The Patrician Trough

Mrs O and I went to an old members' garden party at her former college in Oxford on Saturday.  The weather was a bit hit-and-miss: wan sunshine and stairrods.  But no biggie - Oxford colleges, apart from the shitty modern ones, come equipped with handy cloisters for days such as these.

The quality of the booze and nibblage available at these shindigs is beyond compare.  It all takes place in the middle of the day, so it's only tiny sangers and cake, sluiced down with champagne and/or Pimms.  But you never tasted food like this.  It's living proof of the old adage "shit in equals shit out".  When the stuff going into the sandwich is as good as this, it cannot fail.  Like great art, every thing about the food and drink was better than it needed to be.  And when combined, the ingredients formed something far far greater than the sum of their parts.  Take the humble cucumber sandwich for example.  I don't even like cucumber, which is a bad start, but one was seduced into adoring it by the haute qualité of the bread and the butter it was hiding betwixt.

So, needless to say then, the missus and yours truly did stering work in the dining hall.  We then retired to the gardens to hook up with a few old friends.  And that was that.  There's no real purpose to these old member events it seems to me, other than for successful people to gather together somewhere beautiful and give thanks for God's bounty. 

Afterwards we jumped on the bus back to London.  It became apparent that the young lady in the seat in front of us had also been at the beanfeast.  She was extremely well-spoken.  I mean "What does your father do?"  "He's a viscount." well-spoken.  You'd have to suppose, then, that she'd seen a few fifty pound notes in her time, and yet even she was on the blower to her friends, outlining how much Veuve Clicquot she'd managed to bank before last orders.

I do worry about the upper orders sometimes.

Mister Punyverse

I've got a taster session booked at the Olympic Velodrome next week.  Initially I was hoogely excited by this, but later, as surely as night follows day, the doubts started to creep in.  Riding to work on Wednesday morning I thought I felt one of my hamstrings complaining.  This is normally a sign that my sciatic nerve is unhappy with developments, so it's not a problem.  I just step-up the yoga a touch and get on with it.  But the looming public display of cycling prowess had added a extra dimension of worry.

You see, I am fiercely competitive once I've thrown my leg over a bike, so I cannot and will not race unless I'm in prime condition.  I think it's referred to as "doing oneself justice".  So will I be able to give it full gas at the velodrome?  If I can't, I need to pull out beforehand.  The reason for my uncertainty is that I'm prone to psychosomatic episodes, particularly when I know I need to be 100%.  Chances are this is one of those.

The competitive instinct on the bike is an odd sensation for me.  Other than in this one arena, I have no competitive spirit at all.  In fact I dislike and mistrust competitive people.  I think it betrays a weakness of character.  Why do you need to prove yourself to others?  I know what I'm good at; I don't need to demonstrate that ability.  Except, that is, on a bicycle.

In other news, Mrs O and I are off to a garden party tomorrow at her old college in Oxford.  Sadly, my meteorological advisors tell me it's going to shit down rain, so that's the croquet gone for a Richard Burton.  No matter.  The sherry and nibbles at these do's are of the finest order available, so if push comes to shove, I can always spend the time indoors, face down in the buffet.

Teeth Richards

Luis Suárez has been up to this old nonsense again.  I say "nonsense"; I mean common assault of course.  Actually, I mean uncommon assault.  It's not every day, after all, that one grown man attacks another using his choppers for a weapon.

For those of you who don't esteem the beautiful game as much as I do, LS bit an opponent on the shoulder during Uruguay's game with Italy yesterday.  It's conjures up quite an erotic vignette, that, doesn't it?  One hot-blooded Latin, overwhelmed by his emotions, biting another on the shoulder.  In reality it was rather more sordid than that.

As I feared they might, the broadsheet polemicists went to town on this episode today.  Depending on who you ask, it was either a cultural misunderstanding on behalf of the English or a Freudian cry for help.  All the analysis was unpinned with an rather unpleasant sneering tone.  Whatever position football fans took on the subject was by definition gauche, and instruction was duly given.

That was liquid football...brown liquid.

Without wishing to labour the point, England are out of The World Cup at the group stage for the first time since the Crimean War or something.  I don't really care to be honest; I find it difficult to get excited by international football.  What does stick in the craw, however, is the bare-faced bullshit spouted by the players and manager in the post match trawl through the entrails.

The game was a dead rubber.  Costa Rica were through and so fielded a team of ladies, children and the lame.  And the thinking was that as England had phuque-all to lose, they would play with abandon and invention.  As it turned out, they reverted to type and played a ponderous lumpen version of the game; thereby proving, je suppose, that you cannot make a silk purse out of a pig's perineum.

Current manager, Roy "Woy" Hodgson, opted to play some youngsters in order to blood them at this rarefied level.  Sadly, they were all found wanting.  Probably the worst aspect was the absence of a recognisable football formation; they just seemed to meander about the pitch in a loose confederacy of ineptitude.  What had Woy said to them beforehand to prompt that? 

So the game petered out, bringing down the curtain on a shambolic tournament for this sceptred isle's finest - not that you've have known this from the words of the protagonists afterwards.  Good Lord, no!  England played some "good stuff" apparently.  There was plenty of scope for optimism.  Unfortunately this was absolutely at odds with the empirical evidence available to those with eyes.  England weren't awful, just very ordinary and anodyne.

There was a vee awkward stand-off between Woy and a BBC reporter straight after the game.  The reporter opened with a carefully-weighted and accurate precis, along the lines that the game didn't really get going, did it?  Woy took odds with this.  And they wonder why England supporters get hacked-off.  You don't have to have played the game at the highest level to recognise a shit game when you see one.  It's a variation of the old "I've never been to the North Pole, but I know it's cold" argument.  If he'd fetched-up and confirmed what we already knew, people would have said "fair enough".  Expectations were pretty low to begin with.

Tossers.

Bob Hopeless

I'm in the office watching England's last group (and therefore by extension last [fullstop]) game.  It's against Costa Rica.  Marketing have laid on drinks and nibbles for us all, but no-one's heart is really in it.

A few weeks ago this must have seemed like a prime fixture: 5pm on a fine late-June Tuesday afternoon, everyone in the office, the sun cracking the stones outside and free ale for all.  The thinking was, also, that England would need to win this match, so the excitement would be palpable.  It isn't; it's a dead rubber.  I can't even bring myself to down a complimentary continental lager beer; that's how bad it is.

Maybe next time...

Appraising Grace

Oh woe - appraisal season is upon us.  Mine is tomorrow (Tuesday) and I simply don't have sufficient psychic energy on a Monday to go through the heartbreaking paperwork.  I'm going to have to wing it.

I used to "wing" things a lot as a young adult: school, college, work, bands, girlfriends - you name it, I've wung them all.  Most fly-by-night wing weasels tend toward the Byronic, i.e. they don't give a shite for authority or the consequences of their actions, and refuse, therefore, to prepare or do as they're told.  I wish I could claim the same, but I'm not like that.  I'm actually quite risk-averse.  The only reason I end up improvising wildly in front of strangers, like an unimpressive white John Coltrane, is because my time-management is shambolic.  Also, I know from emetically tense experience that I'm good at it.  

All the same, I'd don't care for the practice.  The hours leading into a performance are awful.  American comedian Steven Wright once described unease as akin to that feeling you get when you overbalance while leaning backwards on a chair, and then catch yourself before falling and overcompensate again in the opposite plane.  He claimed to feel like this all the time.  Well, it's also how I feel before an outlandish wing.  Not pleasant.

Also, even if I were inclined to do the needful, there's football on constantly in the office (future me, please note The World Cup's on - Brazil), so I simply cannot concentrate.  This World Cup is just superb: wonderful, open games, hatfuls of goals and giant-killing par excellence.  

If these aren't auguries from the gods telling me to chuck my bureaucratic hand in and chance to luck, then what are they?  Eh?

HR-se

I've got an appraisal at work next week.  Nothing gets me closer to telling them to stuff their job where-the-sun-don't than the annual appraisal.  It's not that I fear falling-short; I can, and sometimes do, do my job standing on my head.  It's just that the whole HR cavalcade of corporate fanny really gets in amongst me.

I don't know why it should anger me so much; it just does.  I suppose it's the fact that its avowed intention is to make you feel better about things whilst it's doing the exact opposite.  It's spirit-sapping stuff.  For example, they sent us a document to fill out prior to our appraisal meetings.  Its name?  Competency Framework.  What does that even mean?  As Alexei Sayle once pointed out: unless you teach woodwork, using the word "workshop" marks you out as a twat.  Ditto "framework".

Why can't HR confine itself to payroll and discipline?  That's the real point of all the psycho-twaddle, personnel doesn't have enough to do, and needs to salve its conscience.  The robust, fully-embracing, methodology-implementing, benefits-realising bastards.

Ninety nine percent perspiration

I filed my 300-word (phew) book review a moment ago, and the relief is palpable.  No, really, I could have weighed my anguish this time yesterday, such was its scale.  I shouldn't get too comfy I suppose.  There's still time for it to land back in my in tray with "not fit for broadcast" stamped across it.  However, I think I've cut my journalistic teeth sufficiently now that I could churn out another review that comes to precisely the opposite conclusions to the first.  I wouldn't lose any sleep over this mercenary about turn either.  I've been a hack (unpaid) for less than 5 five hours and I've already turned into Pol Pot.

I've now been overcome with that physical slump that follows moments of crise like these.  My ordinary duties look even more anodyne and pointless than they did previously.  I feel like a character in an earnest but shit modernist novel. 

I also feel hugely tempted to take my foot off the gas, but this is fatal for me.  I can in a fug and get depressed.  I need to apply myself.  I know all this stuff, and yet will I buckle down?  Almost certainly not.  There's a masochistic streak at the heart of the Irish male.  This explains the violent temper and drinking.

You can run from that gene pool, but you cannot hide.

Hold that thought

As I probably always knew it would, having to write a review of Chris Froome's autobiography is proving a real headache.  On paper the task looks surmountable:

1. Read the book

2. Write 300 word review of book

I finished reading it today (Wednesday), and I've got until next Tuesday to file my copy.  In spite of these generous margins, I'm absolutely sweating cheddar.  I keep mentally rewriting reviews in my head in the small hours when, without wishing to sound like my mother, I should be asleep.  I'm going to have to nail my courage to the sticking place (whatever the fcuk that means).

Notwithstanding the fact that I'm pathetic - please wish me luck.

I predict a riot

There was a perfect storm this weekend.  It was England's first World Cup game, kick-off was at 11pm Saturday night (for which the pubs had been give a blanket extension) and the weather was good, hot and mostly sunny.  England fans like a drink, and most of them have trained themselves to be catatonic by closing time on a Saturday night.  Old habits die hard of course, so the majority would have been like rag-dolls come half time on Saturday.  Crosses for eyes, bubbles emerging from the nose - the works.  The only thing that might have protected the nations beer gardens was an England victory, but that wasn't going to happen. 

The wife and I spent the evening at my sister's house.  We watched the first half there and decided to scoot home for the second before the nation's finest spilled out of the pubs and started soiling themselves.  The cab office was like a morgue (this was midnight on Saturday, mind you).  The cabbie said that business was slow, but there had been a mass brawl in Woodford to alleviate the tedium.  He then pointed out the police helicopter that was hovering close overhead.  England were drawing at this stage, and already the fans were scrapping.  I don't know how they were going to top that when the Italians took the lead: ritual suicide perhaps.

The L-Shaped Froome

Well, I'm charging through my review copy of Chris Froome's "The Climb".  It started off a bit flowery, language-wise that is ("We exist in our cadence", anyone?), but quickly settled down and has turned into a very diverting read.  You know you're on to something good when you develop paternal feelings for someone on the strength of just 90 pages of his autobiography.

The thing about CF is has doesn't do anything flamboyant; he just does the ordinary things well.  He is possessed of a even temperament and a dogged optimism.  This makes him impossible to dislike.  It also explains why he is so well-liked by his teammates.  I am always amazed by his unpretentious grace under pressure.  During the Tour he faces interviewers at the tops of Alpine climbs, after 7 hours' racing with an infectious boyish half-smile on his lips.  This is someone, you think to yourself, who loves being alive and who is determined to relish every moment.  Good for him.

The other thing that marks his story out as noteworthy is his unusual upbringing.  He was born and raised in Kenya, but into a decidedly British milieu.  He cut his cycling teeth in an all-black, Swahili-speaking environment.  Chris, unusually for a white Kenyan, is fluent in the language.  He initially, as he admits, must have stuck out like a sore white thumb.  The fact that he was accepted and taken to the heart of this small clique of black Kenyan cyclists speak volumes for his integrity.

Chris Froome - if he moved in next door to you, you'd be delighted.

How's the revision going? What revision? Is there an exam?

I've been asked to review a book for work; I say "been asked", but if you substitute the word "volunteered", you're closer to the truth, goddammit.  I thought it would be fun.  The book, Chris Froome's autobiography, is on a subject I love and am knowledgeable about.  And, even if I say so myself, I'm usually pretty good at distilling books and films down to their scanties.  I also read voraciously.  So what's the problem?

I'll tell you.  I feel under pressure.  If I didn't have a deadline, I've have read this tome in three or four days.  As it is, I've got a week.  And yet all I can do is cast furtive glances at it on my desk, and worry because the bookmark is too near the front cover for comfort.  Also, unless I forget how to read English overnight or pull a hamstring in my eyes, it's going to get read in due course.   I just need to relax.  I'm going to end up buying a CD of whale song because I've got to write 300 non-committal words by Tuesday week.

When the going gets tough.

Old Mother Nature

I got a surprise last night when I reached home.  I flung open the curtains to the back door and spied a magpie on the patio.  He was worrying away at the brickwork at the end of the patio and was oblivious to my presence.  Usually corvids are extremely aware of their surrounding, so he was clearly rapt by something.  I opened the door to investigate and he flew off.

He'd been burrowing his way into an ants' nest.  I knew there was a nest inside the wall, but the inhabitants, it seems, had dislodged several pounds of brick dust with their scurrying.  This had piled-up at the foot of the wall and formed a little wedge.  I don't Hoover the garden as a rule, so there it stayed.

The ants clearly thought this was an extension that they hadn't previously noticed, and decided to move into it.  He's a stoical animal, your ant, so the good fortune of the extra space was probably ascribed to the ant god.  There's a job for the underachievers among you out there - God of the Ants.  Can you imagine what the robes look like?  Superb.  Anyhoos, the ants were desperately rearranging the furniture before one-for-money swooped down from the heavens once more.

I have a lot of time for the ant.  They have a certain noble bearing, which for an animal the size of a grain of basmati takes some doing.  And they're quite peaceable too, well, for insects they are.  They don't sting, and they'll only try and take a bite out of you as you're about to step on them.  I think that's fair enough.  I'm sure I'd do the same in the circs..

Prick is a wonker

Rik Mayall died suddenly yesterday.  He was 56.  It's not clear yet what exactly happened.  There's talk that he had a seizure of sorts.  I think he suffered with epilepsy following a quad bike accident in the 90s.  Time will tell.

The news really knocked the stuffing out of me.  I'm not alone though.  It seems from social media that my entire generation has been rocked back on its heels at the news.  His work was absolutely instrumental in making British humour what it is today.  He had been selective in his work over the 15 years or so since his accident, which meant he rather slipped off the radar, which made the shock all the worse.  Luckily he was precocious and prodigious in his early years and amassed an impressive body of work before he hit 40.

I first encountered him as Kevin Turvey.  This was a comic creation so fine that most comics would have based an entire career on him, but Mayall never reprised the character.  He was far too restless for that.  It's just as well for us he didn't because he went on to create many others: Colin Grigson (Bad News), Richie Richard, Flashheart, Alan B'Stard.

It's strange when someone famous dies.  I'm normally immune to the NutraSweet platitudes that people spew up on these occasions.  I've lost enough friends and relatives to know what real mourning feels like and it shouldn't be taken lightly.  But Rick's passing is very hard to take; I've actually found myself welling-up at the thought that he's gone.  It's ridiculous really; I mean he hadn't been on the telly for years.  It's just that he was so very important to me, and all my friends, through our formative years.  It's almost like losing a school friend that you haven't seen for decades.  Yes, he wasn't a part of your current life, but his words and actions informed who you became.  A great loss.

Scumbag for two...sorry, table.

I ate at a Michelin-starred restaurant for the first time on Saturday evening.  They're always fraught with tension, these high falutin' eating out affairs, as I'm furiously minding my manners, which leaves scant processing resources for Mr Brain to operate my limbs for me.  

The reason for the unease is that I'm terrified I'll betray my lowly origins by unconsciously making an Olympic qualifying gaff - using the fish knife to to stir my wine for example, or calling the head waiter dad.  I remember one occasion a few years ago when Mrs O and I were staying in a five-star hotel in northern Spain.  There didn't seem to be much craic available in town, so we decided to dine at the hotel.  The waiter poured us the customary tumbler of wine each and then disappeared with the bottle.  He stashed it on a special wine table about 40 feet away.  This presented me with a problem: would it be considered pour form to mince over in my flip-flops for a refill unbidden?  Also, I doubted my ability to make the distance without knocking over an antique samovar and being deported.  I needn't have worried; being the attentive silver-service type he somehow sensed when we getting to the dregs and would slide over with the bottle in hand without having to be asked.  It was like he was on wheels.  He seemed to float over the parquet without moving his legs.  You'd have to suppose this is part of the training.

Luckily Saturday's shindig was different.  It was a gastro-pub as opposed to a straight-ahead restaurant, so you could order at the bar.  Also, there were no supercilious staff to do passive-aggressive battle with.  They even plopped our bottle of wine down on the table and left it for us to pour as and when we wanted.  Fabulous.

The food was just what I'd hoped it would be: beautiful, subtle and delicious.  The old balance of flavours thing is what marks out a fine restaurant in my experience.  The flavours on the plate join forces to give your tongue the treat of its life.  Mrs O had some horseradish in her dish, which normally I detest.  In this case though it was wonderful.  It wasn't even really a flavour; it sort of swept-up after the other ingredients and made sure your mouth was in a fit and proper state to accept more manna.  I only actually noticed it half a second after I'd swallowed a mouthful, like a faint yell of Geronimo! as it disappeared over the tonsils.  That's elegant cooking for you - well brought up horseradish.

Back on the homemade slop tonight I suppose.  [sigh...]

Simmer on the settee

Well, well, the sun is shining and it's fairly warm in Londres today.  Who saw that coming?  I realise it's June, but one cannot count one's weather chickens in this country.  They kick you in the arse if you try that stuff.

Mrs O and I are finally heading to Seasalter in Kent this weekend for our long-planned gourmet evening on Saturday.  We had initially intended to do this during the winter, but Kent was partially submerged and the trains all drowned or something.  So we postponed until Saturday.

We're heading to The Sportsman, a Michelin-starred restaurant and pub.  The chef there sets great store by sourcing local ingredients.  The area is particularly famed for its lamb.  The junior sheep down there feed on salt marshes.  This imbues their flesh with an especially rich flavour apparently.  They essentially season themselves.  Mrs O is so excited by the idea that's she fallen off the vegetarian wagon for the occasion.  I shall probably opt for a fish.  I couldn't eat a lamb; they have too much joie de vivre.  Whereas your average chubb or whelk looks fairly insouciant about the whole sentience thing, so I don't feel such a heel eating them.

Yum twice.

The ball is round. So are pickled onions. What's your point?

England played another of its pre-World Cup friendlies last night with predictably troubling results.  One of the country's finer young players, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, sustained an injury in this meaningless fixture and now looks doubtful for the tournament.  This is probably for the best.  It will pour cold water on the unrealistic hopes of the nation.

Let's not put too fine a point on this: England are shite at tournament football.  Vee poor.  And yet, with uncharacteristic optimism, the English always believe that this time the team will do well.  They often point out that Spain suffered similar disappointments in years gone by as evidence that sometimes the footballing gods simply conspire again decent teams.  Sadly this reasoning(!) overlooks the fact that the Spanish players are brilliant and the English ones mediocre.  Yes, they are.  How many English players would make it on the starting eleven of the world's best team?  That right: none.  The bench...it's none again, isn't it?  What about the squad?  Nope, another dud.  The only Englishman who might make it onto the coach would be doing so as the designated driver.

So, as I say, AOC's injury has taken the heat out of English expectations.  Just as well too because some of the voodoo logic one is hearing in the workplace at the moment is terrifying.  Real Madrid were European champions and Arsenal won The Cup the last (only) time England won an international tournament.  Yeah, and John Lennon was still alive.  What do you propose to do about that?

Flogging and National Service - a lesson from history

I had the saddle of my commuting bicycle stolen yesterday.  This is a first for me.  I usually escape petty bicycle theft because I carefully choose equipment that, while attractive to the aficionado, would not appeal to the casual slag and/or rotter.  It seems I was wrong about that.

The saddle was a honey-coloured Brooks B17.  That's a leather, rather old-skool lookin' beast, for those of you not au fait with bike couture.  It cost me £70, so the material loss stung a little, but worse still is the fact that leather saddles take a lot of painful miles to break in.  It takes my arse about 1,500 miles to (literally) make a dent in a new Brooks.  Until such time, it's like sitting on a house brick.  This one had 2,000 miles on the clock, so it was perfect: broken in but not yet broken down.

What surprised me most about the episode was why people (if I might use that term in this case) would start stealing Brooks saddles.  As I say, it's not cutting edge technology.  I blame the popularity of cycling, which means that ruffians now know the price of most bit and pieces.  A quick £70 saddle is now an easy score.  But it has no resale value.  People who buy expensive, leather saddles do not buy knock-off gear.  It would be like trying to fence dodgy Archers omnibus cds in a pub; your target audience doesn't exist.  And a broken in Brooks is of little use to a cyclist, unless his backside is a clone of my own.  So, no-one wins.

Another bummer (so-to-speak) about its disappearance was the fact that I had then to ride home (7 miles) sans siege.  I should point out at this point that I ride a fixed-wheel bike; this means I am unable to coast.  If the bike moves, so do the pedals.  I had to "honk", therefore, (standing-up on the pedals) all the way home, with the raucous laughter of chirpy cockneys ringing in my ears all the way.  And take it from me: riding a fixed like this is like treading grapes in a room with a four foot high ceiling.  Not fun.

How do you like your brandy, sir? - In a glass.

It's been humid for a few days in old London town, not humid in a traditional summer sense, just a little damper than we're used to.  Despite the discomfort this brings, I welcome it.  It's June, for the love of Jesus, it's supposed to be humid.  When I was a boy (here we go...), summers were excruciating in their humidity.  Not now though - something happened to the jet stream or something in 2006 and the weather went to heck in a handcart.

At least when it's hot and humid, you feel like you've lived every moment, even if you've actually spent the entire day playing Tetris on your computer at work.  Typing-up vanilla meeting minutes is autumnal work, like putting semi-conscious tortoises into garden sheds or eating roasted tubers.  No, humidity is good.  It's difficult to sleep, but you can pretend you're Philip Marlowe whilst you toss and turn.  If it's too hot to sleep, I'll sometimes get up and sit alone in the kitchen until the small hours, wearing nothing but a trilby and sipping cold tea from a highball tumbler.  It's just as well summers in the UK are short, or I'd crack due to lack of sleep.

As it's not too miserable out, I took a wander down to the river at Westferry at lunchtime.  There is nothing more soothing than the sound of The Thames at slack water.  It lulls me in seconds, my mood notwithstanding.  You can take the boy out of London....

A little difficult to follow

I was at The Globe yesterday, to see a production of Anthony & Cleopatra.  As always with plays there, the audience had a fair number of tourists in it.  Yesterday for example we had a gaggle of young Italian lovies in the row behind us.  How they were proposing to follow the action is anyone's guess.  It's not like watching a Laurel and Hardy short, where you can still glean a lot of entertainment value without understanding the niceties of the badinage.  Even for a native speaker, it takes a bit of concentration.

The play is not one of Shakie's classics.  There are some nice set pieces, but Cleo's character is about as consistent and stable as a five-year-old who's two litres of Iru Bru to the good.  In one scene she's as contrite and rational as can be, and in the the next she's apparently gone crackers.  This makes empathy difficult.  The best line of the whole shebang is: "Let's to supper, come, And drown consideration."  I like to drown consideration with my meals; it aids digestion.

All that notwithstanding, the production was excellent.  The ensemble cast was superb, particularly Phil Daniels as Enobarbus.  He has such range, PD, and he shows tremendous restraint.  Well done, Jimmy.