February 26, 2003  

what do you do in [the] Bath? 25 february 2003

So it was off to the wild with gun and camera last Friday. I say the wild; I mean the West Country. Specifically, Bath. If you've not been there before, it's a pretty lovely wee place. Heck, even if you've been there before, it's still pretty lovely. Nicely compact, beautifully put together, lots of attractive terraces. Hills. A river meandering through the central bit. A pedestrianized central area. A number of good pubs, and at least two good bike shops. Very nice indeed.

And intriguingly close on the train. It took us about four hours to get there (including a total of 50 minutes delay on a scheduled 90 minute journey), but about three to get back. Not bad for halfway across the country, really. We managed to strike a rich lode of fare-dodgers on the way over: our tickets were checked on all the trains we took on the way there, and each time one or two people were heard to loudly declaim that they were unaware that it was unlawful to board a train without a valid ticket. One American lady got very abusive when the conductor pointed out that this by-law had been in force since 1897. Don't you just love Americans who insist that since something is done in a particular way in America, it should thus be done in the same way in the UK, and if it isn't that the UK is somehow defective? And then get abusive about it?

We arrived in Bath quite early on the Friday (2pmish). We had out stuff stashed at the hotel by 2:30 and were out on the streets by 3. It's a nice little town to wander around. We did this for about 2 1/2 hours. It's also a nice little town to sit in a pub. This we did for slightly longer, having found first a rather skody pub full of students in heavy metal t-shirts and the sort of faintly odd-smelling middle-aged men with slight paunches and tattered leather jackets who frequent these places with an eye to copping off with the less picky/more drunk 18-year old girls away from home for the first time. They pulled a good pint though. This pint consumed, we had a bit more of a meander and ended up in the Salamander - a very nice little pub that sold its own ales. Highly recommended - an excellent wee pub, very comfortable, very friendly, and some damn good ales floating around. If you're ever in the area, I'd really recommend it.

The Roman Baths themselves are well cool. OK, so in terms of sheer geothermal activity, Rotorua (heck, Yellowstone park) knocks 'em into a cocked hat. All this is, after all, is a geothermal spa producing a steady gush of water at 46.5c. A geyser or something, this ain't. But it's just amazing wandering around there, around the structure originally built about 2000 years back, so people could have a bath. Originally, the spring would have just seeped up and made for a rather swampy area on the hillside above the river. The Romans went in, put a firm foundation down, built a large swimming pool and diverted the waters in. And then whacked a temple up around it, because it was obviously a sacred site. You've got to admire that sort of forthrightness. And syncretism: the locals already worshipped the spring as a sacred place to their goddess Sulis. In move the Romans: sacred to Sulis, eh? What kind of goddess is Sulis? Wisdom, eh? Ah, right - what you've got here is clearly a sacred place to Minerva, whom you've been worshipping in an aspect that you've been calling Sulis. We'll just call her Sulis Minerva to make what's really been going on a bit plain, and we'll whack up a temple - after all, it's a sacred site. I love the Roman attitude to religion: research theology.

So yeah, the site's a head trip. Partially for the age of it, partially for what it says about the Roman conquest of Britain, and partially because the plumbing still substantially works. If anyone wants to know what the Romans did for us, I ask you this: when was the last time that you got 2000 years worth of wear out of a drainage system with only minor repairs, eh?

Well, OK: minor repairs and several archaeological digs.

The baths also have the advantage of being one of the few places in the central city where you aren't being hassled to buy the Big Issue. Repeatedly. I buy the damn thing, and it was starting to get to me. It was really noticeable how many homeless people were hanging around the central area selling the Big Issue. I mean, I live in Cambridge, and we've got quite a few vendors around here, but Bath just teemed. There were sellers about every three or four hundred metres in the central pedestrianized precinct. I saw more Big Issue vendors than newsstands for the local newspaper. Presumably this is because it's a big tourist destination, but it's still a bit striking.

In summary: big ups the West Country massive. Innit.

Took in Lemon Jelly at the Junction last night. Very mellow gig. An extremely happy vibe pervaded - one of those gigs where halfway through you turn around and grin broadly at the geezer next to you, who grins back because you're having a great time and so are they and you both know it. One of those gigs where the bloke in front of you in the queue for the cloakroom turns around and says "Wow, hope you don't mind me saying this, but you really look like a Jack." One of those gigs where the band hand out balloons and bingo cards. One of those gigs, in fact, where half the audience is e'd off their tits, a certain amount of illegal herbiage is being smoked, and all is well with the world. The band gave a good 80-odd minute set (no encores, though), which was a bit more beat-orientated than their albums. Two blokes playing a very wide variety of musical instruments - at one point I saw one of 'em playing two keyboards at once. Hey, the 80s are back in a lot of other ways.... We spent a lot of the evening waving rubber ducks at the stage, which won us kudos with a large chunk of the audience. See previous "e'd off their tits" comment. Or, in Chris' case, seven pints of cider. He was a happy flying bunny that night.

OK, this is a pretty cool idea. Phat Britain, purveyors of some well stylee choppers and other odd bikes, are now doing custom colours. You can either pick from any of their normal colours, or for an extra £10 you can provide them with an exact paint reference from a colour chart (say, the car paint charts provided at Halfords), and they'll pop out and buy a tin of it and do yer new bike in it. Hey presto: personalisation with a buzz. I think it's a pretty cool idea (and heck, it's pretty good value when you think of the amount of work involved) - OK, so it's basically a bit pointless, but if you're after a chopper anyway then you're not exactly into penny-pinching performance tweaks.

Today's theme tune: Cheerleader by Burning Love Jumpsuit. Bouncy!

February 21, 2003  

flyin' high in the Cambridge sky 20 february 2003

Out for a walk on Sunday, walking along the backs. Down by the college flats near Darwin, saw an old and slightly raddled bloke in a dog collar and full priestly garb. Carrying a crate of empty wine bottles. And putting them on the pile of other crates (around ten or so) of empty wine bottles. Then going back inside for another crate. It was all we could do not to shout "Arse! Feck! Drink!" at him.

Matched only by Chris' observation on the anti-war march on Saturday of a sign that read, simply, "Down with this sort of thing!" Sadly, no matching "Careful now!" placard was in evidence.

If you're like me (and, frankly, you should be), you're a hep young thing who enjoys sitting around proper cafes, discussing the affairs of the day with like-minded intellectual peers. Or at least, having a good sarnie and a smoothie in somewhere that actually makes food on the premises and doesn't have a corporate uniform. Unfortunately, die-stamped corporate coffeehouses tend to have the lock on central areas, as independent cafes tend to be a bit more nervous about taking out rentals on high-value property. They can be a bit hard to find. With that in mind, here's my current summary of the state of the art within about ten minutes' walk of central Cambridge.

• Clowns on King Street. Bit dark, bit smoky looking on the ground floor. However, it's a really friendly little place, run by various european expats. The food's excellent (though slightly pricey - £5-7 for a good sarnie or plate of hot food), and the coffee is apparantly also very nice. The upstairs is a lot lighter and a bit more pleasant than the downstairs. The decor throughout relies heavily on childrens pictures (really - think a fridge door covered in drawings little Johnny did at kindergarten, then extend that thought out to cover the entire interior of a cafe), which is a bit disquieting until you get used to it.
• Mango Organico in Cobbles Yard (behind the Grafton Centre). A good friendly wee place. Seats about twelve people at most, decor a bit heavy on the garish colours and painted breezeblocks, but they're doing a lot with a little. Don't think much of the internal astroturf, though. Excellent smoothies (which they specialise in), good sarnies, and the coffee is well-rated. Not many people know about this one, but it's worth a wee look. Feels like it's being run by a couple of idealistic young things, and probably is.
• The Casimir on King Street. Very bright, clean, modern-looking place run (again) by European expats. Excellent food (I'm particularly fond of the mozarella and sundried tomato baguettes), reasonably priced, and close to the centre of town. Which means that it's always utterly packed to the gunwhales, damn it. If you can get a seat, it's well worth it.
• Cafe Forum in Jesus Lane Shopping Forum. Again, very clean, very light, whacking great big windows. Food has an emphasis on snacks rather than light meals, but is damn fine nonetheless. Good range of cold drinks as well as some clued up baristas, so there's fun for the whole family on that score. Actually quite a kiwi-feeling cafe. This impression is probably helped by the accents of the people working there. A good place to chill out, though the few's a bit shite (JLSF really doesn't get much foot traffic, does it?) and the tables are slightly wonky.
• CB1 (Mill Road) and CB2 (Norfolk St). Too damn posey for their own good, innit. A little too pretentious for me - too many black turtlenecks. But they've got iMacs and they also sell secondhand books, so they get funk points. If only they didn't try so hard for it.

So that central London congestion charge, eh? Bet you that every bike shop within ten miles of the river has been minting it. The evening that it started, the local news ran a story on possible alternatives to driving. They included a section of cycling, filmed with what looked like a helmet-mounted camera, played at about 150% speed. The overall effect was kind of like Benny Hill, but with more white vans and less tits. Or my daily commute, but with ephedrine.

Fun things to discover: Lisa's company mail filter toasts email with the word 'fucking' in it - but not with the word 'motherfucking'. Go figure.

My recent tirade meant that I'm now getting search hits for "America's Cup topless". What, someone's into cookware mutilation? And the frankly bizarre "carnivorous or virginians or hello or channelling or experiment".

And just as a general, last comment sort of thing... it's our third wedding anniversary today. Much love, much gladness in evidence. Yeah. Three years? Cue normal comment about time flying when you're happy.

February 18, 2003  

a brief denigration of our new national sport 17 february 2003

Nice Guardian summary of the America's Cup controversy. Executive summary: the yachties back home need to pull their heads out of their arses. This is not a democratic sport of the people, which has been betrayed by some money-grubbing traitors. This is an excuse for a pack of ludicrously rich people to throw money around the place. This is not a sport that the average person has a hope in hell of ever getting anywhere near. Feh. Yachting, and the Kiwi reaction to it, annoys the hell out of me. Rugby I can understand - it's fairly exciting, everyone can play it, you can take the kids down the park of a Sunday arvo and throw the ball around. Yachting? Two boats, one of which goes slightly faster. Ever seen a last-minute scoring run from one end of the field to the other in a yacht race? Ever seen the leading yacht crash out because a spectator stepped in the way while trying to get a good photo, causing a surprise upset win? Heck, has anyone reading this ever been on a bloody yacht? Even motor racing - shit-boring bloody motor racing, for fuck's sake - relates to something that most people do, and could imagine themselves doing. But yaching? Pffft.

There's a phrase over here - "jumpers for goal posts". It means something's a bit ad hoc - it works, but it could be better, done more properly. I like it. It refers to how you used to play footie (of any kind - remember marking the touchline in primary school rugby games with your jersey) by using your discarded outer garments to mark the goals. All you need is a ball. You want to play rugby or football, you need a ball and a couple of mates. You want to cycle, you need a bike. You want to play hockey, you need a stick. You can get a lot more fancy than that (and for safety reasons, you'd want to), but that's what it boils down to.

And for heaven's sake - the only reason NZ pays a blind bit of attention to the America's Cup is because we've won the damn thing. If it was just two blokes and their dog building a yacht in their garage and racing it, they'd get on the arse-end of the news in the "And another example of Kiwi ingenuity..." slot. We like technological innovation and know-how as much as the next man - but it's only when the story changes from "Spirit of Number 8 Wire Shed-based Inventor" to "Plucky Kiwi Underdog Wins Over Those Flash Foreign Bastards Against Overwhelming Odds" that we start to really pay attention.

No offense intended to any of the people (or, indeed, my relatives) who are making money off the America's Cup. You know who you are. ;) I just can't stand yachting and I think all this moaning about 'betrayal' is a right royal pain in the nads.

Anyway, I'm probably just narked 'cos NZ's cyclists don't get the attention they deserve.

Today's soundtrack: two tunes by DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World and You Can't Go Home Again. Rich and haunting.

February 11, 2003  

experimenting with chainlength 10 february 2003

I'd just like to kick this off with large congratulations to Richard & Suraya, who tied the knot on Saturday. They're both lovely people, and it's about bleedin' time they got around to this. We hooked up with the wedding party towards the inebriate end of the evening - my word, did we ever. Fortunately the bar staff were very understanding about the noise levels, as it was all good humoured and the drunker members of the party kept buying rounds. A memorable night, especially since one of the members of the wedding party kept trying to get everyone to sing "I love you baby" (or whatever it's called) and do group hugs. Good fun, good people.

Less good: bicycle. Having had a problem with my indexing (i.e. my rear gears were buggered), so I took it into the local bike shop for them to have a look. Having fiddled repeatedly with the damn thing, I figured I should get a professional to have a go. All well and good, right? So they advise me that my chain and rear block are buggered, which sounds about right; fit new ones and charge accordingly. Shortly after picking up the bike, I realise that they haven't shortened the new chain. This means that it's a bit sloppy - it shifts fine with it's not under load (say, when it's on a rack on the workshop), but as soon as you try to pedal the damn thing the chain skips all over the place on the rear block. This makes the bike basically unrideable. I'm now playing with shortening the chain by the time-honoured technique of removing a single link, pedalling around a bit, removing another link, pedalling around a bit more, etc. Seems to be a bit happier now.

Mind you, it has reminded me of a great principle of mechanical tinkering. If you only do something infrequently, or have only been taught to do it once or twice, then it tends to be a little intimidating. "Am I doing this too hard? What if I destroy the chain?" and thoughts of that nature. But do it three times in quick succession and it's nice to see how calming it gets by the end.

Nice to know that someone at Litespeed, manufacturers of some very nice titanium bicycles, has a sense of humour. I'd be interested to see an actual photograph of this, with an actual child on it, because this sure as hell looks photoshopped to me. But hey! That's half the fun, right?

Recent listening: Ninja Tune's latest compilation album, Listen & Learn (part of the Solid Steel mix series, mixed by Hexstatic. Funky. Weighing in at about an hour, it's not as twitchy as a lot of serious DJ mixes are - they let the songs stand on their own a bit, rather than compulsively mixing from tune to tune. A good few beats to dance to, a good lot of funky rolling bass, all in all pretty high IQ bouncemusik. Standout track is definitely David Holmes' Rip Rip, a lovely bit of funked-up organ madness, but the bespoke solid steel sections (Solid Steel Scratch School, Solid Steel Rock School, and Hexstatic Electro Rewind Section) are also mighty fine.

Possible reason why France isn't so shit hot on bombing the stuffing out of Iraq: they're already becoming involved in a land war in North Africa - in the Ivory Coast. The legacy of colonialism, eh? Bit of a lesson there, kiddies.

February 05, 2003  

ankle deep 4 february 2003

So Thursday morning dawns bright and clear. I hop on my bike and set off in to work with shining eyes, ready to meet the challenge of another day documenting our new API set. Around 11am, it clouds over. 11:30, it starts to snow. I go for lunch at 1pm, and walk into town to pick up some photos. It's snowing quite hard by this point, and I freeze my tits off. At this point the snow is giving it some, but isn't lying.

Watching it snow was pretty cool. Throughout the afternoon, we occasionally glanced out the window and watched the constant fall of flakes. Whacking great big snowflakes, too. It was definitely starting to lie, and by about 5:30pm the ground had a fair old bit of snow on it.

And then I tried to go home. The snow only delayed me by about 5 minutes (i.e. I was on the bike for 15 minutes, not 10), but it was a pretty nerve-wracking time. Checking my speedo, I averaged 7mph over the day (including the commute in), so my speed in the evening must have been closer to 4-5mph. At that, I was going faster than most of the cars on the road. I had minor skids about four times, lost rear wheel traction quite a bit (wheelspins are much more arse-clenching on a bicycle, trust me), and took corners pretty slow. It wasn't helped by the fact that it was still snowing pretty damn hard, and the snow was getting in my eyes, or sticking to my glasses. Hefty. About halfway home, someone hit me on the back of the helmet with a snowball. This was unhelpful.

So I got home doing a passable Frosty the Snowman impression. Dusted meself off, opened a cheap tinnie of lager, sat down and chilled out. And it kept snowing. Lo, did it ever.

The county was basically shut for a day.

The chaos! The terror! The run on fresh fruit! The runs from unfresh fruit! The human misery! The drama! The blame! The terror again!

Basically, everyone stayed at home on Friday, with the exception of mugs like me who can walk to work. This is of course the downside of my normal swift commute. Mind you, a gang of kids tried to get me to join their "snowball team" on the way in, so I can't say I was ignored.

Otherwise, it's been a bit quiet. Had an inadvertant Chinese New Year dinner on Saturday. As in, we had a few people over for Chinese food (dim sum, steamed pork buns, etc), and then realised on Sunday morning that it'd been Chinese New Year. So, y'know, gong xi fa cai and all that, right? It was even a reasonably trad Chinese New Year meal - huge amounts of food stretching over about four hours, and a good whack of booze consumed. And I'd just like to give a big shout out to my homie James K, what couldn't be there on account of a sudden attack of NHS hospital. Harsh karma and I hope it gets better soon, mate.

It's snowing again. I bet the gritters are scrambling even as I type.

Apparently my employers have signed a major deal with the US Postal Service. Bet you I don't get to meet Lance in the corridors, though.

archives