Hawley, but James Dean Bradfield bursts in towards the end of the song to great effect, and they combine beautifully.  This album is nothing like I expected, but the more I listen to it, the more it sinks under my skin.  It's brilliant.  What a band.  Sustained excellence over two decades, and this is as good as anything they've done in years, if not better.  It's a beautiful song.

And with that ringing endorsement, I'm off for a run to listen to the album again.  Have a good weekend, y'all.

look around, leaves are brown....

I went for my six monthly "high risk drug user" blood test yesterday.  Nothing serious - just making sure that the beta-interferon I take hasn't stopped my liver from working properly yet.  My appointment was at 0745 in the morning, but early though it was, I had to wait a little while as an elderly gentleman was seen by the nurse before me.

"Sorry about that," said the nurse, when she ushered me into her treatment room, "We have those early morning appointments for people who need to get to work.  They're not really for people who can come any time...."  I smiled.  I wasn't really bothered.

Apparently the old boy was more concerned about my wait than I was.  "That gentleman had a fifteen minute appointment for his flu jab, but he said that we should get a move on because he said that the young man outside looked like you needed to get to work."  I was actually sitting in the waiting room wearing my biking gear and with my pannier bag at my feet.  Perhaps he thought I was a courier?   Well, he also thought I was a young man, so perhaps he's easily confused.

After complimenting my veins (I have excellent veins for pushing needles into, apparently), the nurse asked me if I wanted a flu jab too whilst I was here.  As someone in a "sensitive group", in my case on a drug that affects my immune system, I'm entitled to one of these every year on the NHS.  I actually already had an appointment booked for just this purpose in a couple of weeks, but this was much more convenient.  Usually I have to attend a flu clinic on a Saturday morning where I'm usually the youngest person in the waiting room by about forty years and get stared at as some kind of an imposter.

Perhaps if the old fella who was so considerate not to hold me up yesterday morning wouldn't have been so obliging if he knew that I was going to be receiving a flu jab: for me to get one of those, an old person has to miss out and will certainly die if we have a harsh winter....

Just in case I was in any danger of getting carried away that someone had mistaken me for a young man, that same evening, someone at running club asked me if I dyed my hair.
"Why on earth would you think that?" I replied, gesturing to my actually-quite-grey and clearly un-dyed hair.
"It just looks different to normal"
"Well, it actually takes me hours to get this mottled badger look, you know...."

Grizzled, grey and bearded is in, right?

he said, she said....

A friend of mine commented on Facebook last night that she had just shattered the screen of her iPhone.  It's not the most earth-shattering update, but the social media revolution is all about the mundanities of life, so it seemed about par for the course.  Then the comments started:

"That's what happens when you get a shitty iPhone hahahah"
"Over rated anyway. You are better off with a Sony Xperia Z. With a cutting-edge camera, a super-slim design and the ability to withstand life's knocks and bumps"

etc. etc.

Harmless enough banter, I suppose, but I'm heartily sick of all of this lazy Apple bashing.  As if iPhones are the only phones that sometimes break if you drop them.

Look.  I buy Apple stuff, but I freely admit that the people who go on and on about this company being the most amazing thing ever are extremely boring.  Yes, they do get an awful lot of fawning coverage in the press.  Yes, I'm sick of the sight of idiots in their sleeping bags queuing up for a chance to get a gold phone before anyone else.  Yes, I'm tired of the drip-drip-drip of speculation about the next model.  Frankly, who isn't?

But you know what?  The people who go out of their way to slag Apple products off are even worse.  If you think that Android is a better operating system and you're convinced that you get better value out of your Samsung phone, then I'm happy for you.  Why isn't that enough for you?  Why do you feel the need to desperately sneer at everyone else?  Yes, £700-odd is a lot to pay for a phone, but it's worth what people are prepared to pay, isn't it?  I wouldn't queue up all night to get one, and I'm actually thinking of keeping my iPhone 4 for another year, but each to their own.  Different strokes and all that.

Have Apple jumped the shark?  Have they lost their edge since Steve Jobs died?  I don't know and I don't really care, but knee-jerk opinions from blow-hards on the internet are not very likely to change my mind either way.  I don't want hagiography, but neither do I want trolling... and the pointless my-dad-is-better-than-your-dad arguments are just pathetic and childish.

As it happens, I have an iPhone an (old) iPad and a Macbook Pro and I'm very happy with all of them.  They work for me.  Funnily enough, I actually spend a fair bit of time in my professional life railing against people automatically choosing Apple products for work when they are more expensive to buy, more difficult to support and not resilient enough for a retail environment.  I know they are cool-looking, but sometimes that isn't nearly enough.  You see how it's possible to have a nuanced position on these things?

A nuanced opinion on the internet?  Imagine that.

Why can't we all just get along?

fear of the dark....

I'm not sure why, but Stephen Hawking has been on my mind this week.  I think it was probably sparked by seeing a trailer for the new documentary film about him before the screening of "Rush" that we saw at the Broadway on Saturday evening.  I nearly went to watch the film itself earlier this evening, but the screening was just too early to make it practical.

You really don't need me to tell you that he's a remarkable man.  He was told fifty years ago that he had a life expectancy of two years at best, and he has been defying those expectations ever since, also refusing to allow the indignities of his physical decline to hide the brilliance of his brain.  It's still somewhat astonishing to think that a theoretical physicist could sell something like nine million copies of a book at all, never mind one with so much else to overcome.

"A Brief History of Time" famously concludes with the remark that, if scientists could find the most fundamental laws of nature "then we should know the mind of God".  I tend to think he's talking metaphorically, but even if Hawking had not ruled out the existence of God at the time of writing, then I think it's fair to say that he's made up his mind since then.  As he said recently:

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

I have no way of knowing if he's any more right about that than he is on his work explaining the development of irregularities in a single bubble inflationary universe... but just as I broadly agree with his conclusions on the single bubble inflationary universe*, I tend to agree with his thinking here too.  Why would we be so afraid of the idea that this life is all there is?  That when we die there is nothing.  Why not embrace the idea?

* cough.

Here's Hawking again:

“I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

Isn't that a profoundly beautiful thought?

Besides, who are we to argue with Stephen Hawking?  The guy has been on The Simpsons AND Big Bang Theory, for heaven's goodness sake....

the last day of summer...

Running is a peculiar form of exercise.

I went to running club this evening, but I just wasn't feeling it.  I got up early-ish and had a decent cycle into work.  I tend to track all of my exercise using my new Garmin, and as I track these things, I'm naturally aware of the time that I usually take cover my normal route.  Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I've worked out my average time for my commute into work.  FOr some reason it's always slower cycling to work than it is coming home.  Anyway, knowing my normal times, of course, means that I try and beat it every time.  Well, this morning was a record for the outward commute.  Around 18 minutes (my fastest ride home is under 17 minutes... go figure).

That burst of activity just after 7am this morning was pretty much as good as it got, and I've felt tired and sluggish all day since.  I wasn't much looking forward to my cycle home, never mind a run.  Still, I was always going to go running, wasn't I?  So, I cycled 4 miles up the canal to the gym and joined running club for a 4.5 mile run around.

My feet were numb and my legs felt weird, but you know what?  I actually really, really enjoyed the run tonight.  The route took us out along the River Trent and then through the little nature reserve at Lady Bay and then back along the canal.  It was nowhere near as nice a day as we had around here on Sunday, but it was still pretty humid for running.  With about a mile to go, I actually felt good enough that I even picked up my pace.  I ran it a few seconds slower than I ran the same route last week, but it felt really good.

I've been running for a long time but I always hesitate when someone asks me if I actually enjoy it.  The honest answer is no.  Not really.  I enjoy the feeling I get from having been out running, but there's very few runs where I would actually say that I enjoyed myself as I was running.  One in ten, perhaps.  Well, today was that one run in ten.  It was great.  It was practically dark by the time I finished, and winter is definitely coming, but it was great.

It's runs like that that keep me running.  I'll have to dig my fluorescent kit out for next week, I think.  Winter is coming.

it's hardly what I'd be doing if you gave me the choice....

Earworms of the Week

I don’t know what’s been going on inside my head this week, but there seem to be a few perennial classics knocking about. Perhaps this is what happens when I leave my internal jukebox to its own devices…. I start trying to remember the lyrics to adverts from the 1980s.

“Tonight I'm Going to Rock You Tonight” – Spinal Tap

Spurred by the brilliant news that “This is Spinal Tap” has an aggregate score of 7.9 on IMDB…. Out of 11.

“Live and Let Die” – Wings

Is this actually even on the Shrek soundtrack? It hardly matters. I seem to have a number of colleagues around me at the moment who speak before they think… in a good way, I mean. In an endearing, nothing-at-all-to-do-with-work kind of a way. There are also large amounts of people here who never think before they speak, but you get them in every office. Endlessly entertaining. I had a conversation with another colleague this week where she insisted that age wasn’t relative and that she would never be my age. No amount of attempting to explain had an impact on her certainty. It was brilliant. I had a chat with her about Schrödinger’s cat last week, and I think I blew her mind… and that was in spite of the fact that she remembers Sheldon talking about it on Big Bang.

“Oops Upside Your Head” – The Gap Band

Definitely this and not the Snoop sample. I haven’t listened to either in years, but it’s funny what goes through your head when you are cycling along a riverbank at 6am in the morning. I’ve taken to hailing each rabbit I see along the way: “Good morning, Flopsy! Good morning, Mopsy! Good morning Cotton-Tail!”. No, I’m not losing it.
Why do you ask?

The theme from “Um Bongo”

I spent valuable brain time this week trying to remember the order of the fruit in the lyrics to this song. For reference:

Way down deep in the middle of the Congo,
A hippo took an apricot, a guava and a mango.
He stuck it with the others, and he danced a dainty tango.
The rhino said, "I know, we'll call it Um Bongo"
Um Bongo, Um Bongo, They drink it in the Congo.
The python picked the passion fruit, the marmoset the mandarin.
The parrot painted packets, that the whole caboodle landed in.
So when it comes to sun and fun and goodness in the jungle,
They all prefer the sunny funny one they call Um Bongo!

Now you know, eh?

“Showgirl” – The Auteurs

An absolutely belting song, this. It’s the first song I heard by the Auteurs – pipped to the original Mercury Music Prize by a single vote to the eventual winners, Suede in 1993. That’s 20 years ago! Twenty years ago, I was 19 and David Bowie was a mere 46!

“That Don’t Impress Me Much” – Shania Twain

Ugh. Seriously. I earworm this song so often that I even once ended up actually downloading it in an attempt to exorcise it. It didn’t work. Clearly.

“Unbelievers” - Vampire Weekend

The new Vampire Weekend has been getting better and better with every listen. Their debut album absolutely sparkles, of course, but I don’t think I’ve listened to their second album in literally years (perhaps I should give it another chance). The new one though is excellent. I wasn’t initially sure about all of the vocal effects that are layered on, but over time they’ve blended in pretty seamlessly and I barely notice them at all. Fantastic band. They make me think of my hipster New York friend, Jane. She rocks their style. Or perhaps more accurately, they rock hers.

“Supersoaker” – Kings of Leon

As far as I’m concerned, the Kings of Leon have been on a slow, downward career trajectory since the release of their outstanding debut, “Youth and Young Manhood”. As they’ve become more and more successful, to my ears at least, they’ve become less and less interesting and seem determined to become The Eagles. I heard the band being interviewed by Steve Lamacq on 6Music the other day, though and they sounded like really decent, interesting guys. Lamacq has already said that he has been a bit disappointed with the new album, but I suppose they’ve done enough over the years that I might just give them the benefit of the doubt. They also played this record on the radio to accompany the interview - from their forthcoming album - and it sounded alright, actually. “Sex on Fire” does almost nothing for me, so perhaps I’ve been a bit unfair and used that to judge all of their later work. Maybe I’ll try and give them another go and see how they sound.

“Pop Goes the Weasel” – Anthony Newley

My friend Mark first played me this song when we were at University together in about 1993 and I’ve never quite been able to shake it off since. Newley is famous for once being married to Joan Collins, but here he seems to be doing his damnedest to sound like Tommy Steele. C. finds this song unlistenable, but I really quite like it. At one point, Newley gives us the “official” definition of what the expression “Pop Goes the Weasel” means. Something to do with hatters pawning their tools at the weekend to buy booze… but what it makes me think is how the internet has completely changed the way we access information. This song was recorded in 1961. Then we had to take Newley’s word for what the expression made. Nowadays, you only have to have a quick google.

Newley was right, incidentally.  Probably.

“How to be Dead” – Snow Patrol

In 2004, I saw Snow Patrol live no fewer than 4 times. They also remain the only band to have received the accolade of a 10 / 10 gig review on this blog. At some point, though, I went right off them. The quality of their albums has fallen away a little, I think… but mainly it’s the cumulative impact of hearing their ballads used all the time on shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and starting to perceive Gary Lightbody’s work as soppy in the way that Fran Healey’s songs with Travis went all soppy shortly after “The Man Who”. I dug “The Final Straw” out the other day, and it still sounds fantastic. It’s aged better than the follow-up “Eyes Open”, if you ask me, although possibly the ubiquity of “Chasing Cars” is warping my opinion. Funnily enough, Lightbody came up again when my colleague, Chloe, suggested that I listen to “Tired Pony”… who turned out to be one of his side projects also featuring Peter Buck, lately of REM. Quite the retrospective week, eh? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dig out my old Kings of Leon and Snow Patrol records and to revel in the glory years of the first decade of the new millennium. Or I might just listen to some Sabbath. I’ll play it by ear.

And just missing out this week:  "Let's Get Physical" - Olivia Newton-John

Let's all be grateful that it came too late for inclusion, eh?  It's about taking exercise, right?

Have a good weekend, y’all. See you next week.

is it, is it wicked?

I went on a road trip with some colleagues today to visit a number of our shops.  We didn't go too far - just down to Leicester and across to Newark - but we were away for most of the day and I was nearly forced into a lunchtime crisis....

We almost ate at McDonalds.

The other guys I was with were keen, but I haven't eaten in a McDonalds for over ten years now and I wasn't about to start now.  I'm not singling out the Golden Arches especially, because in that time I haven't eaten in a Burger King or a KFC either.  I'm no campaigner either: it's not that I particularly object to them or object to other people eating in them, it's just that I've made a personal decision that I would rather eat my food and spend my money somewhere else.  It's entirely up to you if you want to feed yourself that stuff, but I've decided that I just plain don't want to.  That's it.  I used to eat them as much as the next man, but I woke up one day and decided that it was no longer for me.  I don't remember them being horrible so much as lukewarm, slightly sweet smelling and never quite as tasty as I remembered them being.  I can remember the first time I was taken to a McDonalds too: I was about six or seven years old and they had just opened their branch in the Central Milton Keynes shopping centre, and I was taken there as a treat with my friend.  Over the next twenty years, I would often eat in the very same branch before heading over to the cinema to watch a film (well, before I swapped my allegiance to the BK up the mall instead.  They did onion rings, you see).  But I stopped eating that stuff completely ten years ago, and I haven't missed it at all.  I'd just rather eat elsewhere.

I wouldn't really have minded if my colleagues had insisted we go today, but I definitely would not have eaten anything there and I told them this.  To be honest, they seemed a little surprised and suggested that perhaps it would do me good to have a Big Mac meal.  After all, they said, there's nothing better after a night on the tiles.

Well, I had a quiet night last night, but even if I did have the stinking hangover from hell, I wasn't about to feed myself a Happy Meal, no matter how enticing the latest movie tie-in toy might look.  I'm sure that all of McDonald's claims about their ingredients being wonderful are probably true and they may have impeccable nutritional credentials*.... but that honestly doesn't make me want to eat them.  Fill your faces if you like, but I'm out.

*as part of a healthy balanced diet, of course

I can hardly claim any high ground here: we had this conversation as we were drinking coffees from Costa, and we ended up eating our lunch in the Newark branch of Wetherspoons..... so it's not as though I'm only patronising high class Italian delicatessens with organic, artisanal pesto and  coffee beans from an eco commune in Guatemala whilst sneering at the rest of you lumpen proles stuffing yourselves and your fat children with greasy fast food**.  I just don't want to eat McDonalds thanks.

** I'd rather be doing this, clearly.

As it happens, my lamb rogan josh served at the Wetherspoons pub as part of their Thursday Curry Club and served with a drink, rice, naan, two poppadoms and some mango chutney for the princely sum of £5.99 was perfectly acceptable, thanks very much.

Whether you eat in McDonalds or not, we can at least all agree that the clown is just creepy though, right?  What did he do to the Hamburglar anyway?  Vigilante justice?

so damn easy to cave in....

I just wasn't feeling it today.  Another early start to be at the office for 0630, and although I'm enjoying biking to work, I'm ten days in now and I think the extra exertion is starting to take its toll.  400-odd extra calories burned per day, plus all of my normal exercise.... I'm knackered, and I rather suspect that calories out are somewhat greater than calories in at the moment.

Today I went running at lunchtime.  I usually do on a Wednesday.  As the morning wore on, I began to dread it.  The bowl of cereal I had at 6am seemed an awfully long way away.  Still, I went.  Of course I went.  Today I was running with Becky, who is about twenty-two years old and sickeningly full of spring, running with a bouncy step and a swinging pony tail (C. thinks I run with a whole gaggle of pretty young blonde things.  Well, Becky has dark hair, so there....).  Our best times over a half marathon are actually almost exactly the same, and when we've run together before, we seem to go at about the same pace.  Even so, if ever there was a day when I wanted to go at my own pace and to retreat into my own shell without being dragged along by someone else, it was probably today.

I injected last night.  It's a bit of a lottery how much this affects me physically, but generally I'm okay.  Today I felt a little heavy-legged, and we were only a few metres out of the door before I realised that this was going to be a bit of a slog.  Before long, I really felt as though I was dragging my left leg and holding Becky back from the pace she really wanted to run at.  I wasn't much good at conversation either, as I was too busy trying to hold myself together and to keep up a reasonable speed.  Becky is running the Nottingham half marathon in ten days, and she's not really trained as much as she wants to and isn't sure if she's in the kind of shape to really challenge her best time.  She's only just started using Runkeeper to track her runs, and I spent a bit of time explaining to her that she could monitor her pace throughout the race and compare it to the pace she would need to run to meet her target time (she would love to run under 1hr50m, so that's a pace of about 8.38 mins per mile).  As I slogged along the canal towpath with her, I was acutely conscious of dragging her back.  The last mile in particular was horrible.

When we got back though, I discovered that not only had we covered the last mile and a half at a sub-eight minute mile pace, but we'd also just broken her personal best time for the loop.  Maybe the old boy didn't do so bad after all.

I also managed to do my quickest time yet on the cycle back from work.

Perhaps I'm not dead just yet. I might have an early night all the same.

And sausages for tea.
Yes.  Definitely sausages.

impress me much....

As far as I'm aware, no actual comparative measurement of penis size happens in the changing rooms at work.  I've had a locker there for a while now, and I've never seen any, but it is split into two distinct halves with a wall separating them, so I can't really speak for the other side.

No actual penis measurement, anyway.

....there's plenty of virtual size comparisons going on, that's for sure.  I used to only really pop in there when I went for a run at lunchtime, and it seems the running crowd is pretty small and pretty quiet.  The cycle-to-work crowd is much more boisterous.  It's been pretty quiet when I've been arriving at 0630am, obviously... but at the other end of the day it's a completely different story and the place is full of people pulling on baboon-arsed lycra and talking large about how far and difficult their commute is.

There are a few guys in particular who seem to be training for the same event, a triathlon by the sound of it.  They're not in open competition, but they keep asking each other in vaguely passive-aggressive ways about how much training they're planning on doing when they get home, and then trying to go one better.  I've learned an awful lot about swim times and how having the slower swimmers start first might affect overall planned times.

"Yeah.  If anything the swimming used to be my weakest of the three events, but if anything it's now the strongest."
"I really struggle to drive myself on the bike.  I can go flat out in the pool or running for ages, but on the bike I just seem to sit back after five minutes."
"Have you got tri bars?"
"Of course.  I'm fitting them when I get home."
"Have you used them before?"
"No, but what's the worst that can happen?  I can always put them on and not use them..."

They're not actually comparing penis size, but they seem to be edging towards it.  Naturally, they all have very impressive, expensive looking bikes, team branded lycra kit and sunglasses that they seem to wear in the gathering gloom of a late Autumn evening.

You know the sort, right?

.....and then one of them mentioned this evening the race that they're all training for: it's a super-sprint triathlon.  400m pool swim; 17.6km bike ride and 5km run.  Nothing to be sniffed at, certainly and well worth doing, for sure.  I've done the very same course myself and enjoyed myself enormously.  But is it really worth bragging about?  It's hardly an Iron Man, is it?

Put your junk back into your lycra, boys and put your rulers away.  For goodness sake.  Do you think this kind of thing would happen in the women's changing rooms?  Why can't *we* talk about Channing Tatum just once in a while?

which will you go for, which will you love?

Two of my colleagues were chatting at lunchtime today.

"It's a Linda McCartney sausage"
"A what?
"A Linda McCartney sausage"
"Who's that?"

Finding it hard to believe that the younger of the two apparently didn't know who Linda McCartney was, I felt I needed to intervene.

"You know who Paul McCartney is, right?"
"Yes"
"Well, he was married to Linda"
"What, the women with one leg?"
"No.  Not that one.  His first wife.  Famous for not being Yoko and for being vegetarian.  Have you heard of Wings?"
"No"
"Well, as Alan Partridge said, they were the band the Beatles could have been...[blank look] and Linda played keyboards so she could be closer to Paul"
"Never heard of them"
"Have you heard 'Live and Let Die'?"
"Oh yes. It's on the Shrek soundtrack"
"Um.  Maybe, but it's more famously on the soundtrack to 'Live and Let Die'.  Anyway, it's by Wings."
"Right."

We talked a little more about music, and she recommended I listen to a band called Tired Pony, although I hadn't heard of any of the people she said they sounded like (they're quite good, actually).  I asked her if she could name the band that changed everything for her, and she didn't really know what I meant.  I explained the impact that first Iron Maiden and then The Smiths had on the music I listened to and my whole attitude towards music, but she just shook her head a little sadly and said she couldn't think of anything that had affected her like that.

She has just started a premium subscription to Spotify though, so as a result of our conversation, she has added Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley to her wishlist and is going to give them a try over the next couple of days.  She was particularly keen on Jeff Buckley after I told her that his most famous song - albeit another cover by Rufus Wainwright - was also on the Shrek soundtrack.  Her eyes positively lit up at that....

Honestly.

I can remember being in my early twenties, and I am pretty sure I was more curious about music than this and I was hungry to discover the music that influenced the bands that I loved.   I would have thought that the internet would have made this whole process an awful lot easier and a lot less reliant on chance finds in Our Price bargain bins, but it seems that the simple curiosity to go and find more just isn't there.

Perhaps Chloe isn't typical, and to be fair to her, she is now off to listen to some Jeff Buckley and some Nick Drake.  My mind is now racing to think of other bands that she might enjoy.  I sense a pet project (although she didn't seem at all moved by the idea of Rammstein, it must be said....).

Eels are on the Shrek soundtrack.  Perhaps I should start there.

du hast mich gefragt...

Earworms of the Week.

Gorillaz – “Feel Good Inc.”

I've been working odd hours and cycling to work in the dark of a morning.... but you know what? I do feel pretty good at the moment.  I was having that conversation at work the other day about how no good music ever came out of happiness and that misery has all the good tunes.  Well, this is pretty upbeat and feelgood, isn't it?

City's breaking down on a camel's back.
They just have to go 'cause they don't know wack
So all you fill the streets it's appealing to see
You won't get out the county, 'cause you're bad and free
You've got a new horizon it's ephemeral style.
A melancholy town where we never smile.
And all I wanna hear is the message beep.
My dreams, they've got to kiss me 'cause I don't get sleep, no

Hmm. Well, it's got an upbeat and feelgood tune, anyway.

Theme from “Bread”

Especially that bit where Jack goes "buying, selling...the game's getting hard".  This was massive back in the day, wasn't it?  I imagine if I watched it now, it would be awful.  Didn't they change some of the main actors and keep going?  Yeah, that's a pretty tough thing to pull off.  Still, looking back now, I suppose having a sit com about a struggling family of catholic scousers trying to make ends meet in Thatcher's Britain was probably quite brave.

AC/DC – “Let Me Put My Love Into You”

Stupid, but gloriously so.

Rodrigo Y Gabriela – “Orion”. 

You just can't beat a bit of Metallica played on duelling fast, rhythmic acoustic guitars, can you?

House of Love – “Shine on”

Steve Lamacq played this on his 6Music show whilst I was having a show the other day when I got back from work.  It's from what?  1987 or 1988?  I was probably just getting into heavy metal, and was likely only peripherally aware of this at the time... although it does seem to be one of those songs that has sunk into my subconscious.  I've never owned any music by the band, but I seem to be more than passingly familiar with the song.  I suppose that's probably one of the signs of a decent song, eh?

Frank Sinatra – “New York, New York”

We're thinking of maybe taking a trip to New York around New Year, so that probably explains the earworm.  I have something of a love/hate relationship with Sinatra: I kind of hate everything about him, from his image as a "wiseguy" to his intensely irritating off-the-beat style of singing.  And yet I keep coming back to stuff he's done purely for the reason that he did it better than anybody else.  This song has largely been ruined by drunk idiots the world over, but it still sounds splendid when Frank does it.

Del Shannon – “Runaway”

All it took was one of my colleagues to murmur "I wonder" to himself as he pondered something we were working on, and my brain was off at full steam.  I wah wah wah wah wondered.... etc. Deadly.

Daft Punk – “Give Life Back To Music”

We started cooking dinner pretty late last night.  It was gone half eight and we were having a stir fry with prawns.  As I contemplated the mountain of vegetables in front of me that needed washing, peeling, chopping and stir frying, I paused to think about what I wanted to listen to.  I came up with "Random Access Memories".  An excellent decision.

Happy Mondays – “Loose Fit”

My wife grew up in France and she appears to have missed the whole 'baggy' phase entirely.  As we listened to this song in the kitchen, she thought it was awful and just did not understand why the strange man was going on about:

Don't need no skin tights in my wardrobe today
Fold them all up and put them all away
Won't be no misfit in my household today
Pick them all out and send them on their way

My attempt to explain to her about the fashion of the time for massive flares, and she just got even more confused.  She definitely wasn't having it and I don't think she likes the Happy Mondays very much.  They're twisting her melon, man.... they talk so hip...they're twisting her melon man.

Rammstein – “Du Hast”

Their bassist, Oliver Riedel, freaks me out a little for obvious reasons...

...but I have to admit that I've just been discovering and downloading their music, and you can't beat a good bit of Germanic industrial metal now and again, can you?  Amazing live, I hear.  Well, perhaps one day.  It's a bad ass video, anyway.

Right, well I'm knackered after this week and feel the need for some Leffe Blonde and perhaps a bit of Tomb Raider.  Ah.  That's living alright.  Have a good weekend, y'all.

I'm still yawning....

When I was a boy, I used to be a real early bird.  I'd frequently be the first person up in our house, and I'd spend the time quietly reading a book.  I loved to read, and in fact, I would usually fall asleep at the other end of the day with a book in my hand.  I still love to read, but somewhere along the way, the love of early mornings disappeared.

I was hardly unique as a teenager in spending most of the morning in bed whenever I could, but a pattern was set: I like to potter about doing nothing much until around midnight, and then I like to sleep for as long as I possibly can.  Of course, just as school used to harsh my lie-in buzz when I was a teenager, it's now work that tends to drag my sorry arse out of bed at around half past seven in the morning.

As I've got older and perhaps as my MS has reared it's ugly head, I tend to feel fatigue cumulatively: if I have a particularly busy week, then I really need to spend a few extra hours in bed over the weekend or I will pay a price in the form of an energy crash over the next few days.  I need to put some time into the bank, some money into the meter, some spoons into the drawer.... you get the picture.

My normal working pattern has been somewhat disrupted this week.  There's the cycling, of course, but in addition to that, I'm also working some strange hours.  I'm usually in the office from around 08:15 to about 18:00.  Because of a particular piece of work I'm doing at the moment, I've been forced to adjust my working hours to spend as much time as I can with a colleague who works 06:30 to 14:00.  Instead of getting up at around 07:00, I've been struggling out of bed at 05:45 and getting my gear together for the cycle to work.

Actually, the getting up is the hardest part of the whole thing. Once I'm out on my bike, I'm fine.  At the moment, at this time of day, it's dark when I start my commute and light by the time I arrive at the office.  It's pretty quiet and getting the blood pumping like this is a decent way to start the day.  I'm also quite enjoying those first few hours in the office when there's almost nobody else around and we can just make some coffee and get on with our work.

When Matt leaves the office at 14:00, I go back to my own desk and attend some meetings and deal with emails and things like that, not leaving until probably after 16:00.  It's a long day, and certainly one that I'm not used to working.  By about 15:00, I find that my brain stops working properly and I have this odd light-headed feeling and an ache around my neck and shoulders.... that's when my body is telling me that it's had enough.  This time last year, even during my normal working day, I was finding that my eyes were drooping terribly between about half two and half three.  This might have been due to the incredibly tedious meetings I was attending in overheated rooms, but I've since pretty much stopped drinking during the week, and that seems to have made me generally clearer eyed... even if I was only having the odd pint of a night, it really seems to have helped cutting that out.

Still, when I've been in the office since 06:30, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to shove off not long after 16:00.  They've more than had their pound of flesh by then, eh?

The ride home blows away most of the cobwebs, especially if it's raining, and by the time I've showered and made a cup of tea, I'm feeling set for the rest of the evening... although, to be fair, it's probably not as taxing playing Tomb Raider as it is trying to contribute intelligently to a meeting.

Hmm, actually.....

Anyway.  I do miss my later evenings, as by about 22:00, I'm absolutely beat and looking to hit the hay.  I do like to sleep, so that's okay too...although this worked less well for me last night when my wife bowled back in from her salsa class at about midnight and clanked about on the wooden floors with her dancing shoes on....

Yeah.  So, I have a feeling that I'm going to want to spend some quality time on Saturday morning asleep in my bed with no need to be anywhere.  That would be good.  Well, at least until I get up to go for a run, anyway.

Gotta go running.

*bang bang bang* Yee-haw!  1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.
*bang bang bang* Yee-haw!  1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.

handlebars....

On a normal week, I burn quite a few calories through exercise.  I won't profess to be an expert and I'm sure this isn't an exact science, but I plug my age, height, weight and gender into the gadgets I use to track my running and this is the rate of calorie burn that they tell me.

Until this week, a typical week for me might go something like this:

Monday: Running 4.45 miles, 629 calories
Tuesday: rest & injection
Wednesday: Running 3.29 miles, 471 calories
Thursday: Swimming 50 lengths (0.75 miles), 195 calories
Friday: rest & beer
Saturday: Running 4.00 miles, 579 calories
Swimming: Swimming 50 lengths (0.75 miles), 192 calories

(since the problems with my knee over the summer, I've also reduced my running mileage somewhat from the 20-ish miles per week I was managing before, with the addition of a long sunday run).

That totals 2,066 calories.  I also do two or three short sessions in the gym doing some leg exercises, which probably burns off a few more.  Apparently the average man needs about 2,500 calories per day to maintain his weight, so I'm basically doing enough exercise to eat another day's worth of food every week (not to mention that there's also apparently a "halo effect" after exercise where you continue to burn calories at an elevated rate for another couple of hours).

This energy burn is one of the reasons why I basically eat what I want and I'm still relatively thin.

I've started cycling to work last week, and for the last five working days I've commuted on my bike instead of hopping in the car.  It feels pretty good, to be honest.  I've been getting to work for 06:30 this week (for various reasons), and after the shock of the alarm, it's actually been really nice getting on my bike and riding to work just as it starts to get light.  The route is a shade under four miles and takes me about twenty minutes, which is not much slower than using the car.  It's also an awful lot easier cycling to the gym along the canal than it is driving there through the centre of town in rush hour.

I am, of course, burning more calories.  I haven't been swimming this week because of my new tattoo, but here's what's happened since last Thursday when I started cycling to the office:

Thursday:
cycle home -> work.  4.24 miles, 238 calories
cycle work -> gym. 3.79 miles, 232 calories
swimming. 50 lengths (0.75 miles), 314 calories
cycle gym -> home.  1.96 miles, 109 calories
Friday:
cycle home -> work.  3.67 miles, 189 calories
cycle work -> home (via the barber): 4.84 miles, 267 calories
Saturday: tattoo
Sunday:
cycle ride.  28.01 miles, 1,603 calories
Monday:
cycle home -> work. 3.96 miles, 230 calories
cycle work -> gym. 3.76 miles, 233 calories
running club. 4.39 miles, 626 calories
cycle gym -> home. 2.22 miles, 120 calories
Tuesday:
cycle home -> work. 3.94 miles, 204 calories
cycle work -> home (via osteopath). 5.80 miles, 326 calories
Wednesday:
cycle home -> work. 3.93 miles, 201 calories
lunchtime run. 3.32 miles, 488 calories
cycle work -> home. 4.01 miles, 233 calories.

Even without the big cycle on Sunday, that adds up to 4,903 calories: two days' worth of food .  With Sunday's ride that total is 6,506.  It looks like adding cycling to my daily routine will double the amount of calories I burn through exercise.  I didn't go for my usual run on Saturday either.

Um.

I take this data with a pinch of salt, of course.  But even so....I think I might need to start eating more.

In possibly related news, I'm buying a pair of padded cycling shorts.

ink....

I was explaining to someone at work today how I spent my weekend, when it hit me: I'm suddenly quite tattooed now.  They'd wanted to see pictures, of course, and their reaction to the orca was one at shock that it was so large.  I've got four tattoos in all now, starting with a little tribal swirl on my right arm in Amsterdam in 2003, then the bear paw on my left shoulder in Banff in 2010 and now these two.  The orca is comfortably the biggest, to be fair, but maybe I just don't look the sort.

Actually, this is quite an intricate design, and the tattoo has to be that large in order to get all of the detail in without risking any blurring of lines that are too close together.  I will admit that it looked dauntingly big on Saturday morning when Giselle, my tattooist, showed me the tracing... but actually it sits around my arm quite nicely, and that beautiful fluked tail doesn't even dip below my normal t-shirt line.  I was much encouraged too by the reaction of my wife, who absolutely loves this one, and she did from the moment that the tracing was put onto my arm to be inked in.  Giselle did a fantastic job with this one, I think.  It's still healing, obviously, but I think it looks really good.

The whole process took about 3 hours.  If you've never been tattooed before, then I guess you wouldn't know what that feels like.  I compare it to a feeling a little like sunburn, never really going above 2 /10 on the pain scale, except when the needle hits a more sensitive piece of skin - in this case on the softer parts of the back of my arm or near my armpit - even then, it's never over a 3 / 10.  Watching a good tattooist at work is a real pleasure anyway, and I had a front row seat for this one.

The other tattoo I had done on Saturday seemed to take no time at all and was all over in less than 45 minutes.  Unlike the intricate work required on the orca, this was relatively simple.  The story of both these tattoos can be found here, but this one is actually from a tracing that C. did of an old, hand drawn French star map showing the constellation Ursa Major..  The fact that she's had such a big role in the design of this one is really important to me, and I hope she's happy with the results.  If you look closely, you'll see that Giselle actually missed a greek letter designating the star Megrez off, which I noticed when applying some ointment on Sunday evening and I'll have to go back in a couple of weeks when I'm all healed for the 30 seconds that will be needed to add that tiny detail in.  No drama.  I'm really very pleased with this one already, anyway: it's a good size for my shoulder blade and I think it's worked really well from concept in my head to ink on my body with the fair hand of my wife involved in between.

I realise that tattoos are not to everyone's taste, but I'm comfortable with the ones that I have on my body.  They tell a story, don't they?  They tell my story.  I don't have anyone else's tattoos, I have mine.

Tell me about your tattoos - I want to hear the stories.  If you don't have one, what would you get?  Why haven't you?

words of love and words so leisured....

Earworms of the Week

The Seekers – “Georgy Girl”

The title song for the film of the same name.  Lyrics by Jim Dale.  Yes, the same Jim Dale who was in all of those Carry On films.  I'm not quite sure why this is in my head, because I haven't heard it recently.  Someone did describe the department where I work today as "Carry On IT", but I doubt it was that.  In fact, I can't remember hearing this song in years.  Go figure.  Still, worse things happen at sea, etc.

The Spice Girls – “Say You’ll Be There”

Those worse things that happen at sea?  THIS.  I am cursed to remember almost every word of the Spice Girls' first album because I was working in HMV when it was released, and so had the great pleasure of listening to it over-and-over again for MONTHS.  This song was their second single, released as the fuss around "Wannabe" began to fade.  You'll probably remember the video of them in the desert making out like techno ninjas, or somesuch.  And all because someone said something that sounded a bit like "and this I swear".  That was all it took.  I piss on you!

One Direction – “What Makes You Beautiful”

One Direction fans are about as tedious and deluded as the fans of every other boy band in the history of time. Sadly for the rest of us, they have access to social media and can make their tedious thoughts and childish threats all too public.  Perhaps 1D will be the next Beatles.  Who knows?  I'm fairly certain there are going to be some sheepish looking adults looking back with great embarrassment about the extent of the fuss they made over this lot.  Worth it?  Really?  I interviewed a guy in one of my company's local stores on Wednesday.  He was really good - yet another decent graduate forced to take A job rather than THE job.  Anyway - and I know I sound like a bitter bald, old git when I say this - but he had One Direction hair.  You know, the kind that is flattened down in some places and spiked up in others.  I'm afraid I don't understand why you would waste perfectly good time constructing something as pointless as that.  But then, I've just been to the barbers and had a grade 2 all over, so what would I know about it?

Metallica – “Broken, Beat and Scarred”

Rise, fall down, rise again
WHAT DON'T KILL YOU MAKE YOU MORE STRONG
Rise, fall down, rise again
WHAT DON'T KILL YOU MAKE YOU MORE STRONG

Dumb, but brilliant.

Joe Dassin – “Les Champs-Élysées”

C. absolutely loves this song.  She doesn't go in for singing along in the car very often, but she really lets rip when this one comes on.... which, of course, is a great reason for having it on in the car in the first place.  She likes a bit of Johnny Cash too.  That's my girl.

Robin Thicke – “Blurred Lines”

C actually played me this song on YouTube the other day - before the whole twerking thing, actually - because she was talking about the song with the girls at work and when she was telling me about it, I had no idea what she was talking about. It had completely and utterly passed me by.  I had never heard of Robin Thicke and I had certainly never heard the song.  Then she played it for me, and I thought it was shit.  Utter shit.  
I know you want it?  You're a good girl?  FFS, really?
Apparently this is massive.  DO NOT GET.

Weezer – “Island in the Sun”

This song is a happy place.  Hip, hip.

The Clash – “White Riot”

Just for that footage of Joe Strummer belting this into the microphone, laying down the vocal track in the studio.  They're remastered all their stuff, apparently.  Sounded pretty good to me already, to be honest.

Neil Diamond – “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon”

Great song.  I think operation Yewtree may want a word, but it's a great song.

Franz Ferdinand – “Darts of Pleasure”

They've got a new album out soon, but I wasn't that much taken by the single.  It's been slowly diminishing returns since their fantastic debut album, really.  Still, I had that on again the other day, and it remains a fantastic, fresh sounding record.  It's not that their other stuff isn't any good, it's just that it isn't quite AS good as that.

And what better way to leave you on a Friday afternoon than with this?

Ich heiße Superphantastisch!
Ich trinke Schampus mit Lachsfisch!
Ich heiße Su-per-phan-tas-tisch!

Have a great weekend, y'all.

you say bark, I say bite....

I cycled to work today for the first time ever.

I've sort of been meaning to do this for years and have never quite got round to it.  According to my new Garmin (thank you Running Club), from door to door, it's a mere 4.24 miles from home to office, and almost all of that is on dedicated cycle paths.  So why have I never cycled before now?  Well, because I take lots of other exercise and didn't think that this fitted in very well; because I car-shared with a friend and oddly felt like I didn't want to let him down.  It was actually my friend deciding to change jobs that was the final push to make the change.  Well, that and the Cycle to Work scheme that my office have just started participating in that means I was able to get a 42% discount on a new bike through a salary sacrifice thing that I don't really understand.

my new bike - minus sexy luggage rack and panniers.  Hmm.  Practical.

So the evidence of my advancing old age is piling up: last week I joined the National Trust, and this week I picked up a sensible new bicycle with a luggage rack and some panniers.  On Wednesday night, I carefully folded up a shirt and a pair of work trousers so that I didn't look like a scarecrow in the office, and carefully checked to make sure that I didn't forget anything obvious, like shoes or a pair of pants or something.   Then this morning, the whole thing took me a shade over twenty minutes.  Easy.  With all the road closures in Nottingham at the moment, that's probably not much slower than driving.  Plus my worthiness credentials are enormously advanced.

The trip wasn't entirely without incident, mind: I had a minor moment of embarrassment in the undercroft where I can securely park my bike.  I arrived a little after 8am, so there was plenty of space, but as I fiddled with my new D-lock, I dropped it on the floor and then had 30 seconds of trying to work out how to put it back together again.... all the while hoping that none of the more hardcore cyclists arriving would either:
a) notice what I was doing
or
b) scorn me for my stupidity.

I think I just about got away with it.

After work, I cycled from work straight to the gym for a swim.  Again, this is significantly easier than driving because the route is 3.79 miles (thanks again, Garmin) along a canal towpath instead of a hack directly through the centre of town.  After my swim (50 lengths), it was a mere 1.96 miles back home.

So, 9.99 miles of biking today.  Apparently that's an extra 579 calories burned.  Plus the swim and the leg exercises in the gym.  As if what I really needed to do was burn *more* calories.  I'd feel more virtuous, but I had fish and chips for my tea, followed by a treacle pudding with some clotted cream, so.....

cream. get on top (?)

I promise I'm not going to go on about our trip to Devon all week, but I can't very well finish talking about it without mentioning the food, can I?

In a word: amazing.

cream then jam or jam then cream?

Cream teas, obviously.  On the important question of clotted cream then jam, or jam then clotted cream, C deferred to me because my family are from Devon.  It's been so long since I had one that I'd actually forgotten how it was done.  Initially, I went for cream and then jam, but at the wedding in Tavistock, the scones were presented with the cream on top, which now I think about it seems to be much more sensible.  I can hear my paternal grandparents turning in their grave that I don't know this.  On the list of crimes in Devon, getting this wrong is probably only a little behind ordering a gin and tonic without using Plymouth Gin or asking for a "cornish pasty".  If it's anything like putting milk in your cup before the tea or afterwards, then one of these ways of putting a cream tea together is WRONG.  Which one, though?  Hmm.

Speaking of pasties, I had one of them too.  It was only from a little kiosk by the church in Widecombe-on-the-Moor, and it only cost me £2.50... but pound for pound it was probably the best thing that I ate all week.  As we sat there enjoying working our way through this massive heft of pasty, the kiosk was overrun by French bikers, on a roadtrip to the UK and extremely disgruntled by the picnic lunch laid on by the UK chapter of their club.  The guy we spoke to was muttering darkly about army biscuits with a strange liquid butter.  I think he was talking about a cream tea..... he was trying to order a cheeseburger, and was extremely sceptical when the lady behind the counter suggested a pasty instead.  C. intervened, and he sat down next to us and tucked in dubiously with his pocket knife and a fork.  Much to his surprise, he found it delicious, and was astonished to find that - apparently unusually for England - it was seasoned properly and was nice and peppery.

We ate well in our hotel too, both for dinner and with the full English breakfast each morning (and the St Austell beers were pretty good too).  The obvious highlight of the culinary week was our trip to Gidleigh Park... only two miles up the road from Chagford, but home to a two Michelin starred restaurant run by Michael Caines.

We had the eight course signature menu, accompanied by a "flight of wine", and for three hours we were able to sit back and enjoy some outstanding cooking and to enjoy the whole experience of having a sommelier explain the wine choice with every course.  It was amazing.   In fact, just so I can enjoy the thought of the meal all over again, here's the menu we had.

A delicious glass of properly good champagne accompanied by some appetisers (including a remarkable tomato consomme)
--
Warm salad of native lobster with a cardamon, lime and mango vinaigrette
served with a glass of Rias Baixas O'Rosal 2012 Terras Gauda
--
Terrine of foie gras with madeira jelly, truffled green bean salad
served with a glass of Mosel Riesling Kabinett 2011 Joh. Jos. Prum, Kabinnett, Wehlener Sonnenuhr (I'm no expert, but I thought this was the most harmonious combination of wine and food).
--
Cornish salt cod with Beesands crab, chorizo, samphire, tarragon and lemon puree
served with a glass of Seresin Chiarascura Chardonnay, Pinot Gris & Riesling 2009 Marlborough
--
Cornish duck with cabbage, smoked bacon, roast garlic, turnips and spice jus
served with a glass of Bergstrom Cumberland Reserve Pinot Noir 2010 Willamette Valley
--
Dartmoor lamb, boulangere potato and confit shoulder, fennel puree and a tapendade jus
served with a glass of Les Baux de Provence 2005 Henri Milan, Le Clos
--
A selection of South West Cheeses: Sharpham Elmhirst, West Country Cheddar, Little Stinky, Beauvale Blue
served with a glass of Port Lbv 2009 Quinta do Gaivosa (delicious, but a course made totally worth it just to hear a French sommelier explaining how the complexity of the port brought out the flavour of the "Leetel Steeenkee".)
--
Exotic Fruit salad: passion fruit sorbet and crystalline of pineapple
(it's always good to have a pre-dessert course, right?)
--
Plate of Apricot: apricot and almond nougatine parfait, apricot mousse and sorbet
served with a glass of Ruedera Chenin Blanc 2009 Stellenbosch.
--
Coffee and petit fours.

Words can hardly do justice to how good this meal was.  I preferred the white wines to the reds, on the whole, and I the foie gras and the salt cod were my two favourite courses, but it was a truly exceptional meal and I now want to go back as soon as possible with friends.  It's not an everyday kind of a meal, but once in a while it's a real treat.... not cheap, for sure, but still much better value than many of the restaurants in Nottingham.

I think I need to take more exercise to work that lot off.  Starting tomorrow, I'm going to cycle to work.  On top of everything else, obviously.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to learn how to fold up a shirt.

rabbit, rabbit, rabbit....

As you know, I like a bit of history.

I didn't actively go out seeking history on our holiday in Dartmoor last week... well, I suppose I did a bit: visits to castles and various National Trust properties probably count as seeking out history right?  Well, anyway.  I accidentally stumbled across some history as I was browsing the little shops in the centre of Chagford.

There's a little art gallery there, and it seemed to have an unusual number of pictures and sculptures of hares.  Now, I like hares.  They're beautiful and interesting animals.  To this day, I regret that we didn't buy a lovely ceramic sculpture of a hare that we saw when we were in a cafe in Ashbourne.  I paused to have a closer look at the pictures in the gallery, and saw that there was a leaflet there too about something called "The Three Hares Trail".  It turns out that there are a number of churches - seventeen, to be precise -  around Dartmoor that all have at least one roof boss depicting an ancient symbol of three hares or rabbits running in a circle and joined by their ears to form a triangle at the centre of the design. The symbol is a puzzle for each creature appears to have two ears yet, between them, they share only three ears.  I was intrigued, and as one of the seventeen churches was in Chagford itself, I headed over to have a look.

The symbol in Chagford is on the roof directly over the altar.  The little flyer detailing the history of the church that I picked up on the way in explained that the hares or rabbits were often associated with the tin miners in the area (who bred rabbits in warrens for food) and that the three represented the Trinity.

Hmm.  The leaflet I'd picked up in the gallery had mentioned that the three hares symbol can be found all over the world and many thousands of miles apart. According to the Three Hares Project, the earliest known examples of the motif date back to the 6th Century AD and are on the ceilings of Buddhist cave temples in Dunhuang, China - an important trading post. The symbol is also associated with Buddhism, Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity.  Not to mention the fact that the hare itself is an animal with strong links to magic and to paganism and has long been associated with fertility, the moon and the female reproductive cycle.

A sign of the Trinity?  Perhaps, but it feels as though there are other meanings going on here too and that the symbol's presence in these churches does not have such a straightforward interpretation.

Later that same day, we went out to Widecombe-on-the-Moor to have a look at the church there and to go for a walk on the moor.  There's a boss of the three hares on the roof there too, again close to the altar.  Again, the literature in the church itself links this to the Tin Miners (who paid for the addition of the famous church tower) and with the Trinity.  Looking at the positioning of the boss on the ceiling here, and it is surrounded by other bosses representing images that don't seem at all Christian to me: there are several Green Men, a boss featuring Gawain (of Green Knight fame, of course), bosses of Oak, Wormwood and Myrtle.

The boss of the hares here itself is called "The Hunt of Venus"... is it just me who thinks that the whole Trinity explanation of the significance of this symbol has been added somewhat after the event?  The whole thing reeks of paganism.  Not that this is a bad thing.... surely the story of Christianity is, above almost all else, a story of the triumph of adaptability?  Where do you think the Easter Bunny comes from?  Or the Christmas Tree? Or the celebration of Christmas around Midwinter?    These links to paganism are not to be feared or explained away, surely they're to be celebrated?

We went to a family wedding in Tavistock on the Saturday, and funnily enough there was a boss with the three hares there too, only this time the creatures depicted were categorically rabbits.  I suppose they superficially look the same, but anyone who has ever seen a hare with their own eyes will know that they're unmistakably hares and not rabbits.  These were rabbits.

Still, I was intrigued by the little slice of history that I'd stumbled across.  Every day is a school day.

Especially if you're a history geek.  It's everywhere and it's brilliant.

over the moor, take me to the moor....

In the last few years, I have been lucky enough to do a fair bit of travelling.  When we go on holiday though, we tend to go abroad.  In 2010 alone, when we took some time off work after my diagnosis with MS, we figured that life was too short and spent 9 months or so travelling around Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, USA, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Canada, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Austria.  That was an amazing year and we saw and did lots of incredible things.  Since then, I've been to Kenya, Tanzania, Canada, Austria.... just not the UK.  Sure, we go to Glastonbury most years, but that doesn't really count.

For the first time in a long time, we spent last week on holiday in Dartmoor National Park in Devon.  We walked, we did some diving, we attended a family wedding and we ate some lots of really good food and drank lots of some really good beer.

You know what?  Some of this country is incredibly beautiful.  Easily as lovely as almost anything that I have seen abroad.  I really should make more of an effort to discover more of it.

This is the White Lady Waterfall in Lydford Gorge.  My grandparents, my father's parents, used to live in Plymouth, so I spent many summer holidays in this area.  It was really nice to enjoy them again some twenty-five years later and to realise that I really should have paid more attention to the places my parents dragged me around when I was younger.  We even joined the National Trust, for goodness sake.  That makes me old, right?  I've put the membership sticker in the car, but it feels weird having it there and I've kept the backing to the sticker in case I decide to take it off again and keep it in the glove compartment until we need it next.

The view up from the Devil's Cauldron at Lydford Gorge.  Since I was last here, they've replaced the rickety, damp plank held up by rusty chains with a much more sturdy looking walkway, but the view remains just as splendid as it was before.

A sheep on the moorland above Widecombe-on-the-Moor in the heart of Dartmoor.

A Dartmoor pony and her foal.  It's a breed of horse entirely native to the UK and is hardy enough to survive the sometimes extreme conditions out on the moors, where they roam wild.  When we were walking, there were lots and lots of suckling foals.  They're wild, of course, but unlike Gerald the Gorilla, they're not livid and they actually seem pretty placid and tolerate having you walking around them.

Widecombe church is apparently sometimes called "the Cathedral of the Moors".  Well, I don't know about that, but I did eat a delicious pasty from a stall just over the road from it.

The weather was pretty good when we were there, but it can be famously changeable out on the moors.  We went for a walk near to Hound Tor - which apparently inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write his famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The moorland is capped with many exposed granite hilltops - like this one - known as tors.  As I'm sure you already know, the granite upland that makes up the National Park dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history.

They do a pretty mean cream tea around here too, AND Plymouth Gin is the discerning cocktail maker's gin of choice.  What more do you need to know?  My dad's family are all from Devon, so I'm practically local.  Certainly more local - at least in genetic terms - than some of the very posh sounding old people who seem to have bought up a load of the houses in Chagford, where we were staying, anyway.... but who can really blame them for moving somewhere so beautiful? A place where they serve local ice cream with a topping of fresh clotted cream?

It was lovely.... just don't trust your satnav to take you anywhere around here.  It might be technically taking you on the shortest route, but take my advice and buy an atlas instead.  An atlas will show you roads that are big enough to leave more than about an inch on each side of your car between very solid looking dry stone walls.  That way you don't have to worry what you're going to do when you meet a Land Rover coming in the other direction.

I'm just saying.