Gnaw wee chunion

I'm off to Norwich tomorrow for a spot of Xmas shopping and general carousing.  It's a splendifferous town, Norwich, full of interesting independent shops, fabulous cosy old-school pubs and nice people.  I remember going there to see Orient play The Canaries in the 3rd round of the FA Cup some years ago.  I was struck by what a lovely family club it was.  The ground is modern and walking distance from the centre of town.  And the Norwich faithful all turn up in family groups.  It was more like an American sporting event than an English football match, and was none the worse for this.  If I lived there, I'd go to much more football than I do currently.

I think also the weather's supposed to be good this weekend.  East Anglia in general, and Norwich in particular really reach escape velocity in the cold winter sunshine.  I cannot think of anywhere I'd rather be at this time of year when it's like this - the low countries perhaps.  This makes sense of course as East Anglia and the LCs are of a piece - one land, three countries.

I do hope all this Black Friday bullshit has died down by the time we arrive there tomorrow.  How this previously exclusively American phenomenon has gained a foothold in the U of K is a mystery to me.  It makes precisely no sense here.  In the States, Thanksgiving heralds the traditional beginning of the run-in to Christmas.  People rush to be with their loved ones and eat turkey.  It's also a public holiday, so many choose to take the Friday off too as they're usually not at home.  It's sensible, therefore, for American retailers to begin their Christmas marketing campaigns on this day - loads of people with a day off, all feeling Christmassy.  Now, we don't have Thanksgiving here, as you're probably aware...well, you can see where I'm going with this I'm sure.

What's particularly galling about all this is the bovine acceptance of this "trend" by Britons.  "Woo hoo!  It's Black Friday."  That's right - it is Black Friday...in Ohio.

Tragically mundane

Phillip Hughes, the young Australian cricketer who was struck on the head by a delivery during a game on Tuesday, died today as a result of his injuries.  And the shock of his death is palpable.

This isn't the usual, empty and mawkish mourning for a famous person that one is living through vicariously though.  It's real shock.  The shock is bourne out of the innocuous and mundane nature of the event that killed this young man.  Basically put, he turned his back on a bouncer, as one is supposed to, and the ball struck him low down on the back of his neck.  The impact severed an artery, causing a massive bleed into the brain.  Hughes managed to stand for a few seconds after the impact before very dramatically collapsing to the ground.  It's clear now that he was beyond help even at that stage.

The seemingly ordinary nature of the delivery and the speed with which it killed him made this tragedy almost too much to process.  Hughes was just 25 years old.  The ball struck the one tiny part of his body that was unprotected and where a sufficiently violent contact could have caused serious injury.  Even then, the chances of the artery being completely ruptured by an impact were slight.  The unlikely nature of the chain of events has left everyone dumbfounded.

The match was being filmed, as it was a first-class fixture, and to see a young man struck down with such speed was unbearable.  We are all hanging by a thread; we all know this, at an intellectual, theoretic level at least.  But to have this principle demonstrated with such wanton and ruthless efficiency is too much.  It bespeaks a cruel universe, one with one no regard for human sentiment or emotion.  

I was reminded of the words of Randy Pausch, the professor of computer science, who shortly after being told his pancreatic cancer was terminal, delivered a lecture on the subject "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" to his students and colleagues.  Pausch mentioned that after his diagnosis people were keen to point out to him how unfair it was that a man of his relative youth should have been thus blighted.  But he dismissed this, replying "we are all in the crosshairs".  It's what happens to humans.  It's not unfair or fair: it just is.  It's a part of life, the quid pro quo, if you like.

There will be calls to change cricket no doubt, to ban quick deliveries, change the ball...whatever.  But this is to misread the event.  Phillip Hughes was killed by an extremely unlikely ocurrence, extremely unlikely.  This needs to be put into perspective.  People slip on icy pavements and are killed every winter, but we accept these tragedies, telling outselves that we would be more careful.  "It-won't-happen-to-me."  This is self-delusion.  What we mean is "I-hope-it-won't-happen-to-me".

More sportsmen and women will die in appalling circumstances in the future and this too is a part of life.  We're going to have face this again - an exhausting and disheartening prospect.

Missus O and I popped to see Imitation Game last night.  It's a dramatisation of the Bletchley Park story when a team of friendless geeks cracked the German enigma code, thereby expediting the end of the Second World War.  The breakthrough, which had beaten the finest minds at the allies' disposal for years, was cracked primarily by Alan Turing.

Turing was a fascinating character, not perhaps the kind of man you'd care to share a diving bell with for any great length of time - but a compelling figure for those of us looking back on his life.  He was treated appallingly by the British establishment, in spite of his immeasurable contribution to the country's very existence.  It's generally agreed now that the allies may well have lost the war were it not for the work that Turing oversaw.

So, why then was he treated so badly?  Well, he was (a) spectacularly arrogant and rude ...and... (b) a homosexual.  B was used as the flimsy pretext of his destruction by the powers-that-be because they felt slighted by Turing thanks to 'a'.  In fairness to him, Turing wasn't arrogant.  He was autistic and a genius.  This combination made him cleverer than everyone else on Earth at the time and incapable of telling white lies.  This meant he would tell people that he was cleverer than them and that they needed him if they ever wanted to break the code.  This wasn't arrogance; it was a statement of irrefutable fact.  For Turing, it was like pointing out that night followed day, and he couldn't understand why people took umbrage at his telling them so.

So, he was a difficult man to like.  However, this mitigates not one jot what was done to him.  He was convicted of gross indecency and chemically castrated as a result.  Aside from the wretched heterosexual totalitarianism of this decision, what is worse still is the fact that the treatment destroyed his mind.  He was incapable of ascending the intellectual heights due to the side effects of the hormones he was forced to take.  Think about that for a moment: a genius of Turing magnitude purposely destroyed by a nation that owed its very existence to that genius.  That's the same country that venerates Newton.  Fucking outrageous.

What is more outrageous is the fact that homophobia is still rampant in Britain.  What have we learnt from Turing's persecution?  Precisely nothing.  He was correct in his analysis of the intellectual shortcomings of the rest of humanity, Turing, and they lived down to expectation.  Perhaps that why he killed himself.

Only five minutes from this cinema...

The missus and I are off to our new local cinema tonight.  It's one of those faceless, multiplex shitholes - the kind of human skip I normally wouldn't touch with a barge pole - but it's a cinema that's walking distance from our front door, and that has got to be worth celebrating.

Our last local one closed in 2003.  Since then we've had to travel by bus or tube to see cutting edge flicks.  To those of you who don't live in a large city, this won't sound like much, but to a Londoner, not having a cinema hobbling distance away is like not having central heating.  Yes, one can manage, but surely this shouldn't still be happening, should it?  It's 2014 ffs.  People were coerced into fighting a war for this country.  What was the point?

My only misgiving about the new place is that multiplexes are like honeypots for scumbags.  There's a risk, therefore, that one might be sharing the auditorium with noisy, fcuk-witted fellow denizens, of which there are plenty in my hometown.

The area I live in has been furiously regenerating over the last five years or so - particularly the "village" bit I live in.  All my neighbours are respectable, educated and middle-class.  But the self-same area used to be exclusively working-class and not a little rough with it.  Most of the locale still clings doggedly to its lumpen tattooed past.  Nothing wrong with that of course - it's just that I demand respectful silence when I at the pictures.  What's the point otherwise?  

People (middle-class people) snort and pull faces when I complain about things like this.  But that is to misread the target of my ire.  It's not the working class whose nose I aim to bloody (I am one of them after all), it is scumbags I have a problem with.  These two cohorts tend to get confused by the media and polite English society at large.  I suppose my own class is partly to blame for this.  There is a creeping mistrust of education and erudition among today's hoi polloi.  

This is at odds with the prevailing wisdom I was brought up with.  Then, working class children were encouraged to amass book learning if they felt inclined to.  And those to didn't take to formal education were expected and encouraged to learn a practical skill.  As a boy, my (exclusively working class) friends and I revelled in knowing stuff - not Greek myths or calculus maybe, but abstract notions that appealed to us and facts.  Nothing wrong with a distended arsenal of facts, my boy.

Working class children nowadays wallow in their ignorance and this I find contemptible.

York Shyer Pie

Well, well, what a gem York turned out to be.  It's a charming place, full of interesting historical architecture, fascinating museums, lovely places to eat and dozens of superb pubs.

The journey up on Friday evening was a treat for starters.  The train's an express, so it only took two hours.  Also we were sat with a gaggle of Yorkshire ladies d'un certain age who were very friendly and good value.  They did the usual Ls d'un C-A thing and cracked open a bottle of prosecco as soon as the train left Kings Cross.

We also happened across a couple of young Dublin students who were travelling from Dublin to Edinburgh via London and Newcastle.  There were taking part in a charity event.  Several teams of two had to undertake this journey with absolutely no money whatsoever.  It was also a race, so no chance to rest whatever.  They'd been on the go since 9am that morning.  This was at about 8pm.  We helped them out with some food and a few quid for their collection.  So, all in all, it was a very diverting journey.

We arrived in York at 9.30 and checked in.  Then out for a couple of sharpeners in a craft ale pub at the train station.  Normally, you'd need your bumps felt for drinking in a pub at a train station.  They're generally foul - anonymous, violent and poorly maintained, like Guantanamo Bay with pool tables.  But the one at York station is lovely.  The beer is great and the staff friendly.  This is fitting addendum to the station itself, which is a gorgeous high-Victorian palace to the age of steam.

Saturday was spent at the National Railway Museum, which wasn't the cavalcade of sweaty confirmed bachelors I'd feared.  It was actually a very well kept and presented collection of important engines and carriages from the around the world that illustrate the history and innovations in rail technology.  Even as I type those words, I can feel you slipping away.  I'd had thought the same in your position, but, believe me, it's a great museum.  Everyone uses trains to some extent.  Their history is our history.  It is therefore of interest to most of us.

As Saturday night!  Well, what can I say?  It's absolutely packed with charming, cosy hostelries, York - absolutely packed.  We wandered around, tasting the wares, and finished the night in a lovely curry house.

Sunday morning we charged around the city walls for an hour before heading off home at noon.  A tremendous place - we'll be back.

Man up Friday

The back's a soupçon better today, which is just as well because I was in danger of getting downhearted by it all.  Well, I mean to say, it's day two ferrchrissakes.  The best years of my life are being eaten up by this boring condition.

Still, onwards and upwards.  It's off to Kings Cross straight from the office this evening for the two-hour journey to York.  I've procured a massive picnic to see us right en route.  Better that than worrying about being stranded by "a jumper" outside Hitchin.  That's happened before.  And when it does, market forces turn all the travellers against one another.  

Last time it happened, some old hands dashed-off and emptied the buffet car of booze before the engine had even struck the poor unfortunate in question.  The tell-tale urgent braking was enough to alert them to the imminent impact.  It was ten minutes before I realised something was seriously "up".  I trotted off to the buffet car for a soothing 12 cans of bitter, but the cupboard was bare.  A very dark and introspective two hours followed, which I'm sure would have been grist to the mill for Arthur Miller, but which for me was nothing more than a prolonged opportunity to confront my sober unconscious mind.  I did not like what I saw that night, friends.  No, I did not.

Anyway, no danger of that tonight.  We've half a case of Tattinger each if needs must.

Is it a tom?

We're off tut Yorkshire tomorrow, the missus and I.  The plan is to leap on a train at Kings Cross at 7ish and arrive in the north two and a half hours later, fed, watered and raring for plain-speaking action.

I love going to the north at this time of year.  In my febrile, southern imagination, it's a winter place, the north - like Berlin or Stockholm, say.  Nothing wrong with that; all places have a preferred season when they really come into their own.  Madrid, for example, needs to be experienced in the summer.  I've been there in the winter, and it's facking freezing.  It doesn't work.  They're not geared-up for it.  

It's like when it's boiling hot in London - the denizens go a bit doolally.  It's fun to watch the carnage unfold, but you know it can't last.  This rule is writ even larger in the north of England.  It needs to be chilly.  It's cold in London today, so I'm hoping for the best.

My only problem with travelling north is that I feel so ridiculously fey and affected.  I come across like a RADA rendering of a middle-class, slightly fey Southerner.  It's like when I'm in Ireland, which I am regularly.  My accent sounds stuffy and my syntax wordy and archaic.  Actually, the reason for that is because my syntax is wordy and archaic.  I must cut that out...presently.

Can I speak to your back please? 'Fraid not - He's out.

I somehow put my back out last evening.  This is a depressing and unhelpful development at the best of times, but when you've a long train trip in the diary in a day of two, as I have, it's doubly unwelcome.  It also happened in the most innocuous of circs.

I was on the phone to my sister for 10 minutes or so, and when I walked away from the wretched apparatus, I could distinctly feel a twinge.  This escalated over the coming hours.  And this morning, it was properly sore.  I spend all my waking hours when not shackled to the desk at work, cycling and doing yoga.  How is it then that answering the land-line can upset my lumbar spine?  It's not right.

It's easy to get psychotic - well it is for me at least - when one's back plays up.  It's such a debilitating pain.  Every simple action is turned into a test of will and physical endurance.  The ironic thing is that when I'm being active and physical, it's fine.  It's only when I sit that it starts to ache.  Unfortunately, sitting is what I do for a living, so the days are long and arduous - my two least favourite adjectives.  Well, 'long' has its moments, but you see what I mean.

So the plan tonight is to scoot straight home, carbo-load on wine and then see out the evening in palliative yoga poses.  I wonder what Axl Rose is up to tonight.  No doubt his back will be aching in the morning too.  The rotter.  Anyway, I digress.

Slapstick consumer durables

A friend of mine popped round last night to drop in a new/old computer for me and the missus.  Our old/old one went to meet its maker (Steve Jobs) last week, so we needed a replacement.

This one is a couple of years old, but it's a fine machine.  My mate works in IT, so it's been well looked after.  He tells me too that the spec is still pretty high falutin' although I'll have to take this on trust as I'm way off the pace when it comes to matters IT-esque.  It's a direct replacement for the old one, a mac for a mac.

It's funny when you buy new stuff.  It immediately makes the old item look about as advanced as a granite ashtray.  I always thought our white i-Mac looked pretty hot and cutting edge.  I know now that to the cognoscenti it couldn't have looked quainter had it been carved from mahogany.

I'm quite lucky when it comes to computers and stuff because I have a number of friends who work in the field.  Should anything go wrong with hardware, they can usually be relied upon to brandish a screwdriver in exchange for beer.  Also, it means we've been allowed to test drive this particular model to see if it fits our oh-so exacting requirements.  So far, so good.  Mind you, the screen did fall out overnight, so we're not out of the woods yet.  I'm quite strict about things like this; I don't like objects I've paid several hundred pounds for falling apart like Arsenal's back-four.  Born fussy, I suppose.

What to do?

I'm alone in the office today.  My boss materialised for literally 10 minutes earlier.  He had the look of a man being pursued by Mossad.  He hurried into the office long enough to tell me he was immediately leaving again.  I did strike me as an utter waste of his and my time, this.  Why not just go the next appointment directly from the first?  Unless, that is, he was keen to establish his whereabouts in front of dozens of witnesses should the authorities come-a-callin'.  He was wearing a trench coat too, to add to the whole le Carré vibe.

All this happened after I'd been contacted by my junior colleague to tell my his car refused to start on Saturday evening.  The RAC pitched-up diagnosed terminal gearbox failure.  Apparently it as good as had its tongue stuck out the side of its mouth, so the decision was taken not to attempt resuscitation.  This left him stranded this morning as he lives in the back of beyond.  So it's just me.

The trouble is it's a bit quiet chez work at the mo.  After a few periods of frantic activity of late, we're entered a natural lull.  The industrial winds have died down and the mainsail is hugging the mast like a curtain.  This gets tiresome after a while.  I need something to do.  At times like this a civilised society would simply send me home.  "Come back Thursday," it would say.  "Something's bound to have cropped up by then."  But, no, I've got to sit here, simply for form's sake when I could be at home dismantling the dishwasher, or redoing the draft excluders around the front door.  Useful middle aged sheight like that.

Oh, well, people have greater crosses to bear in life I suppose.

An evening on the tiles...

I had a rare night out on the pop last night.  It was to commemorate and commiserate with my former boss, who has been unceremoniously bumped from his job after 20 years' service.  I used to look forward to these affairs, but these days I eye them with dread.  I simply cannot stick away six pints and not feel the consequences.  That implies I used not to notice the damage; that isn't true.  But I was better at ignoring it when I was younger.  Also I had fewer qualms about turning up to work in an unfit state.  These days, I feel bad if I arrive at the office bright green and trembling.

I left them to it at about 10 o'clock.  My former boss, who was visibly in his cups when I arrived at 7pm, was still draining the bitter cup when I left.  I imagine the inside of his nut resembles the Somme today.

[update]: I got an email from him a few moments ago.  He was so "confused" upon reaching home that climbing the stairs seemed a Herculean task, so he slept downstairs with the cat instead.

What else has been happening?  Oh, yes, I know - Sainsbury's has unveiled its Christmas advert, which is a dramatisation of the famous Christmas truce during the Great War when British and German troops met in no-man's land to play football.  It's a beautifully realised, subtle and sweetly poignant film, and about the most offensive thing I've ever laid eyes on.

I'm staggered that not absolutely everyone in the country isn't horrified by this cynical, heartless and brutally calculating piece of marketing.  Let's think about it for a moment.  A supermarket is using the First World War to hawk its pickled onions and y-fronts.  If, as some people argue, it's fine to to invoke an historical event in which thousands tragically died, then why not go the whole hog next year and base the entire yuletide campaign on 9/11?  The reason they won't is because people would, quite rightly, hit the fucking roof.

But the principle is exactly the same.  Or are we to conclude that an event that killed 37 million people...err...yonks ago is fair game, but one that killed three and a half thousand and happened within living memory is off limits as to use it to market Pot Noodles might, just might, be considered to be beyond the fucking pale?  This is clearly bullshit.  It is either a principled or an unprincipled act.  One cannot cherry pick instances when it's okay and others when it's not.  That's like arguing that it's fine to ridicule a Chinaman, but not a Nigerian.  Actually I do believe some racists actually advance this confused argument.

Gloam is where the heart is

I'm typing this at seven minutes to four in the afternoon, and it's virtually pitch black out.  You certainly wouldn't be able to negotiate a country lane without a miner's helmet on, not unless you like being run over by threshing machinery, that is.

Still, onwards and upwards.  I'm off out for a drink with former colleagues this evening, and it's good weather for gathering together in a cosy boozer on the banks of the Thames to share a couple of mugs of foaming mother's ruin with friends.  It's starting to feel like Christmas already.  And, let us face facts, Xmas is a bacchanal.  I know the Pope or Aled Jones would have you believe otherwise, but don't listen to them; the pagan festival that takes place at the end of the year, with all its attendant dancing, boozing and rutting, far far predates the arrival of Christianity.  The church simply chose to hitch its star to winterval's wagon.  So, be in no doubt, it's all about the carousing.  Happy Christmas - debase yourself.

The only downside to this season is its length.  Everyone is clammering to get drinks in the diary - former colleagues, relatives, old school friends, tramps I once gave money to - everyone.  This makes matters a little cluttered.  In a couple of weeks' time for example I've got carols (and drinks) on Tuesday, drinks with former colleagues on Wednesday, work's Xmas do on Thursday and a shindig at the neighbours' place on Saturday.  That leaves Friday free, and Friday, as everyone do be know, is pub night.  Phew is right.  I'm getting bilious just typing out the schedule.

Croak a computer

Mrs O attempted to turn on our aged and infirm Macintosh computer the other day, and instead of wearily booting, it coughed up some digital blood and shuffled off this mortal etc.  This is no massive surprise as it's had a good desktop innings.  Unfortunately, as JL pointed out to us before being shot by a maniac, life is what happens to you while you're busy making plans.  In accordance with this law, I had been planning to back-up the Mac for some time.  I didn't.  I must point out by way of mitigation, however, that I am a shiftless and an idle man, so it's not my fault.

Needless to say really, there's a ton(ne) of stuff inside the cadaver of the machine that I'd quite like to get back - music, photos and other bits of electronic flotsam.  In desperation I had a quick trawl of the web, and there might, just might, be a chance that the system unit has been overwhelmed by dust, which is why it's refusing to start - the digital equivalent of having shit in the carburetter, if you will.  So in the tradition of devil-may-care British idiocy I decided to take it to pieces and hoover its guts, in the hope this might give it another six months of poor quality wheezing (ahem) life.

I've completed the first part.  I dismantled it on Monday, following some thankfully very comprehensive instructions that some jolly egg had posted on-line.  I then wedged in the thinnest nozzle in the Dyson arsenal and gave it a good old suck.

Tonight comes the final part, the reassembly.  And, frankly, if it works, I'll eat my hat and coat.  Still, stranger things have happened I suppose.  I just can't think of one.

The North-South Divide - define your terms

I've been pondering the north/south divide.  The reason for the ponderage is that I don't believe it exists - not in the simplistic and rather offensive way the term implies anyhoos.

If you're not from England, a quick precis is in order.  The north is an ill-defined and loose coalition of disaffected English people who hate "the south", and believe that "the south", and southerners generally, have got it in for them, and that this displeasure manifests itself by their hoarding all the money and coal at the country's disposal for their own ends.

Now, the first problem with this north/south thing is that no-one from the south (myself included) believes "the south" to exist.  We do not define ourselves as southerners; the demographics of southern England are far too complicated and diverse for us to do that.  What possible overarching sense of self links me, a Londoner, and a farmer from Somerset?

Also, it ignores the geographical arbitrariness of the designation.  Penzance is 400 miles west of Ipswich; these are wildly different places.  One looks like the west of Ireland; the other looks like The Netherlands.  Penzance is in Cornwall, the poorest county in England.  Ipswich is commutable distance from London.  But according to the orthodoxy of the NSD, they are of a piece - southern, and, therefore, equally guilty of raping the north.

Sheffield, on the other hand, is 180 miles from London, but is apparently a victim of the south's economic conspiracy.  The logic would appear, then, to rest on not absolute distance from London, but the degrees of latitude crossed by that distance.  Longitude has no bearing on the matter (pun intended).  What absolute sheight.

Also, whither the midlands?  Are they in the north?  Generally they're not considered to be.  But they're certainly not in the south either.  No Black Country denizen would thank you for suggesting that he or she is a southerner.  But all would agree that they fit the material criteria: north of the capital, former industrial heartland of England, laid low by de-industrialisation and recession.

This implies that the north is a cultural construct.  That also explains why the Scots and the Welsh aren't counted.  As far as the Scots are concerned, the northern English are just the same as the rest of us.

And the final point is this.  The term assumes that southerners contrive to do down northerners.  This fails to recognise that the south is home to plenty of northerners.  If the south gets more money than other regions, it is due to this economic internal migration as much as anything.  The south east of England is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Boys and their toys

I bought a new bike on Saturday.  I'd been planning to for ages.  My commuting bike of the last 12 years finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, so I had a bike-shaped hole in my collection.  I did think (briefly) about not replacing it.  The Mrs and I had a purge of our belongings during the summer.  We also rejigged the furniture, which made the old homestead feel rangy and splendid.  Whilst I was caught up in hysteria this engendered, I thought it might be nice to thin out the number of velocipedes cluttering the downstairs.  The mood passed, however.

In fairness, I do (I suppose) need two bikes.  Should one develop a mechanical, then I always have another at my disposal, which is reassuring.  They are tools, rather than playthings for me.

The funny thing about making major purchases like this is that it doesn't excite me anymore.  When I was younger, I used to sweat cheddar finding the money for guitars and stuff.  I'd salt away tiny amounts of cash whenever I could.  I remember I used to walk down to my building society branch late at night and stare at the balance on the cash point machine, just to give myself a little frisson; my dream was getting nearer.  And on the day of the purchase itself, I'd spring out of bed hours before the shops were open and spend the morning pacing the up and down like an expectant father.

I remember in particular the joy I felt when I bought my first good guitar, a 1974 Fender Stratocaster.  After getting it home, I would sit and stare at it for hours, such was my love for it.  This was in 1986.  About four years ago, nearly a quarter of a century after that initial guitar purchase, I had occasion to buy another good guitar.  I was playing in a band with friends at the time and needed to upgrade my machine.  This experience was the polar opposite of that mid-eighties one.  I had tons of money, so I trundled up the Denmark St, tried out a few guitars, found the one I wanted, slapped down the money and simply waltzed home with it.

Even as I minced up the Charing Cross Road with it en route to the tube station, I was aware of the disappointing contrast with my teenage self walking back to Mum and Dad's with that strat.  Age and money had made me unshockable.  I could buy any production guitar in the world without feeling the financial impact, and that was the difference.  Also, the later guitar wasn't charged with future possibility and aspiration.  It was simply a rather nice object that allowed me to indulge a much-loved hobby, just like my new bike.  Sigh...

Grimble gromble hatstand

I'm not sure what's happening today, blog wise.  I've found by rereading my diary that I've started dropping into a very prescriptive form for my daily entries.  The weather first, followed by how busy I am at work, followed by my route home and ending up with what's on the telly.  There's no scope for empty-headed scat scribbling within this highly-structured form.  I need, therefore, to break its face with a forearm smash of art terrorism.

When I was younger (i.e. at any time prior to now) I used to be so tired and hungover when filling in brer diary that my musings would meander wherever they saw fit.  This was useful because rereading it was like reading the thoughts of a dissolute stranger, who just so happened to be inhabiting my body at the time as I was using it.  This is as exhilarating as its sounds.  But as I've aged, I've become more and more bound by bourgeois routine.  And the old BR absolutely hates improv.

This is age creeping up on one of course.  However, I'm a great believer that age-appropriate behaviour is conditioned - nurture rather than nature.  Given this, it is possible to override it.  I shall do this using positive affirmation and hyperventilation.

Who steals my verse steals trash...

I haven't written any poetry for a while, if one can refer to several years as a while.  As with most things, it's a question of context.  But anyways.  The thing with poetry, in my experience, is to set yourself a technical brief and then see what subject matter these strictures suggest to the unconscious.  And don't be afraid to swear if you feel it's artistically justified.  Only one-nation Tories dislike swearing, so use it as you see fit.

I'm really flagging at the moment - both physically and mentally.  Luckily, I've managed to lift myself out of this fug by reading Scott Adams' blog.  It really restores one's belief in the basic worth of humanity.  I often get down due to feeling isolated.  My isolation stems from a fundamental disinterest in the things that most people seem to find fascinating and/or important.  Reading SA's blog helps to dispel the myth that everyone on the mothership is like this.  Most are, yes, the vast majority in fact, but not all.  And that fact gives me hope.

And so to bed...

Rhine, women and song

Mrs O and I are fresh back from a weekend in Berlin.  It was one of those exhilarating lightning-quick city breaks, the kind of thing that convinces to you give adult life a second chance.  We both clambered on the plane home yesterday afternoon with a feeling of unfinished business.  We didn't stop once the whole time we were there, but still left with the feeling that we'd only scratched the surface of this fascinating place.  

So - we've resolved to go back.  We're also going to get some rudimentary German under our belts.  We're not setting our aim too high, just the ability to order food and drink in a reasonably fluent manner would be nice.  Mrs O studied German at school, which is useful because she has the vocab, albeit buried.  But I'm a complete novice.  I find it sufficiently close to English to make listening comprehension fairly easy, however, so that's half the battle won.  French, which I speak reasonably well, is a nightmare in this regard.  I find it murderously difficult to follow people's responses to me in France.  I'm hopeful that German will be less tortuous on the English ear.  

Another benefit of German is that now and again you encounter the oh-so pleasing instance of a German phrase that is exactly the same as its English cousin, albeit with a more sinister accent.  "Brown beer" or "all in order?" are examples of this charming phenomenon.

It's funny too that one feels a certain unspoken affinity with other northern European races.  The Dutch, the Germans and the English are very much cousins as far as outlook and society is concerned.  And, cliche though it is, I always feel comforted when in Germany because things are so well organised.