came in through the glycogen window 30 july 2001
Classy weekend. Blair arrived on Saturday, so we spent most of Saturday wandering the streets of Cambridge attempting to obtain food/booze/a rental bicycle. We managed 2/3, which I thought was doing pretty well. This necessitated a certain amount of running around screaming on Sunday morning, trying to borrow Blair a bike. Fortunately, Alex and Martyn came through and turned out to have a mate with a spare Specialized Rockhopper (very nice). Thus kitted out, we spent much of Sunday morning/afternoon biking around various bits of the local landscape.
On the hottest day of the year.
32-odd degrees celsius (90F + for all you archaic types). That's a laugh to bike around in. Especially when we hit the tarmac stretch out towards Barton: the heat coming up off the tarmac, the sun coming down. It was like biking through a sauna. When we arrived at the pub, we were all soaked with sweat - you could see the outline of Blair's backpack in sweat. I was floating around in lycra bike shorts and a coolmax top, and I was sweating like a pig. We hit the bar very hard indeed - a huge amount of diet coke etc later we were starting to feel human again. ;) Damn good fun, though.
And now, unusually for me, a rant. Now I realise that some people's personal sites are just a collection of rants with occasional connecting text, but I don't tend to do rants very much. That said, I saw the following quote today, and it really got my back up:
You really have to dig in this culture to unearth the good stuff. For me, art, music and design all came together in the late '20s. What would you rather have? In 1929 you could go see the latest Picasso exhibition and then go see Jelly Roll Morton play at a nightclub. In 2001, you can go see either 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys. There's no comparison.
::Terry Zwigoff [ interview ]
Crap. Absolute crap. That's the kind of attitude I hate: the past was much better, because there was all this cool stuff there that isn't around anymore. It's technically true - after all, you aren't about to see a new Picasso exhibition anymore, and Jelly Roll Morton is long gone. But it's an absolute cop-out: there's plenty of good stuff out there, if you can be bothered to look. So you can't go and see some artist from the 20s? How about going to see an art show from an up-and-coming young artist? How about going to see some new shows at your local theatre? Or a gig at the pub around the corner?
The truth behind all this golden age arsebiting is that the past is safe. It's safe to say that Picasso was a great artist, because he's safely dead now, and the art establishment has agreed that he was a great, an earthshaking artist. The past is always better than the present because it doesn't change, and there's a received interpretation ready and waiting - none of this embarassment of having to see / listen to something new and different and work out for yourself whether or not it's any bloody good. Instead you can stick to a nice safe body of work which can be carefully pointed out and pigeonholed; all the interpretation you could want is carefully filed on the shelves at the local library. No need to go out and actually experience this stuff yourself. And you can be nicely sure that Jelly Roll Morton isn't about to abandon his carefully loved hellraiser persona and become an evangelical Christian; that would be so embarrassing to all the goatee clad devotees. Dead people, dead movements, dead times are safe: you always know where you are with a Golden Age.
The other advantage of a Golden Age is that you can pick and choose what made it so good. Hey, the '20s had Picasso, man! Wasn't he great? Whereas just look at all the shit around now - people framing a basketball and claiming it's art. Jelly Roll Morton, man, he'd kick N'Sync's lame white asses in a stand-up funk-off. The '20s also had a huge amount of shit, my friends. One thing we can be sure of: bad art will never be in short supply. It's a simple and stupid argument to pick out the best bits of the past and contrast them to the worst bits of the present: crap is crap no matter when it's from. The difference is that we don't bother remembering the crap from ages past - why should we, it's crap - but we're confronted with modern day crap each time we turn on the radio.
N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys are not examples of how modern life and modern music is rubbish; they're just the latest exemplars of the fact that it's relatively straightforward to sell middle-of-the-road pap to the masses and make a lot of money off it. There's always been crap mass entertainment, and there always will be. There's always been great art being created, and there always will be. To think otherwise is not just blinkered, it's fucking stupid.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: get some vitamin C and get some sunshine, idiots!
invisible lead soup 26 july 2001
I just realised that I haven't bought, been given or otherwise acquired any electronic devices for the last year or so that aren't in some way orange. Usually translucent orange. Maybe the iMac influence is becoming a little much. Mind you, I like orange.
Went paintballing last night. Neither of us had done it before, and someone from work organised a trip, so... Thing is, when it comes to paintball you've always got one mate who's really, really into it, and who owns all their own gear and who plays every weekend. And they're always also the guy with three years' worth of "Professional Knife Magazine" and "Guns and Ammo" under the bed. With that in mind, we had a bit of trepidation, but figured that it was a work do and that enough of my coworkers would be there to ensure that the anoraks were kept under control. It was actually a great big barrel of fun: we played about five games in total, and had a good time. There was a definite demarcation between two groups, though: people who ran around going "whee! blam blam blam ha ha ha woo blam blam ouch! bugger", and people who snake-crawled ahead while hissing things like "we'll advance in a tiered pattern of three, up to that tree, and John can take point". Heather and self were quite definitely in the first camp; we may not have been entirely focussed on the mission objectives, but we did have a lot of fun. It's a great laugh. The main problem wasn't so much being shot with the pellets (though it does hurt, and we've both acquired a bumper crop of bruises - Heather has some particularly fine examples), it was having your goggles steam up and leave you unable to see a damn thing. I got shot 90 seconds into one game and then stood on the sidelines for another ten minutes, completely unable to see further than three feet. Ah well. Of course, mad dog Sharron From Work is now trying to organise another session (tip for the masses: single mothers with two young children often have a lot of pent-up aggression simmering away), so we may well do all this again at some point.
And since I know that you're all only reading this to find out about our psychotic neighbours, rather than from any cursory interest in the rest of our existence, a quick up date: it's getting weirder. We had about a week where we were convinced that they were doing a runner, complete with uninhabited house and occasional visits from Cambridge Water (they knocked at our place to check if we knew whether she was still living next door). Just as we were getting our hopes up, we came home on Monday to find her standing outside. As we pulled in she started yelling at me for us to let her use the phone. A fairly unproductive exchange followed, the upshot of which was that she claimed that her children had been taken off her by social services, and that this was basically our fault. Fun fun fun. She's definitely going for that junkie/crackie look - sallow skin, sunken cheeks, extreme thinness, etc. So: no particularly amusing incidents recently, just a fair amount of slow decay.
Still, I managed to sow the lawn the other day, so I'm feelin' good.
like a lizard licking the dew off a delicate flower 22nd july 2001
Nice the house. Went to see two excellent movies last night, as mentioned previously. In order, they were:
- Les Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf). This was described in the Film Festival program as being ' The Matrix meets Dangerous Liasons'. Having seen it, I think it's a fairly apt comparison: however, a better analogy would be 'Storm Riders meets Dangerous Liaisons'. Regardless, a really fun bit of French film. Definite influences from The Matrix, as well as various bits of anime and a truly satisfying combined homage to The Sound of Music and various Hammer horror films in the opening sequence. Based around an actual series of killings by a mysterious wolf-like beast in 18th century France, the movie was an intelligent, well-crafted historical horror/action flick. Definitely worth seeing - got a little cheesy towards the end, but good fun nonetheless. Great costumes, wonderful locations, and some none too shabby martial arts / fight scenes (including a number of very obviously Matrix influenced martial arts scenes involving frequent slides into slow motion). Apparantly the director is still recutting it for the English release, but from the cut we saw I'd recommend it wholeheartedly. My one quibble is that the ending could have been punchier, but that's comparatively minor.
- The Fluffer. I was expecting this to be fairly full-on rough and tumble love story, as I'd heard that one of the writers was responsible for Hustler White (no IMDB link, as you require registration to see the 'inappropriate' movie details). I'd seen Hustler White at the Wellington Film Festival some years ago, when it had been allowed into the country to be shown for two screenings only. Explicit sex and violence, often at the same time. But a damn good film which I enjoyed a lot. In contrast, The Fluffer was quite coy - the writers (who introduced the film) said that they'd wanted to make a movie you could take your mother to. While I'm not sure that I'd take my mum, it was definitely not totally offensive. But a damn good film which I enjoyed a lot. A really nice story about love gone wrong and one-sided relationships, set in the LA gay porn industry. Very nicely done indeed, and has definite potential to move above the 'gay movie' niche market. I'm not sure about the distribution status, but if you get a chance, it's definitely worth a look-see.
So definite kudos to both movies. A good evening well-spent.
My new phone is turning me into a text message junkie. The predictive text feature took me about five minutes to figure out (as in, I tried to figure it out for five minutes and then read the manual), but once you get the hang of it it's amazing. One of those fun features that sounds bloody silly, and works up a storm. So now I'm frantically txting people to have an excuse to use it...
onward to oblivion! 19th july 2001
The Cambridge Film Festival is on this week. Woo hoo! We've picked out a paltry dozen or so movies which we'd like to see (mainly stuff that isn't about to come straight back viz Cats & Dogs, Swordfish, etc.), and we've been working our way through 'em. Heather's getting to see more films than I am, simply because she's able to go to more stuff during the day. Still, we've managed to see a couple of crackers so far, and looking like some good stuff's coming up towards the end. And the Arts Cinema is actually a lot nicer than I recall - despite having allocated seating. Looking forward to seeing the double bill of Les Pacte des Loups and The Fluffer on Saturday. ;)
I'm currently on the most typically British course of antibiotics I've ever seen. Alcohol isn't contraindicated; sunshine is. And iron tablets. I don't take iron tablets, but it is the middle of summer over here, and we're getting some very nice weather - I haven't worn long trousers for the last month. Bugger.
Just got a nice sexy new mobile phone, though. A nice shiny orange Nokia 8210. Whizzy. Got it through Phones4U, who are tangentially connected with my old provider. So far, they're medium incompetant: delivering the new phone to my home address rather than the clearly labelled 'deliver to:' address on the order, the innovative solution to the problem of requiring my signature being to get Heather to sign it 'J Elder', things like that. Still, I have a new toy, and it vibrates when it rings. Big ups the house.
Blurgh. Current fun thing to do is drool over bike catalogues. I had a moment of realisation the other day: as I was biking in to work I saw a bloke wearing about £100's worth of cycling gear (lycra shorts, good helmet, gloves, team jersey) riding along on the crappiest, oldest, most salvaged-from-the-Cam-after-a-long-stay bike I've seen for a while, maximum resale value a pint of strongbow. Wow. While marvelling at this, I realised that usually bike around the place in £50 worth of kit (gloves & helmet), and my bike was a freebie slightly decrepit off a mate (Martyn). Hence: saving up for a new set of wheels. I'm currently undecided as to whether to buy a mountain bike (adv: fairly bombproof, suspension, etc) or a touring bike (adv: bloody fast, easy to mount panniers, etc). The main problem is that I'd like to get a really kickass bit of kit... which is a prime target to get nicked. Thus, cardinal rule of bike budgeting: put aside either £50 or 15% of the bike cost (whichever is greater) for locks. It's a bugger: the better the bike, the more likely it is that some bastard's going to half-inch it. So while I'd quite like a £700 piece of aluminium beauty, I'm more likely to end up with something much cheaper in case it gets nicked. Still, if I buy a decent quality bike and it gets nicked after a year, it's still cheaper than driving. ;)
a viking funeral 5 july 2001
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Specifically, it had to happen at the end of June, when the car's tax disk ran out. At this point, we realised that we didn't actually have the car's old MOT. Whoops! My word the illegality of this situtaion. So Heather takes the car out to a garage to get a new MOT certificate issued. And lo! The Mighty Audi, terror of the roads, fails with flying colours. Terror of the roads in more ways than one, it would appear. The garage we took her into for the MOT is a bit dodgy, so we tried another one. Over the next three days, Heather tirelessly drives the car around Cambridge (tirelessly, not tyrelessly - I'd just paid £50 to have a tyre replaced the month before) to an assortment of garages to see how much it'll cost to get the car fixed up to pass the MOT. Low estimate: £1200. High estimate: £1500-1600. Blimey! Since this is considerably more than we paid for the car in the first place - and since the local Audi garage went on record to tell us that they had absolutely no guarantee that we wouldn't be hit with a similar bill this time next year - we decided to look at the options. On the plus side: it does actually run, and the power sunroof still works a treat. On the negative side: it's fairly illegal to actually drive it anywhere and it'll cost an arm and a leg to get it legal. Not good. At about this point in the conversation we get to such fun thoughts as "precisely how much use do we get out of the car anyway?", "how much is the insurance/garage rental costing each month?", and "how easy is it to remove the CD player?". Respectively, "not all that much", "a shitload", and "how hard can it be?"
So while it's been a laugh having a car, we think the time has come to move back to being a solely bicycle-based family. We're investigating ways to quietly get rid of defunct cars, and are planning on quietly removing as much of the useful bits from the car as we can. Pity, though. It was good fun having the car, despite the fact that it was terribly pricey to run and massively overpowered for what we needed it for. Ah well. Live and learn; we'll use the money we save by not having a car to save for another car that can gleefully suck the cash right out of us.
Jared was in town this week. It's always good seeing your mates from out of town; even better when the reason they are in town is to pass their PhD vivas. Thus, the full title is now Dr Sizer Size, which is just too PE for words.
lewdly sing cuckoo 27 June 2001
Disconcerting experiences of our time: yesterday at work, one of my coworkers received a phone call. With me so far? Good. Now, we don't usually eavesdrop on coworkers, but it's kind of hard not to hear what people are saying - especially when they're talking in a loud and clear voice, as to someone in a noisy room. Anyway, this coworker of mine is clearly and distinctly talking someone through a fairly complex bit of geometry - lots of "You need the derivation of a straight line, which is blah blah blah...." sort of stuff. Fairly technical, chunky mathematics. This lasts for about ten minutes. Then she puts down the phone and announces that she was helping her father with his math homework. Apparently he's doing an OU degree in something technical, hence the math. She then goes on to tell us that he was doing his math homework while simultaneously working on his day job. The job in question? Air traffic control. I kid you not. This guy is sitting there, concentrating on some fairly complex maths, while also talking planes through landing patterns.
So that's a little frightening. But apparently he works for the Navy, so instead of landing commercial airliners full of people, he lands military aircraft full of explosives - so that's alright, then.
Man, it's hot. We had Dad visiting over the weekend (stressful but calm), and he seemed amused that we were finding the balmy English summer particularly hot. Well, I'll happily admit that I find it bloody hot at the moment. Not that I'm complaining, mind: being able to do the shorts & t-shirt thing to work rocks. And it even rained last week, so I've managed to get the final bit of the lawn dug over. A huge and healthy lawn will thus soon sprout. And our sunflowers are going well: from about two dozen seeds, less the depredations of the local thrushes, we've got about eight or nine respectable seedlings. They were probably in the ground a little late, but I think we'll get them to a good size before the end of summer.
A team from work (including Heather, who stepped in to replace a last-minute dropout) participated in the Marie Curie Cancer Cure charity punt race last Friday. Said punt race including a treasure hunt section, and being conducted in fancy dress. Woo hoo! Our team decided to dress up as The Wizard of Oz. Well, I say "our team"; Sharron and Nova decided it one Friday lunchtime (moral: you never know what's happening back in the office when you're down the pub). The assignment of parts was as follows:
- Sharron - the Wicked Witch of the East. It later transpired that this was because a) she already had the costume and b) she'd refused point-blank to dress as a munchkin. At 5'1", she was a natural, but no...
- Nova - the Tin Man. This was kind of by default; all the other juicy roles were taken, and it was this or the Scarecrow.
- Heather - the Scarecrow. Lisa originally volunteered for this, but piked in order to see relatives. Heather just raided my wardrobe for the costume. Hrmph.
- Myself - the Cowardly Lion. Yeah, yeah, cheap shot: with blonde hair and a red beard, it was kind of a natural. I ended up wearing brown clothes, having my hair down, and my face painted as a lion (courtesy of Sharron).
- Chris - Dorothy. The pièce de résistance. Chris is 6'5". The sight of him prancing around in a short blue gingham dress and bright red shoes would, we thought, guarantee us some form of prize. Possibly in the form of sympathy.
The event itself was a laugh. Ten minutes of sitting in a punt while Sharron (the shortest member of the team, but the most competent punter) blatted us down "Cambridge's historic Backs", then a quick stroll through town spotting clues. Of course, we lost: the mere presence of 30-50 other teams ensured that we'd have to be seriously pushing it to have got in the top 5. Still, a nice bit of a stroll, some interesting scenery, and a free half-pint of Heineken - 2/3 ain't bad.
We can see that 'genetically based' does not mean "inevitable" or "unalterable" if we consider short-sightedness, which sometimes has a genetic basis but which often can be corrected by wearing eyeglasses.
::Danny Scoccia
will suffer for bandwidth 19 June 2001
An interesting couple of days. Last Wednesday I finally got bored with chugging along via a 33.6 modem connection, and decided to bite the bullet and get a cable modem via NTL. Cool bananas, back to bandwidth heaven, hey nonny. Arrange to get cable installed; lad pops around Friday, installs cable. Cable modem is being sent out separately by an outfit going by the name of "Global Direct" - basically they look to be a mail-order parts mob. NTL ask me for a mobile number so they can arrange delivery of the actual modem. Fair enough.
So on Monday morning, an invoice arrives for the cable modem. I ring the customer service number printed on the invoice and ask when the modem is going to arrive. The answer: "We delivered it on Friday". No you didn't. "Yes we did; it was delivered at 4:30pm and signed for by an M. Anderson." There's no-one of that name here. "I'll ring the depot". On hold ten minutes. "You were out, so they left it with a neighbour - at number 7". And they thought I'd find out about this how, exactly? "They will have left a card telling you what happened." They didn't. "If it's a problem, we can send a driver around to pick up the package and deliver it back to you."
So this pack of fuckwits decide to show up at a random time - despite having my contact details and me being told to wait for a phone call to confirm delivery time - and drop off the package, then decide to just leave the package - containing UKP150 worth of sensitive electronics - with a random neighbour. Fucking brilliant. But it gets better.
So that evening, I drop past number 7 and have a little chat. The lady at home is extremely nice. Apparantly what happened was the geniuses delivering this package decided that, just for a change, they'd deliver a package clearly marked "5" to number 7 for a laugh. She was a bit bemused, but accepted the package anyway. She was pretty mellow about handing it over to me, though.
So I'm really not impressed about the level of service so far. Mind you, I've got the actual connection working (after a few missing bits in the box lead to me spending 45 minutes on hold waiting for some vital registration info), and it is nice having serious pipe into the house again. It'd be nicer if I could figure out exactly how NTL's rather obfuscated install package wants me to configure POP so I can read the mail, but that's an ongoing project.
Every officer in the British Army should be tattooed with his regimental crest. Not only does this encourage esprit de corps but also assists in the identification of casualties.
::Field Marshal Earl Roberts
let's try that one more time 13 June 2001
Whoops, missed out the little fact that Netscape is fussy about stylesheet support when I made a couple of changes. For "fussy", read "doesn't understand quite what the <span> </span> combination means". Hilarity ensued, involving the entire page displaying in light grey (RGB 243,243,243 for those of you who're interested). A few <div> tags later it should be fixed.
And yeah, a few minor look/feel changes to the site (lost the background image, played with the style sheet a bit).
hiatus 12 June 2001
And if the text below is strangely out of date, it's because our modem connection (courtesy of NTL) has been bloody flaky. Ah well. It's enough to make you want to get a cable modem, really.
Still, we've just got back from the first night of a rather good bike maintenance course. Spent a good bit of time greasing bits and bobs on me bike, and got to have merry fun with a track pump. 5 week course run by a bloke from the Cambridge Cycle Campaign; basic cycle maintenance. Looks good so far, anyway.
Other news: sod all. Quiet week, went out to a garden centre at the weekend, was interested to find ponga (NZ tree ferns) on sale as a houseplant (!) at UKP69 (roughly NZ$230-250) - which was basically (!!). They're pretty cool, though. It's kind of a mental readjustment, though. Mind you, you can see the point: they do make excellent specimen plants. And it'll be a while before they're 20ft high in Britain...
time machine go! 8 June 2001
Just wanted to say this: spent last night at the election night party, which mainly meant sitting around at Leckhampton House in front of the widescreen telly with a lot of pissed students and an open bar. When we finally crashed at 1:18am, Labour had won 108 seats. And the Tories had 1.
They've caught up since, of course. If you count 166 seats (compared to over 400) as catching up.
Deep thunder rolling off the shore 7 June 2001
Ow. Having just got my right ear piercing stretched to 12mm to accomodate a very nice Wildcat flesh tunnel (well, it's technically a 'top hat', but you get the idea), it's not in a good mood. Ow. Still, now my ears match again: 12mm each side (go metric!).
Recent events: spent last Friday re-doing the Milton Brewery tour. How many times can you tour a brewery, I hear you ask? As many times as they keep giving you all the beer you can drink (literally: they had in 200pts for a 20-person tour) for 10 squid. I even helped them move a Morris Minor at the end of the evening, though I was rather inebriated at the time. Saturday night was Alex's birthday party. Had several distinct phases: standard drunken party 9pm-1am, small group of people sitting around chatting while v. drunk 1am-3:30am, bugger off home 3:30am. The really disconcerting thing was leaving the house and discovering that it was just before dawn. Walking out of a party and it's light; man, it can throw you if you're not expecting it. An excellent night, though; we ended up walking Alison home, then staggering back ourselves through the frozen dawn. The evening was capped with a 5am fry-up, which we both enjoyed immensely. I'm not of the opinion that sausages, bacon, fried bread, etc are necessarily evil, but they are definitely contextual foods. And 5am when you're freezing cold is definitely the relevant context.
So, this election, eh? I went out and did my democratic duty this morning. This rather irked the couple of English people at work who hadn't been registered to vote for some reason; after all, I am officially Johnny Foreigner, and they seemed slightly nonplussed that I could vote in their election. I reassured them by pointing out that I was voting in King's Hedges, so was effectively throwing away my vote anyway. Still, my cash is on Mad Dog Tony B's posse getting heavily back into power. Off to an election night party tonight to watch the votes roll in.
Damn this warm weather. I keep wanting to garden, but the ground's too bloody hard to dig much stuff over 'cos it hasn't rained for the last month. I keep having visions a pond. However, since once of my main goals for this calender year is to pay off my credit cards, I can't really justify spending about UKP1000 or so on a rather large expanse of water. And given the East Anglia's so bloody dry (let's just say that the Cambridge Water Authority sends out occasional threatening letters about water consumption), the water cost alone could quite well be astonomical. At the moment, we're on unmetred water - which proved pretty useful the time our pipes burst halfway through a month's holiday in NZ, and we had large amounts or water gushing down the side of the house for three weeks. However, if we want to use a hose (and I'm not filling a 5,000 gallon pond with a bucket), we have to go on metred water... pay-through-the-nose time. Ah well. Guess I'm not going to have koi for a few years yet, then.
Planted out me sunflower seedlings, anyway. And got a few new carnivores (couple of Pinguicula and a young Heliamphora) at Strawberry Fair over the weekend, so I'm pretty well chuffed on that front.
My life in other people's links: [ Orbital concert via Pocketpig ] [ Micky/Eva's stag night via Lisa ]
Let 'em have it! 29 May 2001
It's been a good couple of days. Lovely weather, a great long weekend, I'm over my cold, and it's basically been pretty hard chilling. Of course, there's a certain amount of hideous trauma doing the rounds at the moment: but more on that later.
So we went down to London on Friday (25th) for the last day of the Chelsea Flower Show. I wsa helping out at the Carnivorous Plant Society stall, so I got a free pass. Since it was the last day of the show, we kind of felt obligated to get there early - like, 9am early. This meant being up at 6 to catch the 7:15 to London. Blugh. Worth it, though; I had a reasonable look through the show when we got there (not too crowded yet, hence doable), and it was excellent. I've been to Chelsea before (did the same thing in '99), and it's always a great time. OK, so it gets pretty crowded, and anything really popular is always a bugger to see (or: try getting a close look at the orchids/bonsai/roses), but the sheer variety of plant material - and quality of specimens - sets it apart. Saw some absolutely lovely sample gardens, too: the main gardens were a little showy, but some of the smaller courtyard efforts were spot on. I actually really liked the garden designed by Prince Charles, which surprised me. I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with the Best In Show garden, the Daily Telegraph's Japanese effort.
The day at the show table was good fun, though. I basically stood in front of the exhibit, smiled at people, and answered questions. My personality being what it is, this meant that I was talking more or less non-stop for three hours before I took a break. It's great fun being enthusiastic about stuff that you really like. Plant evangelism, ho.
And then 4:30pm rolled around. And all hell broke loose.
The thing about the Chelsea Flower Show is this: deep down, it's still pretty damn posh. Veuve Clicquot had a drinks concession, for god's sake: you could see the Sloanes buying half-bottles of bubbly at 10am. Posh posh posh posh. And part of this poshness is a disinclination to admit that, fundamentally, most of the exhbitors aren't exhbiting purely from a love of gardening and gardening products. Most of them are commercial nurseries, and they usually want to sell something. However, the rules of Chelsea expressly prohibit the exhibitors to sell off bits of the stand. You can see the point: otherwise, by the last day, the most popular stands would be picked bare. However, you are allowed to pay to 'reserve' plants. That is, at 4:30pm on the last day of the show, the stalls can sell their stock. And a shitload of people come on the last day of the show with the express purpose of buying some very large plants indeed. And then - because you can't get a car into the Chelsea grounds - carrying them home.
Ever seen the end of a Cup Final football match? Or the All Blacks vs Australia? How the crowd invades the pitch at the end, and it's just mayhem? Like that, but with everyone in Laura Ashley floral-print frocks, and all carrying 8ft high plants. No, I'm not kidding. It was insane.
So we lasted about 45 minutes, helping the CP kids pack up the stall, and then ran for it. Well, walked along the bank of the Thames to Westminster, then through to Piccadilly Circus, where we met up with Blair, Katherine and David, who all happen to be in London at the moment. A convivial meal in our favourite noodle bar ensued, follwed by a fortunate discovery of the Cheapest Pub in England. I'm astounded to find somewhere where I can get a good pint for UKP1.60; I'm gobsmacked that it's in central London, where I'd expect to pay UKP2.50 or so. Well, we're remembering that one for next time.
The rest of the long weekend was pretty mellow. Much sitting around in the sun, much compost heap maintenance, and the like. Some nice curry with some of our best mates, a few good days of lying around in the sun, etc. Good stuff. Went for a great bike ride on Monday (public holiday in the UK) - got about 6 miles along the Cam before we hit a foot & mouth warning and had to turn back.
Saw a couple of excellent movies on video over the weekend, too. Ghost Dog turned out to be made by Jim Jarmusch, which surprised me. Anyone who can make a hybrid between genre flicks about Samurai, mafia, and hip-hop - and then make it a classic art-house flick - deserves a round of applause. Memento was noticably different - a wonderful mindfuck. Excellent combination of unreliable narration and a twitchy narrative structure. Definitely a movie that I'd like to see again, if only to finally work out what actually happened.
I think our psychotic neighbours are actually on crack. The mother's lost a lot of weight really fast and is definitely looking as if she's read that crackwhore chic is in this year. It's pretty worrying, actually.
Ah, illness 21 May 2001
Blurgh. A rather nasty cold has got me the day off work. I hate taking time off work. I always suspect that my coworkers are conspiring behind my back. One day off ill, and the next time I go in to work they'll have replaced my chair with a meringue or something. Also, being at home sick is as boring as hell. It's OK during winter: you can just lie in bed all day, it's probably raining anyway, and sleeping 14 hours out of 24 is pretty much de rigeur. However, today's one of the nicest days we've had for, well OK, for a week. But apart from last Saturday this is the nicest day for a number of months, OK? So staying in bed and drinking lots of fluids is a pain in the neck. Hence, bed rest in morning, light pottering (including this update) for a bit of the afternoon. Would be a mellow day if a) I could leave the house and b) I didn't feel crap. Ah well.
It's been a damn good week, actually. Last Thursday was the Orbital concert at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Fun. We'd seen Orbital before - about two years ago, when they were promoting 'The Middle of Nowhere'. This was about three months after I arrived in the UK, and damn it was good. And so, with the release of 'The Altogether', another tour.
The gig was excellent. We arrived at about 8:30, and immediately noticed Chris from Work standing in the corner with some of his mates. He was a bit despairing - a couple of the more speccy-git elements of his mates had enthusiastically arranged for their group to meet at 7pm in a pub, with the intention of being at the gig when the doors opened at 7:30. Woop! Standing around at the start of a gig before even the support band has gone on: fun for the whole family! Anyway, we dumped our gear in the coat check and chilled for a bit. About 9pm, one of Chris' more irritating mates came over and started chatting, so we decided to go in and dance to the support act (the Plump DJ, whom I've never heard of). As we walked into the main hall, Orbital came on. Hefty. The slow influx of people into the room became a bit of a torrent, and it took us about five minutes to struggle to a spot about a third of the way into the room.
It's always weird at gigs like this. The vast majority of the crowd is bouncing up and down, grinning like loons and occasionally - during the slow bits - outstretching their hands in the air and going "wooooooo" (self included). And this is all fine and good and I happily admit that this is my own reaction. But you always get a few types who'll just stand there, stone-still, possibly nodding appreciately at a particularly nice bit of bassline. Every once in a while they'll raise their hands reflexively to stroke their goatees in a contemplative fashion, before remembering that they shaved their goatees off in '99 to avoid looking too trendy. Anyway, I don't see the bloody point of going to a dance music concert and then refusing to get down with the funk.
Funkless fools aside, the music was great. They got through a lot of the new album, which was probably a good move. Some of the stuff on the new album really benefited from the live treatment - it was taking me a while to warm to it on disc. The older stuff got a good workout, too. High points were Satan proving that bleep-techno types have an inner industrial goth (went through the crowd like wildfire), The Girl With The Sun In Her Head, and the sheer joy and beauty of Halcyon. The encores were pretty spectacular: Impact (The Earth Is Burning), always one of my favourite songs, followed by Doctor ? which mixed into, of course, Chime . Lovely. Total time on stage was about 90-100 minutes, which certainly strikes me as good value for money. An excellent concert, and a good opportunity to wear a tank-top and shorts in public and not get stared at.
Friday night was a work do, the stag/hen night of a couple of coworkers. A certain 'extremely drunk' motif was present. A discreet vail will be drawn over the proceedings, except to say that at one point a man's stomach was smeared with honey and then had feathers daubed on it. No, really.
Pictures of our recent mission up north are going to have to wait a few days, btw. Bootsphoto.com's implementation leaves a lot to be desired - like, for it to work on a mac - so it's taking a few days to get the stuff up. I'll get it all up as soon as practical.
Chelsea Flower Show, dead cars, and punt races.