keppet

A Day in Zion

2012-01-15T03:21:00.000Z

We woke to weather. It was tipping it down. We unanimously agreed that we could afford to sleep on. We threw the heater back on after having it off and cold overnight and got some more kip in. I had to bail eventually due to the heat and sat outside on a little bench by the window, watching the rain come down and pretending to read a little.

Eventually, we got up and were ready to face the world. Breakfast was not included in our stay so we went to the restaurant across the car park as advised by reception. They had peach pancakes as their special so I ordered a "short stack". The service was very slow and when it came, I wasn't all that impressed by the stodgy pancakes and cold peach slices. I also couldn't finish it and doubted that it really was as short as it could have been.

In the rain, we set off, first to the visitor centre nestled in a grove of autumnal trees. The leaves were all a perfect shade of yellow, off-set vibrantly from the red rock and green grass. From there we drove up the valley, following the Virgin River up the canyon.

The valley floor was lush due to the river and I found myself missing the insane rock formations that had made up the journey so far. It was great to see the autumn colours but somehow it seemed prosaic.

We took a short walk to the Temple of Sinawava which is as far up the valley as you can go without wading in the river up the narrows. We saw someone there who was returning from doing just that in normal trousers soaked to his waist. It seemed crazy to do that without waders.

The day was drizzly but we were still privy to some great views down the valley with the tall canyon sides narrowing the horizon. It faded into cloud in the far distance and was frustratingly difficult to photograph in an interesting way and I was all in all disappointed at the place after where we had been. I knew, however, that the great thing about Zion was its hiking but given the weather, neither of us felt it wise to do anything more than amble on the walks in the valley.

After the riverside walk, we took the trail to Emerald Pools, lower and upper. This walk had a little more to it in terms of elevation but not by much. It offered more views of the valley and a walk under a small waterfall (in the spring, it would have been more dramatic). I especially liked the upper pool where skit went off scrambling for a good view and I just sat amongst the fallen leaves enjoying the season.

Our final jaunt in the valley was to go to the Weeping Rock where the near-constant supply of water from the permeable rocks is forced out on meeting an impermeable layer. The rock face is described as having Hanging Gardens due to the plant-life that clings to it. It was here that my camera's battery life dropped to 1/3.

As was our way, we polished off the daylight with an effort to get a good sunset. We went back on the road, out of the valley and through the mile-long tunnel to the Canyon Overloook trail. With perfect timing, as demonstrated on nearly every day of our road-trip, we made it up to the trailhead with just half an hour or so before sunset. The trail was above the canyon, as the name implies, and above the verdant vegetation, back in the realm of sandstone rocks carved in interesting ways. I felt at home.

We walked the trail, pausing along the way for skit to take photos of another group for them, to the canyon overlook point. We were just in time for sunset. Our trip had made us fairly immune to heights by this point and the view of the valley was only so-so, marred of course by the cloudy weather and poor visibility. The sunset was pretty muted. However, it was a great spot for this poor girl who missed the rocks of the previous places and enjoyed the barren landscape that felt so inhospitable.

Inhospitable to humans, that is, as fellow sunset watchers pointed out to us mountain goats in the distance. It was hard to make out the little white specks as goats until the started to move. Seemingly sheer cliff faces were no trouble for them.

The twilight crept in and so we returned to the car before the light faded too much. We returned to the hotel. I informed reception that we intended to cut short our stay at Zion in favour of a trip to Death Valley. Our spirits had been partially dampened by the weather, the lack of heating in the room and dearth of wifi but above all we had been spoilt by our success in the trip so far at discovering new places. Zion has a few decent trails for hiking and we could have stayed for the three days I planned doing them all but our itchy feet got the better of us.

We went back to the Spotted Dog that evening. It was such a huge success the night before that we actually were very happy to make a return visit. This time we had to wait for a table as we arrived earlier, during a busier part of the evening. The fact we arrived earlier didn't actually change us being almost the last to leave again.

This time, skit went slightly crazy and ordered vast quantities of food. All I could do was look on in awe as I struggled with my pasta mains and sorbet dessert. The chocolate cake looked set to defeat her but she conquered it magnificently.

After our success with the Petite Syrah from California the night before, we felt somewhat confident in the quality of the wine list and opted for a Utah wine on the basis that if the restaurant was willing to serve it, it couldn't have been bad. And who knows, maybe it was a well kept secret how great the wines were in this dry state.

I'm no wine expert, but I am pretty sure red wine isn't meant to fizz. Well, it didn't exactly fizz but that is the nearest I can come to describing the sensation of the wine on my tongue. There was an effervescent bite to it that I have never experienced with wine before. Had I not known that that was not how wine was meant to be, I wouldn't have said it was necessarily a bad quality though. It didn't really matter that it felt strange and to claim otherwise would be an act of snobbery (which is of course what wine is all about). However, this was clearly not the success of the night before.

It was a second enjoyable night at the Spotted Dog though and we yet again skipped on the roadside back to our hotel in high spirits. We were aware that the next day was predicted to bring sunshine and we were looking forward to seeing Zion in full glory.

Bryce to Zion

2012-01-08T22:50:00.000Z

When we awoke, I clambered to the window to see this "view" the receptionist promised us.

It was white.

Snow had fallen overnight and was still falling. I looked out and saw a road not too far away, blanketed with snow. No mere side-road, this was the route we would need to take going west many miles. As I watched I saw a car carefully driving on the road demonstrating that it was possible though maybe not easy.

We went down to breakfast and there was a sense of magic in the air. There were children playing in the snow outside as we ate and everyone seemed relaxed. We took our time over breakfast, knowing that as the snow was still falling there wasn't any hurry to get out onto the road. Back in our room, we called parents and took advantage of the excellent wireless in our room one last time to watch the John Lewis advert that made Philip Schofield cry.

We bundled up and checked out, saying farewell to my favourite hotel of the trip with its lobby furniture carved from deer antlers including rocking chairs and book detailing the trek of a family across the United States (one chapter was called "Susannah's Sacrifice").

We paid our fee on entrance (actually we upgraded from paying individual fees to getting a annual pass for National Parks which made me feel like a very Proper Person) and drove to Bryce Point which was as far as they had cleared the roads. There were a few people at Bryce Point exclaiming at the view and trying not to slide on the path.

The snow had eased off and the snow clouds were beginning to clear. Regions of the amphitheatre were bathed in golden sun while others were still under cloud like a patchwork quilt. The sight was as awe-inspiring as the night before (though from a different viewpoint) and even more beautiful for the layer of snow on the tops of the hoodoos.

Skit and I made the obligatory shots of Bryce Canyon and then considered our next step. We had wanted to complete the "Peek-a-boo" trail in the amphitheatre but that was before the snowfall made casual-shoe hiking problematic. So we thought that we'd follow the trail down into the amphitheatre a little way to get the change in elevation and turn back as soon as the path became difficult.

Three hours later, we returned.

It turned out, the path was easy. Fresh snow with only a few footprints on it without any ice or deep drifts (except for the one by the side of the path where skit made a snow-angel) meant for good walking. We hiked down to the base of the amphitheatre in our usual slowed-by-taking-photographs way, gasping with each new view of the hoodoos. As great as the views were going down, it was the Peek-a-boo trail loop on the canyon floor that held the greatest surprises.

The elevation difference from Bryce point to the Peek-a-boo trail is about 800 feet/240 metres and on the trail there were fairly sheltered portions where the snow had not settled. By the time we made it down to the trail, the sun was properly out and beating upon us strongly. We both spent the hike slowing taking off layers and faffing with whether we need gloves or not.

The trail was aptly named for how with every turn, the surroundings surprised us. It was a trail of discovery as we walked through arches and found ourselves transported to new worlds. The hoodoos varied in size and shape. One turn found us in the midst of a hoodoo gathering, all in a vast semicircle in worship to the sky. Rocks rose up as spires and turrets or resided grandly as cathedrals. They extended forever as an insane Magic Eye of rock shapes. We both gasped with the beauty of the wall of windows.

The trail rolled up and down, keeping our hearts pumping nicely with the exertion but never being too difficult. Just perfect, in fact. We noted the number of footsteps in the snow and realised that we had the company of a handful of people on this trail including a couple with snow chains on their shoes. Fortunately our unchained shoes never failed us.

The walk was absolute perfection with one not-so-minor flaw: we didn't really intend to go on it. I brought no food or water with me. By the time we completed the trail, we were both somewhat regretting that and still had the 800 feet climb ahead of us. Back at the top, we felt like we both needed and deserved pie.

We went to the only restaurant open during the off-season and got a late lunch and followed that up with pie (cherry pie in my case). One trip to the gift shop later (where skit bought petrified wood) and we were on the road again.

By this point, the roads had cleared of snow and there were no concerns driving. Our destination was Zion National Park. We needed to back-track most of the journey we made the day before but it felt quicker to me this time and we were nearly at Zion when the sun set. The road took us through the park in order to get to the nearest settlement for accommodation and food: Springdale. It was a good road as all roads are in National Parks (it seems) and I enjoyed driving the tight bends up until the point where it grew too dark to see the exit of them. There was also a tunnel that was over a mile long. That was fun.

We got to our hotel, pre-booked, in the early evening. It was the same place I had stayed at about five years ago and loved it but since then it appeared to have invested no money in the place (no wifi and worse- the room had no heat). I complained about the heat situation and we got a noisy electric heater that made me feel sick when it was on but it was somewhat necessary as it was, though the warmest place we'd been to since Needles, quite cold.

After a rest in the hotel, we went out, arm in arm, on the hunt for dinner. We just walked down the road in the direction of the park and totally failed to find anywhere to eat for long enough that we were beginning to worry that we should have taken the car. But then the Spotted Dog Cafe appeared.

It was a good restaurant boldly proclaiming its wine cellar credentials. We spent ages mulling over our choice of wine and eventually got a Californian Syrah. The meals were great. I had a very creative pasta dish with pear and ricotta stuffed parcels. It was simply heaven. The meal was wonderfully enjoyable and we were in good spirits. Somehow we ended up as nearly the last ones there so we asked to take away the rest of the wine. The night before at Bryce, an old man tried to remove beer from the restaurant and was retained by the staff until he gave it up as it was illegal for him to do that according to the law in Utah. However, in the Spotted Dog Cafe it seemed to be acceptable.

We skipped back to the hotel slightly merry and warmed by the good food and wine. Well fortified, we settled down in our room to watch some Mad Men (nope, the Suitcase still depressed me) and Community.

It was a good day. Bryce was clearly the highlight of the roadtrip for me and the Spotted Dog Cafe was my favourite place we ate at in the south-west. Just brilliant.

Kanab to Bryce

2011-12-27T00:09:00.000Z

Breakfast in the Comfort Inn was an exciting affair. For a start, the tables were all occupied by people in sombre dress so we had to share a table with strangers. And for a finish, there was a waffle maker. No place thus far had had a waffle maker so this was exciting. And having had no experience of waffle making, I needed instruction in how to use it. A friendly man (in sombre dress) helped me out but I still managed to britta it by flipping the maker over before er... closing the lid. So some of the batter came out. Yes, clever. Also, I don't actually like waffles but the novelty value here won out.

We shared our table with a friendly couple and their grandchild. I asked them "what's with the sombre dress?" and learnt that they were there for a funeral (skit could have given me fair warning that perhaps my tone could have been softer but no...). The man was incidentally a commercial airline pilot which impressed me somewhat.

After breakfast, we skipped to the building next door which was the visitor information centre for Kanab (it was a good thing that we were at t he Comfort Inn and not the Best Western). We asked for advice on what to do and received directions to a slot canyon called "Lick Wash". Taking the name as a good and amusing omen, we took our new maps and directions and left Kanab.

The route to Lick Wash took us passed an old movie set which appeared like a post-apocalyptic Wild West town (next year's big blockbuster) and onto an unsealed road for about 15 miles. The soft patter of stones on the car reminded us to be glad that the car hire company didn't seem bothered by small scuffs and scratches.

We parked the car at the head of the Lick Wash trail into the slot canyon. We were the only ones there. I signed the day-hike permit book there to record the fact that we were going in and noted that there had been fewer than one group of people per day that month. It wasn't really a popular trail in November.

Lick Wash is in the Staircase. This region of the Staircase was in the white cliffs so the rocks weren't a vibrant colour but they made delightfully interesting formations. Apparently the changing direction of prevailing winds caused the layers of sandstone to change direction but I am not sure what it was that caused the honeycomb effects or the hollows that looked like Darth Vader's helmet.

Skit and I spent most of our time photographing the rock walls and little time progressing through the slot canyon. Again, it was cold, but not too cold and of course we were sheltered from the wind. There were patches of snow on the canyon floor and most of the leaves from the trees had turned and fallen. We sat and ate snacks before turning around and returning to the car.

The road back to Kanab was at a standstill. And then the queue started moving... until we were at a standstill again. It was frustrating and we had no idea why. At some point, heavy vehicles passed us but that in itself was no rational explanation. After our half hour or so delay, we stopped in Kanab for a burger and (sweet potato) fries in a small independent diner and planned our next leg, to Bryce. The route was pleasant and simple, north on a road that wound around hillocks and through villages with the slowing changing rock colour on either side as it passed through the different exposed regions of the staircase. On the drive, a big black SUV was hassling me by sticking on my bumper in a no-passing zone. It finally did pass me of course and about ten minutes later, we passed it on the side of the road with a police car. That kept me grinning for the rest of the drive.

Until Red Canyon. Because at that point, the only thoughts in my head were variations on wow. Suddenly we were in a place with rocks a bright orange-red, much more vivid and awe-inspiring than the vermilion cliffs. The rocks stood up, towers by the roadside. We naturally pulled over and took a short hike amongst the red towers. The sun was low and when the sunlight struck the red rock, it was all the brighter.

A tree in the Red Canyon had been decorated with small stones on its branches and twigs and notches and niches. We added a stone each, close together but not invading each other's personal space.

We drove on through red rock arches, heading towards Bryce with an eye towards hitting the park at sunset. Since we are naturally talented, we were dead on time. No one was at the park entrance so we went on by without paying the fee and headed straight for "sunset point" on the basis that there may be a clue in the name. We parked and got out of the car and then I may have sworn.

The sight of Bryce Canyon was awe-inspiring. Delicate pillars of rock, from needles to towers, some top-heavy, others tapering to a point, had erupted from the canyon floor. For miles the impossible features stretched, in this giant amphitheatre from another world. It was simply unbelievable that such a thing could exist. So different from the disbelief that surrounded the Grand Canyon, this wasn't about size but about bearing witness to art, rock sculptured by nature in exquisite forms.

I kind of liked it.

Skit and I viewed Bryce Canyon in awe (but weren't so stupefied that we couldn't take photos) as the sun set behind us. As the sun disappeared, we left.

We took a drive east to what looked like a promising town on the map but when we got there, the one motel looked dubious (and empty) so we went back to Bryce. At the park entrance, there were a couple of Best Westerns. Just because we saw it first, we went for the Best Western Plus. The foyer was grand with a large fireplace at its centre and furniture made from antlers. We got a room, the cheapest room in the entire trip, and settled down in the fancy digs (we knew it was fancy because there was a superfluous sink).

Skit availed herself of the laundry as I messed with the tv and managed to break it. No matter, I was kept rather busy looking over my photos of Bryce and the "hoodoos" (stone pillars). Late in the evening, we went to the only place open for dinner: Ruby's Restaurant. After eating, we tried to get some star-gazing in but the world was against us as it was cloudy that night. We noted that the temperature had plummeted to below zero but thought no more as we went to bed.

Tusayan to Kanab

2011-12-23T11:52:00.000Z

We checked out of the hotel in Tusayan after availing ourselves yet again of the buffet breakfast. The route took us east along the south rim of the Grand Canyon passing scenic view after scenic view. Obviously, we needed to get out at every single one of them, worried that perhaps if we missed one, it would turn out to be The Best View. I think we were still struggling to come to terms with the Grand Canyon and wanting to give it every chance to truly impress us.

The view we subconsciously wanted was Grandview. It truly was. I am not sure how this view distinguished itself against all the others but somehow it was the perfect balance of colours and arrangement of peaks. Perhaps a big part of the allure was the fact that a little scurrying brought us to a ledge with huge falls into the canyon as opposed to raggedy slopes. Sometimes the frisson of death lends to the majesty.

There was a board with some human history of the Grand Canyon on it. Spanish explorers "discovered" (from the European perspective) the Grand Canyon in the 16th century and described the hills in the canyon as "bigger than the great tower of Seville" (104.5 m/343 ft). Which is true... And we were amused at the understatement without being critical of it because what else was to be their yardstick? But it does go to show how tough the perspective of the canyon makes it and how much of a struggle it is to put it into terms a human can understand. Another point that amused us was that they thought they could just nip down to the Colorado river to bring back desperately needed water- a quest doomed for failure.

We drove on and detoured to the Tusayan Ruin and museum on the basis of "might as well, we're only here once" (though that is a bit pessimistic). The small museum set the scene for the ruins which date back to the twelfth century. We viewed the ruins and discussed the pros and cons of having your kiva entrance directly above the fire pit and moved on.

Our final viewpoint, the end of this scenic drive, was Desert View. The Desert View Watchtower, shorter than the great tower of Seville, was built in the early thirties and designed by someone called Mary Colter. According to information boards, she was a stickler for details and put a lot of effort into making the watchtower rugged and fairly ruinous looking to make it match the landscape. Personally, I don't think it particularly nice. She achieved what she wanted it seems but I thought it ugly and not worthy of its amazing location. Plus I was nervous about climbing what looked like a tower on the verge of collapse.

The views from the Watchtower included the Colorado Plateau to the east, the Colorado river in the depths of the canyon and of course the usual mind boggling canyon cliffs and hills. It's essentially the end of the Grand Canyon. We toured the gift shop and climbed the watch tower inside which were reproductions of native art. It was nice but there is only so much time you can give to reproductions.

By this point, it was lunchtime, and we went to the little cafe at this location where the server was the moodiest and most unhappy to serve I have ever met in America. As if it was a huge inconvenience to him, he gave us our requested meals. Skit had "desert tea", a spiced herbal drink and I stuck to the normal caffeinated variety. We took our drinks outside and sat on a bench by the edge of the Grand Canyon with a view of the Watchtower to the east. Possibly the best bench in the world (if Carlsberg made benches...). As soon as the drinks were gone, so were we, out of the cold and into the car.

Our journey was full of ups and downs. Grandview was the highest we went at the Grand Canyon (7,400 ft/2,255 m) and was suitably cold so I was wrapped in jumpers, a coat, gloves and a scarf. After that, our elevation dropped until Little Colorado Canyon where we stopped and discovered that it was back to t-shirt weather. Little Colorado Canyon is just east of the Grand Canyon and feeds into the Colorado, as the name strongly implies. The canyon this river carves looks normal. We looked down at its depth and shrugged it off saying, "we could do that in half an hour". We appreciated its normality though and weren't at all heartbroken to leave the monstrous assault to the senses that is the Grand Canyon behind.

Our next stop was a Navajo trading post. There was a scenic point that interested us but to get to it we needed to go through a road-side market place. Being November, it was rather quiet but there were still about twenty stalls open each with a minder that seemed eager for our custom. After walking through the market to the view, taking the required number of photos and then some, we spent some time browsing the stalls and engaging in polite conversation with the people there. The goods on sale were Native American crafts (apparently- I don't know how many were developed just to sell to tourists like us). It was mainly jewelery with a few other trinkets such as bows and arrows, axes, Christmas baubles...

I bought a bauble and a necklace for myself and a Christmas gift for someone else. Skit bought about half a dozen necklaces (give or take) both as gifts for others and herself. I am not sure what drove this sudden need to shop but it satisfied some capitalist urge.

And so on the road again we were, blasting through the Arizona desert to the dulcet sounds of the Now Show. The landscape was abruptly flat, extending off into the distance where peaks brought an edge to the world. Everything was red and orange rock with landscapes of dry matted grasses stretching for miles.

We had a choice of destination as nowhere had been booked for that night. Kanab and Page were equal distances away but the route to Kanab was classed as "scenic" so we took that through the Vermilion Cliffs area. Since our success timing the sunset at the Grand Canyon with our arrival at the perfect point to witness a sunset, we were keen to have a repeat event and time today's sunset with a view of the famous red cliffs of the area. The issue with this was that we were driving west late in a wintry afternoon directly into the low sun.

We paused to switch driving/being-blinded-by-the-sun responsibilities at a place called "Cliff Dwellers" where large and oddly shaped rocks were randomly scattered in a small area. One looked like a mushroom the size of a shed and others had hollows that provided shelter. According to an information board, a woman got caught out in the area overnight and sheltered there. She decided to stay and build a home there. The ramshackle home still stands or rather slumps. I think she must have been mad.

The sunsets in November are pretty long and for this one, we were mainly on the road so we got to view it from a couple of locations. The first was a view point onto the Vermilion Cliffs which were red to begin with and reddened by the setting sun. We were back up at a high elevation so I only darted out of the car briefly to view this one, letting skit grab all the snaps. The route took us higher and higher up to the Kaibab plateau and the National Forest. This took us to the highest point we reached- 9,000 ft/2,700 m. The forest was dark and snow-laden and understandably deserted.

Our second viewpoint of the extended sunset came just as the last light lay on the horizon which would not have been notable except that the horizon was the Grand Staircase-Escalante. This is a series of different coloured rock layers that through a combination of erosion and uplift form a vast staircase. From our vantage point just out of the forest, the profile of the Grand Staircase was illuminated by the last light of the sun.

Again, cold and complaining, I hurried back to the car with skit in tow and we went on, with Mykey helpfully telling us exactly how many miles we had left in the tank. the next town was Fredonia and the name appealed to us so much we decided to find accommodation there. We failed. It was a small town with one nasty looking motel so instead we kept on the road and went through the border into Utah.

On the outskirts of Kanab, we saw a sign for the "Comfort Inn" with directions "right at the traffic light". We joked that perhaps Kanab only had the one traffic light... It did. As we entered the town, it grew apparently that it wasn't much bigger than Fredonia and comprised mainly of petrol stations. Having seen the sign first, we shunned the Best Western in town for the Comfort Inn.

By looking in the directory in the room, we discovered that there were far more churches than restaurants in town. Not really having much choice, we ended up in a kind-of Mexican food place and yet again I had fajitas (but they were actually better here). Notably, there was actually a vegetarian menu here. In the Bay Area, vegetarianism is not uncommon and yet still finding vegetarian options in a normal restaurant isn't easy and yet here on the border between Arizona and Utah, there was a selection of dishes.

The only other notable thing about this restaurant was that there was deep fried ice-cream for dessert. Yes, we indulged.

Dates

2011-12-17T19:48:00.001Z

17th December - 2nd January UK (mainly Tunbridge Wells)

Otherwise, still in California.

A Day at the Grand Canyon

2011-12-13T01:16:00.001Z

The combination of Mountain Time (an hour ahead of the west coast) and the breakfast buffet closing at 9am meant that skit and I had to get up far too early for a holiday day. Somehow, we made it down to breakfast at a good time and ploughed into the buffet. Having learnt from the day before, I came clutching my own tea bag this time, something guaranteed to be effective. We had fruit, fry-up and French toast (and maybe pancakes too) and were sufficiently stuffed for a hike.

We parked at the Bright Angel trailhead and got our first proper view of the canyon. I had seen it before (in fact, I had been at Bright Angel Lodge before but had forgotten) and my reaction was the same: strangely underwhelmed.

The thing is, the Grand Canyon is too big and too far outside my usual sphere of experience for me to comprehend. I put on an enthusiastic face though and asked skit what she thought. Her response was muted which I took to mean that she was similarly unable to process what it actually was. Perspective is utterly lost at the Grand Canyon as the other side of the canyon and the large peaks in the middle, carved into existence by the Colorado river, just appear as a 2D backdrop. The rock colours are fantastic but muted into pastels at that distance making for a peculiar painting by someone who clearly just likes rocks too much to be healthy. The canyon is just too insane. One river made all of this? This medley of peaks and troughs extending for 277 miles (and 18 miles wide) was created by a river continuously changing its mind over whether it wanted to go? I don't mean to suggest I find it unbelievable, I just find it hard to grasp that something like this was created using the same physical processes as you find throughout the world. It's so unique, so far from the gorges I am familiar with that I have no frame of reference to determine whether I like it or not. In fact, the way that I cannot form an opinion of the Grand Canyon is enough to frustrate me into disliking it but that brings me to the paradox of now having an opinion and so liking it again.

It's tough.

The goal of the day was to gain an appreciation for the Grand Canyon by attempting to walk down into it.

Signs at the top of the trail stressed how lives had been lost in the attempt to go down to the bottom of the canyon and back up again in one day. I actually know someone who has done it (in the winter no less where daylight hours are limited) but skit and I never considered it at all. We were starting pretty late in the morning and did not want to be caught out after dark.

Our hike down was slow. We each had the mind of a goldfish and would walk five steps and go "ooh, I really do have to take a photo of this view" and then walk another five steps and take yet another photograph. As a result, we took about a thousand photographs of the exact same view at slightly varying elevations. The sunlight was not our friend as the south wall was in shadow and the north was brightly lit so there was no exposure that could get both foreground and background but we kept on trying anyway as the sun moved wondering if the new position might in some way change things.

Skit's camera has a "dramatic tone" setting which was a constant source of amusement in the trip especially when, as was the case with the Grand Canyon, the subject was pretty dramatic to begin with. It also had a "pop art" setting which did madness to the already bright colours of the rocks.

We managed to go down only 3 miles (3 miles on the path- obviously vertically we didn't fall that much as the Grand Canyon is only a mile deep) passing blue jays and ground squirrels en route. We noted the changing rock as we crossed from one strata to another and played with the echoes in a segment of the trail that was in a slight crevice. The path was covered with signs of pack-mules (prints and droppings) but we didn't see any up close.

We had lunch at our 3 mile point in the early afternoon and then turned around to get back up to the top of the rim in time to get somewhere for sunset. Getting to a point for a view of the sunset became our goal several times on this trip. Having already too many photos, we didn't pause so much so going back up was quicker. I felt the high altitude as I gasped for breath to do the climb but somehow survived and enjoyed the exertion.

Once at the top, we decided to follow the rim trail west in a desire to find a different view of the Grand Canyon from the one that had been our friend for the past five hours. It was getting colder and the rim trail was deceptively long so we only walked a couple of miles before hopping on a bus that ran parallel to the footpath. We didn't exactly know where we were going- we just wanted somewhere good for a sunset- but on a whim elected to jump off at Mojave Point. Immediately we were greeted by sundogs in the sky. A good start.

The view of the canyon from here was stunning. We could see the Colorado River and identify the rapids. Maybe the hike down the side of the canyon had done the trick in making us more appreciative of the canyon. Certainly it must have helped us identify the variation in the landscape rather than be overwhelmed with rock. The views east and west from this location were each unique and interesting.

The landscape both darkened and reddened as the sunset progressed and skit and I went from parapet to parapet snapping alternately the canyon and the sunset itself. Against the subtle tones of the early sunset were dark contrails. The "inverse contrails" delighted us. The sunset deepened and grew more vibrant until skit and I just looked at it agape proclaiming "I don't even have a word for that colour!", "Maybe fluorescent cerise?"

It was horribly cold as soon as the sun was below the horizon. All the people there piled on the last bus bus when it came just before the last light from the sky vanished. As we boarded, the sky just decided to become ridiculous with reds, oranges and yellows beyond what we thought sunsets capable of. We shook our heads as we gave up in attempting to capture it with our cameras.

Back in the village, we checked on the laundry but it was closed for the day so skit resigned herself to hand-washing that evening. We were then on a quest for dinner not being excited about returning to the hotel. We didn't really know where we could go but just parked up in the village and started wandering aimlessly in a car park. Someone cried out, "are you looking for El Tovar?" I said yes even though we weren't and got directions. We followed them through the back entrance to the impressive looking El Tovar hotel. We peered into the restaurant and bar but kept our distance, intimidated by the luxury of the place. There was a menu on display for the restaurant at the Bright Angel Lodge and we were somewhat tempted by the not unreasonable prices. I got a map from the gift shop in the lobby and we found our way to Bright Angel Lodge.

It probably wouldn't have been difficult during the day or during warmer weather. But we were definitely below freezing this evening.

The gift shop at Bright Angel distracted us for quite a while but eventually we found somewhere to eat. Not the advertised restaurant but a more down-to-earth and family style eatery. Skit had a huge portion of ribs whilst I had beef fajitas. There was some mocking with regards to my eating skills but I think I coped rather well.

It really was cold outside. So very cold. We were going to head out far from the lights of the village to do some star gazing. But I just wanted to head to warmth and when no obvious spot for star gazing presented itself, we just headed to the hotel. On leaving Bright Angel Lodge, we did see that the sky appeared particularly busy but of course pollution from the lodge and other buildings was still present. I regret not pressing to find a place from which to see the Milky Way. We tried star gazing in Bryce (where it was probably colder but by that point, cold weather was less of a shock to little Californian infected me) but there was cloud cover. And then in Zion we were just a bit too sozzled. In the end, we did get to do some star gazing in Port Angeles. But I bet it would have been better at the Grand Canyon.

Needles to Tusayan

2011-12-10T16:51:00.005Z

Breakfast was back at the restaurant (Juicy's?) that was somehow linked to the hotel and it needs to be noted that they did not have Good Tea. It needs to be noted because I need an excuse for why I almost killed a child aimlessly wandering in a supermarket car park.

We hit the road, aiming to leave the interstate and get onto Route 66. It wasn't much longer than the interstate thanks to much of it being straight and with a 65mph speed limit (which we took under advisement) and a lot more interesting. "Historic" route 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles (and vice versa) but now is no longer contiguous and some sections have been transformed into interstates. Route 66 in Arizona is essentially a tourist destination with the small towns along it clearly catering for bikers and motor enthusiasts with a ridiculous number of mechanics along the way.

An orphaned portion of Route 66 took us deeper into Needles where we saw what a small and quiet place it was. We left as soon as we could, back onto the interstate and then off onto the long portion of Route 66 running from Needles to Seligman.

Immediately on exiting the interstate, we were faced with a stunning spectacle of the desert landscape. And also the sign "Mile 1".

We drove on with the mile signs incrementing and desert landscape on either side. Some portions were protected nature reserves. The desert landscape wasn't particularly varied- it seemed that plant life was abundant but it was all the same plant, or pretty much. Low lying and greyish bushes dotted the sandy expanses in regular intervals on the main. The desert in my mind was sand dunes but the desert in reality, in this area, was rocky and with poor soil but not incapable of supporting life.

We drove on through the desert (in a car with no name*) through to Oatman, with me making myself slightly travel sick by playing with skit's camera far too much from the passenger seat. Oatman was a heaving mining town in the first half of the twentieth century with a transient population around 10 000 people. They apparently mined 1.8 million ounces of gold. But now, it's a ghost town with a population around 100 just clinging on for the small amount of tourism that comes in. And plenty of burros. These are donkey descendants of the original pack-animals here during the gold mining days. Though wild, it's clear that they are well looked after both by tourists and by the small population living there. Most of the shops (all tourist traps) sold burro food and the burros approached everyone in the usually correct expectation that food was in the offing.

Oatman was a town with a sense of humour with names like "The Glory Hole", "Prospector Bob's Mine" and "Fast Fanny's Place". We mosied up the street (it's a one street town and that street is Route 66), harangued by burros wanting to be fed, on a raised wooden "sidewalk". It wasn't exactly a movie set for a western but it was close with ramshackle wooden buildings and beat-up painted signs.

Though signs proclaimed that there were (staged) gunfights at 1pm, we didn't see any so we guessed that they were inside the buildings (there was a theatre and a bar) rather than out on the street though everything I read online prior to coming here suggested it was on the street. In retrospect I wonder if we were confused by the time difference between California and Arizona. Nevermind, we were entertained enough by the burros and atmosphere of the place.

We drove on to Kingman via Sitgreaves Pass through the Black Mountains which was a fun bit of abrupt elevation and tight corners in an otherwise straight and easy road. Historically, this pass was the death of many Model Ts that attempted the journey across the US. At Kingman, we stopped for lunch in a fairly kitsch 50s style diner decked out in a kind of minty green and bright pink. Their speciality appeared to be a tower of onion rings a couple of feet tall; the three people at the table next to us devoured a tower in a few minutes.

Route 66 between Kingman and Seligman, after which we had to go back onto the interstate, was dreadfully dull but made slightly more entertaining by "Burma Shave" signs. I knew of this advertising campaign from Quantum Leap (the pilot episode). They are a series of five signs with the first four being a four-line poem and the final sign presenting the product name. The signs in this area seemed to be somewhat more sparse than what was intended and we were often presented with only two or so of the four lines of the poem leaving us to guess what else was there.

For example, we saw one sign that read "Roses are pink" and then after a couple of moments another sign read "Who drive and drink". Googling tells me that the full rhyme is:
Violets are blue
Roses are pink
On graves of those
Who drive and drink
Burma-Shave

Most of the rhymes seemed to contain a road safety message from the snippets we caught.

We were also entertained by watching the mile signs increment and then suddenly change in value as soon as we got back onto the interstate. We thought they were just counting our miles along the historic route 66 but actually there were on every road in this trip in Arizona, Utah, Nevada and, later, Washington too (in Washington the mile sign had a silhouette of the eponymous figure on them). Quite an oddity and somewhat fun.

Our destination for the day was Tusayan (still in Arizona) which is the nearest town to Grand Canyon Village on the south rim. We stopped off at a Safeway in Williams to get supplies and headed north on a more minor road as the day turned to night. The sunset was pretty remarkable out of the car window and pretty long this mid-November day.

We found the hotel, hiding behind the IMAX in Tusayan. By this point, the temperature was sub-zero. The day on route 66 had been spent in "t-shirt weather" (even t-shirt weather by my reckoning) but the South Rim is at some significant elevation. The hotel had an inner atrium which meant that we could get from our room to the restaurant without much of an excursion outdoors. Skit and I enjoyed a nice dinner with nice wine and braced ourselves to go to our first proper destination the next day: the Grand Canyon.

* Mykey was clearly a demon possessing it but the car itself was nameless except for the descriptor "ace" which was derived from the number plate.

LAX to Needles

2011-12-09T23:58:00.001Z

I navigated my way to LAX International Arrivals by means of identifying skit's aeroplane during taxiing to the gate and keeping that as my bearing. Once there I was left wondering, had she been through already? Her plane had arrived before mine but how much before? skit had immigration, baggage retrieval and customs to deal with and I did not.

And so I checked the area, the seats and nearby shops and eateries. No sign of her. And so I joined the people waiting at the gate and started to play "guess the flight". The people that were coming out were definitely Chinese and so, I reasoned, from the flight before skit's, judging by the scheduled arrival time.

Eventually the flavour of disembarker became Pacifican, if that is the correct term which I doubt, and I continued to wait impatiently for skit.

People watching was kind of fun. There was someone at the gate waiting for a "Mr J Hardy" according to the card he held in front of him. The last time I was at International Arrivals, I saw a sign for "Stephen Fry". Come, collect all the comedians that engage in Radio 4 style silliness.

As I waited, I wondered how I would greet skit. Should I be joyful or reserved? Of course, going hand in hand with this train of thought was the question of how I felt about meeting her and spending two weeks on a holiday with her. And so I ultimately decided on reserved as the most appropriate way to display my nervousness about whether things would go smoothly and about whether we'll be annoyed by each other too much.

When I saw her emerge from customs, dwarfed by the backpack she carried, we exchanged a nod of recognition and she manoeuvred around the obstacles to reach me. Once face to face I said something like "I'll try not to smell you- I understand you are stinky" (in reference to her last message to me before she boarded the plane) and we hugged. Possibly she deserved a little more "Oh my God, it's been too long, how I have missed you!" but one has a reputation to maintain.

One trip to the toilet (each), one purchase of Evian (each) and one nearly empty bus later, we got our hire car from Enterprise. I agonised over who to rent from for so long, reading customer reviews and researching cars. In the end, I chose a non-budget (but not too expensive) company to avoid the horror stories of unreliable cars and unexpected charges. Most of what we paid was in airport fees and taxes anyway (plus a premium since we were going to return it to a different airport which I don't regret) and indeed, there were no extra charges even for adding skit as an additional driver which was superb.

Our car was just great. A Ford Fusion with a penchant for mind games and purveyor of unhelpful advice. The dashboard display informed us when "Mykey" thought we were going too fast and "Mykey" would beep just to drive the point home that 75mph was pushing it. And then at 80mph, Mykey would just refuse to go any faster. For roads where the speed limit was 75mph, this was somewhat frustrating. This didn't often happen on the roads leaving LAX though; these roads were chockablock with traffic and it felt like it was taking us an age to get out of LA. The city stretched forever.

We stopped at around 3pm for a late lunch in a shopping mall. It seemed rather dull but oddly appropriate that skit's first port of call in America should be a shopping mall. We ate burgers, again, appropriately. Due to a mix up with the order, skit ended up with four portions of chips. It was vaguely amusing (to me anyway).

In the end, we drove until about 8pm. We discovered an odd feature about our car in that there were interior lights that grew obvious as darkness fell. These lights were purple. They lit up our bottles of water in the cup holders and gave an ethereal glow to our foot wells. The aforementioned mind games had begun. Some time later in our trip, the lights were orange. And we have no idea why they changed.

8pm took us to Needles on the border between California and Arizona. We drove through the Mojave Desert to get there but it had been dark since leaving LA so all we saw was an expanse of "dark". Needles was a glow on the horizon that spread out to the north and south, a band of lights, and it appeared to be a large town. The next day we were to discover that it really wasn't- it was just very linear running along a river.

We took a random turning off the interstate and onto a minor road with the transition between the two being ridiculously rough and pot-holed as if no one admitted responsibility for a few metres. A Best Western stood before us and not having the patience to explore the area and shop around, we just pulled into the hotel parking and booked ourselves a room. We were informed that we would get double the points if we also stayed in a Best Western Plus on our trip but not knowing what points meant and not expecting to stay in a Best Western again, we ignored the information. We ended up staying in Best Westerns whenever we could, of course, except for in Kanab when we randomly became disloyal to the chain.

On registering, we were asked to describe our car. We managed the make but when it came to car colour, we hesitated. We decided that it was probably grey and put that on the form. On returning to our car, we confirmed that it was grey and moved the car and our bags to our hotel room. The next morning, the car was blue. Mind games. It changed colour quite frequently depending on light conditions.

That evening we went to a restaurant somehow affiliated with the hotel. Obviously it was cheaper for the hotel to outsource to a restaurant to provide meals than to run a restaurant itself. Having had huge burgers in the middle of the afternoon, we weren't terribly hungry and stuck with salads (which we failed to get through) and shakes (which I think I failed to get through too, not being helped by how it was topped up considerably).

It wasn't a hugely eventful day. skit had begun telling me stories of her trip so far but it needed a few days for her to complete her tale. It was great to be back in her company. Just... very easy. And pleasant. There is still a lot of dancing around each other in attempting to gauge the other's feelings and not tread on their toes too much but it never feels like a chore. For me at least. But then, when we walk in pace together, it is always skit matching her stride to mine. It doesn't work the other way or indeed with compromise. I didn't even realise until this trip. But whatever, the nerves were dispelled.

Dates

2011-08-09T06:26:00.002+01:00

2nd-15th September - San Sebastian, Spain

FACET Experimental Installation

2011-08-01T01:14:00.000+01:00

When I interviewed for this job way back last September, I was petrified. Not by the interview which was a relaxed affair in the corner of the DWB common room, but by the description of the job. I remember walking up Longwall Street to the Nat Hist Museum (I was meeting with skit and told her to meet me in the graveyard to St Giles but then suddenly phoned her to tell her to meet me by the fossilised tree exhibit instead- I like dead things) and talking to my mum on the phone about how scary it sounded. And then that night I barely slept, it was just such an awful prospect.

The job was to build a facility. Essentially from scratch. There is a linac at SLAC capable to delivering beams but that's all pretty useless without experiments to deliver them to. The experiments were all lined up and waiting but the infrastructure (cables, computers, controls and other words that don't necessarily start with the letter c) was not.

So I was scared. And this made me say yes.

I wouldn't class myself as a risk taker but at certain points in my life, I have put myself out there and not (yet) regretted it.

Building FACET (the new SLAC facility) wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. Much of what I had to do was there. People had dropped cables between the tunnel and a rack in the klystron gallery. Unfortunately, it wasn't really very useful there so more cables needed to be routed from the rack to where they would be used. Which was a trailer, on order and yet not yet at SLAC. Beamline parts were needed, procedures had to be documented, safety reviews needed to be done, users needed to be registered and trained, controls needed to be developed...

And in the past couple of weeks, everything needed to be installed and working.

I was given 8 days to pull everything together. In the end, only one of the five experiments got installed. Two others were almost there. Two just weren't anywhere near ready enough. At least one of those two had the good grace to inform me in advance but one kept me in the dark until five days before the installation about not being ready leading to a last minute rush on getting something else to install instead.

Somehow everything was going to plan except for cable drops and networks. The person I was assigning the organisation of the cable work to was just not delivering. I have yet to complain to his boss but I ought to. The networks was just horrific as the person that designed it for us had gone off on holiday without implementing it or sharing the details with his colleagues. This led to an absolutely atrocious state of things where not only did we not have networks set up, we also had a group of people angry at us for being cowboys as from their perspective, there was no plan at all. To further complicate things, one experimenter that promised a stand alone controls system suddenly brought a system that could only run on a certain network for which we didn't have the infrastructure to support.

Anyway. Everything was more or less going to plan except that Uli, the head of the department that runs the linac, wanted us to end two days early to give him extra time to tune the beam. I agreed to this and there were some fireworks that came from that (since Uli's definition of two days early was actually 2.5 days early) but basically, it looked like we could do it.

Until Saturday when we found a leak in the beamline.

The leak was between two areas separated by a beryllium window. A leak isn't usually a worry but in this case, there was a possibility that the leak was due to a break in the beryllium. It seemed remote but, worryingly, the beryllium window came with a side labelled "vacuum" and, well, our vacuum was on the other side. I was distracted that Saturday by trying to solve the network issue (a lost cause but I didn't know that yet) and not down in the tunnel. I left instructions on which volume to pump on first. They were not followed and I still don't know why. So in realising that the pump down procedure had not been adhered to plus the leak of unknown origin, we went into panic mode.

We wrote emails to our supervisors and to the safety group. We halted the pump down. And so we lost days of time.

Nothing could be done until Monday. So that lost two days of the schedule (and of course, Uli did not get his extra time). And on the Monday, things just stopped. The window was removed and everything was safe but we weren't even able to inspect it- it was bagged and that was that. I asked for the window to be inspected and leak tested and that just garnered a whirlwind of trouble as there was no procedure for that. And then it was discovered that there was no written procedure for anything that we had been doing. We discussed it but we did not write it.

It took most of the day to even realise why we weren't working. I spoke to the supervisor for the technicians and everything seemed fine but he still didn't allow them to work. In the end, I had to suffer a long meeting of being asked awful questions about what I was doing and who was I to be doing it, what authority did I have and what actual consideration had I put into doing it.

Being asked these questions was just awful. I've been doing my best but I'm not an engineer or at all experienced in the procedures at SLAC. I was just trying my best to get the facility built.

The days leading up to this were hectic. I was living life on a carousel and juggling with people on the outside. Throwing the right balls to the right people and trying not to fumble took so much attention. I barely paused, I barely breathed. And on Monday I just felt like a hopeless failure.

On Tuesday, we continued with the work having written and agreed to a procedure. We put a new window in and pumped it down. And continued pumping and continued pumping. Our vacuum was shot. One side of the window was too bad for even the ion pumps to come on. The other side was better but critical because the gauge readings were interlocked to the valves and we needed to set higher values just to get the valves to stay open.

We pumped overnight. It was then Wednesday and things looked only slightly better.

I rustled a couple of vacuum engineers to look at our system to recommend improvements. We've not had a chance to plan yet. The past couple of days have really been needed to recover our energy levels. But we really need to plan again. We need to go back in and tear it apart to build something that can actually be pumped down.

The horror is not yet over.

Was it at all worth it? I signed up for the job knowing that this would make or break me. I need more perspective to tell.

2010: The Big Questions

2011-01-03T12:43:00.000Z

As per usual...

Book

I only read two books that were published this year and one was awful so the easy winner is her Hobbness' Dragon Haven of course. It was a very pleasant read if lacking in bite. But my favourite read of the year was the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. Brought down by some dubious pacing (book 2 is too drawn out and book 3 is too rushed) it's not perfect but I fell quite hard for many the characters, especially the main one, and adored the themes. It's great when characters are actively questioning destiny, identity and morality. And then going off to perform a lengthy and well-written action sequence to get over the fact that philosophising was getting them nowhere...

Television

Again, it has to be divided by "2010 shows" and "things I happened to watch in 2010". AMC really spoiled us with an amazing season of Mad Men (heavier on the comedy than usual, I felt) but more to the point, Breaking Bad was jaw droppingly awesome. Just for this tense action-packed scene it wins even without the earlier explosion, pizza stunt, fly "bottle" episode and heartbreaking speeches from Hank and Jesse.

But best thing I saw last year was The Wire which I started in February and finished in July (or thereabouts- I forget...). Five seasons. And it was more than worth the hype. The city of Baltimore felt real and complex. It was grown over the years from the po-lice and surrounding law officials alongside the gangs and drug dealers through to the wider politics and schools and finally the journalists. And it never once felt like tv. It lacked the normal hooks and landmarks that make tv watching easy and instead forced you to truly think and engage. Its seriousness was deliciously offset by dark humour and a few emotionally uplifting character arcs but so often it was heartbreaking with death just a corner away. I'm not sure it had much in the way of answers but it certainly explored the issues of Baltimore and had wider relevance to the way in which you lead your life.

Film

I haven't seen all that many films this year but I think even if I had seen every new release, I would still conclude that Toy Story 3 was the best. Hilarious and touching.

Game

The only 2010 release I played was Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse and though it was a good interactive tale, it was rather easy. So the best game I played in 2010 was an oldie: The Dig. It had some great puzzles and was an incredibly involving scifi story.

Live Performance

I've seen a fair number of live performances, mainly comedy/ stand-up, but actually I think my favourite evening was watching Antigone in Oxford. Kind of a last minute trip almost on a whim. But it was brilliant. I knew the play but had never seen it performed before and the actors that played Antigone and Creon were powerful in their roles, challenging each other, themselves and the audience with themes of fate and choice and ideals and compromise.

Dates

2010-11-08T13:21:00.000Z

13th - 14th November : Geneva/Annemasse
14th - 20th November : Grenoble
26th - 27th November : Tunbridge Wells
28th - 4th December : Grenoble
12th - 16th December : Admissions (okay, strictly speaking this is Oxford so I am not going anywhere but still, I need to make a note of the date for my own sake...).
18th - 19th December : Crowley (for ISIHAC)/ Tunbridge Wells

Dates (and news)

2010-10-15T15:27:00.000+01:00

My "base" is currently Oxford.

15th - 17th October : Tunbridge Wells
21st October - 4th November : Grenoble
26th - 28th November : Tunbridge Wells

Then there is a gap of the unknown. And...

17th January 2011 - start new job at SLAC, California.

Dates

2010-09-03T20:13:00.003+01:00

9th-10th September - Oxford
10th-15th September - Amy visits me in Grenoble
30th September - back from Grenoble for good. From this point forward, base of operations is Oxford.
9th-12th October - Virginia

Dates

2010-07-13T16:24:00.003+01:00

15th - 20th July - Skit visits me in Grenoble.
3rd - 11th August - I stay in Tunbridge Wells.
10th - 15th September - Amy visits me in Grenoble
30th September - I leave Grenoble for good and return to Tunbridge Wells.

edit:
5th - 11th August - I stay in Tunbridge Wells. I hope.

There was no butler

2010-05-08T13:59:00.011+01:00

Last weekend, mum and I were invited to a CAATS award weekend. We've not been a part of the charity for long and it was our first opportunity to mingle with other supporters of animal rights. The weekend was to honour fundraisers such as ourselves and was to be just a bit of fun, getting to know people with common interests and eating good food and engaging in small activities.

Within a couple of hours of meeting, the weekend took a grisly turn.

The hotel was Wotton House near Didcot. Built in the 17th century, parts of it were rather grand. We gathered at 8 for a cocktail reception in the Old Library which was a fantastic room with arches almost like a chapel but with a grand fireplace in lieu of an altar. It was a cold weekend so we joined a small group huddled at the fireplace.

Mum and I met a few great people including Liz who had run around the world collecting money for CAATS- quite an impressive feat. We also met a woman called Pearl who ran an animal sanctuary in Derbyshire. Poor woman had the shock of her life when a man approached us. "You!" she shouted deafening my mother in her right ear, "What are you doing here?"

Turns out the man (30s, dressed in a manner a city type might consider casual) was her son who she hadn't seen since he left home for university. Wow. What a coincidence. The man (whose name was Evan) turned tail and left without saying a word to his mother who remained steaming by the fireplace.

It was weird and we stuck by Pearl concerned that the shock was too much for her. We were then joined by David who provided an adequate distraction with tales of his fundraising exploits as a leg of a six man pantomine cow that climbed a church spire in East Sussex. We nodded sagely but were well aware that he was a bit of a nut-job, his reputation not helped by the obviously photoshopped image of the event. CAATS attracts all types.

Fortunately we were seated at the same table as David (and Liz and a fair few others we had met) because they were all chatty types that had been to this kind of event before whereas my mum and I felt a little out of place and unsure. Pearl was on another table though we were still worried about what was going on with her and her son.

To my mother's left sat a woman called Briony who had fainted at the champagne reception and caused a bit of a stir at the other end of the Old Library. Tactful as ever, my mum asked her if she is pregnant. Still, Briony seemed forgiving of the personal question. We told her of Pearl and Evan and she explains that Evan was the event coordinator (Briony herself worked for CAATS and was at the weekend in an official capacity) and also a personal friend of the chairman, Baxter. Evan came up to the table later and it became clear that Briony meant "personal friend" euphemistically as Evan explained the full reasons behind his falling out with his mother.

As if this one accidental mother-child reunion wasn't eventful enough, a woman came up to Briony during the meal and declared herself to be Briony's presumed-dead mother. It was just insane and my poor mother caught more shouting in her ear-hole. Turned out that Lindy, this woman, left Briony and Briony's father when Briony was 17. Briony said that Lindy pushed her father down the stairs and the fall paralysed him. Lindy said that she was being physically abused and though she was there when her husband fell, she denied actually pushing him. Whatever, it wasn't our place to get involved in the family drama and I stared down at my food embarrassed for the emotional display.

Lindy tried to get reacquainted with her daughter twice during dinner but Briony just denied that Lindy was her mother at all though you could tell that she was getting worn down and coming to accept it. From across the room, a fellow fundraiser called Jessica came to Briony's aid and defused the situation by taking Briony away to her hotel room. Lindy was not happy with this particularly when Briony said that Jessica had been more like a mother to her. Lindy called Jessica jealous, trying to get between a mother and a daughter, but let them leave.

This was in between the main course and dessert and many people chose this moment to leave the dining room to go to their room or have a smoke or whatever. They nearly all came back by the time dessert arrived (David had wanted to steal Briony's chocolate mousse but was thwarted). All except Jessica. David was worried for Jess but Briony was dismissive. Jess had taken Briony to her room to have a lie down and compose herself and had then gone off, Briony did not know where, but since Jess was on a diet, Briony didn't find it odd she wasn't having dessert.

But then a man ran in. Shouting. Something had happened. It was Jess.

As a room, we got up and surged outside to the area where people had been smoking. Jess was there lying on the ground. It was hard to see in the dark with very low lighting coming in through the windows. We all hang back, unsure. Someone had a camera with them and set off the flash. In one spit second we saw everything. Jess was lying, covered in blood and surrounded by ice cubes. With a pair of scissors sticking out from her throat.

Briony screamed and ran to Jess' side.

No one knew what to do, it was clear. I assume someone went off to call for an ambulance and the police. I felt useless as did most people in the crowd. Some even took photos of the scene. To my horror, and I wish I could say "to my relief" but this was not the case, Jess was still alive. She was confused and only vaguely conscious and, devastatingly, groping at her throat. Briony batted her hands away, begging Jess not to touch anything or even look. But Jess did look and when she saw the scissors sticking out of her, she screamed. It was awful to watch a woman die before our eyes and I have to say I was relieved when the police came and cleared us all away.

We all returned to the dining room and callously got on with our evening. There was nothing we could do really. We even played a couple of games. They were competitive games with teams being our tables. Our table was incredibly intent upon winning and so we concentrated on that rather than the disturbing events of the evening. The first game, we came second but then we played charades where we excelled and won. My mum was particularly pleased at getting the lewdest charade of the night.

We learnt that Jess died before the ambulance arrived. Briony returned to play charades with us despite her grief at losing a close friend. Bizarre but people are robust like that.

The next morning we got down to breakfast before 9. It was this amazing buffet. I helped myself to a bowl of fresh fruit and then a small portion of fry-up with many cups of tea. Mum and I sat on a table with Pearl and Lindy and we chatted away about the strange events of the night before. One of the police detectives came to our table to inform us that there was an evidence room and if we wanted to see what they had collected so far that pertained to the case, we were welcome to have a look. It seemed that the police wanted our cooperation in figuring out what happened last night.

There wasn't much there when we had a look. We talked with Evan about his mother and their falling out. It was clear that it wasn't just Pearl hating Evan for being gay. Evan hated Pearl just as much for being a hypocrite (he accused her of being lazy and as a result being more cruel than kind to the animals in her sanctuary). Plus he accused her of killing his father (who died of lung cancer passive smoking). Did I mention that Pearl was in the room at the time? Some people have no sense of propriety.

We had a little foray into the grounds of the hotel in the late-morning, meeting with David and Jan and Liz and people whose names I have forgotten. There was a lot of cooing over Evan and words like "what a shame, such a waste!" were uttered by the women. No one really had much to say about the events of the previous night, it was all too baffling.

As it started to rain, we came back inside and killed time in our hotel room before lunch. Lunch was a great buffet (so great my mum came back to the table with two main dishes on her plate) and would have been very enjoyable if not for further drama. It was all coming out of the woodwork this weekend.

Gwen was another person that worked for CAATS. She was very keen to make the point that she was the one that made all the games (Gwen's Games we called them, patronisingly). Her insistence on recognition and praise was quite wearying and we didn't really talk to her much over the weekend. Anyway, she strode in just as lunch was wrapping up and had a go at Briony who was obviously still in shock from losing someone close to her the previous night. Apparently Gwen had just discovered that Briony had had an affair with Gwen's late husband. Sheesh.

Pearl was kind of spooked by this revelation and stood up and tried to leave but we were all on lock-down by the police who were okay with us wandering the hotel but we weren't allowed to check-out. So Pearl sat back down again clearly not happy. David asked her what the problem was and Pearl was cagey. I don't know what David was thinking next but he speculated that Pearl might know something about Gwen's husband's death and then he warned Pearl to make sure she spoke to the police straight away or wrote what she suspected down. David seemed quite agitated but I am not sure Pearl was listening.

We were also treated to another blow-up between Briony and Lindy as Briony caught on to the fact that Lindy was in financial troubles and was just hitting her daughter up for cash. Mum and I were ever so grateful that we could at least claim to be a functioning parent-child relationship.

After lunch was cleared, we had more of Gwen's Games (and Gwen was getting a bit annoyed with how we were patronising her by cheering every time her name was spoken but she asked for it with her desperate need to be appreciated). We did the first one in groups of our own choosing so my mum and I just stuck together. We didn't do too badly (it required knowing phrases) but we didn't win or even come close. We had to go around the hotel following a trail of questions but they had lost question 23 (someone had removed it). They knew what the question should have been though and told it to use orally instead (the answer was snake).

We gathered for the answers but during the course of the game, some people had gone awol. Evan came into the room seemingly furious and panicked. He demanded to know Briony's room number for some reason, got it and left again, heading for it. We were all kind of bored (and needed Evan to give out the answers anyway) so decided to follow him. We had to go right to the other side of the hotel and by the time we got there, Evan had already been there for a while but was still shouting. We pressed forward, a crowd of about 40? 50? of us (with some actual hotel guests not a part of the CAATS weekend caught up in the scrum) to find out what was going on and ploughing right into us came Baxter. He emerged from Briony's room and caused us all to move back, repelled like equal sign charges. He wasn't wearing very much. Not very much at all. I am not an expert in male underwear but I am sure the small strip of black material that was his only item of clothing couldn't be standard issue.

There was much shouting and whooping and many people whipped out their cameras to catch Baxter's shame. But then there was a ping as a lift door opened. And a scream.

Amongst all this hysteria, there was another dying body. Pearl was lying in the lift, exposed as the door opened. She was covered in blood with a knife going straight into her chest, the missing card from Gwen's Game between the hilt and her body.

The police, never far from us now, elbowed through and shouted at us until we dispersed. We returned to the dining room, hushed. An awkward number of minutes later, Evan returned, distraught from discovering his boyfriend in a compromising position with Briony. Hurt but professional, he carried on wrapping up the game. Afternoon tea was then served during which Baxter and Briony returned, hand in hand. Turns out, they had been together behind Evan's back for a while. They joined our table and no one was all that pleased at that.

We had another game (kind of a silly relay race during which I ran into a man and hurt my nose, oomph). We then all returned to our rooms to relax some more. On the way, mum and I returned to the evidence room to see how the case was going. The police had been busy putting clues together. It made little sense to us. We did learn that Pearl had had trouble with the RSPCA though- turned out Evan was right about her sanctuary not being all that. We also found out how Gwen's husband died. He burnt to death in an animal lab that had been targetted by activists. Ouch. Some people lead eventful lives.

We rested until dinner. Again, we gathered at 8. There was a loose costume theme to it of "animal phrases" and mum and I joined in with the motifs of "butterflies in one's stomach" and "a bee in one's bonnet". Other people were "raining cats and dogs" or indeed "reigning cats and dogs", "rat race" and, my favourite, "lazy cow" (she didn't dress up at all). This time we were on a table with Evan and I was seated right next to him. I didn't know what to say about what had happened. He lost his boyfriend (of three years! Evan even wanted to get married) and his mother in the space of a few minutes. He hated his mother and so I didn't know what to make of that and stayed clear of the topic, just offering sympathies about Baxter instead.

Baxter really didn't make the evening any easier. He came over to Evan and kind of sort of apologised but not very well. In fact, it turned into a marriage proposal... to Briony. I don't think he planned that and Briony certainly wasn't pleased by it. Gwen too had a go at Baxter, defending Evan (quite surprisingly since Gwen resented Evan stealing her thunder with the organisation of the weekend). Gwen was quite angry with Baxter. By this point, we had become used to the drama that surrounded these people's lives and as they all scattered in various states of emotion, we started to worry for Baxter's life.

Fortunately, Baxter returned as did Briony and Evan and Lindy. Gwen did not. Someone came in and called for the police detectives to come and so they did and we all followed. In the evidence room, lay Gwen. Sticking out of her back, was a kitchen knife. She was alive and talking but didn't respond to questions of who did this.

We knew the drill by now and were quite hardened to such spectacles. As soon as the police detective started to shout, we returned to the dining room. He joined us shortly after and told us that Gwen had died, unsurprisingly. Pearl's torn up membership card to CAATS had been found stuffed down the front of her dress.

There was a game to play and dancing to be done. Mum and I called it a night though and didn't boogie on the dance floor (how anyone could is beyond me). We took a few moments to acquaint ourselves with the latest evidence in the evidence room and then retired.

Sunday was our final day. We had breakfast but I didn't eat much. Instead I got to the evidence room as quickly as possible to put the pieces together. They didn't really click properly. I made notes on what I could but many articles seemed wholly unrelated to the events that had taken place. Why was there a piece about Jordan laying down the "seven deadly sins" and strangely religious diary entries and police reports about people dying all around the world? Some things were clear though. The police had found evidence linking Jess and Pearl and Gwen to animal rights activism and the murder of Gwen's husband. Still, that didn't quite explain everything so we went to the meeting called by the police detective still quite baffled.

The detective sat us all down and made everything clear.

Dates

2010-03-10T16:03:00.001Z

21st March - 11th April : Oxford (with small visits to TW)
30th April - 2nd May : Surrey for a murder mystery weekend

Yes but...

2010-01-31T13:50:00.000Z

It can also be the thing that lets you explore new regions outside the limits of the map drawn by those that raised you. And it goes both ways which is probably the best bit as you each doodle on the other's map letting the landscape grow organically.

Dates

2010-01-29T14:45:00.001Z

3rd + 4th February - Alpe d'Huez
6th + 7th February - T Wells for mum's 60th

It's that time of year again

2010-01-02T22:55:00.000Z

Yet another year ends and so let us see whether our aging minds can remember what has happened in the last 365 days...

Books

Last Christmas (I gave you my heart) I received Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy from my brother. Red Mars has to get my (much coveted) award for best read of the year. Such wonderful characters, jaw dropping descriptions of Mars and incredibly complex look at sociology, psychology and the methods and ethics of terraforming. There was a patch where I lost interest but the ending was fantastic.

Of actual 2009 releases, I must admit I only read a couple of books and so the competition isn't all that strong but obviously I have to give praise to Dragon Keeper. Her Hobbness writes exquisitely and the characters and story were quite compelling. I look forward to part two and hope that there are some huge payoffs.

Television

Battlestar Galactica had the back end to the fourth and final season shown this year and it was amazing. So dark and depressing. Dexter was also on top form with a season that kept me excited and on my toes. Merlin stepped up to be highly emotional with some complex characterisation as we see them move into their "fated" roles.

But the television show that marks the year for me is Outrageous Fortune. I started it just over a year ago (thanks to dvds from cheeky) and grew more and more obsessed with it. To begin with it was just the attitude- the feel-good factor of the show. A drama-comedy that didn't really capture me but forced me to come back and watch more just for the simple pleasure of grinning for 45 minutes. But then with time the stories became more complex as they built on each other and grew. Plots and characters were rarely done and dusted with; things you thought dealt with in an episode coming back to haunt the characters later. The show juggled plots, characters and ideas in such a deft way I am not sure I have seen the like elsewhere (which isn't to say it doesn't exist of course but it is rare). This year was series 5 and thanks to the generosity of cheeky and her friend with a dvr, I saw it not too long after broadcast. The fifth series was as strong as anything they had done and rocked my world.

Film

I shouldn't write categories I don't have ideas for... I'm not a terribly big film person. I guess I liked Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the most. The films just seem to get better with each one for me. This film was so dark and beautiful in appearance and unlike with the books, I got a strong sense of the other characters and their problems (mainly thinking of Malfoy).

Comedy

I went to the Fringe again this year and saw a handful of stand up comedians (plus I saw a couple of acts outside of Edinburgh). Strangely enough, my favourite one drew the smallest audience- Nick Doody. His act was wonderfully constructed: in two halves it talked about what is wrong with Britain and what is great about it with a thread running throughout that was the recent death of his mother and the meaning (or lack of meaning) of comedy. It was clever and funny but most of all it had a point. Which is rare in stand-up routines. He got to a conclusion and it was serious and it resonated, leaving me with serious thoughts.

Personal Event

Every year it comes down to Hobblings, more or less. Is this a healthy thing? Meh. I met with Nadine on a few occasions and each time I had a great time. It's nice to just relax with a friend. I think going to the Venetian Carnival at Annecy was a particular highlight. I adored the costumes. Skit visited me in France and we had a great holiday together with a little hire car. I'd say the frozen waterfall (Cascade du Rouget) was my most memorable part (including the treacherous walk to get there). Then in August I went to Edinburgh with my brother and saw Mike and Madeleine. I enjoyed mixing with these two local celebrities (or at least that is how it felt- I mean, they know Ben Moor!). Also in August, I went to France with skit, biped and Ata and we met Chi and her mother on probably the hottest day of the year. It was a brilliant week. Somehow I can't quite separate the laughter into unique events to identify a high point. All that springs to mind is melon. A lot of melon. And breakfasts and lunches in the sun and dinner with wine and dvds and games... And burying skit and playing crazy golf... Stuff.

Garvan

2009-12-30T21:54:00.003Z

Garvan is posting again and has been doing so for over a year! I can't believe it! Wow.

Quick history written 2006:

Garvan is a long story and an old obsession of mine. He posted on the bbc science board, going on about the hollow earth and creationism. A colourful character (the science board attracts them). He started a blog and I and many many others started our watch. It was hard... you couldn't leave it for a minute without missing something. Garvan did many entries spouting Free-Presbytarian rubbish (and how he was British definitely not Irish) but what was great were the comments. People would swear and post comments to rile him. And he got riled. He deleted comments left, right and centre. He banned entire ip ranges from commenting. It was most amusing.

So time passed and Garvan tried repeatedly to persuade scientists of the obvious lie of "evilution". All arguments were squashed and let he would go on to claim victory. And sing the praises of the crazy-arses Kent Hovind and Ian Paisley.

So far so fun.

But then it got crazy.

For a start, Garvan got an air-gun. And started killing birds that sang, keeping him awake (he was an insomniac).

When a murderer was in the run in his area, he went out with his air-gun to do be the good civilian. He was arrested but let out without charge.

He was getting crazier... and posting and moderating all the time at work while spying on his co-workers and their dodgy-deals out of a car boot in the workplace car park. The co-workers found out. They saw his blog where they had been slandered. And Garvan was fired.

Garvan volunteered his services as an undertaker and started work experience. He was also running "science" experiments in his home. He was trying to cure cancer and used fungi instead of cancer cells as they seemed to be sort of the same to him. He was testing household cleaners on them. One post described how he was rushed to hospital for inhaling cleaning fumes.

Not long after, some Mormons called on him. He invited them in and tried to beat them at their own game. He swore that he would teach the Mormons.

Now my knowledge is a bit hazy because... he did go crazy. His posts described seeing man-sized cancer cells attacking his house. Garvan went to hospital and was put on drugs. He left of his own volition and was better for a while. But then there was a fire in his home town. Another "watcher" reported it on the yahoo group someone set up. He noticed a Mormon church had been set on fire.

Surely a coincidence... But Garvan posted no longer. A few days later there was a post apologising that he had to go away for a while.

The next time anyone heard from him, he was on the bbc science boards apologising for his actions. He was now a Mormon after the local church had shown him surprising compassion.

Back to 2009...

I am not sure what church Garvan is attending now but it's like he never left. Still as loopy as ever:

Ouch!
I stuck a pen knife in an electrical socket this morning to see whether electricity was flowing through it or not, but got a massive shock in the process. I am now in pain and my arm is numb, I think I might go to A&E for a check-up.

It is hard to believe he is real but equally hard to believe it has been faked for so long just for the bbc science board. Reading his blog really is like reading a well crafted tale. Highly recommended not just for humour but for the drama and (admittedly sad) insight into mental illness.

The Garvanian

More Dates

2009-12-03T19:54:00.003Z

11th December - To Paris I go
13th December - To Oxford
18th December - probably TW
19th December - To Barry (Wales)
21st December - or a date near there anyway, to TW.
29th December - trip to Banbury
4th January - to Oxford

Some point in mid-January - To Grenoble.

There is a lot of uncertainty still but I guess I am playing it by ear.

Dates

2009-09-02T15:12:00.002+01:00

12th-16th September - Kent/Sussex
16th-23rd September - Oxford

Then it becomes a little chaotic hiring a car and travelling a lot between Grenoble and a lab near Avignon for 10 days.

I am applying for an extension to my stay in Grenoble so I will be out here for another year.

Edinbrugh Shows 5 to 7 (plus 1)

2009-08-21T23:47:00.001+01:00

At the Zoo, we picked up a sheet of reviews and found a couple of extremely favourable reviews for free Fringe events. We opted to go to one at 1:40 at a pub called the White Horse. Around 12:30, it began to absolutely tip it down and so Jamie and I decided to go there early, shelter and grab lunch. It is only now (or more accurately, this afternoon as I was composing this in my head) that I remember that Scottish pubs don't serve food. And so it was we were surprised to go in there and find it was basically a couple of shabby rooms with a long table with bottles of alcohol behind it.

And without warning, I found myself ushered into the back room by a man and told to sit on some chairs facing the stage er... corner.

I was not about to go back into the rain storm so I decided to stay and watch the gig. It was “Coolfun” and began with the compère/ warm-up guy getting the audience to do silly things. I think most people were there to keep dry but everyone seemed pretty generous (particularly the self-confessed hung-over chap sitting next to me who was possibly still drunk) and played along with clapping/ giving names and inane banter. One guy said he made instruments for surface science which took the guy back a bit and he fumbled for jokes. Alas, he didn't ask me what I did.

Nicely warmed up we got into the stand-up acts. The first two guys were not all that great. They got less response than the warm-up guy who didn't even attempt any jokes. One of them did rather odd knock-knock jokes while the other acted like he was on something and laughed at his jokes much harder than the audience and often even before he said them. But still, as un-great as they were, I tittered a few times and never grew uncomfortable. In fact, it was better than I expected for a free gig as the men pursued their own style and were prepared.

For your information, these three men were Ed Gamble, Tom Neenan and Jez Scharf but I am not sure which is which.

The fourth guy that came up... Nish Kumar... was brilliant.

Nish was good enough that I would pay to see him. I think he was as good as Matt Kirshen. He had an attitude and an ease about him and his stories/jokes were engaging and hilarious. It was just slick and professional and I hope he does well in comedy. His material was unspectacular in a sense- what I remember was about his home town and getting into fights- but the delivery made it seem like it had some meaning to it. Like instead of “here's some funny things that happened to me” the routine was about the way people lived, their prejudices and attitudes.

I left the gig happy to pay for it. I like that way of seeing shows. You pay what you think it is worth when you leave. I would perhaps go one year and only see Free Fringe shows.

We never saw the comedy we wanted to see. We could have stayed for it but we were buzzing from Nish and anyway, we wanted lunch.

That doesn't count as a show though. Our fifth paid-for show was at 5 that day. Ben Moor.

This was the highlight of my festival. It was always going to be. I fell in love with his work last year and there is honestly nothing in the comedy world that can surpass it in my mind. It ticks all my boxes: Word play, not necessarily puns- alliteration suffices; Twisted reality, my brother likened it to Pratchett in that respect but any fantasy or scifi with elements of parody will do; epic journeys of the human spirit. Or something.

We got seats in the front row. Just off-centre so not to be too insane about it. A little angle to watch by adds something, I think. Ben Moor came on stage as before in a suit and tie. And barefoot.

He performed Coelacanth which is the first story in his small collection published this year. He brought it to life with exquisitely perfected gestures and whole-body movements and let the emotions of the piece channel through him. The story of finding and losing love set against a back-drop of competitive tree-climbing with a father-son relationship made me laugh and then, towards the end, it almost made me cry. I blinked the tears away before they could form.

I blathered like an idiot at the book signing but he was sweet and tolerated me especially after I revealed my link to Mike of Transreal Books. I contemplated telling him that we wrote “Not Everything Is Significant” in the sand on Bamburgh beach last year. In a code that no one could read.

I did not.

The sixth show was at 9:45 at the Pleasance. We got tickets for this based on a recommendation from Matt Kirshen. Nick Doody. We didn't expect much as the room (Upstairs- where Ben Moor was last year) was only half full. But like Nish earlier that day, I liked him as soon as he stepped out and started talking. He was another personable comedian and he started off by talking about doing stand-up which felt like an open and honest way to begin. Not that other ways were dishonest (well, I suspect Rich Hall's was) but it did allow us to understand his motives.

He told us how since submitting his entry to the Fringe, his mother died. And that made it difficult for him. He told us how he questioned the point of comedy (and acknowledged how “wanky” this was). It wasn't funny but there were murmurs of laughter. Mostly, I was fascinated. He didn't really acknowledge his audience. He seemed to be in his own little confessional, speaking from the heart.

He motivated his theme for the gig in this way and then went on to embrace it: black and white (in opinion terms). He used the subject of the state of the country and declared that he hated the country. He went on to tell anecdotes to illustrate how bad it was and to litter it with quick jokes too. He ranted and raved and then stopped.

He declared how much he loved the country. And continued to say what he admired and to look at other countries and to be grateful he could be in Britain.

This approach made the act different from the others I saw. It had a forced persona to it in a sense but he opened honestly and said that he was going to do this. And it looked at our choices in attitudes just like Nish did earlier that day. But Nick also answered his question and found the point of comedy.

It wasn't as laugh-out funny as the other stand-up gigs but it meant a lot more to me. It certainly meant more than a man tormented by a fly or a man attempting to get by on very little French. It actually moved me. This was the best stand-up I had seen at the Fringe and it beats much of what I have seen outside it too.

The final show on the final day was Helen Keen's “The Primitive Methodist Guide to Arctic Survival”. This came at the recommendation of someone Mike knew and was indeed a charming show to end on.

It began with shadow puppets. A very strange start but they were pretty good. It then moved onto a cross between an enthusiastic lecture and stand-up as Helen Keen talked about her family and various explorers of the Arctic (going via a Christmas Carol parody on the way). It was full of facts, all fascinating or amusing (usually both) and I was quite entranced. She also played with the audience, making one member represent an explorer and all the audience members around him had to wear white (vaguely) conical hats on their heads to make him feel besieged by icebergs.

She was excellent and unique though she abruptly ran out at the end and caused some confusion by not following up on the “God helmet” she made an audience member wear. It was a refreshing change from stand-up and I do feel like I learnt some things that may appear one day on QI. If “How 2” or some similar show was still running, she'd be perfect for it.

All in all, we saw some excellent shows. There were also some street performers who got our attention (and our money). It was a brilliant festival performance.

Edinburgh Shows 1 to 4

2009-08-19T17:48:00.000+01:00

The first show my brother and I attended was chosen based on time and place and of course availability. And thus it was that we saw Matt Kirshen at the Pleasance. He started off by “getting it out of the way” that he looked a lot younger than he was and declaring that the show was not about his age but, this time, his height. He went on to ask for the mike settings to be changed and to apologise for the noise from the (ineffective) air con unit. This kind of procrastination didn't really endear him to me and I braced myself for a bad act. He looked out at the audience with a huge grin and bobbing head, begging us with his wide eyes to applaud him, to like him. And as the show went on, I liked him more and more.

He wasn't offensive. It's a huge plus with me. Comedians that get by through criticising others leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. He also didn't go anywhere crass or lewd which was also a plus, not because I have any particular problem with that, it's just a girl can't really understand a boy's experiences so well.

But so far that is faint praise. I think I started to believe it was going to be a good gig when people started leaving. No, really... I thought that they were walking out but Matt Kirshen realised straight away that it was a toilet trip and gently chided them for interrupting him at a bad point as he was about to reach his punchline. He used the interruption and got back on track seamlessly without losing momentum. There was more than one interruption as another person went to the loo and of course people had to return also and each time Matt commented on it and made it into a joke and worked his way back to the routine without any problem.

It was pretty amazing.

The routines were about things that had happened to him and were mildly amusing on the whole occasionally becoming raucously funny. I especially enjoyed the comments on speaking French to a GCSE standard (and the time at which you know to call someone vous and not tu).

He made me laugh throughout and even though the material felt under-inspired, his manner felt experienced and I came away thinking the show a hit.

Our second show was “After the Bomb”, a play at the Zoo. I saw two comedy plays last year at the Fringe and this one felt rather typical. It was sometimes funny and it was sometimes unable to get a laugh. I wasn't bored when watching it but I'm not going to rush out and insist that anyone else see it either.

The plot has something to do with Soviet spies setting off a bomb on a train... on which are other characters one of whom is an alien who escapes suspicion by claiming to be Welsh... and unrequited love and professional rivalry and the search for the perfect electrical appliance to settle down with. It's a slight mess but it leads to some good jokes and all the actors were committed to it. I class the experience a hit simply because I find comedy plays a hard thing to get right and this group certainly didn't get it wrong.

The third show was our first mistake. I understand that not every show will be enjoyable and so was willing to take a gamble. My brother was kind of eager to see this act as he had heard good things about it (and my casual hints about seeing Richard Herring fell on deaf ears) despite me saying “but I won't get any of it...”.

It was one man “Lord of the Rings” (condensed to an hour).

I kind of hoped it wouldn't be utterly obscure and impossible for me to enjoy. At the very least I would find out what happened in the second and third films, right?

It was utterly obscure and impossible for me to enjoy. The performer took on all roles plus sound effects, score, special effects and the part of geeky commentator who knows all the differences between the books and the films. At a break-neck pace, I couldn't follow a thing. I believe it required detailed knowledge of the films otherwise you would never know who was speaking or what the mime was meant to represent.

I got a few of the jokes. There was a good joke about Elvis and another about Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The performer also incorporated the sound of a siren from the street outside as it interrupted a death scene, appropriately enough. Plus I was amused by the running gag of people ignoring Sam's presence.

But that was it. I couldn't even follow to the extent of finding out how the films ended. I thought Frodo died at least three times only to be in the act again. Maybe if I cared enough I could read the plot on wikipedia but... I don't.

Rather disappointingly, my brother didn't like it either. Not sure why he didn't and I didn't want to press it because he shouldn't feel bad about choosing a dud show. The rest of the audience loved it from which I draw the conclusion that actual fans adore the show. I certainly did admire the performer. His energy was remarkable as he leapt and rolled and threw himself all around the stage. Plus he was sensitive enough to apologise to me and the other member of the audience who hadn't seen the films (he asked the audience whether there were any of us between films 1 and 2). That was nice of him, I felt.

Before wrapping this post off and having dinner, I will talk about the fourth show. This was Rich Hall. He came out onto the stage a touch too early and pointed out all the people still trying to make it to their seats. I wonder if this was done on purpose, whether he considered it the best way to start his act. I wasn't keen on it. It seemed to me that he could have easily waited thirty seconds for everyone to settle (the show ran over anyway). He told them off and pointed at various people in the audience he recognised (why exactly? Not much fun for the rest of us) and then he got started.

Once he started his routines, he was hilarious. He talked about Edinburgh (and the tram) at first and went on to talk about midges and caravans besieged by them from which you could by coffee. And as his criticism of midges mounted, he was attacked by a fly.

The fly was a bright speck in the spotlight and it came at Rich Hall perfectly on cue. He reacted brilliantly and soon I was crying with laughter as he riffed off it. The fly was soon joined by another fly and the hysteria mounted.

But the fly didn't go. Or rather it did, but it came back again and again and when it was away you couldn't help but let your eyes rove around, searching it out. Rich Hall was more distracted by it than I was and never really got into the rhythm of his routine. The show sagged and though what he said was mildly amusing, the punchlines never properly hit. I am not sure that his finale was what he planned it to be. I know that I had heard the story of how he met the Queen before and suspect he just fell back on old material as he lost confidence in the new stuff.

It was a shame.

I left the show feeling like I had laughed more than ever before at Edinburgh and yet I was disappointed that the show was so hollow and essentially was just about a man being distracted by a fly.

Dates

2009-06-21T19:02:00.003+01:00

Sorted my July flights-wise today. Phew. Need to do a train from Paris to Grenoble as well but that can wait until I catch my breath I think.

4th to 14th July - Tunbridge Wells
15th to 24th July - Krakow (EPS HEP Conference)
25th July to 14th August - Grenoble
15th August to 18th August - Edinburgh

Bit unsure what is happening on the 19th. I could be going to France or... not. But I should be in Quend which is north France from 21st to 28th August and then back in Grenoble for the whole of September.

When term starts, I may move back to Oxford but I haven't discussed this with anyone yet. Things are a bit up in the air at the moment with regards to the experiment and funding.

Disallusioned

2009-06-04T20:04:00.001+01:00

I always used to fantasise that as I grew older, adults would tell me the Great Secret to the Universe. Instead I just grow older.

(email to mum as she warns me of some things I have to look forward to in my 30s.)

Dates

2009-06-01T14:30:00.002+01:00

So, I've been stuck in France for the past six months or so (ignoring an afternoon in Switzerland) and getting out is hard. Very hard. There was meant to be a collaboration meeting on the 29th June so I booked a flight to the UK on the 26th. But then they moved the meeting forward a week. And then today they scrapped it altogether (or did they? We actually put the phone down before they in the UK dissolved the meeting- it was beyond tedious to hear them bicker). And they actually extended the experiment here well into July.

So that is why there hasn't been a dates entry for some time. However, I do plan on making that flight to the UK even if I have to go to France the next day. And I do plan on attending a bbq and I do need to go to the dentist and the optician. So, even without getting my expenses paid (and without permission to leave the experiment) I do hope to be travelling to the UK.

26th-27th June - Oxford/Banbury
5th-9th July - Tunbridge Wells

Rants

2009-05-26T14:05:00.002+01:00

(Written for funsies- the majority of this is about three weeks old now).

Today I got a box of dead flowers, well on the way to turning into mulch. It took the French postal service a month to deliver them. The previous record was when the postman acquired an Amazon delivery one Friday and got around to attempting delivery the next Wednesday (when I finally got the delivery note and could pick the parcel up on Thursday). I am used to mail sent within France taking a week to be delivered. The stamp for a letter here costs the same as the Europe-wide stamp you buy in the UK. A letter from the UK to France takes about three days to arrive. People complain about the Royal Mail but it's pretty good.

I'm not one to be spooked by the "yoof" of today but I am put on edge by French teenage boys. It isn't that they are often on the trams and buses drunk. Or that they play music loud. Or that they shout. It is that they spit. A day does not go past that I am not confronted by this horror.

The best supermarket I have been able to find is the equivalent of an Asda. I used to find the hypermarkets amazing. Dvds and food in one place? But now that is almost commonplace in the UK and I am no longer in awe. I am just depressed by the lack of quality in the fruit and veg, the sparsity of healthy ready meals and the expensive meat that goes off instantly and is riddled with fat. The chocolate and biscuit aisles are extraordinary and don't let me near the pattisserie section, but overall I am not impressed. The time wasted queueing is a constant bugbear as well. It takes far too long to get through. The UK needs to catch up on the States and Japan in many ways but France is clearly behind the UK in employing enough staff and designating different queues for different quantities.

About a month later now and I can happily report that the fruit situation has improved with the season.

Today there is a strike and so public transport is almost but not quite non existent. You just don't know when you are standing at the bus stop whether you will have to wait a few minutes or an hour. It's a common thing. There seems to be a large strike every month or so with smaller strikes happening every week (I am not sure whether they actually qualify as strikes or whether it is just that the drivers all decide to stop to have un cafe). I find I cannot look at this with anything but wry amusement though because as ridiculous as this is, at least there is public transport to miss. Getting anywhere in California was next to impossible and it is so hideously expensive, crowded and complicated in the UK that I despair. So, this isn't a rant about the strikes. It is just amusement.

Geneva Day 1: They heard I was coming so they got extra police with big guns

2009-02-14T21:05:00.003Z

On Saturday morning, 30th January 2009, I had the 10:50 train from Grenoble to Geneva. Being rather late in the morning, I had plenty of time to watch BSG and download the associated podcast. With thoughts of death and despair pervading my mind, I arrived at the station a little early. I took the opportunity to investigate nearby shops to look for a gift for Nadine and I discovered that unfortunately Grenoble has very little to offer in that area. Curses. One day I will find something and pay her back for her hospitality though.

I got onto my train and hung around in the vestibule by the toilet until it started to move, causing much confusion as a queue formed behind me. Once I knew the direction of the train (which, for future knowledge, is towards the town centre) I found a seat facing in the correct direction. The journey was long (2 hours 40 minutes) but pleasant as the track wound between mountains, around lakes, through tunnels and by adorable villages. My one moment of worry was when the train stopped, turned around and started to revisit stations.

But we arrived in Geneva on time and I recognised the station. I got out and was yet again baffled at the passport control where uniformed officials stood idly by chatting to each other and paid the disembarking passengers no notice. Still, I waved my little maroon passport around as if fanning myself.

As soon as I was through the unmanned customs area, I saw Nadine. I grinned and then was fearful as she came towards me with the intention to greet me French style... but it turned out okay. My first task was to get some of the local currency which I had previously found tricky (and lost about €20 in the process) but I remembered where there was a cash machine and got 50CHF without hassle.

Nadine took me on a little walk to the Forbidden Planet style shop they have there. On the way, I saw a little boy wearing a Spider-man hat and impressed Nadine with my super Spidey spotting skillz. She in turn impressed me by showing me a building where Spider-man had been painted on the wall. As an aside, this is surprisingly common in Grenoble as well as Geneva. Not Spider-man- I mean murals and welcomed graffiti. It does add a great pop culture flavour to old places.

I quickly bought a baguette avec jambon for lunch and avoided the extensive chocolate section in the shop (perhaps foolishly as adverts all around the city advertised a flavour of Lindt I can't find in Grenoble- chili and pomegranate). We went to the comic shop and Nadine looked at the price of a calendar she wanted to buy. Even though it was the end of January, the price was still ridiculously high so Nadine didn't buy the item and we went on. (Rather daftly, the next time I went shopping in Grenoble I went and bought Spidey comics written in French... I think Nadine affected me after all but it needed time to work on me).

We went on a walk through the old town and found a statue of a woman with a bag on her head. Nadine told me who it was and explained some of the rather taut relations between the French (though Nadine explained that there was, properly, a different name for the inhabitants of the region that I have since forgotten but I suppose it is related to what we learnt in QI recently about the French not actually speaking French until rather recently). As I was taking photos with my compact digital, Nadine gave me a pitying look (not really- I think it was more smug) and then let me play with her camera. I say play but I basically stole it and kept it for the entire weekend except for when I was tired of carrying it.

I haven't mentioned the police yet but I probably should. In the station, we noticed lots of armed policemen. In fact, there were some on my train picked up at our second stop at Bellegard. They were everywhere in the city too, armed and armoured. It was quite strange as there were no signs of trouble though once we did hear some raised voices... but they were briefly silenced. I mention the police here as I took a few photos of them with Nadine's camera feeling rather naughty but untouchable as I did so. With her zoom, I could take photos of people too far away to see that I had a camera. Quite amazing.

We mosied the mean streets and found some mosaics. Nadine explained some of the history behind them but I was distracted by the camera which she set to take low light photos for me. An age later, I was ready to move on. Our primary port of call was the cathedral which has entry to the towers for views over the city and to underneath the cathedral for a museum on the archeology studies that had been done there.

We first went inside the cathedral and would you have guessed it, spent ages taking photos. I had to hand over the camera to Nadine for most of this as I was failing to get how to shoot with low light indoors. It was nice inside but quite typical for a cathedral, I felt. The wood carvings on the chairs were interesting though especially when Nadine explained that they depicted how the people that sat there died (for example, mauled by dog). I think I spotted her tongue in her cheek there.

We paid some money and got tickets to climb the towers (and to go to the museum after). Nadine moaned on the way up about being unfit and unable to take all the stairs but she kept us moving at a fast pace so I am certain she was exaggerating. Indeed, I walk faster than most people but never found her walking off my pace over the weekend. The climb was interrupted by people coming down but we finally made it to the north tower.

We were disappointed. It was a room with dirty windows that had wires over them, obscuring the view. A bit miffed, we walked out of that room to follow a route through the roof of the cathedral. The beams and struts were fantastic and I adored seeing this normally unseen part. I had thoughts of being a moody fantasy character, sitting up here and speaking dreary poetry with crows as my audience. As you do.

We came out in the south tower which was again a room with windows but these were quite clean and clear. We spent ages taking many photos out of each and ever window. Oh, okay- I spent ages.

Then we found a door that took us out of the room and into the freezing air of Geneva. At last, we were outside and standing by the battlements of the tower. Cue many more photos but this time, my hands were freezing and my grip on Nadine's camera was becoming more worrying. Bravely, I continued to snap picks and I found a girl with a red hat standing outside in another turret. I realised, wait a minute, there must have been a way out onto the north tower after all.

Nadine and I crossed back to the north tower where I saw the girl in the red hat depart down the staircase. Realising she must have come from nearby, Nadine found the entrance to the exterior of the tower. Again, we spent more time than strictly necessary out there, freezing ourselves. But the views and the stonework of the tower were fantastic.

We left the tower and went back down the spiral staircase, through the cathedral and then down into the archeology museum. We should have picked up audio guides here but we were happy to follow the signs and talk to each other about what we imagined the objects were for. For example, Nadine was convinced that a star formation in the rock that had something to do with grinding corn was in fact used for torture. She reasoned that there had to be a torture chamber somewhere in the cathedral...

We never found one though. Instead we found the archaeological remains of the structure used to cast the bell for the cathedral, a stone with the word "sex" carved into it, and an arch that reminded me of a Stargate.

We also heard a recording of some Gregorian chanting. We followed the sound to another museum that I think I failed to get the point of. I believe it was about reforms in religion and it contained a tree showing different branches of faiths today and how they all came from a common point. There was a gallery of satirical cartoons which Nadine helped me translate. The humour was lost in the process somewhat.

We left the museum and went back out onto the streets. Nadine guided me to the Pont des Bergues and Rousseau Island. It was coming up to 6 and the evening was closing in and the temperature dropping but we spent a fair amount of time just standing on the bridge taking photos of the birds. Gulls flocked from one side of the bridge to the other while swans and ducks swam, ignoring the yahoos flying above. The island itself was just a large rock with a couple of benches (and a man who must have been far too cold to be sitting out there), a statue of Rousseau and a tent advertising itself to be a restaurant. We hurried on as fast as our frozen legs could take us without snapping.

Our legs took us to the nearest Starbucks. It was crowded but we were too cold to leave and find another place to drink. I got a chai latte as is my way in Starbucks and we found a table after a few minutes of wandering around searching for space. We sat and flicked through our photos on our cameras and got warm again before braving the freezing evening.

The sky had that deep blue cast of entering the night when we made it out. We squandered our regained warmth by standing by the side of the river taking photos of the city lights reflected in it. Once my hands grew too cold to hold Nadine's camera, we left for the tram.

The tram took us to the border (between Switzerland and France) after a (I think) thirty minute journey. We arrived at the border, which I don't recall being guarded, with about twenty five minutes to kill before our connecting bus so we ducked into the nearest cafe. It was a Turkish place I think and we both got small glasses of mint tea for €1 or something delightfully ridiculous after the expense (and daft non-Euro currency) of Switzerland. Then we were on the bus which took about thirty minutes to get to our stop.

From the bus stop, we walked to Nadine's tower block, discovering on the way how useful barriers on the footpath designed to stop scooters were (for indeed, the scooters no longer went on the footpath, preferring the grass to the side). Nadine's flat was on the ground floor and seemed rather typical judging from my meagre experience. Perfect size for one and furnished with a mix of the modern and old, mostly functional and stocked with essentials chosen for their utility. As an aside, and not at all a comment on Nadine's place in particular, the style in France reminds me of my grandparents' way of living, as if the war only just happened. It seems odd for a country famous as the centre for style and fashion but there we are. And there certainly is a lot to be said for living in a manner that reuses old items and doesn't have a house per person. I digress.

Nadine quite wonderfully cooked me a meal (steak with mash potato and fried courgettes, delicious) and sat me down in front of the computer as she did so. I browsed through the photos we took and also turned my attention to her fabulous dvd collection. We grabbed our plates and sat down in front of the telly to watch Stargate (I selected a few films I was interested in and from there, Nadine chose Stargate, possibly influenced by our investigation of the cathedral's archaeological dig). We ate and discussed the merits of Richard Dean Anderson above Kurt Russell and argued over who was better between James Spader and Michael Shanks. We also discovered that much of it was spoken in a form of Egyptian and subtitled in French which gave me some surprise exercise in translation. The rest of it was spoken English with French subtitles of course which also let me read and translate. I was able to identify a few lines where the translation was abysmal. I felt very proud of myself.

After we finished the main meal, Nadine enticed me with more foodstuffs including more cheese than I knew could fit in a fridge. I don't normally eat cheese except to have on toast or in a panini (panino, I mean) so it was a bit of an adventure for me. Nadine spoke of cheese in a way that would have the cheese obsessed nun in Wonderfalls impressed. I tried one... and it was rather salty but okay. Another tasted worse than my own feet so I gave up on that after a small nibble. The cheddar was sweet and lovely though but I was too full to eat much. Of course, that didn't stop Nadine putting out more food. This time, a sweet crispy type thing that made me think of poppadoms coated in sugar. Nice and not filling enough to stop stuffed me from eating one. By this point we had moved onto a second film (Out of Sight) which was great for nonlinearity and fancy directing.

The day had been quite tiring and after the second film, we both retired to bed. I think it was early for Nadine but all the walking had had an effect on her too. I got into the little putmeup bed and fell asleep before I could say sweet dr....

2 more years, 119 more dedicated threads of 100 emails each

2009-01-31T19:58:00.000Z

Or sometimes 99.

So, as a follow up to this entry, here are the email thread titles from the past two years. And if you can spot all the references, you are insane.

Personally, I kind of want to slay the dragon.
Seize the moment, 'cause tomorrow you might be dead
Aye aye, good girl, prostate probe and no jelly!
The kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten.
Macaroni and cheese: It's what Americans eat when they want to commit suicide slowly.
Stop saying the things I say to you!
Make sure Fluffy's getting enough love
Quirky, but there it is
You try chatting with a cranky hamburger
D'you know, I once hit a bloke for speaking French
... and a sinister need for carrots.
Which one of your sorry friends has telekinesis?
I'm here to kill you, not to judge you.
As nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot
We're your arch-nemesises...ses.
I'm not just a sex goddess, you know.
He's completely insane... and a bit magnificent.
Handcuffed to a serial contrarian
Damsons in distress
Dysfunctional
We can't run, that would be wrong. Could we hide?
Ha ha HA! Mine is an evil laugh... now die!
There's four directions on this map but you're only going one way.
Dude, did I say "harsh your melon"?
Blah blah polysyllabic blah.
I am happy drinking my own internal milk
Alright, so I bounce
Jelly baby?
Ooh you public menace
You can't rule the world in hiding. You've got to come out on the balcony sometimes and wave a tentacle.
Our rats are low.
And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.
Voldy's gone mouldy
I'm good and pure and science turns me on
Oh jealous would involve piano wire
Perhaps a little kara-tay technique will put you in your place
Nothing like a monk with a grudge
There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.
Anyone needs me, I'll be in the supply closet eating sugar packets.
A bitca?
Chuck your boyfriend, have a sandwich
Bite Me
Toilet Snorkel
I'm dead inside!
Waffles lurking everywhere
A fulsome pair of funbags
You look like a fish when you talk
Making the world a weirder place
It's not my cow. It's a sheep with a pitchfork. Unfortunately, it goes quack.
Opaline towers as high as small moons. Glaciers that rippled with insensate lust.
Covering your tracks with the judicial application of bacon and beans.
That is salt in the wound for poor Mr Muggles.
Ennui is the new gunk
I'm not a cargo jet, Parkman!
Hello, square one, nice to see you again.
Fair play to you, not many men can carry off a decorative vegetable.
Have you killed many people?
They were just out to get me because I threatened to kill them.
All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
I surrender to Destiny.
The Devil Wears Primark
You never want to be on time for a ritual, the chanting, the blood rites... they go on.
Yes sir, Captain Tightpants.
The absence of balloon animals.
I retract my pachyderm
I'm 'aving hoops.
I always say there's a time to take off the noose and put on the kettle.
We could release a single.
So large that other smaller breasts will want to orbit them
I'll take away your bucket
I rarely wear clothes indoors. Hope that's cool.
Tinker, tailor, soldier, twat.
You can't prune a tree with a shotgun.
It's a cunning plan actually.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
-- Suicide by paint, inadvisability of --
You were my favourite construct
P.P.S. I can kill you with my brain
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea
Anyone notice a battle with your alter ego going on here?
Are you my mummy?
A Blessed in disguise
Clearly she's disturbed. I mean... clearly.
Oh my god! What can it be? We're all doomed! Who's flying this thing?!
You were all backlit and evil-smoking like that guy on the X-Files
The day he gets hit by a bus, I believe in God again.
Politics is the only thing more boring than blood samples
What's up with that frakking gimble?
That's a Dundee Cake and five Macaroons. And your target is... Toad-in-the-hole.
Now that you mention it, I have started bottling my own urine.
I love you so much, I almost forgot to brood!
The Hammer is my penis.
If god asks, I was with you
We totally had sex.
There is nothing either good or bad...
I'm very seldom naughty.
Since Angel lost his soul, he's regained his sense of whimsy
Not Everything is Significant
If you're not a friggin' tard, you will prevail
Now he must check the time whenever he wishes to copulate.
I trust you. Well, more than three gun-toting maniacs, at any rate.
Who brings a T-Rex to a vamp battle?
If a vampire offers you soup, what does it mean?
No, not the hair! Never the hair!
I think I've figured out how to steer by gesturing emphatically.
Inappropriate Touching!
I know she can't type or file. Until today I had some hope regarding the phone.
I'm a submarine!
I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.
OMG LOL ROTFLMAO WTM I finally got a tuba!!!!!
Yes, yes and merrily we go. Reduce atmospheric nitrogen by 0.03%.
You think you know what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.
What a crazy random happenstance
Your powerful sexual chemistry is too distracting
You've seen one nova, you've seen 'em all.
So, angel's on top again?
It makes a noise. That's sonic, isn't it?
Spit goes "clink"
The small concealable weapons always go to the far left of the place setting.
So I guess a pity frak's out of the question, then?
We've invaded Britain. LOL.

My 2008 in neat little categories

2009-01-02T15:57:00.002Z

My annual post...

Books

I had a terrible year for reading. I don't know why but I had a long period where I thought I would never enjoy a book ever again. The start of the year was great: Lies of Locke Lamora and American Gods were fantastic. But my favourite book of the year is Keeper's Child. It gets the prize simply because I was thinking about it long after I finished the book. It was also written in a style I don't often find in books and the freshness appealed to me a lot. Plus no other book this year had me as emotionally involved (well... actually Locke Lamora comes equal to it in that). I think I also read and highly enjoyed To Say Nothing of the Dog this year. But then came about seven months of not finding a single book enjoyable (I feel tempted to blame the AA reread for that since everything pales to that book with the exception of AQ...). Now I am actually into two books (The Last Watch and Nation which are both superb but I haven't finished them yet. Actually Nation reminds me a bit of Keeper's Child).

Update: I finished Nation in 2008 and adored it. Fantastic book. It felt like a new (dark) style for Sir Terry but retained his some of his humour

Television

Battlestar Galactica usually fills this position as my favourite show of the year but this season (4) has not captured my enthusiasm in the same way as it used to. The rewatches with skit have been fun though. Talk of disappointing seasons, Dexter season 3 wasn't a patch on the previous two seasons. However, as I watched it on iTunes, I saw Dexter season 2 in 2008 (broadcast on Showtime in 2007) and it really did amaze me. It had the same affect on me as Angel and indeed Assassin's Quest. It made my life brilliant by its mere presence. I was getting by with less sleep and I couldn't stop the feeling of happiness from engulfing me. The guests were perfect: Lundy and Lila. The twists and turns of the story were powerful and the pacing perfect. Dexter's transformation over the course of the episodes was quite phenomenal (indeed, he arced well in season 3 as well) and I have fallen in love with the character so badly.

Mentions should also go to Doctor Who which had a great series with Donna Noble as the companion (except for the final three episodes which I find quite forgettable...) and Torchwood which successfully lightened the mood in its second series making the characters more likable and the dynamic more effective... and hence making me realise that actually the dark and despairing tone of the first series was quite superior and under-rated. The problem with Torchwood was though that only two of the cast could act well and the lead was actually abysmal...

Finally, although my personal vote goes to Dexter, I think that the most perfect shows were Mad Men (second season) which is a work of art with its beautiful sets, directing and cleverly nuanced dialogue plus the highly original and subtly drawn characters, and Lost which, as a result of the writer's strike, produced a condensed season 4 absolutely full of action, answers, scifi and epic love.

Films

I've not really watched many films this year. I saw superhero films only essentially: Iron Man, Dark Knight, Indiana Jones 4 and Wanted. I think Iron Man was my favourite and Dark Knight the best... but honestly, I was not overly inspired by any of them. I watched Atonement on a flight and thought that pretty good for something without big action sequences...

Personal Event

It is always Hobbling related, isn't it? Well, this year I went to Olympic National Park in the state of Washington with our very own Mr Cooper who put me up and put up with me for a longish weekend. It was fantastic. I love the states and I love their National Parks and this one has to be the best... Forest, rainforest, beach and the most amazing snow covered mountains ever... I will never get over how quiet it was up there (and yet how much you could hear from far away...). Absolutely amazing. And the other parts to the trip were great too. Mr Cooper never talks about Carolyn enough who is a truly amazing person. And the community of his town is wonderfully nuts...

I also saw Rian again on that trip (always a great pleasure) and I returned to Silicon Valley to reunite with friends there. Such a fantastic time. I really miss everyone...

Theatre

So this year I saw a few things of note including Speed The Plow with Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey, Revenger's Tragedy with loud music, lots of blood and a rotating stage full of darkness and er... rape, Hamlet starring the Doctor and Captain Picard and also various things at Edinburgh. The best thing I saw was one of those things at Edinburgh: Ben Moor's Not Everything Is Significant. The wordplay, density of ideas and metaphysical and metaphorical story just inspired and amazed me. Pre-order the book now! Speaking of Edinburgh, it was great to finally make it to Scotland and see the beauty of the highlands as well as attend the fringe festival which has been an ambition of mine since I realised what comedy was.

Day 5: Penguins Not Included

2008-12-31T17:02:00.002Z

Final day. As mentioned, breakfast was getting quite random but we managed to find enough to eat. Somehow we ate and cleaned and packed and left in pretty good time, remembering to write a quick note in the visitors' book. Before we left the castle, we had to return the keys which led to a lengthy chat with the castle owner about our route back to England. Skit took it all in and followed his advice (though I think it was just what she planned to do anyway).

We went through East Lothian and stopped off very briefly to take photos of Tantallon Castle. Skit pointed out that the rock behind the red coastal castle was not naturally white but covered in guano. Nice.

We passed into England with a little more ceremony on this route than when we passed into Scotland. There were bedraggled flags flapping in the breeze for both countries. Skit and biped entered into a discussion on Scotland leaving Great Britain which made me feel quite upset and annoyed with people at large for playing with my sense of national identity.

We didn't take any more stops until lunch time which skit had perfectly planned to coincide with us arriving at Bamburgh in Northumberland. It was just a village with a couple of shops and pubs but we could also see, looking downhill towards the coast, a large and imposing castle. The village was rather quiet despite it being a tourist spot on a summer's day. It was a weekday (this was the Tuesday after the bank holiday Monday) but I still wondered at the lack of business.

We went into one of the pubs and ordered lunch and drinks. I of course had a cup of tea (with more tea to follow) with also a jacket potato while skit and biped played with much larger meals. After lunch, we walked down to the castle.

Bamburgh Castle sits on the beach. We crossed some playing fields to get there, marvelling at the size of the castle, and scrambled across some sand dunes. Biped and skit took their shoes and socks off once we got to the sandy beach and raced off to paddle in the North Sea. I delighted myself in taking photos. It was cloudy but not too cold (we did joke about how we found Edinburgh so warm and sunny and England to be fairly miserable) and the beach seemed quite surreal by being so pale and flat and devoid of people. After skit and biped lost all feeling in their toes, we decided to go on a little walk along the beach and write “Not Everything is Significant” in the sand but each stroke was considered a separate letter resulting in a strange series of curves and lines that only we could decipher until the word “significant” which was in a readable state but written in a circle. Our final transitory message was simply “Hobblings”.

We popped back into the pub for some illicit toilet use and were yet again on our way. What followed was a tremendous feat of driving skill by skit as she demonstrated just how incredibly long England was. Bizarrely, I started to think of far-off, extreme north cities like Hull as “nearly home”.

Dinner (and an expensive fill of the petrol tank- this weekend must have been when petrol prices peaked) came courtesy of a service station. We had no time to stop anywhere nice (indeed, there wasn't really anywhere nice to stop once we got off the coastal road) as the day was closing in and we had so much ground to cover. Last minute decisions led us to decide to end the holiday at Banbury as from here both biped and I could catch trains to our homes and skit could drive about 40 minutes to her house.

I texted Amy from skit's phone to ask for train times and sure enough, we got to the station with good time for me to catch the train to Oxford. Biped was a bit reticent about catching the train to Reading and changing there for London and instead waited for a direct to London train. I hope she was okay with that. I was concerned to leave her but being utterly worn out beyond belief (being a passenger is oddly tiring), I left for Oxford, waving at her from the train window.

So, that was it. The weekend. It started on Thursday evening with a farewell to Kate who left to see penguins, progressed to Edinburgh where we got to see Czech's pretending to be penguins, the great Scottish country where biped pretended to be a penguin and then back to England again on the Tuesday. Not all segments included penguins. Not only was it another great holiday with skit and biped, it was also a fulfillment of an ambition (to see the fringe festival) and a correction of a great crime (never going to Scotland). Plus it was the start of a Significant new obsession. Get the book. You know you want to.

Day 4: The Importance of packing the correct CDs

2008-12-30T23:44:00.002Z

I was all excited thinking that I was finally near the end of this account but of course this entry here is the penultimate day of our holiday since we made the journey home into an exciting day as well... Oh well. Let's hope I have the stamina to complete this. Since it has been so long since the holiday, I doubt I will be able to remember much which will make it short. Maybe.

Indeed, I can't even remember what we had for breakfast. We didn't really excel with the breakfasts either this day or the day after but we coped. I think we may have had enough for half a bacon sandwich each or possibly this was when biped fried everything in sight and we got fried bread and a solitary tomato and mushroom to divide between us (well, there may have been a few tomatoes and mushrooms). Either way, I supplemented it with a bowl of cocoa pops as some had been left by the previous occupants.

This was the day of incredible driving. Skit was amazing behind the wheel. We set off from the castle at a decent time and promptly realised that we had forgotten skit's CDs including the OMWF CD we really wanted to sing along to (for some insane reason, we were in the mood). Of course that wasn't enough to make her turn back but then we realised that the tickets for our evening's entertainment were with the CDs.

And so we had to turn around and take two, this time singing with gusto along to two Joss Whedon musicals.

The journey was of skit's design. I was quite excited to see Scotland proper and skit seemed eager to show her country off which made for a very long journey across the width from Edinburgh to Fort William, through the Highlands themselves. On the journey, skit kept biped and me informed of our location and the history of the region and alas I fear I will fail any examination in the topics now so this diary entry will be rather sparse of that.

The first stop was a spur of the moment decision as the scenery was getting more breathtakingly beautiful with every second. Skit pulled up into a small scenic area serviced by a van selling snacks (it must be one of the best jobs ever though I can't imagine it is that profitable). We ignored the van and set our sights on a path. A gate barred our way but there was a route around the gate through a large mud puddle. Somehow skit navigated the puddle of almost certain yukkiness but biped and I elected to climb over the gate in a most inelegant fashion.

Muddy disaster averted, we explored what was beyond. The sun was sweet and warm that day. Skit and I found a small stream and then we found biped communing with the heather. In a serene style, we frolicked and cavorted quite content with the stunning views of heather covered hillsides.

Alas, there was more of Scotland to discover and so we moved on and as we moved on (within skit's car of course) we left the sun behind us. At some point, we stopped for lunch and as I remember it being cold but not cagoul-level cold, I will guess that it was after that stop but before the next one. Lunch was at Tyndrum which has a famous (I guess) shop called the “Green Welly Stop”, essentially a family-run service station on the route. We bought lunch (either from this place or one of the businesses near to it, I forget) and I opted to eat it in the warmth of the car as the sun was hiding behind light clouds and there was quite a bitter wind. For some strange reason I seem to recall skit and biped having icecream outside... That surely can't be right, can it? Because if so, they were insane as it was not warm any more. Anyway, it was a brief stop here and then we were moving again.

The clouds sat thickly and stubbornly on the hills, daring us to enter. Which we did. Great amusement was drawn from seeing a car sitting in long grass and bracken by the roadside with no tracks leading in, as if the car had just been air-dropped in there. It isn't a Hobbling excursion without seeing a car in an unlikely place.

In the midst of this bleak and wintry region was another scenic viewpoint. Suckers for punishment, we stopped off and got out of the skitmobile to experience the true Scottish summer. We were pelted with rain and battered by wind and the views were basically clouds across a featureless landscape. Incredible. It's hard to express how amazing a view this was: dark and cloudy and yet full of character and drama (but more on that later).

There was a sign that said “do not feed the deer” and also a deer that you weren't supposed to feed. It was gorgeous and came right up to the little car park where the travellers (not just the three of us- it was a fairly popular stop) went mad for taking photos of the beautiful beast and for getting rather close to it. I let skit be my human shield in this and she got some amazing face-on pictures of it.

The next stop was Rannoch Moor which just screams Shakespeare. It is hard to imagine anyone going to this place and leaving without the urge to write a tragedy full of ansty princes and lots of suicidal verse. It was, however, freezing. The ground was muddy and we had to traverse a bit of the moor by leaping from grassy tuft to grassy tuft. Skit pointed out that Shakespeare was gravely mistaken if he thought witches would choose to gather here when there were much warmer options. Like somewhere indoors near a fire.

It was dark. It was bleak. It was the middle of the day but no one had told Rannoch Moor that it wasn't just turning into night. But you really could fall in love with it.

And then move on of course. Perhaps in search of somewhere slightly warmer and bathed in sunlight. Like Glen Coe. We stopped off for a photo shoot or two. The second little Glen Coe stop was where I realised my memory card was full despite clearing it the previous night. I furiously started to delete my many photos of cloud-shrouded landscape and from that point on I had to become more thrifty with my photographs. There was a fantastic waterfall here. In fact, we had been seeing waterfalls all over the place (putting Yosemite to shame I feel) as the incredibly wet summer was resulting in a lot of run-off.

The next stop at Glen Coe was our longest stop as we needed to sample a bit more of the Scottish air than what was available at the roadside. We picked a path in the valley that took us towards a waterfall but we never made the distance. We took the path across small streams and up rocky slopes and watched skit pretend to be a bird soaring on the wind... and biped be a penguin quite hysterically. I think it was at this moment that I made peace with the Czech mimes of the night before as who could bear a grudge when biped was doing a penguin impression (in a fluorescent yellow coat)?

Our wander here came to an end. Skit asked us whether we wanted to turn back... or go on. It was getting quite late and yet the route via Fort William didn't look considerably longer given that it let us take faster roads back to Edinburgh, so we went on. This was the Best Decision because we saw lochs. Land lochs and sea lochs and the sun was shining again and we were warm and in a wonderful little town that screamed summer holidays as much as any English seaside town but with more class.

This return journey is poorly represented in my photographs (thanks to filling up the memory card despite my vicious deletion of photographs at Glen Coe) but it involved three things: biped asleep in the back of the car, radio 4 comedy in the form of ISIHAC and Just a Minute and lots and lots of castles. Some of the castles really looked like they belonged in a fantasy tale.

Looking back on it, it is hard to believe that we did so much (well, that skit did so much). So much ground was covered in a morning and afternoon. We got into Edinburgh around 7 or so which feels far too early given that we were in Fort William quite late in the afternoon. We should possibly take a moment here to hail skit.

Done? Okay then. We had tickets to see one final show in Edinburgh- “The Third Condiment”. Prior to the show, we popped into a Turkish (I think) cafe and grabbed some food. I actually quite liked our quick and cheap meal and I had some wonderful honey and lemon tea.

The show was a comedy play complete with a reasonably large cast and props and scene changes and everything. Quite prosaic compared to everything else. The performance was utterly likable and on occasion utterly hysterical. The funniest scene was alas the very first scene and it was slightly downhill from that point but essentially it was a really solid show and a great one with which to say farewell to Edinburgh and the fringe (in 2008).

We left the show and I gave Mike a call. I forget why it was left to me to do this as I am the last person that should be left in charge of arranging a final meet-up but that was how it happened. Mike gave me instructions for how to find a bar where we could sit and chat and somehow I managed to listen to the directions and not have them fly out of my head as soon as the phonecall was ended. Skit and I hooked arms and skipped along to the meeting place (leaving biped to slouch behind us with a cigarette as her friend) which turned out to be a fantastic little wine bar/ classy drinks place and not a noisy pub as I imagined.

We sat and drank (I had a White Russian) and chatted with Mike and Madeleine about where we had been and what we had seen. I was shattered (and I have no idea how skit was upright) but it felt comfortable and friendly and when Mike and Madeleine invited us back to their place for tea, I was happy to go along.

Their flat was not exactly as I expected. I confess I thought that “grown-ups” lived quite differently but here was a flat that only differed from flats of students (or people my own age... I perhaps should convince myself that I am not a student any longer) in the size of the book collection. I was in awe of the room given over to books (not that it was a surprise to learn that Mike had a lot of books of course) and shocked by how few I had ever seen let alone read myself. The only books I saw that I knew were Jonathan Carroll books. But I am getting ahead of myself since this perusal of the books came after having some tea and criticising Madeleine on her dvd of the film Pi... I am sorry, I cannot help it. “Pi” is of course a bit of a shared joke within my college friends. Anyway, Mike showed us some of his tapir collection that had made it onto flickr and we talked and talked until I was dropping off where I sat.

We thanked Mike and Madeleine (or at least I hope we did) and left. It was definitely past midnight, possibly more like 1 when we got to the castle. Needless to say, it was straight to bed.

edit: Oh, I worked out the mystery of the right arm, by the way. We had both pulled muscles or at least made them sore by skipping stones.

Dates

2008-12-05T11:06:00.002Z

14th December - 19th December Oxford
19th December - 5th January TW
5th January - 10th January Oxford
10th January onwards Grenoble

Day Three: Take a look at me- a penguin you will see.

2008-11-24T19:19:00.003Z

I have a confession to make.

I got the evening meals mixed up.

This will become obvious later.

This Sunday morning did not start with the same enthusiasm as the Saturday but it was yet again a beautiful morning. We had another patented Hobbling breakfast of pancakes (with sugar and lemon), the mashed potato from the bangers and mash meal (told you I got the meals mixed up...), bacon and the remaining strawberries. We don’t like to start the day without some ballast.

There was some plan to drive to the nearest station and take the train into Edinburgh but general concern about when exactly the trains were running, given the fact it was a Sunday, made us fall back on our friendly neighbourhood chauffeur: skit. And so we got back into the ripe skitmobile and headed off to Edinburgh.

This time we avoided the crippling parking fee by parking rather far from the city centre. As we (well, skit) found a space and demonstrated excellent parallel parking skillz, Craig phoned from the bus station in Edinburgh. We confirmed the meeting place (a coffee shop in the centre of some square, possibly St Andrew) which had been chosen by the excellently organised Mike. Skit, biped and I then hopped, skipped and jumped (very rarely just an expression with us) to a bus stop where we caught a bus within minutes of us getting there.

We got off the bus near the overpriced car park and walked to the square of meetings. Sure enough, there was a coffee shop there though not a Costa as had been promised to us. But still, there was Craig and Witty Lela and Friend, looking through the window like puppies begging to be rescued. I can only think that Friend was brought for sacrificial purposes, by the way.

We went into the coffee establishment of forgotten chain affiliation and greeted our new meet friends. After seeing so many pictures of Craig from boy to man (well, man-boy) and expecting a red-headed beauty for Lela, it wasn’t a jarring moment to meet them.

We quickly realised that Mike and Madeleine were already there at the coffee shop but sitting outside and pretending they weren’t with the other three so we went out there to join them in the surprising Scottish sunshine. We played havoc with the table arrangements to get us all seated and surrounding a focal point (or two). Taking advantage of the warmth of the day, I got an iced latte, my last of the year (possibly my first too to be honest as I can’t remember having one since being out in California).

We chatted for a while about nothing in particular (probably at some point the oddity of the sore upper-arms) and then got ourselves into gear and walked on. Skit and I chatted to Lela, mainly about Craig I think. We ended up back in the area near the castle with the gaudy fountain (I think this is Princes Street Gardens, looking at a map). We found some entertainment in the form of a couple of Australians showing off their unicycling talents. Personally, my focus was less on them as it was on my bladder which was about to explode with iced latte: not nice for me and not nice for anyone within the splash zone. I found some public toilets but couldn’t work out how to get in or indeed which of the two doors I was meant to enter from. Fortunately I was saved by sidling up to skit and telepathically triggering her toilet need so I could then follow her to more convenient convenience. She led me to a museum cunningly hiding beneath our feet (we were on a terrace) and we relieved ourselves there. I mean, in the museum toilets.

We returned to the group who probably had not missed us at all. The unicyclists had finished their act and we moved on, past stalls selling ethnic fashions as you tend to get in festivals. We walked up some steps, approaching the castle on a different route than we did on the Saturday. At the top of the climb, we paused to let people catch up, and a man in a white lab coat leafleting some act or event or something found his eyes drawn to skit’s assets or at least her t-shirt. That day skit was wearing a t-shirt from xkcd musing that if the t-shirt was witty enough, someone might love her. Indeed, the man asked her where it was from as he kind of recognised it creating skit’s first real life xkcd moment. Alas, there was no love offered.

Skit spurned, we continued walking through the city. It became hard to keep together when we got to the chaos of Royal Mile. We got very distracted by all the performers and leafleteers as well as the random crafts market where I bought a badge for skit for no good reason. The biggest distracted for me though was Ben Moor.

I saw him in his grey hoodie forlorning holding out leaflets. I couldn’t help it; I had to go up to him and embarrass myself. I told him that I saw his show the day before and then went on to speak in tongues with the words destiny and fate possibly making an appearance. I must have come off as a total idiot but he was very sweet and asked me whether I had got a badge, which I had. Finally realising that he was looking for an escape route, I wished him all the best for his final performance (hoping that it was indeed his final performance that day because otherwise it may have sounded like a threat) and ran off. I joked to biped that my stalking plan was easier than I imagined.

We continued our walk all the way to the Pleasance. Once there we were accosted by more leafleteers, one of whom delivered a little spiel with the leaflet to encourage us to see the play "Pie" or "Meat Pie" or something- the name was forgettable (to me). We all ended up sipping drinks under a marquee in a quiet corner of the Pleasance courtyard debating our next move. What show should we see?

As we sat, torn between the options, a man walked into the marquee. Dressed in a grey hoodie. It was Ben Moor. Again. He saw Mike and came over to say hi, Mike, I assume, being a bit of a local legend. He then saw me and you could see the fear in his eyes (possibly- or maybe it was just recognition, I confuse the two). I started to wonder if instead of me stalking him, he was stalking me. But then again, I was at his place of work so perhaps it was still me stalking him after all.

Ben Moor sat in a little corner by himself as I tried to ignore the presence of his genius and focus on the issue of what play we were going to see. Encouraged by the funny spiel and jokes written on the leaflet, we opted for Meat Pie (or whatever it was called) and I got the tickets. It wasn’t on for a while so we decided to grab some lunch first. Mike knew an “Indian tapas” place nearby and so there we went.

It was a great little restaurant. We each ordered a dish or two by scribbling our request on a bit of paper which eventually ended up with Mike so he now has a sample of everyone’s handwriting. I had a pot of chai which was absolutely delicious as well as being Hobbling-appropriate. The small Indian dishes came quickly and soon the table was covered with a banquet. I doubted we would ever get through it yet somehow we did and more food was ordered. The benefit of having small dishes, I found, was that hot food was easier to enjoy when you only had a couple of bites and then you could move onto the mild stuff to calm your palate. Plus, I am generally fond of tapas because it means I never grow bored of eating which I usually do with proper servings.

We devastated the area and left. We separated for a while at the Pleasance and reconvened for the show. We went into the theatre, again little more than a back room someone had thrown some seating into, and got a row of seats near the front.

The play was not a hit. The clever leafleteer with the witty sales pitch was not a star of the play and the hilarious jokes on the leaflet were the only ones that raised a laugh. The conceit was that the two stars would play all the roles in the play. They would switch from character to character by doing a little twirl and taking a pose, putting on an accent and doing small alterations to costume. The two performers were actually quite good at this, creating a range of insane caricatures all distinct from each other and capable of being followed in a complex fight scene. That is worthy of praise. Unfortunately, the writing was not great and there were nearly no laughs as we watched a crime caper take place.

At one point quite late in the play they decided to include some audience participation for no apparent reason. Suddenly skit found herself being asked what she had for dinner the night before. “Sausages” she replied with no acknowledgement that the meal was a lot more complex and delicious than that. The actresses got it out of her though: the mashed potato and the runner beans and the gravy. (Not literally.) There was also another audience member that was asked questions and he pretended to be Tony Blair which seemed to throw the actresses for a moment as if they didn’t realise that other people could be funnier than them.

So, it wasn’t a great play but I did come away at least thinking positively of their performance if not the writing. It was such a shame that the day before had had two top-notch shows. I honestly was beginning to think that all the festival had was brilliant.

We then walked to Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano looking out over the city. On the way, skit and I argued about the use of audience participation which we almost never do in Real Life (argue that is, not that particular argument) and it felt quite odd but fortunately came to an end by the base of the Seat.

Madeleine and biped decided not to climb Arthur’s Seat so we arranged with them to meet at the next theatre (this time opting to see a performance Mike and Madeleine had already been to once and so were certain was good). The path leading up split and Mike went one way and Craig led the rest of us on the other route. Craig bound up the steps like a mountain goat as we struggled behind him, pausing half way out of sheer exhaustion. The views of the city were already pretty marvellous and we hadn’t been climbing for very long. Looking at the route to come, I saw an alternate path that was essentially a sheer drop in one place. Some people were attempting to go down it. My heart was in my throat as I could see that they were not prepared for proper climbing. I wanted to shout at them but they were too far away. Fortunately, they thought better of their path choice in the end but it was scary while I thought they were going to do it.

Our path actually had a rather steep bit too- steep enough that we had to use our hands to pull us up. It wasn’t more than a couple of metres though and there was plenty of grass to grab onto making it more fun than risky.

Eventually, we made it to the top just behind a patient and decidedly unwearied Craig. Mike was already there waiting for us.

The top was windy and barren of plant life but teeming with people who, on finding themselves at the top of Arthur’s Seat, seemed to be unsure of what to do next. Skit and Mike spent some time looking at an engraving which gave the cardinal points and described the view. Skit squinted into the distance trying to see our castle and finally persuaded herself that she had it. Craig stood on the rocks looking both magnificent as if posing for an action calendar and ridiculous and he attempted to protect his ears from the gusting wind.

Eventually we realised that the main thing to do when you are at the top of Arthur’s Seat is to go down. We traipsed down a gentle route that took us through those paths that masquerade as streams (or vice versa) that Scotland seems to like so much. It was a longer route but done in quicker time since no one required a break to refrain from dying.

We made it back to the city and to the next theatre, just down the road from the Pleasance. Yes, a different venue. We couldn’t get seats together this time so skit, biped and I found ourselves in a non-tiered row and I spent most of the performance moving my head from left to right and back again in an effort to see what was going on.

Indeed, it didn’t help too much and I soon just gave up trying to watch the performance and instead let my thoughts wander to more pleasant places. In other words, I didn’t really enjoy it and I couldn’t even feel gracious enough to give them the same leeway as I gave the Meat Pie (or whatever) people because it was just too depressing.

Let me start properly. The set was well lit with icy colours and the air was touched with chalk dust that gave the room atmosphere. The music was soft and vaguely improvisational. The two performers were silent throughout as they mimed their story. The entire ambience was one of ice and silence, loneliness and depression, hopelessness and fear. Or so it felt to me. I was distinctly uncomfortable and wanted to leave but was trapped in by a row of people.

The story was open to interpretation as the mimes suggested something about a journey in the Antarctic. There were hints of memories or hallucinations of leaving home with great fanfare and ideas of heroism. And then suggestions of madness and confusion as the mimes became confused between the explorers and the wildlife they met. I could see out of the corner of my eye the delighted expression on skit’s and biped’s faces as they saw the mimes act as penguins or fish or seals or birds. But my mood was going from disturbed to bored as the animal acts went on for ages. I didn’t really know what to do with my thoughts and so just started an inner monologue filled with bile for this show.

It fortunately came to an end after an hour and I was free. Free but still trapped by not wanting to express my opinions in front of either the people that recommended it or the people that seemed to have enjoyed it. Some other voices in our group were muted but some seemed to be in awe of the show. Ah well.

On the walk back across the city, Madeleine made a new friend out of a friendly drunk. I stood about a metre away as she tried to be polite and yet insistent with him and I escaped attention completely. I think I may have turned invisible at some point. Since we were near their house, we said our farewells to Mike and Madeleine and went on two Hobblings short.

The Aberdeen three wanted to go straight to the bus station as indeed it was very late and they had to catch the correct bus. It was a shame that it ended up so rushed especially since I felt incredibly bad that they got on the bus with no dinner. There wasn’t anything open at the bus station for a snack and they didn’t dare go far on their quest for food for the aforementioned worry about missing the bus and so we abandoned them, hungry. I expect Craig and Lela ate their sacrificial buddy. Or something.

I myself was very hungry and also tired and grumpy not to mention depressed and annoyed at those mimes. We three that remained decided to go to a restaurant rather than go to Asda and get something to cook so we found ourselves at Cafe Rouge which is a place I kind of hold an irrational hatred of for no good reason except their food always bores me (and skit criticises me for ordering French dishes with an English accent). What followed was therefore a not fantastic meal. I don’t know whether skit and biped were anything but tired as none of us vocalised our reason for silence, after all that would defeat the point, but the meal was conducted without our usual chatter.

I had had a drink with ice in it and it was served with a straw. As is my way, I started playing. Skit had been toying with the candle, as was her way, but soon joined me in the ice game. The ice cubes had a hole through the centre (I am not sure why but they nearly always do in restaurants) and so I poked the straw through and then placed the straw horizontally on the top on the glass letting the cube hang. The “game” was nothing more than to watch the ice melt and the cube eventually drop from the straw into the glass. It sounds dull (because it is) but was pretty much all my tiny brain could cope with at that point.

We three watched the ice melt. And drop. And then tried again with a couple more ice cubes. Skit got her camera out and took photos. Our waitress backed away with a worried look on her face.

Eventually we finished the food, paid the bill and left. The bus was a little harder to catch this time and we were quite cold waiting for it. It came though and we rode with it and it turned... and took a route not near where the skitmobile was parked. There was little for it but to get out and walk which we did. Cold. Tired. Quiet. And then skit drove back to the castle and we slipped into bed and sleep took us away.

Break in the transmission

2008-11-01T14:13:00.002Z

Nostalgia:

From an email:

I moved out to France about two weeks ago. It doesn't feel like two weeks. I still haven't unpacked. I feel very lonely. The people out here that I work with aren't very socialable and I can't really get to know the people I am living in a tower block with as there is this language barrier. I am trying to learn French but I don't think I will get to the point where I can hold a proper conversation any time soon. Work is really hard and I feel like I am failing at everything I try to do which just leads to me not wanting to try.

But at least it is pretty here. Lots of mountains. And I have my own place again. It's no chezbob but I can put music on and sing without fear that people are listening to me.

I feel like I need to plan another holiday to the states. I can't see any time when I would be able to do this though as the only period when I think I will be getting time off has been nabbed by friends wanting to visit me and holiday in lovely Grenoble. But I am thinking about it and it will happen. One day...

Sorry for a rather self pitying email... Tell me some good news!

The memory plays tricks (Day Two Part Two)

2008-10-24T15:45:00.002+01:00

We wandered the mean streets of Edinburgh in a vague and general direction to the Pleasance. On the way we passed an old church that was the venue for various plays including a Sondheim Musical (Assassins) that skit reserved some tickets for. The play was late (possibly 10 or 11?) so we doubted that we would attend and indeed, we did not.

So, after that scintillating paragraph we hopped, skipped and jumped to a large, purple and inverted inflatable cow. As you do. This venue had plenty of free stand-up comedy gigs. We turned our noses at it though and continued on our trek, getting rather hungry as we went. To appease the borborygmi (thanks, bbc Magazine), skit and biped popped into Greggs and emerged with mysterious meat-stuffed pastries and also the world’s most inedible doughnuts.

Somehow, we made it to the Pleasance. In all subsequent trips there, it never took quite as long which was a relief. The Pleasance courtyard was packed with people and billboards with posters and flyers. All around the edges of the courtyard were the entrances to the venues and outside each entrance, the list of shows and a billboard of posters advertising them. We lingered around such a billboard and identified the posters we liked, a highly scientific way of choosing shows that resulted in us still being incredibly unsure of what we wanted to see. We lurked for a while. Biped suggested that she at least join the massive queue to the ticket desk while we mull this over some more. I wandered off a few metres to ask at the information desk whether there was a list of shows that hadn’t sold out. I could see a blackboard of shows that had sold out but that wasn’t highly useful without spending a good while cross-checking. I asked the information desk girl “is there a list of shows that haven’t sold out?” and she shook her head. A voice behind me said “This show hasn’t” and a flyer was thrust in my direction. I took it and looked at the nice and strangely yearnful face of the man that said this and then looked at the flyer. “Oh, we were looking at this poster and thought it looked good,” I said for we were. I asserted that we would see this show and then was joined by skit, slightly out of breath (don’t deny it), who explained that they had already spoken to the flyer-man as they were standing in the queue and biped was getting the tickets. Flyer-man seemed content but still a bit yearnful and he slouched off in his grey unassuming hoodie into the distance. “Who was that hoodied man?” whispered skit in hushed tones. Well, she didn’t but she did ask whether that was the man on the flyer. “I think so...” I said. I checked the flyer: Ben Moor, a man in a slightly dishevelled shirt and tie and an Indian headdress. Yep, that was him. The serious and strange man was the star of the show. I found it endearing after being hounded by so many leafleteers on the Royal Mile who were not the cast.

Biped came out from the ticket office with “the last three tickets” and I heard that this was one of the acts Mike advertised. Last three tickets... Mike’s recommendation, the star being in the right place to inspire skit and biped and then sell his show to me... It felt like fate. We had a bit of a laugh about the coincidences. It felt noteworthy in light of the act’s title: Not Everything Is Significant.

The show wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon so we wandered off to have lunch. We passed a pub and I thought that we could grab a bite in there which is when I learnt the oddity that is Scottish pubs don’t serve food. It kind of makes their very existence pointless to me but maybe Scotland has some sort of heavy drinking culture or something... maybe.

We found a wonderful little cafe in the end. Nice and modern furnishing and a great feel with plenty of newspapers littered around. We bought our lunch (soup for me with a latte) and settled at a breakfast bar style table. Each of us fell into silence and read papers (I attempted and failed at a cryptic crossword). Had we run out of conversation already? Yes, it appeared but personally I loved that we were all content to be quiet for a little while. No pressure to be anything.

Lunch ended and we had some time to kill before the show but nowhere to kill it so we had a little wander and then returned to queue. We all bought programmes that came with badges (and the money went to charity). Thanks to being there early, we were able to pick some fantastic seats inside the venue. It really was an odd place. I got the impression that it was just a storage room or something in its normal life, transformed with some cunning black cloth and rows of benches into a theatre. It was tiny and the benches were arranged in a U shape around the stage. The seating was tiered so the performer was standing below us as we took the highest tier (and the middle so facing the performing area, not to the side). But this just made our eye level match his and so it was the best, most intimate, view possible.

The room filled up quickly and it became dark and warm. Lights brought the centre alive where Ben Moor stood, now in his scruffy suit sans jacket and wonderfully enlivened. The odd sense of wanting, needing, yearning for acknowledgement was lost, replaced with confidence and love for his play.

He said his carefully crafted lines with pride and perfect timing, perfect performance with every part of his gangly and expressive body. The character he created for his play was a biographer, blocked and scrimmaging for material for his book. His tale was commented upon by the footnoter, a slightly more arch and unemotional character essentially biographing the biographer. The play began with the biographer concerned that he was repeating himself because “the memory plays tricks” and goes on with twists and turns in an Escher styling, never taking the direct course, creating characters and bizarre scenarios, playing with words and memory, time and fate. Not everything was significant but what was significant to one person was not what was significant to another. The play defied logic and relished in it at the same time.

It was amazing.

The biographer inhabits a world where the hyphen has been hijacked by Nike as a form of punctuation sponsorship, where there is a chain of J G Ballard pubs, a rollercoaster called life that is so popular with Buddhists you can’t stop them from queueing up again for it, a musician related to Handal (he finds the name opens doors) and an ex-girlfriend who "moves like a fading continent worried about its future".

I cannot praise this show enough. You may have noticed from the way I am still praising it. The humour was pure radio 4 word play. Every sentence had at least one funny thing in it and I found it hard to keep up. The overall sense of the show was one of wonder but also one questioning fate, not just cosmic fate but the ones we carve for ourselves through our possibly flawed and certainly skewed interpretation of the world. On his website, Ben Moor says “[the story is] written in such a way that an audience member can decide one thing about the events as presented in the piece, and the next person might come to a totally different deduction” and indeed, reviews of the shows have mentioned how the experience of the play was personal and could not be dissected in print.

See it.

Incidentally, biped kept falling asleep. But not because of the play but because it was so warm and dark in there.

On leaving the theatre, I swore to stalk Ben Moor. As a joke, of course and more referring to his career than his physical being.

Outside the courtyard, we met with Gillian, skit’s friend from school. I don’t know what she thought of biped and me but we kept our distance in case she was a cannibal or the like. We walked back across the city, this time walking close by the castle. I recall griping about the number of steps we had to climb and not giving the castle enough awe. I was a little thrown by the way it was a grey stone house and not something with turrets and dragons and fairytale princesses hanging their hair out of windows. But I should at least mention now how cool it is to have a castle on a mound at the centre of a city.

After walking around the castle and through a little park with an incredibly gaudy gold fountain, we came upon a small French market. I have noticed that French markets in France contain much more in the way of skimpy underwear than French markets in Britain. Just an observation. But this market contained the very best of French food and crafts (possibly) including a stall proudly displaying quilted blankets, throws and pillow cases. This immediately caught biped’s cold eye but she dragged herself away.

We went to a cafe/canteen where we grabbed some food and drinks (I believe skit had her second cream tea in two days and declared that she was on a one-a-day diet from now on, something she never kept up to her heart’s relief). Another of skit’s school friends joined us (or rather joined skit and Gilian as biped mused on the benefits of a quilt and I replayed Ben Moor in my head). Biped and I decided to leave the giggling school girls to it without even attempting to find out if they were decent people which was very rude of us but neither of us can claim to be paragons of politeness (well, maybe the Paragon...).

The sun was low in the sky and casting the city in a wonderful golden light. I felt happy and oddly brave so I phoned Mike (phoning is a scary thing to do because I need to speak in better English than normal) to explain that we weren’t going to pop into his shop at closing time as we half-promised because we were quite far away. I came away from the brief conversation congratulating myself on not sounding too abnormal and nervous but perhaps Mike’s memory of the conversation is different.

I then joined biped at the quilt stall where she was annoying the man tending the stall by drooling on his wares. After she wiped the spittle away, we compared opinions on the quilts, remarkably coming to the same conclusion on which one was the best. It had one side with wild strawberries as the repeated motif against a white background. The reverse was quite agreeable too though it is the strawberry side that sticks with me. With reservation, biped asked the cost. The man, obviously eager to pack up but more eager to get some money, gave her a great deal for the quilt and two pillowcases so she could not refuse the expense. With careless abandon, biped skipped off to the cash machine to get the money for it while I stayed at the stall and growled at anyone that came near to her chosen quilt.

We moseyed to our meeting place outside the theatre for the evening’s entertainment. It was a recommendation from Mike called Pagagnini and described as a string quartet with a twist (or words to that effect). Skit and her friends were there and chatting but on seeing us arrive, they hastily made their departure. We joined the queue for entry, taking it in turns to hold the place and use the toilets. I mention the toilets not so you can monitor our bladder control or lack of but so I can moan about the evil soap that stung my eyes and throat and had an even worse effect on skit’s breathing. Fortunately, it wasn’t so bad it detracted from the enjoyment of the evening. As we sat down, a man near us said that he had seen many (maybe all?) of the shows on at the fringe and this was the best one.

It was certainly good but I found some bits a little tedious. The show was formed by a string quartet playing recognisable classical pieces but then rebelling and playing other styles and using their instruments in other ways (for example, as percussive instruments or guitars). The musicians were frenzied as they leapt about the stage, playing expertly. I really enjoyed the music particularly when one musician got an electric violin and recorded himself play. And then played the recording as he played with it, recording the result and then played that as he played again and so on until he was a one-man orchestra. It was phenomenal and had he messed up once, it would have ruined the whole thing as it would have been repeated again and again but he did not; he was perfect. Finally, their encore of the techno version of the Four Seasons really cheered me as it is one of my favourite pieces and seeing it performed with such enthusiasm (not to mention smoke and lights) was the real highlight of the show. Oh, there was also some stuff with a love story between one musician and a member of the audience and other things with one musician being too full of himself... all that was the tedium I mentioned. I observed to skit that physical comedy really wasn’t my sort of thing.

We left the show buoyed and thinking that the entire festival was like Pagagini and Ben Moor. It was cold so I hugged biped’s quilt as we traipsed across to rescue the skitmobile from the priciest car park in the world. The multi-storey was pretty empty when we got there and we discovered the wonderful echoes we could produce. To the castle, we went where the meal was pasta and the entertainment was discovering “Taking over the asylum” on the telly. Mike texted skit as we ate our meal to tell us it was on. He knows us so well but by that point we had decided that as great as David Tennant was, the show was not gripping us. We were just too exhausted and had to go to bed... thinking about fate, choice and significance.

Day Two Part One (or the Mystery of the Right Arm)

2008-10-05T20:11:00.000+01:00

Saturday. I entered a light doze around 7:45 and was quite content to lie there happy in the knowledge that we were on holiday and could take things easy. Then skit got up. Now, granted she didn’t jump on me shouting in jubilance, but she did make me get up just as readily by playing the “anything you can do I can do better^H^H^H^H^H^H as well” card. Could I really let her be up and about without me? No chance. I was her equal in rising and being active before the postman loses the taste of toothpaste.

And so I found myself (leaping from life to life?) dressed and outside before 8:15am. I grabbed some flapjack fuel and my camera and greeted the morning.

It was glorious. Skit’s eagerness to rush outside was well justified. The light was golden (as were the fields of wheat) and it was fresh outside with hints of warmth. We took the first footpath we saw, heading in the direction of Wallyford (great name) and with grand unimpeded views of Edinburgh.

This footpath had two faults. The first was obvious quite early on: it was a stream. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be a stream and it was just the solid month of rain they had had in that area (except for maybe one afternoon) making its presence known but the erosion on the path really did make it look more like a stream bed. So, that was fun. Wet but fun. The second fault should have been obvious from the start but it was only after half an hour of walking that it twigged: we were going downhill quite fast. Which of course meant quite a nasty amount of uphill climbing.

Still, we enjoyed our way down the hill, taking photos of dew-decorated cobwebs and snacking on blackberries. We turned from the footpath-stream and took a lane that led to the road for our journey uphill. We could certainly tell why the skitmobile struggled the night before but we were invigorated enough by the day that it was an enjoyable slope and not as far as I feared. It even provided us with some entertainment as we came across a frog squished such that its innards were displayed like a drawing from an anatomy book. Odd things entertain me.

The view of the castle from the road during daylight was much more impressive than the view at dusk when we were tired and hungry. It sat like a tooth on the skyline (a tooth with turrets). How wonderfully lucky that we should find such a perfect place for us? Luck aided of course by skit’s superior googling skillz.

Biped was out admiring the view and the day so we had a quick mutual glee session, marvelling at the morning sun, the view of the city and the castle looming at our backs. But we were soon inside and making breakfast, the best part of any Hobbling holiday.

This breakfast was eggy bread with strawberries and bacon with a breakfast smoothie and tea and coffee for myself and biped respectively. Our large and delicious breakfasts will go down in legend.

Our plan for the day was to go into Edinburgh, horrify Mike and drive his customers away and perhaps catch a few shows. We were going to go by train into Edinburgh but somehow skit found the strength to drive into the city. We parked in a multi-story car park and then walked to the heart of Edinburgh.

It was my first time in the city though both skit and biped had been there before. I don’t think that stopped them from joining me in looking around in delight at Royal Mile. The Fringe performers were out in full strength, thrusting leaflets declaring “5 stars!” at us (as given by a random blogger or a performer’s mum, one suspects). There was also some street theatre. We didn’t spend long looking at the man with the skin-tight lycra suit riding a unicycle (actually, he may have just spray painted his skin, there was so little left to the imagination) but we hung around and watched some dancers who were flipping and somersaulting right on the pavement. There was also a rather sad but beautiful puppet show where a puppet with a potato-like head contemplated a feather.

We moved on and up, weighed down with flyers, to a certain shop called Transreal Fiction, passing many shops selling kitsch souvenirs, tartan, armour and roast hog.

I hid behind skit and biped as we entered the shop. I couldn’t pretend to be a random customer (as I once did when I spied on Kate in the Cambridge Waterstones) as Mike knew them (and he probably could have recognised me, to be fair. Curse flickr.). I was kind of taken aback at Mike’s appearance as skit once described him to me as a typical Edinburgh gentleman which led me to imagine a wizened old man, an idea reinforced by his “you young wipper snappers” Board posts. But instead there was a cheery face with all the aged wisdom of a five-year old who had just discovered the thrills and spills of the whoopee cushion. (An idea reinforced by his bad puns in Board posts.) He and skit quietly chatted while I browsed the shelves with biped.

The bookshop wasn’t how I imagined either. Dusty stacks seemingly propping up the ceiling, creaking staircases to platforms at varying heights and a maze-like layout of shelving with books unorganised by any recognisable human system was not the reality. The reality was a bright small room with shelves in a regular fashion well-stocked with new books. Above the shelves were framed works of art- Madeleine’s exhibition and behind and on the counter were soft toys. I observed to biped, in too low a voice for Mike to overhear, that the book selection was fantastic. I had grown tired of browsing bookshops, once a great hobby, because I only ever saw the same authors. I swear, the stock in Waterstones and Borders has not changed for the past decade unless you count the proliferation of Doctor Who and Torchwood tie-in books. But the choice in Transreal books was different. And the mere presence of a Neil Stephenson non-fiction book (“In the beginning was the command line” I believe) was enough to confirm that different = good.

I rejoined the others. The conversation had got to what shows we should watch and Mike berated us for not being organised. After all, he had sent the programme to us. I had read through the programme (at least the comedy and drama sections) but it was impossible to tell the difference between any of the shows from the vague and non representative descriptions. Mike suggested a few things and I recall proclaiming that I liked the “weird stuff” (skit, biped and I dissolved into giggles. Mike did not. It’s a Dr Horrible thing...). For some reason though the excitement of the soft toys in front of me (or something) meant that all suggestions went in one ear and out the other. I think they found something to root in inside skit or biped but my memories of this were... vague. Were there stilt walkers mentioned or am I just dreaming?

We left the shop. To be fair, since we entered two browsers had followed so we weren’t exactly driving customers away (which we are experts on in cocktail bars) but we couldn’t have been helping either. So off we went with some vague direction in mind. It may have been the Pleasance for that is where we ended up but honestly, my brain was not being housed in my head that day.

Our walk, whatever the destination, took us to Greyfriar’s Kirkyard. Skit told us the tale of the Greyfriar’s Bobby, to which I listened attentively, honest, not at all dismissing it as ridiculous just because it was about a dog. Anyway, I shouldn’t be allowed near cemeteries normally but I restrained myself here and was interested more in the view than the gravestones and (often open) crypts. The city’s most attractive feature for me is its relief. The multiple levels of the buildings due to the hills produces some astonishing views that put me in mind of fantasy cities: narrow structures, higgledy piggledy with alleys and bridges and twists and turns verging on the Escher. Later I commented on this to Mike and skit saying I could imagine Locke Lamora running for his life in this city.

Skit and I sat on a tree stump prodding each other as we waited for biped to reappear from her wander behind the kirk. We discovered an oddity: we each had sore arms. The exact same spot on our right arms was causing us pain (not aided by the prodding). How did we share the same injury? Had biped attacked us during the night? Was it the seat belts? No, then they would not be the right arm on each of us. Then what was it?!

Without finding the answer, just a new way to inflict pain on each other and eventually biped, we continued on our journey across Edinburgh.

Day 1 - Boldly going North

2008-10-02T13:53:00.001+01:00

“Holiday!” I shouted as I leapt from my mattress onto skit’s slumbering form. The alarm had just gone off at 8am and I had been awake for the past five minutes just waiting for its permission to act. Skit woke somewhere between the “hol” and the “day” as I landed on top of her.

I think I woke her more suddenly than she was used to.

I hopped, skipped and jumped downstairs, knocking on biped’s door as I went. “Go away!” she grouched or something equally rude and unnecessary. I sweetly enquired whether she wanted any coffee (yes) and then proceeded to probably make her the worst coffee she has ever had (but I never drink instant coffee so have no idea how to make it).

I made myself tea and then spent the next hour fussing with the wireless and attempting to send ezmail (or rather yuku mail… I still haven’t adjusted) to the Hobblings we were to meet in Edinburgh. Skit’s adapter for the phone socket was bust and the wireless only lasted a few minutes at a time, just enough to not be successful in my task. I did manage to send a quick missive to Mike though just to pass on mobile telephone numbers and also the responsibility of organising something.

Meanwhile, skit made us delicious bacon sandwiches. There is always bacon, chez skit.

Biped made one quick trip to the Post Office for an Amazon delivery of Gossip Girl dvds and a stop at the local shop for car supplies. And then we were off, not too late in the morning indeed.

However, we did not get very far very fast because a quick stop at Halfords was required.

But then we were off.

We were off to the sounds of skit’s mix CDs, my ISIHAC CDs and Whedonesque musicals (sung along to well by skit, poorly by me). The car journeys took up much of the holiday (thanks, skit, for driving) but I will skip over them with that description.

Except for a brief stop at a service station to grab lunch, our first real port of call was the Lake District. Skit was aiming for Keswick where she and biped and Narrisch had been. Indeed, much of the journey into the Lake District was accompanied by my two companions talking about where they had been or where they had (foolishly) cycled. The other parts were spent playing I-Spy.

Skit received a text message as she entered one of the villages in the Lake District. It was from Em, apparently drunk and wanting to phone. I let biped attempt to compose the reply but unsuccessfully so, so I took over and let Em know that there was a Hobbling Holiday in progress. Em phoned and we three talked to her (skit dangerously so as she was driving but she was going rather slow at the time and the only risk was that that increased her chances of being seen). I think Em thought me a wee bit crazy but I am just not used to talking on the phone so was struggling for things to say.

The phone call came to an end and we continued in the skitmobile in an attempt to find somewhere nice for an afternoon tea. We passed a posh hotel as there was no free parking and came to a tiny village (or hamlet?) called Grange. To get into it, we had to pass over two single-lane bridges. Once there, we went straight to a quaint tea shop by the river. We took a table outside and glared at people until we could move to a table closer to the river bank. Biped and skit ordered cream teas and I got cake with my tea. It was all terribly civilised… Until skit got an utterly incomprehensible voicemail from Q which was followed by a call from her. Again, my side of the conversation was pure nonsense (breaking out of the flow of conversation to cheerfully proclaim that the sun had just come out followed by a lengthy explanation of why that was rare and worth mentioning for the UK in August) and it was probably highly disruptive to the other patrons. But anyway.

After the tea, we used the toilets and skimmed stones on the river for a while. At least, skit skimmed them. Biped and I kind of just plopped them. After a while of tutelage, skit managed to get us both making the stones skip a little but we were nowhere near the level of five or six jump proficiency of the dawg.

Back in the car and on the road again. A text message from Mike said that he expected we were in Scotland by then. Alas, no.

The journey was as described above but to the soundtrack of Scottish music and with the observations as we crossed the border that 1) there was no welcome to Scotland (or indeed congratulations you have left England as I half expected the Scots to put up) sign and 2) biped was fast asleep in the back. I had some fun taking photos of her (as did skit, driving be damned) and then took a feather I had collected from outside skit’s house and tickled biped with it. She leapt to attention to my great amusement later explaining that she thought she was being licked by a snake. Later, skit was to wake the kraken by “accidentally” turning the sound up on her music stereo instead of down when a loud track came up.

It amused.

Another observation when we were in Scotland was that people were not expected to know which side of the road to drive on. Signs instructed motorists to drive on the left despite us not being at a port.

It was dusk by the time we got to the castle. The skitmobile struggled up the steep lane covered in gravel as skit feared for the paintwork. The view as we arrived at the castle was fantastic. We could see out over the Firth of Forth and the city of Edinburgh. Delighted, we went inside the castle’s reception room. The castle itself was unique in my castle experience. I am used to the Norman castles that litter the south-east. This Scottish castle was more of a fort. Indeed, apart from being painted white, it put me in mind of bobfort (plus, unlike bobfort, it isn’t the home to a waterslide fun park or pit of doom). The reception room was kind of bare of the softer side of life but the cold stones were covered with thick material, rugs and tapestries. The owners appeared and greeted us (we used our real names which sounds most bizarre with biped) and skit slipped into a slight Scottish accent and idiom.

The lord of the castle was quite a talker, regaling us with tales of battles and bloodshed (the history of the castle was made slightly amusing by being central to the Battle of Pinkie- narf!) but we managed to extricate ourselves. We jumped back into the (rather ripe) skitmobile and headed to Asda where we put shame to Supermarket Sweep contestants with the speed of our shop.

Back in the castle, or more accurately the renovated barn next to the castle but that sounds less grand so I will call it the castle, truth be damned, biped and I set to making bangers and mash while skit took a well deserved rest on the sofa. Having failed to find HIGNFY, I believe I forced Run Lola Run on the poor dawg but at 10 this was changed to QI. In all Hobbling holidays, I believe I have somewhat dictated what goes on the box but I think I am only permitted to do so because of my Massively Good Taste.

Then, there was sleep to be had. Biped got the grown-up’s bed (as per usual- you know, I am beginning to think that the sound of sawing wood we heard in Harlem was actually biped sawing wood (the evil futon possibly) because I have not heard her snore since. It was all a big con to ensure she got proper beds in the future) while skit and I got the kiddies’ beds. They were short and narrow but then again, so are we. I am of course used to a double bed so there were a couple of dubious moments during the night when I woke to find myself just about to go over the edge, but we all need a bit of danger in our lives…

Hobbling Holiday Day 0

2008-09-14T20:11:00.000+01:00

For me the holiday began as I came out of the English end of the channel tunnel. Within a minute, my phone rang. It was Kate. We quickly arranged for her to meet me at St Pancras (“London International”) and there she was, as I exited through the arrivals door, in all her Kate-like glory.

Which isn’t to say that she was nekkid. I just mean that she was grinning and happy and bouncy. As of course was right for someone who was anticipating moving to the Falklands and enjoying the money she got for the move with a swish hotel and taxis.

Kate rang biped to confirm the arrangements for meeting up as I drooled over the window of a chocolate shop. The conversation was quite amusing as Kate told biped that she was at the station with “Keppet” and then had to explain to biped that she was Board-Kate and not a RL Kate.

Because I had been sitting on a train all day, I asked Kate whether we could walk. It was a longer trek than I anticipated (I had never walked from St Pancras to St Martin’s Lane before though I had done all the bits of the journey- just never together). Kate and I chatted about this, that and the other including the weather which led us to reminisce about the London Meet on the hottest day of the year when people went paddling in Trafalgar Square fountains and Miraba made us try every restaurant in the centre of London.

Our walk brought us, as walks including me in London tend to do, to Forbidden Planet where I found the next USM collection. Then I directed us to the Starbucks in St Martin’s Lane or at least tried to but too the wrong spoke at Seven Dials and we ended up in Covent Garden instead. This area of London never makes sense to me in a delightful way. I don’t think I ever want to work out how it is all connected because that would destroy the mystery: the mystery of how on earth I always stumble upon Covent Garden when I don’t want to and end up missing it when I do.

It didn’t take me long to find my way again but I think I shortened the life expectancy of my wheely suitcase on the pebbled streets. When we found Starbucks, skit was already there but only just. We bought drinks and sat down, within seconds being joined by biped. Skit observed that such a confluence of timeliness had never been seen in Hobblings before (but I think that is because the Atas weren’t included).

We caught up and chatted about this, that and the other (again). The content was most probably both scintillating and titillating but memory fails me for the moment. We popped across the road for dinner at a place I had eaten at before. It’s rather decent in my opinion and well-used to serving theatre goers. When ordering, skit stressed that we were in a hurry and indeed our food didn’t take long to come. Being on holiday, we had some wine at the table (biped and I may have drunk the bulk of the bottle… indeed I found it hard to coordinate my limbs later that evening). It was all rather nice and I hope Kate enjoyed her farewell Hobb Meet.

After dinner, I left skit, biped and Kate at their theatre where they saw Spamalot. I was shattered and found it hard to stay upright but managed the walk to Euston and somehow operated the ticket machine successfully. I arrived in Northampton, got a taxi to skit’s house and fell into bed without any fuss.

Except then I couldn’t sleep until skit and biped got in at 1 in the morning. Still, I was rested and as soon as skit was snug in her bed, I was a resident of the land of nod.

Dates

2008-09-03T20:56:00.005+01:00

2nd - 12th Sept Grenoble
21st - 28th Sept Grenoble
19th October onwards, default status is at Grenoble
5th and 7th week (whenever they are) should be in Oxford (unless it is changed to 6th and 8th week)

I will be brief (as Polonius said)

2008-08-07T19:53:00.003+01:00

The play started with darkness. Or was it thunder? Some reviewer I am to not remember. But if it did silence the audience with a clap of thunder (or indeed a roar or a bellow), then that is a cheap stunt I don't care enough to talk about anyway. So moving onto the darkness...

There were voices of soldiers and lights- torches (of the flashlight variety)- pointing as they shouted at each other for identification. The stage was polished to a dark mirror and every light beam was bounced off it, lighting faces from below or disappearing into the murk at some odd angle. I watched the lightshow more than I listened to the actors, marvelling at the control the actors themselves had over what the audience saw or didn't see.

The "didn't see" is in reference to the ghost, a rather substantial Patrick Stewart with a beard and fur clothing as if he had just come from a winter in Moscow. The lack of lighting was used to let the ghost appear and disappear. However, I just wondered why no one just reached out to grab him. I understand that I should "suspend my disbelief" but the hysteria of a group of men when faced by furry and beardy Patrick Stewart felt daft.

The play moved on so so shall I. The play truly begins here with a large scene containing possibly the whole cast though many standing mute as servants or lawyers or some such. The mirrored doors, centre upstage, opened letting the carnival through, vocally led by Patrick Stewart in a sharp suit (and no beard) playing the King. I frowned as I inspected the many players on the stage finally resting my eyes on a man standing not so far from where we sat. He looked down and played with the stem of his champagne glass. Was that him? Was that David Tennant? Shorter and uglier than I expected but with a hint of familiarity.

Once the scene ended and the stage cleared, the short, ugly guy (I say with tongue in cheek- I obvious had high expectations) was left alone. It was indeed Hamlet and he was angsty. As Hamlet raged against the injustice of his father dying and his mother marrying his uncle, it became apparent that Tennant was more about melodrama than melancholy. Going to the floor and hugging himself while wailing really wasn't endearing his performance to me, though it did give us a nice (and sustained) view of his rear.

Hamlet went to witness the apparition of his ghostly father (I am assuming no one fears spoilers when it comes to this play) and is told that his father was poisoned by his uncle to which he swears vengeance or somesuch. Honestly, not very good stuff from David Tennant and there really wasn't much Patrick Stewart could do to salvage the scene. Except be all smoky and "ripe". I am not sure how they got smoke to come off his coat but it was rather effective and a nice distraction as the Hamlet ham feast bored me.

From here on Hamlet feigns madness as a cover to his er... madness. And suddenly the fun began. I could have done without the jumping, but David Tennant really came into his own as Hamlet teased Polonius and fooled around with Horatio and the sublime double-act of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. No chance at humour was wasted as the Shakespearean wit was delivered flawlessly with cheeky looks and mischievous poses. Suddenly David Tennant grew less ugly and I realised all the charm was in the love for playing the fool.

He was barefooted and dressed in jeans and an orange t-shirt with a drawing of a muscled chest on it. Odd but effective at making him a friend, someone on our level. The idiot-act was played with obvious irony and segued well into the seriousness of the soliloquies, some of the most famous lines ever written but delivered as if fresh and unheard before. I feel that if he had screwed these up, it would have done for him because when coupled with his inability to play melancholy, ruining "to be or not to be" would be unforgivable. But he pulled them off so well. You could almost feel the audience hold their breath as they anticipated the start of a soliloquy but quickly let it out and relax as they just got into the carefully pitched performance.

The other actors obviously deserve a little comment. Patrick Stewart was obviously the other big name people may be interested in but I am not sure what can be said of his performance. He's a classical Shakespearean actor and so terribly good but not terribly surprising. I don't think there was a moment where I was shocked by one of his choices or puzzled by anything he did. It was straight forward and very well enunciated. I do think the kiss he shared with Gertrude to be rather good though and in general, his relationship with her felt very loving. It made me speculate, and immediately get shot-down for just making things up without basis, that he is the hero for saving Gertrude from a loveless marriage and is also Hamlet's true father.

Gertrude was by far my favourite actor in the play (except for Laertes but he's slightly too minor to talk about). She hit the middle-ground between the boomy traditional Shakespeare of the elder actors and the rough and rambling Shakespeare of the younger actors and created a very credible woman and queen. She was great at the comedy (correcting the king when he got Rosencrantz and Guildenstern confused) and the drama (being accosted by a raving Hamlet in her bedroom).

Ophelia unfortunately should have been shot in the opening scene and saved us all from seeing her skip around the stage like she has been told to do it by her gym teacher. The writing of course is no help when we see so little of her before she goes utterly bonkers and then commits suicide offstage, but the actor played crazy like it was a game for children. I wish I could give her a break but then I think about what Summer Glau could do with the role and I am no longer forgiving.

Back to the play itself, the bizarre highlight was the dumbshow. Hamlet has told a wandering troop of actors to re-enact the infidelity of his mother and poisoning of his father. I am not sure what words could be used to properly describe the dumbshow queen, a man with his painted man-boobs hanging over a girdle and an enormous skirt hiding under which is the dumbshow uncle doing who-knows-what. And then there is the poisoning performed by a man dangling from the ceiling. Sublime.

In the second half, after failing to kill his uncle when he is in prayer Hamlet accuses his mother of being a whore in her bedroom. It called for a genuinely mad and not all that chipper Hamlet and David Tennant was passable but not exceptional, unlike in pretty much every other scene since he "went crazy". He accidentally (oops) kills Polonius who is spying on him and the dead man lies in the scene for quite a while as the mother and son discuss the finer points of current affairs. I marvelled at the restraint of the audience member sitting next to the prone Polonius for if I were there, I would surely be tweaking his nose. Eventually though, Hamlet drags Polonius away shouting "goodbye mother" with great cheer and earning great laughs from the audience.

Hamlet hides the body and is missing for a while as the royal house is in panic and turmoil, trying to find the murderous prince and the corpse. There is so much panic, flamboyantly dressed guards run into one another. Hamlet is apprehended and tied to an office chair and finally gives over the location of the body (to which the flamboyantly dressed guards run, ignoring Hamlet's words that they don't have to rush as Polonius wasn't exactly going anywhere). Of course, the prince could hardly be permitted to stay at court though they hardly wanted it to get out that he was mad and a murderer, so the king decides to send him to England as everyone is mad there and he is sure to fit right in. Overjoyed at the prospect, Hamlet makes small jumps in his chair, making it edge towards offstage, obviously very eager to go. The flamboyantly dressed guards that remained helped him out by pushing him all the way offstage to which the office-chair-bound prince cried "wheeeeeeee!".

It was around this point that Ophelia went mad with flowers and I stopped paying attention, instead wondering where I had heard the line "there is nothing either good or bad" before (I'll give you a clue: it's on Angel). The good thing about a dead Ophelia is a good grave scene. This scene was amazing. The gravedigger was your typical working class commentary man complete with flat cap and thermos flask (with which he demonstrated the difference between suicide and drowning). What was amazing about the scene was that the humour was not based on word-play or silly sounds or faces from David Tennant; it was based on observations of how people behaved. And for that to last four hundred-plus years and still feel as funny is quite amazing.

It was also funny to hear the silly sounds and see the silly faces as Hamlet saw lots of skulls being tossed out of a grave.

Then the scene took a turn as the funeral procession entered, turning to the grief of Laertes and Hamlet as they dealt (or rather failed to deal) with Ophelia's demise. The rest of the play progressed without much humour as they duelled, Hamlet noticeably unwilling and Laertes noticeably clutching to the guidance of the king as he didn't know what else to do. And so they all died. Well, most of them. As they tend to do in tragedies. I wouldn't have complained if they had changed the ending...

The audience applauded. The cast stood and bowed. They left and re-entered in that way they do with small groups until the main stars who come on in pairs or singly. The cheers were massive for Patrick Stewart. They were galactic for David Tennant. He lapped it up as flashes went off everywhere in the audience. You can't really blame him; his grin is too infectious to do that.

Tedium

2008-07-24T17:58:00.001+01:00

But hey, definitely a doctor now.

Dates

2008-06-12T16:41:00.003+01:00

Just back from Grenoble (3rd-10th June).

12th July - Theatre trip.
19th July - Graduation.
20th- 26th July - Grenoble.
1st August - Theatre trip.

Then maybe a long weekend in Scotland sometime in August?

Dates

2008-05-02T12:50:00.001+01:00

7th - 10th May in Grenoble, France.

squeak

2008-03-27T11:52:00.000Z

Dear xxxx

I didn't have time to say on Monday that your student was very
impressive. Lots of good stuff in the thesis, and when we did give her
tough questions (like the scintillator that emitted Cherenkov
radiation) she responded in a very positive and physicist-like way. I
was sorry George took the Graduate School instructions about not
informing the candidate at their face value: she deserved to be told
on the spot that she'd passed with flying colours.

Best wishes

yyyy

Dates

2008-03-23T10:38:00.000Z

10th - 24th April Holiday in the USA.

Policeman or Train Conductor?

2008-01-30T22:53:00.000Z

(From an email with minor alterations.)

So I was catching the train back from Tonbridge and as I got onto the platform, I overheard a member of the station staff talking to a random guy about how there was a problem and the train currently at the platform couldn't leave until it was resolved. Random guy said "I'm a policeman, can I help?" and the station guy was obviously relieved. They went to the other end of the platform and within a couple of minutes, the train left. I don't know what was going on as I stayed up the safe end of the platform. Two uniformed policemen (is there a new word for policemen that covers both genders?) turned up but my train came before any more of the story. Anyway, my point is that this random guy, obviously just catching a train himself, said "I'm a policeman, never fear, I can save the day." Now, it is nigh unto impossible that I will ever have cause to cry "I'm a physicist, stand aside!".

Trains always get me thinking anyway. I am in awe of train conductors. They are usually men with tatoos and piercings and pony tails (or at least on the South Eastern service they are, I notice elsewhere they are not...) and I see them and I think... they are not train conductors. That just happens to be something they do. And then the policeman... he was a policeman. It wasn't something he did- it was what he was whether in uniform or out.

These are just things that came together for me over Monday and Tuesday with no coherence at all. I want to be the metaphorical policeman but perhaps I should just be the train conductor.

Christmas and 2007

2008-01-06T17:53:00.000Z

Board post:
As always, I post asking people what their highlights of 2007 were.

Book

I can only think of two books this year that deserve a mention. One of which actually came out this year: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows of course. It was kind of poor in places (the long period of nothingness, camping and the worst final chapter in the history of final chapters) though. But still, it was a fitting climax to a long journey for this reader. But the award for my favourite book that I read this year (it was published yonks ago though) goes to Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It is possibly the best book I have ever read actually. Such wonderful humour and vibrant characters. The author paints people and places with such precise strokes. Having been to some of the locations he describes, I can vouch for his incredible accuracy. A picture wouldn't have done half as well. Whoever said a picture was worth a thousand words had never read Neal Stephenson. But more than that, he educated me. I learnt a lot about encryption and espionage and it excited me.

Film

I saw three films last year that I think merit mention. Hot Fuzz was a perfect comedy film. The set up of gags and their eventual execution was sheer genius. Stardust was also superb. I felt fully transported to a magical fairytale. It may have been simplistic in many ways but that was what I longed for really. Something simple. And also funny and energetic. Of course, the only film that had me going back for more and thinking about it for weeks was Spider-man 3 but that is very predictable of me so I don't need to explain why, I hope.

Television

Well, it's hard to call this one. It should be Heroes. The second half of the first season contained Company Man and Five Years Gone both of which were exceptional hours (well, 42 minutes) of television. But the finale and the second season have conspired to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. Doctor Who had four amazing episodes in an otherwise pretty poor series. Life on Mars series 2 was a shadow of series 1 with one stand-out episode. I highly enjoyed other shows like Journeyman, Kyle XY and Dexter but the best of the year for me Battlestar Galactica. BSG was my top show last year too. In 2007, it continued to be amazing and protray the hard decisions and the cost that came with fighting for survival. Razor managed to add a layer of understanding and horror to one of the more shocking arcs in season 2. Plus the second half of season 3 ended with such a perfect scene, I still feel it lingering in the darker recesses of my mind.

Personal Event

Every year this becomes a list of Hobbmeets/holidays. I think the number one moment was a fulfilment of an ambition I have had for a couple of years: listening to the Spin the Bottle (Angel) commentary with skit. In my mind, this event was going to be accompanied by alcohol but we did not need it.

Another highlight of the year was having acrobatics performed about a metre away from me with two of the best people to come out of California by my side.

You and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate (Day Three)

2007-11-24T11:17:00.000Z

As skit has pointed out in the comments, I missed talking about our star gazing session. On Sunday night, we bundled up in our warmest attire and went out into the cool and clear night. We went down the One Road of the village a little way until we found a spot clear of artificial lights. We spent a long time with our heads turned upwards, looking at the stars and comparing how many pinpricks of light we could resolve. We managed to fool ourselves into thinking that we could see the Milky Way though it was only the merest hint of light and nowhere near as stunning as it could be. As we looked up, a small, dark body brushed past, through and around our legs. A cat begged our attention and we obliged.

So, the evening came to a close after an episode of Due South and I slept well for a change. I had a marvellous dream that I was let loose on a chocolate shop and ate everything in site. In the morning, skit was not to be found.

I kid. She was around but hadn't slept very well (I stole all her sleep, mwah ha ha ha) and responded badly to my chirpy spirit and needling that morning. I helped out with the breakfast for once (and this is where I apparently burnt the sausages but they were perfect for me) which was a slightly less impressive affair than before (I fried the potatoes from the night before and we also had bacon, sausages and one grilled mushroom each). Then came a shocking piece of organisation as biped and I washed up and cleaned the kitchen while skit did the other rooms producing a clean and tidy cottage by 10am. We didn't even have Once More With Feeling to motivate us.

Quite frankly amazed, we spent our last few moments in the Hobbling Hayloft writing in the visitors' book. Our real names went in there but under the column for where we were from, skit wrote “the internet” which we hope raises an eyebrow or two. As I cleared my things from the bedroom I shared with skit, a face appeared at the window. Being on the first floor, I jumped and gasped: it was skit but how was she flying? Please don't be just like West... I am not sure I could cope.

Of course I had forgotten the exterior stairs by the side of the Hayloft that led up to the window. Skit grinned and said that she'd been waiting all weekend to pull that prank on me.

And then we said our farewells to the cottage. Standing outside the massive door, we had one last photo of the place. And then to the skitmobile once more.

Skit drove us to Weston-Super-Mare to the amazing (though rather downbeat) sounds of the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack (which reminds me- Razer is on tonight!). On the way into the town, we past the helicopter museum and, much more excitingly, the Bakelite museum. Spurning such delights, we continued. To the beach!

Intrigued by the name “Sandy Shores” and not particularly wanting to stop the music, we continued through Weston-Super-Mare through some quite beautiful woodland to... mud. No sand, just mud. So much mud I am surprised there wasn't a statue of Jayne somewhere. Mud forever. And what did we do? Well, we went playing in it. When we started to sink into it, did we turn back? No! When it grew hard to pull one foot out and move on, did we give up? No! When faced with not just mud but pools of water, did we hesitate to wade through? No! Possibly should have though given how my trainers are still horribly dirty and I dread to think what the state of the skitmobile is.

We went back to the front at Weston-Super-Mare and parked after experiencing a roundabout a few times. As you may expect for November, there wasn't much going on. Everything was deserted and the beach was empty (but sandy, not mud). We wandered down to the beach but didn't go far, just under the pier to admire the structure. We then went up onto the pier and philosophised about bunting in the cold wind. The pier was long and empty of life and walking along it gave me post-apocalyptic tingles. At the end of the pier, as if some metaphor for the afterlife, was an all but empty arcade. The lights and sounds of the games were such garish displays of life compared to the grey and bleak outside. Occasionally we would see an attendant gazing roboticly into the distance or the odd zombie muttering “you have to play to win”. I honestly couldn't tell if a clown we saw was real or mechanical.

Skit got into the spirit of funnelling two pence pieces into the machines, causing biped to crow that she had discovered skit's vice (because never have we met anyone as full or virtue and purity as skit...?).

We then went to lunch at a seafront cafe. We became more and more subdued as time passed and we realised that it was the end. I had soup and a smoothie as skit and biped shared soup and a scone with clotted cream with bits in: “ah, real clotted cream!” cried skit as she saw the lumps.

And so we staggered miserably to the end of the weekend. Like the bright bunting flapping in the cold, grey day, we had great memories of the weekend, of our time together relaxing and laughing and eating and walking through caves, mythical lands of fairies and dinosaurs and the golden heaven of the gorge. We had a new friend in Blue and old friends we got to know better in Indy and Sky. We had experiences of villages that liked to burn people and a Doctor that needed killing. We had the staples of prodding and cushions and a bathroom full of Lush products. And then we had the awkward goodbye.

Why are goodbyes so nasty in Real Life when they are epic and beautiful in films? In reality, they are better done fast and without much talking. Which is how we did it, with one last trip in the skitmobile as the minutes to the Paddington train departure ticked away. I got my ticket and biped and I got on the train that was waiting for us and skit drove away.

On the train, biped and I talked television (predictably) and a few text messages were passed between me and skit who had had to go back to the Hobbling Hayloft to (successfully) reclaim forgotten cheese and lamb. We passed yawns back and forth (*yawn*) and our goodbye seemed to dissolve back to the normal state of affairs... because it isn't goodbye with Hobblings. It is just “see you later” on the board, with emails, skype, letters/pads or text messages. It's not even “see you later” really.

It's thank bob we're here for each other. Always.

The Clamour of the Lamb (Day Two Part Three)

2007-11-18T23:30:00.000Z

We got back to the Hobbling Hayloft minus one Hobbling and pretty exhausted. I collapsed on the sofa. My recollection at this point is hazy as half of me swears that I had a cup of tea but the other half of me is certain that skit had a hot drink too... so it must have been hot chocolate. Yes, it was hot chocolate, made from actual bars of chocolate and large quantities of milk by biped and skit. I am certain that there were biscuits to dunk. I quite clearly remember biped's shock when she realised that dunking the biscuit enhanced its delicious qualities. She shared this fact with skit and me who were way ahead of her and dunking our second biscuit by that point. I also remember skit dropping the biscuit and realising how that possibly was a Bad Idea. We followed this up with a quick tea leaf reading session (but with the patterns the hot chocolate made on the mug instead of tea leaves) Trelawney would be proud of (though no one got the Grim).

And then I was back to work. I had to send Phil chapters the next day so obviously needed to actually complete them. I know I was being an anti-social grouch but there was no other way for me to keep my deadline (which I did, wehoo). From the kitchen I heard little snippets of conversation along the lines of “it's totally frozen!” “no, wait, this bit is okay” followed by hacking sounds and giggles and “well it might be all right...” along with “just don't let Keppet know.”

I was happy not knowing (well, not happy as much as worried about why the shading in my table was causing latex errors) and stubbornly kept to my wonderful red sofa.

A quick mention of the sofas. There was a three seater sofa-bed and a two seater and an arm chair so when Sky was not there we got one each and didn't actually have to come within Flying Fox wafting distance of each other. Which was nice. But we still all piled onto the three-seater with cushions to separate us now and again.

Anyway, 8pm came and I did my duty and turned the television on to Top Gear. They were driving across Botswana and in particular a salt-plain I believe they said was the width of Portugal. Apparently no one had driven across it before and so they were going to attempt to be the first (with locally bought vehicles). Of course, it turns out that no one had done it before because it is protected for being a unique and delicate ecology but none of that was mentioned in the show, it was just boys having a ball. And it was amusing and it was funny as long as you turned off your inner voice that cried out “they're such idiots!” all of the time. Richard Hammond fell in love with his car and he even named “him” Oliver and shipped him back to England. It did strike me that British telly is an odd thing because most of the good shows are about middle-aged men talking (HIGNFY, QI, Top Gear).

Then a miracle happened and I don't know how it did. But dinner was made. I was actually surprised at how quickly it was produced given the sounds of despair earlier (and the gravy granules all over the kitchen). And I was surprised at how good it tasted. Seriously delicious especially the lamb. We could never have got meat that good from the supermarket. It was perfect. We had the crab-apple jelly that the farm provided with it though the lamb really didn't need an accompaniment. It was so good.

And over. Pretty fast. There was a lot of leg left but it was still mostly frozen so it went into the fridge. A few potatoes remained and these were saved for Monday breakfast. I washed up and put my work away and joined biped and skit for a game of Save Doctor Lucky.

It was similar to Kill Doctor Lucky but with alterations that I could see were an attempt to make the game play better but, I thought, just made it more restrictive instead. I found myself actually moving myself and Doctor Lucky into a position that would help biped and skit just to get some excitement into it. Saving a guy and not killing him really wasn't in any of our natures and the aids were not anywhere near as good as the weapons. Soothing music was perhaps the best. No rival at all to Tight Hat.

Biped won. Of course. She can kill and save the best out of any of us.

With the game came a little logic puzzle that skit really got her teeth into. It was about women with terrible names and their bed-hopping husbands who may or may not have played cards as the Titanic went down.

One puzzle done and I was off to bed. We watched an episode of Due South as I relaxed on the sofa with skit and the requisite number of cushions. Then I toddled off to bed, utterly exhausted.

You did what with the banana?! (Day Two Part Two)

2007-11-17T18:28:00.000Z

Today I was grumpy. Generally grumpy. But trust me when I say that is an improvement on my general mood these past few months.

Biped and I tussled over who got to travel in which car. I ended up in the skitmobile and we followed Sky in a, quite frankly, pathetic two-car convoy. We stopped off at a small Tesco so biped, skit and I could do a shop for bits and pieces that were required for our roast lamb dinner (the lamb was purchased that morning from the farmer and much to our disappointment, he did not slaughter a lamb right in front of us but brought out a massive leg from the freezer). We also grabbed biscuits for our day of Cheddary fun. And bananas. And er... sherbet.

The next stop was at a random car park that, I believe though attention was not being paid (this day is very much a blur in my mind and I am not sure if it is the passage of time or me just not really having my mind where my body was that day), advertised prices to explore the gorge. We parked up (or rather Sky and skit did) and said "well, we're not having that! They want to take our money? Forget it!" and went to the cheese shop. My mind probably wandered between this rant and the decision to buy cheese. From now on, assume that any jarring transition from one event to another is due either to my aforementioned poor memory or the general ditziness I felt that day.

I am not a cheese fan. I'd eat it, preferably on toast with HP sauce, but "raw" just puts my teeth on edge. So I went to a souvenir shop instead. I sense that you are clambering for a better description of where we are because all the hints I have given so far are a car park and cheese shop. Well, we were in Cheddar and just around the corner from the gorge itself. The street was narrow with the typical grey stoned buildings either side that could have dated back centuries or maybe to just last week, it was hard to tell. The shops were uniquely rubbish for anything a normal person might want and totally geared towards the tourist industry. It was quite kitsch in an olde Englande kind of way. And yes, included tacky souvenir shops and the famous Cheddar Cheese shop.

I bought a selection of postcards at the souvenir shop next to the car park and rejoined the Hobblings. I was quite surprised by the cheese shop. It was like a boutique of cheese. The white counters and carefully placed lighting bore stylish cheeses and there was a tasting bar with trendy-looking staff proffering crumbs of cheese. The other three chose and bought their cheeses and we vamoosed.

After letting some people evacuate their bladders at the local pub.

We drove (well, again it was more Sky and skit though I am sure biped joined me in the occasional pretence of driving or is it just me that can't help but pretend I have a clutch, accelerator and brake under my feet?) up the gorge with Sky in the lead. The road was winding and upwards climbing with rock faces to either side. The dramatic scenery promised last night, driving through this in the dark, was delivered in spades. Once the gorge turned into relatively flat countryside, Sky pulled over and skit followed. Sky came to us and wondered out loud "perhaps we missed our stop?" to which skit rolled her eyes and suggested that yes, indeed we had. And maybe we should go back to where the gorge was actually gorging. Sky concurred and we went back down along the twisty twiney road passing climbers and mountain goats on the way.

This time, skit parked when we were almost back at the start of the gorge (almost, because she recalled that all the spaces were taken further down) and we waited for Sky to turn around and join us. Which she did with tales of horror about people taking up two spaces due to terrible parking in the next car park along. Also in our car park we found four minis parked side by side. Now that must have been a fun convoy.

We sauntered down to the hideous collection of buildings that someone probably thought a great idea back in the 60s (one Hobbling said "half the people were on drugs and the other half did the architecture") passing a rock formation remarkably like a lion on the way. As we declared earlier, we were not going to be fooled into paying actual money to walk a gorge, so skit inquired at a souvenir shop and found that there was a path to get to the top that we didn't have to pay for (unlike Jacob's Ladder, the stairs that lazy tourists take). And so we were off to find this path.

And somehow we didn't.

Taking a footpath away from the touristy 60s monstrosity, we found ourselves looping back to the shops. Not wanting a wasted trip, the other three Hobblings evacuated their bladders (again for some of them!) while I perused the used dvd collection of the curios shop. And then we were psyched to try for this path again.

And after clambering up a muddy slope to nowhere, we decided we still hadn't found it.

But as the photos on flickr attest, the path was found. Eventually. Starting our ascent with cheery grins (I lie- I was in a gunk) we were met by a man running down the path who imparted this piece of wisdom with us as he passed: Don't leave anything at the top because you will only have to go back up for it.

We nodded sagely.

And staggered on. And up.

The path was steep and it only got steeper. One by one, the Hobblings stripped down to t-shirts apart from me who attempted to exude an aura of "just popping out to the shops" and kept my coat on. I somehow doubt anyone was fooled into thinking that I wasn't suffering from the exertion since I kept dropping back and taking breaks on fallen branches. Not to mention suggesting every few minutes that we all go back down, have a cream tea and a game of crazy golf.

I was ignored and so continued plodding as Sky mountain-goated her way up with skit on her heels. As biped, skit and I took a break, Sky skipped off to explore a cave and find some bears to frighten (she didn't).

The path was steep and one long part was so steep steps had been placed in the mud. And with every turn in the path, we hoped and then were denied being at the top.

And yet suddenly, we were. And we turned around as the ground began to level out and we could see forever.

It was worth it. Most views are but this one in particular was fantastic. The sun was only just peeking out from behind the clouds making the view somewhat grey but all the more wild for it. We stood and took photos for some time in this field at the top of the gorge, leaning over the dry stone wall at the edge of the gorge to get the best shots.

We were going to be walking along the top of the gorge (blissfully flat) for some time so we didn't hang around wasting too many megabytes. We fuelled up with gingernuts and trooped onwards. The view just kept improving as we found autumn colours to one side and a flat expanse of fields (with sheep and dry stone walls) to the other. Biped pointed out a route going down but skit and Sky encouraged us to keep on going.

A conversation biped and I were not a part of labelled us all as different middle earth species. Thanks for that. No idea what I was but I'd prefer to be a cylon. Biped may have been the one to come off the worst as I recall she was called a dwarf. “It's okay,” skit said, “you have an axe.” Yes, I am sure that made it all better.

The path started to slope down. Soon we were hopping down steps but not as many as we had to climb up thanks to being further up the gorge. With our knees complaining, we took a most welcome break at the base of the steps. I sat on a stile as skit dismantled the wall to the side to get somewhere relatively comfy to sit. Out came the postcards and a pen and we assigned them to the various Hobblings for which we had addresses (and now I worry that I haven't heard from everyone that they received theirs...). We watched other people come down the steep steps including one lady being dragged down by a little dog. She was almost in fear for her life as the dog pulled her faster than her legs and sense of balance could manage. She made it to the bottom though and skit and Sky fussed over the dog as I hung back hoping that I'd escape the creature's notice. I did, thank bob, but the others wanted to move away because they were being attacked by midges (that seemed to avoid me) so I had to come within a metre of the dog to pass it. I survived though. I am so proud of myself.

It was here that biped fell over. My first reaction was fear that she was okay. After discovering that she was fine, it became laughter as she was covered in mud. Hee hee. Look- I felt concern first so obviously I am allowed to be amused.

We made it to road level. It was a hallelujah moment. We had scaled the side of the gorge where it was deepest, walked along the top and climbed down again. Wonderful. I had visions of cream teas and crazy golf in my head.

And skit and Sky took us up the other side of the gorge.

I was in a bad mood but only because I didn't know what amazing experience was before me. The climb up wasn't anywhere near as hard as before of course because the gorge wasn't as deep. It was potentially lethal as the path was unclear and we had to climb up a steep and very muddy slope without any sign of steps or anywhere where our shoes could gain purchase. Somehow though we made it without accident, helped by grabbing onto branches on the way up. The people we met who were attempting to go down the slope may have been in for a muddier (though faster) experience.

Once past the muddy slope, we were back on the flat gorge-top. It was cheery going with added amusement from a sign warning us about feral goats. We had to go through a turnstile in a tall metal fence to continue on the path. I am not sure if the fence was to keep the feral goats in or out actually.

The sun had come out from behind the clouds properly by this point. It was mid-afternoon which at this time of year is a pretty amazing time. The sun is low in the sky and the sunset lasts for hours. We were walking straight into it, towards the golden light. The trees on the side of the gorge cleared and we were out in the open, surrounded by grass that caught the light like magic, scattered white rocks forming nature's Zen garden and the gorge itself.

It was beyond perfect. It glowed gold and green. The gorge fell away and rose again with exposed rocks forming tiers and fingers. We couldn't see the road at all and the only signs that we hadn't fallen into a mythical version of England (perhaps with feral dragons instead of goats) were the walkers and climbers we shared the gorge-top with and a reservoir in the hazy distance (biped: “How did the lake get to be so round?”).

We rested here and I know I am at risk for sounding too melodramatic but it was my spirit that did the resting. The grumpiness fell away and was replaced by sheer contentment for where I was and who I was with.

The ground was full of dips and mounds (and animal droppings but we will ignore them) and I chose a perfectly rounded hillock as my throne. I sat on it at peace and took my coat off, delighting in the end of the autumn day. Biped and skit sat around me (in worship, I assume) but Sky couldn't find a comfortable spot on the rocky ground so I shuffled over and made room on my mound.

We sat for ages writing the postcards and generally giggling, particularly at Sky's efforts with her banana. She wanted to dip it into the packet of sherbet but it wouldn't fit which was momentarily the funniest thing ever.

Not much to get me to move away from this place except for this: it was growing late and the light was slowly disappearing. The last thing we wanted was to end up walking in the dark so we had to leave. A few photographs were taken in one last attempt to capture the moment forever, and then we went.

We walked along the side of the gorge once again, past feral goats and autumn colours. Once again we had to go through a turnstile in a fence and then we were there, at the top of Jacob's Ladder: 274 steps back down to earth.

We went back to the car park. Said goodbye to Sky. It was very sad. But there you go.

Prelude with Pancakes (Day Two Part One)

2007-11-17T01:36:00.000Z

I slept poorly. Again! Despite having the heater off, the window open and a head stuffed with marshmallow. I slept better though and was only half dead when I woke... no, wait... I was at least three quarters dead when I woke up with skit attempting to creep out of the room unnoticed. And due to that 25% of deadness I went back to sleep again. Or at least tried to but the Hobbling Hayloft was buzzing with activity (or at least the extractor fan in the bathroom was).

And then the fire alarm went. So I definitely had to get up.

It wasn't anything major, just biped opening the grill to check on the sausages (or whatever was under the grill- don't ask me, I was in bed) and filling the kitchen with smoke. It did make me accept my fate and get all Flying Foxed up not to mention dressed (I told you not to mention it).

I made a pot of tea and plonked myself down at the table (upstairs in the living area). We chose to eat indoors since there was going to be so much to eat (and really, it was November and who eats outside in November?).

And up came the grub. It looked beautiful. Where should I start? Sausages, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and even pancakes. More pancakes! With a hot cup of tea it was so perfect. Really, many thanks and also looks of awe and respect to biped and er... anyone else that helped make it (I don't really know...).

Part of the reason I slept so badly was due to worrying about my work so after breakfast (which I probably washed up due to guilt, right?) I pulled out the loaner laptop and got started. I did a fair amount before I was ushered away and told to get ready- we were off to Cheddar.

I also liked the Duck Decoy (Day One Part Four)

2007-11-15T02:22:00.000Z

Where were we? Ah yes, in the skitmobile on our way to Priddy following local boy indylead (nominative determination perhaps) who… didn’t know where he was going. With much humour, we all pulled into the Wookey Hole car park one, two, three, parking alongside each other with Olympic level choreography. Indy came tapping on our window and skit thrust the roadmap book into his hand.

Comic interlude over, we were off again at high speed through narrow country lanes. To our left, the very last rays of light slipped away from the fields of Somerset hinting at the valleys and fantastic views we would never see.

And then Priddy.

We knew we had got to Priddy because we suddenly found ourselves in a village-sized car park. Inching along in our convoy, I got a text message: Find somewhere to park! Skit turned on her parking-sensors and turned around, finding a tiny space on the side of the road between two parked cars. I jumped out of the car and helped her back into it and I have to confess that my thought processes ran a little like this: I wonder if she’d actually back into this car if I don’t say stop first? But I chickened out and shouted “stop” in a strangled voice when she was just about to touch. Sometimes you have to act like a sane person to get along in this world.

Out in the dark in a strange village, surrounded by cars that looked like they wanted to eat Paris and surrounded by villagers with pitchforks, we wondered where our fellow Hobblings were. We walked to the pub where we had last seen our convoy friends which also seemed to be where everyone else was heading (oh, I lied about the pitchforks, by the way). Then we got a phone call at the same time as the silhouette of indy’s fedora appeared on the horizon. The Hat was our beacon at many points during this evening. Indy just had to stand in front of a light and we pricked our Hobbling senses and formed a quorum around him.

The smaller-bladdered folk used the pub loos as I giggled stupidly at the poster that advertised “Skittles night”. We had about an hour to kill until the fireworks and used it to allow me to purchase some soup (oxtail, mmm) and for everyone to sit in the pubs gardens and natter.

Before 7pm, we got off our slightly cold rear-ends and planted ourselves in front of the huge pile of twigs on the village green. There was some judgement going on elsewhere in the green over which “guy” was the best. What a delightful competition where the children of the village work hard to create a facsimile of a man only to have them, whether winner or loser, burnt to a crisp on the village bonfire (the guys, not the children…). The guys (around ten in all) were placed on the bonfire and then came the moment we had been waiting for… the lighting of the bonfire.

They lit the other side to where we were standing. So it took a while for us to even notice.

But the people tending the bonfire, a job skit must have envied, kept lighting our side of the bonfire until it finally caught and then it roared into life. As if the gates of hell had been opened, the air crackled with the heat, burning the flesh off my bones.

And the other Hobblings just smiled and edged closer as if they weren’t feeling like a lamb roast.

Not really enjoying the intense heat, I hid my face behind my gloved hands and protected myself from the radiation. I did enjoy watching the guys burn though especially the one whose head fell right off and rolled a little way.

I wandered away from the fire and watched a flame juggler for some time before rejoining my fellow Hobblings. They had moved a little away from the fire as it went into its fusion phase and sat on some sacrificial coats on the muddy field. Indy actually chose to be a manly man and remain standing which was helpful as I directed him to stand between me and the fire causing a wonderful indy-shaped shadow of cool.

The fireworks started at 7:30pm. Being a small village and a free display (well, free if you managed to avoid the stewards with their tins especially the small ones (stewards that is, not tins)) I wasn’t expecting much. And not much was on offer. A few bangs, a few whizzes. Kind of disappointing but I hadn’t been to a firework display for four years and wasn’t complaining. An annoying announcer kept on talking over a tannoy, rallying the crowd (some of whom were dressed up, incidentally. I spotted one Spider-man wannabe with stripy socks) to call for more fireworks. And so more fireworks did come, as lame as the last.

One part of the display involved a special guy rigged to some gallows. The announcer spent some time talking about non-violence and a world without prejudice and hate… before telling the story of the evil Catholic and asking the crowd “should we kill him?” to which the villagers waved their pitchforks and shouted “yes!”

I was wondering if the villagers would turn on the strangers in their midst at any moment but they seemed content with someone stuffing fireworks into the guy and lighting the fuse. Quite chaotic and followed up by a non-spinning Catherine wheel.

Odd village customs aside, this was the turning point of the display. Suddenly they brought out the big guns. The fireworks came and came and came, a superb choreography of lights and sounds. Out on the distant hillside I could see a guy running for his life as he lit box after box of fireworks.

So paint me impressed. And happy. After weeks of pestering people “we have to see fireworks, we have to see fireworks” I had got what I wanted. Plus disturbing calls for an execution.

It was late. We had had a wonderful day of Hobbling fun. But alas, it had to come to an end. Indy and Blue needed to return home as Blue had work the next day and it had to end sometime anyway. So we waved them goodbye.

Sky had made the wise decision to return to the Hobbling Hayloft rather than attempt to drive strange country lanes late at night. It wasn’t really much of a decision for her, I hope. After a brief discussion by skit’s car, biped and I swapped so I rode with Sky. Apparently I was the better navigator, so said biped who had no way of judging. I expect she just wanted to be in the car with the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack but Sky’s wasn’t so bad: we got Buffy. As long as it is tv related, I am smiling.

Unfortunately, the smiles were fixed grimaces as, like Royston Vasey, once you entered Priddy, you could never leave. The traffic appeared to be moving when we joined it albeit at a walking pace. It soon came to an absolute halt. No movement whatsoever. We sat in the queue to leave for a long long time. Sky turned the engine off and we listened to the music and attempted some small talk. I glanced in the wing mirror and saw two cars back biped looking glum. As I remarked upon this to Sky, as we had no idea where we were in relation to skit and biped, an ominous black shape loomed over my window and tapped on it. It was skit to share with us the brilliant news that she was stuck behind us.

I don’t remember how long we were stationary for. But it was a long time and it made me worried for no particular reason other than I am always worried about something. But somehow, there was life somewhere and the cars did start to move. It was slow at first (and up a hill so it wasn’t much fun for Sky to drive) but we picked up speed eventually.

Pursued by skit across the dark Somerset countryside, we had to make a couple of random choices thanks to a lack of signposting but never got lost thanks to Sky’s quick glance of the map before we left. It was incredibly dark but on the way I was aware of being in Cheddar Gorge and I gaped (ha) at the rocks either side of the winding road.

After driving through Cheddar, it was pretty easy going until we hit Winscombe, the village nearest the village too small to be on any map. Once in Winscombe it was up to me to remember the obscure turn-off to Barton.

I actually did but I didn’t tell Sky to turn off it until it was too late. It wasn’t my fault that the sign was too small to read until we were right alongside it, was it? But at least this put us in a better formation as skit needed to be in the lead to enter the farm first and park while we sorted Sky out. As we turned into the driveway, I leapt out and rang the doorbell to the “office”. I felt rather bad as it was past 9pm and it must have been rather late for farmers. But our guy was up and friendly as he agreed to get extra bedding for us.

Sky parked her car in the main car park. (Skit was rather proud that she had her own private car parking space right by the cottage as no one else was as privileged amongst the holiday makers). And we showed Sky our fabulous abode.

We were tired. And not really as hungry as we were tired at first so many of us snacked on cake and rhubarb wine (which tasted exactly like rose with overtones of rhubarb (apparently- I am not sure I know what rhubarb tastes like) and I was not a huge fan). I heated up the remains of Friday night’s spag bol and forced biped to make some of her amazing salad at knife point. And so we all managed a rather respectable meal without actually planning it at all.

And we watched Angel.

Angel is always good. Judgement, in case you were wondering. Actually, did we watch Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been as well that evening? I forget…

You may expect a group containing me, biped and skit to just watch dvds all night.

We did not.

We were social.

Oh yes.

I had brought one of my favourite games with me though I rarely get the chance to play it: Kill Doctor Lucky. The rules seemed a bit complicated but everyone was a very able games player and soon caught on aided by the game’s structure which includes a period at the start for learning and constructing strategies.

Sky’s strategy seemed to be to follow biped wherever she went, thereby ruining both their games. It also involved trying to kill Doctor Lucky with Bad Cream. Fortunately for biped, Sky soon lost track of her in the many rooms of the Lucky Mansion and biped was let loose with the Civil War Canon. Unfortunately for skit, poised with the Monkey Hand, and for me, oiling my Chainsaw, biped played the winning card (some weapon I can’t even remember, alas). The real tragedy though was that Sky never had the chance to attempt to kill Doctor Lucky with… the Tight Hat.

After being broken into fits of giggles by that, we packed the game away and got out Trivial Pursuit (and the Mayan Gold Green and Black’s Chocolate with, of course, special Mint Mix tea flown straight from T2 in Melbourne courtesy of Em). Now, this game is meant to be tough but perhaps it was made tougher by being many decades old, so old that many answers to questions weren’t even true any more (USSR, currencies etc). The question-setter seemed to be a bit obsessed with London bridges and slavery, sprinkling the most impossible of questions with the most stupid like “how do you spell misspelt?” which even biped, who claims to be as bad at spelling as navigating, could answer. The game became more fun for the player asking the questions as we allowed quite outrageous hints to be given.

At some point when I was being asked a question, I just couldn’t be arsed any more. Like a wall of pillows, I ceased to think and needed, with a zombie-like fixation, to go to bed. It was late. Very late.

The rest is a haze as I must have struggled into my pyjamas, washed and gone to bed. I recall skit coming in quite soon after. (Sky was on the sofa bed (which I hope was comfy, I never asked…) in case anyone was wondering if she bunked up with biped). I think I may have giggled as sleep took me about anal sphincter calibration. I do that.

Mr February was particularly amusing (Day One Part Three)

2007-11-11T00:37:00.000Z

Dumping our coats in our cars, we all followed indy’s suggestion to go to the Wookey Hole Inn (“It was good when I was ten…”) for lunch. We read the menu outside and gaped at the posh pub food. It didn’t serve “bangers and mash”, it served “wild boar and apple sausages with mashed potato and red wine gravy”. (or something)

We went into the pub (after having some difficulty finding the door) and opted to eat outside as it was such a gorgeous day (and we are all well aware that gorgeous days in England no matter what time of year it is should not be wasted). Indy pointed out a large table at the far corner of the pub’s back garden. It was large enough to seat all six of us, yes, but the seating was painted pink and it was surrounded by garishly painted and bejewelled statues.

So we all felt right at home there.

Soon after sitting down there, a cat joined us. It rolled around on the table and Witted at us to pet the cat as cats do. This prompted much discussion on how you sex a cat. Apparently, you have to feel the nipples. No one volunteered. The cat left later as indy threw helicopter seeds and one landed right between its eyes.

I guess as we sat down and waited for people to decide what they wanted to eat (and honestly, why do some people find it so hard? It won’t cause the end of the world to choose wrong… will it?) it was our first opportunity to get to know Blue. I recall her being one of the liveliest talkers at the table and regaling us with some amusing stories (though I didn’t take notes so can’t relate them here). In other words, she was great company. We even had an actual Hobb discussion at one point which is rare (if not impossible with me, biped and skit). As I mentioned before, there never was small talk and there certainly wasn’t any Inquisition. There was just ease as we all gathered and acted like old friends. It always happens with Hobblings and I am surprised each time.

Blue kept taking food off indy’s plate. He claimed to have taken food off hers but was obviously far more subtle about it if he did.

Obviously I had the sausages. Me and sausages aren’t as predictable as me and biscuits but you’d probably get some profit if you put money on it a few times. They were delicious though more gravy would have been divine. I had a latte afterwards in case people were thinking that I’d be having a cup of tea. Yes, I drink other drinks too.

It was a large lunch and a very enjoyable one for the company, the setting and the food itself. Alas, we had to move on. But what better way than with a small car convoy? It is only lamentable that Sky wasn’t driving the same car as skit and indy (they both had Ford Fiestas) or that they weren’t all driving minis. Still, having three small cars convoying to Glastonbury was very amusing. Skit and I took up the rear and looked at the two cars ahead in amusement especially when we espied Blue trying to do something with indy’s ears (or something).

The convoy came to a halt at the delightfully named Butt Close where we all parked. We strolled down the High Street passed shops selling grow bags, a man on the pavement selling smudge sticks and a shop called “The Psychic Duck”. There was even a Magick Shop. All the people were brightly dressed New-Age hippies. We went into one shop that had books and cards in it and some people spent an age in there leaving indy, Blue and myself bored outside (when we started playing with the Wookey Hole stickers).

Eventually we were all together again and we walked onwards. Alas, we just missed the Abbey’s opening hours but we found a wonderful little group of shops. We had to pass under an arch and into a courtyard where the buildings were vaguely Mediterranean looking (maybe). One of the shops in this area (called Venus I think) had a giant and rather phallic rose quartz carving in its window. Indy didn’t seem to know why Blue and I were giggling. I gave Blue a sympathetic look. Poor guy. Another case were sexing is done by feeling the nipples, I am guessing.

We milled around this area for some time. There was a crystal shop that had some interesting pieces in it (moldavite, I think) but I left my crystal days behind me about ten years ago and the shop was more about jewellery than rocks anyway. The other shop in this area we spent a lot of time in was the candle and incense shop mainly to laugh about the zodiac candles that revealed that biped was mentally unhinged due to her star sign. They also had some amazing types of incense/herbs such as dragon’s blood which was an amazing red colour.

Alas, it was growing late and the sun set as we went back up the High Street to Butt Close. We popped into a couple of quite normal shops on the way (though one did sell nudie farmer calendars) to do shopping for Sunday brunch and also pick up a bottle of Rhubarb Wine (as you do). As the last rays of sun left the sky, we waited for Skywolf to speak to her keeper back home as she was debating within herself whether to stay overnight or go home after the end of the Meet (obviously she was under peer pressure to stay).

Back in our convoy, we had one last stop on our itinerary: Priddy.

T Rex: Eats children (wearing trainers) (Day One Part Two)

2007-11-09T20:56:00.000Z

We emerged into bright sunlight and apparently into the Jurassic period complete with King Kong and, controversially, fairies. Not wanting to question what this had to do with caves and cheese, we just accepted it and enjoyed the “life-size” dinosaurs and friends. Especially Blue who seemed to enjoy King Kong way too much as evidenced by one of skit’s photos (and more of that later as I reveal the startling truth about indylead).

As we ambled and gambled around the valley of the dinosaurs, the Hobbling cameras all came out. Hobbling holidays are plagued with them nowadays as it becomes not just “a photo a day”, but the philosophical question of “if I don’t take a photo of it and upload it to flickr, did it really happen?”

We followed the leat (my new word for the day) and discussed what, if anything, would make us jump in it. I don’t know whether skit noticed, but I purposefully walked alongside Sky and not skit during this dangerous time. Not because I don’t trust skit but because I know from experience that any potentially embarrassing or life-ending situation leads to us fighting to get the other into trouble. So instead I walked with Sky who is surprisingly safe for a Hobbling.

We entered the museum passing a row of cheery, fibre-glass policeman (if I remember right), a necessary part of any fairy/dinosaur/giant ape adventure. The museum itself was as dusty as all museums are with a few rocks and bones to play with. Skit and I emerged first and entered the paper mill.

This Victorian industry seemed to agree with skit who looked at the photographs of rows upon rows of exhausted, body and soul-worn women tearing rags and declared her love. Maybe her attention was more fixed on the large rag boilers now I come to think of it. Or mulling over the mechanism for creating watermarks. No matter.

We waited for the others on a conveniently and quite randomly placed sofa and as we went to leave the paper mill, a man, identifying us as no better than children, asked for two volunteers to try their hand at paper-making. Actually, I don’t think he even said the paper-making part so I was a bit surprised when skit and Blue jumped to attention when for all we knew he could have wanted a hand with pilfering the cheese of mass destruction.

But it was paper-making which involved Stuff™. Stuff being German apparently for rags and bones. Skit and Blue plunged their hands into the Stuff and performed an esoteric set of movements that led to them both having a thick slab of soppy mess in front of them. The man (who I assume actually worked at the paper mill and gets paid for this) proceeded to heap praise on skit’s mess and insisted that she put her palm print in it as if she was a movie star in front of Grauman’s Chinese theatre. He then moved on to insult Blue’s mess and tell her to put a foot print in it (though someone who I will guess was indy was begging for her to put her face in it instead). In the end though both skit and Blue made baby footprints with clenched fists (if you don’t know what I mean, you probably didn’t go to an all girls’ school where we sat around every lunch time board out of our skulls).

Then the messes got thrown away. Which was nice. Not really paper-making then, was it?

Next up, we were cruelly not allowed entrance to the two-storey play area because, apparently, we were kid enough to get to play with Stuff but not kid enough to enjoy ropes and swings. Grrr. However, there was more than enough fun to be had in the mirror maze. I wonder what it says about us that we spent so much time in the company of infinite Hobblings (and dvds and hats). The mirror maze was brilliant, the mirrors were good enough that it was extremely hard to navigate. At one point we turned to see Blue right behind us. She was waving for help and crying out “where do I go?” Such a simple question and yet by walking forward she would have crashed right into a mirror.

I do wish that I had seen the little kid that ran straight into a mirror. It sounds great.

After the mirror maze (yes, there is more- who would have thought that visiting caves could lead to such a variety show?) came the Victorian Penny Arcade. Visitors to San Francisco will know that my favourite place to take people in the city was the Mechanical Museum of old arcade games. When I took skit there, we had just come off the coldest boat trip of my life (yes, it was colder in June than in October when I went out into the Bay with Em and Q) and I blame her competitive nature and encouragement for me to play against her in feats of strength for the loss of sensation and colour in one of my fingers. Anyway, I think the point is here that I like these old games. Even when I don’t play on them, I am fascinated by the design and ideas much more than anything I’d find in modern arcades.

We exchanged our currency for old pennies and attacked the games. The best ones are of course the ones you play with other people and I did kind of insist on playing with skit for payback for all those games I lost to her in San Francisco. Oh yes. Great fun to win for once. Great fun for me anyway.

The games were not the last part of the Wookey Hole experience. Oh no, next came the crazy circus mirrors. Where are the photographs of these, skit and biped? They spent forever (with Sky) taking photos and laughing at themselves squat, curvy and tall while indy and Blue explored the shop and bought fudge. The shop was also home to models of pirates of unlikely dress (Blue seemed baffled at the mechanical structure some of the female pirates must have had in their bras). I flitted between the two groups gaining the disapproval of both, I am sure.

Incidentally, parrots in a boat with pirates on their shoulders. Remember we are doing that in the boat race, biped and skit. Remember.

This was, alas, the end of what Wookey Hole had to offer. It did get a wee bit crazy towards the end but that’s what happens when you attempt a Real Life BAD. We just can’t help but fall into time portals, blend our genre with fantasy and pirates, find a clone-o-matic and pretend to be in crude relations with King Kong.

The entrance to hell must be around here somewhere... (Day One Part One)

2007-11-08T11:21:00.000Z

I hardly slept that night as it was too hot in our little room especially with the incredibly thick duvets and heater I couldn’t work out how to switch off in the dark. When the alarm went, I burrowed down in my bed and denied the morning.

I couldn’t deny it for very long of course. There was much movement downstairs and I eventually argued with my stubborn inner-me that there was breakfast to eat and a meet to attend so I did have to get up. I won and inner-me left the bed in a huff.

I made my tea without giving any cheery morning greetings to the Hobblings already in the kitchen making pancakes. As I put in twice the leaves and let it steep for twice the time, I watched skit fail to toss a pancake. Overloading the next pancake with butter and not making it as thick, she was successful. All the fun and games made me realise that I was not so tired and more excited about the weekend.

We squirted lemon and sprinkled sugar on our pancakes, rolled them up and took them outside. We sat outside the Hayloft eating our breakfast in the early sun and marvelling at the warmth of the November morning. After brushing my teeth, I stood outside the Hayloft some more, watching the chickens and enjoying the peace.

Leaving ten minutes to get to Wookey Hole, we jumped into skit’s car (it definitely needs a name- I will call it the skitmobile for now but we need something more imaginative for official use) and utterly failed to make it there on time. Twenty minutes late, we got out at Wookey Hole cringing, expecting to be berated by punctual Hobblings.

Of course we were the first to arrive. We waited outside the ice cream parlour that doubled up as a ticket office until the dreadfully late and irresponsible Hobblings indy, Blue and Sky made it (about five minutes later).

Indy hung back and let Blue meet us on her own. Having never met Blue before, and Blue having met none of us, it was one of those amusing meetings where we three just looked in silence at the stranger that siddled up to join us, slightly unsure that we were the people she had to spend the day with. “Are you the right people?” she asked or words to that effect because what do you say when off on a daytrip with people from the internet? I don’t think Hobblings do introductions well. We don’t really care for names or occupations or small talk. All we ask for is a little television or book talk and the odd idiosyncrasy to be amused by.

Blue needed her nose cream almost immediately on arrival and then every ten minutes after that.

We got our tickets for the caves and proudly wore our little “paying customer” stickers (which caused much fun later in the day when indy and Blue kept sticking them on each other and I managed to get one on skit’s back for hours before she noticed it). We gathered at the entrance for the next tour and nattered away about this, that and the other. And giant rabbits that lived off the Cheddar cheese.

The tour began just far enough into the cave that the entrance was a glow of daylight far away. The guide was an odd old chap that had cultivated a children-hating irascible old man persona with a penchant for bad puns. He told us how at one end of the narrow cavern the cave dwellers (who I think have been there for around 50 000 years- take that American tourist traps with caves that were occupied 500 years ago…) kept their fire while at the other end they had the entrance. And just beyond the fire was “Hell’s Ladder”.

Anyway, here the witch of Wookey Hole lived and made her evil brews (her scary visage was projected onto the cave wall) though some Hobblings speculated that it wasn’t some random witch after all but Myopia! I do want to distance myself from the insult… I wasn’t the one to start spinning the stories about how evil Myo had hidden all the Flagstone Fresh in our caves and how it was our duty as brave Hobblings to liberate it. I think that was Sky’s story. Yes, I’ll blame her.

So, to bastardise the story of the Wookey Hole witch, the local (mad and possibly electronic) monk caught the evil Myo mixing her evil brew to poison children (that wore trainers- rather specific and not all that common in the Dark Ages but who am I to doubt the word of out guide?). The monk chased her down Hell’s Ladder and into the Witch’s Kitchen where, in a flash of inspiration and an utter lack of respect for the laws of nature, he blessed the water in the cavern and threw it at the witch who turned into stone. A stone that didn’t really look very much like a witch. Feeling vindictive, the monk threw water at her little doggie as well. Just because. Nice monk.

We had to duck low to get into the next chamber (and pass under the “chimney”) which was called the Witch’s Parlour but I like to think of it as the Witch’s Tub with Whirlpool Functionality. Unfortunately the tub only filled every few decades (due to floods) and the whirlpool action was liable to give “rather extreme exfoliation” (said Sky I think… or some other Hobbling). This chamber was also used in an episode of Doctor Who (Fourth Doctor). See- they don’t just use quarries or Cardiff.

We all shuffled onwards, on the look out for any Cybermen that Myo may have kept for her own nefarious purposes. We didn’t expect the attack to be on our sense of smell though. Within seconds, the stored Cheddar cheese knocked us unconscious and Myopia stood over us cackling, “Cheese! Cheese will make them sleepy…” (or something). In a rather less Judy Garland orientated reality, cruel biped (I think.. Hobblings all blur into one in my mind) made us get rather close to the cheese in order to take our photo. It was more horrible than words can describe. No wonder they didn’t bother looking the cage door. Any thief wouldn’t be able to get close enough to steal the cheese. Even with no sense of smell, he wouldn’t be able to get very far without being marked as a biological warfare threat and arrested.

After the cheese, the guide (obviously out of puns) let us meander through the chambers on our little lonesome. I have somehow forgotten to mention the rather unlikely rock formations he pointed out like the elephant with half a trunk or St Paul’s Cathedral but I am sure you’ll forgive me. With no one to make us keep up, skit, biped and I brought up the rear of the pack and became rather snap-happy despite the lack of lighting making photography rather difficult. For some reason we all obeyed the no flash photography rule (it could wake the bats apparently) which demonstrated a lack of fun, I think. On turning a corner, we heard in the distance an evil laugh… I naturally had to return it.

Somehow, despite being obviously at the rear, we acquired someone behind us in the final cavern (where out guide was waiting for us). Suspicious. Cathedral Chamber was huge. We stood on a little balcony (and managed not to throw anyone off it) in awe (well, I was). A bob-bot army could have made a delightful addition to the décor.

Our way out took us through tunnels. We were rather excited about being in real underground tunnels and quite expecting to bump into Australian BAD players at any moment or perhaps a woolly mammoth. Alas it wasn’t to be and the wonderful tunnels turned into concrete lined tunnels with delightful posthistoric graffiti. And then we made it out into the sunlight… without encountering a single clone or depressed man waving an axe. Paint us all a bit disappointed.

Calibration (Day Zero)

2007-11-06T17:57:00.000Z

The Hobbling weekend began slightly later than planned as my “on time” train arrived about twenty minutes late. Fortunately, skit and biped were patient enough to wait for me and produce a surprise attack from behind as I left the platform of Weston Super Mare. With that as a greeting, we ambled on and out of the station to see a huge and brightly lit TESCO sign just across the station car park. “Oh,” realised skit, “that was why the station man thought I was mad when I asked whether there was a supermarket around here.”

The three Hobblings raced down the aisles of Tesco (well, biped tried to glide on the trolley but then skit took over before accidents occurred). Bypassing the world’s smallest pineapples, we debated over whether we needed six chocolate bars (I believe we settled for four?). Escaping with our shopping, we had a showdown with an evil trolley hell-bent on taking over the world, and vamoosed in skit’s car (after getting momentarily lost in Tesco’s carpark- those trolley sirens were messing with our minds).

Getting from Weston Super Mare to our Hobbling Hayloft (though we generally called it our cottage, I will go with the alliteration here) was quite remarkably easy (or at least skit made it look easy). As a town girl, I was unaware that an address comprising of just a village name (too small for road maps) and the name of the nearest slightly larger village would actually get us anywhere. But these villages only seemed to have one road in them and so it weirdly enough worked without directions.

After a long and narrow country road where skit drove remarkably well in the pitch black, we arrived at the farm with the little holiday cottages. The farmer (I assume?) showed us to our Hayloft which was a wonderful little detached cottage with The World’s Largest Door. There were beams everywhere and low windows and slanted ceilings. The kitchen was small but perfectly equipped for any task we could give it (it even came with flapjakes, lemon cake and crab apple jelly). Skit and I made ourselves at home in the little twin-bed room while biped got the adult room with a closet big enough to keep someone in. “With a bucket?” skit asks.

Biped and skit set to cooking the dinner: spaghetti bolognese. I bowed out of the cooking setting a trend for the whole weekend (eek, but only because the bogognese was so tasty that I wanted these talented cooks to make more. Every meal they made was divine and the one time I did anything I apparently burnt the sausages but that’s how I thought they were meant to be! They are always black for my family...). Instead I made sure I knew how to operate the tv and dvd player, an important role I am sure you’ll agree. At 9pm we watched HIGNFY, as is our way, and then at 9:30 we watched Armstrong and Miller with our dinner (which came with a salad remarkable to being delicious even when we forgot to buy dressing). Better than last week’s episode but the highlight of the evening had to be calibrating anal sphincters on QI.

I washed up and we all grabbed mulled wine and stood outside under the stars. There weren’t as many as we hoped. It seemed that there was some mist in the air but the warm and quiet night was still beautiful enough that we stood outside for quite some time.

Dates + Quiz

2007-08-05T04:48:00.000+01:00

28th August - Leave the US.

September should be spent in Oxford but I haven't found any accommodation yet so maybe not...

Quiz? Guess which one is my parent:

71 years ago

2007-06-23T20:34:00.000+01:00

(I've been meaning to move this here for ages now... It is just a few Board posts and a photo from my Flickr stream so nothing new. Just things I need to save.)

Miss Mitchell (my grandmother)

I shall be waiting outside the shop for you at 9 o'clock Saturday evening. I hope you don't mind me sending this note with Ron. I would have made arrangements with you last Wednesday night only your parents came along so soon.

I am writing this in a hurry so please excuse writing + notepaper.

See you at 9 o'clock.

Cheerio

Cliff Jones (my grandfather)

First note received 15th February 1936 after first meeting February 5th 1936.

Quote:
cliff passed away today.

apparently mum gave him a kiss at 2.30 and he died half an hour later.

probably have funeral next week and jac says he will get extra marks in
his test that he has next week.

Mum is down in south wales and i have to stay here to make sure jac
turns up to his exams.

dad

The distance feels odd. I don't know whether it is a good thing or not. I guess I can pretend that nothing has changed. I won't really recognise the difference until Christmas.

I spoke to my mum and she said that he died listening to the Mikado and was on morphine. I guess if I had to choose how to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan, that would be the way.

Seriously, it sounds like he went in the best possible way. She said that he responded when his favourite song came on and died soon after.

I am sad and slightly tearful. I have never had anyone close to me die before. I think part of the sadness comes from losing that innocence. Mingled with worry about how my mother is coping.

Dates

2007-06-23T02:45:00.000+01:00

24th June - 1st July -> Albuquerque (conference- ugh)
11th August weekend -> Farewell do
And then... gasp... I need to actually go home. I guess I should book a plane ticket soon.
31st August -> Visa expires. Funding expires.

Stop fighting, children

2007-06-06T02:18:00.000+01:00

Are we nearly there yet?
Because I don't know the way.
I am driving and she is navigating
But the map doesn't extend that far down the bay.

Are we nearly there yet?
Because she is in great pain.
The tooth that likes cold things is quiet
But the one that likes hot is acting up again.

Are we nearly there yet?
Because one more "ow" and it's the end of the line.
She takes her twentieth painkiller
And instead of "ow" she says "porcupine".

Are we nearly there yet?
Because the fog is coming in fast.
I can't let go of my ferry ticket
And my finger is getting a purplish* cast.

Are we nearly there yet?
Because her camera battery has given up the ghost.
Non-squirrels kept on posing for her
and then came the jellies as well as the Monterey coast.

Are we nearly there yet?
Because I want a cup of tea.
Would you like one, sk- I mean Susannah?
Okay then, I guess it's just me.

Are we nearly there yet?
Because I cannot cycle one more San Fran hill.
I admit the views of the bridge are gorgeous
But that gradient feels like it's going to kill.

Are we nearly there yet?
Because the abuse is wearing thin.
Prods, headbutts and bumping elbows...
Oh what the hell, it's fun when I join in.

Are we nearly there yet?
Because we have Angel to watch tonight.
No, you can't skip the icky Oedipal bits.
And look- Wes is not sorry and he's not right!

Are we nearly there yet?
I'm worn right down to my Spidey socks.
I just want to hug a cushion and lean against you...
Mmm, can I smell Flying Fox?

Are we nearly there yet?
Oh, today is our last day.
I guess it's all over then.
I guess we could hug. Or maybe just... *runs away*

* Or maybe blueish?

Konnichiwa Kyoto

2007-05-16T04:30:00.000+01:00

Photobucket

I took so many more photos than are up on my flickr stream. Here they all are in their glory (and not so glory). They should be in the same order as the text below.

Christina and I set off for Akihabara on the 8:11 Tsukuba Express. At Akihabara we hopped across on the JR line to Tokyo Station and then skipped to the Shinkansen which took us to Kyoto. I am always in awe of the ease of Japanese rail. Everything runs on time and frequently. The ticket barriers even speak of efficiency! None of this time wasted in opening a gate for the ticketed passenger to walk through. Instead the gate is always open and closes on the unticketed passengers. Think about the precious time saved when millions must pass through the gates every day.

The Shinkansen is of course the bullet train that the world is in awe of (apart from France). It took about two hours and forty minutes to get to Kyoto. We passed Mount Fuji on the way. The morning was clear and it rose up glistening white. The country between the cities was mainly a mix of small buildings and farm land. No space is wasted in this area of Japan. We also passed the Sanyo Solar Ark.

Once we arrived in Kyoto, it was straight to the Tourist Information office in the station for us. We grabbed maps and suggested walking tours from the helpful woman on the desk (who annotated a map demonstrating that she was able to write upsidedown as easily as the right way up... the words, not the orientation of the writer). Then we grabbed some ramen noodles and braved the outside world.

The station was amazing. We left the 10th floor and entered this huge atrium with steps and escalators that went all the way down to the bottom. The steps were full of people sitting and watching a stage far below on the third floor. We took the escalators down and tried to block out the noise from the people "beatboxing" on the stage.

Our first impression of Kyoto as we left the station was one of rather cheesy ugliness as the building in front of us was decorated with a huge lighthouse type structure. In the evening we saw this all lit up on the skyline and grew to like the architectural oddity but at first we were laughing at it. It was only a few minutes away however that we saw our first temple.

I noticed that about Kyoto, that the temples and shrines just cropped up in the most normal settings. Of course they would though. Churches are found in residential areas, after all, with no great touristy fanfare. But it seemed to me that in Tokyo this was not the case and it surprised me to find religious structures in Kyoto alongside houses and shops.

Our hotel was Western style and pretty expensive for one night. If I was to visit Kyoto again, I would definitely try harder to find accommodation that was both more Japanese and cheap.

After capturing our breath at the hotel, we embarked on our weekend of Kyoto discovery. With walking guide and maps in hand, we took a bus to the Nanzenji Zen Buddhist temple. We entered through a two-storey gate. Although the site dates back to the thirteenth century, like most of Kyoto the gate was rebuilt after being destroyed in the fifteenth century. The setting was rather beautiful. Many trees, tall and thin, and artfully placed and carved rocks. Incense was burnt just beyond the gate. What would undoubtedly be overwhelming if indoors became an uplifting and relaxing addition to the air. In particular I loved the aqueduct in the grounds. It took me some time to wait for the arches to clear of people but once they did I was able to get a shot of the line of arches.

Christina and I moved on quite quickly because the day was disappearing and there was more to do. We took the "path of philosophy" past some teddy bear fishermen to Ginkakuji.

Ginkakuji was designed as a retirement villa but turned into a Buddhist temple. It was meant to be covered in silver but that never happened and what stands there now is a nice wooden pavilion topped with a phoenix. Surrounding the pavilion is a Zen garden and pond from the fifteenth century. I loved the garden. Sand was formed into a truncated cone, placed near more sand raked into smooth curves. It was almost an optical illusion with the curves of the sand following the curves of the ground and exaggerating them.

We walked up a path on a hillside overlooking the Silver Pavilion. The hillside was gently wooded and the ground was covered in a rich green moss. Unfortunately there were many tourists and it was hard to enjoy the setting properly because we had to move on.

We left the Ginkakuji just as it closed and hopped on a bus that ran south to the streets of east Kyoto. Christina's guide book suggested that this was full of old wooden houses and narrow streets and was the former "entertainment" district. However, when we got there it was early evening and the area was pretty quiet. The maps didn't cover these small back streets at all well so we wandered aimlessly for a while discovering the ornate carvings on the buildings and the lanterns that lit them (plus an inflatable Spider-man). We had hoped to get some proper Kyoto cuisine in this area but we weren't able to find any restaurants. So we settled for a family style restaurant near the river.

The next day we started before nine and got to our first port of call by ten. This was the Kinkakuji: The Golden Pavilion. We arrived there with a load of school kids and had to fight the crowds to get a glimpse of the golden pavilion across the lake. The pavilion is actually rather new as in 1950 a "fanatic monk" apparently burnt the fourteenth century building (who knew monks were such pyromaniacs?). The covering is real gold leaf.

Once sated with the expense of the place, we moved on the path through more wooded and mossy areas to the tea house. The old tea house was not open to the public but they had one for us tourists. There were bright red parasols and tables covered with red cloth to sit on. A Japanese woman brought us a bowl of matcha and a small sweet each and we sat for a while in this serene setting. On first sip, the tea was unbelievably bitter but it grew on me and by the bottom of the bowl, I wanted more. The sweet was rather bland tasting icing around a red bean paste filling but it seemed to suit the strong tea well.

Next on the agenda was the Ryoanji Temple which had a, and I quote, "rock garden surrounded by low earthen walls [that] may be thought of as the quintessence of Zen art". Well, all I can say is Zen art is quintessentially dull. I will further quote the leaflet: It is up to each visitor to find out for himself what this unique garden signifies. I am sorry to say that I was too lazy to do that and rushed on to sit for the best part of an hour by the lake by the temple. It was full of lotus flowers and terrapins and the blue sky.

We then walked to the JR line and caught the train to Nijo-jo (castle). This dates back to the seventeenth century and has bumped the Met in New York off the top spot in my "places I want to live in (when the world ends) list". The castle is bounded by a moat and wall and within it is an inner moat. In the outer circle is the Ninomaru Palace and the best place I visited in Kyoto. The building was a series of linked rooms with straw mats and painted walls. The art was amazing and I am not even a fan of Japanese art; it bordered on the abstract possibly depicting landscapes. I especially loved the windows covered with thin white paper that let the sunlight in and made the rooms glow. Of course, the main attraction of the building are its nightingale floors and they really did sound like birds calling. With all the tourists, it was as loud as the dawn chorus.

We also wandered the garden of the palace with its large lake and stone work and also the more modern garden along the north side of the castle. We rested for some time in the inner section of the castle. There was a high point where a castle tower once stood from which we got some great views of the castle and the city beyond its walls.

Feeling quite exhausted, we left Nijojo for Kyoto train station. We had intended to do the old Imperial Palace but the weekend had truly worn us out and we were thinking of the train journey back to Tokyo quite fondly. Before leaving Kyoto (on the 1800 Shinkansen), we rode the station escalators right up to the roof of the station and took in some great views of the city (spoiled in the photos by reflections). There was a brass band playing on the stage this time and we saw the expanse of Kyoto to the music of 2001.

And let's not forget the doorknob...

2007-05-09T00:16:00.000+01:00

Huge Spider-man 3 Spoilers Afoot!

Spider-man 3 was the first film of the franchise that I knew I would love from the very first moments. I did not know what to expect with the first film and although I felt huge relief that it wasn't like Joel Schumacher's Batman films, I was webslinging home worried that I had dragged my friends out to a children's film. With the second film I was sitting disappointed though vaguely amused until the train scene. With the third film I was immediately plunged into action and emotion.

The first two films had moments of intense action and comedy but this was the first film, I thought, that managed to interweave the two successfully. Unlike both other films, it wasn't an hour of treading water until we got some action. It was straight away. And it wasn't some random crook but a character and a relationship we cared about: Harry Osbourn.

The moment when Peter saw Harry after the play, my heart leapt. There was no messing around. This was straight after Spider-man 2 and we had not missed a single delicious moment of this tragic friendship. Harry's attack on Peter was so sharp and sudden that I was screaming "where can the film go after this?". This was indeed the stunning fight scene of the movie and it was right at the beginning. The audience went wild. Every hit suffered by Peter and Harry was felt by us all. There were gasps and cries at every deftly choreographed move and finally cheers and applause when Peter downed his frenemy using one simple trip-web.

And then silence as it seemed very real that Peter had killed his friend.

In a series that semi-annoyed me with its lack of acknowledgement that Spider-man was dangerous, it took a rather dangerous turn. And I loved it.

Harry survived thanks to Goblin magic and came out of his brush with death with soap-opera amnesia. I both hated this device and loved it for being close to the comics. Then later I adored it for the side to Harry it allowed us to see. The simple childish glee. It bothered me a little that we had not seen this in him before but then it all made sense when he says that not knowing who you are carries a sense of freedom with it. I feel that this line should have been emphasised more (Spider-man is not a subtle franchise usually) as it is a large part of the film. This was a film that asked "Who is Peter Parker?" and then took it away from him to see who was left. More about that later, obviously. Right now I am delighting in my memories of Harry and Peter bouncing a basketball and later, Harry and MJ dancing. And failing to flip an omelette.

Basking over now. Let me mention the Sandman. I was pleased with the special effects but that is all that can be said for the Sandman. His back story was trite ("I was a crook to save my daughter") and the integration into Peter's story only worked up to where Peter "killed" Flint. After that he was just an under-motivated bad guy. And please don't get me started on the Particle Physics Test Facility...

The Sandman was there for Peter to vent on. To lose himself. And so we get to the idea of knowing who you are. Peter loses himself in his fame and later his rage (or rather, his wish to feel rage as it is really the loss of self he longed for). I loved the first part. It is right that Spidey should have such fans. He has very rarely been given fame in the comics or cartoons but whenever he is, this egotism is the result. It felt great to see it in full and hideous glory. I felt his fun as well, how he swung into his parade (posing momentarily in front of the stars and stripes) and, giddy with the love, shared a kiss with Gwen Stacey. It felt good but more than that, we got to the very essence of Peter Parker. The Peter we know and love, no matter the medium, is defined by those he loves. And yet naturally he is a bit of an egocentric prick. Only since the loss of Uncle Ben (and others in the comics) has he really put others first and that is where his fans fall in love with him. Which isn't to say we can't take some glee in revisiting that prick. And then relief and love that Peter is big enough to say "no, I don't want that...".

The result of his egotism was to hurt MJ. MJ who was the star of the second film for me and continued to out-perform everyone else. She was still the mature woman we saw a few years ago but now the consequences of her "sacrifice" came home and her life was more of a struggle. She never seemed to be brought down by that though. She dealt with her problems with a great strength and belief in self (in contrast to how Peter broke down in Spider-man 2). Every moment with her was a delight. When she turned away from Spidey in disgust as he kissed Gwen, I turned away with her. I was with her every step of the way when she attacked Peter in the restaurant. A moment that was possibly the most real and yet the most funny in the whole film. When Bruce Campbell came on screen the audience erupted into cheers. His best performance to date. But back to MJ, she runs thoughout all the films with her own story that is superhero free and about the tribulations of Real Life and I love her for it. A shame she has to end the film screaming though.

As I just mentioned one cameo, I feel I ought to mention that Stan Lee also got riotous applause. Plus all the other comedy performances in the show excelled. Diktovich and Ursula returned to my delight. And who would have thought that even Betty Brant could make me laugh so hard as she shocked poor J J Jameson into keeping his stress levels low? Jonah has never been so funny as when he was meekly taking his medication. Hoffman also made the Daily Bugle a fantastic place to be with his incessant sucking up.

The new addition to the Daily Bugle was of course Eddie Brock Junior. Or was it Brockman? At our first introduction with him I was not happy with the terrible character writing that was having someone care more about taking a photograph than their girlfriend falling to her death... but of course that was all part of setting up this villain, the first in the series to feel like a truly bad person rather than someone driven mad with science (aren't we all?). The disappointment of the Sandman was easy to ignore when we had a simple bad person to contend with. His attempt to weasel into Jonah's good books/newspaper with a faked photograph was brilliant as it led to a fabulous confrontation with Peter in the real world rather than Spider-man in the cartoony one. Eddie and his hatred of Peter Parker was set up brilliantly.

Of course, when the confrontation occured Peter was already in symbiote heaven. Peter lost himself to fame and then just plain loved losing himself. Attacking Sandman, Eddie and Harry (where I gasped at the venom- and truth- in his words) kept me glued to the screen. In a world where Peter gave up the most integral part of him, his concern for others, he really beame a force I couldn't tear my eyes from. And who would want to when this force was such fun at a jazz club? I go to sleep each night with a huge smile on my face, picturing him leap from piano to table to Gwen.

It couldn't last though as it wouldn't be Peter. He enjoyed it all, sure, but he chose to be himself. It perhaps was't much of a choice though as who else could he be? Harry's choice was the big one and this one I felt to be handled clumsily. He could cling to the madness he fell into in Spider-man 2, or he could let it go. And for me, why he let it go was not made clear. I know what I would have done. Well, actually I would have not even done that. When Harry and MJ danced together, I anticipated the end of the film which is not something I often do as I find it spoils my enjoyment but this time I could not stop myself. I saw Peter purposefully bringing back the Green Goblin to help him out. But that aside, I don't think that what we saw in the film was Harry making a Choice. He merely believed the truth because some Jeeves told it to him. I really wanted Peter to apologise to Harry, accept that he did wrong in letting Norman die. Accept responsibility at long last and leave Harry with the Choice of forgiveness. But no. A missed opportunity maybe but the many Imaginings that I have been able to have about the subject is testament to how well they have made these characters and themes come alive.

Which brings me to the end of the film and oh boy did it take my breath away. Peter and Harry together. The action could never be as good as the fight at the start of the film but the joy factor certainly made up for that. And I really think that Harry showed Peter up a bit, don't you? Could I be a Gobby fan as well as a Spidey one please? I was overwhelmed and just praying that they would end the film on this high point akin to Angel and friends fighting forever in their alleyway. It was not to be. But I don't mind because that is where my spirit resides. Forever thwipping and gliding. For eternity.

Dates

2007-03-23T21:44:00.000Z

6th - 24th April ---> UK (15th-20th Oxford, 20th-22nd Wales)
5th - 19th May ---> Japan
23rd May - 2nd June ---> skit!

Three days of being wound tight

2007-03-16T01:40:00.000Z

Last weekend I was made angry. And it lasted for quite a few days. Every interaction I had was somewhat coloured by this anger. It began with a thread being pulled. A really light-hearted and inoffensive thread.

First I will cut and paste my emails with skit.

skit:

Has Willem responded to your ezmail, by the way? He's starting to
annoy me even more in the thread. Grr.

Me:

Ah, even though I had read this before, reading it again brought a firey hot coal to my stomach.

I have a Word document titled "hatemail" (.rtf) which has two further ezmails as they were too long to read properly in the small ezmail box.

So I sent an ezmail. Willem replied. I replied. Willem replied. I replied. Willem replied. I am not replying.

He is very sure of himself. I will give him that.

I have been so wound up by him lately. So very wound up. To summarise:
He does not agree that he should notify people when they have a thread yanked (or give them the chance to change whatever causes the problem).
He found our reactions to a thread going missing as amusing in the sense that he enjoyed the confusion.
He does not agree to explain the rules. (I asked him to before Sophie did).

I think that is everything of note...

I just hate the way he went "no" to my requests. Which were simple! My requests were that he would not delete whole threads based on one small thing, that he would notify people when "rules" were breached and that he would clarify what the "rules" were.

I also accused him of breaking the "have a sense of humour" rule but didn't press that one. I also didn't press the matter of what he considered to be an insult. It is of course something I don't understand but as I have said with the whole God/bob thing, I make concessions even if I don't get it.

Anyway. I thought I'd blog this as I can't post about it on the Board and it does bug me. I see his behaviour as a strangely empowered case of trolling. He adds nothing to our community and came in and destroyed a little part of it. He got amusement from this (he did admit this- I want to make it clear that part of what annoys me is that he seems to get off on the power trip).

Yeah, I am incredibly worked up. And he wouldn't listen to me in the slightest. I was getting to the point where I was willing to do anything, screw the consequences. But his final email was not even a reply to mine. He just said that I was illogical and not to email him again. And also made some reference to a long term problem with him which is ludicrous. So, I have not replied because he asked me not to. And it is so hopeless. And anyway- he is right in one thing. He doesn't get off on the power trip often enough for it to be a problem.

I ask myself why I care so much.

I know why.

It is because of my ego that calls the Board mine when I have no right to do so.

Mine in a communal way. Ours. But "mine" sounds more fiercely protective. "Mine" like... pika was mine. Or maybe my family is mine. My friends are mine. My school is mine.

skit

Yes, my general reaction to all of that is a heartfelt grr.

I think…I understand him. And to some extent I see why he thinks he
has a right to behave exactly as he does. He did set the board up
originally and probably feels to some extent responsible for our
behaviour on it. Responsible in the sense of an adult restraining a
lot of exuberant children. Responsible like the teacher on the train
who got more worked up by the radio 2 jingle than by the constant
swearing. He looks on himself as the arbiter of our good behaviour,
restraining our excesses when he knows better than us.

And there's the reason _I'm_ annoyed. But I can, and do, see why he
behaves like that. I don't think he's going to listen to our
grievances with that behaviour, because that's exactly the point – the
initial assumption is that he is the adult, with experience, who knows
better how we should behave. He will continue to do that no matter how
much we resent it, because it's how he sees us. We appear silly
children, stamping our feet, rather than equal members of a community.
And yes, that's wrong. I agree we let him by signing onto his board in
the first place, but I don't like it.

> I also accused him of breaking the "have a sense of humour" rule but didn't
> press that one. I also didn't press the matter of what he considered to be
> an insult. It is of course something I don't understand but as I have said
> with the whole God/bob thing, I make concessions even if I don't get it.

I don't even think it's that things insult him. He never seems
particularly insulted. I think he thinks it's just unsociable
behaviour and he's going to keep it in check. It's more what he thinks
may offend other people than anything personal on his behalf. That
almost annoys me more.

> Anyway. I thought I'd blog this as I can't post about it on the Board and it
> does bug me.

If you want to vent, by all means blog it. But I think it's getting to
the time where we need a board discussion about what to do (as yuku is
coming…(the goose is getting fat?)). I think the best idea might be to
set up on our own entirely…and we don't even need to make it obvious
that we don't like his control, because it's perfectly rational that
the responsibility of moderating the board should belong to those
people who get the most out of the board and are most likely to be
around when things need moderating. Because I worry that we risk
losing people. I am sure, despite his politeness, Snail is feeling
pretty nonplussed and a bit annoyed right now, and the fact that none
of the oldies have seemed nonplussed with him (because we know Willem
of old) is probably making him feel even weirder about the board as a
whole. Same goes for other newbies, and for lurkers – would you want
to join a board if you saw this going on?

So yeah, I think it's time for the debate, even leaving out personal
anger. But putting it on your blog might make other people think a bit
harder about it too, which would be a good thing (at the moment I am
channelling jes I think and fearing an avalanche of 'nicely nicely'
style posting which would argue stay with the board and yuku so as not
to lose or offend anyone at all).

(Now)

So, essentially this blog post is like a mass email to Hobblings because what I said to skit, the comments I invited, is for all Hobblings. You can stop reading here. Or continue to see the original ezmails.

By the way, when I think of Willem I think of the incident in the chatroom. Does anyone else remember it? In those days it was not run by ezboard and so we could choose whatever name we wanted. Willem decided to go in and pretend to be someone who had been recently trolling (arguably) the Board. I have never worked out why that is funny.

Me (written when on owl shift at 3am)

You need to accept that this is a polite and civil board, Willem. That we respect each other. That even long-term Board members respect relatively new Board members, especially those that contribute as much intelligent thought as Snail. And yanking his thread because you don't get the joke does not show him the respect he deserves. I know that you are the terrible ezop and have never claimed to have anything but a tyrannical rule but you are enforcing rules without explaining what they are first and I don't like that. Just say it: no mention of God, hell, the devil, demons, spirits... Then at least we can comply without mistakenly believing this to be a Board of good humour.

And the reply:

Keppet
you seem to be a bit pissed off? you also seem to assume things without asking. including what i disapprove of or no.

I did get his joke but did not like it.
respect: you seem to have a different definition then I.
Snail said something which I find not in agreement with the rules under announcement. And moreover I dislike on certain grounds which I feel are in line with the already mentioned rules..

your statement that there has not been an explanation is completely incorrect.
so there is nothing to "not like"
if you go to look under announcements you will find the rules.
It gets even better when talking about humor: i find it very funny what happened. don't take removing a post too seriously.
It might be I have a somewhat different humor then most people.

regards
Willem
PS I dont see the point of your opening sentence: i dont need to do anything which I already do,
the fact that ripping away a post happens very seldomly tells me enough..

Me (I forget when I wrote this... towards the end of the Owl shift?)

Nowhere in the rules does it say anything about not using the existance of God in a humorous way. I think you need to either clarify the rules or find a new way of dealing with them. Obviously clarifying the rules is the harder of the two.

Dealing with the rules obviously depends on how great the infringement. When a post is obviously inflammatory, no one would cry out if it was pulled. However in this case no one apart from you (in a strange case of not getting the joke- the thread was about a Tin Tin film!) took offence and the reaction was overblown. It was disrespectful to Snail who is a fantastic addition to the Board. It said that his opinion was not worthy of a thread. What could have been done had you found it within yourself to spend more than a second hitting the delete key, would be to post and say that you didn't like the joke and would prefer it if the joke didn't appear again. What is the point of pulling the thread once you have seen it and taken offence? Petty revenge it feels like to me. After all, the insult to your sensibilities has already occured and deleting the thread will not erase that. In my opinion, a mere comment of how you wish people to behave is what was necessary. Then people can change their behaviour out of respect to you which they would on this Board. If Snail had not raised the issue, would you even have had the chance to explain what your boundaries were? How would anyone know how not to offend you in the future? It was utterly unproductive until Snail asked why.

The middle path to dealing with this between yanking the thread and posting your opinion would have been to edit the thread title. A small thing that says that Snail is allowed to talk about the Tin Tin film, is allowed to voice his opinion. Just as long as he frames it correctly. This would have been an odd thing to do for reasons I stated above (that the offence had already been dealt to you so why try to turn the clocks back) but at least one that was respectful of Snail's right to discuss a film.

>you seem to be a bit pissed off?

Yes. This Board means a lot to me. Suddenly having a thread yanked without explanation is like a thief coming into my home. Okay, maybe my landlord coming into my home and taking something. It does cause offence. It says that this is not a community. But it is. The Board is a community. And we can police ourselves if need be. We can set our own limits as a community. We are small enough that this works. And it means a lot to me that it works.

> you also seem to assume things without asking. including what i disapprove of or no.

Ah I see. You are a huge fan of the upcoming Tin Tin film and could not stand any criticism? No, I think I understood what it was you disapproved of.

>I did get his joke but did not like it.

There are many jokes on this Board that I do not like. I tell people and also post jokes that I do like. I believe that to be the best way to show people respect.

>respect: you seem to have a different definition then I.

How did your actions show Snail respect? Maybe you are right and you do have a definition that allows you to do such actions in a community.

>Snail said something which I find not in agreement with the rules under announcement.

As I said, perhaps you need to revise them then though that is not the simplest way to proceed.

>your statement that there has not been an explanation is completely incorrect.

I am sorry if you contacted Snail about the removal and I am jumping to conclusions (based on his bafflement) that you did not. If this was the case, you should say.

>It gets even better when talking about humor: i find it very funny what happened. don't take removing a post too seriously.

Well I do for reasons stated. Would you be willing to think over your stance on this bearing that in mind?

>It might be I have a somewhat different humor then most people.

That is true. I do not deny that you have one but if you find pulling a thread funny then I have to appeal to your sense of wisdom rather than humour.

>the fact that ripping away a post happens very seldomly tells me enough..

I don't see why it happened at all.

I don't mind if you don't reply. I hope that you just think about my suggestions and opinions and come to some place that shows a willingness to work with people rather than over them.

With much love for the community you created,
kepp.

Willem

Keppet
first: no need to get cynical against me.
I maintain a different standpoint
I cant appreciate people using Gods name in a disrespectfull way.

I could have contacted snail before hand but i choose not to do
- a short fuse maybe? I felt it an inappropriate title and i dont want to discuss that if I am short in time.
It is my interpretation of the rules.
if you look to the total number of posts etc and the number of times I removed a post without any warning (which is mentioned in the rules btw) i feel you overdo it.
you seem not to get what I said: i did not say i found it funny to pull the message but what happened thereafter.
pecooper seemed the only one who had a clue what really happened.
you can cry about a single incident like this but then i ask you: why did snail apologize? you cant tell me he did not mean it.

in conclusion: it is a matter of interpretation. can you try to agree to disagree ?

there is no need to tell me what i should have done or should change in the rules
I feel they are reasonable and worked well in all those years and 10thousands of posts.
.
regards
Willem

Me

>first: no need to get cynical against me.

In fact, I feel I was being optimistic. I thought that I could help you but I see my words have fallen on deaf ears. Why do you keep the rules a secret? Why, when Sophie asks for clarification, do you not come clean? Does it amuse you to have a set of rules no one knows about?

>I cant appreciate people using Gods name in a disrespectfull way.

Then say it! And also clarify that disrespectful includes humorous.

>I could have contacted snail before hand but i choose not to do
>- a short fuse maybe?

Do you admit then that that is what you should have done? Do you agree to a more gentlemanly way of acting in the future? I cannot tell from what you say.

> I felt it an inappropriate title and i dont want to discuss that if I am short in time.

And there I think we come back to disrespect. Snail is not worth your time, obviously. I feel that he should be. If you respected him, he would be. We all would be.

>It is my interpretation of the rules.

I do not argue that about your right to set the rules. I may argue what they are but I cannot put any power behind that, so what is the point? I argue the way you enforce them.

>pecooper seemed the only one who had a clue what really happened.

I knew. Possibly others did too but so few on the Board know who you are and think only Myo has that power so it is easy to see why most were confused.

So you found the confusion amusing? You don't think that the confusion is suggesting that your rules are not clear enough? we are back to this amusement you have in knowing rules others do not.

>you can cry about a single incident like this but then i ask you: why did snail apologize?

Because he is a good man who shows others respect.

Besides, is this the issue? No, the issue is the way the thread was pulled with no explanation. Not what Snail said.

>in conclusion: it is a matter of interpretation. can you try to agree to disagree ?

I feel like you have missed the point. The fact that I disagree that what he said was offensive is of no consequence. We can agree to disagree over that. However, apart from being short of time, you have not explained why you think it okay to not explain yourself. Why you think pulling a thread without due respect to the author is okay. Why you don't want to clarify what you find offensive.

kepp

Willem

Keppet
If you continue to misunderstanding what I say, and continue to say illogical things it is meaningless to debate with you
the one having no respect is you here because you keep saying things that are not truthfull.
You seem to have a grudge against me (from the past i guess)
I will end this discussion.
no need to answer anymore
w

Obviously I stopped ezmailing. It was making my life pretty hard and there was no point in continuing.

WonderCon 2007

2007-03-15T21:05:00.000Z

My photos and I highly recommend looking at Narrisch's on her flickr photostream.

Getting to sleep that night was tough. I was buzzed from the events of the day (my previous blog post) and the plans for WonderCon. I had two nightmares where we missed seeing the Drive panel (the first because we forgot and the second because they changed venue on us). Still, I hopped out of bed with enthusiasm and scared Narrisch into thinking that I might actually be one of those freaks known as morning people.

The alarm didn't wake sleeping Narrisch but the whistle of my kettle did (after I let it screech for a minute) and we both had a cup of tea and strawberries (with cake also in my case) for breakfast. Yet again, I got my timing wrong and we missed the train but the bus was able to get us into the city which saved me from driving half asleep. The bus journey was pretty slow and long but fortunately gave Narrisch some experience of it before Monday and using it to get to the airport. We talked in depth about Battlestar Galactica, my lack of sleep making me forget names and slur my words.

Once in the city, our first port of call was Peet's as we both required coffee. Sitting in the cafe, Narrisch noticed someone she called "that guy from Just Shoot Me" and we also spent a good time comic-geek spotting as the city was full of hairy wanderers in black t-shirts. I spied a special Peet's Chai blend and thought of Rian.

I did slightly better in remembering where we had to go for the con than I did with the parade, aided admittedly by a large banner saying "Welcome to WonderCon" and the aforementioned stream of obvious geeks going to it. Every few steps on our final approach to the Moscone centre, a "man in black" demanded to know whether we had prepaid tickets or not so I started to simply carry the print-outs as if they were a shield and sure enough they kept their distance and we were able to queue-jump and get through the main doors, hot on the foot-steps of a storm-trooper. Once in, we had our tickets scanned and collected our passes. I wore mine with such pride.

I inspected the programme. We had not missed any events I cared about fortunately. There were a number of panels starting at 12 that I was interested in. I finally selected (with minimal consulting) a tv panel as opposed to a comics panel. The topic was the changing face of television based on the (frankly wrong) idea that scifi was having a revival (when was it not on the telly?). The panel included Jeph Loeb (Heroes, Lost, Smallville and every single comic book character worth writing) and a couple of people from the 4400 (Billy Campbell and Ira Behr) plus someone utterly random from Deep Space 9 (Chase Masterson). Plus of course, Richard Hatch. I thought that anyone that worked on Battlestar Galactica would be enjoyable to listen to, you cannot work in such a show and not have ideas about the issues, right? I utterly underestimated him though.

But back to events. For in this retelling I have only just decided to go to this panel. The decision made, we went off to the toilet and then found ourselves taking the most obscure route to the discussion location that we could, behind curtains and up stairs and down corridors. But we got there and despite being early for the show, a hefty queue had already formed. As we waited, a woman came around with a raffle to win an autograph session with Nathan Fillion. A guy a couple ahead of us drew a winning ticket. Alas, neither Narrisch nor I picked a winner but the guy right behind us did prompting Narrisch to sulk that he had her ticket.

While in the queue, we had a brief conversation with the girl in front (Farscape t-shirt) about where to get patches to cover the quite hideous National Geographic logo on Narrisch's bag (well, Narrisch didn't like it). We queued for longer than expected as they were not ready yet in the ballroom (which sat 3000 people, by the way) but eventually we were let in, being warned not to run by an official man who then we saw running.

Narrisch and I took some good seats near the centre and near the front. When they brought the panel out we applauded and Narrisch made some comments about Chase Masterson bursting out of her corset and the colour of Ira Behr's beard (purple).

The chairman (from TV Guide) started the ball rolling with the main question about the revival of scifi. Jeph Loeb and Richard Hatch waxed lyrical on the subject (Richard Hatch pretty much giving a speech that got an incredible round of applause). Both talked about the staying power of science fiction and its role in our culture over the decades, disagreeing with the blurb of the panel totally. Richard Hatch of course referenced his Apollo days and to be honest I felt a little baffled that he could compare Battlestar Galactica of old with the intelligent, political and insightful show I watch every week. But he sold himself completely proving that he was much more Zarek than Apollo. Jeph Loeb's contribution was much more what I expected and so a little stale (it's all about the characters really... and the cool guns) but at least it showed the sharp and hugely successful mind behind it.

Move onto the 4400 people... Billy Campbell, being an actor that didn't actually watch any television (apart from Rome, I believe) barely had a word to say. He had to share a microphone with Ira Behr (executive producer, if memory serves) and every time a question came up, whoever had the microphone would surreptitiously edge it towards the other. Ira Behr talked about how the network (USA) didn't see their show as scifi and from his comments it was obvious that he saw the 4400 as a commercial venture rather than a closer look at humanity. I recall many comments by him recapping the previous season, some comments about the future, but nothing of any note at all. Chase Masterson was the odd one on the panel having no show to talk about but had obviously been on the convention circuit enough to have pretty sounding speeches prepared.

So the panel was amusing due to the reluctance of Billy Campbell to speak, Ira Behr merely plugging his (now mythos-heavy) show and the potential of Chase Masterson to explode out of her bodice. It was also transfixing as Jeph Loeb displayed his savvy and Richard Hatch his passion. A few things that came out of it... Heroes is shot entirely in LA (just as Lost is entirely Hawaii) and plans to have a proper conclusion at the end of the season or rather "volume" as Tom Kring puts it. The second volume should have much of the same characters as the first plus some. Tom Kring, though the creator of something that feels like a comic book, does not read comic books. The entire writing staff works together on an episode of Heroes (I knew that Bryan Fuller of Wonderfalls fame wrote for Claire from an interview with him). I got the distinct impression that Jeph Loeb was a little jealous of the intellectual heights Battlestar Galactica aspires to and attains but he showed that he loved the working environment and focus at Heroes.

We had good seats in this panel but did not want to endure the next session (which was about Jericho) so we left, encountering outside a dapper Willy Wonka and an Alien eating poor unsuspecting con attendees. We had quarter of an hour to kill before the next panel we were interested (gender in genre) and so poked our noses into the exhibition hall. I was in absolute heaven. "Like a kid in a sweet shop" fails to capture the absolute bliss I felt in this massive hall filled with booth after booth of comics, books, art and toys. In fact it was overwhelming and I wondered if I would ever be able to find anything to buy without being distracted by so many shiny things I could not afford. Indeed, I saw an issue of Amazing Fantasy number 15 and nearly wept.

But I didn't. We went to gender and genre a little too late to get seats so we took a bit of floor by the side of the room. There were two people on the panel aside from the chairman: Jane Espenson and Pia Guerra. The questions given to them came from people online, mainly from whedonesque. I remember odd things like how Jane Espenson described a common cheer in writers' rooms in answer to "would it be racist/sexist to do this?" of "it would be racist/sexist not to". I remember the discussion on Battlestar Galactica women. Starbuck was both put forward as proof that we have gone beyond the point where gender matters as she is the most broken person in the fleet but no one sees that as a comment on "female weakness", and also as a criticism (from an online person) that people write strong females just by giving them a male character. This seemed to confuse the panel as the whole point was, in their eyes, that there was no such thing as a male character. But they acknowledged (using Gilmore Girls as a reference, dearie me) that if you wrote about a strong woman today you would probably have to give her typically female hobbies as that was still the culture she grew up in It was commented on that Athena was seen folding laundry and Jane Espenson declared "well, it was probably her turn" and followed up with "actors just like to do things which is why Giles ate so much". They joked about how Uhura on the Starship Enterprise was just a telephone operator and how all their role models were male.

Narrisch and I skipped out on this a bit early. There was getting to be a lot of repetition and it was clear that the panel speakers had an optimistic and boringly uncontroversial view of gender in genre. Personally I doubt that they should be so chipper. Outside of television, I don't see a great deal of female protagonists that are written half as well as the male ones, Joss Whedon and Brian Bendis being exceptional writers but a mere blip in comics history.

We went to the ballroom again which was still holding the Jericho panel. It overran so we had to sit through a tedious panel session on a show we did not care about and did not seem to have a great deal of experienced and interesting people running it. The token actor wore a baseball cap inside, an American habit I loathe and have seen creep across the pond. Grrr.

Eventually the Jericho panel drew to a close. I was much more interested watching the translation into sign language. Actually, it was interesting because apparently there is a deaf person on the show and he or she had attended a local school and classmates were in the audience.

But the room was filling for the Drive panel. Narrisch and I moved around a bit and cursed the people that left empty chairs guarded by a discarded jumper or bag so we could not take them. The place we ended up in was near the front but off to the side so we got a good view of the large television screen (not that that was a worry). At least we were on the correct side of the stage for seeing a sneak preview of Nathan Fillion. As they cleared the Jericho lot and set the stage for Drive, Mr Fillion was crouched on the ground with the stage curtain swept aside so that he could entertain a little girl. He didn't succeed in making her cry (as David Boreanaz did at the Angel con I went to) but not everyone has that gift.

The first person to be introduced onto the Drive stage was... unmemorable. But then came the “small actor” we “may have heard of”... and then the room went pretty wild with cheering. Mr Fillion came onto the stage (wearing slightly baggy jeans it must be noted) and basked in the love. Pretending humility, he gestured for us to tone it down and then shrugged as if to say "well, go on then" and gestured for more cheers. Then he quietened us again... and brought the cheers back. Oh and then a couple more people were brought on stage. I forget who.

No, I don't. One was his female co-star and the other the man behind the show, Ben Queen. I say man but as soon as he came on I cried out "he's twelve!" because he looked it. I am not old enough to be thinking that people in power look younger every day.

The panel began with a couple of uninspiring clips of the show, one I swear had Ivan Sergei in Mr Fillion's role and so must have been rather old. The clip that was a scene rather than a trailer showed a lot of Nathan Fillion acting... like Nathan Fillion. Indeed, later in the panel he was asked whether there was any Mal in his character and he admitted yes... which makes me wonder if he is capable of being anyone else. Not that who he is on screen matters as much as how enjoyable he is to watch (in the commercial tv world) but I would have liked to see some range.

The panel talked about the usual things: the birth of the project and its long journey to get to our screens this April, the genius of Tim Minear, the structure in terms of whether there is an end to the show (yes- they will complete the illegal cross-country race but of course there will be another race if they get another season and not necessarily only one per year). The questions from the floor were almost all aimed at the fan favourite Fillion except for one about their favourite cars (Mr Fillion wanted the Batmobile after a long rambling answer that went via futuristic concept cars) which was aimed at all the members. Oh, and one that asked whether it was a problem that the cast was split up all over the country despite it being revealed earlier in the panel that all locations were on LA sets or green-screened. Nathan Fillion stole the show even when he wasn't being asked anything by taking photographs of his co-star and also asking for some audience participation to demonstrate what Drive was all about. When he asked for volunteers, the tectonic plates moved from the effect of so many people leaping up.

I could say more but apart from the fun atmosphere created by Nathan Fillion and his Amazing Fans, the panel was just a lot of talk about a programme no one has seen. And one that isn't even scifi and would be of no interest at all to anyone in the room if not for whedonverse (well, minearverse) links.

So I won't say more.

Narrisch and I left very happy. It had been a good way to spend an hour just for the standup comedy routine that was Nathan Fillion. We leapt into the exhibition hall, myself a little bit too excited at the ocean of booths. We started at the autographs end of the hall and looked for Richard Hatch but he was nowhere to be found. Alas. I did see Ernie Hudson and I clasped Narrisch's arm. "It's Ernie Hudson!" "Er... who?" Ernie Hudson is pretty important to me being a central character in The Film That Spoke Most To Me: The Crow. He was the heart of the film and the strength of it. And then of course he was the warden in Oz, a series that I adore. Narrisch urged me to speak to him, to at least tell him how I valued his work. But surely he knows? And I do hate to state the obvious. So I withheld. I think had I said something, the words would resonate in my head to this day and I would be filled with shame at how they weren't worthy.

So, we passed the Browncoat Booth and some artists and snaked our way down the booths and across the hall. At some point the booths all became comics and memorabilia and other absolutely distracting and shiny things. I am in awe of Narrisch for keeping track of me. So many times we were walking down an aisle and something in a booth would catch my eye and I would be gone. I'd break the spell only to discover that minutes had passed and Narrisch was out of sight. And yet just as the panic edged into my mind, she'd appear as if I was causing no bother at all.

I bought the Eternals (a complete set of 7 issues plus a sketchbook issue for just $23 which perhaps is not a saving compared to the trade paperback but I was happy with it) and the first Fullmetal Alchemist book. I embarrassed myself then by saying to the booth guy that I had seen the cartoons. The cartoons?! Anime! I know that... so why did I say cartoons? Maybe I am wrong to paint anime fans as such snobs that they care what I say as the guy didn't seem too upset.

Narrisch bought a patch for her bag (it said Serenity) and I spent ages going through a box of badges. To top off the day, Narrisch took photos of people dressed up as Willy Wonka (the same one as before), Captain Sparrow, Mrs Incredible and the Alien with its head removed.

We took our purchases and left around 4:30 as it was closing. We hadn't had lunch so we skipped to a sandwich place. As I ate my sandwich (and stroked my comics) we talked about one question that was asked in each of the television panels we attended: are the actors told where their characters are going? Jeph Loeb said that Christopher Eccleston was shocked to find he was told nothing of where his character was headed but on Heroes, as with just about every other American tv show, no one knew future developments. We debated this and I took the position that they should be told everything they need to be told. If their character is going to kill someone in cold blood ten episodes down the line, I think that they should know it in order to play a character capable of that.

This was where I went stupid again as I forgot about the train. And then when I remembered and Narrisch inquired if we could make it I said yes at my pace and no at hers. Oh dear. It just came out... out of annoyance at myself. But it hurt her and she barely spoke a word to me for ages. We did miss the train (by seconds). The next one was an hour later so we went to Borders to kill time. It was healing. I think you can always rely on books to be that. We looked at the titles and Narrisch gave me some recommendations I should try out when I have the time. We discussed Robert Jordan (Narrisch hadn't heard that he was terminally ill) and also some books in the "in the news" section.

We left Borders talking about Snape as Narrisch admired the advertising campaign inside the store that asked you whether you thought him good or evil. I tried to defend my position of not really caring either way but admiring JKR for being able to write a character that really could go either way. The talk segued into my general disdain of mysteries in fiction.

We caught the train to go back to Menlo Park at 7 which brought us in at 8. The restaurant I promised to take Narrisch to was right next to the station and so we didn't need to drag our weary bones very far. It is called Iberia and is my favourite place to eat ever because it is tapas. I really can't deal with meals sometimes. Ordering and eating small and tasty courses until you can't eat any more is so much more enjoyable than a plate of stuff. Plus of course I liked this restaurant because of the atmosphere. In the winter there is a fire going and the tables are in nooks, all perfectly intimate. Everything is made from wood and there are panels on the walls. The atmosphere is helped also by the fact that I always sit at the bar rather than one of the intimate tables. Someone is nearly always behind the bar, making getting served very easy, and they are always interesting and friendly. Narrisch and I begged for help in choosing wine (did I mention that I love tapas because you end up drinking most of your meal?) and our guy Alex (I think) poured us tasters. Selecting our vintage, we ordered a bottle and perused the tapas menu. I ordered my two favourite dishes and left Narrisch to select another two. Alex laughed when I described one of my dishes as mini pizzas "but better" though I swear that is what they are... cheese on bread, right? We ended up with a nice assortment and I was certain that we'd need to order more but I found myself full without even having half of the items. I hope Narrisch was also satisfied.

The conversation became quite fluid. Somehow Narrisch was side-tracked into a lengthy explanation of the situation in Ireland during the times of Jonathan Swift. She told me afterwards that she was worried at the time that she was going on too much being somewhat... lubricated. But I am happy to be educated. And by the end of the evening, Alex joined in the conversation and we were talking about Narrisch's genealogy work and the ethnical make-up of Europe. Somehow the conversation evolved and Alex was asking me about string theory and then explaining that he agreed with it because we were all made from the same thing and vibrations from chanting were clearly special. I had not expected Alex to turn out to be a Buddhist but he started talking about it. Not being to add much I just enjoyed his enthusiasm and was grateful that I would not have to explain what string theory was to him.

We left sometime gone ten, after closing. We walk the short distance to chezbob and put the kettle on for tea. My hdd was doing its thing and recording Battlestar Galactica so we took our time getting everything perfect.

Cue intro. "They have a plan..." Cue scoffing. After the start credits rolled we commented on how they used scenes of the upcoming episode and how we felt about it. Narrisch didn't like to watch them apparently but I have never found that they spoil the episode at all. I enjoy watching them and coming away none the wiser, just appreciative of what a fantastic look the show has. Incidentally, I hear in commentaries people say that it costs a lot of money to redo the opening credits sequence (say if a character leaves). BSG does this every week. Someone is telling fibs...

The episode passed so quickly and at the end we turned to look at each other... "What just happened?" In stunned silence we sat, gathering our thoughts. "They didn't just..." More silence. Then Narrisch stepped through denial into bargaining and came up with a couple of explanations I didn't dare question because I valued the peace of mind they brought (one of them she admits is impossible having rewatched the episode). Consoled, we said goodnight and went to sleep.

My alarm went at 7am and I quickly got washed and dressed and put some food on the breakfast bar for Narrisch. She woke up as I shuffled around and we said quiet goodbyes. I left for work, happy with the weekend that has passed... and selfishly glad I didn't have to see Narrisch leave.

Year of the Boar - Lunar Year 4705

2007-03-09T23:08:00.000Z

Copied and pasted from an email. All of my Chinese New Year photos are at photobucket and my favourites in my flickr stream.

Saturday began at 9 with me rushing around readying chezbob for company. I had laundry to do and also everything had to be clean after many weeks of dirty habits thanks to my cold and trip to Japan. I didn't quite get everything done by the time I needed to leave for the airport. All the laundry was stuffed in my bag rather than neatly put away and the bed remained unmade. As is always the way with laundry, one item seemed to have remained stubbornly wet despite over an hour in the dryer and so my clothes were all damp when I got to them the next day.

But back to Saturday which had gorgeous weather. I got to the airport and only waited a few minutes for Narrisch to emerge. We rambled on in the car, talking absolute nonsense I daresay. In general, our conversations were on Battlestar Galactica touching slightly on her Hobbness, Hobblings, flickr, particle physics, Harry Potter, geneology... it annoys me that I cannot remember more. At some points it was reminiscent of how we argue. For example, we picked a point raised at WonderCon about whether actors should know their arc or be as ignorant of their future as the characters and argued bitterly. Later we discussed mysteries and how I don't enjoy them and we were able to draw these topics together and see how my prejudices are at least consistant.

Aside from the chatter, which was surprisingly incessant, we took a stroll in Menlo Park and ended up at a cafe for lunch. The girl on the till was obviously frazzled. Orders were all over the counter and she frowned as she looked at them. Still, we foolishly ordered and sat outside in the sunshine for quite a while before she came out with my salad (but without cutlery). She asked Narrisch to repeat her order as she obviously didn't have a clue what it was anymore and then disappeared for another ten minutes or so. Eventually we had two meals, cutlery and drinks. We were in no rush apart from our great appetite and kept the chat going so I won't complain. The salad was delicious.

On the way back to chezbob, Narrisch bought a coffee at Peet's. Getting her coffee was a large concern for me but she appeared to be less of an addict than I feared so I did not have to exorcise the coffee machine MR thoughfully left to gather dust in chezbob. At chezbob we gathered what we needed for our evening in the city and relaxed for a while before realising that I had totally forgotten the train times and we had missed the train. For some reason I was off my game all weekend (and in retrospect this has carried on all week) and so utterly annoyed with myself at every turn, taking it out on Narrisch once which was so wrong of me I will be cringing for weeks at the memory. I have mentioned before how I get when there is a place to be at a certain time. I get angsty. And it never helps me get there. Getting there would be helped with just leaving on time. Nevermind though. This just meant that I had to drive in.

I don't drive to the city as a rule. I hate the traffic there particularly the taxis and it takes as long to get there as it does to take the train thanks to congestion and the hunt for parking. Plus of course I am not familiar with driving in the city. However, Narrisch was great at directing me and somehow we remained unscathed despite the man that wouldn't let me get into his lane so that I could turn into the "parking garage" and Narrisch flinging curses at him.

Now on foot, I realised that checking the website for the Chinese New Year parade half a dozen times that week, hadn't actually imprinted on my mind where exactly we were to go. We strode down Market until Narrisch spoke to a doorman who was waving a print-out of the route around (it was good that she was willing to ask for directions as I am qite pathetic at it). Now well-informed we saw that the road right in front of us was closed off and a crowd was gathered. We paused to smile at a little boy with an inflatable Spidey as large as he was and then continued on to find a suitable point to stand (that is one with an unobstructed view). Channeling someone who is not me, I suggested a place right in front of an exotic underwear store. I was probably joking but we did indeed halt there.

There was a man on the other side of the street wearing a pig snout. Every time we tried to take a photo of him, he moved. Otherwise, we were entertained by the two boys sword fighting (later joined by a girl who whupped their arses by using the "waving a sword around like a feather duster" technique) and the continuous sound of explosions as people throw small amounts of gunpowder wrapped by paper on the ground.

The parade starting forming at 5:30. We were rather excited by what we thought was the start of the parade but it was merely the head of the parade moving forward to make enough space for everyone behind. We ended up staring at the same section of the parade for about half an hour as it was forming. Just upstream, a dragon tried to keep excitement levels high by running around and throwing small explosives onto the ground and downstream a troop of fluffy pink girls bounced, seemingly breaking the laws of thermodynamics with their perpetual motion.

Just gone six, the parade started for real. We were inundated with marching bands, dragons, lions and cute kids dressed as piglets. One of the stranger floats had a load of women in fat pig suits coming out of an egg and dancing before going back inside. And there was also a rather tacky fake aeroplane. My favourite float has of course been much documented in photographs (see below or photobucket or flickr). It was Vietamese, I believe and I really fell in love with the girl on it. As skit said, "That girl looks kind of left out and pensive in this one...as though she is the heroine, spotlit off on her own, probably about to have a soliloquy/solo... about loneliness."

It went on forever, it seemed. By 7:30 (ish) we were both suffering a bit from standing or crouching by the curb and thinking that perhaps the parade had nothing new to offer us, just more lions and dragons and pigs (oh my). We moved on to the flickr 3rd birthday party at the Yerba Buena Art's Centre. I am not sure what I expected but a free and yet somehow small party was not it. On entering we given an ID check in case we wanted alcohol. Narrisch was very happy to be asked her age and handed over her ID with such pride and allowed them to scrawl "Beer!" on the back of her hand in a biped-pink pen, a demand she wore with pride. We grabbed as many freebies as we could (a lens cloth, a sticker and some moo-cards) and moved onto the buffet. I grabbed some cheese, bread and hummus and eyed the cupcakes vowing to return.

Cupcakes

The reason behind the party attendance was of course the auction on behalf of "Kids with cameras". Narrisch had fallen in love with this photo and was going to bid on it.

We perused the photos selected for the auction. As we started a woman approached and asked me who I was. "I'm nobody," I replied. "Ah, are you with someone then?" "Yes, my friend dragged me along." (And then to Narrisch:) "Who are you?" "No one you would have heard of...".

It was rather strange. I began to wonder whether we were the only randoms in a rather elite crowd. However, I think the woman was just drunk ("Or high," said Narrisch), since she had a rather violent reaction to one of the photos "Oh that is hideous! Ugh!").

Personally, I liked this one for the colours and light and this one for the world it showed. I really felt I could just step through the glass and be in my own spooky little childhood (that I never had).

We mosied along and pilferred cupcakes. I told you I'd return for you, my sweet little chocolate and cream delicacy. It was absolute heaven. All fresh and rich. (Narrisch: Are these [the circles on top] paper? Me: Well I just ate them...).

A note now on the people there. They all had fantastic cameras and were snap happy. Plus there were plenty of geeky t-shirted men with scraggly beards mingling with dramatically black swathed arty types. Someone brought their baby, a couple of others brought their dogs. It was quite bizarre and I felt that everyone probably had an interesting story to tell (compared to the comic/tv-geeks I spent the next day with anyway). Oh and there were the yipyips.

Back to the point, it was a silent auction. Narrisch checked the bids on her dream photo and it was at $200. She ummed and ahhed for she was unsure when would be the best time to bid strategically (but she was happy with the cost given that it was to go to charity) plus they said they only took cheques (which she did not have with her). After asking the organiser whether cash would be an option and hearing the organiser say that anything would do, even paypal, Narrisch put down her bid of $250. By this point, there was only ten minutes left to the auction and the bidding forms were being held by members of staff. She made the poor man holding the blossoms form present his back to her so she could lean on it as she wrote.

What followed were an anxious few minutes as people checked the bid levels and then moved on. Even I was getting nervous on Narrisch's behalf. As the clocked ticked on and the members of staff counted down the seconds, it became obvious that there was no last minute rush with the auction and Narrisch had won.

We hopped, skipped and jumped across to the Metreon, a cinema complex by Yerba Bueno Gardens, and found an ATM (in fact quite a few but only one was not "out of order" or having a "healthcheck"). Narrisch grabbed her cash and we jumped, skipped and hopped back to the auction where she exchanged cash for photo.

After putting the photo in the car (and discussing just how Narrisch was to get something too large for carry-on and too delicate for check-in back to Colorado- answer, she leaves it for me to sort out with UPS), we sauntered into Mel's Diner. On the way we noticed a few oddities dressed up as Darth Maul or other monsters. Narrisch realised before I did that they were from WonderCon which had their masquerade party that evening. This taster of the convention we were to attend the next day continued inside the diner as many people in costume or merely in comicgeekwear were apparent. We sat at the bar of the diner and Narrisch was next to someone reading Civil War Frontline issue 11 (which is the latest and last issue in a series I rate rather highly but the issue itself had some poor moments). She pretty much had to restrain me from asking the man for his opinion once he was done. I explained (but not very well) the story of Marvel's Civil War and we laughed at how it took her a while to realise that when jes talked about the Civil War, she did not mean the American one. I also laughed at the jukebox choices we had including such tracks as "I fall to pieces" and "Crazy" not to mention "CC Rider" (oops I mentioned it).

Basically I laughed. I was stupidly happy. What had we done? We had spent the day doing nothing until 6 when the parade started. But then we saw some fantastic floats and marching bands, schools, martial art groups and performers. And we had also won a photo (I say we in the loosest sense but I did feel some victory). The day had been spiced with a lot of conversation on rather geeky things but on an intelligent-BSG level. I have still to get back to her with the explanation of SUSY though.

The drive home was uneventful and once in chezbob, we had spearmint tea and looked at our photographs. So many are blurred (on Narrisch's as well) but still, they captured the movement and colour of the event. I went to bed charged on the driving, the auction, the cupcake and the Vietamese girl gazing into nothing.

"I like to stalk you in my thoughts"

2007-03-09T22:22:00.000Z

My shifts

Note, Day is 8am to 4pm.
Swing 4pm to 12am.
Owl 12am to 8am.

There is a daily meeting (including weekends) at 8:45.

Sunday March 11th --- Owl
Saturday March 17th --- Swing
Sunday March 18th --- Owl
Monday March 19th --- Swing
Tuesday March 20th --- Owl
Saturday March 24th --- Swing
Sunday March 25th --- Owl

I think someone hates us.

2 years, 82 dedicated threads, over 9000 emails (ish I think)

2007-01-31T02:39:00.000Z

Cheers
We do live in a fairytale
Mischief Managed
Dear Diary
Psychotic Life In Technicolor
Committee Monkey
Braid my hair and call me Pollyanna
A mite unpredictable
Let's go to work
Missives beyond our ken
Welcome to this grand illusion
Orders, answers to the questions of life and the occasional game of Travel Scrabble
Emails lurking everywhere
Electricity lies
Buns of Steel
Skulking. Professionally.
Oops
not awash with ambiguity
Bobbing along in our barrel
Very Arthur Dent
Self-flagellating Hypocrite Sluts
stick figures with tribal heritage
Utter nincompoops
Go Pirates!
I don't care if this throws the thread out I want to go to bed
One day in your memoirs, you'll describe me as inscrutable
Happy slapping hoodies with ASBOs and ringtones
Grr. Argh.
Finger Food?
Jasmine-scented Angelsnot
Love's Bitch
A major in dumb planning from Angel University
Death by Ood
Rudimentary Pulley System
Lemon Juice in Your Eyes
Mind-numbingly Useless
Scoffs at gravity
I don't believe "urgh" is the magic word
Must have been a huge cereal box
Don't give up probe
Moping at the Bronze
Did I leave the stove on?
*realises there is no email*
Continent-spanning Underground E-mail Network
At least you didn't dream about that guy with the cheese
I owe your village a goat
More popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus
Wake up and smell the psychosis
With power comes responsibility
We attack the Mayor with hummus
New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York
You like pain?
It must be bunnies
The government gave me bad hair
Nancy-boy hair-gel
Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt in your own home.
Girl needs an email
Cherry brioche and contraceptive paint
This could be a little more sonic...
I think this line's mostly filler
Madam Grouchy Carrot (and sidekick sus)
Your girlfriend is a toaster
livin' legend needs eggs
Defy the chicken
I swallowed a bug
Well, frak
Woof. In low tones of menace.
A moody forkful of eggs and b.
Let's go toaster shopping
skippet: the stand-up years
recommending inappropriate topiaries
She has had congress with the beast
This time it's personnel
With this ring, I thee bio-damp
I never could read your handwriting
Otherwise, they can't make a movie about it later
Easy-bake, Flop-a-palooza, Whoosh, Pop - I don't skulk.
My sister's a ship; we had a complicated childhood
Known by all and Sundry as Bertie and Gertie. Like some dashed musical act.
Hot and cold running interns
... the wild haggis romp
Always keep an eye out for Johnny the Tackling Alzheimer's Patient

You can't take a picture of this

2007-01-29T06:57:00.000Z

It's already gone.

Dates

2007-01-20T23:02:00.000Z

I forgot to mention I was at Fermilab, IL. 16th-19th January.

Next month, Japan 15th-24th February (unconfirmed- may be longer).

Then 7th-26th March experiment at SLAC.

Visa expires 31st March. Who knows what will happen next?

As always there are photos on photobucket for Fermilab and also my UK trip over Christmas. Mum insisted on a Torchwood tour (especially "the place where the water comes down").

Birthday Girl

2007-01-15T18:46:00.000Z

My birthday weekend started on Friday. I went home around 2pm, shopped for odds and sods and breakfast things and came back to chezbob to nap. Once awake again, I watched Six Feet Under with MR and ate dinner. Then, around quarter past ten, it was time to pick up the guest of honour from the airport.

I got lost. I always do seem to. But quite handily there were planes to follow. I finally arrived at the terminal and saw no signs of Rian’s flight on the arrivals board. I worried. I rushed around in circles thinking that there must be some sign of it, a representative I could ask maybe, but it was strangely bare of staff at 10:50pm. Then I turned around and she was standing there by the baggage carousel staring into space on her valium. Anyway, home was again an adventure. Yep, I got lost again. Then we had wine with MR by her fire and MR giggled so much and was so happy I was in shock. Rian was chatting well and we teased MR. There was probably Six Feet Under conversation. There was definitely talk about her photos of her parents and also some pieces on her wall. Rian was being graciously nosey in the flattering way only she can do. At half past one we went to bed. Rian had MR's bed as chezbob is not heated overnight (I hate heating... I use my little electric heater in the morning to make it warm enough to leave bed though) and MR's guest bed is not in the warmest part of the house.

The next morning I woke and emailed Rian's Blackberry to tell her that it was safe to come over. Which she did. I made tea and tried to make hers into chai by adding mulled wine spices which I think was odd and not nice because she never asked for it again. I then made a fry-up which we ate at my rarely-used table. By the time we were done with breakfast I think it was time for lunch. We got dressed and washed and so on and we walked down Santa Cruz and I took her to Kepler's Bookstore because I wanted to buy Day Watch. Alas, it wasn't there and when I asked the girls at the information desk, they said that the publication date had changed to March. Grrr. Rian spent her time browsing and chose a gift for MR (which MR found after Rian left and said that it made her cry, it was so perfect). We left the book shop and passed a homeless guy (of which there are many in the states). Rian gave him some money and he started talking. He said that he was a great studier of people and looking at us he could tell that she had very high energy blah blah blah and I had very low energy and I should learn to enjoy life before I pass away. He said that. "Pass away". I can't help but think it was a threat. He kept on talking, saying how people judge him but he doesn't drink or do drugs, how great Rian was and how lousy I was. How I was too shy and closed off. Pah. Anyway. What happened after we left the crazy man behind? We went back to chezbob and I read a novel from skit and Rian read comics in the sunshine.

I realised that it was nigh time we got on the train to San Francisco to make it to Teatro Zinzanni on time. We dressed and were out by twenty past four. MR drove us the short distance to the station and we hopped on the 4:34 train. We maybe looked a bit dressier than the average passenger and drew some stares. There was an event at Millbrae station. There were all these paramedics and people rushing around. The police came. We passengers were all very concerned "oh we do hope he/she is all right" style. And then after a ten minute delay, we were moving again. There was the announcement that they found a passenger totally unresponsive and so called the paramedics. But he was just fare dodging so them they called the police. Dearie me. The announcer made it into a moral for us all to always buy a ticket.

There was a one hour journey where I got more and more nervous for the same reason as I get nervous when going to any appointment as described on Day 1 of the NY Meet when we rushed to Accomplice. Once at the end of the line, we got a taxi to Pier 29. MR was made really tense by this ride which was typically kamikaze but we made it without a scratch.

The venue looked like a tent. We went inside to a smallish round tent/room with a bar in the middle and a shop to the left and a contraption that played music and moved to the right. It was the sort of thing I'd expect to see on a pier. There were people milling around all dressed up and decorating people's faces with paint and glitter. It was all reds and golds and feathers and jewels. MR got herself and Rian some Pomegranate Mohitos (cocktails... I may have the name wrong or indeed the spelling) and me an ice tea as I was so thirsty and also exhausted. I then got our ticket and table number.

We had a table for three on the second row. Sort of. The set up (in a different round tent) was like a catwalk. There was a stage at one end with the band and then a strip down the diameter of the tent. We were one table away from the strip. When there were rope acts, they were almost above us. We sat and found our first course of appetisers. It was nice to nibble as people got seated but I was still a little subdued. I was tired and my cold wasn't helping things. And suddenly there was nothing to say to people. I worried that they weren't enjoying themselves a little but kind of gave up on worrying about that as there was nothing I could do. But of course the show solved that.

Teatro Zinzanni isn’t really describable but I will try. I wasn't too impressed at the start. There were some hammy actors declaring love and proposing and someone singing and someone with a huge fake bottom... and people making prat-falls and slapping other people and shaking feather dusters... Yeah, describing it is impossible. But the show went on and there were actual acts. I think the first great one was Sergei who juggled rather impressively. He made a few errors but I wondered whether they were on purpose because the errors were at the easier things at the start of his act, not the end. Well, it was fun and I appreciated the juggling.

After some of this show, they brought out the next course (soup) and the serving staff were all dressed up and fancy. They changed theme in their costumes in every course and would do something different as they went down the catwalk. The soup was nice (and by this time we had some wine to drink). What was the next proper (non-singing, non-hammy acting) act? I think the woman on the ropes. She was amazing. The ceiling was quite low so it was pretty close. She climbed a rope and did some stunning gymnastics. I was entranced. I couldn't clap her as I was just spellbound by her and the shapes her body made. She was a part of the rope. It was so fluid. I wish I could express this better.

Next up was a salad and some other act. One of the hammy humour acts was getting "a virgin" from the audience for "Casanova" to teach how to seduce a woman. "Casanova" (played by a woman) chose a man (probably 18ish) and dressed him as a woman to demonstrate on. "Casanova"'s lover (man as woman) returns and is jealous. The unfortunate audience member was dubbed Panini and they made him do things like sing and generally embarrass himself. Later on there was a similar thing with a sea goddess and a satyr. They plucked out a couple from the audience (Mitch the accountant who looked like one and his wife who dressed in beige) and dressed them up as a satyr and sea goddess making them do the act which involved prancing. And singing. Always singing. It was actually hilarious at one point when even the hammy actors cracked up and slipped on their lines. And it was so funny to see the accountant and beige woman be transformed.

There was a bit when we all had to dance but of course Rian and I (MR went to toilet) had no one to dance with so Sergei came and danced with us. Which was nice. He had a disco ball on his head. Which was odd.

I had chicken main course. I didn't finish it as I was almost full and I wanted dessert. The remaining acts included a man who balanced things. So far quite dull you think but he balanced wine glasses on a tray balanced on a sword. And then did rope tricks. Holding them. And then he swayed on the ropes right over our table. I was convinced he was going to drop it all and seriously amazed by it. I was unable to clap for fear.

There was one more rope act which was a couple. They probably weren't technically better than the woman who did it on her own but I loved them more because, just as the woman and the rope was one, these two people and their ropes were one. And there seemed to be a theme to it; they were always supporting each other or falling away from each other. And there was such anguish on their faces. I felt almost moved to tears. It was absolute beauty.

The final act was a man hula hooping. Not the best act in my opinion but it was more impressive than it sounds. He had hoops going all over his body and they were shiny so it looked like he was trapped in a sphere of light.

That was the show. Oh, and the dessert was gorgeous. Some sort of pumpkin, caramel and chocolate creamy thing. And I downed a cup of coffee which seemed to impress people.

We came out of Zinzanni (and removed the bits of paper confetti from our hair) and met upon the step Bee, our driver in a sharp black suit with bow-tie. She was nice as was her Lincoln Towncar. She drove us to a restaurant she recommended. MR complained about the cab ride we had to Zinzanni so I am sure Bee was on her best behaviour and drove extra smooth for us. We went to the Hyatt Regency Hotel and were driven right up to the entrance. Bee opened the door for me and we got out like movie stars.

It took us a while to get to the restaurant (called the Equinox) because the first "elevator" we got in just refused to take us all of the way to the top. We went to the second to top floor and then came all the way down and hunted for a lift that would take us all of the way. Most peculiar. Meanwhile Rian was taking deep breaths to deal with the height. Indeed, I couldn't look out of the glass side to the lift as it went up so fast and the centre to the hotel was built in this weird slanty way such that the perspective made me feel sick as it all raced past. Once finally at the top we went to the restaurant and sat down with the cocktail list. It was a revolving restaurant and I felt a tinge of queasiness but not too much if I looked at things that were sort of stationary. The city at night was rather pretty. We could see the Bay Bridge all lit up in its glory (not as great as the Brooklyn Bridge but I do love bridges. I think I waxed lyrical about them for a while). MR had some wine and Rian and I had hot chocolates with peppermint schnapps. Bee stuck with water of course. We stayed there for over an hour and chatted about travelling quite a bit as Bee used to live in Switzerland. Eventually the motion was making me long for stationary things so we left.

We tried to go to the Carnelian room which is another high-up restaurant but driving past the hotel, it looked really dead. This was just before midnight. So we went to the Top of the Mark which was a restaurant I had been to last year with MR and some of her friends after seeing a Tom Stoppard play. They charged $10 just to go in. It was because they had a live band (this almost jazz thing I didn't think much of). We still went in and had some fun in watching the couples dancing. Most weren't really dancing, just doing that sway and shuffle thing, but a couple (of couples) were worth watching. Oh, and Mary-Rose asked the band leader to wish me happy birthday. Grrr.

Anyway, at 1ish we called it a night (they turned the lights up in the restaurant and the band left which we took as kind of a hint) and Bee drove us home. We all seemed to nod off in the back... I know I had a few blank and confused moments anyway. We were at chezMR/bob by 1:40 and I went straight to bed.

I woke up around 10am. Which was perfect really. I went straight online but not to tell Rian I was up. I set up the webcam and skyped the parentals. I didn't pay attention to the time and interrupted them just as mum was serving dinner... oops. But anyway. I opened cards and presents from family with them there. I got some chocolates from Waitrose and a Parker pen (from the House of Lords, no less). Oh and a load of money mainly $1 bills. Was I expected to go to a strip club? Anyway, my mum disappeared and then came back with a cake and candles. I was told to blow very hard so I did and they went out. Magic.

I got dressed and emailed Rian to say I was up. As I waited I opened my presents from friends which was much fun. I got a purse, lots of tea, a book on Spidey2 and more tea plus a photo frame already filled with photos (because my laziness is apparently legendary). Eventually Rian came over. It transpired that she couldn't work out how to get out of MR's and was pawing at the back door whining until MR let her out. Rian brought gifts and cake. Gifts were a beautiful wooden box with some good luck/protection tokens inside "even though you don't believe in them", a pad from Katherine "to write to skit" and a Jack Skellington toy from Aidan. The cake was from Emano and we warmed it in the oven and ate it with some strawberries (one must always have strawberries in the fridge). MR joined us as well and it was extremely pleasant. It was sunny and everything was calm and unrushed and sweet.

We were up properly by 12 or so and MR went off to enjoy her life while Rian and I went looking for lunch. I suggested the French cafe/wine bar at the end of Santa Cruz. On our way there (in really glorious sunshine) we saw a man in a Blue Sun t-shirt. I said "cool shirt" and he looked mildly afraid. I giggled a bit at that and a woman in front of us turned around and said "well, look at you two on top of the world" or words to that effect. Rian said that it was my birthday. The random woman in the street gave me a hug and said that God must love me to give me such beautiful weather (it was fantastic- so warm Rian was without a coat). She then turned around and picked up a box from a small table on the pavement. It had a slice of cake in it she called "red velvet". The sponge was crimson and the icing white. I was pretty happy at this generosity and positive spirit and skipped off (okay, not really) with Rian.

We went to the Cafe Baronne (French place) but the queue stretched well out into the street. Rian said that we should just go to Starbucks and get stuff to go (I promised her lunch in the sun) but I was not sold on the idea and so dragged her for a walk to some small group of restaurants near the station. We found one place with tables outside (and it wasn't anywhere near as popular as Baronne) and ordered lunch there. We both had sandwiches and sat enjoying them in the sun until the sun lowered a bit and the shade started creeping. I guess this is where I quietened down a bit.

Once back at chezbob, Rian had a last minute email check, gathered her belongings and prepared to go. I was being quiet and closed-off here as I always get when having to say goodbye. People must think that I am dying to get rid of them. Anyway, we put Rian's case in the boot and had a paint incident. There was a small hiss which we discovered to be one of the red paint cans for car touch-ups, making its mark on the back of the boot fortunately and not Rian’s bag. We tried to clear it up but only succeeded in getting paint on ourselves making it look like we had just murdered someone. The wonderful smell made me quite light-headed and possible made driving a little more exciting.

For once, I didn't get lost on the way to the airport. I dropped Rian off at the terminal and only gave her a quick hug before hitting the accelerator and going back to chezbob. She was there a couple of hours early. But she wanted to leave then and it felt hard to encourage her to stay when I had nothing to offer her to do. Anyway. I drove back and discovered that the reason why I got lost before was because there were two exits from the 101 with the same name and I needed the second one.

And so, in the late afternoon of my birthday I was home and alone. I watched bad scifi (Jake 2.0 which oddly appeals to me) and downloaded the new Sam&Max game. I love it. The first Sam&Max game was pretty good. This one, not as great with the game play (I finished the first two chapters in three short evenings) but the comedy is fantastic. When I could no longer focus on either the computer or television screen, I went to bed. Around 10pm. Without a doubt 25 feels old…

The highlight clip show probably hosted by Angus Deayton

2006-12-30T14:28:00.000Z

Copy and paste Board post...

Book
This is a book I read this year rather than a book that came out this year. Although there was stiff competition from Nightwatch and A Time Traveller's Wife, the book that was blew me away this year was Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It was full of Pratchett-style humour but also felt incredibly fresh and exciting. I was hooked on the book from start to finish and delighted in the way tangents and digressions could take over the plot.

Film
I actually cannot remember a single good film out this year. X3 was only okay and that was the big release (oh and PotC2 and Superman Returns but I have never been a fan of either). I saw Nightwatch in January (the US had a rather late release) so that wins for me even though it was a bit patchy. It was at least visually and thematically brilliant.

TV Show
Contenders are Heroes, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Six Feet Under (not of course new this year but new to me), Life on Mars... Possibly others too. But the winner kind of has to be Battlestar Galactica for being both a show I enjoy immensely and a show I am proud is getting made. Most of the other shows I have listed I think are just out there to make televsion... be a bit of fun or a way to earn a living. BSG somehow has become a work of art- an incredible look at humanity. What makes us human, where we come from and where we are going... Its themes are so huge in scope, I feel painfully unworthy to watch it at some times.

Personal event
I would love for once to have my highlight of the year be non-Hobbling related just to convince myself that I have a Real Life. Alas, my highlight was the New York/Boston Hobbmeet. Meeting so many people and living with some of them... well, who seriously thought we'd make it work? It was a massive event and ran near-perfectly thanks to our combined efforts. Thanks to every Hobbling... and honorary Hobblings.

Runners-up were the Hobbling Thanksgiving and a not-so-Hobbling event which was Fairie's wedding.

And the Board post from 2005...

Film
Like many here my favourite film of the year was based on a cult tv show. Yes, it's The League of Gentleman's Apocalypse.

Book
Of the 2005 releases, my favourite book was Harry Potter 6. But of the books I have read this year, G R R Martin's Fevre Dream.

Television
Ha. Doctor Who. I think. Oh, Farscape Peacekeeper Wars should also count as 2005. And also Battlestar Galactica.

Personal Highlight(s)
Three days of Hobbness last February when Em and jes accosted me in my own home followed by a large Hobbmeet in a bowling alley and then a day freezing in snowy London doing touristy things/ laughing at naked santa.

Also brainwashing skit into becoming Just Like Me.

Also... California baby!

And seeing the Milky Way, shooting stars and many constellations from the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Seeing an awesome lightning storm in Arizona.

Gate-crashing Rian's Thanksgiving.

Mum always has her eyes closed

2006-12-26T08:09:00.000Z

The annual family photograph. At least it isn't blurry like last year's.

keppet

A Day in Zion

Bryce to Zion

Kanab to Bryce

Tusayan to Kanab

Dates

A Day at the Grand Canyon

Needles to Tusayan

LAX to Needles

Dates

FACET Experimental Installation

2010: The Big Questions

Dates

Dates (and news)

Dates

Dates

There was no butler

Dates

Yes but...

Dates

It's that time of year again

Garvan

More Dates

Dates

Edinbrugh Shows 5 to 7 (plus 1)

Edinburgh Shows 1 to 4

Dates

Disallusioned

Dates

Rants

Geneva Day 1: They heard I was coming so they got extra police with big guns

2 more years, 119 more dedicated threads of 100 emails each

My 2008 in neat little categories

Day 5: Penguins Not Included

Day 4: The Importance of packing the correct CDs

Dates

Day Three: Take a look at me- a penguin you will see.

Break in the transmission

The memory plays tricks (Day Two Part Two)

Day Two Part One (or the Mystery of the Right Arm)

Day 1 - Boldly going North

Hobbling Holiday Day 0

Dates

I will be brief (as Polonius said)

Tedium

Dates

Dates

*squeak*

Dates

Policeman or Train Conductor?

Christmas and 2007

You and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate (Day Three)

The Clamour of the Lamb (Day Two Part Three)

You did what with the banana?! (Day Two Part Two)

Prelude with Pancakes (Day Two Part One)

I also liked the Duck Decoy (Day One Part Four)

Mr February was particularly amusing (Day One Part Three)

T Rex: Eats children (wearing trainers) (Day One Part Two)

The entrance to hell must be around here somewhere... (Day One Part One)

Calibration (Day Zero)

Dates + Quiz

71 years ago

Dates

Stop fighting, children

Konnichiwa Kyoto

And let's not forget the doorknob...

Dates

Three days of being wound tight

WonderCon 2007

Year of the Boar - Lunar Year 4705

"I like to stalk you in my thoughts"

2 years, 82 dedicated threads, over 9000 emails (ish I think)

You can't take a picture of this

Dates

Birthday Girl

The highlight clip show probably hosted by Angus Deayton

Mum always has her eyes closed

squeak