potatoes...

I don’t really believe in bucket lists. I’m not a fan of keeping lists of things I want to do before I die. Partly, this is because it seems a nonsense, as the simple truth is that no one knows when they’re going to die. If you could die tomorrow, why are you writing a list instead of getting out of the door? Mostly though, my objection probably comes from how lucky I am to have done some incredible things in my life, so a bucket list seems kind of redundant. 

 I’ve swum in the chilly waters off Kaikoura in New Zealand as hundreds of dusky dolphins swam around me and leapt over me. I was told that you need to sing to them through your snorkel to keep them interested in you and to stop them just swimming off when they get bored. As a result, I’ve discovered that they’re big fans of “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. 

I’ve skydived from 10,000m above the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, where the big dunes of the Namib desert meet the ocean, freefalling for a seemingly endless 30 seconds before the parachute opened, surprisingly filling me with mild disappointment. Here I learned that it’s okay to pack your main parachute up in a slightly slapdash way as long as you’re careful with the reserve as that’s the really important one. 

I’ve done a lot of diving too: on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, in the Maldives with giant Manta Ray doing a graceful dance together no more than a meter above my head, or along the edge of a canyon into the deep ocean surrounded by literally three hundred sharks, all bigger than me and a few casually swimming along behind me as if to see if I was worth the effort of a closer look. It’s at moments like these when you really begin to appreciate your place on the food chain. 

I’ve walked with lions and wolves, seen sperm whale, humpback and orca, kayaked with baby seal, stood within 2m of an adult male grizzly bear, watched dawn breaking above the jungle temples of Ankor Wat… So there’s no question that I’ve been very lucky. 

All this brings perspective; when you experience the elemental beauty of nature first-hand like this, it’s not hard to understand your own existence as comparatively insignificant, in the most wonderful way. All our sound and fury ultimately signifies nothing, and that’s okay. 

The time I felt this most acutely was standing on the sides of Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador as it erupted. Ecuador is a small country, barely the size of the UK, but it contains in that space an enormous diversity of landscapes, from high Andean paramo all the way through to Amazonian jungles (not to mention the Galapagos Islands). We were on a three-week trip and wanted to cram in as much of this as we reasonably could. We hiked the high Andes up to about 5000m, we watched hummingbirds feed, fished for piranha in tiny jungle rivers, brushed tarantula off the benches before sitting down to dinner, drank fresh passionfruit juice and picked coffee berries straight from the tree. Banos is a city in the middle of the country and is renowned for its hot springs and adventure activities. I’ve never seen the appeal of bungee jumping, but we did mountain bike along mountain gorges and, on our first evening in town, we took a trip up the town’s volcano (as our guide would say, the hot springs are not for free) Now, when you think about active volcanos, the chances are that you’re thinking of Pompeii or Krakatoa, but not all volcanos are quite that explosive. Tungurahua means “throat of fire” in Quichua, and although it is erupting and you actually have to drive over the pyroclastic flows that have poured over the road to reach the town itself, you’re not seriously in danger of being overrun by lava. The town does have volcano warning alarms, but apparently the lava moves so slowly that you will have around three days to actually leave the town before you’re really in trouble. Mind you, the volcano dominates the skyline and, as you drive into the town, you can see the column of smoke and ash it produces from a hundred miles away. It’s quite an impressive sight. 

That first evening, we drove up the volcano before it got dark. It’s quite steep and narrow in places, and as we slowly wound our way up the narrow, wooded tracks, we came across a tiny, wizened old lady dressed in the traditional costume of the region, complete with natty woollen Spanish-style trilby hat (a legacy of the Spanish colonisation). There’s only one path up or down the mountain, so we stopped and – through our guide – offered this lady a lift, which she gratefully accepted. As we continued up the mountain, we began to be aware of the rumbling of the erupting mountain. “Ah,” said this tiny, birdlike lady, cackling delightedly, “Mother Tungurahua is putting baked potatoes into the oven for her children”. 

 Before long, we dropped her off to make her own way, and as she smiled and waved, we continued up the mountain. Not long after that, I was standing in the gathering dusk, listening to the sound of an erupting volcano and feeling the ground rumbling beneath my feet. I have never before in my life felt quite so connected with our planet whilst also feeling utterly insignificant. It was, in the most literal way possible, awe inspiring. 

Our precious planet is huge and beautiful and life is short. Later that day, I ate guinea pig for the first time. I don’t recommend it. Tarantula is nicer and neither are a patch on crickets fried in sesame oil served as a bar snack. Travel really does broaden the mind… as well as the palate.

I remember when...

Just as my blogging here seems to be dying off, today I had cause to remember something we did together way back in 2005. Do you even remember 2005? I ask because I've just employed someone who had graduated and was born in 1996.  You know, 2005: when everyone blogged and had a magnificent nom de plume like SwissToni, Urban Fox or Lord Bargain? 2005: when the internet wasn’t only used to reinforce your own increasingly firmly held opinions and to throw anonymous hatred at people with slightly differing but equally entrenched views? When the USA didn’t rip children away from their parents and keep them in a cage?

Ah, good times.

Well, it was so long ago that you probably don't remember, but way back in those halcyon days, we did a handwriting analysis thing.  We had participative, inclusive fun then, didn't we?  No fewer than 18 people submitted a handwritten song lyric to me for analysis by B1rdienumnum (who had read a book on the subject and was thus more of an expert than any of the rest of us). What marvellous fun we all had reading that analysis and trying to guess who had chosen which lyric.

You can read the whole saga here (and just in case you can't stand the suspense, the results are here)

You just don’t see quality content like this any more, do you? Who has the time?

Heaven knows how, but in those crazy, early days when the world was new, as well as analysing handwriting, we also managed to do bookshelves, fridges and several rounds of a compilation CD swapping game.

I miss those days.

What happened to us?  Life just got in the way, I guess.

We were probably making other plans.  Or something.

sorrow's native son...

There’s an article about the “alt-right” on the Guardian today and it introduced me to the strange and alarming concept of “the Manosphere”.

"For several years now, I’ve had a dark and fairly unusual hobby. When I’m alone and bored and the mood strikes me, I’ll open up my laptop and head for a particularly unsavoury corner of the internet. No, not the bit you’re thinking of. Somewhere far worse. That loose network of blogs, forums, subreddits and alternative media publications colloquially known as the “manosphere”. An online subculture centred around hatred, anger and resentment of feminism specifically, and women more broadly. It’s grimly fascinating and now troubling relevant. In modern parlance, this is part of the phenomenon known as the “alt-right”. More sympathetic commentators portray it as “a backlash to PC culture” and critics call it out as neofascism….On their forums I’ve read long, furious manifestos claiming that women are all sluts who “ride the cock carousel” and sleep with a series of “alpha males” until they reach the end of their sexual prime, at which point they seek out a “beta cuck” to settle down with for financial security. I’ve lurked silently on blogs dedicated to “pick-up artistry” as men argue that uppity, opinionated, feminist women – women like myself – need to be put in their place through “corrective rape”."

This is all darkly fascinating and troubling, of course, and given a sharp relevance by the appointment of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon to a senior role in Trump’s White House staff. What captures my attention is how this chimes with my own experience:

From the age of seven until the age of eighteen, I attended boarding schools that were, to all intents and purposes, single sex. Sure, there were girls, but they were in an overwhelming minority and were generally treated, at best, as being a completely different species. I don’t have any sisters and, separated from my mother for long periods of time, this meant that I spent the majority of my formative years surrounded only by other boys and with very little feminine influence. I’m pretty confident that this left me emotionally scarred to the extent that I found it difficult to form meaningful relationships with girls. I don’t want to exaggerate the impact this had on me: I’m still friends with one girl I met at school when we were both 17, and I like to think I was perfectly capable of interacting relatively normally with women… it’s just that it took me a long time (and, trust me, it felt like an absolute bloody age) to be able to get myself a proper girlfriend. Even that makes it sound like I knew what I was doing; truth be told, I met the girl who was prepared to look past my rough edges and decide that I was worth persevering with. I don’t think I really had all that much to do with it.

Would this have made me a candidate for the Manosphere? Perhaps, although I’d like to think that I focused all my anger and frustration inwardly. I never blamed anybody but myself for my inadequacies and I certainly never blamed the girls. Actually, the prevailing attitude at my school towards girls was pretty shocking. There was one guy in my year who seemed to delight in using his “power” (he was popular, confident and privileged) to seduce girls. He’d work on them for a few weeks, to the point where they thought he was “the one”, and then, once he’d got access to whatever he needed, he dropped them and never spoke to them again. He was 18 and these girls were 17. He thought this was funny, and so did many others. Lots of the boys, I’m sure, thought this was behaviour to be admired because he was getting some from these stupid girls. To be honest, I was just appalled that you could treat another human being so callously. Did I wish that I was more successful with girls? Of course, but I was damned if this was going to be the way that I went about it…. even if I had that sort of confidence, which I definitely did not.

Then, like so many people before me, I discovered the music The Smiths. It’s cliché, of course, but in my late teenage years, Morrissey seemed to be speaking directly to me and articulating the things that I felt.

And in the darkened underpass
I thought oh God, my chance has come at last
(But then a strange fear gripped me and I
Just couldn't ask)

And then I grew up. I don’t know exactly when this happened, but it wasn’t until some point in my early-20s (well, they do say that men mature more slowly than women). I’m probably definitely still emotionally crippled in lots of ways, but I finally met someone and fell in love and put a lot some of my confusion and frustrations behind me. Perhaps I’ve been lucky (I frequently tell people that I still don’t really understand why my wife ever looked at me twice, or indeed why she still seems to like me), but my life has been filled by intelligent, powerful women. In fact, depending on how you gauge these things, I would say that the women in my life have generally been more successful than the men. Some would probably think that says a lot about the weak “beta cucks” that I hang around with, but I think perhaps it just goes to show that girls are brilliant. Why be threatened by these wonderful creatures?

Why would you want to be that guy?  As Noel Gallagher once memorably said about his younger brother, don't be a man with a fork in a world of soup.

what's cooler than bein' cool?

I don’t think I’ve been cool at any point in my whole life.

When I was around 8, I jumped a year at school and was generally in classes with people a year older than me. This was probably good from an academic point of view, but it meant both that I was young compared to my classmates and also generally considered a nerd because I was bright. I was made head of school at the age of 12 or 13, and I’d consider this to be the point in my life when I was the most mature. I sat exams and was awarded a scholarship to my next school and I was generally ridiculously sensible and with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.  It's been pretty much steadily downhill ever since.

At my next school, as a scholar, I was streamed with the other bright kids and was generally held in disdain at a school where academic achievement was actively frowned upon. I was only averagely good at sport, so I was generally just the tall guy in the top sets with an older brother also at the school. In fact, for much of my first couple of years at this school, people didn’t even bother to call me by my own name and just called me “Little Dave” after my brother (who is actually shorter than me anyway, dammit!). Even worse than just being in the top sets for everything with the other dweebs, I also marked myself out by being so appallingly bad at maths that I was initially in set 5 (out of 6)….So I stood out because I was the guy who was smart but comically bad at maths.  Perhaps even worse, I was also the guy in maths set 5 who finished his end of year exam with half of the 90 minutes still to go and when almost everyone else was still sweating over their answers. I handed my paper in and the teacher actually began to mark the two finished papers there and then, turning to put down the scores so far on the board.

BOY A: 48%.
SWISSLET: 98%

…You can only imagine how popular this made me with everyone else in the room, particularly when I then demanded to know what I’d got wrong.

This was a mostly single sex school, with girls arriving in the sixth form. I know.  Old school.  Generally speaking, the boys split up into three groups over this:

- high status: guys who were in one of the school sports teams and/or who were generally considered to be cool. These guys were the top of the pile, and some of the girls were drawn to them. It must have been difficult being a girl thrown into this sort of an environment, but an attachment to one of these guys could radically change your status within the school. You became cool and desirable by association.  It's hard to blame the girls that took this option.  These were the sort of guys who grew their hair, played in the first XV, smoked, had copious facial hair and played the guitar

- low status: nerds and odd-balls. In the awful social ranking that took place in the school, if you were one of the girls who were generally – and there seemed to be a general sense of these things – considered unattractive, then these were your people (and, at my school, 13 year olds thought nothing of giving girls aged 17 or 18 an audible mark out of ten, or... below a certain score... just making vomiting noises). These guys probably played the euphonium and – even within the confines of a strict uniform code – managed to look like they’d been dressed by their mum

- the rest: Neither one thing nor the other. I was definitely in this group. Definitely not cool, but also not quite the total opposite end of the scale either.  Not quite, anyway.

It feels ridiculous to even type this, but we even sat like this at the meal table…. cooler guys and “pretty” girls at one end of the table, odd-balls at the other end and me in the middle. I did my best, but aged 17, I was very poorly emotionally equipped to strike up conversation with anything so alien as a GIRL.

It’s one of my biggest regrets from this time of my life that I wasn’t nicer to people at the far end of the table / social scale. A few people I treated very badly, and I’m not really sure why. Generally, I just went with the flow of things and didn’t feel able to just take people as I found them. It sounds like a terribly limp excuse, but I essentially lacked the social capital to stand out; I was clinging on by my fingernails and didn’t feel that I had anything left over to help anyone else out.  Pretty cowardly, but there you are.  I was a teenager.

This theme continued through university too, where I always felt slightly “other” because, having been to a boarding school since the age of 7, being away from my parents and being able to go out drinking and stay up late really wasn’t that big a deal. I wasn't cool here either, but nor was I yet comfortable with myself to be entirely happy in my own skin. I don't remember university all that fondly - either my bachelors or my masters degree. Both were fine, but they just weren't the massive milestones in my life that everyone would have you believe.

And then to work.

I’m still not cool, but at least I’m old enough now not to care. I joined a choir because I like singing; I’m happy to listen to Taylor Swift, Iron Maiden and Bloc Party; “La Reine Margot” is one of my favourite films, but so is “Anchorman”.

I’ve got a framed 7” single of “Don’t it make you feel good” by Stefan Dennis on my desk at work. My team gave it to me because they caught me earworming it out loud at my desk one day.

I’m still pretty far from cool, right?

I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs....

Ten years ago today, on a whim, I started a weblog.  I was twenty-nine years old.

Ten years represents 25% of my entire life, and some things have changed a lot in that time: I've got married, been diagnosed with a chronic, incurable illness, travelled around the world, eaten a tarantula, got a cat, installed wireless internet, bought my first mac, grown a beard....

Other things have hardly changed at all: I'm living in the same house, I work at the same place (albeit in a completely different job), I still listen to lots of music and do a lot of running....

I'm probably not the right person to ask about whether or not I've changed much as a person in that time.  If I had to guess, I'd probably say both yes and no.  Still, let's look back at that first ever tentative foray into blogging and see if we can discern anything about me from there:

Tuesday March 02, 2004
Well, this is my first ever entry.
Not quite sure what plans I have for this blogspot, but I guess we'll find that out as we go along. I've sort of been thinking about this for ages, and now I'm taking the plunge. Here we go then.

Thoughts for the day:
(1) Oh shit - I forgot to buy 30th Birthday presents for 2 of my friends who are up for a shared 30th bash this weekend
(2) Thank you Amazon!

G'f is away today. It's sort of hard to settle without her. Haven't been able to concentrate on the TV (University Challenge, Nevermind the Buzzcocks) or on my book (The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud). When I'm finished here I think I'll wash up, do some ironing (oh how domestic) and then try the book again.

Hm. I'm sure it will get more interesting than this.

Well.  Those two friends and I all turn forty in the next week or so, and I haven't got them presents for that yet either... so no change there (and I could well use Amazon when I do finally get around to it).  My wife will probably laugh at the idea that I ever did the washing up or the ironing, but she's away a lot more now and I still find it harder to settle when she's not around.

I especially love the charmingly naive belief that somehow my blogging would get more interesting over time.  Well, 2398 posts over 3652 days, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of words, and no sign of it yet!

You never know though, do you?  Maybe over the next ten years.....

A decade of blogging!  Good grief.  Who would have thought it?

words like silent raindrops fell....

About fifteen years ago, right at the start of my brilliant career, I arrived in the office to find one of my colleagues in tears.  I've always been a relatively early starter, so it was probably around 8am and John and I were the only two people in our team in the office.  Everything seemed normal to begin with, but then John, a contractor who was probably in his forties, suddenly started to sob at his desk.

I had absolutely no idea how to react.  As a human being, and the only other human being there, it was obviously my duty to go over to his desk and ask if he was okay, but I can distinctly remember that this was all I had.  Once I'd played that card to a grown man sobbing at his desk, all I had left was to offer to get him a cup of coffee.  It was pathetic, but I simply did not have the emotional toolkit to respond to the situation.

Whether or not I can blame this reaction upon my schooling or whether or not it's an intrinsic part of my emotional makeup and personality type, I suppose we'll never know.  It doesn't really matter.  I was sent to a boarding school when I was seven years old and spent the next eleven years concealing my emotions because an open display of emotion makes you a target in that sort of environment.  Hugging and learning was definitely not encouraged and only served to open you up to ridicule.  I may well have been an introvert already - I was a bookish child - but I'm pretty sure that the environment I was in sealed the deal on my (lack of) emotional development.  It's nobody's fault, it's just the way things were.

I'm older and wiser now, of course.  Have I changed?

Well, I popped round to see a friend at work this evening.  I'd been meaning to pop round earlier, and I only had a couple of minutes before I needed to shoot off if I was going to make it to running club, but I wanted to make the effort to at least say hello.  When I got to her desk, everyone around her had gone home and she was alone.  She was a little quiet, so I helped myself to a chocolate from the team tin and then realised that she was quietly sobbing.

Again - still - I had absolutely no idea to react.  Just like fifteen years ago, as a human being, and the only other human being there, it was obviously my duty to go over and make sure that my friend was okay, but again, this was basically all I had.  I ascertained that it was work problems rather than personal problems, which I guess is the lesser of two evils, but other than vaguely commiserate and offer a bit of half-arsed sympathy, I honestly didn't know what I should be doing.  The time pressure didn't help, and I left my friend feeling like I must be one of the crappest, most emotionally stunted people ever to live.

Apparently, the Star Wars character that best represents my Myers-Briggs personality type is the Emperor.  Well, sometimes I just feel like C3PO.  Bright but of no practical use what-so-ever and with absolutely no understanding of people at all.

Curse my metal body! I wasn't fast enough!

Nearly forty and apparently no more emotionally developed than I was at seven.  I can only apologise to anyone and everyone who probably has a right to reasonably expect more than this from me.... especially to my friend from this evening.  If you're reading this, then I honestly wanted to do more but didn't know how. I hope you're doing okay.

over and over.....

I saw Daniel Kitson performing on Sunday.  He was excellent.  I love the fact that he's a stand up who:
a) Sat down for the whole duration of the show behind a desk on the stage
b) Doesn't talk down to his audience.  At all.  He's not afraid to toss out ideas and thoughts and theories that assume that you are basically an intelligent human being and will be able to follow.  You actually have to concentrate on what he's saying for the best part of two hours with no interval.  I really like that.  He's not above the odd knob gag, obviously....but frankly, who is?

Anyway.  The show was about lots of things, but one idea that has stuck in my head was about memory.  Kitson talked about how strange it is when someone has a memory of you that you don't remember at all.  He also talked about how no one, even two people who were in the same place and saw the same thing, will have the same memory of anything.  I love this kind of stuff, and it's one of the reasons that I really enjoyed studying history... the simple, but mind-blowing, idea that there is no such thing as a FACT.

FACT.

Anyway.  I digress.  When musing about the nature of memory, Kitson theorised that our memories are not actually little freeze-frames of an event in our lives, forever frozen in time exactly as they happened, but instead they are living things that are constantly changing and evolving.  In other words, we remember these things because we keep thinking about them and giving them a polish, and that in the act of polishing them before putting them back into storage, they are subtly changed over time.

That's an interesting idea.  Is it true?  No idea.  But what I do know is that I'm starting to get the same sense about this blog.  I've been writing this now since early 2004.  That's a long time.  You tell me, but I do sometimes get the impression that I'm telling you the same stories over and over again.... with the memory of that event getting subtly changed each time I tell it.  In my head, I was convinced that I saw Iron Maiden when they played at Donington in 1988, but when I wrote about it the other day, something made me check and it turns out that I actually saw them play there in 1992.  I had to go back over the post and correct some of the chronology, not to mention deal with the fact that I'd written the whole post around the assumption that I'd seen the band when they were touring "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" and not "Fear of the Dark".  Dammit.

So what?  Memory can play tricks on you, right?  Yes of course, but whenever I sit down and write about how I first started listening to The Smiths (or feeling fat or whatever), I get this creeping sensation that I've probably told this exact same story here before.  Slightly differently.  Broadly the same, I'm sure, with most of the key points appearing the same every time, but each time I put metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper to write about that event again, I'm probably moving my own memory further away from what actually happened.

Is that a big deal?  Not really.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter at all.  In fact, it's mildly interesting to see how my OWN perspective on an event in my life is shifting.... but you will tell me if I start to bore you though, right?  If I'm repeating myself incessantly and telling you about ever-more-fictional events in my own life, then you will let me know, won't you?  I don't mind it when a TV programme starts with a quick recap of what's happened so far to bring you up to speed, but that's not a TV show in its own right, is it?

I'm beginning to bore myself, and that's never a good sign.

Monkey.  Minature Cymbal.  That's me.

not like any other love....

It's thirty years and one week since The Smiths released their debut single, "Hand in Glove".  I realise I'm a little late on this and should probably have mentioned this last week, but I've been listening to the band a lot over the last few days and have been thinking about how much they meant to me.

I can actually remember the Top of the Pops that featured the band's debut performance in November 1983.  They played "This Charming Man" and Morrissey caused quite a scene waving his flowers around the place.  Do I remember that?  No.  I remember watching it because "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel was UK number one and I do remember watching that, dressed up in my dressing gown.  I didn't get into the band until much, much later.... some time in late 1992 or early 1993.

The first albums I ever owned were things like Adam and the Ants, Nik Kershaw, a-ha and Five Star.  The first album I ever bought for myself was "The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden some time in late 1987.  This was an enormously formative period in my musical life and I spent enormous amounts of time listening to bands like Aerosmith, Guns N Roses, Queensryche, The Almighty, Poison, Faith No More and - save me - Poison.. briefly, and I never really got into Motley Crue.   By the time I turned sixteen, although heavy metal was still a real staple part of my musical diet, I was also starting to listen to The Doors, Lou Reed (especially his "New York" album) and was discovering classic rock by the likes of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.  The charts at the time seemed to be a pretty bleak place, and - somewhat ironically given how much I like them now -  I viewed people like the Cure, the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays and James with a deep suspicion, never mind the rest of it.  I don't remember coming across the Smiths at this point, but I'm sure that if I had, then I would have loathed them.

Nirvana caused a bit of a stir, of course.... although, for a fan of rock music, it really wasn't such a great leap from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to the Seattle scene.  At least it was real music, right?  The first album I listened to after my parents left me at University was "Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" by the Black Crowes, and at some point in my first year at Warwick, I attended a legendary Faith No More gig at the Birmingham NEC where seat covers rained down on the band as they played their encore of "Easy".  I had posters by people like Therapy on my wall and I was happy with my black leather biker jacket listening to heavy metal.

And then The Smiths changed everything.

I can't even remember how it happened, or how I even ended up with a borrowed cassette copy of part one of their greatest hits, but somehow "Half a Person" struck a chord and I never looked back.  I was nineteen years old, but I think emotionally young for my age, and there was just something about Morrissey's lyrics that spoke to me.  It was always about the lyrics too, at least at first.  Not for the first time and certainly not for the last time, it was Morrissey's words that chimed with a lonely teenage boy who craved an emotional connection.  He just seemed to have an uncanny knack of expressing a yearning I wasn't able to articulate for myself; he seemed to understand how I felt.  An appreciation of what Johnny Marr brought to the band only came much later.  For me, then at least, it was all about Morrissey.

I hungrily began to buy the music.  Ironically, at the time, it was actually quite hard to get hold of Smiths CDs: the originals were out of print and the Warners reissues hadn't yet begun.  I can vividly remember trawling a record fair at the Birmingham NEC and coming home triumphantly with a French import copy of "Hatful of Hollow" on CD.  Imagine that.  Now you can just download pretty much everything the band ever recorded instantly.  It's not a proper album, of course, but "Hatful..." remains my favourite long player by the band.  There's just something about the rawness of those session versions that really brings those songs to life.  Morrissey's yelp on "This Charming Man" is just electrifying.

I never gave up on rock music, but I also began to listen to bands like Blur, Suede and Radiohead.  Mostly, though it was always The Smiths and then Morrissey's solo work.  Nothing else touched me in the same way and I'm fairly certain that nothing else has got close since.  They are without a shadow of a doubt the most important band in my record collection.

The Smiths weren't a perfect band ("Golden Lights" anyone?), and goodness knows Morrissey is increasingly a loud-mouthed, opinionated idiot who doesn't think before he speaks... and they also seem to have more than their fair share of irritating fans who try to write about their favourite band in the way that they imagine Morrissey speaks, using mainly song lyrics for their turns of phrase.... but in spite of all this, and in spite of some of Morrissey's solo output, no other band has meant as much to me as The Smiths.  No one.   I found them relatively late and long after they had ceased to exist, but no one else has inspired such a fierce, possessive devotion in me.

I have been listening to a lot of their back catalogue this week, and the records still sound amazing to this day.  The chemistry between the band members, especially between Morrissey and Marr, just sparkles and crackles out of the speakers.

I've done a lot of growing up since I was nineteen years old, but there's a part of me that will always be that shy, lonely boy who found comfort in these records, and I'll always be grateful to the band for that.

the fallen angel watching you...

You know that feeling when you hear something that gives you a real jolt and you suddenly realise how old you are getting? Usually this happens to me when I’m foolish enough to make idle small talk with my colleagues at work. I’m terrible at small talk, but in the interests of filling a potentially awkward silence, I might innocently ask someone how their kids are doing:

“Oh, Leah is now fifteen…..”
At this point, my eyes will widen in horror as I realise that I can remember when this guy had the time off work for Leah’s birth. Which means that not only have a whole fifteen years passed, but they’ve passed with me working with a lot of the same people.

 Fifteen years!

This morning I heard that “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” is twenty-five years old this month. A quarter of a century! What?!  There's a good article about it on the Quietus here (cheers for the link, Mark)

When it was released in April 1988, I had just turned fourteen. Barely months before, I had bought myself a cassette copy of “The Number of the Beast”. This was a big deal. My music collection at the time either consisted of things that I’d taped off the chart show on radio one or a handful of cassettes. Actually, if I think about it, I reckon I could name them all in order of acquisition:

Kings of the Wild Frontier – Adam Ant
The Riddle – Nik Kershaw
Human Racing – Nik Kershaw
Scoundrel Days – a-ha
Silk and Steel – Five Star

I also had a share in a couple of seven inch singles: the first Band Aid “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and the Frog Chorus.

“The Number of the Beast” was the first time that I went out on my own and bought something entirely of my own choice and without any kind of influence from anyone. I hadn’t even heard any of their music – I just liked the cover – but it opened up a completely different door and set me off in a musical direction that has largely stuck with me ever since.

“Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” was the first Iron Maiden album to be released after this momentous purchase, and I quickly added it to my collection on cassette (CDs weren’t really a thing yet and I’ve never owned a record player). Thanks to the success of the single, “Can I Play with Madness” (and its accompanying promo video featuring Graham Chapman shortly before his death), I was also able to watch the band on Top of the Pops - still a thing in those days, if you can imagine that. I also started putting Iron Maiden posters on my wall, starting with the Seventh Son poster itself, but quickly branching out into Aces High, The Trooper, Somewhere in Time, Piece of Mind, Powerslave… sometimes before I even bought the albums themselves, although they followed soon enough.

I can remember being fourteen, and to be honest I wouldn’t go back there for any amount of money… but at the same time it seems incredible to think that it was twenty-five years ago. I’m so old. Although, not as old as the band themselves, of course, who are playing this album more or less in its entirety on their current “Maiden England” tour.

Twenty-five years. I doubt the fourteen year old me would recognise the 39 year old me if he passed me in the street, but I’d know him from his bad hair, bad skin and terrible glasses (I may have no hair now, but frankly that's an improvement.  I also don't wear glasses now and I've got better skin.  I'm even thinner, for goodness sake....). Poor kid. He doesn’t even realise that his whole life is still in front of him.

If I get the chance, I might even tell him that it’s okay to speak to girls.

It is okay to speak to girls, right?

just like Fred Astaire.....

If Moroccan roads are any kind of benchmark, it seems that Mercedes Benz cars don’t die: they live forever as long distance taxis. Not an easy retirement, I thought to myself, as our leather-seated 1973 classic, with about a million miles on the clock and a CD of the Koran hanging from the rear-view mirror, hauled us over the crest of the snow-peaked High Atlas mountains. We were heading into the desert. We left the smoke filled souk of the Jamaa el Fna behind us, climbed over the mountains in the early light of the morning and then headed down through the Draa Valley towards the low mountain range that marks the northernmost point of the Sahara desert.

I was nervous and excited. This was my first trip to Africa, and the thrill of the unknown stretched before me. Even the roadside stop along the way to buy dates felt like a little adventure. My instinct was to pass; my mind full of the bacteria they must surely contain. We stopped anyway, urged on by our taxi driver. We bought dates from the toothless, grinning hawker, rinsed them with water from a bottle and then ate. They were delicious. Of course they were delicious.

We followed the course of the Draa, a sluggish river closely hugged on either bank by a belt of lush greenery; olive groves in the middle of a stony wasteland. We passed ancient looking Kasbahs and trees filled with grazing goats. We were clearly not in Kansas any more.

After a long, dusty day on the road, just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, we reached the desert proper. Not exactly the dune sea of my imagination, but a low, stony plain filled with rocks and scrub. Our camp had already been pitched, and we arrived to sugary, fresh mint tea. Tea making, you understand, is a ritual to be taken very seriously: put a handful of black gunpowder tea into your teapot; fill with water; add fresh mint; place teapot directly into the embers of the fire. As this boils, line up a your shot glasses. When the tea boils, add an enormous lump of rock sugar and then carefully remove the teapot from the fire. Hold the teapot at a great height over the first shot glass and pour. Put teapot down. Pick up shot glass and then, also from a great height, pour the contents into the second glass and repeat the process up and down the line until all the glasses have been filled at least twice. Pour the tea back into the teapot. Repeat. Probably repeat again, and then serve, always pouring the tea from a great height, so that it froths and bubbles. Add more mint and serve. Delicious, of course, but I can’t help but think that the tea itself is nowhere near as important as the ritual of making it.

As we watch our tea, a tagine, being prepared, there is much discussion amongst our guides. After ten minutes of animated discussion, one walks slowly from the camp. One of the other guides approached us, the one with the best English:
“We have looked at your bags and we think we need another camel. Hussein is going to get us one. He will return before we leave in the morning.”
“But it’s nearly dark”.
Shrug. “He will be back before morning.”

When we awoke the next morning and prepared ourselves for our first day of walking in the Sahara, there was Hussein, carefully preparing the tea.
“You’re back!”
Hussein was a Berber and he spoke only a little bit of French and no English. He communicated mainly with smiles. He seemed to find us remarkable.
“How did you find your way back in the dark? Did you use the stars?”
Hussein looked confused, and looked over to Brahim, the English speaker, for help. Brahim explained what we had asked, and Hussein began to laugh uproariously, as if he had never heard anything more ridiculous. We looked to Brahim.
“How did he find his way back in the dark? We’re in the middle of nowhere!”
Brahim shrugged. “He knows the way”.
Hussein laughed again, his eyes dancing as he shook his head at the sheer stupidity of the idea that he might need to navigate by the stars.

Over the next week, we got quite friendly with Hussein. It’s amazing how well you can get to know someone when you don’t share a language. Hussein sang us Berber songs around the campfire and we sang him Beatles songs. If memory serves me correctly, he found “Yesterday” especially amazing. He taught us an unfathomable Berber game that involved a grid drawn in the sand and goat droppings. He cooked us sand bread and meticulously made us endless cups of mint tea. We also learned that he was married.
“How did you meet your wife?”
With Brahim’s help, we learned that every once in a while, the Berber tribes meet. They spend almost their whole lives travelling across the desert, and a gathering like this gives them a chance to meet and to mingle. Hussein met his wife at one of these gatherings; a dance. She was, we learned, covered from head to foot, with only her eyes showing.
“So how did you know that she was the one?”
Hussein laughed and replied in his own language.
Brahim nodded and turned to us.
“It was” he said, “the way she moved”.

horse and carriage....

It was on this pitch in 1823 that William Webb Ellis was supposed, "with a fine disregard for the rules of football", to have picked up the ball and run with it... at a stroke, inventing the game of Rugby Football.

I played rugby on this pitch on Sunday morning, scoring a hat-trick of tries in a game of touch rugby that was part of the wedding celebrations of one of my oldest friends.  As it happens, I've played rugby on this pitch before: between 1987 and 1992, I attended Rugby School.  I wasn't a particularly good rugby player, reaching the giddy heights of the second row of the 3rd XV, but I did get to play on one of the most famous rugby pitches in the world.  Did you know that the England rugby team actually borrowed the kit of the Rugby School 1st XV - white shirts, white shorts and black socks - and that until very recently, the captain of the England team wrote to the captain of the Rugby XV to ask their permission to wear it each season?

But I digress.

Rugby was undeniably one of the most formative experiences of my life.... but this weekend is the first time that I have been back to the place in nearly 20 years.  Make of that what you will.  Almost without exception, my very best friends are people that I met at this place when I was a pupil, but would I send my own (theoretical) children to a school like this?  No, I absolutely would not.

It was strange to be back.  On the one hand, the reason we were there was for a much anticipated wedding, and it was a fantastic couple of days with some fantastic people.  On the other hand, almost every single reminder of the over-privileged, entitled ninnies who attend this place - and yes, I'm well aware of the irony in that statement - makes me inexplicably cross.  I look at myself and at my friends, and I see emotional damage that has lasted for decades.  We're very close, but almost without exception, we seem to have struggled to form relationships of any depth, particularly with girls: where it has happened, it seems to have happened almost by accident.  I've been very lucky, but I'm also acutely aware that I'm emotionally closed off even to the people who love me the most.  Is that a price worth paying?

It apparently now costs something like £30,000 a year to send a kid to this school, not including uniforms or anything like that.  £30k! To be precise, it's £10,033 a term, although they do generously throw in a 5% discount when you send your third child.  That's an enormous sum of money, and I can't see how it can possibly be justified.  It was cheaper in my day, and I was a scholar too - which meant that my parents got a reduction in my fees because of my academic achievement (and which also meant that I got to have my name in capital letters in the school directory!).  Cheaper, but still about £10k a year, and I'm not sure it was much better value.

When I was here, the school was at the tail end of decades of under-investment, and the place was pretty run down.  Almost immediately after I left, the school became fully co-educational and they started converting dormitories into study bedrooms, demolished the old outdoor swimming pool to build indoor facilities and they put up some proper art facilities and things like that.  It's a school transformed, and results have improved accordingly.... not least because they started admitting smart girls instead of stupid boys.... but even if I had the money to spare, I still couldn't bring myself to send a thirteen year old child to a place like this.  My mum and dad had the best of intentions sending me away to board when I was seven years old, but that was essentially the day I left home for good: I boarded at school from the ages of 7 to 18, went straight to University and then left home.

Would I be the same person if I hadn't attended Rugby School?  Absolutely.  Would I be a better person?  Well, no one can say, can they?  Perhaps I'd be emotionally more open and a little less arrogant, but who knows?  For better and for worse, that school played a large part in making me the man I am today.  Nothing can change that now and it was a strange sensation indeed to be back.

Just look at us, for heaven's sake. The past really is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

It was a great wedding, by the way.  They really threw everything at it, it was completely ridiculous and OTT and it was a lot of fun.  Good luck to them both.  The groom and I go way back, you know.  We went to school together.  I hope that poor girl understands what she's letting herself in for....

fool's gold...

On 31st August 1991, I was lucky enough to be at Wembley Stadium to watch Guns n'Roses perform live on a scorching hot day.  Apart from Steven Adler, this was still the classic G'n'R lineup and the Use Your Illusions albums were still to be released.  I was seventeen years old and it was just the most enormous rush simply to be there to watch one of the most exciting bands in the world.  One of my friends had seen the band's performance at the Donington Monsters of Rock festival in 1988, but since then we'd all been listening to "Appetite for Destruction" almost incessantly and couldn't wait to finally see them live.  This was the same day that Nine Inch Nails were bottled off the stage, but I have no memory of that, although I do remember Skid Row playing and then waiting something like three hours before the headline act took to the stage.  As I recall, we passed the time by joining in with the rest of the crowd in cheering every time the big screen cameras fell onto a pretty girl sitting on someone's shoulders, and then cheering even louder when they lifted their tops.  Those were the days, eh?

It turned out to be Izzy Stradlin's last gig with the band and the set list was:

Perfect Crime, Mr. Brownstone, Bad Obsession, Welcome To The Jungle, Live And Let Die, Dust N' Bones, Double Talkin' Jive, Civil War, I Was Only Joking [Intro] / Patience, You Could Be Mine, November Rain, Nightrain, Drum Solo, Guitar Solo, Godfather Theme, Sail Away Sweet Sister / Bad Time [Intro] / Sweet Child O' Mine, 14 Years, My Michelle, Only Women Bleed [Intro] / Knockin' On Heaven's Door, Estranged, Paradise City

Axl Rose played Nottingham Arena with a band calling themselves Guns N'Roses a couple of weeks ago, although Axl is the only remaining member of the line up that I saw that day in 1991.   Mark and Graham went and asked if I wanted to come along, but to be honest, I saw pretty much the classic line-up back in the day and I didn't really feel much need to go and watch a band pretending to be them.  Axl might be older and fatter, but it doesn't sound like he's changed very much over the years: twenty-one years later and he still kept the crowd waiting for hours before taking to the stage a few minutes before the venue's nominal curfew and then played until 01:30 in the morning.  Good job it was a Saturday night, although judging from Mark's review of the gig, half the audience left long before they got to the end.  Can you imagine attending this sort of a gig on a weeknight if had babysitters or any great distance to travel?  I know I must be getting old for even thinking about practicalities like that, but Axl is even older than me and is still behaving like a spoilt child.

Ask Axl and he'll probably tell you that Guns n'Roses have never split up.  Perhaps, but maybe they should have.  They were a great band.  They might have their moments now, but it's hardly the same, is it?

Speaking of truly great bands, it's not long now before the newly reformed Stone Roses play those massive gigs in Manchester.  I haven't got a ticket, but the truth is that I'm not enormously upset about it and actually didn't even try and get one.  Apart from being miserable enough to think of the inconvenience of the trip up to Heaton Park and the likely beer-chucking awfulness of the crowd (plus the simple fact that Ian Brown - every time I've seen him live, at least - couldn't carry a tune in a bucket), the Stone Roses are another band that I saw back in the day.  Alright, so "Second Coming" had already been released and Reni had already left the band, but it was still a thrill to hear them open their set with the 1-2-3 punch of I Wanna Be Adored, She Bangs the Drums and Waterfall. 

Unlike Guns n'Roses, where I was on board pretty quickly, it took me a while to appreciate the Stone Roses.  In fact, I hated them at first.  It wasn't until a couple of years afterwards that I began to get past what twats their fans looked and could appreciate quite how good that debut album really is.

I saw them on 29th December 1995 at Wembley Arena, backed by the Manic Street Preachers, who at that stage in their career had only recently put out "The Holy Bible" and their fans were still wearing leopard print leggings and eyeliner.  The Roses were pretty good, I thought, but even then I knew that the material from Second Coming wasn't anywhere nearly as good, even if the kids standing in front of us were word perfect on all of the new songs.

If the Guns n'Roses show was Izzy Stradlin's last gig with the band, that show at Wembley Arena was John Squire's last with the Roses before they reformed this year.  Maybe I'm some kind of a jinx?

The set that night was I Wanna Be Adored, She Bangs The Drums, Waterfall, Ten Storey Love Song, Daybreak, Breaking Into Heaven, Your Star Will Shine, Tightrope, Tears, Love Spreads, Good Times, Made Of Stone, Driving South, I Am The Resurrection.  What a way to finish.  I notice at their first comeback gig the other night that they didn't play "I Am the Resurrection" and they didn't do an encore.  How many fans do you think saw them leave the stage and thought they would be nailed on to come back and play that classic?  How disappointing!

I was 21 years old when I saw the Roses that night.  21!  It made me smile on the radio the other day when they were playing out the reactions of some of the fans who had been lucky enough to make it into the crowd for the Stone Roses first comeback gig in Warrington.  They had some 21 year old on, and he was banging on about what an amazing band the Roses were and how he was so happy to have finally seen them.  They broke up in 1996 when he would have been, what.... 7?

Still, the end for the Roses was a mess and they deserved better, I think.  I hope the comeback works out well for them.... even if I am a bit alarmed at the news that they've apparently signed a new two-album record deal.  New material?  Really?  Second Coming is hailed by some as being massively underrated, but I listened to it again the other day and it still sounds like muddily recorded, self-indulgent shite to me.  Let's hope they can do  better than that.  Shouldn't be hard....

Nostalgia, eh?  It ain't what it used to be.

I might not be paying to see Guns n'Roses or the Stone Roses, but one band who I would pay to see if they got back together would be the Smiths.  How could I not?  I've never seen them, apart from anything else.  I'm old, but not that old!

Saying that I would go and see them, I desperately hope that it never happens....  It just couldn't be the same, could it?

this time for Africa....

It was two years ago this week that we came back from our trip to southern Africa: 21 days or so spent travelling in the back of a truck across South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia; camping and in the company of around 20 strangers.

Best. Trip. Ever.

2010 was a great year for us and we were lucky to spend a hefty amount of time travelling our way around interesting places like Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Cambodia and Vietnam.  We saw a lot of really amazing things and had a blast... but I think the most fun we had was in the back of an old truck called "Denver" on that trip to Africa.

 We had rules.  The most important of which, of course, was that WE ARE THE PARTY!

We definitely were.

It was a brilliant journey and it's given me a passion for Africa that our trip to Kenya and Tanzania last year has only intensified.   I'd been to Morocco before, but this was my first trip into Africa-proper and I was spellbound from start to finish.  It's an amazing place and I can't wait to go back.

We saw leopard, lions, elephant, hyena, lots of pronking springbok, zebra, rhino, giraffes and a whole heap of other beautiful African wildlife - I stroked a lion for heaven's sake - I saw incredible landscapes and I even jumped out of a plane...but it was definitely the people that made the trip so special.

I've spent a bit of time this week remembering some of the great friends we made in Africa.  Gums in New York; Grooves in Vienna; Dark Horse in Bern; Spike in Switzerland or teaching somewhere in the USA; Silverfox and Tigger in Calgary (and their new arrival!); Screamer and Bullitt in Montreal; Baby Max in Quebec; Waffles in Belgium; Timon and Dangerous Dani and Meters and Bones and Sparks in Germany; Swampy and Snappy in Toronto; Sarge and HRH in Washington; DJ Tash in Melbourne and Chuck Norris and Elbie somewhere in Africa.

Disco and Iceman salute you!

Let's do it all again soon.

cha-ching cha-ching...

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

---

I was at the gym on Friday night, relaxing in the sauna after another good swimming lesson.  As I was sitting there, getting a good sweat on and luxuriating in the glow of my twanging muscles, I was joined by some kids.

---

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

---

Well, I say kids, but as they were all clearly attending one of the local universities, they were all probably in their early 20s.  They'd been in a spin class and were discussing how hard they had been worked and planning what they were going to do later on that evening.

What struck me first was how posh they sounded.  They weren't deformed posh, but they were well on their way, and sported the kind of floppy hair that I immediately associate with the products of the English public school system.  Maybe Nottingham University attracts that kind of student.  I don't know.  I've lived here for nearly fourteen years but have never really felt the need to make a study of the student demographics before.

---

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.

---

... and then it struck me: their accents were hardly the issue.

What the hell were these students doing in my gym?  Student membership is something around £40 a month.  When I was a student - admittedly some time ago now - that was the weekly shopping budget for a house of four people.  But have you seen students shopping now?  I used to buy value bread and baked beans and lots and lots of baking potatoes.  Today's students seem to stock up on premium lager, exotic fruits, fresh pasta and fresh tuna steaks.  When I was a student, my tuition fees were still paid by the government, and although I got a modest allowance from my parents (in lieu of a grant), I was still forced to get a job if I was to avoid going into debt.  I'm proud to say that I left University without any kind of an overdraft at all.

I know things are different now, and students are forced to go into massive debt simply to pay their tuition fees.  Does this mean their attitude towards money has changed?  If you're going to be £20,000 in debt, why not £30,000 or £40,000?  Throw some more Stella into the basket.  Why not?  If they don't have to drink Hoffmeister, as I did, then why would you?

---

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

---

But seriously..... £40 a month for a gym membership when they probably all have access to the University gym, right?  Is that not a ridiculous luxury?  I hate to sound like one of Monty Python's Yorkshiremen, but these kids don't know they're born.

---

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL: They won't!

---

I blame the Government.  Like the man said:

"O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt; hic tamen vivit, vivit?"

Ah. Good luck to them, I suppose. They're the future, right?

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?

it was acceptable at the time.....

I had my annual phonecall yesterday evening from my old University. They wanted money, of course. In spite of being one of the richest educational institutions in the UK, they're not above trying to make me feel all nostalgic about my student days to tap me up for some money.

Having gone to a boarding school, it wasn't the first time I'd been away from home for any length of time, and so university was never really all that big a deal for me. As a result, I'm perhaps not as sentimental about my time there as I might be, and I'm not the kind of person who plans his life around the next reunion. Perhaps the university knows this. Their trick to get my attention is to get a current student on my old course to ring me up. They still want my money, of course, but they get to wrap it all up in a nice conversation about old times.

Although I have absolutely zero intention of giving any money, I always feel for the student in this situation. They are presumably doing this primarily because they need a job to help pay their way through University. They haven't volunteered to talk to old graduates out of the kindness of their hearts, they are doing it because they are paid to do it. I get no thrill at all from being rude to people at the best of times, and I'm certainly not about to get on my high horse about the begging policies of a stinking rich University to some poor kid trying to raise a bit of beer money. Instead, the student will enquire politely about my time at the University, and I'll politely respond.

The best part of my undergraduate course was the term that I got to spend studying the Renaissance out in Venice, and the student who called me last night was particularly interested in finding out about that: where I lived, whether I had to speak much Italian, how hard the coursework was... that kind of thing. We also talked about tutors (she has the same one that I used to have), how the union had changed (they're knocking it down to build a new one over the summer, apparently) and the merits of living in Leamington over living in Coventry. Small talk really, and in its own way it was perfectly pleasant. I made it clear right from the start that I wasn't going to be committing to a donation on the phone, and she didn't push it too hard. We got on fine.

The thing is though, every time I found myself being drawn out of my reluctance to talk in any depth about my time at University, I remembered that I was talking to a kid. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, it's just that she was in the second term of her first year. This means that she is probably little more than 18 years old and was likely born around 1989. I graduated from that University some 13 years ago, and in 1989 I was sitting my first GCSE. In other words, I'm nearly twice her age and I'm more or less old enough to be her father. She was politely interested in what I was saying, but to her, I must have seemed absolutely antique.

Bless her for trying, but my God it made me feel old.

no words of consolation....

I went to the dentist this morning. As I'm sure many of you are all too aware, it's actually quite hard to get yourself onto the lists of an NHS dentist, so if you're lucky enough to have one, you stick to them like glue in case you can't find another one who'll have you. So it is then that even though I moved long ago and there are probably hundreds of dental practices closer to me, I am still visiting the dentist I registered with when I first moved to Nottingham ten years ago. I now live on the other side of the river in a much nicer part of town down by the cricket ground, and every time I make the journey to the dentist, I always get a slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's not because I have any great fear of the dentist - God knows I had enough orthodontic work done as a teenager to have no great worries about that. The feeling comes from the history I have with that particular part of town.

I didn't really know the area at all when I first moved down here from York, and I ended up living in a little off-shoot of the city up near the motorway junction. It's not a particularly nice part of town, and certainly not as nice as leafy West Bridgford, but I didn't really know any better at the time and it seemed quite convenient for work, so that was that.

My then-girlfriend moved down to Nottingham with me. Unlike me, she didn't have a job lined up, but we'd been going out for nearly two years, so without ever really talking about it, we just kind of assumed that we'd make a go of it and drifted down together. We made the journey down the M1 on the same day that Princess Diana died and moved into a comfortable but fairly basic semi-detached house with the satellite dish that had been it's major attraction. I started work a week or so later and, after a bit of searching, she found a job too and we began to settle into a routine: we registered with the doctor and the dentist, worked out where the nearest supermarket was and, through a process of elimination, decided which curry house we liked the best. The job was good and we seemed to be doing okay. We were okay.

After a little while, we started to talk about buying a house. She was really keen and wanted to put down roots, but without ever really understanding or being able to explain why, I was totally opposed to the idea. We carried on as normal, but I increasingly found myself stewing on this. I thought I was happy and I knew that buying a house and settling down properly was probably the logical next step. I was puzzled at my intransigence on the subject, and eventually it dawned on me that it wasn't that I didn't want to buy a house per-se, it was just that I didn't want to buy a house with my girlfriend. At the time I realised this, I still thought that I was in love with her, but this revelation highlighted a pretty fundamental lack of commitment to the relationship made me realise that I was drifting and that this couldn't go on. To my regret, I made this realisation and did nothing about it for a year - I certainly didn't discuss my feelings with my girlfriend . I think perhaps I was trying to fool myself: we got on very well and we made a good, solid couple. I also got on really well with her family and she with mine. We seemed so settled that breaking up seemed ridiculously drastic, and so I pretended that everything was going fine and hoped that I'd get over it in time.

This limbo went on and on, and most of the time I was able to dismiss my doubts as background noise to the everyday routine of our lives. Her job was going well and, on the face of it, everything was tickety-boo. Then, one week, I went away on a residential course down in the Mendips and everything changed.

I'd known C. for a couple of years by this point and although she tells me that she'd had her eyes on me from the start, I remained utterly oblivious... until we went on this course, and it became apparent even to me that we had a connection. Nothing much happened, but as I drove back up to Nottingham and to my girlfriend, I knew I had to end it, and the sooner the better. I walked back into our little house in this grimy little town on the edge of the city and I was greeted by my loving girlfriend who was delighted to see me after a week away. For a couple of hours I kept my thoughts to myself and was clearly a bit withdrawn, but eventually I just came out with it: I wanted to break up. I'd been thinking about this for a year, but the poor girl never saw it coming. At first she didn't believe what I was saying, then she tried to suggest that we live apart for a little while, but finally it sank in and she was absolutely crushed. For the first time in my life, I felt as though I had done something genuinely bad to someone else. It probably sounds arrogant of me, but I was everything to her. She had moved her life to be with me and now I was bringing the whole thing crashing down around her feet. There was nothing I could say or do that would make her feel any better.

Throughout the whole, awful conversation I felt dreadful, of course, but I was also absolutely certain that I was doing the right thing for both of us. It was difficult and it was painful, but once it was done we would both be able to move our lives forwards.

Today, on the way back from the dentists, instead of heading back up towards the motorway junction and heading back into work as normal, I drove through the town to try and avoid the traffic I had seen coming the other way. Along the way, I was unable to resist taking the turn that would take me past our little house to have a little look. It's not really changed much over the years. The gates have been replaced with a wooden fence and the windows are now double-glazed, but otherwise it's much the same as it was when we lived there. I looked at it for a minute or two before getting back onto the road and heading into the office.

I saw her once or twice after the breakup, but I haven't seen her now in eight years or so. I think she still lives in the area (she's still in touch with my parents), so I sometimes wonder if I might bump into her one day. Perhaps I will, but I imagine that if she saw me first she would walk quickly in the other direction. Frankly, I wouldn't blame her.

On reflection, I'm sure that it was the right thing to do, but I delivered the killing blow to a relationship of some three-odd years with brutal abruptness. I felt awful enough about it at the time, and 9 years later I still feel awful about it. God knows how she felt about it or how she feels about me now. I hope she never gives me a second thought. The memory of it still pricks my conscience.

before I knew how much it cost to play it safe....

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

It was on Bonfire Night, exactly seventeen years ago today, that a good friend of mine asked me if I would look after her stash of vodka and some other assorted spirits. We were both not quite yet seventeen years old and such things were not only illegal in the eyes of the law of the land, but, of far more immediate concern to us both, it was also strictly forbidden in the school rules. As I stowed it away in my study, I knew that the consequences of being found with this contraband would be severe - most likely involving a letter to my parents and if not suspension, then certainly a period of confinement to the House (for obscure reasons, this was known as 'gating').

So why did I do it? I'd only actually known Catherine since the start of that term in September, so why risk punishment on her behalf? Those of you who did not attend a largely single-sex school will probably laugh at this, but this was a period of significant change in my life. Up until that point, I had gone through all of my schooling since the age of seven with classes made up almost entirely of boys. As I entered the sixth form, however, our routines and friendships were disrupted by the arrival of girls. The girls stayed in their own houses, of course, but they joined us for classes and were assigned to a boy's boarding house for their meals. This meant that when I arrived for the first lunch of the academic year, the fourteen boys in my year in my house were joined by four girls. Of course, as you might expect of some extremely emotionally retarded sixteen year old public schoolboys, the arrival of these interlopers immediately divided us into three main camps. In the first group there were those of us who treated these girls with disdain; as somehow lesser people who were only worthy of any attention if they were deemed to be attractive, otherwise they were to be at best ignored and at worst actively abused. A second group panicked completely and were like rabbits caught in the headlights; unwilling to accept that something had changed, but unable to stop looking and equally unable to open their mouths in the presence of such a thing as a girl. The third group probably liked to think that they were sensitive souls and actively repudiated the loathsome behaviour of the first group and the desperately pathetic reaction of the second group. These wiser boys would attempt to engage these girls in polite conversation and to otherwise acknowledge their existence, never letting a complete lack of any conversational experience with women get in their way. All three groups were divided in their reaction to the arrival of the girls, but all were united in the immaturity of their reactions. I was in the latter camp, incidentally, as if you wouldn't have guessed.

God knows what the girls made of all of this. Although they would only have arrived at the school a day or so before, they would probably have had ample time to experience the wonders of walking just in front of a group of thirteen year old boys who would loudly pass judgement upon you, making kissing noises if they liked you, and coughing or retching noises if they did not. Over time, they would develop survival strategies. A few lucky girls would find universal acclaim as being 'fit' and would be placed upon pedestals so high that they could only ever hope to be reached by members of the first XV rugby team - their survival would depend upon having a boyfriend who commanded respect. Others would be deemed 'alright' and generally left alone as long as they kept their heads down. The unfortunate majority would be openly and unsubtly abused for their perceived failings - their survival strategy would be to develop a thick skin. All would be judged on a daily basis by boys who outnumbered them ten to one. It was horrible.

I'd got on well with Catherine pretty much immediately. At that awful, stilted first meal, we had discovered that our parents lived about four miles apart and that we had bus routes into town in common. That had been enough to get us talking, which had been a great relief to me as my conversational gambits with girls were (and probably still are) somewhat limited. Over the course of the next few weeks, we became friends. Catherine proved to be intelligent, dignified and fiercely independent. There was no way that she was going to conform with anyone's expectations of how she should and should not behave, and she had the courage - at some cost - to try to retain her individuality in the face of a smotheringly chauvinist environment and some oppressive rules. She kept this up for the best part of two years as we studied for our A-Levels, and however vulnerable and insecure she must have been feeling, she managed to convey at all times an air of icy calm and disdain. I thought she was great and used to love meeting up with her during the school holidays, when I discovered that she had the same awkward air of non-conformism with her parents.

I think Catherine asked me to stash her booze that day because she had been seen smoking or out of bounds or something like that. Instead of taking part in sport or any of the other activities that Thomas Arnold deemed improving for the young men at his school, she would often go wandering around town with a couple of her friends, sitting in coffee shops and smoking. On this particular occasion, she had been out buying booze to drink that Saturday evening and was worried that she was going to have her room searched and be caught red-handed. Even then I was something of a loudmouth, but I had the happy talent of keeping my head below the parapet and generally avoiding trouble. I'd like to say that this was because of a brilliantly cunning survival strategy, but really it was because I was pretty square and didn't really do anything much that might land me in serious trouble... the odd drink, the odd cigarette... but nothing particularly out of line. When Catherine asked me to look after her booze, I didn't hesitate and tucked it away without a second thought. She kindly said that I could help myself to as much as I fancied, but needless to say I didn't touch it.

The town's firework display and bonfire was taking place that evening in the park quite near to our House, and for some reason we were given permission to attend. I can remember walking over and standing around in the dark watching a half-decent display of fireworks and wondering if Catherine had got into any serious trouble or if I would bump into her. At the time, it seemed to me that she was reckless and hellbent upon self-destruction, and perhaps she was. She defied the the rules so blatantly that it seemed impossible that she would be with us for long. I remember realising, perhaps for the first time, that perhaps it was cruel to put a person like Catherine into an environment like that school where she would be crushed (the school would probably prefer the term 'moulded', but crushing is what it was). Perhaps it's cruel and damaging for anybody to be into that kind of an environment, but where I had the ability to conform and to survive, I don't think that Catherine had the ability to conform or the will to survive.

She did survive though, and went on to Cambridge university and a career in publishing. The last time I saw her was six or seven years ago at a coffee shop outside Baker Street tube station. She seemed content (she was about to get married) but still happily carrying that fierce intelligence and slightly prickly air of non-conformism. We've lost touch since, but all the fireworks over the weekend have reminded me of her and that weekend half a lifetime ago, as they usually do.

Never mind Guy Fawkes: it's my friend Catherine that I choose to remember at this time of the year.

william, it was really nothing....

After purchasing tickets to various forthcoming shows*, but before heading into the auditorium on Friday evening, Sarah and I had a quick glass of wine in the bar connected to the Playhouse. It was whilst we were sat there, totting up who owed what to who and who needed what ticket for when, that I saw him. He hadn't really changed all that much since I last saw him some twelve years ago and I recognised him almost immediately. His hair was shorter now, but it still had that distinctive dusty orange colour and he was still whippet thin and slightly gangly. He breezed past where we were sitting, looking around him as though for someone he was supposed to me meeting. I hadn't seen him in more than a decade, but there was absolutely no mistaking William.

I was at University with William and I suppose you could probably call us friends, although we were never really terribly close and had been somewhat thrown together by mutual friends. In our third year we actually shared a flat together in Venice for a few months and again when we came back to campus, although on each occasion we shared these flats with our friends. He was a funny fish really. He was awkward and spiky at the best of times, and he was a loner who liked company but seemed to rather resent it. He was seriously into his music too; one of those kids who absolutely threw himself into the loudest and most angular corners of American hardcore and made a point of knowing the minutiae of every single band he loved. He scorned the mainstream, of course, but reserved most of his vitriol for someone like me who wasn't exactly mainstream, but certainly wasn't as bleeding edge in my musical tastes as him. He rather fancied himself as straight edge too, or at least rather liked the idea of it, if not the actual practice of it. Like a lot of introverts he was also prone to sudden furious outbursts in company that seemed woefully out of place, as though he had felt the need to contribute to conversation but was incapable of judging the correct tone.

Like I say, he was a funny fish... and after we graduated, I don't think we even pretended that we were going to be keeping in touch and we didn't exchange emails, addresses, phone numbers or anything.

And then I saw him in Nottingham on Friday night.

I've lived here now for ten years. In all that time, I've been to quite a lot of gigs. I'm pretty sure that if he had been living around here during that time then he would be certain to go to a lot of gigs, and I'm pretty sure that I would have seen him at a concert in the Rescue Rooms or somewhere. Unless perhaps he saw me first.

I'm fairly sure he recognised me on Friday, anyway. After walking past us looking for his friends, I saw him walk a little more slowly past the outside of the window where we were sitting and caught him having a second look at me when he thought I wasn't watching.

So did he come and say hello? Did I chase after him and greet him like an old friend?

No, of course not. Two introverts don't equal an extrovert.

* The tickets were for Sean Lock, Mark Steel, Lee Mack, Punt & Dennis & Tim Minchin... although I'm only going to the first three of those. I think I'd better add them to the gig list before I forget.