Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma

I HAVE MOVED....

2007-02-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

I NOW BLOG :

OVER HERE

POP BY & SAY HELLO IF YOU'RE BORED

Decisions, Decisions

2007-01-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

After a bit of deliberation I've decided to move my blogging activities across to my Myspace page. The reason being is that I've not really had the opportunity to do this blog much justice. I post little bits and pieces on my Myspace blog currently, nothing very interesting, usually pretty inane stuff about music or something I've seen on TV. It gets more readers than this blog so it makes sense I think to concentrate my efforts over there. I seem to have less time for this kind of stuff now so I thought it probably best to try and streamline what I'm doing.

Anyway, my Myspace page can be found at :

Martyn Clayton

I'm still blogging, still posting the usual rubbish, spouting off my half-baked theories on irrelevant stuff that rarely matters. Just that I'll now be doing it over there. If you've not yet got a Myspace page then you should go get one. It's a great forum for meeting new people, finding out about new music, events etc. I'm getting increasingly addicted to it.

Unlit boxes, oysters and tarting up Ottamans

2007-01-28T14:00:00.000-08:00

Finally I've got a moment to do a bit of blogging. It's been a really busy week. I was determined to finish the first draft this week and I managed it. Last weekend down in Suffolk was really relaxing. On Friday we headed down to Mersea Island in the far reaches of that much maligned county. Big skies, marshes, the grey sea and thousands and thousands of oysters. Very windswept and bracing, just what I was needing.

Saturday evening we went along to yet another pantomine, this time it was a rock and roll version of Dick Whittington at the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. They don't have the space in the theatre to do a big lavish production so they came up with the idea about a decade ago of filling their annual festive production with some classic tunes. It works quite well and the actors/musicians involved are all highly talented and multi-skilled. We also ate out a few times at some great pubs, particularly the one down in Essex, but it's name I can't remember for the life of me. If you're down that way it's just before the tidal bridge onto Mersea. You'll know the one I mean.
The photo at the top of the boxes with images on forms a part of a series of art installations called LUX currently in-situ on Micklegate. They're actually pieces of illuminated work that come into proper being after 6pm. The one pictured I thought actually worked OK unlit in the daylight.
Other than Little Man Tate and work, I've done precious little. Watched the first episode of the widely trailered, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll teenagers of SKINS on Thursday night. I was actually presently surprised by it. It's quite tightly written and well casted. Far from representing the downfall of western civilisation as the divvy papers suggested, it's pretty tame really.
Yesterday I decided to stay off the computer completely and do something more productive. An old 1930s ottaman that belonged to my Gran has come into our possession. It was looking a bit worse for wear but I thought it could probably be saved. I bought some white paint and a groovy retro design bit of fabric for the top and set about giving it a make-over. I'm generally rubbish at anything crafty, but I'm quite pleased with my handiwork in this instance. What do you reckon ? Hope Gran would approve. Now I'm off to watch the football, eat some ravioli and relax. Back to square one with the book tommorow morning.

Take Me Out - First Draft Complete

2007-01-27T01:56:00.000-08:00

First draft of my little old novel is now complete. Do you know what ? I'm actually quite pleased with it. It currently stands at 71,000 words which I expect to grow a bit by the time I reach the end of the third draft. The story is all there, quite different to what I'd originally envisaged, stronger I reckon. Lot's of interesting ideas and themes to try and develop a bit in the second draft and my confidence is now growing that this thing will somehow or other see the light of day. Time for bed I think.

Little Man Tate @ York Fibbers

2007-01-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

Coming onstage to Sheriff Fatman by Carter USM and chants of "Yorkshire, Yorkshire", Little Man Tate were amongst friends at Fibbers last night. They're too big for such a tiny venue as Fibbers to be honest, but they always promised to return no matter how big they got. They've so far stayed true to their word.
It really does feel that LMT are on the verge of big things. They have a devoted and loyal fanbase who follow them all over the place. They were out in force last night giving the proceedings a celebratory atmosphere. From the two-fingered salute of "Man I Hate Your Band", through the current single "Sexy In Latin" and an anthemic singalong, fists in the air version of "What, What You Got" they appeared to be a band on the top of their game. Their set was short, driven and tight, all of it delivered with great humour and clear enjoyment. They seem to be liking life at the minute and it's refreshing to see a band without any pretension or front. If you ever get the chance to go see them you should. They are perhaps the most Yorkshire of all the current crop of of bands to come out of the region and none the worse for it. It's kitchen-sink pop music about everyday life in Northern England and it deserves to turn them into serious players. It used to be that working-class lads from Sheffield got jobs in the steelworks, now they form bands and sing about setting fire to Portaloos. This is definite progress in my book. Bands like the Arctic Monkeys and Little Man Tate are writing contemporary folk songs. Thought I'd also mention one of the support acts, The Hussy's who are a female fronted band from Glasgow who are in a similar mould. Nice line in wry observational songs and an energetic performance. All in all , a really memorable night at old York's own little answer to CBGB's. I've already stuck a LMT vid on the blog, but I thought I'd post another for the sheer hell of it ;-) This is the Blackpool filmed video to "What, What You Got."

It's been snowing in England

2007-01-24T12:06:00.000-08:00

Time is pressing, Little Man Tate, promised re-jig

2007-01-23T14:05:00.000-08:00

I'm still plugging away on the first draft at the minute, so I've still got little time to blog. I'm off to see Little Man Tate on Wednesday night, they're another Sheffield band on the verge of doing big things. This is possibly the last chance you'll get to see them in tiddy venues before they go all semi-stellar in a Kaiser Chiefs fashion over the coming year. I'll make time on Thursday for a review of the evening's proceedings. I want to do a bit of re-jig on here. I don't like the new Beta templates, I'm struggling to use them. Sunday will see a bit of a redesign I reckon. Until then, this is Little Man Tate. If you've ever been to a dodgy house party you will surely recognise yourself in this vid. Remember the name, you'll be hearing a lot of it over the coming months.

East Anglian Weekend

2007-01-22T08:06:00.001-08:00

Just got back from an extended weekend of walking, eating, lounging about and doing quite a bit of work on the book. First draft should be complete by the end of the week. Not much time to blog properly at present but I'll be back in the next couple of days with more of the usual rubbish. The photo was taken during a walk on Mersea Island down in the deeps of Essex. Very Great Expectations I thought. Hope you're good.

Getting there, clearing out drains and the Act of Union

2007-01-16T21:21:00.000-08:00

We've been having problems with our plumbing. The drain from the bathroom to be precise. It's had a blockage. Water has been taking ages to go down and has instead been seeping out across the back yard. It's kind of been one of those "not that pressing" problems. Nothing major really, bit irritating. Unless the thing around the house is hitting me around the head screaming "I'm a big scary house thing, fix me now !" then I tend to just let them lie for a while. Today, I got rush of blood to my head and decided to prod around in the drain. It wasn't pleasant let me tell you. I had prior to prodding purchased (nice alliteration there don't you think ?)some mighty chemical disaster of a drain unblocker. There goes my environmental kudos. It was like Teesside in a bottle. Anyway, I decided I see what was down there causing the problem and got a big stick and started fiddling around. I pulled out masses and masses of matted hair. It had formed a thick hairy, gunky carpet so dense that water was unable to seep through. Pulling it out it took all my concentration not to retch and the water just seeped down and off on its merry way without any problem. I still poured my liquid Middlesbrough down the drain just for good measure. Actually, I'm not knocking Middlesbrough. It's one of the friendliest places on god's earth, and there's plenty of far worse places. Like Darlington.
Now the drain is clean, confident and assured in it's dealing with my dirty bath water and I feel quite useful. This always happens after I've had a go at doing something like that. I've been slapping my thigh in a manly fashion, chuckling like Brian Blessed and contemplating power tools all afternoon.
Boringly, here comes the bit where I tell you about the book's progress. First draft should be complete by the end of next week. That's the date I'm trying to work to at least. I'm giving myself deadlines to concentrate the mind. Some cool folks on Myspace have responded to my plea for potential cover designs. Within hours of me posting my request. The book's page has also been recieving friends requests which is quite bizarre. I'm doing all of this with a "let's see what happens" attitude and so far I'm being pleasantly surprised. I've just got to ensure that what I produce ultimately lives up to expectations.
We're off to Suffolk for a long weekend. My folks-in-law have a lovely peaceful house which should be conducive to getting on with some writing without other distractions.
Apparently today is the 300th anniversary of the Act Of Union between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. Apparently a BBC poll found most people in both countries still generally supported it without much passion or chest-beating. It's kind of just there like an old jumper. This is a safe, comfortable corner of the world, we seem to get along just fine most of the time. I quite like the unity in diversity as long as everyone is respected. The politics of minor difference don't really do that much for me.

Take Me Out

2007-01-15T16:37:00.000-08:00

If last year was about Introverts Anonymous, then this year is all about

Take Me Out

Which is a song by Franz Ferdinand and the title of my work in progress. It's got it's own Myspace page already and is looking for friends.

More dreams, not having opinions and doing it yourself

2007-01-15T01:16:00.001-08:00

I dream a lot. I always have. Last night I dreamt loads. From about 3am when I had to go to the loo my head was full of odd dreams, right until the alarm went off at 6.15. In one we'd moved house to somewhere which was riddled with damp, in another China was about to nuke the States and a state of emergency had just been declared here :-0 . Then I seemed to spend ages drifting in and out of sleep thinking existential thoughts about the meaning of life. I came to the conclusion that Buddhism was probably nearest the mark, stripped back of all the superstitious accretions. Weird. I can do without that too often. I put this down to cheese on toast for supper and my having been watching Desperate Housewives on E4 just before bed. I do appear to be in a very odd headspace at present, prompted I think by the writing of the book which is now hurtling towards 50,000 words at present. I'm hoping to get the first draft completed by the end of the month. We're off to Cornwall for a couple of weeks at the end of February when I hope to be working on the third draft and knocking the thing into shape without other distractions. Apologies if I haven't been around much on other peoples blogs, I'm not finding the time at present to pay my usual visits to blogs I enjoy, but hopefully I should do again shortly.
I'm still completely unable to stand anything to do with current affairs at the minute. I thought I'd give the Today programme a go this morning whilst eating my porridge. I had to turn back to 6 Music after about five minutes. I just can't be doing with any of it. I've always been interested in politics and debates right from my early teens. At times I've perhaps over indulged in debate and gotten down about stuff that I'm probably completely powerless to change. Now having, at least temporarily, removed myself from thinking about much that's happening, I feel mentally much lighter and probably happier. There is an element of ego-indulgence in the idea that your opinion makes the blindest bit of difference. Having listened to countless phone-ins and radio discussions, read bloggers opinions and letters pages on loads of different subjects over the years you do eventually come to realise that most people know nothing about most things they feel compelled to share their thoughts on. Realising that I don't have to listen to them has been really liberating. The Buddhists definitely have a point I reckon.
I want to try and get my head down over the next three days, so I might not be around much. The first draft is now getting tantalisingly near completion and over the last few days I can see the quality level has risen again. What is quite interesting from a DIY artistic point of view was the entry into the music charts yesterday of a song by a band unsigned by a record label based purely on download sales. They have built their following through gigging and Myspace. This is the first time this has happened but it surely won't be the last. The way technology is empowering people to bypass the traditional media outlets is exciting. Yes, it allows lots of dross to hit the market before disappearing without trace , but within all that you can find some real gems. I'm going to put this wee story of mine out myself I reckon and try and do something with it through Myspace and a website. It'll be a good learning experience if nothing else. I've got no appetite for trying to do the rounds of agents and publishers waiting for one to bite. There may well be a time and a place for that in the future, but I don't do the lottery and I try to keep my pipe dreams in check. In the meantime I can probably sell a few copies. I'm going to fnd a clever person on Myspace to do me some cover art and see how it goes. I'll keep you posted.

The Sugars @ York Fibbers

2007-01-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

We toddled along to top York grubby music venue Fibbers last night for a wee bit of doo-wop cabaret from Leeds based band, The Sugars. Two ladies, one gent, all looking absolutely fantastic and sounding incredibly tight. There's a definite White Stripes influence in there with their howling vocals and scuzzy guitar. The chemistry between Anna and Matt at the front works really well Lots of attention has clearly been paid to detail, which I like to see in a band. There's just enough knowing in what they do without slipping into cheesy parody. Standing right by the speaker stack, my ears are still ringing as a result. My dad always said I'd be deaf by the time I was 30 due to my Dj-ing activities and love of noisy music. You were wrong dad, but perhaps by the time I'm 40 if I carry on this way. If you're going to lose your hearing it's better to lose it to The Sugars than someone naff. At least that way your final memory of what sound was like will be fantastic. I always felt really sorry for that bloke in Touching The Void, who at the point when his senses are failing him and he's going strangely mad get's Boney M's "Brown Girl In The Ring" playing on a loop in his collapsing mind. How terrible would that be. I'd quite like Monsters by The Sugars please.
Thought I'd mention Grammatics as well who opened the proceedings. They have perhaps the skinniest, most sickeningly attractive front man in the universe. It's just not fair, it really isn't. These young folks look much better than I did when I was their age. Anyway, they were fantastic as well. After the bands are done, on a Friday night Fibbers becomes Up The Racket indie disco. And disco indeed we did ! Until Rach remembered just before 1 that she had work this morning, and we came home. That's just how rock'n'roll we are ;-) I quite enjoy these things now as I get to watch the casualties being entertaining, rather than being an entertaining casualty myself. At least I tell myself I was entertaining, it helps ameliorate the feelings of intense embarassment I get when I'm reminded of some of my youthful behaviour.

Lookielikies, my weird dream and doo-wop cabaret

2007-01-12T07:07:00.001-08:00

Current Celebrity Big Brother decaying man, Leo Sayer and....

My mental old hound, Barney ? (See below for reference purposes)

I personally find it quite spooky. Nearly as weird as the time I encountered the haunted face of Ted Rogers, former presenter of 3-2-1, imprinted on a cream cheese and chive Pringle at a family buffet.

Thankfully, the dog hasn't started singing falsetto or dressing in a clown like manner. Neither does he have a deluded belief that he's up there with the Beatles and the Stones in the canon of British rock greats. They are a similar height however. Did Leo Sayer really say that when he came close to death a few years ago that his management told him that they thought they were going to have to tell the people of the UK that "they'd lost their boy " ? Now I'm not sure if I've missed something here. Wasn't Sayer a bit of an embarassing 70s pop-star or was he in fact the Buckinghamshire equivalent of Gandhi ? This needs to be cleared up. Maybe he really is the queen of our hearts ? Or was that someone else. Maybe I'm thinking of Graham Norton.
I had a weird dream last night that Francis Maude, whose some kind of Tory person, was murdering a beggar in the centre of York with his bare hands. I think this might have been prophetic. Thankfully I managed to stop him by hitting him over the head with my man-bag, which was ladened down with books from the library. In fact I ended up killing him but was pardoned by the authorities as he was a Tory and it was seen as public spirited. Really I did. Not that I'm advocating the bludgeoning of Tories with fully loaded man-bags, or indeed lady-bags for that matter. Although I don't think I'd object that strongly if you just wanted to knock one of the really nasty ones around a bit. If you do give it a go please make sure you post it on YouTube so I can see.
Have a great weekend. We're off to see The Sugars tonight at the salubrious York nitespot, Fibbers. If you fancy a bit of hardcore doo-wop cabaret, check out the vid below

Panto changed my life, oh yes it did.

2007-01-11T01:35:00.001-08:00

Tuesday night we went along to the pantomine at the Theatre Royal in York. Being a lover of vaudeville and music hall, panto is one of the highlights of my year. I don't have many. The pantomine is a great British art form which has been sadly debased by bastard Aussie soap-stars and rubbish boxers whose names apparently put bums on seats in struggling provincial theatres. They have turned what should be a deviant bit of charivari style seasonal madness into an aneamic middle-of-the-road borefest. Here in York we have two pantos. One at our elegantly decaying "Grand" Opera House is pretty much in the latter category. This year it features Sid Little and a fat bloke who used to be in Brookside. Meanwhile at the Theatre Royal we have the absolute daddy of Pantos. Run as a benevolent dictatorship for 28 years by jobbing actor Berwick Kaler it features not a single household name, b,c,or, d-lister just a carefully nurtured repetoire of actors who know or at least learn how to do the genre justice. It's full of adlibs, surreal flights of fancy and lots of humour for the adults as well as the kids. The Guardian and The Times put it in their top three pantos in the UK, and the Independent made it their numero uno. Not bad for a little provincial theatre. People now travel from all over the place just to visit the York Theatre Royal Panto. On Tuesday night we had a New Zealander and a Fijian in the audience, and a couple of rows in front of us a French couple discussed amongst themselves what the hell they thought was going on.
This year it was Cinderella, but that is largely by-the-by. People go year on year to watch the interaction between the main players who are now a much loved part of peoples annual Christmas and New Year festivities. We went to our first one in 1995, before we lived here when we'd been staying for a few nights at a B&B in Clifton in the early New Year. We were both students at the time and passing the theatre we popped in for a coffee. One of the ladies who worked at the box office asked us if we'd be interested in a couple of standby tickets for that evenings panto. For the princely sum of just £3. We couldn't really refuse and had a fantastic evening, aided in no small part by several rum and cokes at the bar before we went in. We talked about how brilliant it had been for ages. Shortly after that I think we both decided if we could we'd come and live in York as it had a cool panto amongst it's many other attractions. Then in July of that year I rented myself a place to live, got my dad to put my computer, my clothes and my writers yearbook in the car and here I came. I think my parents thought I'd probably last about six months. A couple of months later Rachel joined me and that has been pretty much that ever since. Not going to the panto would just be plain wrong. It's like being part of a big mad cackling family for a couple of hours. If you're ever this way over Christmas and the New Year, go see it. You'll enjoy it. I promise.

Last Christmas

2007-01-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

Anarchists parade, faux fur and our future in Pop Tarts.

2007-01-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

Write about what you know. That’s one of those pieces of advice you are often given when you begin to write. I grew up in a dreary backwater where nothing of interest ever happened. That’s not strictly true now I think about, there was small incident with a serial killer, but that aside, nowt happened. Ever. The weekly local paper used to feature stories about the changing of the floral displays on the High Street, or the disappearance of a shopping trolley. Occasionally there’d be some kind of collection to send a sickly child to swim with dolphins and the like. Then apocryphal stories would circulate about how the kid wasn’t really ill at all and it was all just a dreadful ruse by their money-grubbing parents. Every year we had a local carnival. This consisted of a bit of a parade by local businesses where people would dress up along a theme and travel at a snails pace on the back of lorries through town. The quality threshold of the floats was usually pretty poor. I remember one business one year just sent a huge earth moving tyre on the back of one lorry. Nothing else. Not a single human sitting alongside in novelty attire. Just a giant black bit of rubber. How our little eyes must have lit up.
Carnival meant the annual carnival princess competition where local schoolgirls sent in their photos to the local paper and the readers had to vote for a winner. The gene pool in our town was quite small. There had been little real input since the Vikings. This meant that attractive people of either sex were quite thin on the ground. Those that were good looking were deified and worshipped as primitive gods by the rest of us. The winner of the Carnival princess competition always seemed to be an aloof girl who wore too much make-up and who knew lads who had motorbikes. Not ever desiring a motorbike, we were never to be introduced. My sympathies were always with the less facially gifted entrants of which there were many. Why their parents did this to their daughters I have no idea. Being held up for public mockery in the local paper was our equivalent of the medieval stocks.
As a rebellious teenager I decided I’d try and spice the paper up a bit. I sent them a press release claiming to be from an anarchist organisation threatening to disrupt the local carnival parade with some decent, honest British mayhem. Nothing violent, just a bit of direct action.
Now I like to think that if I had been working on the paper at the time I’d have asked myself a few questions upon receiving it. Why would an anarchist organisation be interested in a parade of travel agents and primary schools for instance ? How many members can they have in our tiny uninteresting town ? But no, they took it at face value and ran the story. On the front page. Not only that they also wrote an editorial condemning this kind of thing and expressing the sincere hope that “anarchists of all types will be dispersed among the prison system.”
This to me seems a bit harsh. Maybe I’m a bed wetting liberal and all that but surely the threat of a 15 year old waving a placard at majorettes doesn’t warrant the full force of the British legal establishment does it ? This was in the days before Swampy admittedly but even so. I went to ground and tried not to look awkward when people talked about the anarchist threat. I couldn’t look a policeman in the eye. Come to think of it, I still can’t. Even though I know I’ve done nothing wrong they make me feel guilty. Teenagers should get up to more of this kind of mischief. It’s more entertaining than mindless vandalism but probably less distracting for them than casual sex and class a drugs. Speaking of which have you seen the trailers for that Skins programme on Channel 4 ? I’m looking forward to that, principally because it will annoy the “we’re all doomed brigade” something rotten. Teenagers sleeping with each other and getting off their faces ? Whatever next the invention of the wheel.
I knew nothing then and I know very little now. Therefore when I write I have to find stuff out first. So currently I’ve been doing extensive research into the proceedings of Celebrity Big Brother. I am a complete Pop Tart. I like trashy culture quite a lot. I manage to combine this with the occasional 19th century Russian novel and visit to an art gallery without my head imploding but if I’m being honest I find Girls Aloud more exciting than any classical composer you could care to mention. I know that to some people this means I’m a deplorable wreck of a creature responsible for the creation of a generation of airheads who spell the collective doom of the species but I can’t help it. Somehow or other more of the population have got more intelligent, read more books and visit more museums and galleries than ever before despite the influence of The Word and Take That in the 90s so it can’t be all bad. Actually, what happened to Euro trash ? I used to love that.
I think it’s great that you can do PhD research into pop culture. I think we need more pop culture graduates. It’s what the economy is crying out for. Mathematicians are all well and good but they’re probably not as groovy. We could employ lots of overseas graduates to do the boring stuff and we could concentrate on being attractive, knowing and wry : “Britain : We’re sexier than you” could be our national slogan. That’d really annoy the French.
I’m therefore probably not properly qualified to talk about Big Brother but I will anyway. This years collection of oddballs and non-entities have been as satisfyingly mad as usual. I think a part of me watches the programme to be reassured that actually I’m quite sane after all. Relatively speaking.
Leo Sayer started out as the bookies favourite for the main prize. I’ve always found him an odd character, even when he was an unlikely lust object for my sister when I was tiny. It’s that diminutive stature, the unlikely hair and the falsetto at inopportune moments. Things started well for Leo. I reckon he thought he had it in the bag. He entered house saying “I’m a big personality, I just light up a room”, which is the equivalent of saying “I’m the mad one” when a new housemate joins your shared student house. Over the days Leo has been slowly unravelling, his behaviour getting increasingly erratic and unpredictable. On last nights programme he was seen telling the footballer’s girlfriend whose name I can’t remember that he had contemplated making love to her coat. There are some things that are just wrong on so many levels. Sprouts for instance, alongside other unmentionables such as incest, comb-overs and Tory governments. Leo Sayer shagging a faux fur jacket is another. Thankfully he didn’t follow his lust as I dread to imagine what the dry cleaning bill would have been like.
This years twist has been introduction of 2002’s fourth place contestant in the regular programme, the not very fragrant Jade Goody. Jade has been accompanied in the house by her “problematic” mother Jackiey and trophy boyfriend Jack. The sight of a confused Jermaine Jackson trying to reason with an aggressively dysfunctional cockney lesbian is the kind of quality TV experience I think few of us would want to be without. How can people say that Big Brother is dumbing down ? Jade has turned her life around since leaving the house and has become a millionairess in the process. She claimed the other night to be the 25th most influential woman in the country yet couldn’t pronounce the word “influential”. I really wouldn’t like to predict a winner.

Damn you blogger and your evil ways

2007-01-09T02:05:00.000-08:00

I've just written two insightful and searing posts about Celebrity Big Brother which Blogger has conspired to send into the nothing. What's happened to them I do not know. I can't be bothered to write it out again now and it's nearly two in the morning. I need to get a proper host for this blog as blogger is currently doing my head in.

36,000 words which must be half-way I reckon. My characters are acting in quite an unusual manner at present. They're very different to how I originally imagined. You give them life and then they take off and do their own thing. Bit like kids I guess.

The Liberace of the northern counties

2007-01-05T18:00:00.000-08:00

Go check out Street Pianos. Every street should have one.

Good but no cigar...

2007-01-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

30,000 words have now been passed, I've collected £200 in Monopoly money and managed to avoid being sent to jail. This is surely a good thing. I reckon the story is shaping up for around the 70,000 mark so I'm probably not even half-way yet, but this still feels significant.
We heard from Rach's bro, my brother-in-law Nick yesterday. He spent his Christmas and New Year cycling around Cuba. He had a really great time from what I can gather until he managed to fall off his bike and fracture his wrist. This meant he got to spend quite a bit of time in a Cuban hospital. The level of treatment was pretty high by all accounts and he spent a great deal of time comparing scars and injuries with his Cuban ward-mates who were quite impressed by this daredevil Inglese. He'd promised to bring me a cigar, hand-rolled on the thigh of some attractive latino lovely, but I'm not sure if this injury has intervened on the prezzie score. Get well soon Nick.
I'd love to be able to tell you loads of interesting stuff or wow you with my insight into hot topics of the day, but I'm currently struggling to think about much more than Celebrity Big Brother and whether to have cheese on toast for dinner at the minute. Anyway, hope you're well and I may be back soon with something marginally less boring than usual.

Living with the imaginaries, tortured outsiders and Pan in the trees

2007-01-02T11:42:00.000-08:00

I think novel writing has put me into some kind of shutdown mode. When I’m not engrossed in getting the thing written all I want to do is watch TV or read. All my thoughts keep popping back to the story and where it’s going. I’ve been talking about the characters as if they have an existence outside of my head. The book is set in York and when I pass places associated with it I start wondering what they’re up to. Is this normal ? It’s not unpleasant, just unusual for me to be so focused. I’m really liking the story for it’s own sake. All thoughts of publication seem to have been put right to the back of my mind for now. I’m sort of thinking that if I read it and enjoy it and a few friends do as well it will in itself be worthwhile doing. Whatever else happens is a bonus, to quote every band ever interviewed in the NME.
Christmas TV is meant to be pants and it pretty much has been over the past week or so. You can always find something interesting if you persist however. Saturday evening I watched Spirited Away which is the most successful Japanese film ever. It’s an Oscar winning animated adventure in which a suburban family are transported to a bizarre fantasy land after eating in the deserted restaurant of an old theme park. The central character is a little girl called Chihiro. Her sense of moral duty and innocence are transformative within the context of the strange land in which she finds herself, and in which her parents have unaccountably become a pair of pigs. It was full of Japanese oddness but totally charming and beautiful to watch. The director Hayao Miyazaki insisted that it was entirely hand drawn rather than using CGI like most of the animated hits of the past few years.
Later on Saturday night I watched The Hours. This was a poignant meditation on the nature of art, gender roles, and the challenge of reality. The film ended and begun with Nicole Kidman, almost unrecognisable, as Virginia Woolf walking into the river in which she ended her life. In the film Virginia Woolf is struggling in suburbia with her overbearing husband Leonard as she attempts to write Mrs Dalloway. This links to 1950s America where a suburban housewife is reading the completed novel as she struggles with the conventions and restrictions of her life. She has one small son and another baby on the way. The claustrophobia of her surroundings was perfectly captured in the lighting and layout of the 50s dream home in which she found herself imprisoned. Then in present day New York we are introduced to Meryl Streep as book editor Clarissa Brown. She is busy nursing a male writer friend who is dying of Aids in an crumbling, graffiti strewn apartment block. Isolated, with more than just a touch of madness the figure of the writer is that of the classic tortured artistic outsider. The tenderness of Brown towards this brilliant but difficult man is touching, and the parallels between him and Woolf are made fairly obvious. It later transpires that the boy in the 50s house, has grown into the dying adult writer. I don’t want to ruin the film for you if you intend to watch it so I won’t divulge anymore details. Needless to say it was a really poetic, beautiful and moving film which I keep finding my thoughts returning to.
New Years Eve was spent in with the promised cheapo bottles of Cava, lots of Cds, the new version of The Producers on DVD and Jools Holland. We both really enjoyed The Producers. I’d seen the original any number of times and I was a bit dubious about a need for a remake but in the end I was pleasantly surprised.
Last night I sat down and enjoyed the BBC’s new dramatisation of The Wind In The Willows. That was a book that really got me into reading in a big way and I still re-read it quite often. I’ve always been totally enchanted by the story and the characters. I’ve always had an element of Mole about me, and our house bears a startling resemblance to his hidey-hole. I thought the casting was excellent, Matt Lucas was born to be Mr Toad, and Lee Ingleby as the hesitant, innocent and decent Mole was particularly good. I got goosebumps at times whilst watching it. It took me back to my childhood and those long lazy days of summer freedom. The night boating scene was particularly special, as the river becomes a dream land. Mole and Rat spy dancing orbs of light and in the branches of a tree a Pan figure plays a haunting melody. This is the magic at the heart of things, the precious moments when you forget yourself and everything makes sense for just a split second. I think you have lots of those seconds when you’re a child, but it can be harder to spot them as an adult. My hope for 2007 is for plenty of those magical moments and for the simplicity of spirit to recognise them.

News From The Region : Movies of the year

2006-12-30T15:50:00.000-08:00

Grubby pants, unturning stones and duvet days

2006-12-30T15:43:00.000-08:00

The forecast for tommorow night looks like a load of grubby pants so we may well be forced to sit in and drink cheap cava whilst watching Jools Holland. I always used to like those traditional Scottish programmes you got on with country dancing, bagpipes and the like. We always had to watch them when we were growing up. It gave my mum chance to tell us about her tenuous Caledonianism and talk in an awful put-on Scottish accent. Even at 7 I knew it was a bit rubbish.
I'm neither a New Years Eve lover or hater. I'm kind of in the middle. Bi-bothered if you will. I can quite happily swing either way. You can find me at midnight on New Year's Eve with a party-popper in hand off my head on Babycham, kissing the nearest sentient being amongst the throng, or alternatively quietly tapping a slippered foot to Mantovani on the light-programme whilst knocking back a cocoa. It can go either way, and I'm never fussed which one of those outcomes prevails. Let them fight amongst themselves for my fickle attentions I say. In fact it's forecast to be dull all day tommorow so Rach and I intend on having a duvet day. No alarm, drinking loads of tea, reading the papers and eating toast.
The last few days I've been getting my head down with the book. This is getting boring now I know. I did hit a bit of a plateau round about mid-week but then pulled it round again in the last couple of days. It's been fair flying along today. 2700 words this morning no-less. I might see if I can get that over the 3000 mark. We're nearing the magical 30,000 word point which somehow feels significant, even if it isn't.
I did mention the other day that I'd lost weight over Christmas. I'm really pleased on that score as this time last year I was 13 and a half stone. I was a bit podgy it's fair to say. I've lost a couple of stone this year and feel loads better for it. Much more positive and happier in myself. I'm quite a vain person, I enjoy looking nice which is probably a bit crap and shallow but there you go. I've tried not being bothered but I just get down, the trick is finding a happy medium between complete crankiness and complete indifference. It's odd getting on into your thirties. I feel loads happier about myself these days than I did when I was in my twenties. I also have a much greater urge to try and sort myself out in areas where I know I've let myself down in the past. I'm now aware of the passage of time in a way I wasn't in my live forever years of my early twenties. This is a good thing, but it's uncomfortable at times. You start uncovering stones that have been left unturned for years and what you find is not always what you expected. Change is there to be embraced, experienced and enjoyed, not just tolerated so that's the spirit I'm trying to go forward in.
Have yourself a very happy Hogmanay and here's to new beginnings in 2007.

After all that Christmas over-indulgence...

2006-12-29T11:58:00.000-08:00

...it must be time to get back to the gym

Lipstick lesbians, Toblerone and decent honest values

2006-12-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

Apparently the Prime Minister is away enjoying his Christmas with one of the Bee Gees. I know this because the Daily Mail has been getting itself into one of its regular lathers about the lavish decadence of the Blairs. The Blairs had the good fortune to be at a party where there were in attendance, not just ordinary common or garden decent, everyday, upstanding, ordinary British, decent lesbians, but "leather-clad lipstick lesbians". Along with glamorous sapphists, there were also drag queens and a druid priestess ! Wow... Now that to me sounds like a fantastic evening, but to the Mail the presence of the PM and his missus at such a fabulous gathering is "mind-boggling." I'm sure I can't be the only dull thirtysomething from the provinces who has in his time been at parties with all the above. Admittedly probably never all that same time, but then I'm not a friend of the Gibb brothers. I do know a bisexual Witch. That's not a value judgement on the woman's character, it's just her religion.
I know as a Guardian reader, (and therefore responsible for the downfall of western civilisation as we know it- ooh it's like Caligula round our way let me tell you) I'm meant to despise the Mail and all its works but I just can't bring myself to. It's just too hilarious to be truly hateful. As the house journal of the Muggles Union it does give me an insight into the psyche of your average cave dwelling little Englander and it's a dark and grim old continent. I pity them more than hate them, they seem to have this deep thread of inner sadness running through their existence, and are overflowing with bitterness about just about everything interesting. That can't be healthy can it? Yorkshire Post and Northern Echo readers in these parts I think must inhabit a similar world. What you can't take away from the Mail is the fact it knows its audience and gives them what they want. It's also very well written. Good luck to them. It gives me a regular chuckle and lets me realise that there are a minority of people in this country with whom I have no more in common with than the fact we appear to have heads. As long as they don't bug me I'm happy for them to lead their lives as they see fit. Anyway, Rach and I made a unilateral declaration of independence earlier in the year so we are in fact a sovereign nation in our own right. It's a right old Shangri-La as well. You're welcome to visit as long as all your papers are in order and have nothing to declare except your fabulousness. All that aside, I hope the Blairs are enjoying their break at their mates house. That's what you do at Christmas isn't it ? Go stay with the friends and family. It's not their fault that their friends are richer and have better parties than those of your average Daily Mail reader. Surely being jealous of that fact smacks of the "politics of envy". This as the Daily Mail and the Tories repeatedly told us throughout the 80s and 90s is a BAD THING. Get over yourself, have a Quality Street. Nip out to the garden centre and get your dinner. There must be an offer on.
Speaking of chocolate I seem to be existing on a diet of Toblerone and coffee at present. What's more I appear to have actually lost weight over Christmas. This I put down to the gastric flu and my insistence on not having a third portion on Christmas day. The energy expended on the swings must have burnt off a couple of calories as well.
There have been some splendid adverts on the TV of late. Rach and I are particularly fond of a low budget number for something called "Mandles Candles ". Just how good is that ? When Mr Mandle was thinking of going into business he must have run through a number of products he could have manufactured.
"How about curtain swags ? Nah, Mandles Swags, just doesn't scan... or we could do occassional tables ? Mandles Occassionals...better but just not right... wait a minute... I've got it !"
And thus, Mandles Candles were born. Not sure how they differ from the all the usual candlles we seem to have filled our glamorous hovel with but they sound fantastic. Rach and I wondered if you could buy handles for your mandles candles or whether or not you should wear sandals whilst lighting your mandles candles (I never take mine off, what with reading the Guardian and everything...mind you they are Birkenstock ;-) )
The other advert we really enjoy is that one for Ernest Jones the jeweller where a glamorous lady is trying on her little black dress whilst her fresh faced open-necked(hey he's smart, but he's not stuffy ) yet suited partner looks at his watch and wonders just how long his lovely lady is going to take. To really increase the pressure the taxi driver has arrived outside their refined town house and is impatient for his fare. The guy say's they'll be five minutes, the woman rushes to the window and shouts down that they'll be ten. Bloody hell, women eh ? Then at just the wrong moment, the fella, being a generous and classy catch, hands his lady a box from Ernest Jones. Woohooo...the lady is shouting internally, yet outside she still looks demure, unflustered and alluring. Cut to the shot where the couple are having a smooch in the window and the guy shouts down they'll be another ten minutes, whilst the honest to goodness, decent, hardworking, British, decent, overweight taxi driver rolls his eyes indulgently. The implication here of course is that the couple are about to have glamourous, decent, British loving whilst the cabbie waits outside. So there you go. Buy your lady something expensive from Ernest Jones you unimaginative fool and you too can have hardworking, decent, British, glamorous open-necked sex with a lady who takes for ever to get ready. Nice one.
In our house it's Rach who ends up waiting in the front room for me whilst I go through several outfit changes. We never have a taxi and I'd do owt for anyone if they bought me a Cornish pasty in a gift box. I'm easily pleased.

New shoes, swinging, erotic striptease and the Scissor Sisters

2006-12-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

So that's your Christmas done then ? Hope your festives went according to plan, there were no big family arguments and you didn't seriously overdo it on the sup and snap front. Ours was alright as far as it went in it's abbreviated fashion.
The Christmas Eve showing of "It's A Wonderful Life" was a top bit of seasonal business. The advert had promised "mulled wine & nibbles", so we expected a few canapes and the like. In the end it was a full scale buffet of epic proportions. We'd already eaten so we didn't do it justice and left with that feeling of regret you have when you've not made the most of free food. The film was lovely as ever and it was great to see it on a big screen for once. It was a sell-out and a few late arrivals had trouble getting seats in their family groups. This caused much middle-class awkwardness and as a couple nabbed the seats of a pair who had just nipped off to the bar it could have got quite nasty. The slightly butcher member of gay couple sitting behind us pointed out the error to the lady of the couple who took umbrage and said something nasty in return. Rachel at this point piped up with a very audible "rude bloody cow" and the camper gay part of the couple said "ooh the silly bitch." I sank back in my chair and pretended I'd seen and heard nothing. After the seatless couple had huffed off chuffing something like "well that's not playing ball is it ?!" (no it was a film love, not a ball game of any kind) the camp gay guy leaned across our seats and said ;
"Well so much for the Christmas spirit....I feel quite traumatised"
To be honest, he wasn't the only one. A middle-aged guy who had a much younger oriental looking wife took the spare seat next to me. He slept through three quarters of the film and at a key moment it looked as if his head was about to land lovingly on my shoulder. To be honest, he wasn't really my type and he had terrible dress sense so I coughed heartily which brought him round with a jolt.
Christmas Day was spent with the family. It all went OK, there were no crossed words of any kind, I managed to stay relatively sober despite being over exposed to some evil sweet rhubarb wine which had been made by an enthusiastic uncle. Rach and I cleared off for a walk around the village just as it was getting dark and ended up at the childrens play area. Let me tell you that swings are the absolute business when you're big, I seemed to be able to propel myself much higher than I did as a kid. My stomach felt a bit delicate by the time we'd finished. We took some pictures of our nightime swinging activities (let's just see what that does to the blog traffic ) which I may well post later.
Santa was very kind and remembered my Dunlop Green Flash trainers and the Girls Aloud Greatest Hits album I asked for. I wasn't the only one who received music. My mum (whose 72) got the Scissor Sisters album she'd set her heart on. This was played repeatedly through the course of the day and we all had to dance in the front room to keep her happy. By about the fifth time of hearing "I don't feel like I dancing " I agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment.
After all that excitement it was back to work yesterday. I was genuinely excited about getting to work on my book and I'm feeling really positive about it. Quite unlike me really. Dad bought me a book written by a Polish friend they know from the local Catholic church. It's about his experiences escaping the Communist regime and reaching Britain. It's a POD book and I was really impressed by the quality of the production and the way it looks. Now I'm thinking I might do something like that with the novel I'm currently writing. I'm sure I'd be able to shift a few copies and judging by the costs I wouldn't need to sell that many to recoup my money. We'll see how it goes. Speaking of Mother Church, Rach and I were talking about what our kitchen needs just to finish it off. I reckon it's crying out for a 64 inch statue of Our Lady Of Perpetual Help

(only $13,000 - a snip I'm sure you'll agree) but I think Rach has set her heart on a Slow Cooker from Argos. Never mind, the back bedroom is due for a sort out in 2007.
Last night I watched that Challenge Anneka thing about building a maternity centre in a Sri Lankan village recovering from the effects of the 2004 Tsunami. Anneka didn't seem to do much, but the volunteers who had gone over to get involved were all really impressive. Watching it I began to feel a bit crap and useless. Positive people doing practical stuff, giving up time and comfort to make a real credible difference. Both Rach's brothers have been involved in various projects in Central America over the years and I have nothing but admiration for people who go and get their hands dirty like that. Could I do it ? I'm not sure.
Following that we watched Faking It which was a burlesque special. Burlesque if you don't already know is the high-camp erotic striptease exemplified by the likes of Marilyn Manson's wife, Dita Von Teese. It grew out of the 19th century music hall tradition and became very popular in the 1920s through to the 1940s. It's currently undergoing a bit of a revival which in my book is a GOOD THING (one of many). In the programme a 34 year old cleaner from Wales with a terrible shaggy perm had to be able to convince a panel of judges that she was a real performer. This poor woman was very likeable but had lived such a sheltered life in her rural Welsh vilage and had been cleaning toilets since she left school at 16. She was a bright woman, but had little faith in herself and as a consequence wanted to hide herself away from the world. The highlight of her week was bingo in the village hall. Yes, it really was that desperate.
After a few weeks with the curvaceous and utterly lovely Immodesty Blaize she was a woman transformed. She'd had her hair done, she was much more confident with her body and the whole 1940s burlesque look really suited her. Anyway, she managed to convince the panel that she was the real deal and left Immodesty about three feet taller. It was a lovely, heartwarming thing to see. Not only that, she was so good that she's now intending to become a real burlesque performer in her own right leaving behind the bleach and rubber gloves for feathers and satin gauntlets. Surely another GOOD THING. Rach was quite inspired by this and fancies having a go at the whole burlesque thing herself, I can't say I dissaprove. We thought she should go by the name of Legs L'Amour, and I could be her spivish impressario, Chuck Clemencau III. This fantasy has now superceded our previous one where I was the lead singer of a group called Lipgloss Gigolo. My name was Tristram Lefarge and Rach was my polka-dot wearing muse, Penny Farthing. We cycled around Sussex villages on 1940s Raleigh boneshakers having picnics whilst looking wistful. Both fantasies allow me to wear my trilby. At the very least we're going to take ourselves along to a burlesque night in the New Year.
So that's me done. Back to the novel writing and I'll leave you the video below which if you're still off work I command you to dance to energetically. Otherwise my mum will be round and she can be quite insistent.

It's A Wonderful Life...

2006-12-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

Few photos below of different bits of York street life which were taken this morning, the busiest Saturday of the year by all accounts. We were early enough to miss the craziest part of the day and got home before midday. This afternoon we took the dog on a long walk down by the river. It was deathly quiet and still, we hardly saw a soul. With the low-lying fog that is still cloaking the Vale Of York, it was all quite eerie, but peaceful and refreshing with it. The dog got reassuringly filthy and had to go in the shower when he got home. He's now curled up, whimpering in his sleep as he chases those dream rabbits. His sleep always looks really satisfying.

Tommorow we're going to repeat the walk and then we're off to a special screening of It's A Wonderful Life at the City Screen. There's a bit of a pre-film Christmas reception in the sky lounge . I'm going through my annual agonising about whether or not I'll make it to Mass over Christmas ;-) Christmas Day we shall be at my sister's house for the food onslaught which I'll spend the rest of the week recovering from. My family hold onto the perception that I'm a big eater based on what I was like as a teenager. In reality, I'm not that big an eater at all these days. In fact for a bloke I'm probably quite a small eater. That doesn't stop the usual "it's not like you not to have a massive fourth helping Martyn ? Are you ill ? Check his temperature ? He must be poorly..." You get the picture, I'm sure you've been there.

So I hope you all enjoy your festives, keep believing in happy endings and get plenty of confirmation that despite everything, it's still a wonderful life.

(apologies for the cheese, if you can't get away with it just prior to Christmas then you never can)

2006-12-23T17:36:00.000-08:00

Down in the Eye Of York (that's the bit near the Castle Museum and Clifford's Tower) we've got an outdoor ice-rink in situ for a few weeks. It's always really popular and is great for show-offs who pirouette about, do high-speed stops and generally make the rest of us look a bit silly. That's not difficult in my case.

2006-12-23T17:29:00.000-08:00

These carol singers in Coppergate were one of a few groups out and about giving it a festive go today. I think they just had the edge on the others.

2006-12-23T17:19:00.000-08:00

The guy on the piano at the front of shot had just finished a really haunting rendition of "In The Bleak Mid-Winter". It was quite beautiful. Street musicians make all the difference, particularly ones who are good at providing the appropriate mood music to match the prevailing atmosphere. You can see the West End of the Minster in the fog above the rooftops.

2006-12-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

Check out the cue outside Scott The Pork Butcher. It actually stretched back past several shop fronts. Scott's it's fair to say is the absolute business. People come from far and wide to get their pies and hams. It's a real proper butchers where they care about stuff like provenance. Their pie products will be freely available in heaven.

2006-12-23T17:10:00.000-08:00

What was really noticeable today in town was that away from the shops much of York was really, really quiet. Around by the Minster was a real haven. Constantine was all on his lonesome so I thought I'd go and say hello. I always get a real sense of history when I stand by this statue and remember that it was here that he was first proclaimed Roman Emperor. In little old York. But then I'm a bit weird like that .... ;-) The photo below is of St William's College which was also very quiet. St. William was an Archbishop of York in the 12th century.

2006-12-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

2006-12-23T16:55:00.000-08:00

It was very busy in the market this morning. Greengrocers in particular were doing brisk business. Lots of people walking around with whole sticks of the evil sprout type things. I have to go through the annual torture of holding out against the family onslaught of "just try the one sprout...go on, you'll like it. It is Christmas." I hate sprouts. Get behind me foul baby demon cabbage thing...

2006-12-23T16:48:00.000-08:00

I think the dog's ready for Christmas...

2006-12-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

We didn't buy him any of those canine antlers you can get from Tesco. That would just be silly...

And so the end is near...etc

2006-12-22T13:34:00.000-08:00

I know it's customary to say, "didn't that year fly by" at this time of year, but I don't think this one has. It's gone quite slowly for me. This last week has really dragged. I can't wait to get finished this evening and chill out for the Christmas festivities.
I was pleased to see that the genius that is Bondbloke has returned to the blogging world. Bondbloke is a man of strong opinions and they're always delivered with an admirable upfront honesty. Not only that, he's proven his brilliance by choosing to come and visit York prior to Christmas. Hope your enjoying yourself mate. It's fair to say York is heaving this year. Apparently it's been a bumper build up to Christmas in the city. Lots of effort has been put into promoting the annual festive jamboree here and it appears to have been paying off in "No Vacancies" signs at the bed and breakfasts and kerchinging cash-registers. I'll try and get a few pre-Christmas York piccies over the weekend.
That aside the writing has been going really well this week. The novel is cracking along at a fair old place. I can see much that needs improving within it, but my principal aim is actually manage to complete a first draft. That goal looks likely, possibly by the end of January which would be great. I'd like to have something reasonable to submit with the Masters application which I'm going to make roundabout April I reckon. I've not really got any ambitions for publication of this one to be honest. It's more of a learning exercise. It's about getting the discipline in place, learning to think about what I'm trying to produce and where it's going. Hopefully, I'll then be in a good position to begin the Masters in October. Part of my reason for wanting to get the Masters course under my belt is that I'd like to be able maybe to lead creative writing courses with marginalised groups - the homeless, prisoners, the mentally ill etc. I want to put my meagre talents to more socially useful ends than I do currently. I might not be the next Henry James or Ted Hughes, but I might just be able to help someone gain some insight into their lives or their condition. Masters courses tend to be the gatekeeping qualification to that kind of work for those of us who are not Martin Amis. Aside from the workaday journalism, I've just had another couple of poems accepted for publication. I think I'm getting near the point where I should perhaps start thinking about pulling them together and approaching publishers about a collection. Maybe in the New Year. Submitting poetry is always a real trial. It's the most concentrated and personal of all the writing I do.
We've got the weekend and then Christmas day and then Rach is back at work on Boxing Day. Sadly, the clients she works with don't get a respite from their conditions just because it's Christmas.

A traditional family Christmas

2006-12-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

It's always nice when you get what you asked for...

Getting stuff done, going to the piccies, meeting Len and developing a mystery illness

2006-12-18T14:30:00.000-08:00

After writing my post on Friday about the novel idea I've been working on, I sat down and completed over 5000 words. Five freakin thousand ! I've never ever written that much in a day before. Reading back over them this morning they're not at all bad either. I was working out just how long it would take me complete the thing if I managed that kind of word rate a day. Then last night I felt all peculiar, sicky and heady and altogether a bit odd. I went to bed at 7.30 and slept through till 6.30 this morning. As my mum would say "you must have needed it." Getting up expecting to feel all refreshed and raring to go after my marathon kip I felt just as bad if not worse than the night before :-( I started writing then had to go back to bed where I stayed until midday. So my word rate today is a stunning 57. I'm hoping to pull it round this afternoon but it's probably fair to say 5000 looks unlikely.
I had to go to the doctors this morning about something else altogether and I mentioned to him how I've been feeling and he reckons it could be the beginnings of gastric flu ?? FFS.... Just what you need the week before Christmas.
Had a pretty good weekend. Went to the City Screen in York to see that Cameron Diaz/Jude Law seasonal cheezefest, The Holiday. It was alright actually, if you suspended your cynicism for a while. That's actually not that difficult for me as I'm not real very cynical in the first place, so I really enjoyed it. Hollywood always make England look like a Shangri-La of ivy-covered cottages, snow at just the right time, and not a chav in sight. I think I'd like to move there. The people are all really amusing in an understated witty kind of way.
Being a reader of The Guardian at weekends and therefore reponsible for all the ills of the known universe (sorry guys, I just can't help it. I'm always making excuses for fecklesness whilst knitting my own yoghurt and removing the grit from the grooves in the sole of my sandals) I read something about blogging. Apparently the signature tone for bloggers is a life jaded cynicism. Seeing as the social profile of your average blogger is fairly solidly middle-class this seems a bit self-indulgent to me so I try and avoid it as much as possible. I do find myself having to apologise for being generally cheerful and upbeat about stuff. Is that a bad thing ? I've had periods in my life when bad shit has happened and it just seems a bit pathetic to point out the minor niggles constantly whilst ignoring the generally benevolent nature of most peoples lives most of the time. Grumpy old sad sacks do really get my goat though. Get a life, go for a walk, have a dance, eat a pie, just bloody cheer up ! Or at the very least stay out of my way.
The City Screen in York is a top cinema. It's in an old newspaper building down by the river. It's all very stylish, sleek and groovy. It's won design awards and they've got a really cool bar that overlooks the Ouse. We went for a couple of drinks in the bar prior to the film and I could have quite happily spent my entire evening in there and not bothered with the movie.
Yesterday we made a new friend. He's called Len and he's a mighty behemoth of a Serbian spruce. He stands at a towering 2 feet (that's right 2, just count 'em)in the corner of our front room in his best Christmas finery. He had an adopted brother, the pot-bound Norwegian, Chris. Sadly, after three years of service, Chris passed away earlier this year. It was a very sad moment for us all, but he's currently being broken down into compost at the council recycling centre so in a way he's being reincarnated. Len never met Chris but we've been telling him all about him and I like to think they'd have got along just fine.
Christmas shopping done, prezzies wrapped, Serbian Len looking resplendent now all I've got to do is shift this malady and I can enjoy me festives.

Giving up on my criminal past and finding a new direction

2006-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

For the best part of the last two years I've been attempting to write crime fiction. I always used to read a lot of it and I guess like many other readers of the genre you think "hey, I could do that." The first attempt wasn't bad. I got as far as sixty thousand words but with my usual scatterbrained approach to these things I forget to back up the copy I had stored on my computer. Cue the inevitable big comedy computer crash, Martyn jumping up and down pulling his hair out, followed by a mellow mood of "well, let's put it down to experience", a mince pie from my mum and a lovely cup of tea. That's better...
If I'm being honest it wasn't much cop. No pun intended. So I like to see that lost effort as fateful. A necessary learning moment in the journey towards completed noveldom.
Then followed two more ideas. I couldn't decide which I liked best so I wrote both concurrently. Then I reached around fifteen thousand words with both and they both ran out of steam. Just like that. They now sit, like two incomplete twins on my PC hard drive taunting me with their unfinished nature. They're both an improvement on the first one.
Then followed attempt number three in April/May of this year. I had the characters worked out, the plot threaded to the nth degree, the mood music was set, the literary awards it would win already polished and sitting on my mantelpiece. Then I started writing it. I didn't like it all. It didn't interest me so I stopped and decided I wouldn't bother writing crime fiction after all.
After months of not really doing much creative an idea just popped in my head a few weeks back. Completely out of the blue, completely unrelated to anything I had ever thought of writing before. I didn't plan it, I didn't think about it, I didn't even know where it was going. I just had a couple of central characters and a ruse. I keep writing it. It just keeps pouring out as if I wasn't there and I'm really enjoying it. I've got finish it as I want to know how it ends. I think I'm going to use it in my MA application.
It's not crime. It's in no way related to crime. It's about relationships and stuff. Rachel has read what I've written so far and reckons it reminds her of Marian Keyes, someone I've never read or even been particularly aware of. Where it's coming from I don't know, but I'm sticking with it and we'll see what happens. It's set in York by the way and the central character is a thirtysomething woman called Lauren. That's all I'm willing to divulge at this early stage ;-)
Rach has been encouraging me to clear the decks, sod worrying about a crust for a while and just get the thing written which I think I've now managed to convince myself is what I'm going to do. Some work to tie up before Christmas but come the New Year I'm going to concentrate on getting the novel finished. I'm lucky in that I'm in a position where I can so it seems churlish not to give it a go.
I read an interesting post a while back on John Baker's blog about different writers approaches to writing. I think I've been guilty of attempting to "go by the book" too much and it's stifled my own creativity. I've wanted everything plotted and planned, the characters drawn and the conclusion in my head before I've even begun the first line. It's similar to how I write articles. I'm learning to step out of that straitjacket and just go with it.

Not funny fat men, gorgeous put downs and being oblivious

2006-12-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

Not much TV to report on from last night. I had to crack on with an article I needed to get finished to send off this morning so I had a rummage through my old CDs, stuck on something antiquarian (1993 - practically prehistoric) and got my head down. By the time I'd done Huw Thingy from the Beeb One News was saying "Newsnight is just beginning on BBC 2, but for us at the..." I turned over, and sure enough, he was right. So I watched a bit of that and caught up with what's been happening in the world.
I've been a bit slack with the old current affairs of late. My head has been thinking about fiction, nice clothes and whether or not to have one last stab at growing my hair before the inevitable slide into slappery. This has been no bad thing I've discovered. I've been an awful lot more content in myself, completely oblivious of what's going on. This reminds me of a checkout girl we once had in Sainsburys. About a week after the Tsunami the other year she was scanning our newspaper when she looked at the agonised pictures of victims families on the front and asked us what the problem was. We told her what had happened, even explaining what a Tsunami was in the process. Her verdict ;
"God, all that just like, from a wave ?"
The lightbulb briefly went on, then flashed off again, and you could see she'd gone back to thinking about that nice lad down the road who keeps smiling at her, and whether or not she could afford those new boots from Faith. There is so much suffering in the world I can't say I totally blame people who take no interest in it. I know people who go completely the other way and are so consumed by the endless grief of our existence that they forget to smile occassionally, have a dance and not worry. We're the lucky ones living where we do with the lifestyles we have. Countless millions across the globe would love to be able not to have to fret about their daily bread.
Anyway back to the pointy nosed Paxo and the Newsnight massive. Last night he was joined by the man of letters, Christopher Hitchens. He's the pro Iraq war guy, brother of the preposterous Peter, and the man for whom George Galloway reserved one of his best put downs. Calling Chris Hitchens to his face " a drink soaked, ex-trotyskist popinjay" was a stroke of genius in my book. To then follow it, with "look at you, you're sweating man, your hands are shaking for want of a drink", just confirmed my opinion that maybe attempting to rattle Galloway is never the best policy. Hitchen's meekly responded, "you're not a very nice man are you."
To be fair to Gorgeous, Hitchens had set about attempting to heckle him. If you do that you're clearly going to be in the firing line for a verbal volley. Hitchens is currently contending that women are just not very funny. Female comedians in his book are usually either "fat, dykey or Jewish". They can't make us laugh apparently and it's all because of the penetrative imperative. Men need to make women laugh to assert their sexual dominance. When women laugh apparently they throw their heads back in imitation of the female orgasm, and to quote the guy himself "men just don't orgasm or laugh like that".
Where do you begin with something as choice as that eh ? If you've not seen Hitchens, he's a sweaty little fat man, with huge bags under his eyes. To make matters worse he always comes across as pretty charmless. If you thought life has dealt him a rough hand, think again. Enough people find him erudite and witty to sustain him in the role of international commentator on stuff, even though what he has to say is usually not very original or interesting. I've heard the women can't tell jokes line before from a Mancunian intellectual by the name of Bernard Manning. He also has weight issues.
Let's go back to the "fat, dykey or Jewish" line. It could quite easily be maintained that many male comics are fat, camp or Jewish. Just take a look at the Little Britain guys for example who succesfully manage to combine all three. It's something in the nature of marginality that exercises the comic response from an early age. You learn to be funny to cope with the crap. Sadly for Hitchens, despite being fat, he's not very funny. There is also something about the comic tradition of trangression within that. Unlikely people doing unlikely things is funny as it challenges social norms and expectations in a non-threatening way. So Matt Lucas dressed as a teenage girl is funny to some people, likewise Dawn French as George Michael. It's the reason people go to the panto to see a middle-aged man dressed as an outlandish woman, and an attractive woman pretending to be a male love interest. That less women attempt to make careers from comedy goes without saying, but is that down to being naturally less funny in some kind of biological or social sense, or just down to the fact that the lifestyle of a comic appeals less to them. That many men feel threatened by funny women is fairly certain. Having been at comedy clubs where heckling blokes have thrown all kinds of misogynistic rubbish at the woman on stage only to receive a satisfyingly caustic put-down, I can vouch for having seen that inferiority complex in action. Lots of blokes just do not like the idea of a woman being funnier, therefore smarter than they are. Having also been out with groups of women on a night out, I've usually returned exhausted at the level of verbal sparring that takes place. In fact not really that different to groups of blokes. My mum is naturally the funniest person I know. She always has me in hysterics with the stuff she comes out with. Her funny faces, her mimicry, her ability to point out the absurd in everything she sees. Rach generally keeps me laughing as well.
One of the smartest, most observants bits of comedy I saw this year was the one-off special of The Royle Family. Written by a woman whose neither fat, dykey or Jewish, just brilliant. In thirty years time people will be still be watching re-runs of the Royle Family in their millions. Whereas Christopher Hitchens will be...where exactly ?

Can't move for lingerie, big gay weddings, and trying to remember the GOOD THINGS

2006-12-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

According to yesterday's edition of the York local paper, The Press, we soon won't be able to move in York for shops selling undies. We are in the middle of a "knicker-boom" apparently. This follows on from the coffee shop boom of the late 20th century and sandwich shop boom of the last couple of years. Skimpies are a definite improvement on both of those previous swellings in my book. The hardworking reporters from the local paper (no story too small) took to the streets of York to gauge local opinion. This was universally a GOOD THING the public of York concurred. Apparently, men are no longer as terrified of buying their other half something more comfortable to slip into, than they were a few years back. Surely, another GOOD THING. It is still a bit of a minefield as far as I'm concerned however. On the couple of times I've dared to do this, I've always remembered the undie sellers dictum "red and black always come back". You can't go wrong. Just write down the sizes on a bit of paper, point at what you like and ask the nice shop girl to lend a hand. They're there to help.
Also in yesterday's press was a report from the Gay Wedding Exhibition that was held at the racecourse over the weekend. It was a screaming success apparently. This is surely, another GOOD THING, which makes three already. Only yesterday was I writing about marriage and it surely has to be morally right that whatever your orientation you have the right to dress up fabulous, drink endless champagne, make an arse of yourself to some disco classics and sob uncontrollably at the niceness of it all. Seriously though the right of gay couples to have their relationships legally recognised has to be one of the major achievements of the past few years. England is a better place for it. In other words, it's a GOOD THING.
Doing what I do best last night, watching TV, I chanced upon a programme about a guy in his late thirties who one day completely lost his memory. He's an Englishman in New York (no not Sting, I wouldn't have watched it if he had been) who was riding the underground and suddenly had no idea who he was. I could put something jocular here about how that normally only happens to me after ten pints, but that would be sad and predictable and despite the amount of TV I watch I do have a life. Anyway, this guy had no idea who or where he was. Confused he walked into the local cop shop, who in turn took him to the local hospital. Eventually they managed to trace one of his friends who slowly began reintroducing him to his old life. What was facinating about it was just how much the new Doug, for that was his name, differed from the old Doug. The old version had been a high-rolling in-yer-face yuppie plonker, who hung out with similarly divvy mates. The new Doug, was thoughtful, much more introspective, happiest in female company and softer spoken. He was studying to be a fine art photographer and had no inclination to go back to being the old him. I can understand why, the new version was a massive improvement. He had little in common with his old friends who wondered who this stranger was sitting down for a drink with them. It raised all kinds of interesting questions about the nature of personal identity. Are any of us really the same person who we were 5 or ten years ago? I've changed an awful lot in five years and I wouldn't want the old me back for the world. Life is much better in my current incarnation.
Change for the better is a GOOD THING, which makes five, which in itself is a GOOD THING. Hang on..

Avoiding Victorian values, Quentin Crisp, and pulling faces at your best mate.

2006-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've been amused this week to hear news of the Conservative Party "coming out" in favour of traditional married families as the best way to bring up kids for the good of society. One of their lot, Dominic someone or other even got in a killer line about just how great it was back in the Victorian times. Back then of course, we all knew where we stood. Families stayed together, men were men, women were in corsets, kids were up chimneys and there was no reality TV. It must have been great.
It's complete and utter bunkum of course. Anyone whose studied the 19th century will tell you that it was a time of massive social upheaval and change. Our large towns and cities were no go areas at night. Gangs of feral kids prowled around causing no end of mischief, serial monogamy was the norm for the massed ranks of "underserving poor" from whom the majority of us owe our descent. For the middle-classes, the strict gender polarity encouraged meek, mild and servile women and men who bought books which advised on how best to beat your wife and kids to instill proper family order. Gay men got lengthy prison sentences, lesbians were'nt invented.
It's amazing that anyone who thinks they're even semi-intelligent can cite the period positively with a straight face. The Victorians were great self-publicists. They lived behind thick velvet drapes of self-deceit and hypocrisy, and if you lift the lid on their moth ball stinking world, you discover all kinds of unpleasantness. No, I'll take the chaotic but honest early 21st century over the chaotic but hypocritical 19th thanks very much.
The idea behind the Tory talk is to incentevise marriage through the tax and benefit system, as if all those happy co-habitees will run to the altar upon hearing the news that such a decision will be worth an extra £1 a week to the household budget. I'm sure people will go on as before, marrying if they want to, not bothering if they don't feel like it, trying to do the best by their kids even if their relationships end. In other words doing what people have always done in the tricky area of human relationships - muddling through.
Rach and I have nearly been married ten years. We married dead young, although we didn't really think so at the time. Why did we marry rather than stay cohabiting ? Good question. A few of our friends at the time were doing the same, we went to quite a few weddings and just thought - "wouldn't that day in the sun be nice?"
Probably completely the wrong reason for anyone to get married, but I'm sure if folks are being honest they too will cite similar reasons. In the event,we both felt a bit daft. The day was good from what we can remember, but I think both of us now realise we'd do things very differently today. To a large extent it all got taken out of our hands, we became functionaries in a well rehearsed social script. So I totally understand why people would not want to bother with any of that.
Before we became a couple we were best mates. Proper best mates, we still are. We always struggle to say the words "my wife" and "my husband", likewise the less loaded "partner". It just makes us laugh. We're all of those things, but above all of that we are bezzies.
For a while after we got wed we seemed to slide into this peculiar game of grown-ups. We acted the role of husband and wife. I tried my hand at DIY, Rach did some baking. It didn't last and we soon fell back into our old routine of talking absurd nonsense, making each other laugh continually and chuckling at the muggles. Now if there's baking to be done we usually ask Mr Kipling, and if a shelf needs putting up, well, we do without. We both follow the Quentin Crisp school of domestic maintance - "after four years, the dust just doesn't get any worse." This makes us feel louche and bohemian, rather than just filthy. It also allows more time for watching reality TV, dancing around the kitchen, wandering about and pulling faces at each other.
Male bloggers often make a habit of referring to their spouses as "the good lady", "my better half" or even the splendidly music hall "ball and chain". I can't refer to my best mate as any of them. It would be ridiculous. Likewise with anything vaguely romantic in a hearts and flowers sense. We both find the thought hilarious.
Even more absurd to us is the idea of us having kids. As a happily married couple we should of course be doing the decent thing and be providing shiny Dave mit som jungen for his back to the future project. Rach never wanted kids and I never for a moment presumed she'd change her mind. Only now are people beginning to accept, that yes, we really mean it. We like having nephews and nieces and think it's right that we should support those who do have them through the tax system. It's a mark of civilisation.
What I'm getting at with all this, is that there is a freedom today to make your own relationships exactly how you want that was not there to the same degree for our grandparents. Even less so for our 19th century forebears. I would have loathed to have had to have been the archetypal 1950s husband and father, never mind the even more repressed Victorian version. Friends who are dads are generally much more clued up and involved in the life of their kids than even my own relatively involved dad was 20 or so years ago. Find what works for you and do it. If it's consensual and does you good then why not ? The problem I have is when politicians of any stripe start trying to tell me how I should conduct my personal relationships. Let a thousand flowers bloom, love who you like how you like and don't give a drunken bishop what anyone else thinks, least of all a lousy politico.

An ice sculpture is unwrapped

2006-12-09T16:10:00.001-08:00

Here's a crappy clip of an ice sculpture being unwrapped at the Festival Of Angels in Little Stonegate earlier today. Feel free to waste a minute or so of your life watching it.

The Festival Of Angels @ The Quarter, York

2006-12-09T15:06:00.000-08:00

Every year the businesses of The Quarter in the centre of York put on the annual Festival Of Angels The streets in that part of York are filled with ice sculptures, snow falls miraculously from top floor windows, festive tunes fill the air and lots of tasty snap and sup is on sale. If it doesn't get you in a Chrimbo mood then I hereby award you with the Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma annual bah-humbug award for misery guts. If you can be cool in the crowds then York is lovely place to be in the run-up to Christmas. But then I think it's a lovely place to be all year round. Faults it has many, but it's home and I'm more than just a bit happy about that :-)

It always snows at The Festival Of Angels.

Spicy fare for a cold day in The Quarter

2006-12-09T14:52:00.000-08:00

The Quarter is home to lots of nice restaurants, cafes and bars. There's always a very relaxed vibe around there and the businesses have worked hard at creating a good feeling amongst themselves. It feels like a little community of like minds. Loads of the foodie places had setup little stalls on the pavement offering tasty fare. Best of all was the superb spicy banana curry wrap cooked up by El Piano. The top photo shows it being prepared. Just what you need on a cold day and it only cost a solitary British pound. Can't be bad.

Christmas shopping on Stonegate

2006-12-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

I've nothing but admiration for this guy who stands in the middle of Stonegate, painted blue for hours on end. He's an open invitation to gobby kids to have a go, as was the case here. Completely unflustered.

Worried about imaginary people who live in my computer, hungry ghosts and looking forward to the weekend

2006-12-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

Any language learning programme you could care to wish for always introduces you to a range of native speakers of the language. They generally hang around chatting about really inane stuff so you can pick up how to ask for a coffee and ask directions to the Gare Du Nord without being laughed at by foreign types. As you're probably aware I'm trying to pick up a bit of Welsh at the minute. Don't ask me why, I don't really know other than that it's probably got something to do with my summer-long infatuation with Imogen Thomas. (Not seen her in Heat Magazine for ages. Where is she now I wonder ?). Anyway, in my Welsh learning programme there are a number of different people who met at a Welsh learners week held in Lampeter. There's Matthew, who sounds like a Welsh Brian Blessed. I imagine him having a beard and twinkly, occassionally slightly odd eyes, he's quite intense. Then there's Tom, who sounds younger than Matthew and is slightly camp. Now and again he comes across as a Welsh Graham Norton. Tom works as a solicitor in Cardiff and despite his voice, is actually a happily married man with grown up children. Matthew on the other hand is something of an enigma.

He lives alone, in London where he's been for over five years. He's in his late 20s (although sounds fiftysomething at least to me), and is currently unemployed. This situation arose because he's desperate to get back to Aberystwyth where he originally hails from. Tom and Matthew recently went to play squash together and Matthew couldn't believe that Tom was old enough to have grown up kids. To be honest, neither could I.

There is something of the night about Matthew. I can't quite put my finger on what it is. You just get a feeling about people at times don't you ?

I'm not even sure now if Tom and Matthew are speaking any longer. Last night Tom was telling his course mates how excited he was about the addittion of a new model boat to his model boat collection. That guy has sooo many interests, I don't know how he finds the time. I can imagine him at weekends driving around little villages in South Wales, visiting collectors fairs held in elegant old hotels, chatting about sails, and miniature ropes with like minded people from Monmouth and Chepstow. He then asked everyone else if they collected anything.

One woman collected miniature Welsh dragons which I thought was quite nice in a twee kind of way. Then Matthew spoke. From the pit of his stomach rose his rich baritone voice. No, he didn't collect anything. He thought it would be "silly" to fill his small flat with model boats or dragons ! He almost spat out the line and you could sense the growing tension.

So now I imagine Matthew sitting alone in his tiny, cold, bare of collectibles London flat, unemployed and dreaming of the Mid-Wales coast. His dark grudges against his course mates and their trivial concerns eating away at him. I'm worried that in Unit 14 we're going to learn the Welsh words for "psychopath" , "serial killer" and "helping police with their enquiries."

If my growing concern for Matthew's mental health and the wellbeing of his coursemates and tutor was not enough, last night I was visited by the ghost of Christmases yet to come. I had a lovely,long soaky bath. I ate a couple of oranges. The bath is the only place I can eat oranges. You can just get messy and let it drip all over the place and it doesn't really matter. Anyway, fruit aside, I stuck my head under the water before getting out. Then standing in front of the mirror fashioning the barnet into something resembling reasonable, I was struck by a truly horrifying sight. The hair at the back of my head is thinning in a monkish tonsure kind of way. It only becomes visible when wet, but I know what this means. My grandpa was all but Errol Brown by the age of 40, my dad has done a brave modest combover since his late forties, which is now beginning to enter the realms of ridiculousness. My brother and I are trying to persuade him to go to the barbers for a number 2, but he's quite happy with my sister trimming his increasingly futile resistance. My brother himself has followed that route, it's quite severe and his features are quite gaunt which makes him look hard, even though he's a big softie really.
I gazed transfixed at the mirror. My vision became blurred in the steam of the bathroom, then something strange happened. The face stareing back at me from behind the trapped glass was no longer my own, but the haunted features of the ginger forward combover man from Llandudno. It took all of my self-control and struggling rationality not to run screaming from the bathroom. Last night my sleep was fitful, visited as I was by giant syrup of figs, dancing pensioners with a Brylcreem habit and the vision of my long luxurious late teen locks. Time is cruel, but I'm still here this morning. So too is my hair you'll be relieved to hear.
I'm looking forward to the weekend. This week has been a mare I can tell you. Nothing major, I've just struggled to stay concentrated on my work and have instead been gazing out of the window, arsing around on Myspace, re-arranging ornaments, and considering cleaning the kitchen floor. Only considering mind. This weekend sees the quite lovely Festival Of Angels in York. I can't really explain what it is, so I'll take some photos and stick them on here. Few last minute festive bits and seasonal bobs to purchase, wrapping to be done then we can relax on that score. Husah !
Have a good one whatever you're doing.

Watching the waters rise in York

2006-12-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

As you probably know York is famously prone to floods. The water that falls in the Dales and the Moors finds it way down into the Ouse and the river here also meets the wee River Foss. For a few days every year we get a bit of a flood. It always gets a mention on the regional news and very occassionally in a bad year on the national news. The year 2000 saw the biggest floods in York for nearly 400 years. Our street stayed resolutely dry. We're far enough away from the river for it to be a bit of an interesting novelty, we don't have to contend with a flooded basement every year as those who live on its banks regularly do. The attention that gets focused on the floods here in York is a bit misleading however. York has a massive flood protection system with millions more to be spent on upgrading it over the next few years. The historic city centre is regarded as being of international importance and in need of protection. So as the waters rise, it's not really York that suffers. Considering the amount of population that lives nearby, very few homes are ever effected. Even in 2000 most of York was relatively unscathed. It could of been worse had the defences been breached, but the point is they weren't. They did what they were built to do. With the improvements that are taking place , despite global warming, York looks fairly secure. We're lucky we live somewhere that is known about nationally and as a result gets a larger slice of the funding pie.
It's the rest of North Yorkshire which really suffers. All our great rivers have little, largely forgotten about towns lying on them. As a result it's currently Middleham and Leyburn for instance which are having the most to contend with. Ripon, Malton, Pickering and Selby downriver on the Ouse are also always at serious risk. So I can take my photos of the river thankful I don't live somewhere which just doesn't figure in the roster of places worth protecting. The people who live in those towns I'm sure feel very different. These photos were taken this morning.

Keeping up the Joneses

2006-12-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

We had a fantastic few days in north Wales. We wandered around taking photographs, eating loads of rich food, drinking the first festive Baileys of the year and generally chilling out. I can reccomend holidays in the first week of December. One thing that peturbed me all weekend was the sight of an elderly man with auburn hair who took the comb-over hairdo to new heights. Rather than just a plain old Bobby Charlton sweep across the pate he had grown his hair down the back of his head and was combing it up and over, across his baldy patch. This was quite something I'm sure you'll agree. It struck me that prior to the morning comb forward and application of Brylcream his hair would hang right down his neck whilst the top remained naked. I was haunted by this vision of a hair crime all week. I'm not sure if I should alert the authorities.
Reading the guest book in holiday cottages is always entertaining. You always get a few classic entries. Lots of people complain about the tiniest of things, one woman wrote it all in green marker, some people go back again and again. In our cottage in Cornwall, that's us saddoes. The one entry really caught my eye was from four lads who next to their names had written in brackets (not gay)just in case you had any doubts. The fellas had gone off to North Wales for a bit of largeing it in the sticks. They had a great time, although their holiday was marred by the fact that the bar staff in the village local spoke Welsh. So they've gone to a Welsh speaking village in Wales and discovered that locals speak Welsh. Whatever next, Germans speaking German in Germany or even (heaven forbid) Spanish speaking Spaniards in Spain ? The lads gave their address as Reading, Berks. The emphasis clearly on the berks then ;-)
Got the chance to watch quite a bit of S4C. It's quality viewing and my Welsh learning was enhanced no end by the wind and rain which meant that the reception on the Teletext service was naff. This meant no English subtitles but we watched anyway and I managed to pick up enough of what was being said to be able to explain to Rach. The gathering of Joneses in Cardiff was featured as one of the programmes. It was a bit of a variety type event with lots of Welsh language speakers performing safe middle-of-the-road family stuff for a largely elderly audience. Then at the end of it all a mad Grace Jones appeared to cap the night off. It was horrendous. She did her two crappy hits, minced around in ridiculous outfits and tried hard to look sexy. Frankly she looked more than a bit overweight and to say it jarred with the previous acts on the roster would be like saying that perhaps Cradle Of Filth might not be the best support act for Daniel O'Donnel. There were some terrified looking septugenarian Joneses in the audience I can tell you.
Other than that we had a rare old time of it. Go have a look at Northern Sky for a bit of snapshot of what we did. We've got to wait until February now until the next hols. I'm sure I'll be winter stir crazy by then.

Guess where I've been...

2006-12-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

...and it was brill. More to follow shortly, just as soon as I've done me washing.

Celestial beds, masters of the universe and urban myths

2006-11-29T04:01:00.001-08:00

I've been reading an excellent debut collection of poetry over the last few days by Yorkshire poet, Gaia Holmes. It's superbly titled, Dr James Graham's celestial bed and it's a collection which finds magic in the mundane and the everday. It touches on subjects such as burger bars, catholic folk magic and the inerring intelligence of our canine friends. The language is rich and accesible and I really can't reccomend it enough. Go buy it, it's great and so is Gaia. She's one of my Myspace friends and she left me a poem on my page that she wrote about her old dog Wolfie for my own elderly dog Barney. For a flavour of what she's about I'll repost it on the end of this waffle.
According to today's Daily Express apparently political correctness has gone so stark raving bonkers that even the annual fumble at the Christmas office party is now under threat ! No more photocopying of bottoms, no more drunken stumbles to the birdie song with the keraazzzy guys from accounts, no more telling that obnoxious middle-manager exactly what you think of him after four bottles of Babycham and a large Baileys. I'm not sure what all the details of the story are but it has something to do with fear of litigation in case your employees don't get home safely at the end of the festivities. We live in a litigious society don't we ? Well actually, no we don't. The number of compensation claims both brought to court and found in favour of the person making the claim have stayed pretty consistent since the early 1960s in the UK. It's one of those "we're all going to the dogs" urban myths put about by people who like to think that everything has been rubbish since the nasty "liberal establishment" (who they ?) got put in charge of running things. Most of it is unsubstantiated bitterness from people who long ago lost the argument. Don't believe half of it, and take the other half with a large pinch of salt (low sodium of course). One of the funniest of these kind of stories I heard recently was that poppy sellers were not allowed to attach the poppy to the lapel of the person buying it for fear of pricking them. This story has all the hallmarks of the nutty fringe. Nice old veterans who just want to be polite cowed by political correctness and fear of litigation. What's wrong with the world (Foam, gnash, froth at the mouth, bring back Enoch etc) !?? So I thought I'd check this out for myself. I went straight to the British Legion and asked them what the policy was. It turned out there was no such policy. Sellers were entirely free to attach poppies to buyers, in fact they were positively encouraged to do so. With this joyous news I wandered down to Acomb shops and asked the nice old man in his beret and medals to put the poppy on my jacket lapel which he duly did after I'd dropped a few pound coins in his collecting box. We exchanged a few words had a chuckle about the urban myth, I thanked him for his efforts and we left each other smiling. What's more I got a couple of stories out of it as well. The fear of litigation and imaginary demons on every street corner makes us put self-imposed limitations on our lives and expectations. Always try and find out the facts and don't take tabloid screaming headlines at face value. They usually have an agenda to advance which frequently gets in the way of the truth. As for office parties, I fully intend to enjoy mine. I will be putting a party hat on the dog, whilst playing a self-compiled party mix CD and dancing around the back bedroom office on my own. I think I'll cook sausage rolls as well. If it all gets messy I will be suing myself for wilful neglect before lying down in a dark room to dream of the good old days of rickets, shared outside privvies and tuberculosis.
Continuing my weird period of actually getting on with stuff I've been talking about for years, I'm just about to start applying for a place on a MA course in Creative Writing to begin next October. I've been making excuses for not doing it for about three years now - lack of cash, lack of time etc, but they've all been dissolved. After a bit of nagging from relations over the weekend I've decided that there really are no excuses anymore and I've got to go for it. Stepping out of my comfort zone is never something I find particularly easy, but there are times when you just have to go for it. So that's what I'm doing. Wish me luck ;-)
Here's that poem I was telling you about :

LIVING WITH A GENIUS. (by Gaia Holmes)

My dog doesn't take drugs.
He can get high on the scent
of march tulips,
levitate above the park
pissing from the heavens
and trailing his toes
over the heads
of Greek gods.

He can read messages
in the wet maps
that stain the pavements,
check the weather on a lamp post,
scan the news on the leg of a bench.

My dog knows
how to chase a ball,
skin a rabbit,
catch a stick,
grout the tiles,
remove butter stains
from delicate fabrics,
spell his name backwards,
say 'thank you'
in 36 different languages
and change engine oil
without spilling a drop.

My dog reads Heidegger
and Wittgenstein
when I go to work,
studies cryogenics and metaphysics,
corrects my poems with red biro,
underlines punctuation errors,
suggests better line breaks.

My dog can catch ghosts,
snap the spines of evil spirits
and scare away burglars
with his intellectual wit.

Weekend in Suffolk

2006-11-27T05:28:00.001-08:00

We spent the weekend down in Suffolk where Rach's folks live. We were there for our twice yearly get together of her side of the family. I know you're meant to roll your eyes and mutter darkly about your in-laws but I really like mine so I'm afraid I can't oblige. I feel quite lucky on that score having heard horror stories from friends. We all get along pretty well these days which makes life a lot easier and generally pleasant when you get together. In fact it was a splendid weekend of eating, drinking, catching up, playing with little ones and having a laugh. They're well sorted for top quality foodie pubs in that part of the world and we visited a couple, all on my cool dad-in-law who not only is very generous, but who is also a quality classical guitarist par excellence.
We're in the middle of a few busy weeks at the minute which makes a pleasant change. We're off on our travels again this week, more of which will be revealed later (don't get too excited, it's not that interesting) and following that it's my sister and brother-in-laws 25th wedding anniversary do, which for more reasons than just the obvious is something to celebrate this year.
I've had a lot of those sublime moments of insight of late into just how lucky I am really with the hand that fate has dealt me. I'm quite happy being me with the people I've got around me, living where I do and leading the life I do. I know it's not very cool to say so but I'm more than content with my lot. Which probably makes this blog not particularly interesting as I don't have much gossip to dish or cock-eyed rants to have, but I reckon I can live with that ;-)
We missed this years St.Nicholas Fayre here in York. We usually look forward to it, buy loads of rich food, prezzies and then decamp to the pub for the rest of the weekend to begin stoking up the festive spirit. I reckon the Suffolk weekend however more than made up for missing it this year. I've heard good reports and I wait to hear which minor celebs were spotted perusing the pork pies. You normally get one or two.
It's head down this week as I've got to try and get a weeks worth of work done in three days, so I probably shouldn't be wasting time writing this uninteresting nonsense on here. I'm still watching I'm a sleb, I'm still dancing round the kitchen to CSS and The Rapture. Have a dance today, it's good for the soul and burns off a few calories. As a former DJ I still like to see people having a groove.
In the post this morning was a flyer from Yorkshire County Cricket Club offering tickets for next May's test against the West Indies at Headingley. The leaflet was all sunny with stylised carnival scenes all over it. It's the weekend of Rach's birthday and my mind started wandering to sunny days sitting in the West Stand as the shadows lengthen across the ground, and the people around us start finding their voice. Two tickets have been duly ordered and I'm half way through winter already.

3 Xs and Rach's love interest

2006-11-24T09:42:00.001-08:00

Apparently Lovefoxxx has 3 xs not 2. It make sense. Rach spotted that I'd been sighing over said lady yesterday and demanded I redress the balance by sticking a pic on here of her own celeb fella of choice...

So ladies, I give you....

Mr Noel Fielding, aka Vince Noir of The Mighty Boosh.

Every woman under 40 I come across on Myspace appears to have a thing for him. Damn him and his swinish good looks. Why I can't I look that good in cowboy boots and ridiculous hats ??

Have a good weekend whatever you're up to...

This is the aforementioned Mr Fielding in the video for the groovetastic Mint Royale's "Blue Song". I had a good boogie to this myself the other week...

Parents growing older, Brazilians 2 cool 4 school and Bergerac music

2006-11-23T08:12:00.001-08:00

We had some sad news last night. A close friends dad passed away earlier in the week from cancer. He's been poorly for a while but went down hill quite suddenly over the last few weeks. Our friend was with him when he died at home, which is perhaps a very small mercy. We also had news that another friends dad is also not so good at the minute. It has brought it home to us that the time you have with your parents is limited and that we should perhaps make more of an effort. I'm guilty at times of getting too wrapped up in my own concerns and not being as attentive to them as I should be. None of us are getting any younger.
On a lighter and more trivial note I picked up a copy of the NME today. I don't buy it very often these days and whenever I do it reminds me why I don't. I used to get it every week when I was kid along with Melody Maker and Sounds (remember that one kids ? You used to get a badly printed free poster in the centre pages every week). The Maker was always the one which took itself more seriously, Sounds was just rubbish, and the NME was the one which poncey Sixth-Formers who listened to Pink Floyd would roll their eyes at. This weeks edition features the annual NME cool list of luminaries who they reckon have been the epitome of all things now this year. It's mostly Greek to me I'll be honest, but I did notice my current crush is featured. She's a Brazilian woman who goes by the name of Lovefoxx (not sure if that's what she was christened), who sings in a band called Cansei de ser sexy. That's Portugese for "I'm Tired Of Being Sexy". I wish I could say I knew the feeling. She is quite perfect as far as I'm concerned. She's stroppy, pretty in an interesting way and sings suggestive songs. The band are seriously cool and play a kind of guitar-disco-funk-noise thing. The name gets abbreviated to CSS. They're very good and this is her in action...

Stroppy indie girls are and always have been my thing *sigh*. Lovefoxx is the the polar opposite of those bland air-brushed MOR songstresses you get today like Norah Jones, Katie Melua and Nerina Pallot. Highly talented of course but so over produced and packaged as to become completely bland and lifeless. They have all perfected exactly the same look for their promo photos, and you can just see the hand of some bean counting record company exec behind everything they do. Pallot in particular is exceptionally bland. It's quite fitting that she comes from Jersey as what she's turning out is Bergerac music for the unimaginative. It's musical shorthand for dull people trying to affect sophistication. Resist, resist. Get into something daft and joyous instead, whatever the genre, rather than that kind of musical middle-of-the-road mogadon. It's processed cheese slice music in a world of exciting dairy products.
So three cheers for Lovefoxx and her like and three cheers for ageing parents everywhere. They made us what we are.

Sleeping on the sofa, Sheriff Hutton luminaries, Tories eating their words ,golf bores and modern day Robin Hood's

2006-11-22T15:15:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past couple of nights camped out on the sofa in the front room. I've not been a bad boy, it's just my late night coughing habits are a bit of a nuisance for Rach so I thought it would be best to ensure that one of us at least got a decent nights sleep. The cough is still hanging around and it's getting to the point where I'm considering a trip to see the Doc. I try and avoid GP surgeries as much as possible, they're full of ill people, but this cough is dead annoying. So my continued quiet life continues quietly only punctuated by a rattle and the occassional sandwich.
I've learnt this morning that current participant in "I'm A Celebrity", the catty designer, Scott Henshall is a local boy. He spent his formative years in Sheriff Hutton, a fact which has not been missed by the local paper who sent reporters out onto the streets of old York to gauge the opinions of the populace about his performance. Opinions were mixed, but one woman concluded that despite the fact she's never watched the programme she was sure that Scott was "doing fine". With such a strong local vote of confidence he can only go from strength to C-list strength. Village historians in Sheriff Hutton though are nonplussed. They maintain that the most famous son of the village is in fact Sgt Major William Sharrow who died at the Battle Of Little Big Horn. That may be the case but I doubt he's going to be appearing in Heat Magazine anytime in the near future ;-)
Another thing I have learnt is that donations to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance following the Hammond guy's big crash at Elvington have enabled it to purchase another ambulance and have secured the service for years. I'm no fan of Top Gear. The thought of a group of menopausal middle-aged men in bad demin frothing at the mouth over silly cars has never been a very attractive proposition for an evening's entertainment. I always have an image in my head of the kind of people who watch it sitting in some golf club bar in the midlands, saying things like ;

"That Clarkson, he talks a lot of sense..."
"You're not wrong my friend, you're not wrong"
"How's your Pauline ?
"Very well, how's your Pauline ?"

In co-ordinating club polo shirts and slacks. But I can't say anything , I watch "I'm a sleb." Nice one Hammond bloke and his generous fans.

Still it's not a good day for the gobby middle-aged bores of the right-wing blogosphere. Today we learn that their nemesis, Polly Toynbee is being suggested as the woman who should be providing the Tories with inspiration for their social justice policies. Anyone who has had the misfortune to read some of the hackneyed arcanites of the blogging world will know that they like to reserve a special place in leftie-hell for Polly and her opinions, now she's going to be advising their party. Laugh, I nearly fell off my platforms. You always get the impression with their attitudes to Polly that their ire is provoked in no small part because a) she's slightly left of centre b) she's smarter and better paid than them, but most of all c) she's female...

Now she's the person the Tory party are listening to and the marginalisation of the golf bore fraternity continues apace. Never mind, there's always Clarkson.
The Tories new spirit of taking from the rich to give to the poor could probably take the Modern Day Robin Hood's for their inspiration. This group from Yorkshire walked around New York on Saturday handing out free cash to the passerbys causing mayhem and much jollity. That's modern art for you folks. It leaves you better off and with a smile on your face...

Watch the vid :

Coughing for Europe, not sleeping, buying coats and Sunday in Leeds.

2006-11-20T05:55:00.001-08:00

The infuriating cough is still hanging around. It waxes and wanes throughout the day, reaching a peak of annoyingness around about 11pm right through until about 3.30am. As a consequence I've not really slept much for about four days. Last night I decided I'd try a double measure of whisky, hot water, some honey and ginger in the hope it would just knock me out. It did the trick, but every hour until 5ish, I woke up to have a good old rattling rasp, then I'd fall back into fitful sleep again. Not good. That aside, I've had an enjoyable last few days pottering about. On Saturday I had a shopping mission to complete. I've been eyeing up a new coat for a few weeks attempting to try and justify laying out the cash for it. On Saturday I finally convinced myself that the time to purchase the thing had arrived. I'm very pleased with it I have to say and can been seen modelling the item on my Myspace Page . Aah vanity is a terrible thing ;-) . BTW if you're not already on Myspace I can certainly reccomend it. I've met some great people through it and you do get quite attached to your virtual friends on there. It's not just for the kids, I've got buddies on there ranging from their early 20s to their 60s. Sign up and send me a friend request and I'll be pleased to approve you.
Yesterday we headed off into Leeds. Thursday saw the start of the annual Christkindelmarkt in the city and we thought we'd pop along. Then we went and spent a large part of the afternoon in The Faversham, which is a Leeds indie institution up by the University. They do excellent sunday lunches and with it being a student haunt they're not that pricey. I noticed that fellow resident of this part of York, Rick Witter, former lead singer of Shed Seven is on there on the 16th December with his new band, The Dukes.
The Fav is co-managed by Ash Kollakowski who also runs Leeds indie label Bad Sneakers, and it's been instrumental in assisting the development of the current crop of exciting Leeds bands. With Sheffield down the road being as alive with music as it is at present there is a real positive cultural feeling abroad in these parts at present. It's all good.
Leeds is a great place these days. It always used to feel like a bit of a tired old provincial city living on former glories, with some great architecture but an overall feeling of greyness. That's really changed over the past decade and increasingly it feels like a coherent European city at the centre of a coherent region. There's less reference to London and the south, more to the continent. City centre living is now really popular with countless swish apartment blocks rising up around the old canals and wharfs. The financial sector is booming and it's having an effect on everything round about. Here in York we live in the so-called "Golden Triangle" which exists between Harrogate, York and Central/North East Leeds, in which house prices have spiralled and so too have expectations of what we can be about. It's good news of course if you own a house, damned frustrating if you're trying to get a toehold on the ladder. I did notice that in central Leeds lots of the developers are now offering so-called "crash pads", one bedroom studios in very neat blocks that come in at less than £100,000 to help young professionals get going. The hard task though is translating that success into parts of the region that have remained relatively untouched by over the past decade, something which in my opinion will require a greater local control over issues of economic development and planning. How that comes about though is anyones guess ? Anyone for city-regions.
After dinner we wandered down to the Corn Exchange for a bit more shopping before catching the train home. Speaking of the Corn Exchange, there are plans afoot to turn the empty Bonding Warehouse on the banks of the Ouse in York into something similar. It makes perfect sense to me. Small scale, alternative and bohemian-ish businesses operating out of a lovely, but currently deteriorating old building is just what York needs. It's slightly off the beaten track, but not really so and is well placed for the Scarcroft Road area, Bishophill and Fishergate, where exactly the kind of people who would shop there tend to live. With the University set to grow by 20% over the next few years as well the timing couldn't be better. Seem's like a no-brainer to me, but all is not as it seems. A rival developer is proposing an upmarket hotel, gym and fitness club for the site and is clearly rattled by the alternative plans. He's resorted to throwing accusations about the Corn Exchage style idea being "hippy nonsense" and "airy fairy", which are as splendidly archaic as they are laughable. It's shaping up into a classic battle of good versus evil and who can tell which side will win out eventually ? It's impossibe to predict with our dotty council who I hope retain enough of their quirky Liberal instincts to back the right horse.
This morning we went and had a furtive wander around the old Terry's factory site which is now part of the proposed Chocolate Works development. They're converting it into offices, apartments, an art gallery, shops and a hotel. We're keeping an eye out for news of the apartments as we both quite fancy the idea of living in a sweetie factory.

Martyn's videos of songs he's not heard for a while, and had almost forgotten about, but is quite pleased to rediscover, principally by Northern bands

2006-11-16T08:02:00.001-08:00

Number 1# The Milltown Brothers - Here I Stand. I think they came from Oldham ? Which takes me back to the days when I used to skulk around in voluminous trousers, a long sleeve joe bloggs t-shirt and a beanie hat pretending to be on drugs, whilst saying things like "mad fer'it" . Happy days :-)

Trying not to have the man-flu

2006-11-16T07:37:00.001-08:00

I've been off-colour since Sunday, hence the lack of any posts on here. Bit of a head cold with, stiff limbs, coughs, sneezes, headaches and a throat that feels like I've been gargling with razorblades. After several days of intraveneous Lemsip, compulsory "character-building" brisk walks, more oranges than a smallholding in Andalucia and plenty of bed rest I'm now feeling much brighter. I know it's almost compulsory for blokes to describe a bit of a cold as "the flu" but I have been resisting all week. Having had a couple of incidents of proper full-blown, "ohmigod there's dancing elephants in tutus in my bedroom" hallucination inspiring flu I know the difference. This cold, whilst not being the 7 stone weakling of the cold/flu world, wouldn't last 5 minutes in the ring with a proper pumped influenza with a grudge. Speaking of which, has anyone heard anything of the bird flu lately ?? I got quite paranoid for a few weeks last winter when every news report had us on the verge of social meltdown brought on the wing from Siberia.
So the cold has gone and I've just been left with one of those irritating coughs that hang around for a week or so after the main business is over. So I've not really been doing much other than partaking of some splendidly trashy TV. The return of the misnamed "I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here", has been an unadulterated treat. Lauren Booth has just confirmed all my feelings about the Booth family. They really are quite mad aren't they ? Myleene is just beyond loveliness, everything about her is so close to perfect as to be slightly unreal *sigh*. Jason Donovan seems like quite a nice bloke really, and now I feel guilty for hating him as a teenager.
Other than that, did anyone see that "Dating The Enemy" thing that has been on after I'm A Sleb ? The idea behind it is they make a not easily pleased young woman go on a date with the kind of bloke she can't stand. Tuesday night a posh trainee barrister woman went for a weekend with a nice lad from Essex for a weekend of fish & chips, largeing it with the Basildon massive and being surprised. That went quite well, but the bloke to his credit tired of her constant snobbish references to his friends and family and told her to sling her hook. Then last night I was spitting at the TV as a sadly archetypal Essex girl spent a weekend in Leeds with a nightclub DJ. This woman didn't like northern accents at all, and was full of tons of old prejudices that you thought only really existed in crap old stand up routines. The lad was a good looking, friendly fella and they had quite a groovy weekend. Leeds these days is quite a happening place if you've not been for a while. I can recommend it, and without being mean probably has a bit more going for it than where she's from. Whilst he went out of his way to be nice to her, his mates, the girls in particular took right against her. They let her know in no uncertain terms that she hadn't made a good impression. The most noticeable thing about the whole exercise was that whilst the DJ and his mates didn't really fit any cliches about Yorkshire, she absolutely screamed "Essex" in flashing neon. Her frocks, her make-up, her attitudes. It was as if she'd been made in a factory to order. One of the funniest scenes was when she was insisting that "Pub" was pronounced "paab" and found it ridiculous that people in the north pronounced it "Pub". Nothing wrong with differences in pronunciation, in fact it's quite a good thing but don't go telling people that your way is the only way. I was shouting at the guy not to give a toss about the silly woman and tell her where to go but he was just too nice to do it.
After all that I felt quite exhausted, made myself another Lemsip and went to bed. It's all been happening.

The View from here

2006-11-11T03:18:00.001-08:00

Just how good were The View on Jools Holland last night ? They're one of my favourite current bands at the minute. Still teenagers writing noisy three minute guitar pop songs about growing up in provincial towns with no mess or pretension. Perfect, joyous and a bit daft, just like all good pop music should be.

Amnesty : protecting trafficked women

2006-11-11T03:04:00.001-08:00

John Baker has been blogging about a current Amnesty campaign that is helping to raise awareness of the growing illegal traffic in women from poor countries to the developed world. Most are essentially kept as slaves in the euphemistically titled 'sex industry', i.e brothels, and are encouraged to come here with offers of non-existent jobs.

It is a modern day slave trade that is terrifying in it's scale and the misery is causes.

Childhood depression, grasping the nettle and sex on the brain.

2006-11-11T02:44:00.001-08:00

I read with interest this week all the stuff in the papers about the four year old girl from Sunderland who has been diagnosed as suffering from depression. Having spoken to different people about it some seem to have difficulty in accepting that it could be a real condition. Is it not just mood swings or a young child acting up ? I was surprised that it even reached the national news to be honest. Five years ago I wrote a series of articles about the subject of childhood depression for a number of different publications. In some cases I even encountered families who had 2 and 3 year olds who were exhibiting all the classical signs of depression. Speaking to specialists in the field I soon learnt that it wasn't that unusual a diagnosis. Not everyday by any means, but certainly not unheard of. There's nothing particularly remarkable about the Sunderland girl and I'm presuming the fact her condition developed partly in reaction to not getting into the school of her choice has made it more newsworthy.
Mental health issues do appear to be gaining more coverage of late which has to be healthy, although in attitudinal terms we still have a long way to go. In terms of public funding it remains something of a cinderella issue. Economically mental health problems cost us millions every year through lost days at work, social security benefits and more intangibly the underuse of talent. Considering that so large a percentage of the population will suffer at some time from a mental health problem the very ordinariness of mental health conditions can sometimes be lost. The chances are that on your street there may be a couple of people who have or who are struggling, perhaps quite secretly and anonymously to cope with a debilitating problem. Too often lack of therapeutic and counselling services have left GPs with little option but to prescribe drugs when perhaps they would like to be able to offer something a bit more holistic. In many cases drugs are vital and necessary, but with people suffering from milder, yet still limiting depression they can be something of a sticking plaster.
I've written quite a bit over the years about mental health issues and have in a bit of a scatter gun fashion got to learn about what's going on in the heads of people suffering from different conditions. The brain is just such an amazing and mysterious piece of kit. I find how it works absolutely fascinating and I've long harboured ideas about doing some more systematic study into its workings. I'm currently going through a period when I seem to be finally grasping the nettle with lots of different ideas that I've long had partially formed somewhere at the back of my head. So I've enrolled on a psychology course with the Open University which begins in February. It'll be good to stretch myself in an area that is outside of my comfort zone and will I'm sure equip me better in various aspects of my writing.
The web is full of personality type tests, some frivolous and a bit daft, others more detailed and based on proper psychological theory. One that you might find interesting is the BBC's Brain Sex test, it takes a while to complete but it's results can be quite enlightening (and surprising). The science that lies behind it essentially says that there are two types of brain. One largely possessed by women that is better at empathy and complex emotions, the other largely possessed by men which is better at systemizing , spatial awareness and planning. This is of course a vast simplification of a very complex area. There are countless shades of grey, subtleties and provisos, but for the sake of brevity I'm sure you get my general drift. Your brain sex does not necessarily match your biological sex but in the majority of cases it will. They also run in a spectrum with the pronounced male brain being one of the likely causes of autism, or that should be the complex of behaviours exhibited by someone with an extreme male brain get classified as a condition called autism. The extreme female brain would produce someone highly sensitive perhaps to the point of being unable to function in the world.
Have a go at the tests and see where you fit in, then I might tell you where I came on the spectrum ;-)

Fire in the disco

2006-11-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

Not much chance to blog today. Rach is off so that means I am as well. We're going to try and get most of our Christmas shopping done this afternoon. Rach's family now have a no present rule and my side have instituted a cash limit for the first time so it shouldn't be too painful ;-) We normally leave it until the last minute and try and ignore the whole thing for as long as possible. This time round we figure the sooner we get it done, the sooner we can forget about it.
Then to reward ourselves we're going to have a cheesy night of sipping sickly overpriced alcohol from designer bottles whilst throwing some shapes in one of York's less than salubrious 'nitespots' . Every now and again it just has to be done...
(The photo by the way is of me the last time I ventured into a nightclub. I think you can tell everyone was quite impressed. )

I walk therefore I is

2006-11-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

I've been watching "Too Big To Walk" over the last couple of nights on Channel 4. It follows 8 seriously obese people as they attempt to walk from the south coast of England all the way up to Edinburgh. In doing so they want to challenge themselves, begin to lose weight and hopefully kickstart a healthier life. It's been compelling viewing and I find myself willing all of them. As people have fallen by the wayside I've felt real disappointment for them that they've been unable to keep going. They're a nice bunch of people, all fairly thoughtful and articulate about the state they've got themselves in. We're hardwired to desire food, we're programmed for scarcity at a time when food is cheap and plentiful. Food becomes an addiction and a comfort and before you know it your weight is creeping up. The final stretch of their journey up through Yorkshire and the Lake District, then through the Borders and onto Edinburgh will be shown tonight at 9pm.
Walking is a great way to lose weight. Throughout my 20s I used to be quite a serious runner. I ran countless half-marathons and a good few marathons. I would dash off on a Sunday morning for a twelve mile plod down the cycle track and think nothing of it. This came to an end when I started developing really painful knee problems, at times it became really difficult to even bend my legs never mind run. My dad who has long suffered from knee-problems, due in no small part to the impact on his legs from jumping in and out of the cab of a lorry has had one knee replaced. It won't be too long before he's having the other one done as well. I've seen the scars, they're not pretty and the pain he was in is not something I'm in any particular hurry to experience myself. The other knee will be replaced as well as soon as my dad gives the signal. He's reluctant to go for it due to the fact that despite being in his 70s he still runs a gardening business and two false knees would restrict his ability to do his job. Time will eventually leave him with little choice. As an aside, what has been a positive experience for him is the fact that he's not been put on a waiting list to get either knee done as would have happened in the old days, instead his consultant has left the timing of the operation entirely in his own hands. As soon as he's ready he'll be given a date within three weeks when the operation will take place. When he was recuperating he had the benefit of a brand new state of the art physiotherapy suite which aided his recovery no end. As a result he's been a lot more empowered throughout. There is much that needs improving in the NHS but praise where it's due.
Not wanting to go down the same line as my dad some thirty years earlier than he did I took my doctors advice and put the running on hold. Anyone who has run a marathon will tell you, that one of the best aspects of the training is that you can pretty much eat what you want. My appetite was huge when I was running and I still managed to stay slim. Then when I stopped training I kept eating. It was a hard habit to shake. I was the pasta king, tons of the stuff I shovelled away as if I was still aiming to beat my marathon personal best. As a result my weight crept up and up until my I hit 13stones 7lbs as 2005 gave way to 2006. Not only was I now looking a bit chubby (I've always had chubby cheeks whatever my weight) , I was looking fat. I had to buy new clothes and I was in danger of accepting that this was the new thirty-something me so just get on with it.
New Year is always a great time for new starts so I resolved to do something about it. Rach and I started to have a regular evening walk. Starting out at 30mins a day, it increased week on week until we hit March and the return of the light nights and we were doing nearly 2 hours an evening. It was great. We saw the Spring slowly returning and the weight falling off. We modified our eating slightly, but not drastically. There was no talk of a diet, just cutting out the sugar in the coffee and tea and the snacks between meals. By the end of March I was under 11 and a half stone, roundabout where I should be for a bloke of 5' 9". That's pretty much where I've stayed, when a few pounds have crept back on a bit more walking and a bit less food has got me back where I should be.
I'v always enjoyed walking and I frequently document different country walks we've enjoyed on my blogs. North Yorkshire is walkers terrain so we've a lot on our doorstep to explore. Walking around the city streets of York though offers just as much interest and variety as well we've found, particularly if you're consistent. You notice subtle shifts and minor changes, places have moods and atmospheres that differ throughout the year. The light picks out some small detail that you've never noticed previously despite having passed it countless times. Walking roots you in your environment in a way that driving, and even cycling can never really do. It beats gym membership and requires only a decent pair of walking trainers and a determination to keep at it.
Today Natural England is launching a campaign to encourage people to walk in green spaces for the sake of their health. It's clearly not a panacea but it does contribute to your general sense of well-being. Another related website is the excellent York Stories which charts in photos and words one woman's journeys on foot around the City of York.
I'll sign off here as the dog is looking expectantly at me. We've got an appointment with the park to keep.

Early morning vegetables and catching up with the Wasses.

2006-11-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

Tuesday morning is fruit and veg box delivery day at our house. Before about 7 every Tuesday a nice lady called Maddie leaves a big brown sack of locally grown organic seasonal produce on our doorstep. It's always exciting because you're never entirely sure what you're going to get. As well as the usual carrots and spuds, you always get one or two more unusual items like Jerusalem artichokes or bags of Swiss Chard. So you're not scratching your head wondering what to do with the less familiar things you also get a little sheet with a couple of recipes on them and a bit of information about where the produce was sourced. This week for instance some of our bag comes from Newfield Organics on the edge of the North York Moors at Fadmoor. The farm is run by Howard and Rosemary Wass who were green pioneers in the UK back in the early 1970s. Howard's belief that human activity and hyper-consumption is exacerbating global warming is now the scientific and political consensus. When even the leader of the Conservative Party agrees with the likes of Howard Wass you can be certain that something significant is going on. This year the Wasses developed a belated passion for folk music. Howard purchased 6 CDs by the Derbyshire acapella group Coope, Boyes & Simpson . They listen to them incessantly - in the bath, before going to sleep, whilst doing the chores. They've now learnt all the words off by heart and they provide a backdrop to their constant questioning about how we conduct ourselves and the purpose of our life on the planet. I'm grateful for people like Howard & Rosemary Wass who dare to think and challenge cosy assumptions. It's taken the rest of us 30 years to catch up with the Wasses.
We get our fruit and veg from Farmaround North which was founded by Isobel Davies when she relocated back to her North Yorkshire roots in 2003. Prior to that she was the founder of Farmaround London in 1994 which is a flourishing veg box service in the capital. The original remit of the Farmaround North was North Yorkshire and the North East, but I know for a fact that they now deliver as far afield as Carlisle, Leeds and Sheffield. There is also another local farm which has recently started offering a similar service - Paradise Farm at Howsham.
I wanted to finish this post with a Coope, Boyes & Simpson clip on YouTube but I couldn't find one. So bearing in mind their fascination with industrial songs and mining heritage, I thought Kate Rusby singing 'My Young Man' accompanied by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band would make a worthy substitute.

Reconstructing Peter Snow

2006-11-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

The man pictured left is Peter Snow. No, not the one with the swingometer, but Fr Peter Snow a Catholic priest from the late sixteenth century. Originally from Ripon, Peter Snow was captured and tried for the crime of being a Roman Catholic. He was hung drawn and quartered on York knavesmire and his head was placed on a stake above Micklegate Bar as a warning to others. York was a city that always had a significant underground Catholic community, underground being the operative word with a number of secret passageways and tunnels often being used to hide priests and members of religious communities from the prying eyes of the Protestant authorities.
He was executed on the same day as another local Catholic called Ralph Grimston. Snow was in his early thirties, Grimston about 50. The heads were spirited away from the stakes by local Catholics who took them to Hazelwood Castle near Tadcaster for safe keeping. They were finally unearthed during renovations in the 19th century
Now they are about to be interred at Leeds RC Cathedral finally putting them to rest after over four centuries. Prior to their interment forensic experts from Dundee University have used computer software to reconstruct their faces. Using simulation software that utilises precise facial scans accurate pictures of what the men looked like have been created, hence the picture of Fr Snow.
I love these facial reconstruction things, brings you face to face with these characters from the past. What you get from that picture is the youth of the man and just how ordinary he looks. He wouldn't look out of place wandering around town today. BBC Yorkshire & Lincolnshire's Inside Out programme features the story of Snow and Grimston at 7.30pm tonight.

Foods of Britain

2006-11-06T01:34:00.000-08:00

There's new book out which I've just asked Santa to arrange for me. It's called "The Taste Of Britain" and it co-authored by York food writer, Laura Mason.

It basically documents local and regional foods from across Britain, some well known , others less so. So you've got Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, Yorkshire Parkin and Newcastle Brown Ale alongside dock pudding, wilfra tart and elder (cooked cow's udder).

It began as a project for the European Union to document our regionally specific dishes to see if they could be awarded protected status. This means that for it to qualify as the genuine article it has to be made in the place from which it derives, with local ingredients. A Yorkshire cheese maker who was selling Yorkshire Feta fell foul of this earlier in the year but as Laura Mason rightly points out how would we feel about Greek Wensleydale ?

The foreword is by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who gives the example of proper farmhouse made Yorkshire curd tart he tasted;

"It was wonderful...and a world away from any regular custard tart I'd tried before. What I learned from this experience is that regionality does matter. If that tart had been made in Dorset or the Highlands it wouldn't have tasted the same. And if it had not been made at all, the world - on that drizzly autumn day - and me would have been poorer for it."

I feel the same about some truly heavenly Welsh cakes I had whilst on my hols. We always like to seek out local stuff when we go away. It's something I picked up from my dad who has always gone out of his way to sample local fare when he's out on his travels. It was always an exciting part of childhood holidays for me.

Whilst I'm on a foodie theme I'll leave you with my very own York Rarebit which is like Welsh Rarebit but made by me in my kitchen in York, hence the name ;-)

I don't really do quantities so you'll have to feel your way.

You'll need :

*Mature Cheddar

*English Mustard

*Worcestershire Sauce

*Fromage Frais

* Black Pepper

* Baby leeks or an onion will do.

* Few slices of bread toasted, I use a few slices of my own farmhouse loaf.

Grate your cheese into a bowl, spoon in some fromage frais and mix together. Add a couple of teaspoons of English mustard, splash in a healthy amount of Worcestershire Sauce and the black pepper. Lightly fry your baby leeks in some olive oil and chuck them and the oil in your mixture. Lightly toast your bread and then spread the mixture on it. Stick it back under the grill until it's all bubbling and hot.

Posh cheese on toast if you like, but a great winter snack.

Surveying the damage

2006-11-05T17:31:00.000-08:00

The extent of the Mischief Night damage down our street appeared to be an egg thrown at the neighbours window and every car on the street getting a wing mirror folded in towards the car. Seeing as all the cars they did it to have moveable wing mirrors in the first place this was hardly vandalism of the first order. It took a second and a knowing rolling of the eyes accompanied by "kids eh" with some of the neighbours to right the world again.
Mischief Night by the way is a great film. Quite edgy and intense in places but the grimness is always lightened by loads of sharp humour. I've got a foodie blog mulling in my head for tommorow but time doesn't allow me to write much today. Hope you're having a good weekend.

Jim Stringer - Railway Detective

2006-11-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

My near neighbour Alex has been blogging today about The Lost Luggage Porter by Andrew Martin, the third book in his Edwardian railway detective series. His detective, Jim Stringer is a native of Robin Hood's Bay on the north Yorkshire coast, but now finds himself as part of the railway police in York after brief stays in London and Halifax in the previous two books.

Miggying, premature bonfires and a belated rapprochement

2006-11-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

We're off to a bonfire tonight for a premature Guy Fawkes celebration. I'm a bit uneasy about going to a bonfire on anything other than the actual day. I don't like this holiday creep that seems to occur around dates in our traditional calendar. November 4th was always Mischief Night for me, an evening of licensed mayhem when as kids we could go out and wreak moderate havoc on the neighbours without fear of getting told off. Despite both my parents being quite strict in many ways, they had no problem with me going out on the evening of the 4th of November to chuck eggs at windows, lift garden gates off brackets and do a bit of knock door running. For one night only we could be beastly. They never wanted to know what we'd got up to but delighted in telling us about their own pranks as kids which were always much more inventive than anything me and my mates could come up with.
I've been reading Ronald Hutton's The Rise & Fall Of Merry England which explores the pattern of communal rituals in England and Wales in the period of 1400-1700, three centuries which saw dramatic religious and ideological change in the country. Lots of the older customs associated with the Catholic year and popular grassroots Christianity were attacked as irreligious by the coming Puritan establishment and as a consequence many died out. The degree to which that happened however can be overstated, many customs hung on or were transformed and given new meanings. The extent to which they survived was largely dependent on the degree of importance they fulfilled within the community.
Mischief Night or Miggy Night as it get's called in these parts, owes it's historical roots to the night when Guy Fawkes was plotting mischief below Parliament, prior to getting apprehended. But the principal of an evening of licensed community mayhem has much older roots and appears in cultures around the world. The charivaris and Lords Of Misrule of Medieval Europe were much more chaotic, threatening and sinister than any fifteen year old lurking around the streets of Yorkshire in his hoodie is today. But then the rules that governed the lives of our Medieval forebears were much stricter, the threat of communal censure much greater than it is in our more individualistic era. Licensed misbehaviour was a necessary safety valve in helping to prevent much more damaging unrest. So it makes sense that my ma and pa, now both in their 70s were able to push the miggy boat out further than we ever could. The daily strictures placed on their behaviour were greater than on mine.
A new British film opened last night from the makers of East is East and Shameless, called Mischief Night. Set in Leeds, it looks at the life in a run-down racially mixed neighbourhood as Mischief Night approaches. Whilst most people rumble along trying to make a future for themselves and their community, off in the background sits religious radicals on one hand and white extremists on the other who want to tear the whole thing apart. We're hoping to go see it tommorow evening, so we're back to front this year.
I heard an MP on the radio this morning questioning the environmental impact of Bonfire Night and asking if it was still right that we commemorated the "burning of Catholics". If that was what Bonfire Night was really about then he might have a point. In reality, the meaning of the festivities differ from place to place. We were always given quite a sympathetic portrayal of the plotters. They were responding to persecution in a foolhardy and dangerous way. There is something romantic about Fawkes, a York born adventurer and passionate believer in emancipation for his religious community. Speaking of which, the first member of the Royal Family to openly marry a Catholic since the Reformation is taking place today.
Enjoy your festivities whatever you're up to and check out the trailer for Mischief Night below. Like the boy in the trailer, my mum was also a dinner lady ;-)

Coast, the Mabinogion and keeping up with the Joneses.

2006-11-03T20:43:00.000-08:00

We had a bit of a TV quandary in our house last night. There's very little on the box that either of us get that excited about but last night we had one of those nightmarish clashes that wreak havoc with your televisual enjoyment. Our old VCR died a while back and we've never bothered to replace it. We've got a DVD player for films so it didn't really seem that pressing. On evenings like last night however you realise the folly of discarding 80s technology so quickly.
Coast was on BBC 2 and the the new Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall series on Channel 4. Hugh was edging it, until we realised that Coast was going to be exploring the North Wales coast all the way to Liverpool, Rach's alma mater and a place where I spent a year dodging scallies whilst attempting find things to write about. I'm a committed Cambrophile these days and I'm finding anything Welsh really fascinating. I'd not really had much to do with Wales for absolutely ages, other than following the career of the best situationist rock band to come out of Blackwood ever. Then knowing that we were off there on our hols I thought I'd reacquaint myself with a bit of the history of the place. I read quite a few books on the country including the excellent Wales : Epic Views Of A Small Country by Jan Morris, which led me onto the Medieval Welsh canon parts of which I'm now working my way through in translation. This coincided with my annual Big Brother addiction which this year featured two Welsh speakers who frequently chatted with each other in their native tongue. This seemed like quite a cool thing to be able to do and in a sublime moment of unlikely neural fusion, low and high culture came together in giving birth to a new project. "I know" I thought, "I'll learn Welsh and then I'll be able to read the Mabinogion in the original language". Which is a nice idea.
This chimes in with an earlier idea of mine following a series of articles I wrote about the Russian voluntary sector : "Let's learn Russian so I can read Dostoyevsky in the original".
Sadly, I'd still be unable to read Janet & John in Russian, never mind Crime & Punishment. I stuck with Russian for all of three weeks but Welsh has been a bit more of a success. I've managed to force myself to sit down and work at it a few hours a week. Then last night when a couple of Welsh speakers spoke on Coast I knew what they were on about. I literally punched the air as a mark of my achievement.
"What ?" asked Rach.
"She said she works in the office at the nuclear power station !"
Onwards and upwards ;-)
During boring moments on Coast when they were doing unspeakable things to shellfish, we quickly turned over to check out what Hugh was up to. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is something of a spiritual icon in our house and we try to live by his teachings so not watching the start of his new series left us feeling a bit like a devout Catholic who'd missed Sunday Mass. Apparently he was attempting to wean chicken nugget addicts off their habit with some success. What I like about Hugh is that he's not puritanical and censorious where food is concerned. His food is rich in cream, cheese, red meat and alcohol and food for him is a sensual thing. He is the anti-McKeith. What he does argue though is that we have cheapened a lot of our food in the search ever lower prices, pushing family farms out of business in the process and ending up with over-processed crap as a result. To cap it all he's a bit mad, which is no bad thing in itself.
But back to the Welsh. I heard this morning that there is to be a world record attempt at the Millenium centre in Cardiff to try to assemble the largest gathering of people with the same surname. Joneses from across the globe are gathering to watch a variety concert by people with the surname. Grace Jones will be there as will Dame Gwyneth Jones the opera singer.
Earlier in the year I had a look at the 1901 census to try and find out who was living in our house at the time, just three years after it was built. It turned out it was a family and the lady of the house went by the name Mary-Anne. What really got me interested was the fact that she was born in Carmarthen. The town at the time was majority Welsh speaking, so it was likely that she at least had some knowledge of the language. There can't have been many Welsh speakers in Edwardian York and finding out that one once lived here seemed serendipitous.
I then had the idea that I'd trace the Carmarthen family of Mary-Anne for a feature article or two. I thought it might be a nice take on the "Who Do You Think You Are" fascination at present. Turning to the 1881 census I found the newlywed couple who would later find themselves living in our house. From that I was able to locate their wedding date and find Mary-Anne's maiden name. It was Jones.
1881 Census for Carmarthen turned up hundreds and hundreds of Joneses so my search got put on the backburner. I like to think that a Welsh speaking Jones from Carmarthenshire will be showing their passport to prove their surname at the Millenium Centre later today. I'm sure they have no idea that their great-great-great Auntie Mary-Anne once lived in my house and is providing inspiration in my crusade to get my head around those consonant mutations.

Writers Advice 1# - Dealing With Rejection

2006-11-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

I posted this on my Myspace page a few days ago but thought I'd repost it here as I know I always used to be read by people who will surely relate to it's central thrust. It comes from esteemed book shop owner Bernard Black (aka Dylan Moran), who illustrates how the writer should handle the sensitive issue of rejection. I've always quite fancied the idea of having a small bookshop but Rach reckons it would be just like Black Books. In my worst moments I do exhibit Bernard tendencies it has to be said ;-)

Irrepressible Info

2006-11-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

If you look on my sidebar you'll see a little box with the title "Irrepressible Info" which keeps flashing up little snippets of information. Various regimes around the world are going out of their way to attempt to censor the access of their citizens to information on the net. We're not talking crappy cartoons attacking peoples religion here, it's life and death stuff in a lot of cases. The code supplies a fragment of a story in a variety of languages and if you click on it you'll be taken to a place where you can read the story in full. It's a way of trying to circumvent the controls placed on information by repressive governments.

I picked up on this from Yorkshire Soul who is always on the ball where these kind of things are concerned.

Welcome to Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma

2006-11-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma which is my new diary style blog. After a few months of not really having much to talk about due to the fact we've both been absorbed in house type stuff life once again looks more interesting. In the past when I've not had much to talk about I verged into the realms of opinion and have started spouting-off pub bore fashion about things I'm probably not qualified to talk about. Presently I'm busy with loads of different thing so it's probably safe to say this will stay fairly uncontroversial.

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate is the name of the shortest street in York. It used to be the site of the former public pillory and the name consequently evolved from "Whitnourwhatnourgate" to it's present name. All the 'gates' we get in York derive from the Old Norse, 'gata' meaning street. I hope to include loads about this beautiful old city I'm lucky enough to live in and the surrounding area, so naming the blog after a local street seemed fitting.

The photography work has been going better than I could have expected. It's always satisfying to get nice comments from people who have bought my work. I get loads of satisfaction from knowing that my photos are framed and on peoples walls. In fact it gives me loads more pleasure than my writing has done over the past couple of years so increasingly I'm thinking in terms of images rather than words when I try and work out where I'm heading. Writing has been something I've done for as long as I've been able to so I doubt there'll ever be a time when it's not part of my life, but variety is good. Most of the time I just feel pretty privileged to be able to do what I do. It's hardly ever likely to make me my fortune, but it does allow me almost complete self-determination. Reading the blogs of people who seem to really despise their job I'm always reminded that enjoying what you do with your working day is not necessarily par for the course.

Finally got round to updating the photography blog with a few shots from over the past few weeks since we returned from our week in Wales. The weather is lovely and the light is perfect at present so I'm trying to make the most of it. I hope to get a whole load of new York shots tommorow whilst the cold clear weather continues.

This is one of my favourite times of year. Early spring as well is always nice, but late October/early November take some beating in my book. The smell of leaf rot and bonfires, crisp cold weather and thin piercing light. I spend loads of time out of doors at this time of year, before the nights really start drawing in and the Christmas onslaught really gathers pace.

Anyway, thanks for popping by and enjoy the blog.

2000-02-01T04:11:00.000-08:00

1999-02-02T01:27:00.000-08:00