Typical

It’s been pissing it down with rain for the last couple of days which, coupled with feeling really less than great has meant I’ve not done any exercise of note since Sunday. Given all that it seems typical that as I look out the window at the moment the rain has stopped and the wind died down. Just after I’ve eaten a large meal. I want to go out and run but know from experience it’ll be a horrible experience which I’ll regret.

Sad to say but I reckon I’m going to have to join a gym if I want to keep my hand in with some reasonably enjoyable exercising over the winter. This is normally when I slack off but if I want to be in a reasonable shape to tackle the Heb next year then keeping up a regimen is important. If I joined one of the gyms in Dunfermline I’d probably never go, but one has opened up outside the back steps of Waverley station which I would have to walk past twice a day. Nice and handy for either morning or evening sessions.

New light! After failing to be able to distinguish between path and ditch while in the Pentlands the other week, I decided to get something with a few more lumens to its name. Behold my new Exposure Joystick. Even if I don’t get into the hills for a little while I intend to take it out onto the b-roads of Fife and Perthshire to give it a trial in the next few days.

At Least It Wasn’t Earlier

November rumbles on. As usual I took a few days off to avoid working on my birthday and so had a two day week last week. Tuesday night was JoCo gig number two through in Glasgow where MrCadbury and I got…shitfaced. This made Wednesday a bit of a damp squib. However, I struggled up at a reasonable hour, downed a pint of Nuun’d up water and felt not too bad considering. Managed a trip to Tesco in the afternoon to pick up a copy of MW2 and completely failed to cope with playing it for more than an hour. Curry in the evening and then an early night.

Thursday brought little of note. I went to my local bike shop (I’m ashamed of how little I’ve used that place given that it’s 200m from my front door) and picked up two semi-slick tyres for the bike. Not being hugely adept at changing tyres it took me ninety minutes to get them on though this did include noticing they were the wrong way around and having to reverse them (more on that later). I also managed to puncture both the front and rear tubes but hey, it’s a learning experience. Went to see Harry Brown in the evening so that I had a film to talk about in the next Sonic’s Ring.

Friday brought the Ikea joy. Unfortunately, Ikea joy was delayed by an hour due to a wreck on the highway so I was even more ratty than I would normally be in that place. However, we made it out alive so Dad and I started work on constructing my new wardrobe. Only been three years in this flat, it’s not like that’s a long time to be without basic furniture.

November’s music going continued in the evening with Colin Hay in Edinburgh. It was at The Caves which is a hell of an echoey venue. I can’t imagine it being any good for full band gigs. Sadly, the gig was populated with many many twats who thought that talking was part of a good gig atmosphere. There was a couple two rows in front of me, the girl seemed unable to pass thirty seconds without talking to her other half despite numerous “ssshhhh“s from the crowd. Despite that, it was a great gig from a man who appears completely comfortable being in a dialogue with the crowd.

On Saturday, I got soaked. Went out to try the new tyres properly (and realised they had been round the right way the first time so were now round the wrong way) and at the furthest point from home the heavens opened. Made it back home looking like a drowned rat and unable to feel my toes. Dried off, warmed up and recorded a new podcast. Just Dave & I since Iain’s mic was on the fritz.

Sunday; cyclocross. Got up, changed the tyres round and headed to Inverkeithing for a cyclocross event. Apparently, cyclocross means trying to pedal through mud for an hour. Talking to other people there other events aren’t as muddy as that. Certainly, it felt like an act of attrition trying to complete the circuit. It also meant that I struggled to get the bike clean when I got home. Then the sick set in. I washed the bike, ate and then woke up on the sofa having wrapped myself in a towel for a blanket. This was rather confusing given I had no memory of lying down.

A quick check of my general faculties revealed I had no energy whatsoever to make it to the Tegan & Sara gig that night so I was glad I hadn’t picked up a ticket yet. Climbed into bed at nine which meant I’d been upright for only about ten hours on Sunday.

Woke this morning to stomach cramps and aching muscles all over. Tried to force down breakfast anyway and was heading out the door when I caught a look at myself in the mirror. At that point it made a lot more sense to head back to bed than inflict the grimacing hunchback on my workmates.

At least it wasn’t during my holidays.

Month of Music

This month seems to be all about the gigging.

On Friday I nipped through to Glasgow to watch Yo La Tengo at the ABC. I own about half a dozen YLT albums but I’ve never managed to get into them all that much. It’s great background music but if you asked me to him a tune I wouldn’t be able to. I’m still not sure I could do that, but after seeing them live I have a much better appreciation for what they’re about.

Beautifully crisp, clear bass riffs came booming out of the stage and were the backbone of some stunning guitar wailing. Really epic music that leapt between styles all night. We got some feedback heavy rock ‘n’ roll, doo-wop, straight up jazz, slowcore and some amazing crescendos.

I bumped into Calum of Meursault (and ex-HMV pal) at that gig and found out that they were having a single launch party at the Bowery on Saturday night. I haven’t seen the guys play in about a year and they sound very different. Much, much tighter with some astonishing drumming from Fraser. They were supported by Neil’s other band, Withered Hand, who were incredible. Given the folk-punk kick I’m on at the moment they really did it for me. Must pick up the album. The third band on the line-up was Jesus H Lizard whom I’d never heard of before but, again, a really great sound came from the front. I couldn’ t see anything so just closed my eyes and marvelled at the harmonies.

Sunday was always going to be special. Sunday was JoCo day number one! I laughed so hard, I arrred! like a pirate and I mumbled my zombie chorus. Brilliant! And I’m off to see him again tomorrow. Huge success!

Cos I said I would

I spent yesterday at Chen Yingjun’s tai-chi seminar and I’d have to say I’ve never known such pain. The posture correction sections were a revelation. With just a slight correction we’d be placed in a position that was clearly correct but that put incredible strain on leg muscles. It was amusing to see sweat break out in an instant on a person’s forehead.

As seems to be the way, I’d arranged to something else on the second day of the seminar and this time my intention was to either get out on the bike or do some decent running. There was also the small matter of going to see Dananananaykroyd in the evening. During downtime on Saturday we were chatting about what I could do today and I decided it would be on foot and it would be some off-road running.

Not wanting to go too far, I opted to head for the Lomonds and take in both West and East summits. Unfortunately, the weather had something against that and it was blowing a gale while lashing down for a couple of hours after I got up. However, I decided that shouldn’t stop me so I set off anyway.

Sad to say, I only managed the first summit. As I crested West Lomond the wind really picked up and I didn’t even pause at the trig point. Once over the summit I tried to contour round to see if East was a possibility. The driving wind and rain coupled with 20 metre visibility turned me back.

Lunch at the Pillars of Hercules was lovely as always. Since there were no seats inside I sat under the porch, wrapped in a fetching red blanket.

I decided to skip the gig. I was feeling quite tired and really didn’t fancy driving into the centre of Glasgow, making my way out to Oran Mor, watching a double support act gig and then driving back across. Starting the week on precious little sleep isn’t the best way to go about things.

Ah well, I’m sure I’ll see them at some point in the futre.

Doing it for the cause!

I don’t know if it’s working or broke, but it made my giggle.

Hi, how are you today?

So many things I should have written about but I’m not going to go into too much detail here. They’re past and now is now. I’ll summarise a few things in the hope that simply logging in and writing will get me back into some kind of rhythm.

I went down to Nottingham to help out with the Survival of the Fittest race. It was a cracking good day’s work during which I sent a few thousand people through a very mucky drainage pipe. It was a bit of an epic getting home. Left N’ham at three and made it home not long before midnight. Luckily I had plenty of Answer Me This to listen to.

The following week Pyro & I ran the same race in Edinburgh. It was fun. Running after a night of curry and beer isn’t such a great idea though. I’ve written a race report for Sleepmonsters but it hasn’t appeared yet.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Frank Turner in concert and it was amazing. An awesome ninety minute sing-along of show and supported by Fake Problems! Double result. I only saw about half of Fake Problems’ set, but I did pick up their last two albums on vinyl afterwards along with a couple of 7s. How Far Our Bodies Go is currently spinning on the rather lovely Systemdek iix I’ve taken delivery of from Dave at work.

We had a Zombie Club pow-wow and a couple of the others are up for trying a podcast. Should be a good laugh. Lots of plans for EZC and the new year.

Saw Dawn… and Day of the Dead at the Cameo last night. Two wonderful presentations with some interesting Q&As as well. Meant I was fucking knackered when I got up today though and so didn’t take the car to work to pick up the turntable. Really wish I had cos lugging ten kilos of large, cumbersome hifi equipment home on public transport was painful. I reckon it’ll be a day or so before my arms move back into their sockets. It does, however, sound awesome. Needs some alterations but nothing major. Better shielded cables as the media centre plays havoc with it.

My piece of paper tells me there are six movies I haven’t noted down yet. I’ll probably do a post of everything and limit myself to a hundred words per film.

Hurt Locker

I am so very glad I went to the cinema to see this film. I’m normally sceptical these days about any film that people say has to be seen on the big screen. All too often I feel that’s a way of saying “this film is dumb as a bag of hammers so you have to be distracted by the spectacle of it”. Not so with The Hurt Locker, this is a film you should see on the big scren so that you can’t be distracted while watching it.

Possibly I shouldn’t have watched this so soon after listening to Mark Kermode’s review as it definitely coloured my opinion, but I agree with him on so many levels about this film that it doesn’t really matter.

This is a great, great film but it is not a film about the Iraq war. There are no great insights into combat or the soldier’s feelings about the war. It is, instead, a film about men and the macho, posturing, buddy relationships between those men. The story is propelled forward by the introduction of a new officer in the bomb disposal unit who is more gung-ho than the officer he’s replacing, putting the troops under him on edge.

I really can’t recommend this film highly enough, the time flew by and I left feeling completely satisfied with that I’d seen.

Strange Days

On loan from Jack, and in anticipation of her upcoming film Hurt Locker, I recently watched Strange Days. It’s a film I’ve been aware of since it came out but just never got around to watching. It’s certainly got a good pedigree so it should be a cracking film, right?

Well, it’s okay, but it’s been a while now since I actually sat down to it and I can’t remember all that much about it. What I do remember is feeling that it was distinctly average. The film has a “millenium fever” feel to it where serves to date it badly. It also has a number of actors who I’m not particularly fond of for one reason or another. And it’s long.

Ach, it was alright, and I can see myself sitting down to watch it again based on the fact it’s a Kathryn Bigelow film but it won’t be for a while yet.

L’appartement

One of the reasons I started a LoveFilm account was to start working through all those foreign language or plain arty films that I hadn’t gotten around to picking up. One of these is L’appartement which I’m not ashamed to say I was initially drawn to due the presence of Monica Bellucci. Add to that her husband-to-be Vincent Cassel and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get a run of the mill romance.

Cassel plays Max, a businessman on his way to Tokyo to close a major deal. He’s engaged and seemingly settled in his life. That is until he catches sight of Lisa, the love of his life, in a cafe. Max ditches the business trip to hunt Lisa through the streets of Paris to the apartment that she lives in. Through flashbacks to their earlier life together we get to know what happened to their relationship, to the people around them, the mistakes they made and what they missed.

I’m no expert on romantic cinema by any manner of means, but this is certainly a very interesting entry to the genre. What makes it more interesting the farcical nature of it at times as the two leads play an unwitting game of cat and mouse, not knowing where the other is. Both are superb, bringing an eminently believable chemistry to the screen. It’s not hard to believe they were married just a few years later.

I can definitely see myself picking this one up next time I see it in a sale.

Another Epic

The first thing I was going to do here was link to the post about last year’s epic bike journey but apparently I didn’t write one. So, instead, you’ll have to make do with pictures from the event. This year we headed to Fort William for a 43 mile round trip which was along terrain a lot rougher than I expected.

We set off a bit late and weren’t properly underway until 10:30 but we made reasonable time through the woods around Nevis Range though the innacurate Explorer map didn’t help. Some resurveying needs done there. In fact, all the way up the Lairig it was fine and not even all that steep (all hail SPDs). Though I did manage to bounce my balls off my saddle once or twice, as my expression will attest;

However the weather held and we were soon at the bothy which heralded the start of the last major climb.

And here’s where the rot set in for me. The climb from there was a horrible, rocky, muddy path that was ridable in places. The downhill on the other side wasn’t much better. By the time we made it to the river cross I wasn’t in a great mood and feeling resigned to the fact it was going to be a long slog back along the old military road.

This was only about halfway round so the prospect of another several hours of bouncing around off pram-sized boulders didn’t exactly fill me with joy. Tim and Sandy, top blokes that they are, left me to stew at the back which is exactly the thing to do with me; never get far enough ahead that I think “where the fuck are they?”, don’t stop so often that I think “patronising gits!” and don’t try and and cheer me up. I’m happy on my tod working through bad thoughts in my head.

However, after a couple more hours it was clear we were all getting very tired. I look pretty wasted here and Tim’s struggling to keep the camera steady.

I never felt as tired as this as I did on the last epic, but we had the weather on our side this time. I think this was about the point where I donated my emergency gel to Tim to get him back up and running and we pushed on. By this point it was starting to get a bit dark and I was the only one with lights. I think it’s fair to say that I disagree with the others on the idea of going out for a ride without illumination.

On the last push I was tired enough to just forget about the brakes and go hell for leather down the forestry track back to the b-road and home. I probably hit speeds I wouldn’t normally get to when I’m more awake.

A good day out though I do prefer ground that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve been a few rounds with a professional boxer.

All the photos are Tim’s, except the last one which is Sandy’s.