belligerent ghouls...

There was an article in the Guardian this weekend about the dark underside to books about boarding schools; how for every jolly Hogwarts story, there are many that display a somewhat seamier underbelly than even the one imagined by JK Rowling (and given that she imagined a basilisk slithering around the school in the Chamber of Secrets, that's really saying something).

"Savage discipline, along with sexual confusion and formalised bullying, are so common in the schooldays memoirs of the British elite in the 19th and 20th centuries that you have to conclude that parents wanted and paid for their children to experience these things. To most of the class that used them, the private schools were factories that would reliably produce men and women who would run Britain, its politics, business and culture. Boarding school was a proven good investment. So thousands of men and women who had suffered awfully, by their own admission, sent their children off for just the same."

Well, steady on.

My dad was the first member of his family to go to University, studying medicine in London with a set of grades at A-Level that wouldn't get him anywhere near further education these days.  He worked hard and, together with my mum, thought that the best gift that they could give their children was to send them to boarding school.  So, at the age of 7 years old, I effectively left home.

The schools I went to for the next 11 years were some way removed from the kind of places that people now pay upwards of £35,000 a year.  Nowadays, it's all co-education (girls!), study-bedrooms and academic achievement.  Not in my day.  These schools were at the sharp-end of a few decades of under-investment, and the cracks were beginning to show.  I was a scholar, my parents receiving a discount on my bill because of my academic performance... something which also earned me the tremendous distinction of having my name in capital letters in the school directory.  Sadly, academic achievement counted for little and pretty much doomed you to a life with a diminished social status in a school where your prowess at sport was everything.  I had to work very hard indeed to get my social status back to a comfortable zero, which is about as good as it ever got for me.  Actually, that's about as good as it's EVER been.

Was I bullied?  A bit, although physical bullying was very rare and the the kind of fagging that you might have read about in Tom Brown's Schooldays was long dead.  Was there even a hint of sexual abuse from either teacher or other pupils?  None that I heard and certainly none that I experienced.

Did I suffer long-lasting emotional damage that has affected my ability to form close relationships or to express my feelings?  Absolutely.  Although the bullying aspect of the article didn't chime with me at all, there was one bit that really did:

EM Forster delivered the harshest of all one-liners about the products of the British public school. They go out into the world, he wrote in 1927, “with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts”. 

Undeveloped hearts.  There it is. That's the (a-ha!) heart of the matter.

I get on well with my family, but we aren't close by any stretch of the imagination.  My wife mentioned to me at the weekend that she really needed to talk to her mum because they hadn't spoken since Wednesday.  I haven't spoken to mine since Mother's Day and I haven't spoken to either of my brothers for a few months.  No one is ignoring anyone: this is just perfectly normal in my family.  I don't blame anyone, but I'm fairly sure that this is the result of my schooling.  I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for my mother in particular to send me away when I was seven years old, but she did it with the best of intentions.  My mother would probably take this as the most damning criticism of all, but I'd certainly never send any child of mine into this environment.

“They say that Eton taught us nothing,” crowed the first world war general Sir Herbert Plumer at a dinner of the school’s old boys’ society in 1916. “But I must say they taught it very well.”

The funny thing is that I never at any point even really felt homesick.

Isn't that sad?

clones...

When he arrived in the office the other day, my boss greeted me warmly.  After exchanging pleasantries about our respective weekends, he told me that he had been watching the football on Friday night on the BBC with his wife. Apparently, when the managers were interviewed, they had the following conversation:

"You know you keep asking me about that guy who works for me and what he looks like?"
"Yes?"
"Well, he looks a bit like that guy's older brother"

Pep Guardiola is 46 next week. He's nearly 18 months older than my older brother.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this.  I think, on balance, I'll probably take it as a compliment.

I seem to have one of those faces. I once ran past a guy standing at a bus stop with his girlfriend, and the three of us stared at each other as we all realised that me and the guy looked almost exactly the same.  Five minutes later, I turned around and we repeated the whole thing when I ran past them again.  A few years before that, I was eating in a restaurant in York when I realised that all of the kitchen staff were lined up behind the serving counter looking at me.  I scanned from left to right, taking them all in, until I got to the chef on the end who looked exactly like me.  He gave me a little wave.

...and before you say anything, if you think that about my dad, then you haven't met my dad.

may your eyes let you see...

We popped down the motorway to my parents’ house yesterday afternoon for some lunch. It’s my mum’s birthday this week, and with father’s day coming up as well, my younger brother had organised for us to get together and cook lunch for the aged parents. Well, actually, he’d organised the lunch because we’ve just found out that my mum has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, and we wanted to show some solidarity and make the effort to come and make a bit of a fuss of her (what is it about my family and neurology. My elder brother and his family had to drop out, but my younger brother and his (surrogate) family were there, as were my aunt (my mum’s sister) and uncle.

It was really nice. A couple of glasses of wine and just a bit of general chit-chat over a roast lamb. I know It’s a hoary old tradition and that lots of people do this sort of thing every week, but my Sundays usually revolved around a long run, and lunch is often something to be grabbed at home and eaten in front of a re-run of Modern Family. We also don’t get together as a family anywhere near as much as we might. Mum and dad only live an hour or so down the motorway, but we’ve never really been the cuddly types and I’m generally happy to stay lightly in touch. It’s not that we’re not close, it’s just that we don’t have that kind of relationship. Perhaps this is what happens when you’re sent away to a boarding school at the age of 7 and that this is the kind of relationship with your family that is a direct result of that sort of emotional and physical separation. My mum’s diagnosis isn’t really a shock either. My dad is a doctor and my mum is a nurse, and I think they both had a pretty good idea what was coming before the formal diagnosis, and then my dad managed the breaking of the news to us in the same way as I’m sure he did when he broke bad news to a patient: state the facts and manage our emotional reactions. He did the same thing to me when he told me he had cancer ten years ago. It’s not great news, clearly, but at the same time all of the emotion has been drained out of it. I suppose I’m just the same when I think about my MS… getting upset about it doesn’t do any good.

Anyway. I haven’t seen my aunt and uncle in years, and one of the really nice things about getting older is that – and I know this sounds ridiculous – it’s good to be able to relate to them as people and not just as my aunt and uncle. When you’re a kid, they’re just another adult, aren’t they? They’re not really people in their own right and you’re not really interested in what they like or don’t like. Now that I’m older, it was really good to be able to have a long and interesting conversation with my uncle about beer and comparing notes on our local breweries. As well as a love of beer, we’ve got loads in common: he taught history for most of his life and his politics and world view seem similar to mine. He also has a lovely wry sense of humour. I like him. That’s nice to find out.

I like my parents too. My dad drives me mad, but it’s times like these when you really realise that they won’t be around forever and you need to appreciate them while you can.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Or, if you prefer

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
To-morrow will be dying.

Depressing? Not really. It’s the one thing we can all be sure of, isn’t it?

Carpe Diem and all that shizzle.

play among the stars....

I spent a good part of my Sunday afternoon reading "One Night in June" by Kevin Shannon and Stephen Wright.  It was loaned to me a little while ago by mother-in-law before a trip to Normandy that we unfortunately had to cancel.  The book tells the story of the British Glider Regiment and their role in Operation Tonga.

As wikipedia says:

"Operation Tonga was the codename given to the airborne operation undertaken by the British 6th Airborne Division between 5 June and 7 June 1944 as a part of Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings during the Second World War. The paratroopers and glider-borne airborne troops of the division landed on the eastern flank of the invasion area, near to the city of Caen, tasked with a number of objectives. The division was to capture two strategically important bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River which were to be used by Allied ground forces to advance once the seaborne landings had taken place, destroy several other bridges to deny their use to the Germans and secure several important villages. The division was also assigned the task of assaulting and destroying the Merville Gun Battery, an artillery battery that Allied intelligence believed housed a number of heavy artillery pieces, which could bombard Sword Beach and possibly inflict heavy casualties on the Allied troops landing on it. Having achieved these objectives, the division was then to create and secure a bridgehead focused around the captured bridges until they linked up with advancing Allied ground forces."

In spite of poor weather, communication difficulties and some poor navigation, the Operation successfully completed all of its objectives and significantly hindered the German response in the crucial early hours of the D-Day landings. Of course, that summary obscures the extraordinary heroism and sacrifices of the troops involved. Apart from anything else, the gliders used in the operation were made of very lightweight wood, were laden with the heavy equipment needed by the paratroopers - light artillery, jeeps, bulldozers and the like - and were helplessly towed into enemy territory through flak and by planes that they couldn't always reliably communicate with. As if that wasn't bad enough, their target landing zones were tiny, hard to locate and often protected by telegraph poles that had been specifically put in place to prevent exactly this kind of attack. Many of the gliders and supporting paras landed as far as two miles away from their objectives, so the completion of all of their primary and secondary objectives becomes an even more remarkable achievement.

The book has the first-hand accounts of many of the pilots involved in the operation and all have extraordinary stories to tell, many told with the kind of understatement and stiff-upper lip that you imagined only existed in the most hackneyed war films.

What gives this story all the more poignancy and relevance for me - albeit indirectly - is the fact that one of the pilots involved in the operation - was my wife's grandfather. He flew glider 100 and was fatally wounded by enemy fire during the landing. His story is told by his lead pilot, and his memory and sacrifice are thus commemorated and remembered.

Of course, in the wider context of the war, this was just one small piece of a much larger story, and just one lost life amongst thousands lost on that day alone... but it was a crucial piece of that story nonetheless and it deserves to be remembered and re-told, and not just by his family.

after all, he's just a man...

One of my old running buddies asked me today if I had an opinion on the existence of women only races. This is “Race for Life” season, and the Embankment on the river Trent was covered with wave after wave of ladies dressed in pink last weekend, running 5km to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Alongside their running numbers, many wear hand-written signs detailing who they are running for; some with pictures; many no longer with us.

It’s quite an emotional event, and it always seems like a glorious celebration to me. I have a friend who runs it every year, she trains for a few weeks before the event and worries about whether she’s going to be able to make it and then proudly takes selfies, all red-faced at the finish. She tries to shrug it off and tells me that she’s not a real runner, but I always tell her that she’s just the same as me: runners run. If you run, you are a runner. It’s that simple.  Don't let anyone try and tell you that it isn't.

Does it bother me that I’m excluded from races like this? Not really. You know the kind of person who complains on International Women’s Day that there isn’t an International Men’s Day? Why would I want to be that guy? Why would anyone want to be that guy?   If it bothers you that much, please feel free to set up your own, male only event.  Besides, the other 364 days of the year and most of the human existence has been one long international men's day, hasn't it? Really?

So no, I’m not threatened by a women only race or opposed to the idea of it. Why would I be?  Some of the strongest people I know happen to be women (some of the quickest runners too, for what that's worth).  Sheesh.  Haven't people got more important things to be worrying about?

As it happens, my nephew and niece have just taken part in the schools version of race for life (which is open to both boys and girls).  My 8 year old niece managed a full 5km and her little brother something less than that.  My dad sent me pictures of the cards they pinned to their t-shirts.  To say he was touched is something of an understatement:

and

Adorable, no?
---

If you're interested, here's the Cancer Research position on why Race for Life remains a women only event:

"When we launched Race for Life in 1994 it was unique due to the fact that it was a women only event and this aspect has really shaped how the series has grown from strength to strength each year. The atmosphere on the day of Race for Life events has a strong sense of sisterhood, uniting all women with a common goal, to raise funds to beat cancer. We regularly review our events to make them the best they can be and four years ago we seriously looked at whether we should let men enter Race for Life. However, our research showed that Race for Life’s success is due to its appeal to women as a women-only event and to allow men to enter could bring in less income for the charity’s life saving work. We cannot risk this vital source of income to cancer research. We hope you understand that this decision has been made in the best interests of the cause."

A women only race? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

(the big payback)

I received a phone call from my older brother on Sunday afternoon.
"Don't worry, everyone's okay.... but I've just been in a car accident with Mum and Dad"
As conversational openings go, that certainly got my attention.

My parents have been visiting my brother and his family to celebrate Mothers Day.  They had been travelling for a walk before lunch with my brother driving when they collided with another car.  Given that the roof and all the supporting struts had to be cut from the car by the fire brigade before they could be taken to hospital, it's remarkable that no one was more seriously hurt.  My brother walked away with only the bruises from his seat belt and my mum was released from hospital on Monday with bruises and some "minor" cracks in her spine that may actually have been there already. Sounds pretty horrible, but apparently it's a lot less painful than when she slipped a disc.  My dad is still in hospital.  He's been on blood thinning drugs and the collision saw an artery in his chest rupture and lots of blood leaking into his chest cavity.  Apparently, so he proudly told me whilst high as a kite on morphine, it have him a D-cup on one side of his chest.  He's okay, I'm told, but just waiting to see what needs to happen to secure the artery and make sure everything is okay.  He was most perturbed to have lost his ridiculously large "phablet" smartphone to be honest, and since he got that back he's been busy chatting to all his church pals on Facebook.

My dad is a doctor, so he tends to make a terrible patient: always full of comment and criticism of his treatment and what he would be doing instead.  He's always been pretty unsympathetic with his family too.  If he's concerned about you, you know you must be ill, and I can only really remember that three times in my life: when I had measles and pneumonia together when I was about thirteen, when I had glandular fever and when I started exhibiting the symptoms of what was later diagnosed as MS (he initially thought I could have broken my neck).

My mum told me an interesting story when I spoke to her on Monday though.  Apparently, she was stuck in the car waiting to be cut out for around an hour.  My father, who for the last twenty years of his career worked in Occupational Medecine, joked that as he'd worked with the Cambridgeshire fire brigade, he might well know some of the firemen they were waiting for and how terribly embarrassing that would be.  When the firemen arrived, as my dad was bleeding, they focused on getting him out first.  As my mum was waiting, in pain and getting cold, she was comforted by one of the firemen who kept her warm and held her hand.

"I'm only here because of your husband, you know"
Apparently, a few years before, this guy had been through a really messy break-up and had really hit the rails.  The brigade had wanted to get rid of him as too much trouble, but my father played a critical role in convincing them that he was worth the trouble and that he could be helped. He then provided some of that practical help.
"I haven't had a drink in three years and gave up smoking a year ago.  I owe your husband my career"

I don't see that side of my dad very often, but it's nice to hear a story like that and good to know that his care and compassion was repaid a little further down the line.

someone by your side to sing along...

I had a good long phone conversation with my elder brother last night. We get on pretty well, I think, but I wouldn’t exactly say that we were close. In fact, several months often go past between conversations. He forgot my birthday, actually… but I’m old enough now that this isn’t really a big deal, and as he’s got two kids aged 6 and 3, I figure that he’s got other things on his mind and other calls on his time. We’re good. It’s all good.

His reason for calling was that he wanted to thank me for the presents we’d sent down (via Amazon) for his daughter’s sixth birthday the other week.

C. and I are probably the kind of aunt and uncle that you would have hated as a kid. We’re always giving worthy or educational presents, and we’re particularly fond of giving people books. Well, we both loved books when we were kids, and there are some absolute knock-out books you can give kids (I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen or The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of his Business by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erbruch or Hairy McLary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd), so….

This time around though, I thought I’d do something different and I sent her the DVD of the recent Muppet movie and a CD of the soundtrack. Part of my thinking was that I was pretty sure that my brother and his wife would have to watch this several hundred times over the next few months, so it might as well be something that they can enjoy too. I love that film and the soundtrack is just brilliant. Plus, of course, if the Muppets are a hit, then that’s a pretty rich seam I can mine for birthdays and Christmas for the next few years.

It’s been a hit apparently…. Mum loved it too, I hear. I imagine when we finally arrange our long-promised baby-sitting session with them, we’ll get a chance to watch it too. Well, at that age, life should be a happy song, eh?

Whilst we were talking, I was reminded that I was only seven years old when I was first sent off to boarding school.  Thinking about my niece, I suddenly realised how young that is.  Seven!  I mentioned it to my brother and asked him if he could ever imagine sending his daughter away in the next year or so.  He didn't even need to think about it.  No.  Of course he wouldn't.  I know that my parents only did it with the best of intentions, but can you imagine how hard it must have been to drive away, leaving me at school that first time?

This photo was taken in the same month I started boarding - September 1981.  The past truly is another country.  They do things differently there.

the patience of angels...

I'm aware that I might sometimes seem excessively stoical about my MS.  It's certainly true that I've been relatively lightly affected to date and that plenty of other people are far, far worse off than me.  I know this because I see some of these people every time I attend an MS clinic, and I read about them almost every time I read an MS-themed blog.  I know this to be true, but I'd hate anyone to think that this means I am in a state of zen-like calm about my condition.

I'm not.  It pisses me right off.

I hate the fact that I can't feel my feet properly, that my big toes seem to be perpetually numb and that the muscles in my leg feel all weird; that my hands are affected by pins and needles to the degree that I'm losing the ability to do detailed little things like the top button of a shirt; that my shoulders are getting weaker and I have all the upper-body strength of a small, enfeebled child; I wonder if every time I forget something if it's a neurological symptom; I hate the blurry vision I sometimes get in my right eye when it steadfastly refuses to adjust to a change in light conditions; I hate the awful lassitude and fatigue I feel when I just suddenly "bonk" and have no energy left and have no options but to just go to bed, whatever the time of day.  I don't really like the fact that I have to give myself injections every week with a massive needle that hurts more or less every time I stick it into my thigh.... and let's not even get started on the impact that my diagnosis has on things like my ability to get travel insurance, on my driving licence and on my ability to spontaneously just get away from it all without proper planning and, most likely, a doctor's note.

Yeah.  MS is a right pain in the arse.

....but the thing is, it is all relative.  It was a bit of a bind to get a doctor's sign-off that I was okay to go diving in Lanzarote next week, but when he did the necessary, he wrote that I had MS, but that my condition was "stable and well-managed".  And you know what?  It is too.  For such an unpredictable condition, I really have been lucky so far.  I had dinner with my little brother last week.  He was in town for a conference and I took him out for a curry.  Over dinner, he told me how he felt a bit of a fraud when he turned up meetings of his local branch of his MS Society.  So much so, in fact, that he stopped going.  Lots of other people there were in wheelchairs, and they looked at him and saw nothing wrong.  He was actually asked what his connection with MS was.  Did he know someone with the disease?  It's funny that the very people who ought to know the most about the condition apparently knew so little, but it proved to me again that it's all relative.  My younger brother may not show many outward signs of the condition, but he was diagnosed a few years after me and has already had at least two relapses and has been hospitalised and on steroids; he has so little sensitivity in his hands that he has to use a special keyboard and mouse - which as a web developer is something of an inconvenience, I'm sure.  On the other hand, I have never been hospitalised by my MS symptoms and even cannot honestly say that I've even had a distinct relapse since my symptoms first appeared in 2005.  It's all just ebbs and flows around the same basic theme.  And he's worried about seeming a fraud.

So yeah.  MS is a bind and I wish I didn't have to put up with it and its manifold indignities and inconveniences.... but it really could be worse, you know.  It really could.  I was going to moan about how hard my last couple of runs have been, how numb my feet and how heavy my legs, but even typing that thought up makes me feel like a pathetic whiner.  Oh poor me, slogging my way around a four-and-a-half mile run!  When some people can't walk without a stick and many can't walk at all because of their MS, that's a pretty nice problem to have, huh?

It's shit, but it could be worse.

That's pretty much a seven word summation of the human experience, isn't it?

he's making a list and checking it twice....

I received my father's Christmas list via email the other day.  He usually makes a point of saying every year how he's not a big fan of lists like this, but he didn't bother this year.  Maybe he's tired of receiving socks.

I think I actually started the trend in our family for writing Christmas lists.  I pride myself a bit on putting a bit of thought into the presents I get for people, but I'd simply had enough of receiving poorly thought out tat in return.  Clearly, what you get isn't as important as the thought, and I know that I'm a difficult person to buy for, but the year that one of my brothers gave me a giant plastic budweiser money bottle was the final straw.  After that, I just made lists.  You know: a few CDs, a few DVDs, a few books.  That kind of thing.  Nothing too fancy or expensive, but things that I actually want and would otherwise buy for myself.

Of course, once I'd started doing it, everyone else felt that they needed to follow suit.  It makes shopping a lot easier, for sure, and you can guarantee that you are at least getting people something that they want, but it does take some of the fun out it.

Anyway.  My dad's list turned up.  High up on the list (second only after "shirts") was this: "Long scarf, nice bright colours I can loop double around my neck in modern way. My current scarves are not long enough to do this."

Um.  What?  Loop double around your neck in the modern way?  What on earth is that?  I presume he means that thing where you fold the scarf in half and pull one end through the other in a sort of slip knot.  Is that an especially modern way to wear a scarf?  Have people not been doing that since there have been scarfs?  What a peculiar way of describing it.  Strange man.

Well.  We popped to Paul Smith anyway.  A nice scarf in the classic Paul Smith stripe should fit the bill.  Obviously, he'll only wear it with his hideous, huge high viz jacket with the velcro fastenings that will pull it to pieces, but that's up to him....

Anyway, other options on his list included things like "The People's Bible Commentary – Isaiah - A devotional commentary for study and preaching" (or, alternatively, the editions covering Job and Jeremiah).... and obviously I'm not going there.

they want the water not the wine....

It was my younger brother's birthday at the end of October.  As usual, I was almost entirely lacking in inspiration.  After all, what do you get for your 35 year old younger brother?  To be honest, I've long since given up on thinking of anything original to give him and have either been buying him amazon vouchers or getting him something he's specifically asked for.  Not very interesting, perhaps, but at least he can get himself something that he actually wants.

In 2009 we did hit upon something different: he asked me to buy him a few albums that I thought he might like.  Now, I have very little idea what music floats his boat, but he sent me a list of the sorts of things he was enjoying and left it entirely up to me.  I can't remember everything I bought him that year, but I think it included the first Maximo Park album (he already had and liked "Our Earthly Pleasures"), something else and the Mumford & Sons album.  Now, I'm not really much of a fan, but that last one in particular proved to be a real hit with my brother.

It was an experiment that worked well enough that we tried it again the following year: I bought him the first Band of Skulls record , Nick Drake's "Byter Layter",  Cat Power's "The Greatest" and the Mt Desolation record.  Again, I think Nick Drake and particularly the Mt. Desolation albums were a hit, so on the whole it was well worth doing.  

I think I gave him vouchers again in 2011, but this year he asked me for some music.  Hmm.  Now, I've not actually bought that much music this year, so I had to do a bit of head scratching.  After a couple of weeks thinking about it, we came up with the following:

"Django Django" by Django Django

"Jake Bugg" by Jake Bugg (Nottingham's 1st number one in decades)

"Diamond Mine" by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins (the extended edition)

...and an album that he specifically asked for by Inlet Sound.

Now, I've no idea if he'll like any of that stuff (although I think he'll be all over the King Creosote album and perhaps the Jake Bugg)... but it will be fun to find out.  Hopefully for both of us.

Christmas isn't far away either, so perhaps I'd better keep my thinking cap on.... if anyone has any suggestions, then please feel free to add them below.  Whilst we're at it, I'm also after gift ideas for my elder brother, his wife and two kids and for both my parents.  Oh, and for my wife.....

walk on...

Congratulations are due to my little brother, who completed a 40km hike across the South Downs on Saturday to raise £1,087 (so far! you can still sponsor him on that link....) for MS Research.

You might remember that he did something similar about 12 months ago, when he walked Offa's Dyke to raise money for the MS Society.

What happened next was a cruel irony: as he says himself:

"Back in April 2011, I walked Offa's Dyke (a 177 mile National Trail) in aid of MS Society after a family member, after several years of symptoms, was diagnosed with MS. During the challenge, as I talked to people about the condition, it moved me just how many people's lives have been affected by MS. Since completing that challenge, I began to experience symptoms, and was diagnosed with Relapsing Remitting MS in December 2010".

So, raise money for an MS charity...develop the symptoms of MS.  Life's a kicker, isn't it?  I sometimes describe any fundraising I do for the MS Society as "my self-interest charity", and I guess my brother is now in the same boat.  Still, with the current Government of the UK looking to make slashing cuts to the National Health Service, including a likely cut to the funding of the MS Nurses, these charities need the money more than ever before.

My brother has just started injecting himself -- today! --with the same beta-interferon 1a that I've been using now for the last couple of years.  I hope he reacts to it as well as I have, but it can definitely be a little overwhelming at the start when you receive all of that equipment and are faced with the prospect of stabbing yourself in the leg with a needle that's about two inches long every single week for the indefinite future.

I was, however, amused to see him tweet:

"Apparently I am not the first idiot to lock my sharps bin within 5 minutes of receiving it!"

Um.... no, definitely not the first idiot to do that.  Ahem.  In my defence, how are you supposed to know that pushing the bit that says "push" down will lead to final closure?  They don't tell you that kind of stuff.  Of course, it takes a special kind of idiot to do the same thing several times, but I was at least able to offer the advice that they're usually possible to re-open with a bit of patience and a pair of kitchen scissors....  

Well done.  Pretty good effort all round, I reckon.  On behalf of our people, I thank you! I may be shaking the virtual collecting tin myself over the next few months as I'm thinking of doing the Nottingham half marathon again in September.  Steel yourselves.  You have been warned.

walk on.....

I can’t let the day pass without offering a quick word or two of congratulations to my younger brother who today completes a thirteen day walk of Offa’s Dyke. The Dyke was built by Offa, King of Mercia from 757 to 796 A.D to try and create a boundary between his kingdom and the independent Welsh kingdoms; it’s 177 miles of trail winding across the Welsh and English borders from Prestatyn on the North Wales coast to Chepstow on the Severn Estuary, so it’s no mean feat (no pun intended) to walk it-- especially when you’re carrying a full pack and are camping along the way. My brother’s been walking in the company of his dog and a friend in order to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and they have so far raised a little over three thousand pounds.

As he says on his website:

“About a year ago, after several years of having symptoms, a family member was officially diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Like most people I was ignorant of what MS is, so when I heard the news I did some research.

Now bear with me, as I am certainly no expert, but basically MS is an autoimmune disorder affecting the central nervous system, caused by the immune system attacking the protective sheath surrounding nerve fibres. MS is unpredictable, and symptoms vary from person to person, but can include problems with balance, fatigue, numbness, visual problems and muscle stiffness or spasms, and in some cases can lead to severe and permanent disability. MS can be a difficult lengthy process to diagnose, but it is the most common disabling neurological condition affecting young adults – around 100,000 people in the UK have the condition. It is complex and unpredictable – there is no cure, and treatments that are available are effective in only certain cases for some of the time.

After doing this research, and talking to people, it has moved me just how many people’s lives have been affected by MS – I have discovered that something I hardly knew anything about is all around me.”

I haven’t spoken to him about this or about my MS at all really, but you’d have to be made of stone to read that and not feel something.

Thanks Phil. A truly magnificent effort and I’m touched.

....given that our flight home on Sunday evening is likely to be cancelled as a result of the ash cloud from the eruption in Iceland, I may be forced to attempt a walk of my own. It’s the small matter of some 5,260 miles between San Francisco and Nottingham, so I imagine it may take me a little longer than thirteen days.

the green, green grass of home....

Ever since I was a teenager, I think it's fair to say that I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with my dad. This is hardly a unique phenomenon, I'm sure, but to this day, we barely have to be around each other under the same roof for longer than a day before we start rubbing each other up the wrong way. I'm not sure why this is. Superficially, we're quite similar. For starters, at first glance, we look physically very similar, and are unmistakably father and son. Look a little more closely though, and the differences become more apparent: as well as being bald where my dad has a full head of hair, I'm a lot taller and actually have quite a different physical build to my dad. It wasn't until my mum lost a load of weight recently that I realised quite how much I actually resemble her in terms of our physical stature - tall, thin, broad-shouldered.

I think something similar is true of our personalities: on the face of it we're both untidy, impatient and irascible, with a tendency not to listen and to interrupt, but when you look at things a bit closer, the differences become a lot starker. At least I hope they do.... My dad is a doctor and a man of the sciences; I am very much inclined towards the humanities. My dad is religious and I most certainly am not.... and so on. I love him to bits, of course, but I just don't think he understands me because, although we're superficially similar on the face of it, I am ultimately put together in a quite different way to him. Somehow, after all this time, he still gets angry when I react to things differently to him (and, I suppose, vice-versa). It's as if he keeps expecting me to be more like him than I actually am.

I was given a stark illustration of this when we last saw my parents: my dad was talking to C. and was describing how I used to drive him mad when I was a teenager by deliberately doing a bad job of mowing the lawn, leaving tufts of uncut grass all over the place. This, he said, was absolutely typical of me. This is not the way I remember things. It's absolutely true to say that I used to drag my heels over being told to cut the grass. What teenager doesn't? It wasn't so much that I disliked the job itself or had anything better to do with my time, it was more to do with the fact that I was being told -- ordered -- to do something, and I objected on principle and took my time getting it done. There was never any question that I wouldn't do it; it was always only a matter of how far I could push it before I actually went and did it. If you've been a teenager, then you've probably been there yourself and I'm sure you know how it works. However, once I was out and cutting the grass, never once did I deliberately set out to do a bad job, to piss my father off or otherwise. I may have DONE a bad job, but I never set out to do so intentionally. The idea that my dad has spent the last twenty years or so stewing on that as being somehow typical of me is something that I find a little disturbing. It is entirely possible, I now think, that my dad has based his assessment of my personality on a presumption of a premeditation, of a malice of forethought, that has simply never been there.

Based on a conversation I had with C. over the weekend, what really worries me now is that she has taken my father's misreading of me on-board and is applying it to me herself. I've no one to blame for this misreading of my intentions but myself, but I still find it alarming that my actions (or inactions) are interpreted in this way. I'm surely not that inscrutable, am I?

your house is waiting, your house is waiting for you to walk in, for you to walk in...

Are you ready for this?

I know this doesn't happen every day, and in fact probably doesn't happen anywhere near as much as it ought to..... but I'm about to eat my words and admit that I was totally wrong about something:

That family wedding I was obliged to attend on Friday?

That day off work that I was a little resentful to be taking?

That wing of the family that I was somewhat disparaging about?

The wedding list I was somewhat snooty about?

None of it was justified. I had a lovely time and actually found myself a touch moved at times.

Sure, some of the guests all too obviously came from the "Heat" and "Hello" school of celebrity style and had absolutely no idea of the distinction between attending a wedding ceremony in a church and going clubbing (one pair of yellow and black plastic platform shoes with six inch heels in particular had to be seen to be believed: the girl in question could barely walk, and they managed the not inconsiderable feat of drawing attention away from what looked like an attempt at a french maid costume)... but they seemed nice enough.

As usual, I also struggled a bit with the church ceremony itself. Although I chose to have a civil ceremony, I do understand why people like to get married in a church. In this case it seemed especially apt as the wedding service took place in the church of the little village near Bath where the Bride had grown up and where the bride's mother and her wider family had been active members of the congregation for many years. I also understand that lots of people derive a lot of comfort from their faith. Naturally, I respect that and I respect that people have the right to believe in what they want. I just find it all ridiculous. Even if I could accept the presence of a higher power who created the Universe and all that jazz, I fundamentally struggle to understand why we seem to think that this higher power wants all its worshippers to be in a state of perpetual grovelling. All the hymns and prayers seem to involve throwing ourselves at God's feet and generally sucking up to Him in the hope that He will see us right on Judgement Day. I don't really want to use the word "credulous" as that seems unduly harsh, but I simply cannot bring myself to see it all as anything other than a peculiar set of rituals. Still, that's the whole point of Faith, isn't it? I don't believe in God, so I suppose I'm always going to find the whole thing hard to understand, aren't I?

Putting all that aside though, watching the bride being walked down the aisle by her two brothers was still quite an emotional moment. Although I haven't spent much time with any of them in years, I've known the three of them since we were all very small and at one time (when we were both about 6) I was close enough to the bride that our families used to joke that we were a lovely little couple. Their father died about 12 years ago from an especially nasty and difficult to diagnose tumour in his digestive tract, and it was actually profoundly moving to witness how the remaining family honoured his presence during the day his only daughter got married. Her two brothers shared the role of giving away their sister, and just seeing them walking down the aisle with her emphasised the gaping hole that the death of their father had created in the day. The elder brother also did the first reading from Corinthians. He stumbled a little and got a few bits wrong, but he has some learning difficulties, so this was perfectly understandable, and far more important was the fact that he was standing in for his dad. In the post-Diana world in which we British are apparently incontinent with our emotions, it was moving to be hit by this very understated, but nonetheless very real emotion. Although he was technically only my dad's cousin's husband, I called this man "uncle", and I thought he was a lovely man. It was lovely to see him remembered like this.

We had the usual hanging around after the ceremony when we all transfer to the venue for the reception and get bossed around by the photographer for what seems like hours, but it was a lovely day and it was great to spend some time with my delightful 18 month old niece. My heart sank a bit when I saw the seating plan and realised we were all on the same table as the vicar and his wife, but I needn't have worried as they both turned out to be excellent company - the vicar was actually an interesting guy who had started out his career as a lawyer and had retrained only seven years before. They were also about to take a sabbatical to New Zealand and were very pleased to hear our hearty recommendation of the Quechua 2 second tent and our testimony as to how well it stood up to the torrential rains of the last few Glastonbury Festivals. The meal was also very nice, but it was the speeches that really blew me away: again, the father of the bride's absence was honoured, but in a very understated way. There was a small picture frame containing a montage of images of him with his family placed on the top table, and without any great ceremony, the family also lit a candle for him. Again, I felt his absence keenly during the speeches, with both brothers again standing in for their dad, and I got a real sense of how the family had been pulled closer together since his death, and a sense of how much they felt his absence on his only daughter's special day. I'm not ashamed to say that I was moved. The speeches from the groom's side didn't let anyone down either, and the meal was concluded by the groom producing a guitar and singing a song he had written for his new wife. This could have been cringeworthy, but in this setting and with emotions already running high, it pretty much brought the house down, and absolutely everyone on the top table was wiping away the tears. Yes, it's easy to laugh at things like this, and you might well be smirking reading this now, but the sincerity of the emotion on display was really very touching.

I didn't spend a great deal of time at the disco, but I did spend the rest of the evening sitting in front of an open fire with my wife and my parents, sharing a couple of bottles of Rioja with my dad. We don't really talk all that much, and when we do we often don't see eye to eye, so it was just nice to spend some quality time with him. Since his cancer and the removal of one of his kidneys, he doesn't really drink any more, but this was a special occasion, so it was nice to be able to raise a glass or two with him.

Cynicism be damned, it was a really lovely day and I wish them all the best. Hell, I even hope they get some proper mileage out of that stupid meat tray.

We stayed in Bath for the rest of the weekend, but I'll save that particular write-up for another day.... so stay tuned for the next exciting installment of my weekend:

> monumental architecture!
> butlers!
> spa treatments!
> squiffy shop owners!
> Bath's unexpected Alpine links!
> proper rugby shorts!
> mulberry factory outlets!
> moaning minnies!
> fudge!
> tone deaf posh buskers murdering "Hey There Delilah"!
> &c.

don't miss it.

sealed with a kiss....

I've been invited to go to a family wedding in a couple of weeks. It's on a Friday and in Bath, so it's more than a touch inconvenient, which is a bit annoying. Especially so given that I'm not close to any of the people involved, but when the invitations arrived, my father issued a three line whip and let it be known that my presence would be required.

My father doesn't have much family. He was an only child, and the only family connection of any sort that he still has is with his cousin - his mother's sister's daughter. I think I've mentioned this woman here before. How do I put this? In the nicest way possible, she's awful. The best example of this is when my dad decided to send her kids something different for Christmas. For years and years, with their christmas cards, my dad had sent each of his cousin's three kids a cheque for a few quid... nothing much, just a token fiver or tenner to show that he was thinking of them at Christmas. Now that the youngest of these kids was a strapping 25 year old, he decided that this was a bit daft, and decided instead to give them one of those charity gifts: he donated some cash to Oxfam and he gave them all "a latrine in Africa". Good idea, I thought, but apparently his cousin thought differently. She rang up on Christmas Day and she lectured my dad on how he was effectively taking the food from her children's mouths by giving them something as insulting as a gift to charity on their behalf. I couldn't quite believe my ears and still struggle to understand how she had the sheer brass to complain about something that she had absolutely no right to expect. She won though, because the following year my dad reverted to giving her kids a cheque instead. I would have given the ungrateful sods nothing, but my dad feels obligated to his cousin as pretty much her only surviving relative: her parents are both dead, her husband died a few years ago, and he feels a responsibility towards them that actually speaks highly of him and is far more than they deserve.

And so it is that my dad put his foot down and said that I was going to have to take a day off work and give up my time to go to this wedding in Bath. It's a family occasion and he expects me to be there. I can't help but think there's a subtext here, as I steadfastly did not invite any of them to my wedding last year. The seeds of this were sown back at my elder brother's wedding in 2004. I bumped into my dad's cousin when she and her mother were chatting to C. No sooner had I arrived, than she made a huge and completely pointless song and dance about how I hadn't formally introduced them to my lovely partner. Now, I always go out of my way to be polite to my relatives, no matter how tenuous the familial connection, just as I try to be polite to everyone...but I'm sorry, sending me a plastic belt for Christmas and a polyester tie for my birthday does not buy you the right to expect anything else from me at all. You have no say over how I run my life and you certainly not get to hector and chastise me over some pathetic imagined slight at an otherwise happy family occasion. It was no coincidence at all that when C and I got married last year, we only invited friends and immediate family: people who we wanted to be there to share our day with us. We did not issue obligation invitations to distant relatives who I otherwise had no connection or contact with. Getting married abroad probably helped, but I think that most people understood this....not everyone, I'm sure... but I think most people are capable and mature enough to understand that, first and foremost, a wedding is about the bride and groom and what they want. So we didn't invite by dad's cousin, we didn't invite her mother, and we didn't invite any of her children. They'd been invited (and attended) the weddings of both of my brothers, but I was damned if they were going to come to mine.

And so now I've been invited to the wedding of one of my second cousins, and I can't help imagine that the invitation is somehow a pointed one, as though they are demonstrating how magnanimous they are in overlooking my appalling snub of them from last year. This is doubtless my imagination, but my father does seem very keen that all of his side of the family make the effort to attend. Actually, I'm sure it won't be the end of the world. We've taken the time off and will attend the wedding and the reception on Friday, and we've also booked a nice hotel in the centre of Bath to make a weekend of it in what is, after all, a lovely town. If it makes my dad happy for me to be there, then ultimately I'll smile and put up with it.

Is it wrong of me to get all snobby about the wedding list though?

I don't know the exact history of the tradition, but I've always thought that wedding lists were originally a way of helping a young couple set up their first home together.... and they originated at a time when getting married meant that you would be leaving home for the first time. In that kind of context, you're going to need all the plates and gravy boats and things that you can lay your hands on, and gifts like that were probably most welcome. When C. and I got married last year, we'd already been a couple for the best part of 8 years, lived together for the best part of 7 years and we both had good jobs and earned a decent wage. We didn't really need anything. Yes, I suppose we could have wandered around John Lewis and put together a list of stuff we wanted, but we decided that we were simply more interested in having our friends share our day. If anyone really wanted to buy us a gift, then they could make a donation to a charity or "buy" some terribly worthy gifts from Oxfam - school books, fertiliser, goats, donkeys... that kind of thing (see how I avoid the use of the Oxfam's made-up word "funusual" in describing these gifts. My worthiness only goes so far).

In the event, we raised over £3000 for charity, which I was really very pleased about. Now, I don't expect everyone to have as high a WQ as we do, and I've got nothing in principle against couples having a wedding list - hell, it's a sensible way of making sure that you don't get 15 toasters from well meaning relatives - but looking down the bride and groom's wedding list for their big day, I couldn't help but shake my head in amazement. It was hosted by Debenhams for a start, which I know I shouldn't get all snooty about, but if I was going to have a wedding list held with someone, it wouldn't be with them... it also seemed to feature an awful lot of Vera Wang crockery. Well, perhaps they need a lot of crockery. Who am I to judge? I was a bit late to the list, so there wasn't a massive amount left on it, and perhaps all the really sensible stuff had already been snapped up, but one thing caught my eye immediately. To me, it was the kind of item that summed up the whole ridiculous and conspicuous expenditure associated with the modern wedding; it was the kind of item that can only ever be sold when couples are wandering around a big department store wondering what else they can add to their wedding list. I refuse to believe that any of these are sold to any other people for non-commercial use at any other time.

It was a Spiked Meat Dish.



It was £25, but I had to have it.

In the card that will accompany this gift, I have written that I hope they enjoy many happy roast dinners together, but if they use it more than once in their entire lives, then I will be astonished.

Perhaps it's something that they've always wanted, but I'm betting that it's far more likely that they only added it to their list because they were wandering around the store with a little handheld device wondering what else they could add to their list, and they scanned it on without really thinking about it, and probably without even considering that someone might buy it for them.

...Which, of course, is exactly why I did buy it for them.

Ridiculous.

Although, to be fair, it is fully dishwasher safe and comes "complete with protective covers for spikes", so it's really very practical.

In fact, perhaps I should get one for myself....?

he said that we would thank him later....

My mum and dad came up to visit over the weekend, and it was nice to take them out to dinner, introduce them to the cat (who soon enough added another couple of adoring fans to her already sizeable list) and to cook them a Sunday lunch. It was Mother's Day this Sunday, of course, so I was also able to hand over my card personally for the first time in many years, and my mum was on pretty good form. My dad's a different matter though. Since I hit adolescence, I have never really seen eye-to-eye with my father, and I'm not really sure why. In some ways we're very similar (we're both grumpy, for starters), but in other ways we're really different. My father is a doctor and he tends think like a scientist. In his world there are theories and laws that govern almost everything and the world can thus be boiled down into truth and untruth. I am not a scientist, and I do not operate in a world with such stark blacks and whites. For me, there is no such thing as a fact, and I have an unshakeable urge to probe why people think and say the things that they do. To me it almost doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong; I want to understand how someone got to their opinion in the first place. If you have an opinion or say something that you can't really back up, don't be surprised if I probe you on it... even if it's a subject I might know very little about. I work on the theory that even the most confident person is probably only about 85% sure of what they're saying. Conversation, therefore, does not depend on how much more they know than me, but how much I can probe into that 15%. I'm not doing this to flex any kind of intellectual muscles, I'm genuinely interested in that gap, that final 15%. My dad's often not really interested in having this kind of discussion and so naturally sees this as my determination to question everything, to be a smart-arse and to always have the last word. Perhaps he's right.

Anyway. I didn't exactly clash with my father this weekend as find myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable in his presence over the course of the 24 hours or so that they were with us. He's grumpy, for starters, and has a tendency to bark and snap at people, particularly my mother. I probably shouldn't criticise this too much as I know it is something I know that I am prone to myself, but it makes me wary of him. On top of that, and far more annoyingly, he has a tendency to interrupt you in the middle of a conversation with a total non-sequiter that indicates that he hasn't been listening to the conversation thus far (even if he initiated it) and that he considers his question to be of far greater importance. He moaned about having indigestion, and yet he ate a 3-course meal in a french restaurant including a creme-brulee for dessert and then moaned about all the rich food we'd forced him to eat. He grumbled during our 60 minute walk about his back, his feet, the lack of toilets on the route, about needing to buy a pint of milk before they went home... you name it, he grumped about it. When I offered him a drink, he asked for bitter lemon.

"We don't have any bitter lemon", I said.
"Yes you do", he replied, "you certainly do as you gave me some yesterday".
I checked. We have no bitter lemon.
"Well I definitely had some yesterday".
"OK. If you say so. I can do you an orange juice or something?"
"What can I have with it?"
"How about fizzy water? I could mix it with some fizzy water for you."
"Have you not got any lemonade?"
"No, no lemonade I'm afraid".
"I'll just have some water then".
"Flat or fizzy?"
"Fizzy".
"Right".
"Oh hang on, why can I not have orange juice with fizzy water?"

Sigh.

He also walked dirt onto the carpet, nothing dramatic, but when my mum pointed this out to him and started picking up the debris he was leaving about the place, he left his shoes on and continued to tramp it in. In fact, about the only time he really perked up was when he was getting ready to go home. Yes, I know a lot of this sounds petty when written down, but it's the kind of stuff that really gets on your nerves after a while.

The funny thing is that in some ways I can actually relate to him. He's in his sixties now and in the last twelve months has survived a cancer that necessitated the removal of one of his kidneys. Perhaps related to that, his liver function tests are now revealing that he probably won't be able to drink alcohol again for the rest of his life. Who needs that? When he feels an ache or a pain, even though he's a doctor, he probably has no real idea if this is because he's 61 years old and is just feeling a bit under the weather, or if it's a sign that there's something a whole lot more serious wrong. How are you supposed to cope with that? It's not quite the same, I know, but I think I know how that feels. I turn 34 later this week, and I'm increasingly feeling the symptoms of wear-and-tear: a torn ligament in my ankle, sore knees, a stiff neck, a bad back, a general but persistent feeling of fatigue that is starting to make exercise harder. This is probably all just because I'm getting older but there's a little worry in the back of my head that some of this could be the WTs stirring into life inside my brain and nervous system. I already have a persistent and generalised feeling of numbness and loss of sensation across my body and a loss of power in my shoulders and down my arms. These symptoms are never going to go away and there remains the possibility that this will develop from Transverse Myelitis into something else, like Multiple Sclerosis. For obvious reasons, I try not to dwell on this, not least because there's bugger all I can do about it.... but sometimes it's hard not to wonder if what I'm feeling is the next step in that direction.

I'm a different person to my father, but I'm sure that thought makes me grumpy and hard to live with sometimes too.

forget about your sin, give the audience a grin....

What was that?

We popped home yesterday to see in the New Year with my parents. It was a very pleasant affair. I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve in general, so to spend a relatively quiet night in with my wife and with my parents was all very restful and civilised.

....How blest are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail....

New Year isn't a big religious festival, and it's not Sunday today either, no matter how much may feel like one, so we didn't have a repeat of the religious conversations that dogged the dinner table the last time I was at home.

I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers'.

God is never very far away though, so they tell us, and this never seems more true than in my parent's house. I was innocently sat at the computer in my dad's study looking up the various DVD editions of "Das Boot", when a note stuck onto the wall caught my eye. It was the programme for the local Christian Discussion Group (run by "Father" Gary, of course).

Here are some of the topics up for discussion over the next few weeks:

-> "The Rosary and the Rhythm of Prayer"
-> "Icons and Visual Images in Prayer"
-> "Heresy, Creeds and Councils"
-> "Exploring Mary, Mother of God"
-> "Exploring Church: I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" (capitalisation and punctuation all as written. I'd always thought that the "catholic" in this context was specifically without the capital letter)

Ahh, what's so special about the cheesemakers?

Bear in mind that this is an Anglican church. Would anyone care to hazard a guess what on earth they're doing talking about rosaries, icons, the Virgin Mary and the like? Ah wait a minute....don't tell me.... this is "High Anglicanism" again, isn't it? You know, where your bog standard Anglican vicar goes around his rural parish calling himself "Father" and where they pick and choose the shape of their religion to suit themselves and their lucky dip beliefs. Like incense and confession but hate the idea of the pope? Hate the ordination of women but hold out the hope that one day you might find someone stupid enough to actually marry you? High Anglicanism could be for you! Apply today. Generous dog-collar allowances provided.

Not only does my dad have a rosary (in a little box helpfully labelled "My Rosary"), but according to the note on the wall, he also appears to be leading some of these sessions: "Realms of Glory", "Elijah - Man of God", "Something Sacred to Share" and "Come Lord Jesus".

Sounds good, no?

Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

The irony of us all sitting together around the telly and watching "The Life of Brian" last night is not lost on me.

My mum has much more sensible hobbies: according to the minutes of their last meeting, the local art group still has £10 in the tea kitty, although they still need pictures of seascapes bringing in for the next session, and a couple of volunteer models would also be nice for the portrait session.

It might be good fun and all, but does drawing save your immortal soul though? Eh? Tell me that.

---

One of the bonuses of spending Christmas somewhere else this year was that we had all of the presents from my family still to open. Over recent years, I'm afraid I've taken to handing out a list. I know it takes something of the romance away, but to be honest, the giant plastic budweiser bottle money box was the final straw. As a result, I largely got things that I asked for. My younger brother and his wife however saw fit to give us a plastercast plaque with the following legend:

"SI . HOC . LEGERE . SCIS . NIMIVM . ERVDITIONIS . HABES"

As it happens, I can read that, and I read it to be a swipe at us because they think we're too clever half. Well, glorify in your ignorance if you want, and a happy 2008 to you too.

My mum and dad got me a magic kit, which I much prefer, to be honest.

---

Oh, and I have no objection to Jools Holland's annual New Year's Eve Hootenanny per se, but I can't help but think that it would be much better if he didn't insist on inviting and then talking to the same old people year after year after year.... Roland Rivron? Seriously? The programme also helped me realise, once and for all, that the Kaiser Chiefs are absolutely shit. Ricky Wilson was completely pie-eyed for one thing, but performing next to Madness just shows them up for the no-marks they really are. Seasick Steve was the best thing on the show by miles.

it's gonna take some time, but I'll get there...

Phew. It's certainly nice to be back home after a week away in France, somewhere down near the banks of the river Loire.

I'll do a proper post at some point, but in the meantime here are a few thoughts / observations from the last seven days:

-> New St. Pancras looks great, but service at the champagne bar (Europe's longest, apparently) is very slow. (I also harbour suspicions that it was their roast beef sandwich that gave me the tummy bug that has followed me around for much of the last week. Grr.)
-> nice uniforms on the staff though, even if they do look like the coldest people on earth
-> Eurostar is a great way to travel and far less hassle than flying
-> (not very insightful this) Paris is a beautiful city
-> (nor this one) The French sure do know how to cook. Our restaurant ("L'AOC") is superb
-> not impressed by the Impressionists at the Musee d'Orsay
-> ....but very taken with a huge sculpture of a polar bear
-> the countryside between Paris and the Loire is flat and almost entirely featureless
-> ....but their train service is fantastic. East Midland trains this is not.
-> oysters may look like snot, but they taste great
-> cellared wine is sometimes absolutely delicious, but sometimes it's a bit too much. Perhaps my palate has been ruined by £3.99 bottles from the Coop?
-> Seasonal beer from a trappist monastery? Now we're talking
-> C's mum is an ace cook...
-> ...but Xmas dinner is done by C's dad and is superb
-> Christmas pudding made from brioche is very rich but also surprisingly light
-> I really need some exercise
-> The banks of the Loire are a great place for a run
-> or four....
-> I don't know what this says about the relative fitness of people in Orleans and people in Nottingham, but I see more people out running on the Loire on Christmas day than I ever do down by the Trent
-> The French have a strange fetish for small dolls of Father Christmas that they hang outside their houses. They're all a bit Stephen King, to be honest....
-> "Das Boot" by Lothar-Gunther Bucheim is a gripping and claustrophobic novel. I really must watch the film sometime
-> "Time for Bed" by David Baddiel is still quite funny, 10 years after I first read it
-> ....but neither can hold a candle to "Moon Palace" by Paul Auster
-> family are great, but I think I'd rather spend Christmas with my friends
-> She's in excellent hands, I know, but I miss my cat
-> Doctor Who is really awful. The Xmas special this year is (in my opinion) derivative rubbish. The Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. It's only 70 minutes long and it still feels like they're spinning it out
-> Flash's new album is actually really good. Properly good. Seriously. Give it a listen.
-> proper headphones are brilliant. What a great prezzie
-> I like getting presents, but I genuinely prefer giving them than receiving them
-> I don't expect gratitude either - it's just nice to pick something out for someone and then see them (hopefully) get a kick out of receiving it.
-> ...that said, there are some ungrateful sods out there, family included.... especially family
-> French radio is weird - every second song has to be French, and they seem stuck in a musical timewarp where all that cod-rock guitar from the 80s is still cool
-> They're also obsessed with James Blunt
-> although, to be fair, Telephone are quite good
-> I must have needed to catch up on my sleep. I'm getting about 12 hours a night
-> It's cold
-> Open wood fires in massive grates are very, very soothing
-> ...so is vin chaud
-> cutting a wedge of goat's cheese across the middle to take all of the cheese and leave everyone else the rind is rude, selfish and ignorant. Don't think I didn't notice
-> I really shouldn't have watched the news. Very depressing - I'm not sure why Fiona Bruce is smirking at the news of Bhutto's assassination, for starters
-> time to go home. The trains in France are painless, but there are no direct trains from London to Nottingham, so we return via Grantham. Sigh.
-> Sleeping in your own bed is ace

I could go on.

But I won't.

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If I get time, I'm going to try and put the Earworms of the Year up on Friday this week. Thanks for all the nominations so far.... but it's not too late to cast your votes. Details are here, and emails to the address in my profile please.

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If I don't see you before, Happy New Year to one and all. Let's hope 2008 is a good one, eh?

War is over if you want it.

Oh my God, I can't believe it....

I spent a couple of days last week working in our big Milton Keynes branch, lending an extra pair of hands to help shovel more Christmas tat out onto the shelves. To be honest, I was quite glad to escape the politics of the office to do something completely different and to have the chance to interact with some real customers. There's something very soothing about making sure that the shelves are well stocked and nicely presented, and I'm convinced that there is zen to be found in shelf stacking.... in fact, it would be a great job if the bloody customers didn't keep ruining it by moving stuff about. Tsk.

Anyway. The reason I chose the Milton Keynes store is that it is fairly close to where my mum and dad live. We're not spending Christmas with them this year, so it was an opportunity to spend a couple of evenings with them before we bugger off to France at the end of this week. C. and I usually eat our dinner in the living room in front of the telly or in the kitchen, so it was really nice to have a couple of proper sit-down dinners at the dining room table with my parents. Of course, this also meant that instead of making sure we were up to date with the episodes of "Californication" we have got sitting on the Sky+ box, I was obliged to engage them both in honest-to-goodness conversation.

For real.

As is often the case with my parents these days, the conversation soon took a turn towards God. I'm a heathen, of course, so they really should know better, but their new house is pretty much in the hulking great big shadow of the church of St. Winnicent the Magnificent (or whatever) and they just can't seem to help themselves. My mum is only really interested in the community of the church, and busies herself with things like the church cleaning rota and baking cakes, but my dad has always had bible-thumping tendencies and has had his passion well and truly reawoken by the arrival of a new vicar a couple of years ago.

"Father" Gary is an Anglican vicar, but he likes to call himself "High Anglican", which - as far as I can tell - essentially means that he's Catholic in all but name, but likes to hold out the forlorn hope that he might one day get a girlfriend..... he believes in confession, he likes to abase himself in front of the cross at Easter, and he abhors the idea of women priests.... that kind of thing. Long before I actually met him, I heard an enormous amount about him from my parents who seemed to think that we would have a lot in common and would get on like a house on fire. Imagine my surprise, then, that when I finally met the elusive "Father" Gary, he turned out to be a horrible little sneery weasel of a man. I resigned myself to having to talk to him only to see him duck meeting me... something (I'm delighted to report) that he has continued to do ever since.

So. There I was at the dinner table enjoying a rather tasty roast chicken and a glass of white from the excellent local wine shop, when dad decided he would engage me in a conversation about the church in general, and "Father" Gary in particular. I was tired from a long day in store, but I had also had just enough wine that I was feeling mischievous enough to probe exactly what "High Anglicanism" is. My dad launched into some rambling explanation or other, but I decided to cut to the chase:

"Where do they stand on the whole transubstantiation and consubstantation debate then?". I studied Medieval history, so although I'm not in the least bit religious, I do have an enduring fascination with the history of the church. I find it amazing that schisms have started and wars have been fought over such nonsensical questions as to whether or not the host used at communion is LITERALLY transformed into the body and the blood of Christ, or if it only SYMBOLICALLY represents it. Quite why anyone would waste any energy over that, I don't know, but I do know that it is at the nub of the differences between Anglicanism and Catholicism.

"Ah, I'm pleased you asked me that", replied my dad.
"Really?"
"Yes, because under the articles of faith for the Anglican church, it's actually forbidden to believe that the the host actually becomes the body and blood of Christ"
"mmmm. So where does this leave "Father" Gary?"
"Well, I asked him this question, and he simply tapped the side of his nose and said, 'Well, let's put it this way: if I spilt some of the wine onto the floor, I'd have to burn the carpet'".
"What?"
"Yes"

(apparently, Gary also marvelled at how the methodist church in the village could use an actual loaf of bread in the communion service instead of those little discs. Imagine the crumbs! You can't be leaving the actual body of Christ for the mice, can you? Heavens! The corpse of our Lord is only to be enjoyed by true believers!)

I was now confused.

"So where does "Father" Gary stand on the Pope then?" Another key difference between the religions this one: Catholics believe that the Pope is the emissary of God and that what he says has an equal standing in the eyes of the church to that of the Gospels. Anglicans, presumably having paid rather closer attention to some of the clowns who have held the role, tend to believe that this is nonsense.

"Oh, Gary doesn't like the Pope. He doesn't believe that the Pope is the special emissary of God or any of that stuff"
"Right."

I paused to deliver my killer blow.

".... but wasn't the whole issue of transubstantiation created as a result of a papal edict anyway? I don't believe that Jesus left any specific instructions about the actual presence of his body at communion in the gospels did he? It's all the interpretation of the Catholic Church."

Aha!

My dad refused to allow this (or my long history of heathenism) to dent his enthusiasm though. "I've got a book I think you'd really enjoy". He jumps up from the dinner table and returns 30 seconds later, handing me a book. I glance at the cover: "The Meaning of Jesus". I put it down on the table.

"I'm never going to read this book Dad"
He picks it up from the table and gives it back to me.
"It's a discourse between two Oxbridge academics. One is a liberal Anglican, the other is much more traditional. They're actually really good friends, but it's amazing how opposed their positions on different things sometimes are!"
I glance at the cover and then put the book back down on the table. "But I'm never going to read it. Life is far too short. There are plenty of literary masterpieces already that are well ahead of this on my reading list."
"I think you'd enjoy it. It's really good!"
"I'm sure it's a real page-turner, but I'm still never going to read it"

.....and so on.

As you can imagine, conversations round the dinner table at home are a right barrel of laughs. Now I think of it, this might be the reason that C. and I are going to spend Christmas with her parents in France this year.....

and I remember how we'd play, simply waste the day away....

After more than thirty years in the same house, my parents have finally upped sticks and moved. They've only moved a mile or so down the road and into the village proper, but when I drove down there for the first time today, it still felt very strange. My parents moved to the old house in 1977 when I was barely three years old and I can't really remember any other home. Of course, I hadn't lived there properly since I finally moved out more than ten years ago after University. I was sort of expecting "moving out" to be a big thing, but in the end it was really a case of not moving back at the end of the academic year when I had finished my Masters. My room stayed pretty much just as I had left it, only I was now officially living at a different address.

Given that I started attending a boarding school in 1981 when I was seven years old, and boarded until the age of 18, at which point I left for University... I suppose you could say that I hardly spent any time there at all. You could say that, but of course it was here that I came back to when school broke up; it was here where over the course of several years I flattened a piece of ground until it became serviceable as a cricket pitch; it was here that I used to sneak out into the field for a crafty smoke when I thought no one was looking.

That house holds a lot of memories for me. Long after I moved out, this was the place that I still called "home".

So I suppose I surprised myself slightly when we drove past the old house on the way down to visit my mum and dad at their new address. The shell of the building was intact, but as I slowed down to have a good look, I could see that the entire garden, the garden that my parents must have spent thousands of hours trying to tame, had been decimated. The new owners appear to have gutted the house itself and are busy building two enormous extensions at either end of the building. I surprised myself because I felt almost completely detached from the whole thing. My parents used to live there; I grew up there. But my parents don't live there anymore. The house is changing, but the memories remain and the memories revolve around the people, not the place itself. It's only bricks and mortar. Only bricks and mortar.

I turned my head back to the road and drove on down into the village to see the new house, which, although it's very nice, I will never call home.