Catching up

12th June 08

Try this – marvellous!

http://www.therightfoot.net/mystuff/whatever/swf/bubblewrap.swf

This is going to be one-of-those-days. No-one here seems capable of performing even the smallest task without requiring my input – very frustrating. It would also appear that a person who left a couple of months ago, did not leave adequate instructions for certain of their tasks and this is creating significant confusion.

I am still not managing to keep this up. It would appear that it takes up too much of my time. I do actually have better things to do. Reading other peoples blogs can be quite fun. There are, I discover, some people who do this on a semi-professional basis. This, as I have said before, is strictly for my own consumption. Anyone else who reads and is offended or otherwise can just “Jog on”.

This is now the 5th of July and I have just watched “Control”. The film is just excellent and whether you like the music or not, or whether you know the ending or not, are just irrelevant. As a biopic with bias (Its based on Deborah Curtis’ book so you can work it out), it works very well indeed. I felt that it appeared to deal fairly with both Ian and Deborah.

Last Sunday we had a climatologist here for lunch. He was here to represent the A-Rocha charity for the church. I think I may no-longer be in global warming denial. I am slowly ploughing my way through the IPCC 4th Report. It is very convincing. We’re all doomed so live with it.

I read Jpod by Douglas Coupland. This is a most strange book. Quite compelling in its organisation but the story was shallow and uninspiring, and despite the component parts to create a truly excellent ending from the material, Coupland fails to do this and seems to be happy with an ending more worthy of a secondary school literature student.

“Dogs” by Ray Coppinger, is a much better read. Being non-fiction does not stop its content being challenging and surprising. I would love every “dog-breeder” to read it and be chastised, and you can add all those idiots who think that dogs descended from wolves. This book turns a lot of those ill thought-out notions on their head and looks at it from a more logical and biological perspective with less basis on emotion than fact.


27th October 2008

This is not being kept up – all sorts of reasons really – I have lost focus with it and only have a limited length of time to devote to it. It would, perhaps, be better if I spent less time surfing the net and a bit more time recording the minutiae of my life. Who knows – I might even reward myself with a broader overview of what I am actually achieving.

I am, however, using Facebook a lot more and I do like the “Status updates”. This is a helpful way of cataloguing the ongoing bits and pieces.


30th October

Another load of nonsense:

Today I decided that if I had to write my autobiography it would probably be titled “As if anyone was really bothered”. The Evening Mail would probably get very excited about it so I would suspect it would sell well (in Barrow). I could therefore suggest a second title but I'm not going to put it here.

E4B (Electricity for Business) have gone into administration and we are one of the 40,000 customers. BG have taken on the book and by a spot of luck they are able to offer us a very similar deal to E4B. Looks like we might not lose out too much.

Totally random things happen here. So far this week I have seen:

The opening of a new estate agency (In this economic climate??)
The opening of a large leisure / home store (in this town???)
Threats that a charity has had made against it to burn down the kennels because the person was refused a Rottie Puppy. This is an undesirable person to own such a dog and I would suggest that the threats are further evidence of the unsuitability. The person also claimed to have links to Al Qaeda. If such an organisation were active in Barrow I am sure that they would not like their name used in this way. How thick do you have to be?
A puppy called “Nigger”. Neanderthal doesn’t quite do these people justice.

That said, I have tickets to Quantum of Solace on Saturday night and those at short notice as well. I have not got tickets to AC/DC or Metallica. Bit sore about both of those but I’ll get over it in time.

15th November

Another couple of weeks have slipped by. For my books you can keep abreast of the Visual bookshelf on Facebook.

Had a night out at the Apollo in Manchester last night – Danko Jones, Saxon and Motorhead – all extremely loud and all very good. Lemmy was in good form and you knew it would be pretty good after the second track on their set he asked if we would like it “a bit louder”. Dano Jones played some good numbers and very solid rock n roll stuff it was too. The only problem was the lead guitarist / singer who rather let himself down when he opened his mouth. That was almost embarrassing. Saxon were also very dependable stuff , no baldness issues in that band apart from the lead guitarist who has not a hair on his head. I can see why Spinal Tap was based on them – I even thought as much when they came on the stage.

There was a slight amusement as Motorhead appeared – a pint of beer came flying over the top of me and I was somewhat drenched –all part of the enthusiastic experience. Josh caught the drummers’ towel – we had survived the front row for the whole evening. It was very good value for money in that Danko Jones came on at 7-30 PM and Motorhead left the stage at 11-15.

Today we have been very relaxed. One of our neighbours appears to want our discarded bathtub. We have had the plumbers in to do the main bathroom. They have made a start and are beginning to reinstall already. The Electrician comes in to start his work on Monday and the plumbing work should be under control by the end of the week and then the tiler can start to do his bit.

I made another trip to the gym and my legs have largely recovered from the 20+mile run through Grizedale on Wednesday. That run was very entertaining as I saw a very rare red squirrel run across the path in front of me.

It always seems a very long time between posts..

It has been so long since I last posted that I cannot remember the thread of my thoughts and even if I was to re-read the previous posts, I would still not be able to recreate the point I had reached. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. The laptop HDD died and required recovery by a very expensive team of experts. It is now working perfectly, although it takes time to sort all those little settings out e.g. for instance I am using “Word” at the moment and the default font is Times-new-Roman and I hate it and need to reset it to something more acceptable like Tahoma. At least I have all my files now and that should make the talk to the nursery children on Friday a bit easier – I have a powerpoint for that.

Currently I am reading “More Bollocks to Alton Towers”. If you have not read the first one then you will not understand the second, but it is a glorious celebration of the Great British tourist attraction. I love it as it provides me with masses of potential points for further investigation. I guess you are either a bit of a nerd or you’re not. I am also reading “You don’t have to be evil to work here, but it helps” by Tom Holt – again Tom is a bit of an acquired taste and the only way to describe it is to say that it is absurdist fiction set in a very normal world.

The Angels and Airwaves gig at the Manchester Academy on the 10th of April was fantastic, but very very sweaty. I have not been that involved in a gig since I was 20. The support “You, Me at six” were very good and certainly a better opener than Biffy Clyro for Linkin Park. The next gig should be a lot more sedate – Jethro Tull at The Sands in Carlisle.

The other major event of the last while, was our trip to Africa. I have written a diary and as soon as I have copied it in, I will post it here, as I don’t want to have to do things twice. Tanzania is fantastic and I would recommend anyone to go there. You do need to do it some style to make the best of it though. We went with CC Africa as a tour operator. They are a fantastic company and their lodges are superb. We flew in and out with Emirates business class. Their service is always great and for that distance peasant class would be horrible.

I did however watch “I am Legend” on the flight – avoid like plague. I am so glad I never bought the movie. I have also watched “The last King of Scotland”, since being back home – that is superb, although not a comfortable watch. The Simpsons movie is not bad – a reasonable plot and some good comic moments – not a classic but enjoyable all the same. “The Baker” with Damian Lewis is a great British comedy and is easily up there with the best high-budget jobs, even though it looks to have been shot on a home video with a budget of 20p.

Back at work now though – things tickling along, but as ever could always use a bit more cash.

Running going OK again – need to get ready for the K2B now. The Grizedale10 went well on the 15th March – 77mins for 10 miles and came 78th out of 250. I was quite pleased indeed. Holiday and work have conspired against training for the last month but am hoping to get a good 20mile run in on Thursday. I am also booked on another trail run in October. Firstly need to get that K2B out of the way – less than 8hh this year would be good.