Holiday

I'm demob-happy today, which when you consider I'm only going to York for the weekend is probably something of an overreaction.  It just goes to show you have take your jollies where you can when you're a man of a certain age.  In my 20s, I'd need to be flying to New York and a tear-up at Studio 54 before I got excited.  As much as I love York, it's unlikely to be overrun with former members of Chic, or Bianca Jagger on a horse.

As tradition dicates, I've spent a king's ransom on nibbles and drinks for the one-hour and fifty-five-minute train journey that one has to endure in order to get there.  If things go according to plan, in a little over two hours' time, I should be drunk and pretending to read a fashionable and difficult novel.  Yes, I wear round glasses.  What of it?

The north will rise again.

As I promised I would some months ago, I'm heading off to York tomorrow after work.  I've really warmed to the north (of England) of late.  I didn't really know and/or trust it previously.  I'd rarely been there, and then it was usually en route to somewhere else.

Mind you, I mustn't fall into the trap of defining the whole of the north of England as some charming, homogeneous entity.  It's as varied as anywhere else - more so in fact.  When you consider Liverpool and Manchester are 35 miles apart, their cultural difference from one another is staggering.  That's the joy of this country, it's incredible diversity.  We're losing it of course, in this age of instant communication, but it's still there.  I intend to sample as much of it as I can before it's snuffed out by smart phones and shit pop music.  The mission continues tomorrow.

I do have a little problem though.  I've foolishly eschewed beer for Lent, and York is home to more good real pubs than you can shake a stick at.  You don't even have to plan your evening in advance and track them down, as in other cities.  Every pub in York will have a tremendous array of ales.  You simply walk in, shake the rain off and point to a nearest beer pump.  Whatever's in the barrel beneath it will be superb, 'appen.

Lead-lined coughing

I'm ill!  Well, not that ill, but ill enough to warrant a day off yesterday.  I didn't feel able to make the ride in, and so reasoned I was insufficiently well to justify going in at all.  I'd simply be doing the germs' work for them.  No, instead I stayed at home.

Sickies, as I'm sure I've pointed out before, are a rarity for me.  I don't get ill much and even when I do, I don't like poncing around at home.  I've far too much residual Catholic guilt to enjoy that.  So I always make a point of doing something constructive with my time at home.  Yesterday, I shielded the control cavity of a 1974 Stratocaster.  This is the perfect pastime for am ailing man.  I was able to work from the dining table in the kitchen, nice and close to the radiator.  It took me about 5 hours to complete the task, during which time I estimate I drank a little over an imperial gallon of tea.

It was lovely being at home.  It was a sunny day, so I was able to stare at the garden during tea breaks.  I know it betrays a certain lack of drive and ambition, but I'd love to be retired.  Pottering around all day, drinking tea and eating Jaffa Cakes?  Yes, please.  The Rev. Sydney Smith once averred that we should all do what life intended for us.  He's quite right.  Some of us are cast in the role of earnest office Johnnie.  I am not.  I pottered, drink tea and think great thoughts.  I just need to a European monarch to put me on a generous retainer as his or her court philosopher in order that I might have sufficient funds for nibbles and treats etc., and I'll get on with head-scratching.

Loss

Today marks the first anniversary of the death of my beloved aunt.  I've been all at sea recently - unable to concentrate etc., and I ascribed this to a combination of fatigue and a nascent heavy cold.  It's like my brain is shorting-out at times; ideas flit hither and yon.  It's as if I'm a spectator to my own thoughts.  I think now that this confusion is probably a consequence of grief.  I'd forgotten the anniversary was due until my mother reminded me.  I've been feeling a lot of rage as well as the distraction.  This is how I felt when she died; my mind is reliving the memory.

This illustrates the importance of expressing grief.  I don't - can't actually - do this.  I get the initial wave - the tears, and the anger as I say.  But then when I'm on the cusp of letting it all out, I close up.  A bit of emotional scar tissue forms in my brain and I limp on.  I do need to let it go, this stuff, but it's hard.  Men in general and Irish men in particular abhor expressing raw emotion.  That's why Irishmen drink so much.  It gives you a glimpse of your emotions.  By the time you sober-up, the lid is safely back in place.

Concen................err......tration

Due to massive physical and mental fatigue of late, I'm really finding concentration hard to come by.  I can't even hold down 30 seconds of smalltalk today.  I was chewing the trivial fat with a colleague earlier, and as he spoke I found it impossible to focus my eyes properly or follow the drift of his anecdotage.  Christ knows what I looked like to him, a giant egg-glazed fruit bun I expect.  He was good enough not to point this out.

When a man is tired, that man is usually me

I'm really shattered today.  I'm definitely coming down with something - the same bug that's made the office look and sound like a trench in Mons for the last fortnight, no doubt.  In fact the only thing that's kept me for actually falling asleep is the Not Nigella Lawson twitter page (https://twitter.com/CarryOnNigella).

This admirable endeavour is a page of obviously spoof tweets from the well-upholstered sauce pot and sometime chef Nigella Lawson.  It contains the kind of fire-proof single-entendres that make England go round, and always leave me gasping with laughter.

You can get away with murder in this country if you peddle smut as long, that is, it's genuinely funny and intelligent.  I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue is the high water mark of this type of, peculiarly English, humour.  Humphrey Littleton used to say some outrageous things on there, and they always passed without comment or censure.

The chap who runs the Nigella site accepts contributions, so the following were composed when I should have been doing something altogether more worthwhile and therefore dull:

My pet hamster's food gets all over the furniture at home.  I spent this morning flicking the nuts off a tallboy.

I recently attended a Buckingham Palace garden party.  I met lots of important people, and ended the evening with a Sir Mellie Finger.

Went for a cycle on the bridle path earlier.  It was fun, but muddy and I ended-up with a face full of muck from some fellow’s Chopper.

The extractor fan in my kitchen makes a frightful noise. I must get a man in to peer under my hood and oil the flaps.

I accidentally spilled a bottle of Mazola all over the bird table this morning, and had to spend the entire afternoon hosing the oil off my tits.

 - My work here is done

Heaven Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday.  I'm not a traditionally religious, in that I don't believe there is a god.  I do, however, observe Lent by giving up something enjoyable.  This year I shall be abstaining from strong drink during the week.  I count Friday evening as the weekend, incidentally.  This is a hangover from growing up in London in the 1980s.  Back then, commercial television was shared by two companies.  One, Thames, did Monday to Friday.  The other, LWT, took over at 5.15 on a Friday evening.  LWT's was real glitter ball ooh-ahh viewing of the most low-brow and compelling kind.  I got into the habit as an urchin of associating their logo with the weekend.  Their weekend began at 5.15 on a Friday evening, and so does mine.

Actually, scratch that.  It's 6pm, and I'm gasping for bottle of jollop.

Bed Pan Cakes

It's Shrove Tuesday here in the holy land (England I mean), so it's pancakes for tea therefore.  I don't normally bother with them, to be honest, but something's prompted me to give them a whirl this year.  I must be yearning for spring and its attendant warmth and light.  Yes, it's been a long cold lonely winter, to quote Audley Harrison.

As we're having them for supper, I've opted for savoury ones, yes, I know, very French.  I couldn't face brown sugar and lemon for me tea.  I'm not eleven, ferrchrissakes.  I picked-up a recipe on the BBC website that was trying rather too hard - it's vegan.  Meat-free would have done me, but there you go.  The thing with p-cakes is what to have with them?  If you ate them on their own, you'd need to neck at least nine, which would be unseemly.  These ones are clad with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, so a nice dressed salad might be in order.  And some sourdough bread.  That would surely constitute an ample meal for the jobbing 6-foot-tall man-about-town?

I also bought the wife a splendid-looking bottle of French wine for Valentine's Day, which we haven't yet necked, so that's going for a burton, I tell you.  I feel reborn today; it's the weather.  It's simply splendid out.  Wine, pancakes and original British drama on DVD.  What could be finer?

Fie Another Day...

Well, so much for that theory.  Mrs O and I had planned to go to the RSC in Stratford on Saturday.  That meant our getting up at the ungodly hour of 7am on a Saturday morning.  This we did only to discover that the Chiltern line, which we were slated to be travelling on, was fucked and that buses were replacing trains.  This made the journey to Warwickshire a 3-hour slog, so we demurred and declined in that order.  And to add to the misery, we couldn't shift our tickets prior to curtain up, so we lost the money and weren't able to exchange for another production.

So that blew Saturday out of the water.  I ended up mooching around the house, and then doing my usual Denmark Street thing.  For new readers, I should point out that when I can alight on something constructive to do of a weekend (so that's most of the time then) I hang around the guitar shops of Denmark Street in central London, itching to try out equipment, but too nervous to do so.  The reason for this nervousness on my part is due to the knowledge that I have no intention of buying any more expensive guitar hardware.  I'll then overcompensate furiously for the benefit of the staff, who couldn't care a tinker's cuss anyway.  I'll pull faces, ask intelligent questions and even make notes in my diary.

I need to be more brazen.  I might opt to have then chiseled into the granite of my headstone when the time comes: "Needed to be more brazen."

Crash, bang, wallop

The network's "down" at work, which means it lidderally impossible to do anything.  I could file things I suppose, but given my age, I think that would be unseemly...as well as dull.

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow, which means the pubs in our locale will be a no-go area.  I live in such a moneyed fleshpot these days that all the pubs in the vicinity have turned into de facto restaurants.  That means they'll be filled to the distressed rafters with pairs of dead-eyed 20-somethings, checking their respective phones over a half bottle of cava and two ramekins of overpriced shellfish.

What to do instead then?  I can't countenance Saturday evening without at least a fleeting visit to a hostelry.  I suspect we'll have to slum it somewhere 15 minutes' walk away, in a pub that serves peanuts and beer only.  The trouble with that of course is that one is then wont to encounter riff-raff, and we can't have that on VD.  It's not romantic.

Hatstand of doom

Feeling a bit doom-laden today.  The weather isn't helping; it's grey and shithouse...also freezing cold.  I need to take a step back I suppose; I'm too close to matters.  Objectively, things are okay.  Subjectively, I'm staring down the barrel.

We're off to Stratford on Saturday, for a matinée of A Winter's Tale at the RSC.  That should help - a rollocking good Shakespeare comedy.

Just what the doctor ordered

I felt like shit this time yesterday - so bad in fact that I didn't think I'd make it to work today.  I take absenteeism seriously; it's a legacy of a Catholic upbringin.  For me even to consider having a sickie requires my feeling truly terrible.  I was exhausted when I reached home last night, so the game was definitely afoot.

The missus was late-ish home, but we decided to pop out for a pre-show cocktail nonetheless.  After returning home, I threw caution to the wind and spent the rest of the evening eating fine foods and drinking fine wines to my heart's content.  I didn't go to bed until nearly midnight, convinced I'd be phoning in sick this morning.  I woke up after 7 hour's undulating and watery sleep (I was woken by a bluebottle.  In February??) feeling much much better, however.  Hmm...chilli, wine and good telly appear to have steadied the ship.  That's good news...I think

Some eye in your sleep

Oh good grief, I'm tired today.  I slept poorly last night, but that's nuttin' new, so why I'm quite so facking knackered today is open to conjecture.  If only I had the energy pour la conjecturage.

I think I must be coming down with something, which troubles me.  My eyes burn with fatigue, but I've done nothing to provoke this.  I'm probably a bit sick then.  Most of the people I work with get the lurgy all the time; they're forever spluttering and hacking up gold watches.  I'm very lucky in this regard.  I rarely get ill, so when I do, it scares the shit out of me.

I'm off home.

The Coast is clear

The missus and I shot down to the coast yesterday.  Don't get excited; it was only the coast of the Thames Estuary in Essex.  The weather has taken a turn for the better over the last couple of days, so we thought we'd make the best of it buying staring at oil tankers entering Canvey and Tilbury.

While this might not sound too glam, the light yesterday was spectacular - worthy of the Pacific coast of California.  Everything, from the most dangerous-looking and prosaic pub to the morbidly-obese locals, looked fabulous.  We had a good old 3-hour march, stopping only for a lunch of pumpernickel bread and cheese on the beach.  Lovely.

From there it was home on the train through Essex to east London.  The light maintained its peerless form all the way.  I swear to Christ that Benfleet looked like Providence, Rhode Island when the train rolled in there.  There were dozen of brightly-coloured fishing boats all lined up along the sea wall next to the station.  All bobbing along in jolly harmony.  It was wonderful.

A Nippon in the air

As we're at a loose end this weekend for a change, the missus and I are in the enviable position of having the whole of London as our plaything on Saturday evening.  It's vital to always have a plan when you live in the the metropolis; otherwise you end up squandering its gifts and are left solely with the sheight bits - the crowding, expense, noise etc.  We were furiously scratching the collective noggin at home last night then when it occurred to me that we hadn't been for a Japanese meal for a yonk or several.

We both adore Japanese grub.  It umami-heavy, which we both enjoy - think Marmite with Worcestershire sauce poured all over it.  It's also possible to stuff one's face with Japanese food and remain lithe and lovely.  That's why the Japs are so trim.  In fact the only downside to it is the amount of salt it contains.  This does lead to seriously high levels of stomach cancer in the land of the rising sun, which, again, helps the populace to stay slender I suppose.

When we lived in north London a few years ago, we discovered a tremendous Japanese restaurant in Camden.  It's dead authentic (like I'd know).  Well, all the staff are Japanese, and one is expected to sit on the floor, cross-legged.  It's uncomfortable, yes, but in a Sunday colour-supplement, north London twat fest way.  

I'm always really mindful of my pees and cues when eating there.  I'm generally a polite person anyhoos, but with the Japanese, particularly so.  They set even greater store by decorum than the English, but they're far too genteel to vent spleen at you for any inadvertent offence caused.  And, as with all things Japanese, eating is pregnant with unstated rules.  A devil-eyed westerner can bone-up on some of these, of course, but not all.  Even rainman would struggle with the myriad complex niceties.

Still, it's worth it.  One little innovation of my own devising would help matters though: hollow chopsticks.  That way one could suck up the miso, using the chopper like a straw, and then wield them in the usual way to see off the noodles and raw kipper.  Bingo.

A tangled web

If London has one overriding virtue, it's its sheer size.  You don't ever really tire of the old place because it would take more than your allotted three and a half score years to become familiar and jaded with it.  This was further evidenced for me today as I had a wander around a then uncharted part of the Isle of Dogs.  I've worked on the isle for five and a half years, but this spot, which is only 10 mins' walk from my desk, is completely new to me.  It's an idyll of suburban calm alongside an old dock, right in the centre of a formerly grimy part of docklands.

I've had stuff like this happen to me in the centre of London too, which is extraordinary when you consider that I'm a native Londoner of some 46 years, who spends all his free time in Soho and environs.  But now and again I'll find myself strolling down some new avenue somewhere, thinking "where the fcuk am I?".  That's what keeps the magic alive.  You can't do that in a town of 5,000 inhabitants, sadly - sorry bucolic types.  You need at least 8 million punters.

My worry about the present construction projects ongoing in Londres, and there are loads, is that the architecture takes no account of the area of London it's proposing to blight.  London, as has been well-documented over the years, is a collection of disparate villages, not a uniform entity.  Each area has its own look and its own ambiance.  When architectural homogeneity takes over, everywhere looks and feels the same.  Take Canary Wharf for example.  It's perfectly fine.  The buildings are well designed and it's clean and easy to navigate, but it has no USP, no birthmark to distinguish it from any other moneyed part of a major world city.

There are developments of this CW kind in both Soho and Fitzrovia, two historic, low-rise areas of central London that thus far have maintained their unique identities.  The new stuff is their to attract Russian money, I'm told.  And our esteemed mayor, Boris, is only too happy to accept their nouveau largesse.  This dolt is going to be remembered in London for centuries, but not for the reasons he supposes.

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

Kalt following

Jesus wept, it's cold this afternoon.  Not that this should come as a surprise; it's been well-forecast.  It's just that one's ability to objectively recall the pain of cold weather is weak.  I can remember heat pretty well, I think - but not cold.  Why is this?  It doesn't seem on the surface of it to afford me any evolutionary advantage.  Also, I'm London-born to Irish parents.  I was always going to be at the front in the war against shit weather.  That's why I don't tan well.  My skin goes red and then I'm physically sick in hot climes.  

I can see the point of this, though.  My blood wasn't designed to tolerate heat, and evolution hasn't yet come to terms with the rise of budget air travel.  In 50 years, cockneys like myself will no doubt have thick rubbery GM skin that can equally-well withstand alpine Europe in the winter and Dubai in the summer.

But I suppose there is an upside to the chilly temps: the missus and I have a lot of fabulous telly to get through, so it's supper on our knees and the goggle box "on" as soon as we're able most nights.  Last night was "Happy Valley", which is as intense a crime drama and I've ever lain eyes on - and I'm old enough to remember McMillan And Wife.  It's so frantically over-wrought in fact that I dread watching it.  The missus has to insist.  I'm always delighted she does though.  It's absolutely brilliant.

We alighted on this series thanks to a camp barman in a pub in central London.  We were in there one evening in the dead-eyed week between Christmas and New Year.  The boozer was practically empty, and we got chatting to the staff and a nice young couple from Chicago, who where in "London, England" for the night before flying home.  The barman raves so compellingly about H.Val that we had to have it.  It is as good as its shrill hyperbolic billing, however.  When I'm next in that hostelry, I'll tell him so too.

Tonight is "Wolf Hall", with the peerless Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell.  Everyone is being acted off the screen by Rylance.  But no-one fares worse than Damian Lewis as Henry VIII.  This is the worse piece of miscasting since Janette Krankie landed the role of Lolita.  Poor D just isn't magisterial.  He's good-looking, yes, but that's not enough in a production of this haute qualité.  Actually, it is enough for some of my more impressionable female friends.  When the first episode went out, they wouldn't stop tweeting about how marvellous he was in the role, notwithstanding that all the positive notices revolved around his ability to fill a pair a tights.  These are intelligent, professional wimmin d'un certain age too, not dozy young slappers.  They should know better.  Tsk.

Woof! Begorrah...and relax

Well, I'm back at my desk after a tiring weekend at my sister's place in Ireland.  Too much drinking, not enough sleep and approximately half a fluid ounce of exercise have rendered me useless.  I'm physically frail and emotionally running on empty.

It was lovely to spend some time with the sibs and their better halves, as we do this so infrequently as adults, but I always come away from these events feeling slightly down and introspective.  It always occurs to me as I chat with my sisters that we have a lot of collective water until the familial bridge now, and that time is of the essence.  I don't like introspection.  It hurts.

Anyway, back now, so onwards and upwards.  The missus and I have a free weekend this weekend, so I'm not feeling under pressure.  It also helped that I had a day off yesterday, which I spent in industrious, domestic bliss.  I got ton(nes) done.  Again, this industry on my part is another symptom of the time-slipping-by anxiety.  In my 20s, I'd have gone to a gallery or watched an impenetrable art-house film.  Now I regard those pastimes as wasteful and decadent.  My decadent days are behind me I'm afraid.