Look At The Gills On That

This spell of half-decent weather we've been enjoying of late reached new heights yesterday.  It was sunny and absolutely glorious all day long.  Days like this are like hen's teeth in England in October, so the missus and I seize the opportunity and jumped on a train to the coast.

We travelled down to Shoeburyness in Essex and walked the few miles along the Thames Estuary coast through Southend to Leigh-On-Sea.  This stretch of coast, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, gets short shrift off the self-appointed cognoscenti, but for why, I can't imagine.  It's beautiful.  The light yesterday was magical.  It was as good as anything I saw in California's Pacific coast.  I am being serious.

By the time we'd marched to Leigh, we were knackered and stopped for some cockles there, in true cliched cock-er-knee style.  Shellfish is my only concession to the otherwise appalling world of cockney cuisine.  I do like a cockle.  There's something truly lovely about the coast when the light's right.  Why is it I wonder we as species seem drawn to the water, like this?  It's as if we atavistically yearn to return to our pre-mammal state.  I certainly do.

A bloody-minded refusal to give in

For my sins, I am a member of the Olympic Velopark in Stratford.  I say 'for my sins' because the facilities there are peerless - world-class track, road circuit, bikes, trainers blah, blah - you name it, it's there.  But getting to them presents a problem.  The booking website is an unutterable disaster.  It's clearly been designed by committee, a colourblind one.  It's a fucking mess frankly.  Don't believe me?  Then have a look - look, everyone, an html pig in knickers.

I've been trying most of the afternoon to book a simple event at the Velopark next week, and I'm a member.  Fuck knows how a nearby would fare.

Useless.

Johnny Winter

Seasons are a funny thing.  I've been stomping around this planet for forty-six years now, most of that time in the same country.  And yet the changing of the seasons still catches me on the hop now and again.  This week is a case in point.  The first half was wet and humid.  The low, dense cloud base meant it was quite warm, which confused my brain stem into thinking it might still be summer.  The rain cleared overnight and this morning was appreciably colder as a result.  And as I type, at 5pm, the light already looks weak and wan to me although objectively it must actually be brighter than it was at this time yesterday evening.  This mental dissonance can only be due to Mr Brain finally accepting that summer is over.  I crave root vegetables and sleep.  It's time to hunker down, baby.

Unfortunately I can't curl up and slumber for a while.  I've got lots on - all jolly stuff though.  I'm off to Ireland for a work meeting in a couple of weeks; I've used the opportunity to take a couple of days off and drive down to my parents' place, which is in the west of Ireland.  I get back to London from there late on a Thursday evening.  Then it's back to work on Friday and off to Iceland on the Saturday morning.  I've gone from doing virtually nothing in my spare time to resembling a low-rent Liz Taylor, jetting hither and yon.

That reminds me - I must get some Mogadon for the flight.  And some gin.

Never mind the quality - feel the width

The trouble with buying things off the Internet is that you don't get a chance to offset howlers before actually paying for the items.  I took delivery of some bike parts via the information super web yesterday.  Sadly, the wheel I bought doesn't fit the forks I'd earlier purchased to accommodate them.  They're only a few mils to cock, but in the these matters, a miss is as good as a mile.  So, now I have a bmx front wheel blighting the front room, and nowhere to shove it.  Had I bought it from a shop of course, I could simply have wandered down there to part-ex it for a fitting replacement.  But, no - I'll have to post it back.  And I'll be honest with you, it's a cheap wheel and game's already unworthy of the candle.  So I suppose I'll end up buying another one.  Gerrr...ate.

I've tried to stave buying shite on line for just this reason, but shops that actually stock things are like hen's teeth these days.  Even in a city the size and greed of London, no-one is prepared to chance his arm at hawking stuff in the traditional manner.  Shopkeepers, rightly, complain that they simply become try-before-you-buy emporia.  People assure themselves that this is the item they can't live without, and then speed home and buy it from sweat-shop in China for a third of the shop price.  Soon we'll end up with nothing but coffee shops and petrol stations in our high streets.  And the phuque wants to live in a place like that?  Exactly.

 

L'enfer, c'est les autres

What a day.  I foolishly reported a small IT problem with my computer yesterday.  Consequently the IT support team wiped it clean and reinstalled all my software.  Unfortunately, they obliterated my personal desktop and preferences at the same time.  All the the macros I've been accruing over the last...ooh, let's see, six and half years.  No matter!  You know what they say, you can't take it with you.  I can't now, certainly.

This stress of not being able to work for several hours while I tried to rebuild my virtual memory from actual memory was intense.  I was consequently a bit short with a couple of the IT guys, for which I am genuinely sorry.  It's the system that's at fault, not the individuals.  Well, some of them are at fault too, but not this pair.  I'm such a bleeding-heart liberal, 'eh?

I've got tons on in ma vie privée too, which doesn't help.  I've got a to-do list like a donkey's cock.  I'm terrible at dealing with stress, really poor.  The reason, the deep-down reason, is I think because I have a visceral fear of disappointing people.  So I don't like taking too much on.  But life's not always compliant.  Fate sometimes shovels on a bit you weren't anticipating.  That's where I am at the moment.

Sin Gas

I'm having a concerted crack at Spanish en ce moment - that's French, by-the-way.  I have a problem though; the course I'm following in still in the development stage.  The first resource - the pronunciation guide - is overdue by a couple of months and I'm keen to begin.  I think I might need to crack on and improvise.  I'm not bad at improvising, but I'm no Charlie Parker.

Still, Spanish is a rigorous tongue when it comes to phonemes.  I shudder to think how foreigners learn to pronounce English, what with its hideous spelling system.  I delight in telling non-native English speakers that we cradle Anglophones have as much bother as they do.  It's extraordinary that if I happened across a village called Roughton for example, I would have no idea how to pronounce the place's name - none.  I'd have to wait for a local to give me an audible steer first.  Ludicrous.

So I just need to count my Spanish blessings and get on with it.  Apart from the bilabial fricative bee and the soft dee, Spanish contains sounds that an English speaker should already have at his disposal.  My only other worry is the fact that I can't roll my ars.  Never have been able to.  But I'm told Spanish speakers have come to expect this of English speakers, so it's understood.  It's like us and the Japanese struggles with el and ar.  We basically know what they're trying to say, so it's not an issue.

Oil of olé

Today is my first back in the office since last Friday (today's Thursday, by-the-way).  I've spent the interim in Andalusia, my favourite part of Spain.  And we spent most of that time in Cádiz, probably my favourite city on Earth after London.

We've been there before of course, but this time I got to go and see Cádiz FC play a home game finally.  They say you should never meet your heroes, but this lot did not disappoint.  Cádiz play in about the lowest stratum of professional football available in Spain, and they don't do that with any great aplomb most of the time.  That said, however, their fans refuse to be downhearted about it.  They make a point of turning up to matches drunk and then singing the praises of beer, their own team's ineptitude, the merits of the refereeing decisions and the goals scored by the opposition.  It's as much fun as it sounds.

The plazas around the ground were rammed full of young men on the afternoon of the game, all skinning-up and drinking furiously.  This to mine jaundiced English eye it looked a recipe for disaster.  But once you sidled-up to the throng it was clear there would be no bother here.  Cádiz is a club that wears its inclusive, anti-discriminatory heart on its sleeve.  If you've made the effort to turn up, you're welcome as far as the Cádistas are concerned.  Also, as is common in Spanish football, all generations were represented in the stands.  Young parents brought their infant children along, and the couple in directly in front of us were in their dotage.  The senora sported a bright yellow diaphanous scarf in place of the otherwise obligatory replica jersey to show her allegiance.

The football, too, was glorious.  Cádiz won at a canter and the quality of the football was extremely high.  Even the missus enjoyed it, and she hates football.  The only downside of going to football in Spain is that it ruins the English version for me.  Paying thirty quid to stand on a draughty terrace and listen to embittered old racists vent their spleens for two hours is not my idea of fun, but that's the reality of the professional game in this country.

Alas...