Category: Other stuff

Pretty concise and snappy title eh? Yes I do have a life outside Mountain Biking. No, it’s no better written or researched.

Chicken’s run.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography7 Comments

After only eighteen months, “Poultry Alcatraz” is finally complete. Not complete as in properly finished, but sufficiently secure for a complete relocation of our six mad chickens to their new home of “much squawking”.

Garden/Chicken Run - July 2010 Garden/Chicken Run - July 2010

Garden/Chicken Run - July 2010 Garden/Chicken Run - July 2010

It may not look like over a years’ work, and of course it isn’t. Because we had to wait until the diggers moved out, the pond was drained, that area was laboriously cleared of mutant vegetation before even the ground could be dug up by a team of two with many other calls on their time. Two of them generally hanging around asking for food/money/toys/the other sister to be buried in a trench.

But, after a harsh lesson in rural animal husbandry, we took extra care this time with six foot of tightly meshed fence bolted firmly to stout posts. Below ground another twelve inches* are dug in against fox attack.

All we’re missing is a roof and some motion sensing machine guns. Even this evening, I was shifting large logs in the proximity of the pen to prevent a possible roof assault. I did wonder if Fox’s now come equipped with grappling irons and wire cutters, or we were in thrall to an Olympic gymnast hiding a chicken rustling habit.

But better safe than, well, dead. And while the construction methods are somewhat rustic, all done by eye and then by hammer, the end result is chicken heaven right now. As we’ve left all the spiky vegetation that’s about head high and adding a few inches per day. Well it was but within a week, the greedy buggers will have reduced it to shrubbery swarf, so turning the entire area into first a dust bath and then a mud pile.

While recording this rather satisfying, if structually second rate, building of all our own work, I ran around in the summer rain shooting random garden scenes. A quick browse shows a pretty impressive transition from pea shingle to mostly garden via phases of four foot trenches, ten ton hardcore lorries, a week with a mini digger and six months from a man who came for a week to finish a single dry stone wall.

Tallet (2 of 33) Gardening

It makes me realise how much we’ve done, but also how much is left to do. And that’s before maintaining what we have. Next person who says “oh I wish I had a lovely big garden like this” shall be presented with a spade and a bucket and told to put their trowel where their mouth is.

Garden/Chicken Run - July 2010 Garden and Chicken Run July 2010 (18 of 31)

Garden and Chicken Run July 2010 (14 of 31) Garden and Chicken Run July 2010 (15 of 31)

Garden and Chicken Run July 2010 (25 of 31) Garden and Chicken Run July 2010 (26 of 31)

Garden and Chicken Run July 2010 (31 of 31) Garden and Chicken Run July 2010 (30 of 31)

Tomorrow I have to spend 18 hours travelling to and attending a “Developing your edge” course. Something I’ve only previously considered when sharpening disemboweling weapons. Apparently even for the lightly tinged self conscious individual, this is a very long day of gruesome toe-curling embarrassment.

I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to it. I may be able, however, to explain exactly how much I enjoyed it on my return. Could be quite a short post I feel.

* I measured it and everything. Couldn’t help thinking “12 inches is always a bit more than you think”

End of an era.

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

Sometimes while you’re attempting to get on with your little life, something happens that makes you stop, take stock and wonder at the apparently ordinary. Stuff that reinforces the whoosh of time passing with such force it’s almost panic-attack scary, events which hard stop a status-quo that felt comfortably never ending, a couple of hours which shunts perception of what you think might be important onto a branch line and – for that brief time at least – instead a simple and rather melancholy cypher of the world stands front and centre.

It’s an innocent enough premise; the end of year school play which we’ve done before, but today was a little different. There would apparently be little fun on offer when paying to share a hot and humid village hall with a 100 excited and noisy kids* and their only slightly less manic parents. Locked in for 90 minutes with absolutely no chance of the large medicinal you’ve fervently self-prescribed, and viewing the whole shebang with a world weary intellectual snobbishness side-ordered with chore and boredom.

And that’s pretty disrespectful when you consider the entire school has forgone any real education since half term to learn a whole heap of songs, dialogue and dances. Yet I’ve been watching Verbal trying to hide behind scenery for six years; three times per annum she’d sweat over her one line before delivering it in a dull monotone while staring anywhere but the audience. And then run away.

Random has some “Dad Genes” going on and so can be seen mugging for all she is worth, but this is not her last time in primary school, she is not stepping up to a place where the difficult transition between child and adult takes place, it’s not the nine year old who is teetering on the precipice of puberty and all the confusion that this bring. And it seems Verbal realised all this in her own way, and found a way to stare stagefright right in the snozzle and still come out swinging.

First she was half of the dark undertaking duo – Snuffle and Rot – tendering to the recently deceased in the very Wild West town of Splodge City. She had some decent lines and delivered them with a level of confidence and timing little seen until tonight. The audience laughed, the kids fed off it and you’d have to have a heart of frozen lead not to melt a little when the tiny tots get up there and try and remember which way is right. Or wrong. It hardly matters.

The bigger children were ‘busting some moves’** while the plot unfolded with a certain predictability, some truly terribly corny jokes and much singing. I found myself genuinely engrossed by the whole thing; clearly huge amounts of work had been put in and the results were there to see. But we’d yet to see Verbal’s second character triumph.

Some of the more sophisticated of you out there may have witnessed powerful operatic performances by the world’s finest companys, been rocked and shocked by the best bands at a million watts or blown away by famous actors who command the largest stages, but I would contest that until you have seen “Lightening the Wonder Horse”, you have seen nothing.

It may only be a heavy cloth fabrication of a the heroin’s noble steed, but let me tell you it is impossible not to fall about in more than a little mirth when this two part equine wonder begins to dance. Okay I accept it’s not much of a speaking part but, even with parent’s understandable patronage of their own offspring, it not only stole the show, it galloped off with the bloody thing. No honestly – I guess you had to be there 😉

So that’s that then. Last performance of Year Six and they definitely knew it. It’s also apparent many, if not all, of them can do stuff now beyond the likes of us. Not just the youthful veneer protecting them from the significant possibility of ritual humiliation, but also the trust, friendship and fun of being a group of confident and joyful humans clearly having a ball with absolutely no fear of failure. It’s wasted on the buggers, frankly.

And while I lament the passing of time, the realism of understanding no longer will Verbal only orbit your world, the shock of how-the-fuck-did-six-years-go-so-quickly?, I’m more than a bit delighted she went out on a high. The whole lot of them deserved the rich accolades and adulation they received as the curtain called, but I’m left with something a little more personal.

A week or so ago, I was going on a bit about how horrible London was, how hot I’d been in my suit while closeted with the tunnel rats, how there could be no place other than the surface of the sun which could be less pleasant when Verbal brought me to a premature halt with “Yeah Dad, but if you really want hot, try being the inside of a horse“.

Fair point. Well made.

* The little one behind us would howl every time a soloist performed their song. I couldn’t help thinking he has a bright future as a music critic.

** apparently. So I’ve been told. I’ve no idea what this means.

Diggit.

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

It has been made abundantly clear to me that I was fully consulted during the garden planning process. And yet, as part of my life strategy that – boiled down – is essentially blaming other people for everything, I beg to differ. Because I have wasted enough time, mucky spade in hand, to fully comprehend the horror that seven large flower-beds will bring.

Let me bring you with me here; if we exchange the couplet “flower bed” for “Weed Anarchy“, you begin to understand the futility in attempting to repel borders which are being over-run with an army of spikey green.

Somewhere in the dense jungle may be the expensive items we bought and carefully planted last year. But I’m not sure why we bothered, because if the long winter didn’t do for them, all sorts of unwanted aliens appear to be eating what’s left.

n the same way that life would be significantly fairer if lettuce had the taste and texture of sausages, weeds should not be allowed to grow faster than stuff you’d actually like to see. And if we don’t tackle the rampant little buggers soon,they’ll became terrifyingly rocky horror show and impervious to anything short of Napalm.

Happily, I am rarely allowed to weed unaccompanied, or at least supported by detailed drawings of what needs ripping outand what cost a fiver and was recently buried on purpose. I have worked hard on being this useless, honing my techniques and asking “This thing here… yes this one with the flower on it… it’s a weed, yes? No? Oh I’ll put it back then. Or what’s left of it anyway”.

Carol has done a brilliant job sorting it out although somewhat tired of spending days being “Woman with Trowel”. However our efforts have lessened our focus on the bottom half of the garden mostly lost to trampolines, a half completed Poultry Alcatraz, a dry pond and weeds that are bristlingly face high. Honestly, if I don’t get that Chicken run finished soon, I’ll have Kevin Whasthisname from Grand Designs turning up and doing a head shaking piece to camera.

Obviously I have a solution. And just as obviously it’s grounded in creating the most amount of carnage for the least amount of effort. Enter petrol based powertools – a friend’s strimmer is barely disguised as Lucifer’s motorised hell on earth. It even has a set of handlebars, which are probably designed to provide some form of control once the monster two stroke has spluttered noisily to life.

Largely pointless to be fair. Once it’s running so are you are an unwilling parter in a brutal, random and whirling tango . “Get the kids inside” I shouted over the cacophony of an unsilenced engine on full throttle* while fronting up to inch width nasties giving me the leafball**

The next twenty minutes were lost to a swathe cutting circuit of the garden scattering weeds, grass, plants and the odd fence post amok. Nothing could withstand the whirling death of the brushcutter including my now numbed hands and bleeding ears. I couldn’t stop tho, locked into a grisly dance with anything organic and having the temerity to sprout unasked.

A juddering stop revealed that such actions quickly drain a full tank of petrol, and a quick personal inventory had me laughing out loud at my now “greened up” complexion. Surveying my work, it was hard to independently assert that this part of our garden actually looked any better. One thing no-one could deny though, it was certainly lower.

One half cocked job completed, it was time to beef up the vegetable plot or “Insect Buffet” as I like to think of it. I can almost hear the stamping of impatient tiny feet and twitching of hungry proboscis as we carefully plant a whole raft of leafy goodness. I take a long hard look at natures’ bounty before reconciling myself to a chewed up wasteland some time in the near future. Maybe their is some work for the strimmer here on the insect harvesting front.

Still keen to do something strimmery, disappointment was the chief emotion as my plea to use this somewhat blunt instrument in a surgical strike capacity is firmly turned down. While I backed my ability to sorts the weeds from the daffs, Carol felt my strimming talents could be used elsewhere. Anywhere really even if that meant barely controlled destruction some five miles down the road.

“No I don’t need the car, I’ll strim my way there” I cried. In the pantheon of manly powertools, this rates pretty close to the top, above the whacker plate but possibly still below the jackhammer. Apparently chainsaws are even better, but – let’s be honest about my abilities here – it’d be fun until someone lost a limb. Or a head.

Both Carol and I like gardens. We just don’t like maintaining them which makes me feel that – lovely as it is – the block paving approach didn’t receive sufficient consideration at the design stage. Still, at least it gives me the opportunity to tinker with more oily engines, and I’ve yet to rule out a nuclear upgrade.

* Really this is a proper bloke’s toy. It doesn’t really need a throttle. Unless it has a special “go to 11” setting.

** like an eyeball, only somehow more sinister

Vlad The Impaler.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Not a nice bloke at all. Famous in the 15th century for significant carnage and, well, general impaling. Also referred to as “Dracula“, “Ivan Lendl“*and now a mate of mine called “Geoff“. Or Geoff The Impaler as he clearly has a direct dynastic link to Mr “no time for a trial, run ’em through with cold steel” himself.

Today was designated for chucking toy gliders off big Welsh hills. Apparently it was also scheduled for a short – yet still spinally tapping an 11 on the boredom meter – visit to the local garden festival which I’d conveniently forgotten about**. Anyway after a brief yet tough negotiation on proxying child-care, I chucked a whole load of foam, wood and GRP into the love-bus and made haste to Wales.

Where, on trudging to the slope edge entirely encumbered by silly toys, three things became obvious. Firstly I’d forgotten to bring any food (although I do now have a tea flask which makes me feel about 123 years old), secondly the wind had decided to ply its blustery trade elsewhere, and thirdly my pathetic riding attempts from last night had seamlessly transmogrified into rubbish attempts at missing the ground.

After two “arrivals” which charitably could be called landings only because the model was amazingly available for re-use, I wisely kept the expensive moulded rocket entirely un-built on the grounds I’d also forgotten a large black bag to collect the remains. So a third fling of a glider entirely built (and oft repaired) by my own personal fists of ham, enter stage left a post modern Vlad who ruthlessly upstaged a piece of the 3-D world I had been previously minding my own business in.

The result – as any amateur engineering student will tell you – of a large heavy object hitting something rather light and flimsy will be an explosive energy transfer similar to a high velocity bullet splatting a melon. Descendant of Impaler flew on largely undamaged, while “just flying along” had an airborne rekit of his model with the fusalage plummeting vertically in the manner of a GM lawn dart, and the wing spinning away towards some hard bark.

Not much you can do at this point other than try not to blub. Some 150 feet below us were the remains, and it took a while to collect the various pieces. Amazingly – especially since I built it – the fuz was largely undamaged after its’ sub soil examination of the local peat and the wing has another crease which is merely an addition to the many other repairs. Like Mountain Biking buddies, the fellas were very supportive suggesting some kind of electronically operated bilge hook for the next encounter and also softened the blow by agreeing “that was your best landing today”.

Could’ve been worse, could’ve been the garden show. Still at least we stuffed the Aussies at Rugby and saw off the American Part Timers at cheeseball eh?

* for younger readers of the Hedgehog, Ivan “The Count” Lendl was a tennis player of some renown although much of his success was directly linked to a physical manifestation of Vlad himself. Opponents would regularly find themselves exciting eviscerated during changovers.

** Or if honestly was taking minutes, it would read “checked weather forecast, surely no one will risk holding an outdoor festival with a 10mph knob on Northerly with the prospect of stonking thermals later“. That’s the problem with honestly, it ruthlessly outs my inner geek.

Just lie there..

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense2 Comments

… and tell me about your mother. Freud* was an odd bugger, of that there is no doubt, but less well known is the awesome nuttiness of his contemporary Carl Jung who – after a somewhat public falling out with his fellow couch-man – embarked on a project to categorise each and every one of us into a personality bucket. All of which he apparently achieved without assuming a default position of an Oedipus complex.

At which point, everyone who was anyone** ignored his dry and dusty research, instead flocking to the Freudmesiter and blaming their parents for everything. Frankly, that man has much to answer for based on the feedback I get from my own kids. Anyway, post war and with a bunch of people needing jobs that didn’t involve killing people, the US government funded a Mother/Daughter combination to resurrect Jung’s theories to be applied to the modern workplace.

Myers and Briggs have stalked vocational spaces ever since with their carefully cloistered sixteen boxes of people types explaining why some of us – when presented with an audience – feel the irrepressible urge to moon while others are found hiding in cupboards. As part of a “group grope” management bonding thing, one of the many delights included completing a questionnaire which, carefully analysed, would inform exactly what kind of nutter you are.

Not being terrible self aware, but having been repeatedly – and tediously – harranged for being too impulsive/too noisy/too direct/too just bloody annoying, it wasn’t exactly a cosmic shock to find what passes as my personality is essentially keen to party, especially if it’s a party where the centre of attention is forever me. What did somewhat prick my balloon of carefully crafted amusement and cynicism was the probable reason for my obsession with lists.

I don’t do lists; I love lists, love them in the way of the incurably OCD. Mere collections of tasks are nowhere near enough; firstly we weave in sub-lists, create lists of lists, assign priority stars, stab linkages, arrows and – I am quite proud of this -mark the first item in BLOCK CAPITALS “Complete To-Do List”. When you’ve written “Find Dog” on a notepad, while said dog is probably playing with the traffic, it is absolutely clear that organisation and structure are mainstays of your life.

Except they’re not. My aspiration goals may be neatly documented but they are never completed. Frustration lies between those two points, especially if you have the ability to understand what needs to be done, but are far too lazy to actually do it. Yet I cannot sit down with a beer and a book in the garden, if the supporting chair has a weed in my slumped eye-line. The reluctant conclusion from all this is that my basic slackness is infected with a work ethic itself inkly verbalised in lists.

Because if I every finish this list, and that list, and the list I wrote at 2am while wide awake trying to order chaos, then I will be free to finally sit down, do fuck all and not feel guilty about it. Waste time without obsessing that it IS a waste of time, stop making changes because they represent a new start, give up on it trying for perfect and accept that good enough generally is. What I may have learned is that list is never going to be done, so I may as well try being a normal person to see how that feels.

Carol’s pretty normal – with the exception she had a rather large blind spot in terms of suitable husbands – and I was pretty damn sure her personality was pegged by my five minute skim of some fifty years of research. And I was mostly right, except for the tiny assumption that she loved planning, lists – natch – being organised and helping organise, sorting stuff out and getting things done right now. It appears I was 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} wrong there, which may explain some issues of domestic disharmony in the last fifteen years.

Slow learner, that’s me. There is no point profiling the kids as they are perfectly attuned to any personality trait most effective in annoying their parents. And don’t think by changing the rules that this will in any way wrong foot them, because they adapt way quicker than us old fuckers. And the dog is essentially mad so he’s not getting done unless there’s some hidden category involving a mental type entirely predicated on stealing food, chasing the cat, and – in a perfect world – combining the two.

You cannot read too much into this shit, because we’re all different, yes? We don’t fit into virtual boxes dreamt up by people who apply statistical rigour to something so organically random it cannot be so simply categorised. But for all of that, it doesn’t stop it being mildly interesting if only to make you question just why mainlining the arsehole motherlode comes so naturally. So this weekend I shall organise nothing, my listing notebook shall remain unopened, I’ll let the spontaneous genie back out of the bottle and refuse to accept life will end if that door isn’t painted.

Beer for breakfast then.
* Sigmund. Not Clement although of the two, I felt old Clemmie was slightly more bonkers at the end

** Although by this time they’d been convinced they were somebody else. Probably a Pharaoh, unlikely to be a turn-of-the-domini street sweeper. I wonder what that is?

Hospital Pass

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Would have been useful these the last couple of days. Taking the alternative meaning, Verbal accepted one, when agreeing to a game of Extreme Leapfrog, before landing in Hereford A&E. For about 30 hours. Having turned eleven only two days earlier, it could be viewed as a belated birthday present that keeps on giving.

I should have suspected the worse when Nick – the long suffering bike mechanic – text’d me on Saturday to say “Your brakes are now fixed……. but the bearings in the front wheel are fcked”. Ying, and bloody yang. Wondering if this rash of expensive failures would ever end, I idly inquired to the world at large, what could possibly break next. On the not unreasonable grounds that everything I owned appeared to be pulling a sickie in the bike shop.

The answer was Verbal. Honestly if this goes on, I’m calling in a priest. I might not even wait for somebody’s head to start spinning round, because it is obvious that some kind of “broken Jonah” stalks my world. Verbal’s initial – and only – leapfrog attempt went up, then sideways, rolled off the top and crashed down directly on her elbow. Which decided it’d make a quick break with the bone it has been recently attached to and play the “arm’s at a funny angle now” card.

Local community hospital suggested dislocation. Not as a remedy, more as a diagnosis. Hereford A&E eventually pony’d up a radiographer and HD digital images showed a gap where once there was none. I received most of this information by text message while being whisked* westwards by the Cotswold Trundler. Arriving home, breaking news announced an operation was forthcoming to pin all the broken bits back together.

This triggered a mad sequence of panic involving pyjama’s, toothbrushes, couldn’t-be-more-helpful-neighbours, inconsolable Random child and mad dog. I should have know better – based on my own experiences – and the promised op was postponed, leaving nothing other than a late night clothes delivery and a bit of sleepless night.

Following morning, we received an unexpected call from the hospital promising that Verbal was second in line for the knife. My expectations were quite low as we fought our way back into Hereford, and these expectations were not quite met. Typical NHS really, brilliant nurses, great Children’s ward full of light and toys**, aloof consultants and rubbish timekeeping. Carol hung about all day while nothing happened, until – finally – at 2pm, Verbal got the big sleeping draught and a major wiring job to align the wonky bones.

She was extremely stoic and brave all the way through. More than I was after my last big accident. Random and I pitched up about six to find a groggy and in-pain Verbal demanding if we’d brought any food. So not entirely groggy then. I asked if Carbon or Titanium had been used for the repair, but no one seemed to know anything. On those grounds, we decided to do a runner since there seemed to be no interest in keeping her in.

Anyway she’s off school for a week which I’m sure means a) lots of TV and b) some frustration for her mum. Next Friday we get to find how “Operation Barbed Wire” has gone and if they need to add a cast to her list of bloody annoying things that you get with a broken arm.

It is amazing what a sense of perspective you get when one of your children is badly hurt. I’m not suggesting you try it for that reason, but it is good to be reminded what is important. On that note, I’m off to unwind my head on some local trails. I have sacrificed a twisted derailer to the Gods of Fate to protect me from any more disasters. We can but hope.

* wrong word. If you whisked anything this slowly, it’d just curdle

** They even had a little games room with a Pool table and a Wii. Someone had nicked the remotes tho. What kind of people eh?

Oi You “Clever Trousers”

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

That’s me. In a weekend packed with potential disasters which included Auto-Mugging on London’s mean streets, surviving Harrod’s toy floor without having to eat the credit card, managing some sleep while ensconced in the same room as two excited children, and remaining sober for absolutely bloody hours whilst others were nose down in the lager trough, I serenely* triumphed over serial adversity with only hints of sulky tantrum.

Talking of the speech as I did for quite a long time, my suit was noticeably un-fruited, my trousers entirely failed to explode, and the guests were kind enough to laugh. Sometimes even out loud. It was a strange experience in many ways; sobriety comes hard to me especially in the face of a free bar – so after my new Sis-in-Law refused all our pleadings, she and my bro were finally hitched and we decamped to a rather lovely Victorian pub full of the desperate-to-have-a-drink.

Here are some of the things I learned during a couple of displacement activity hours; the City of London is a lifeless void at the weekend – shops don’t open, restaurants remain resolutely bolted shut, pubs franchise their entire buildings for the event-only trade, and you cannot buy a box of matches to re-enact the Great Fire or light a cheeky cig. With nothing for tourists and a workforce that is entirely suburban, this square mile is tumble-weed post-apocalypse empty.

My surreal wanderings were interrupted by some random flash of illogic bringing forth the speeches some two hours early. This was good because it mitigated the real possibility of me eating an entire packet of Marlboro Light, but was equally bad as most of the guests still retained the power of speech and thought, somewhat working against my cunning plan to make them laugh. I bet their aim was still pretty damn good as well.

The stage was set if not very big. We ousted the band (their soundcheck having rendered most of us ear bleedingly deaf), nicked the radio mike and looked out on a sea of about a million people shoaled around the oval bar. A place I’d very much like to be in, or – preferably – upside down under. Worse still, my straight laced middle bro was both way funnier than I expected and entirely spontaneous. This from a bloke who carries out risk assessments before tackling a difficult set of stairs. The bride’s father was – well – American but none the worse for it, except when his ramblings nearly had me grabbing the mike and demanding to be put out of my misery.

Before we go on, it’s important (well to me anyway) to understand this is not me making a drama out of something that isn’t a crisis. I know – as many of you do – that I am a terrible show off, ego writing cheques my body can’t cash, terribly economical with the truth and never happier than when the attention is entirely centered on my verbal diarrhoea. But the terms of reference are different, those are my terms and my rules of engagement. Standing up in front of a 130+ people – most of which you don’t know – and having to be funny, that’s something entirely more scary.

And it was. I learned some more things; clever sentence construction translates poorly to the spoken word. Jokes that read well present something a little more ambiguous when blurted out at high speed, crafted stories hard learned by rote sound dry and forced, pauses are good, ah-doc works better, half as much would have been twice as funny. My desperate last minute edit made the whole thing a bit less baggy, so after twelve minutes – of which I LOVED the last five when I dumped the text and switched to something a bit less formulaic – I also found that people are incredibly generous, easy to please and happy not to have been bored.

And afterwards – with a welcome beer now in hand – I thought I had made too much of the whole thing. But I’m not sure; not because it actually mattered that much to me, but because it was my Bro’s wedding, and he’d rather stupidly entrusted me to humiliate him, and I didn’t want to fuck it up. Which is why I cut it, took out the edgy stuff, lost the best jokes but kept the happy vibe of the day. It felt like a mature response to something, and that’s not really my normal mode of operation.**

To that end; I played more with my kids than I did drink with some old friends. I left my extended family to get on with it because I wanted to spend time with my own. I turned down God knows how many beers and left sober enough to walk back to the Hotel. Where I grabbed a shower and much needed cup of tea. You always worry about getting old, but the bugger just sneaks in while you’re busy trying to be different.

Walking the mutt last night, I was struck my how little London appeals to me. Having done some tourist stuff with the family, it’s all fine and occasionally amazing but it ain’t for me. Place is full of nutters I told the kids on the way in, and nothing in the last 48 hours convinced me otherwise. Good to see the bro married off to a lovely girl, shame they couldn’t have done it somewhere less concrete-y or full of arseholes.

The last thing I learned was the worrying fact that almost all of my living relatives read this blog. Some of them find it amusing, many doubt it’s accuracy and most find the swearing a little reprehensible. I promised I’d try not to write “fuck” quite as often. Don’t send me back to London tho, or all bets are off.

* Thanks to some a reprehensible backslide into a single packet of lung unfriendly pharmaceuticals.

** Not sure I should have bothered, because his brave – if rather foolhardy – jamming with the band provided more humiliation that I could ever dole out. He did play most of the right chords, just not at the right speed. Or in the right order. Fair play tho, cahoonies the size of coconuts.

Suits You Sir.

On By AlexIn Other stuff5 Comments

“I could buy a half decent set of forks for that” was my initial response, when presented with the price for a pair of – sadly non exploding – troons and matching jacket. Okay, the cost may have been somewhat justified by the small detail of them actually fitting but even so…

There is a little shop in Ross that preserves the 1950s shopping experience. You are served by the genial owner who has all the mannerisms of “Mr Humphries” in his prime. I am not sure I needed to have my inside leg measured quite so carefully. Certainly not twice.

Anyway, he listened – politely – while I explained my ongoing suit buying problem. Other than being a tight-arse northerner. One, I am a strapping six foot individual*, but essentially a dwarf from the hips down. Two, being a cycle obsessed freak, my thighs fit in flappy shorts and not much else. Three, because of one, I need a jacket that would double – for most normal size people – as a full body cape and 4) I don’t like wearing suits

He eyed up my carefully thrown-together ensemble (baseball boots, dirty jeans, ancient paint-stained T-Shirt, baldness – possibly trying too hard) and presented me first with a garment of 1980’s shiny-ness. I have to say I was less than keen as even I know the Crocket-and-Tubbs era has clearly passed. But on slipping it over my wonky shoulders, I couldn’t help thinking somehow this was making me look even more debonair that normal. A tough act as I’m sure you’ll agree.

Sadly we ran into what I like to call “the trouser problem“. Either comedy clown-waist or drain-pipe tight thighs. No matter, off he hummed and harred into a stockroom putting me firmly in the mind of Mr. Ben, before returning with a rather traditional Navy Blue Suit. Luckily Carol was there to stop me launching into a diatribe about how boring and old fashioned it looked, before I’d even thrown a leg in. Amazingly, this one fitted even better, although my purchasing decision was now being made purely as a mitigation strategy to prevent further reach-arounds.

Eventually we agreed that with some minor alterations, I’d stop looking like I had stolen it, and talk turned to prices. Problem is, this is a proven sales strategy get the customer something they think they want and then hit them with a price. I didn’t dare ask for a discount in case he offered – instead – to throw in a Cravat or a Shooting Stick. It’s that kind of place.

And yet, I found myself curiously enjoying the experience. He clearly had millions of years of experience. It wasn’t pushy or disinterested. He did actually seem to care that I wouldn’t stride out in my new threads looking as if I’d just been demobbed. Curious times indeed – maybe this is what middle age feels like.

Anyway, as the Clash famously said London is Calling and I am reluctantly answering that call. 72 hours of logistical hell, congestion charges, tube stations, protocols, procedures and speeches. All with two small-ish children who find it all fantastically interesting, and therefore become even more difficult to control. I shall report back early next week on how it all went, unless the speech was so toe-cringingly unfunny, I’ve booked myself instead into long-term therapy.

* in my own mind, and out of range of a mirror.

Worst Man.

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

I spent far too many weekends in my 20s and 30s attending weddings. I always felt it was appropriate to turn up, get pissed, make an arse of myself before lying down in a comfortable gutter for the night. Something I carried seamlessly into our own wedding day, other than the gutter thing but only because the distance between bar and bed was carryable.

And for a few of those lost weekends, the additional responsibility of being promoted to Best Man was thrust upon me. Really, really bad idea. I was forever losing rings, speeches and, on one memorable occasional, the groom. My organisations skills hit the high water mark of assembling a few random people at a place of Worship, before wandering off to check the bar opening time.

I lacked the respect for the job, the willpower to ignore the delights of a free bar, and my speeches were delivered – at best – adequately. And, inevitably, properly plastered.

You would have thought with that history, no-one would ever ask me again and yet I’m sad to report, another disaster is almost upon us. And worse even that, all of my family will be there. Those for which I am directly responsible, and a wider group to whom I related.

My old brother is getting married. In a rash of Senior Moment Insanity, he offered me the opportunity to make a fool of him. In a rather more studied and inspired moment, he split the job between me and the middle bro.

Now playing to our strengths, that’s him with awesome organisational skills and the ability to herd cats and me being a lazy fucker occasionally known for writing amusing words, he took on the job of sorting out absolutely everything leaving me only to craft and present the speech.

This seemed an absolutely brilliant idea right up until the point when I realised what my responsibilities were in this arrangement. This can be summed up by repeating an earlier conversation whilst I was bemoaning the unfairness of my lot:

I am not looking forward to this speech you know

Why Not, you love being the centre of attention, they’ll all be pissed what can go wrong?

They might not laugh. They might all hate me. My trousers might explode. Whole episode is a cluster fuck waiting to happen

What? Total bollocks. I thought you liked writing funny stuff

That’s different, there isn’t an audience

Yes there is, you just can’t see them

It’s not the same

It is

IT BLOODY ISN’T

I am shitting the bed. I had no problem writing the speech, but that’s not going to help me delivering it. Because one thing I do know, reading off a prepared text is going to be about as funny as a brain tumour.

It’s too late to back out now. Most of my living relatives, people I’ve known since school and my own little family unit will all be watching. And I’ll be talking too fast, thinking too slow all while trying to stay sober enough to command fair use of my legs.

I hope my trousers do explode; at least that’s guaranteed to be funny.

For this, we had to put up with that?

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

I know, I know two consecutive posts with a political tinge, but we live in tumultous times. Or do we – because after four weeks of lie and counter-lie, endless rhetoric, vox-pop postulation and the continued cynacism of an electorate, we appear to be back exactly where we started.

As regular Hedgehoggers’ will know, my firmly held view is that voting for politicians only encourages them, and therefore should only be undertaken after much thought or much alcohol. And so you cannot help to be a bit proud of a nation that absorbs a month of political saturation, debates it, ponders it and then chooses to entirely ignore it.

Early indications would suggest the percentages of the vote are pretty much where they started on April the 6th. This after one bloke was apparently more popular that Churchill, another performed the kind of “smile at the front/stab in the back” volte face we associate with our esteemed Prime Minister, while the posh lad did his best to pretend he wasn’t really.

If they weren’t such a alien race of self important, power hungry lunatics, you would almost feel sorry for them. An exhausting, country-spanning, photo opportunic sales pitch glossing over the cracks (although Chasm feels like a better word here) none wanted to talk about, and instead promising a glorious future that looked pretty unlikey to anyone with sufficient mental prowess to, say, feed themselves.

And at the end of it, no one actually gives a shit. Those who could be bothered to vote – which doesn’t appear to include the much hyped surge of enfranchised individuals fired up by the campaign – stuck a cross where they mostly always had, shrugged their shoulders and waited for the world to end.

Deckchairs, Titanic anyone? I feel we would have been better represented by Private Godfrey and his “We’re all doomed” prophesy. Stock Markets in free fall, riots on European streets, panic on Wall Street, Budget Deficit with lots of scary zeros, 2.5 million umemployed, the gap between those with and those with not ever widening and, almost propetically, it’s pissing down.

I think I’ll just go and hide under a blanket until someone trustworthy tells me the worst is over.