turn that wine back into water

Ballater from on-high
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

We checked into our B&B properly after lunch, a bit surprised to find we essentially had an entire wing to ourselves. Certainly an entire floor, they said "your room is upstairs" and it, our toilet, and our shower room, were the only things that were. And after tourist information had asked for a double room, which by the sounds of the phone call was likely to be a twin room turned into a double, the presence of a bunk bed was an eyebrow-raiser.

Thankfully there was a double bed as well. The bedroom was the full depth of building, giving us a view above the caravan park to the hills beyond at one end, and to Craigendarroch over the local housing at the other. The latter window was slightly worrying as it had no curtains, yet also the most scope for being spied on(!)

Also worrying, to us big city types surrounded on a daily basis by the scrotes of Broken Britain, was the knowledge that the front door was never locked and being asked if we wanted a key to our room. Such things are apparently not required in sleepy Ballater, and we felt almost guilty for saying we would like one. It reminded me of my bag quandary in Auckland the other year.

Anyway, the weather was gorgeous and the day was still young. On came the walking boots, out came the GPS and camera, and off we went. In Ballater tourist information we'd snagged a leaflet of local walks and decided to combine two of them: first walk along the river Dee until it met the one which went up Craigendarroch, the big fucking hill. So we started out through the caravan park, past the golf course, through a car park, and up to a church. Except it wasn't a church, it was an ex-church that's now a "restaurant with rooms" called The Auld Kirk.

At this point we actually had no accomodation for the following night (Tuesday). When booking in Aberdeen we'd deliberately given ourself an extra bit of freedom, although I'd tried pretty hard to convince Ruth that staying 2 nights in the same place would give us freedom, as we wouldn't have to check out and find somewhere that day. And I'd succeeded :-) but this place tested that, because it looked like a fucking cool place to stay. But we didn't, deciding instead to explicitly look in advance for opportunities to stay in a converted church on some future holiday.

The Auld Kirk was also the place where the two walking routes joined, so we left the first and joined the second. The trek up the hill is graded DIFFICULT but unlike another one of the same grade, it did not (apparently) require a high level of fitness or proper hill walking equipment. Good job, as I have neither.

Not really sure how far up we were when we turned back. It wasn't all the way, and from some angles it looked quite near the top... but from others it didn't at all. Either way it was a decent walk, got the heart going and the sweat beading, and was exactly the sort of things we'd had in mind for this holiday.

The Auld Kirk
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

We headed back down the hill -- and it was probably a good idea we'd given up, as it started to rain. The descent would have been a bit more slippery and dangerous if we'd not. Back to the Auld Kirk where we waited for about 2 minutes for a waitress to come out, then we gave up and went to a pub in the centre instead. Beer and quiz/bingo machine session later we went back to the B&B. We ran into the landlord who was so happy about our request to stay a second night he did a little dance(!), and he'd just sorted out a curtain on the rear window too. Mint. In the room we happened to catch a good BBC show about learning magic tricks and stuff. Can't remember what it was called or I'd use the name and link to it.

It was only about 6pm. It would have been a shame to waste the great weather and countryside, so we actually went out for another walk. Cambus O'May had been on a signpost in a picture in the Aberdeenshire brochure we'd gone through back in the Aberdeen hotel, partially responsible for convincing us we could head inland for a better time. It's a few kilometres from Ballater along a walking track which traces the old train line, and it was that we headed along, finding its start point after a wander through the local housing estate.

Ice cream van music still in our ears, we wandered for a while, stopping at one point for a chat with a local dog owner whose Collie dog apparently loved rounding up sheep... just so long as it was on its own terms. It hated being told what to do. Daft thing, does it think it's a cat or summat? ;-)

We didn't bother going all the way to CoM though. It was getting nippy, we were getting hungry; we got as far as a decent view of a little castle-turret shaped house and turned back.

This whole Deeside area had done a very good job of reminding me of Tasmania, but I couldn't quite figure out why. It hit me on the way back into Ballater that the reason was fucking obvious: probably more than half of the towns and villages in the state were essentially Scottish, built on very similar lines in very similar countryside. A further similarity was soon evident as we struggled to find somewhere to eat. It was a Monday, and most of the restaurants were fucking shut.

In the end we had a meal in another hotel, which was piping through a fucking terrible local line-dancing AM radio station which interspersed the songs with ads the likes of which I thought had died out in the 80s. The best song by far was Turn The Wine Back Into Water, a Christian country lament from a guy imploring that God sorts out his addiction to grog. Nothing like taking responsibilty for your own actions, eh. I've since discovered, in the course of writing this, that it's by a bloke called T Graham Brown. Now that's a website.

Despite the awful music and terrible decor, the food and service weren't that bad really. Shame we had to tell about 4 different members of staff that no, we weren't staying there (and we never will!).

On Tuesday we were going to do one of the things you pretty much have to do, given how many there are in the local area: go see a castle.

the Dee after tomorrow

the Dee,
originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

It's a bit sad when I make a pun that doesn't actually make any sense, but, meh. I have totally lost my decent-title-writing mojo (if indeed I ever had such a thing). Anyway, about last Monday...

After a considerably calmer breakfast than Sunday (which was a fucking awful zoo-like experience), we checked out from the hotel and headed, via a Diet Coke purchase, to Aberdeen bus station. Everywhere was pretty busy because unlike in England on the same day, it wasn't a public holiday. The buses into Deeside run every 20 minutes, but not the whole way -- the service to Ballater is only hourly.

We'd given ourselves 20 minutes or so to buy a ticket, having researched the night before that a Bluebird Explorer would sort us out. It was only about 0930, and our plan was this: get the bus to Ballater (just under 2 hours), see if the B&B would take our bags, then double back and go to Crathes Castle. Back to Ballater in the afternoon and check in properly, explore, etc.

This plan failed. Immediately. First, we were in the queue for tickets until after 0945, thanks to there being only one person selling them and a couple of very awkward customers ahead of us. When we finally got to the front of the queue the woman said there was no pass she could sell us, and that our best bet was just to buy two singles to Ballater. Oh well. Two singles to Ballater then please...oh. You buy them on the bus. So we queued, and missed the bus, for nothing. Thanks a bunch, Aberdeen bus station! We spent a couple of minutes cursing our lack of foresight -- with hindsight, if we'd come to the bus station the day before, just after booking our B&B, we'd have found this out and not missed the 0945. Bollocks.

... time passes ... Diet Coke ... T3 magazine (load of shite that is) ...

Got the 1045 bus, paying £15 each for period returns to Ballater. It was £12 for a single, and we thought the extra 3 quid was worth it so we could come back on Wednesday, if we wanted (at this point I favoured a cab to the airport).

It fucking tipped it down while we were on the bus. Really bad weather. Things weren't looking good...until we got to Ballater. Off the bus, the sun was out, storm passed. With hindsight, our lack of foresight had turned into a blessing -- if we'd got that 0945 we'd have been utterly pissed on.

originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

When booking the B&B we had discussed with the staff at the tourist information centre that we were using public transport, so they explicitly said they'd book us into somewhere in the centre of Ballater. So, a not-as-short-as-expected walk ensued -- past 2 hotels and a few more B&Bs, next to the caravan park on the edge of town, there we go.

Even after our delay and the walk it was still a bit bloody early, but the people at the B&B were super-friendly and took our bags in, letting us go free, even giving us a recommendation for lunch venue.

Wandering slowly to take in the views all around us, we strolled back to where the bus dropped us off and beyond and found the venue. It was a restaurant in the building where Ballater's own tourist information is; it looked busy, so we went in next door for leaflets instead, and ended up paying a quid to visit the Royal Train Station exhibit/reconstruction. There used to be a train line which terminated in Ballater, for Balmoral castle which is only a couple of miles away. It was built for Queen Victoria and was in use right up to the 1960s, though most of the exhibit is set in the 1800s. There's a replica super-posh-opulent carriage, and some interesting titbits of information. For example, her maj back then didn't trust the accordion-style things which join carriages (and were very very new back then), so instead made the whole train -- which was up to 800ft in length -- stop, whenever she wanted to move to a carriage other than her own. Now that's posh.

By now we were really quite hungry so went for lunch in another restaurant (website fucked at the time of writing), where I had the phenomenally Scottish combo of haggis to eat, Irn Bru to drink. Christ I love haggis, but even I had a bit of a struggle with the quantity they served. Conversation focused mainly on an angry, anti-Royalist Ruth getting constantly pseudo-riled by my consistent and persistent devil's advocacy. Heh.

Lunch over, it was back to the B&B to check-in properly. First impressions of Ballater were, frankly, fucking great.

Park and Walk

It just occurred to me that, as well as gloss over Old Aberdeen way too much, in the last post I failed to mention something else about Aberdeen that we discovered on the Sunday. Aberdeen city centre has a Park and Walk scheme.

I'll say that again. With emphasis. Aberdeen has a Park and Walk scheme.

I'd heard of Park and Ride schemes before, but this was new to me. New and confusing and stupid. Isn't "park and walk" the same as just "park"? Y'know, park your car, because you're within walking distance of your destination. Where's the scheme? Why have roadsigns? Aren't "park and walk" regions just, err, car parks?

I wonder if anyone will ever come up with a "park and drive" scheme: drive somewhere, stop for a bit, then drive on until reaching your destination...

Footnote: somewhat unbelievably, "park and walk" schemes seem to be commonplace. I'm going to stick my neck out here and offer it as evidence of broken Britain. Harumph.

Exit condition

William Wallace
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

So, hmm. Aberdeen. Bit grey. But hey, maybe that's just because it was the early evening, the skies being grey, maybe first impressions aren't always accurate. After all we hadn't made it to the beach, hadn't made it to Old Aberdeen, in fact let's face it we'd done very little other than wander up the main shopping drag. Aberdeen, after all, is a city with a sightseeing bus tour from a chain company, which to my mind implied that it must be a decent tourist city.

So, our plan was to get that bus. At the very least it was a form of 24hr bus pass for the bits which were likely to interest us. Yes, our London attitudes may have been a little patronising towards the place -- we had already learnt, courtesy of a tourist city map given to us by reception staff at our hotel, that one of Aberdeen's claims to fame is that there are over 30 places called Aberdeen in the world (another is that it has the largest permanent funfair in Scotland; the council website has a list of amazing things about Aberdeen) -- but we were trying to rectify that.

First though, a Diet Coke. An easy purchase, but not a quick one, thanks to untold grief being had by the woman in front of us in Somerfield. She was about 150, being served by an under-18, and there was a little communication issue going on. The girl behind the till had mistakenly typed in 2 quid instead of 20 quid, and the resulting odd-looking receipt made the old woman desperately confused and convinced she had been short changed. To top it off her fags had had to be put through the till separately, so she had to hand some money back, and, oh, it was just so traumatic. Noticing this, a supervisor opened another till and we got through. I suspect the difficulties are still going on at the other till a week later.

Up to tourist information and, hmm, it's all still very grey, isn't it. Even with a blue sky, it seemed to kind of just accentuate how grey the buildings were. But we'd still not been elsewhere... and were destined not to venture far for an hour or so, because we missed the sightseeing bus by one minute. D'oh! So after getting our leaflets etc we went for a wander around some back streets and, fucking hell, we found some colour. Not immediately; first we found some more grey buildings, but less square, on a less straight road, basically some character and stuff. We found sculptures and things, and then we found a big park, in the middle of the city, leading towards the bridge on Union Street which would have been lovely if it was over a river, but in fact was over a busy road and a railway line.

At the end of the path in the park we went up the steps, which was a mitsake. Heading back the way we came might have taken an extra 10 minutes, but at least it wouldn't have had the strongest stink of piss this side of the old coach station in Manchester. By christ it was awful.

Right. The bus. It starts outside Marischal College, a building that looks like a church but as the name suggests is not. However, it also isn't a college (any more); there's a bit of scaffold around it, as it's being refurbished for use as the council offices. This is great, because as they told us, the current council offices -- built in the 60s with no respect for the surroundings -- are going to be demolished when it's completed. Those offices are fucking horrible, and hide Provost Skene's House as well. There's a photo on flickr.

After setting off the bus goes first past stuff we'd already seen, so rather than take much notice I instead spent a bit of time trying to work out what the bloke in front of us was all about. This was a man on an Aberdeen sightseeing bus, in Aberdeen (duh), wearing an Aberdeen FC shirt and 2 Aberdeen FC wristbands. So presumaby he knows the city already, which probably meant he wasn't missing much by putting his (red, possibly Aberdeen FC branded) headphones on so he didn't hear the commentary.

Aberdeen beach
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

He didn't get off. We did, after going first through Old Aberdeen (which looked very very nice) and getting to the beach, just beyond Pittodrie, Aberdeen FC's ground. Just opposite was the most terrifying looking bar this side of Gibraltar, and I intend to never go in it even if for some reason AFCW play up there one day. It makes me shiver to remember it. And I can't find a photo of it anywhere, except as a tiny part of this one (about halfway up, on the right, in the car park).

The stop at the beach was just beyond "the Aberdeen Eye", which offended Ruth. It's a big wheel in a small seaside funfair, probably 1/8th the size of the London Eye. Ruth was not impressed with the whole Eye naming therefore. She'll be glad to know that googling for "Aberdeen Eye" in quotes gets no results other than for opticians, at least on the first page; though without quotes it led me to discover that its real name is the Grampian Eye Big Wheel.

She was impressed, perhaps worryingly so, with the 2p machines (which seem to be called "Penny Pushers", but I can't find a decent page about them anywhere, only gadget sellers with nostalgia-fest desktop versions for sale) though, and we spent the best part of 90 minutes in the arcade, heh. Then we wandered along the seafront, took a few photos, had an ice cream, and got back on the bus 2 hours after getting off it.

The Aberdeen bloke was still on the bus. In a different seat, but still on the bus. Perhaps he had got off at some point, but even if so it meant he'd got off later than us and got back on again, having done more than a full circuit. That seemed odd to us. Still had his headphones on too.

After the beach the bus winds through the harbour area, full of working boats off out to either fish or do stuff at the oil rigs. It's not pretty. But after that, it heads out past some old city walls, across the Dee, near an old prison, and then to a big park. There was a pony show on that day, coming to a close at the time we got there, and we'd pretty much decided not to bother getting off until we got all the way back round to Old Aberdeen.

At Marischal College we were kicked off. Everyone was, even Mr Aberdeen, because the bus was broken. Not some trivial thing like a broken exhaust or engine or something, no; the CD player was fucked so there was no commentary. Rather than have a person do it, they were just piping a recording through the speakers (and badly, as it was about a minute out of sync with where were were for most of the journey). Being broken they just took the bus out of service and told everyone on board to come back in an hour. The buses are only once an hour, and they finish at about 4.30pm, so an hour is a big chunk of the day lost!

Mr Aberdeen wandered off down some side street while we went back to the tourist board, but first a phone call. Despite what we'd seen on the tour, and were about to go and see, we were still pretty keen to get out of the city. I had booked 4 nights at the Holiday Inn Express and we'd only stayed one night so far, but we wanted out. Ruth phoned up and asked them if we could check out in the morning with no penalty, and thanks to my having booked a flexible rate we were told we could. So, tourist information board it was and within half an hour we had a room booked at a B&B in Ballater, some 40-odd miles inland, in the Cairngorms national park.

Diet Coke bought, we got back on the bus (as did Mr Aberdeen!) and got off in Old Aberdeen. The main thing here is King's College, nowadays part of Aberdeen University. It's lovely and we spent 45 minutes or so doing the tour our leaflet suggested, taking loads of photos and feeling invigorated -- the weather had been great all day, we'd loved the funfair and now found something really nice in this city, and best of all had an escape route sorted. Aberdeen is not somewhere to stay for 4 nights, but 2 nights was spot on.

Walked back to the city rather than wait for the bus and do the whole circuit again, went for a pint in a decent pub in the city then went back to the hotel. Booked ourselves a table in the Indian we'd been turned away from the previous night, had a fantastic curry, then went to a WORLD FAMOUS pub just down Union Street that neither of us had ever heard of before, and whose name now escapes me (lasting impression that it left). Played a lot of quiz machine, then back to the hotel. The Untouchables was on TV! Senior.

Dragons' Den ideas

I love Dragons' Den. Can't get enough of it (so long as "it" refers to the UK version, not the dodgy Nigerian version we stumbled across on Sky one night). And I want to go on it, so I've been compiling ideas in my head. Now I've decided to commit them to blog post, so I don't forget them.

1. The Scotch Easter Egg. Like a normal Easter Egg (ie, huge) but not chocolate. Instead, a scotch egg. Initial market research conducted at a friend's birthday party suggests I would be able to sell at least 3 of them, not including the ones I'd buy myself. Not sure yet how much I'd ask for, or for what equity stake.
   
2. The Party. I'll host a party where the tickets are 20 quid, but only spend a tenner per person on catering and venue hire etc. I want a 400 quid for 50% stake. 100 people at a party is 2 grand income, 1 grand profit, 500 quid each, 25% profit on investment. That's my projection for month one, after which the business will cease trading.
   
3. The Bank. They're quite profitable, so I want to start one. I'd like £30million investment for a 30% stake. With the money I intend to hire a few people who know how to run a bank, that can invest the rest in the things banks invest in to make money, while I draw a huge fatcat salary and bonus, much to the ire of that bloke who presented the worst episode of Dispatches I have ever seen ("oh no! private firms pay their bosses loads of money, while their customers lose out if they go bust! oh no!").
4. My house. I want £60k for a 25% stake in my house. It's a good house, easily worth that much right now and in a nice area. It's already worth more than that. When I sell it they're as guaranteed a profit as it's possible to be. What I intend to do with the money is piss it away on fruit machines, lager, holidays, and plastic musical instruments for my xbox 360.

Not sure how I can fail really. All my ideas are better than the wondercock pants that show off yer meat and two veg prominently, as seen on a recent episode (9.17pm paragraph in the linked page).

Capital Radio and me

When I were a lad I used to listen to Capital Radio a lot. I have fairly vivid memories of Saturday mornings filled with it, on the occasions that my brother and I would stay at home rather than go down to stay with our maternal grandparents, as happened every weekend until 1988. At Christmas there was always the top 500 songs, played virtually back to back (maybe just between 9am and 5pm? was radio even 24hr back then?) over the course of several days, almost always culminating in Me and Mrs Jones, Layla, and Hey Jude. I remember listening to Pat and Mick's individual shows, not just their single(s), and to the commercial chart show which differed in some way to the one on Radio 1, though I can't remember how. I even remember some of the ads. Well, two of them: Harry Enfield in Stavros mode advertising a new newspaper, the Independent, with the strapline of "It flippin' is or are you what"; and new train route (now defunct!) Thameslink, singing "Thames-link! Thames-link! The train that takes you // straight through London // without changing stations // yeah!".

Well, now I work at Capital Radio. Actually I work for Global Radio (I think), who just bought the company I joined in March (GCap Media), and who own Capital Radio amongst a whole host of other stations across the country. Odd that we're named Global really, but meh. I'm not really a fan of Capital these days, but it is ace to work at a place I've known all my life. Still getting the hang of working for a company that isn't a pure internet company (this being my first such job!), but there are actually quite a few benefits to that. And best of all I get to keep working in central London, and bumping into (literally) DJs. In the last few months I have managed to stumble past David 'Kid' Jensen, Pat Sharp (uttering the word 'cunt', though not at me), Paul Gambaccini, and Henry Kelly in the corridors or at security. What a list! I'm sure I've also been in close proximity to various people who weren't broadcasting in some way in the 80s too, but I couldn't care less about them (actually I know full well that I've seen Alex Zane an awful lot).

Aaanyway, the real point of this post is just to puff my chest out a little bit. Capital launched their new website yesterday. It's not just a redesign -- it's a complete rewrite from the ground up by the team I belong to, a wholesale move from the outsourced version which existed before to an entirely in-house solution. I'm pretty proud of it for a number of reasons. Every part played is a big part given the small size of the development team here, but I'm (hopefully not unreasonably) particularly proud of my own contribution because of the technology we're using. As if this post wasn't boring enough already...

Capital's site, and the CMS which powers it, is built using Django, a framework written in Python. Nothing majorly special about that, but before March this year I had never coded with either, having never even heard of the former. Leaving Yahoo! after 8.5 years was a gamble for me, and likewise this place took a punt on me, believing my "I'll have no trouble picking it all up" spiel having been presented with a CV that said I could only code in Perl. I'm double pleased that I've repaid their faith, and proved (to myself, even) that I wasn't just boasting.

Though maybe this django and python lark is just really, really easy ;-)

The grey before the red

Sheriff Court
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

Forgot to note last time another thing about arriving in Aberdeen -- the proliferation of oil industry adverts at the airport. All the revolving things by the baggage reclaim were for various petrochemical exploration and extraction companies, giving the place a very very industrial feel. And that was apt, I suppose, given the amount of grey in the city. I mentioned it before, and this 'ere photo shows it off though actually looks pretty good with the blue sky behind it, and in truth a lot of the buildings were in isolation nice to look at. The main problem is that they weren't isolated.

Our hotel was on Chapel Street. A very functional Holiday Inn Express, they at least recognised my Priority Club membership (I think) and gave us a voucher for 5 quid off at a local chinese restaurant. But it was way too early, and too bright outside, to think about going for food just yet so we went for a wander to see what was nearby.

Union Street is Aberdeen's main city centre road, and fucking hell is it ever depressingly dull. Long enough such that most businesses seemed to have two branches separated by about 1/3rd of a mile, it's just a very uniformly grey set of shop fronts which, I assume, look as they do because granite doesn't take paint very well. But that can't be the reason, even certain businesses seemed to have changed their frontage to suit the city -- specifically William Hill, whose branches were distinctly monochrome rather than the blue I expected.

Lush in Scotland stinks just as bad as it does anywhere else.

At the top of Union Street is the building from this photo (not sure what it is, actually; possibly the law courts?) and then Castlegate. This is a big pedestrianised square with a pub on one corner, a few eateries and shops, and a big castle at the end. Well, not that big a castle, I guess. Just beyond it, we thought, was the beach, so we ventured onwards and came across a terrifying-looking pair of tower blocks. After a wrong turn at the roundabout which took us almost into the harbour area, we did go along the main road towards the beach a bit further but in the end gave up.

Back at the square we had a drink in the pub on the corner, called the Blackfriar. Choosing the back room after a somewhat frosty reception from the group of gents standing at the front room's bar, we just had the one (Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted for me) before trudging back down Union Street and to the hotel. Quick change and out for chinese, with the 5 quid discount, but not before being parternally and patronisingly turned away from the heaving Indian restaurant just round the corner. We had the audacity to ask if they had a table available without reservation. Oh dear.

The food in Yu, the Chinese place, was really very nice. We both ordered our dishes in a type of sauce we'd never heard of -- Ruth had duck, I had chicken -- and it turned out that basically she'd ordered Lemon Duck and I'd ordered Lemon Chicken. I took advantage of the 5 quid discount to actually just order an extra dish that cost about a fiver, fat fuck that I am. Can't even remember what it was! Back at the hotel we were neither of us particularly taken by our first evening in Aberdeen. I had a real sense that the (lack of) colour was having a psychological effect that made me dislike the place more than was perhaps fair; a sightseeing bus tour the next day was going to test that theory.

London to Aberdeen

[No photos on this post, I'm not uploading anything to flickr over free-but-slow airport wifi]

Jeez. Not blogging for months on end doesn't half get me out of the habit of decent titles for the posts I do bother to make. How utterly pedestrian, but unfortunately inspiration has deserted me. Had I come up with anything better before finishing the text below then I'd have come back and removed the sentences prior to this one, but in fact I've come back to write this! Ahem. Anyway, as I write I'm sat in the BA lounge at ABZ, otherwise known as Aberdeen airport. I've already spent longer than 2 hours getting here in plenty of time for the somehow-they've-made-it-90 minute flight back to Heathrow, from where I arrived on Saturday afternoon, where this post really starts.

Actually it starts on Friday evening, when a cheeky bottle after work started me off down the slope towards a hangover on Saturday morning, which I had promised myself I'd avoid. Flying with a hangover sucks, and to be fair to myself I didn't do too badly... but nonetheless I was, as Wooj says, in deficit in the am. Not bad enough to make the cab to T5 be awful, though the traffic round Hampton Court made sure of that anyway. Our driver was a strange mixture of cockney and landed gentry, occasionally lapsing into a definite twang one way or the other on specific words or phrases. I mean, the Jairmans have figured out how best to deal with a trifling road accident, why the bally hell can't we English? It's simply ridiculous. Anyway, gawd bless yer and 'ave a lovely flight.

Disappointingly for my English sensibilities, but in accordance with my desires as a traveller, T5 does actually appear to work as well as BA's recent spiel claims. Yes, we chose a particularly slow queue for the fast bag drop but that was entirely the fault of the passengers ahead of us, not the staff. Once our bags were in we zoomed through security and found our slow, winding way to the Galleries First lounge. You can tantalisingly see it the second you're past the x-rays but to reach it you have to go left, downstairs, along, upstairs, upstairs again. Worth it though, that's a fucking proper lounge right there. Of all the lounges I've been lucky enough to visit in this 2-years-and-counting frequent-flyer odyssey I'm tempted to rate it above the previous winner, Qantas's first class lounge in Sydney (experienced back in May). Ruth is slightly less convinced of this but still agreed that it was superb.

Superb, and empty, in fact. There was hardly anyone else around having seconds from the hot food buffet, enjoying way too much custard on their cakes, or necking free champagne and kettle chips. Oof. Copious consumption before the gold card runs out! Got on the flight feeling appropriately bloated and was instantly, after the seatbelt sign went out, thrusted a sandwich and Breakaway chocolate bar. Mmm!

Domestic flights have no business class, which is good because it meant that I had managed to get us in row 1. It's not a great row, possibly worse than row 2 (there are no seats in front under which you can sort-of stretch your legs), but there's still something childishly goose-bumpy, for me at least, about having seats in row 1 on a plane. And there is still the very genuine benefit of being able to get off first (or complain, and receive compensatory BA miles, if for technical reasons they have to kick passengers off from the back and you get off last. Hello, Jersey trip last year!).

Aberdeen, I subsequently learned, has the distinction of being The World's Most Improved Airport. I choose to ignore that presumably you need to be fucking shite in the first place in order to have sufficient room for improvement that you win that award, because it would be rude of me to point it out. But there are some odd things about this airport nonetheless. Upon arrival there seemed to be no distinction between landside and airside, though with hindsight that appears to be mostly because we arrived on a domestic flight. So that's understandable. Less understandable is the Customs Red Channel comprising a sign that says "Customs Red Channel", being very much landside, and in actuality being a pillar next to the car hire desks with a phone on it. Very curious.

The cab ride to Aberdeen city centre was uneventful but informative, as our driver expressed surprise that anyone bothered to visit (t)his city as a tourist and then proceeded to tell us what high-fat foods we should make a point of buying while here. Rowies were the main recommendation, supposedly available any time of day or night at the 24hr bakery opposite our hotel which was, in some Scottish comedian's opinion, the best street in the whole of Britain. His justification was the presence of a strip joint, the aforementioned bakery, and a strip club. And he was right, all such things were there, but the bakery wasn't open at all during our stay. I remain a man that has never eaten a rowie.

Right. I do intend to write up the rest of our trip over the next few days but right now, and especially in the absence of any photos to break up the flow, I can't be bothered to write any more; suffice it to say for now that Aberdeen is grey. Very, very, very grey.

Regime change

What responses there have been about my last post (public and private) have concentrated on the Wii aspect. That's predominantly my fault, given how I phrased everything, and it means we all missed the point: Wii Fit is first and foremost a measurement tool. It's not a game in the sense that practice or learning techniques in themselves could get me better scores; the nature of the gameplay is such that they will only get better if you do actually get fitter (which, yes, the games themselves are supposed to do). As for the two activities I do the most, I don't aim to jog a particular distance or get a particular score in the boxing, and being the only player in my household there is no competitive aspect to the charts.

The balance board is good at measuring. As scales they are accurate, and as daft as the "Wii Fit age" thing is, any activity you repeat at roughly the same time every day which uses a consistent measure is useful as a way of determining progress. So for the sake of argument let's remove Wii Fit's training games from the equation -- pretend the graph is a set of results from normal bathroom scales, and say that 4 weeks ago I started a fitness regime which primarily involves a 3km jog five times a week. How long should it take for me to lose some inches/weight, and/or feel noticeably different?

Wii Fat

23 days on the trot and no progress
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

23 days into my Wii Fit regime and I'm almost exactly the same weight/BMI as when I started. Specifically, my lightest weight was on day 3. When I first bought the thing I said to a few people that it was a game of chicken between losing weight/size, or the novelty wearing off. I think the novelty is winning :-(

The game itself says, and in fact it's common knowledge, that you need to give a new exercise regime a bit of time to yield results. But how long? I don't feel noticeably better, nor am I smaller. The missus says she thinks I'm looking trimmer, but I don't see it in the mirror myself. In fact looking in the mirror makes me far more miserable than it did before. Where I used to see a fat bloke who was fat because he didn't do any exercise, now I see a fat bloke who gets up 45 minutes earlier than before and does 10 minutes of boxing exercises each morning, a 20 minute jog most mornings, a few minutes of step basics 3 times a week, and wonders what the point of them all is.

NB those are all from the aerobic exercises designed to burn fat, but I do intersperse them with activities in the yoga, muscle workouts and balance exercises too; though mostly in those I discover that my balance and posture are already pretty good (I put that down to 20 months of MBT-wearing). I've also been carrying a deliberately heavy rucksack for the last 6-8 weeks to and from work; cut down my alcohol intake; started using the stairs instead of the lift most times at work, where I sit on the 4th floor; and mostly swapped what would previously have been a pastry or sandwich for some fruit, at breakfast and lunch.

It's really pissing me off. I might give it 'til 31 days out of stubbornness, but if I don't feel any better or get any smaller by then, someone's going to have to explain why I should continue bothering.

same old song and dance

Two months without an update? Guess that's par for the course. Latest attempt du jour at letting a good 6 or 7 people know what I'm up to involves my new twitter account (see panel on right, when it's working; twitter goes down more often than the planes in Air Crash Investigation), and a getting-less-vague-by-the-day temptation to start using Facebook. The latter urge probably comes from the drip, drip, drip insistence of a couple of individuals who know exactly who they are. :-P

As for walking, well, we have done a bit of that. More in Australia, and Vietnam after that, and since then a few things like Richmond Park and Hengistbury Head in Dorset. Go look on everytrail... if you can be bothered. Most of the time I can't, so you won't find much there anyway.

Where's my new home cinema thingy whatnot? Hmph. My TV feels incomplete.

couple of walks

We've done two walks here so far:

Bondi beach
Nielsen Park

Can't tot up the distance properly because I've failed to get the GPS working, and because on the second one everytrail.com seems to think it was only a mile long. I reckon it was about 3. In fact fuck it, let's assume roughly 7 miles, roughly 2 miles for the walk into Kingston recently, cheat a bit by rounding up and make the running total 40 miles.

Weather in Sydney seems better today so we might get some more done, maybe even the harbour bridge!

Sydney, days 1 and 1.5

Just about to nod off but thought I'd write something here first. It's coming up to 1530 on Friday afternoon and we're knackered.

Not exactly stereotypical Australian weather here, it must be said. We arrived yesterday morning to torrential rain at 6am when Kevin and Sally met us at the airport. 45 minutes from landing to airside despite not using the Express Arrival lanes. The rain stayed pouring until we got to their house, and after the tour and dumping our bags Sal went to work. Kevin took Ruth and I to our first box-ticking venture, a mostly dry affair at Bondi Beach. We parked almost in Bronte and walked the coastal path to Bondi itself, heading inland when the heavens re-opened for some breakfast at Paris Go(?). Back to and along the beach afterwards, we spent a little while watching a nutter swimming around the rocks at the northern edge. It was windy and the ocean was pretty mean.

Walked back along the same coastal path and to the car, then came back to Willoughby for 3 hours kip while Kevin took Rowlf out for a swim. The evening was a BIG box-ticker for Ruth, as she went to a ballet at the Sydney Opera House. Prior to the performance the 4 of us had beer and chips at a bar; and ... OK I'm fading here, so this is the end of the post. I'm just dryly and dully listing what we did in linear fashion and it's not fun to write which means it's probably even less fun to read than normal. Maybe I'll write something better before tonight's pub crawl. Not likely though.

oh, and while I'm here

What happens to men of a certain age, disposition, wealth, and status within their company that makes them think white jeans are ever a good idea? They're not.

I wish there was a shit-hot chess player whose surname was "Flash".

Don't wanna be like common people

Shock! A post to my blog. Double shock! Not a post about walking. Although we did walk into and around Kingston the other day, so I should add another couple of miles or so to the running total, but I can't be arsed. It'll get added to properly over the next few weeks because Ruth and I are off on holiday, and our holidays always tend to involve lots of walking; this holiday in particular does because we've planned it that way. We're off to Sydney, Tasmania, Sydney again, and Ho Chi Minh City.

As I type, however, we're still in Blighty. Specifically we're in the BA FIRST lounge in Heathrow's Terminal 4 (no T5 chaos for us) near gate 10. One of the very few times we're able to take advantage of my for-one-year-only Gold status with BA and we're larging it to the full. Well, as full as possible -- Ruth tried to get an Elemis spa treatment and was told they're fully booked for the evening. This despite us being pretty much the first people to check in for the flight (10pm last night), and to drop our bags off (7pm this evening) and having made a beeline straight here (left the house at 1815; in the lounge at 1925). Oh well.

Quick aside: Ruth's reading the New Statesman. Not the most popular periodical in a place like this, I'd wager (and I really would, capitalist pig that I am. Though the odds would be shocking).

Anyway, having left a genuinely fat feline at home we are, spa notwithstanding, living la vida fat-feline. A bunch of cheese and strudels and sarnies and bagels already washed down with some champers, I'm now tucking into the sweets with relish (NB: not actually eating sugary goods covered in hamburger condiment) with a glass -- a glass, no less! -- of lager, while Ruth has a coffee and some kettle chips. All this is taking place 2 hours before we take off for Australia, ensconced in the best business class seats the upper-deck of a BA 747 has to offer.

I'm so glad and, despite my tone, somewhat humbled bordering on embarrassed, that I was lucky enough to have had the fiscal and temporal opportunity to take those 2 months off in 2006 and flit around the world. It's that which kick-started this holiday because, combined with a bit of help from my previous employers, is how I earnt enough miles that Ruth and I can now do what we're doing. Come November I'll be on the outside of these lounges, wistfully remembering what it was like to be a scruffy Morden pikey drinking himself daft and stuffing his fat face with salmon and cream cheese bagels, in amongst the power suits and blackberries and people asking "which risottos do you have this evening?". Granted, for a further year I'll be that self-same pikey drinking himself daft and stuffing his fat face with whatever fare the business class lounges serve, but after that... well from this distance, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Right. Enough of that. This holiday will have to try very hard not to rule. Look out bro, we're on our way. See you in 24 hours or so.

Walton wander

For the first time in over a month we actually went out for a walk... met up with Ed and Monica for the first time in ages on Saturday. It was meant to be a nice long wander and we decided to start from the Anglers at Walton on Thames, to walk along the Thames Path for a bit. I'd mis-remembered, thinking it was where we finished last time when it was in fact where we'd started. In the end it didn't matter because we didn't do very much at all; by the time we'd all got to the river it was tipping it down with rain, and instead of walking we went for a pub lunch. Once the food was finished it was dry out so we headed towards Sunbury Lock, but turned back when we reached The Weir pub because time was running short.

Total including car park to river to car park: 3.7 miles. Running total for the year: 30.4 miles. Number of days of the year to day: 77.

Oops.

Thursday the 14th

Just walked from my dad's place to mine using a shortcut I'd always suspected existed but only got confirmation of the other week when me brother was here. Doesn't chop off too much of the distance, especially when I got a bit lost (and walked too far in Berrylands too) but makes the whole route much nicer by cutting out Grand Drive and West Barnes Lane.

Blimey. I've walked 27.1 miles in the last 6 days inclusive. Shame I'm still over 17 stone, sigh.

I walk alone

Doesn't count towards the resolution, but I've knocked up an extra 12 miles solo over the past 24 hours walking to Ruth's and halfway back

Gomshall to Guildford

A proper length walk today, 9.5 miles from Gomshall to Guildford. Photos here. There's 51 photos out of 66 uploaded at the time of writing. Particularly nice one of a big cock. No GPS track because it broke. I should have used the everytrail app even though it won't upload properly, at least it records. Oh well. I also really can't be arsed trying to draw it on everytrail or gmap-pedometer or runningmap or anywhere else, it's a proper pain in the arse especially when most of it isn't on roads, so find it out for yourself...

... because it's route number 14 in the TimeOut book of Country Walks, volume 1, and briefly described at that book's website. Book says 9.2 miles but a brief mishap just after the recommended pub lunch means I'm adding on a bonus 0.3. Lots of the walk is beautiful (especially in today's weather), but a bunch of it is fairly boring too, and the mud sucks. Recommended overall though. So that's 26.7 miles now.

hospice to register office

7th Feb 2008, 2.3 miles from the hospice to the register office yesterday, picking up paperwork at the former and taking it to the latter. Running (well, walking) total now 17.2 miles.

Also, big up BA for rearranging me brother's flights home to get him back to Sydney 4 hours and 1 flight quicker than he was booked on.

Bit of a wander around Nonsuch Park

1.8 miles around Nonsuch park on Sat during a break from hospice vigil. Lots of dogs. Red Setters are cool, but Bearded Collies win. 15 miles in 35 days (not doing any today).

surbiton to hampton court to kingston

Did this yesterday (with a sunday roast + mascarpone cheesecake w/blueberries in the middle):

Surbiton to Hampton Court to Kingston, 7 miles.

Now, I know it claims 6.6 miles, but I'm claiming 7 because the first section (recorded by GPS) was 3.3 miles whereas the second section I clicked in. It (the second bit) is inaccurate because I was lazy, and moreover there's a sign at the bridge at Hampton Court which says Kingston Bridge is 3.5 miles away. Add getting to the bridge from the pub at that end, plus crossing the bridge and walking to the bus stop at the other end, and I'm saying the 3.3 for that segment was more like 3.7. Handily enough that also means we walked a nice round 7 miles. So: 13.2 miles by the end of the 20th.

World of walkcraft

That's a shit title for a blog entry, but no-one's reading anyway so I don't care.

I've made a new year's resolution to walk at least a mile a day -- on average. And what's more, it doesn't count if I walk by myself: I made Ruth agree that it's a co-resolution. Hah! We don't have to walk every day, but I want us to have walked at least 366 miles by 2009. To this end I'm recording each walk we do on everytrail.com (because, when I remember, I can use one of my GPSes and let it do the hard work for me) and adding them up.

I thought I'd use my blog to note down my progress mostly because I think they're both things I will soon get very bored of and stop bothering with. But anyway, progress to date:

1. London's South Bank, 3.3 miles
   
2. Ruth's to me dad's, 2.9 miles
   

So, 7 days in and we're at 6.2 miles. Behind schedule already! Heh.

shall I start this up again?

Not sure I can truly be bothered, but I've been thinking of mouthing off again recently, and bunkum.org failed dismally to take off. I can't believe I was ever stupid enough to think I'd be more active at looking after a bunch of code than a bunch of English. Meh.

I'm off to Istanbul in 15 hours.

no more

I simply can't be arsed blogging any more. Bet no-one had figured that out. Anyway, aren't social networks the future? I've got something far more web 2.2 up and running, my load of online nonsense. Behold, http://bunkum.org/ ! If I'm lucky then people will like it and use it and chat, amongst themselves if not with me, and if I'm unlucky it'll become popular and the countless usability and scalability problems with it will show me up to be the coding charlatan I undoubtedly am. Either way I'm sure it won't last very long.

By the way, if anyone does bother to head bunkumwards, the rules are quite simple:

• register with minimal fuss


• subscribe to the topics you think you'll find interesting


• you can reply to messages but not start new threads by default


• if you email me, from the address you used to register with, then I'll give you thread-starting access

Not putting my email address here or on there, it's only meant for people that already know me anyway. Frankly it's nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to get my own messageboard software/interface more widely known and used, because I'm a tiny bit proud of it. That and I was bored at work today.

Off you go then. Cheesehound is dead, long live http://bunkum.org/

snow

my flat
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

GO AWAY

Slack slack slack

Yes, I know I've not written much recently. Sorry. But frankly I've not been doing a lot of interest other than listening to shitloads of bands that oink and squeal, and that all goes here. Actually I tried to go see some bands last Tuesday at the Peel and failed, because the gig just plain wasn't on. Hmph. I've also vaguely been keeping up with the cricket but not watching it, although I did manage to listen to the last few overs of England's glorious victory this morning taking us, massively improbably, into the final against Australia. Cor. Add that to the weekend's rugby and we could be on a national sporting hat-trick, just need to beat Spain at the footy tomorrow...

I still don't have an mp3 player. I'm quite close to buying either a Trekstor Vibez or a Cowon iAudio D2, but not that close really. Mind you I am starting to get proper fed up with XFM. The other day the breakfast DJ was so fucking awful (the Friday guy, not Laverne) and he played 2 songs twice. Do they want people to listen to entire shows or what? Sigh. That said I get the feeling I'm in a minority when it comes to wanting a bit more diversity and variation on the radio anyway; the 8 o'clock shuffle seems to almost always include a track that gets played regularly anyway, and the "top 7 most requested songs of the day" thing at 7pm each day is also shockingly predictable. Why don't people request stuff that they can't hear just by tuning in for any given hour of any day?

I saw Casino Royale the other week. I thought it was shit. Well, the second half at least. Did a script writer die halfway through and they let a 6th form work experience lad write the rest? From the moment that bird was introduced to the plot it was just dreadful dreadful dreadful. And not just the script, but her acting too. Pah. Thankfully in filmic terms I managed to even things out by buying and watching Warrior King which, like its predecessor Ong Bak, is absofuckinglutely superb.

Sutton Ecology Centre is shit.

Metal

Despite barely posting once a week here it appears I've decided there's enough time spare for me to start a new blog. Behold, Oinkers and Squealers.

Cold

snow in my garden
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

It's cold. There's snow. My garden's covered in it. London's covered in it, in fact. XFM were inviting people to phone up, if they hadn't yet looked outside, and react to opening their curtains/blinds/etc live on air today, as if the whole of London loves snow. I don't love snow. I'm trying to like it because let's face it, not liking snow's a bit miserable. But right now I've got a good excuse to be miserable anyway, because I'm ill.

Proper ill, that is. IIRC I've not had a day off work in the last 2 or 3 years that wasn't either a booked holiday, or due to a hangover. This time it's neither: I've got a total bastard chesty cough, a twat of a bunged up nose, a slag of a sore throat, and bitch of a heavy head. Thankfully I also have some 7.7% alcohol cough mixture, a superb sofa, a load of glucose-containing food and drink, and a bottle of Olbas Oil. Fucking hell though, get this: yesterday I couldn't smell the Olbas at all, so bad was my nose. Seems a little clearer today but the lungs and throat are still fucked.

London: A Life In Maps

In a fit of culture I went to the British Library last weekend, to have a butcher's at their London Maps exhibition. Quite good it was. I was expecting more schematics than there were, I can only recall there being any in the last bit where a few tube and train maps cropped up; mostly the maps were just maps of central London, concentrating on the north side of the river (from St James's to the Tower, really) to begin with and gradually increasing in scope as London itself did so. Took a good while to come across a map that went out far enough that it had Surbiton labelled on it, and even then it was spelt Serbiton. C'uh.

The little bits of text describing each map were great. I loved reading about two cartographers in the 1600s, whose names escape me but who were vying for supremacy in the burgeoning "map London" industry, if that's what you can call it. The idea that people back in the day really did have arch enemies, as they were referred to, appeals greatly to me. I wonder if I can cultivate such a relationship with a coder at, say, Google.

Understandably enough a lot of the maps were pretty samey. Understandable because there's an objective truth being laid out, obviously. Because of that it seemed the rival map makers had to find their own way of making their mark and trying to convince people (financers or royalty, I assume) that theirs was best. In at least 3 instances the tactic seemed to be "make the map as ridiculous in scale as possible; make it out of 16 sheets, 8 high by 2 wide, such that a ladder is required to see the top; or make it so long it takes 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other". Yes, some of the maps were huge, and not just because they wanted to include masses of detail either. In fact some of the most detailed maps were a pretty normal size and required lots of squinting to make sense out of.

Having to walk from one end to another of a map brought London's size into context though. I recently walked from Waterloo station to Tower Bridge and back of an evening -- in the late 1600s, that was the entire breadth of the city. When I walked the 13 miles home back in November, that would have been an epic journey worthy of chronicling, through countryside and lots of disparate villages. Bit different now.

Other ways of making the maps stand out seemed to be in the insignia. In a spare bit of space on most maps was the title, the author's name, the long subtitle that was all the rage, and all that gubbins. They were surrounded with the most immaculately presented and fabulously detailed little coat-of-arms type things and were, in general, far more ornate and impressive than the maps themselves. Odd.

It was quite interesting to learn that the train system, certainly in south west London (the Kingston Loop et al) is the same now as it was in the late 1800s; it was very funny to see a PUBLIC TRANSPORT IS TERRIBLE AND WILL KILL YOUR HORSES pamphlet; but the best thing of the whole exhibition was seeing a panorama that didn't use the word panorama -- oh no -- it was a cosmorama. That's my new favourite word, that is.

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I really hate the HSBC cash machines at Cambridge Circus. Every time I use them I forget just how tormenting they are. Here's a tip: always ask for an amount of pounds divisible by 20. Don't be fooled by them offering you £30 or £50 -- they never have tenners and always ask you to pick £40 or £60. Poxy fucking things.

Dodgy barnet

"Controversial Hair back in action" is my favourite cricketing headline of recent times.

Is that what we call a crowd?

is that what we call a crowd?
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

7 points from 9 isn't a bad return for the last game of 2006/first two games of 2007. Yes, I'm back watching football again. A few badgering emails from the Dons Trust convinced me to head to the first, as they wanted to take a photo of me and a bunch of other recent Dons Draw winners. Duties done, piss poor weather and a dreadful first 10 minutes made me think staying away might have been a better option after all. But we ended up winning 3-1 and a mate offered me a free ticket to a game in late January -- in the Presidents' (or President's?) Lounge, no less. Then on Wednesday I went to Bromley away and saw another 3-1 victory in possibly the most unpleasant weather I've attended a game in since Barnsley away in February 1998 or so. 1-1 away at Ramsgate yesterday completed my hat trick. Fuck me what an appalling ground. Not sure I'll make 38 games on the trot (my previous record) but 4's looking a reasonable target.

Farewell 2006

Good fucking riddance.

Saucy

Ah, here's that post-big-night-out "what the fuck was I playing at? why didn't I slow down/have less/etc? I've got to stop" introspection. Excuse du jour: err, I don't really have one.

map mistakes

This road is not called Box Lane. It's called Bow Lane.

So this is Christmas

What have I done? Well, I've been round me dad's all day, walked there this morning and got back not too long ago. Just put South Park on having had a shower 'cos I was stinking like a total bastard, probably because I was trotting at a decent pace while wearing 3 layers of clothes, 2 of which were coats. One of them was a present from me dad and step-mum, who seemed unsure whether I liked it or not. I think my using the phrase "oh mint, that's proper" may have been at the root of their confusion.

If I recall correctly, Christmas Day is the only day of the year I've never been in a pub. Still is. The Beverley in Lower Morden wasn't going to change that. I've actually had a completely dry day and not before time. It's no secret I've been caning it like an absolute bastard over the last few weeks, but even by those standards the weekend was fucking ridiculous. That's what happens when I get given a free ticket to see Iron Maiden. I was already half-cut on Friday when I got told about that and spent the rest of the evening celebrating, but Saturday itself was fucking incredible.

Let me just get this out of the way first though: Trivium are still rubbish live. Their drummer can't keep time.

Anyway. 3 of us got on the train at about 1745 on Saturday. With beer. Probably too much beer for such a short journey. Finished it off anyway, and waited outside Earls Court trying to get hold of Darryl, since he had the tickets. When he said "Aaah, it was just a joke lads", obviously joking, I managed to threaten him with a glassing. I believe the actual phrase I used was

Why do you think we're drinking out of bottles and not cans mate? I figured the glass would come in useful in case I needed to start an altercation

I'm not sure saying this, loudly, and less than 5 yards from the nearest policeman was that sensible an idea. Dear police, and, in fact, society as a whole: I wouldn't actually have glassed him. Just can't get out of this urban savage chic phase at the mo, innit.

Fucking hell did we put it away. So so much to drink. All four of us were total fucking disgraceful dipso lush fucks, frankly, and the next day was almost a total write-off for everyone -- although me and Wooj managed a few in the evening to celebrate his birthday. Whether we'd manage that was touch and go for a while, mind. But the best bit about yesterday was that each time I had a hangover twinge, instead of the normal "what the fuck was I playing at? why didn't I slow down/have less/etc? I've got to stop" introspection, I instead started laughing at the memory of the night. A real fucking belter.

Make you breathe more easily

That new Jarvis single is rubbish. XFM London should stop playing it. The intro really reminds me of another song though and in 2 weeks of hearing it on typically heavy rotation I've still not managed to place it.

I can't work out whether I like all of The View's Same Jeans or not. His voice sometimes grates, at other times I like it. The rolled Rs are the sticking point I think. But I do like the fast bit at the very end, which much like Jarvis's song reminds me of something else.

In fact lots of stuff reminds me of something else. Am I the only person in the world who can hear a very definite Dead Kennedys resemblance in songs by Arctic Monkeys? A band who, by the way, might be worth questioning over the Suffolk streetcleaning, given these lyrics.

I'm going to have to buy the Razorlight album I think. I fuckin' hate that America song, but Before I Fall To Pieces is great, and I really like the other one on the TV advert whose name escapes me right now.

The Ordinary Boys' Boys Will Be Boys starts off with some great lyrics, but my favourite "night out" lyrics are still these ones from The Zutons.

Lord give me grace and dancing feet, and the power to impress. Is it so wrong to crave recognition?

Earlier this year I was chatting to some friends and saying just how much I wanted Sacred Reich to reform. Seemingly every other thrash band from the 80s/90s cusp is either still going or has recently got back together for a filthy lucre tour, but no sign of these boys. Most disappointing. Well blow me down with a feather, not only have they got back together but they're touring the UK and playing at Wacken, for which I already have tickets and transport.

Malevolent Creation are back 'n all. I saw them supporting Pestilence once, in Walthamstow, having had an entire bottle of Thunderbird Red on the tube from Morden. I don't remember if they were any good, although thinking about it I saw them later on in the same tour at the Marquee and they were fantastic.

A few weeks ago I was scouring for Bogdan Raczynski and couldn't find hardly anything that didn't cost a fortune. IIRC I ended up with a Rephlex records compilation and that was it. Discovered earlier this week while working late with a colleague from upstairs that he's got bloody loads of his tunes, and gave me access to a bunch of it. Superb. I still want to buy it, if I can find it at a reasonable price, but for now I can at least listen to him.

Been rereading my holiday blog entries recently. I noticed that when I was in Auckland I posted this:

Hmm. Panic! At The Disco sound like Fallout Boy, and to my utmost annoyance I've found myself liking the latter (and, therefore, the former) recently. "lalalalala cock it and pull it", etc. Goddamn emo rubbish being all catchy and shit. Thank fuck I've placed a moratorium on buying any CDs 'cos they're too heavy to cart around the fucking world, hopefully by the time I get back to England this phase will have passed.

Jesus. How wrong was I?

'tis the season

'tis the season
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

I was going to have a dry weekend. Instead I went to the pub on both Saturday and Sunday. However, I feel less bad about my lack of self-control because I've just read this. So there.

Walked 10 miles today. Clicking on "small" next to where it says "Elevation" is quite interesting. Richmond Park seems nice -- I've never really explored it before, and didn't do much today, so that gives me something to do sometime. Who has sovereignty over postcodes? There are road signs on Kingston Vale and the roads coming off it that say Royal Borough of Kingston at the top left, and SW15 at the bottom. I kind of thought the borough border would also be the postcode border.

◊

Got my name read out on XFM finally yesterday, on about the 5th attempt I guess. Can't even remember who the DJ was but it was a guy in the morning asking for hangover cures. Darren in Surbiton recommends a Lucozade Hydroactive and a packet of crisps, which rarely fails but if it does, a Guinness fixes everything. Natasha on 6music read me out again 'n all, even though I emailed in during a section of the show where she hadn't been inviting contact (I said the new Fall Out Boy single, played in Emo Corner, sounded like Christina Aguilera; she, her producer, and another listener thought it was more like N*Sync).

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I hate football commentators. They're nearly all shit except for Andy Gray and Martin Tyler. Alan Smith just said "this is probably the pick of the bunch without doubt". Is that probably, or without doubt, Alan? You fucking idiot. David Pleat once said "I like this lad, he's got plenty of that side-to-side width". Not that top-to-bottom width then Dave? Can't remember who it was that said "alarm bells are flashing" the other week. Chris Kamara made 90 minutes worth of howlers during a play-off final the other year which everyone I was with kept picking up on and getting infuriated by. During Cardiff -vs- QPR a while ago they might as well hae been watching a different game such was their interpretation of how the game was panning out. Etc. In fact now the guy who isn't Alan Smith just said "Is it my memory playing tricks or how many great goals have we had this season?". What the fuck does that mean?

Cricket. Fuck it. Cock it and pull it.

I wish I didn't care about cricket. We're so awful. It's not like I expected anything different, after the 2nd test, but I still can't stop watching the 3rd. It's painful. I thought it'd be over in 3 days but the Aussies have decided to fucking humiliate us. Gilchrist has just taken 24 off a Panesar over including 3 sixes. Sigh.

◊

Burnout Revenge on xbox 360 is fun. When I'm in the right mood, of course, and last night to the delight of all concerned (ie my opponents, who in the past have had to suffer me storming off in a Big Gay Huff) I somehow was. Played 'til just gone 0200. Discovering that the soundtrack is a bunch of emo helped, Fall Out Boy FTW!

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Threads is amazingly bleak, grim, depressing, distressing even. Astonishing film. Glad I live and work in London, I presume this place would be a nuke target and I'd likely get vapourized rather than survive.

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I might go to this exhibition at the British Library later or tomorrow.

off the rails - short reprise

At least I'm not as bad as this bloke.

off the rails

Got some post from South West Trains this morning. Half expected it to be a demand for monies owed, having completed a Surrey hat trick of post-drinks fare-dodges last night by waking up in Guildford. On the last train. This time the Yahoo! Christmas party was to blame (although the drinks before going there might have had something to do with it too). So there I was at 0150 or so, no trains back to London until 0353. Got some money out to get a cab and discovered there were 2 other guys in the same boat, so we agreed to share (they both needed Kingston; result).

Unfortunately while at the ATM I'd discovered that my travelcard was missing from my wallet. I gave a fairly thorough check to make sure it wasn't just not-on-top, but didn't find it. It runs out on January 7th so it's not the greatest hardship in the world, I'd only have lost 3 weeks or so worth. Mind you that's 90-odd quid. Anyway. I wanted it back. The cab was turning up in 5 minutes and some very kind and accomodating SWT staff let me back on the locked-up train to look for it. 'course I had no fucking idea what carriage I'd been in or anything. During my search the fella got called on his walkie-talkie saying the other two were about to fuck off in that cab unless I made it back sharpish, so I admitted defeat and came home. Dunno how much it was going to cost but I shoved 20 quid in one of my fellow disgraces faces as they dropped me off, about 100 yards from my door.

My travelcard was in my wallet. Just not on top.

View from the morning

At my desk before 0700 on a Monday morning. What the hell is wrong with me? I have to go home early today.

I need to change the way I talk. I know there are plenty of people who get aggravated by lots of things in the way modern English works, specifically by the overuse of superlatives and extremes. The way people say "literally" in a way that means the precise opposite of "literally" is an example, I think, of the extremes I mean. Like "I literally shat myself when Slayer came on" -- no, you didn't, did you? You figuratively shat yourself, perhaps. Anyway. I'm as guilty of it as the next man but I've been inspired to try and change, and the reason is I saw a film last night called Death Machines.

See I'm prone to describing things as "the worst [whatever] ever". There's several instances where the '[whatever]' in question has been a film, and there are some wrongs to right. I need to apologise to the makers of Sliver. Home Alone? Not such a bad film. The Crow? I guess it has some redeeming features. Death Machines? Without doubt the worst film I have ever seen. And I've seen Plan 9 From Outer Space 'n all. And They Came From Beyond Space. And Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy.

The number of the beast

I was going to go for a 15, 20, even 25 mile walk yesterday. I didn't. Managed the just-under-6-miles from home to me Dad's place though, good preparation for Christmas that. I just couldn't be arsed leaving the house any earlier than 3pm, despite getting up plenty early enough for a long 'un. I just lazed around watching football on TV instead. Ho hum.

Got on the radio again this morning. 6music once more, this time for bigging up Mysterious Cities of Gold's theme tune.

Left the house at 0945 today to walk to Chessington, but gave up halfway and got on a bus. The reason I was heading that way is 'cos I'd agreed last night to join Loz and Freya on their trip to the zoo.

I love zoos. They're great. If memory serves correctly I've been to zoos in Paris, Cologne, Berlin, New York, Singapore, Sydney, and now Chessington. Actually that doesn't sound like enough, but maybe it is. Anyway. Chessington's is perhaps somewhat less splendid than the others but heading there on what turned into a fairly grey and very cold English December day was a great idea. I love visiting summery places out of season. Spending a few days on the Isle of Wight in November 2003 was a superb case in point. There's something about the bleak desolation, exacerbated by the weather, of a half-closed, almost-deserted tourist attraction which really appeals to me; Chessington Zoo today provided just that. The bleakness was even compounded by the horrid building site of the 150 room hotel being built on the premises. Ace.

The animals help too, mind. There aren't masses of 'em but they've got spider monkeys and rabbits and alpaca and gorillas and lions and tigers and stuff, innit. I do think it's a genuine shame, rather than just something to take the piss out of, when something so obviously educational is let down by bad English though. Like, say, on a sign explaining stuff about the Grey Owl where, highlighted as one of the things to remember, is a mis-spelling of the word "Arctic". Artic indeed :-(

Hung out at Loz's for a while after the zoo, getting a couple of films he illegaled for me last night in the process, then decided to walk home. The "walking as a form of transport" route is just over 3 miles, but is a pretty horrible walk through shitholes and along very big roads; but the "I've got nothing worthwhile to do with my time" route I managed to concoct was 6.5 miles, and thoroughly pleasant. Well, not thoroughly, but perhaps 85% so. Deliberately walked faster than normal, partly to see what speed I could keep up and partly 'cos I was fairly keen on the idea of watching Chelsea -vs- Arsenal, think I kept a steady 4.3mph. Not bad I suppose.

Stop - Darren time

Blimey. I got read out on 6music's breakfast show yet again, this time for bigging up MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This. Go me! I don't imagine anyone will listen to it but just in case, it happened at just around 9am, so 2hrs in. FWIW it's a good show anyway.

I also got the song right in Liz Kershaw's name-that-tune competition thing although I didn't bother SMSing. Mind you I'm not too fussed about that because the prizes were shite. Getting into this emailing/texting-the-radio thing though innit. Think I'll try and get on Laverne's 8 o'clock shuffle next week. In fact before even finishing this post I've sent in my entry. If they pick me that'll not just be my name on the radio, it'll be my voice. Oo-er.

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Fuck my sleep patterns. Well actually I guess they're not pissing me off that much, but needing to be awake and/or in the office at particular times what with working in a team and stuff isn't really compatible with 'em. Shame really 'cos I enjoy the madness of being up at random times of day and night. Handy, 'cos having regressed into only needing/having 4 hours kip a night, I don't seem to have the complementary ability to stay awake for 20 hours a day. When I went to bed after posting that last entry I probably fell asleep around 0230, and I definitely got up at 0615. Come that evening I was knackered when I got home and went to kip at 2230, predictably enough waking up at 0230. I thought that was a bit early to get up even for me so tried to get back to sleep, failing to do so until around 0345. What followed was a series of 10-15 minute naps until just gone 0600, after which I stayed awake but felt totally fucking shattered. Just couldn't drag my sorry carcass out of bed and ended up getting to work late. Sigh.

Right. I'm off for a walk. My head's a mess.

down and out in West Byfleet

Dear Mr South West Trains conductor guy on the 2323 London Waterloo to Alton service, December 6th 2006,

Thanks for letting me off the excess fare I volunteered to pay, having missed Surbiton through being asleep and only waking up when the doors locked shut, thus ending up in West Byfleet. Your generosity saved me a good 3 quid. Shame you didn't suggest I stay on 'til Woking which would almost certainly have meant waiting less than half an hour for the train back. Oh well. It could have been far worse. Mind you missing Surbiton twice -- on schoolnights -- in the last 14 days isn't something that I'm particularly proud of. Tonight's was more due to tiredness than being off the rails though, so perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Probably a good idea to go to bed, mind, what with it being past 0200. Sigh. Glad I sleep well even when the apocalypse is going on outside.

load of Baldocks

sun and church, in Baldock
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

Went to play table tennis on Sunday. I go up to Cambridge to do so every so often, ostensibly every month but in reality it's been about 4 times this year. Transport's a bit shitty, since somewhat unbelievably there are no trains northbound out of Kings Cross on a Sunday until 10am. Not to Cambridge, that is; to anywhere. First one there is at 1015 which gets in at 1101, being the "Cambridge Express" or summat. Unfortunately the room was booked for 1100 'til 1300, so rather than be late I decided to get a coach.

Got up too late to get the coach. For fucks sake. Then I left the house way too fucking early to get the train, at about 0820, meaning I ended up spending an hour at Kx stood there reading a magazine. Still, I was only going to be 20 minutes or so late.

25 miles or so south of Cambridge is a place called Baldock. I've been there. On Sunday. Because just north of it the train I was on slowed to a halt, the driver told us there was "plastic wrapped around the overhead lines" which meant we were in danger of bringing them down if we proceeded through, and we reversed into the station. Sigh. Last time I went to Cambridge I had train grief too, I guess this was a little less gruesome. Anyway, at Baldock the doors were opened as we were told it'd be at least an hour until engineers would get it all sorted. Most people stayed put, a lot got on their phones, a bunch went hunting for cabs, a few went and had fags, and a couple tried the door of the nearest pub despite it being about 1115. I went for a walk.

Baldock's got fucking loads of pubs. Probably 9 or so in easy distance of the station, which struck me as too many for a town of the size it appeared to be. Mind you the Tesco seemed extraordinarily ill-proportioned too, and seemed to be housed in a stately home or summat. Odd. Generally though it seemed like quite a nice place, somewhere I wouldn't mind being stuck... were the pubs open and me in the mood for a pint. In fact I could even be convinced to go there deliberately, but anyway. Just under an hour passed and I returned to the station; my train was no longer at the platform, and I'd just missed another one that I'd seen arrive and depart as I approached. Bah. 15 minute wait 'til the next one and I got to Cambridge just after 1300. Two hour session been and gone, three hours 'til the next sesh, almost five hours since I'd left home. Oh well.

Nice pint, nice lunch, and we ended up playing 3 hours of good table tennis in the evening. Got home pretty quickly, 40-odd minute wait for a train in a FREEZING BASTARD COLD Cambridge station notwithstanding. Thought my hands were going to fall off. Meant I got to listen to the Sunday evening rock show on local station STARadio though, which was notable not for a particularly strong selection of metal but an ad for a company whose name escaped me, whose slogan was the phenomenally dreadful "SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, AND YOU'RE TO BLAME, WE GIVE IN-CAR AUDIO A GOOD NAME". Sheesh. That reminds me: a tribute act called "Born to be Jovi" played at Kingsmeadow last Saturday. What a rubbish name. Someday there'll be a bloke in a flatcap called Ron Jovi and he'll be great.

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Been in a fucking appalling mood all day today. I hope this isn't a regular thing. Really face-like-thunder stuff again though. It started when I woke up to the sound of Matthew Hoggard losing his wicket and England being reduced to 105/8, at about 0400 UK time this morning. Not only were we playing like a bunch of total cunts, but waking up made me realise I'd fallen asleep too early last night to hear XFM's Jack Penate session. Sigh. And XFM don't have any kind of "listen again" regime.

Been up since 0400 anyway. Couldn't get back to sleep, perhaps didn't want to. The utter incompetence of the England team with both bat and ball really did fucking ruin the start of my day though. I was steaming angry when I headed for work at 0830 and even a walk in the rain from Waterloo to the office did nothing for me.

Meetings today, end of last/start of this month type stuff. 5 or so hours of 'em. They went pretty well, but the first one in particular made me feel like a total fraud. Our team got a bunch of praise (in fact, we did yesterday too) for having a phenomenally successful November, yadda yadda yadda. Great work, great integration into the team for the new boys (that includes me), etc, and there was me thinking, oh. Really? I've been worried about productivity 'cos, well, it all feels a bit... easy to me. I thought there perhaps should have been more to do. Not that what we did was rubbish, there just didn't seem like an awful lot of it to me. But what do I know? Our product is delicate, after all.