Where was I?

Got back from a week in the Lakes this evening. A glorious, happy, mild, almost-rain-free, fun, exhausting, exhilarating 7 days spent in the company of fabulous friends, food, frolics and frippery.

We went last year, of course, but that was in May (and I never did write it up. Tut!). Don't s'pose I'll write this one up either, being the lazy sod I am, but we have the memories. And the photos. They're up on Picasa, if you're interested. We've decided we're going to pick one and have it printed on canvas to hang somewhere in the house as a permanent reminder of the funtimes. Well, you have to, don't you? I do. I absolutely do.

Meme

Shamelessly hijacked from tvor, but isn't that what you're supposed to do with these things? I really miss those Friday Fives!

Could you see yourself with the same person for a year?
You mean like this person I've been with for nine years? Umm... yes!

Do you know anyone who's having a baby?
Quite a few people. All of them in the book club, strangely. Who knew reading could be so dangerous?

Have you ever been called heartless?
Never.

Do you think you've made a difference in anyone's life?
I know I have.

Name something you're doing tomorrow?
Going on holiday!!! Yayyyyy!!!

When was the last time you had Starbucks?
A couple of visits to the Trafford Centre ago. Probably sometime in the summer.

Are you ticklish?
Yes. Finding the spot is a puzzle though ;o)

Do you crack your knuckles?
Yes, since the age of about 10.

Who was the last person to give you a hug?
Nikki.

Are you in a good mood?
Yep.

Are you excited for something?
Yep!! (see above)

Is there someone you can trust 100%?
Several people.

Last person you said "I hate you" to?
I may have said this to someone as a child, but I don't recall saying it since I reached big school.

Will you talk to the person you like tonight?
Yes.

Do you miss anyone?
Yes.

Will this weekend be a good one?
Yes! (Whether the weather is good or not!)

What were you doing at 7am this morning?
It's not 7am yet (it's 5:54 at the moment), but if I were to guess I'd say playing Spider Solitaire (when I *should* be writing).

Has someone ever made you a promise and broken it?
Yes.

Is there someone you don't ever want out of your life?
Several people.

Have you ever found someone you really really really liked?
Yes, but I really really really need more reallies in the question :o)

Honestly, are things going the way you planned?
Depends which plan you're talking about. If you mean the way I planned when I was, say, 18, or 21, or 25, then no. But "honestly," I can't say I mind. Things have turned out for the best.

Do you find it hard to trust others?
No. Too easy, if anything.

Are you a jealous person?
Used to be. Now, no.

Are any of your texts in your inbox locked and why?
I guess this means mobile phone texts? I don't receive many and I don't keep any.

Last night, did you go to sleep smiling?
I fall asleep so quickly I don't have time to smile.

Any Summer plans for 2010?
Not so far.

Look in your inbox in your phone, who are all the people you have texts from?
I haven't kept any, but the most recent ones were from Nikki, Natalie, and work peeps.

Do you like voicemails?
No. 99% of them are work-related and usually involve adding something to my pile.

Do you wish you had an older, protective brother?
I've often wished I had siblings of some flavour, but I wouldn't say that wish included an older brother. Necessarily. In fact I always pictured myself as the older one.

Are you keeping a secret right now?
No.

Have you ever had a surprise birthday party?
No.

How much longer until your birthday?
Almost exactly a month.

Is there one person in your life that can always make you smile?
Several people.

Will Friday be a good one?
Oh yes!

Have you ever had a best friend of the opposite sex?
Yes.

Is there anyone you couldn't live without?
There are people I wouldn't want to live without. I'd probably manage it, but it would be less like life and more like existence.

Could you go out in public looking like you do now?
I usually do, but I wouldn't recommend it. Style icon? Moi?

Do you think things will change in the next few months?
Yes. One way or another.

What colour shirt are you wearing?
Black.

Have you told anyone you loved them today?
Gimme a chance - I haven't even finished my second coffee yet!

What do you and your best friend like to do together?
Chill. Optionally involving beer, food, or both.

Do you have a cellphone?
We usually call them 'mobiles' here, but yeah.

How long have you had it?
This particular one, about a year probably. I don't really pay much attention. I've had a mobile since 1994, although that wasn't what you'd call 'mobile.' It was about the size of a house brick.

What's bothering you right now?
That I'm still waiting to hear back from New York.

What is the last thing you drank today?
Still drinking it - the morning coffee.

What are you going to do after this?
Check the rest of my emails, and then play some cards do some writing.

Is there a certain person you can't get OFF your mind?
There's a few I think of regularly, but not in the way I assume you mean.

Whose bed did you sleep in last?
See what I mean? Mine. Ours.

Has someone ever told you they will love you forever?
Yes.

Do you like to cuddle?
Who doesn't?

Will you be in a relationship in the next couple months?
I should blimmin' well hope so!

How do you feel about your hair right now?
What hair?

Do you have any siblings?
No.

What song did you hear last?
Something by Daughtry.

Who was the last person you talked to on the phone and what did you talk about?
Nikki. Our usual midday catch-up.

What woke you up this morning?
Having had enough sleep.

Do you ever write in pencil anymore?
Very occasionally.

Who did you last see in person?
Nikki. She's sitting round the corner.

Is there something you wish you could tell someone but can't?
No.

Could you go the rest of your life without doing any drugs?
I've managed so far!

Bad-Axe bastard

I don't know what made me suddenly think of this, but my mind has just popped the answer to a 40-year-old riddle. Now as you'll see, if it had actually been subconsciously working on the problem all of that time, this wouldn't be too impressive, but as far as I can tell what's happened is that my train of thought, as I sat here playing cards and inventing dialogue for The Literary Novel, has happened across a childhood memory that my adult brain solved instantly.

So it's not really been a riddle for forty years, it's just that I've not thought about it since I was about twelve.

We used to have a bunch of cheap blue plastic biros in the bureau at home, which were remarkable only in that they had been heavily embossed with gilt letters spelling out the legend "I'M A BAD-AXE BASTARD." When these pens first turned up at home I asked my Dad where he'd got them. Apparently a friend of his who ran the local trophy (and engraving) centre had given them to him as they were 'surplus to requirements.' He claimed to have no idea what the phrase meant, when I asked him, and knowing my Dad it is at least vaguely feasible that he wasn't just protecting my youthful sensibilities.

With the wisdom of ages now mine (well, those 40 years anyway), I just wish I'd been able to see the look on the face of the customer when he came to collect his pens and realised that it might have been advisable to write down his desired wordage rather than rely on the dodgy hearing of the old guy who ran the shop.

Perspectives

Into each life a little rain must fall. An old, trite phrase that, like all old, trite phrases contains a kernel of truth. Everyone has their own shit to deal with; their own bucket to carry; etc. Parents always tell you that they'll never stop worrying about you, and that you won't understand how they feel until you have children of your own. And then, when you have children of your own... yes. You understand. With a depth of understanding that sits somewhere below bone-deep. In a subterranean cavern of the soul that you didn't really know existed.

And you watch your children dealing with their shit - that small proportion of it that they're prepared to share with you, or you learn about indirectly - and wish that you could help them with it. And know that you can't. Worse than that, sometimes, someheartbreakingtimes that stay with you in a way you know you'll never shake off, you're the cause of the rain that fell into their lives. Rain? It was more like a fireman's hose, with your hand on the valve.

Which is why these days we like to try and make our home a haven of shitlessness. Dump your shit at the door, no shit here thank you. That's not to say we don't have "serious conversations" - just that we like to try and resolve more problems than we cause, and generally accentuate the positive. But sometimes, being a parent, I worry (see above) that it all gets a bit boring here. Cos, you know, we don't really do much most of the time (apart from the odd trip here and there). The weekend days generally have a beat to them - lazy breakfast; do our own thing for a few hours; pot of tea with optional snacks; movie; dinner; evening telly usually followed by another movie - but is it ENOUGH?

This morning, in a rare shaft of sunlight that shone into that dark cavern I was talking about, I discovered that maybe it's more than enough. Maybe it's exactly right. I happened across this answer in one of Blythe's online quizzes. (I hope this doesn't count as 'parental surveillance' but hey - if it's on t'Internet it's public domain, right?)

Were you happy when you woke up today?
Yes, because it was the weekend, I could hear my sister coming out of the car and through the front gate, and I was at my dads. Being at my dads is like therapy; I get away, literally as far as I can, from everything thats currently happening. It's like a small two day holiday every two weeks.

As you might imagine, that cheered me right up! So that's why this post is called 'perspectives'. Because things always look different depending on who's doing the looking, and because you don't often know the effect what you do has on others, even those closest to you, and even when you think you're not doing much.

Another day, another door...

With the fourth door painting completed on Wednesday and the locks and hinges refitted on Thursday, it was ready to rehang. Just in time too, to avoid daughterly embarrassment as this is one of their weekends for visiting.

The final small task - fitting the emergency release mechanism to the lock - I completed this morning and here it is in all its glory. I'm happy to report that it is now a pleasure to sit... er... where I was sitting when I took this shot. Whereas before the cracked, splintered and battered old door was an affront to the eyes, now there is only calm serenity and smooth acres of white.

Four down; three to go.

Installing update...

I thought I may have blogged before regarding the frustrations of owning a wireless printer, but a quick search proves me wrong. Well, that's a subject in its own right, but it'll have to wait for another day. It's only tangentially related to today's tale, in that it was the reason I needed to reboot before taking Nikki to work this morning.

Knowing how long it can take my machine to cycle, and wanting to get a letter printed off before we left so I could post it en-route, I started the process with plenty of time to spare. Or what should have been plenty of time.

Sadly my attempt at closing down my PC was greeted with that dreaded message: "Installing update 1 of 21... do not switch off your computer."

1 of TWENTY-ONE? Good grief. How long have they been waiting to be installed? And why the hell doesn't Windows tell you there are so many pending while you're in the middle of a session? Took 45 minutes to close the bloody thing down in the end.

Ideas 'R' Us

I had an idea for another novel last night. It came to me in one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had and for once, I remembered it for almost an hour after waking - long enough to write it down in sufficient detail for me to build the story on it.

Trouble is... I really don't need any more ideas. From a position a few years ago of saying to myself "I know I could write a really good novel, if only I had an original story concept" to now, when I've been writing down every good idea I've had since that first thought, I've got more ideas that I know what to do with. Certainly more than I could ever write in however much life is left to me. People in the know - specifically this guy - told me (well, not ME personally, you know - he wrote it on his blog. His very-well-read blog) this would happen and guess what? He was right.

Damn' good idea though. Really dark and menacing. And as always, FAR more attractive than the story I'm trying to write at the moment. Which makes it just one more distraction I don't need!

Beware the camcorder

We never need much of an excuse for a get-together with mates, but when there's a holiday in the offing then there's also the obligatory "planning" meeting, which duly took place yesterday. The actual planning part didn't take much more than ten minutes - where and when are we going to meet up for lunch on the way there; who's cooking what meals on what nights; a grocery list for the initial shop (mainly breakfast items and snacks); and are we all having the same bedrooms as last time; and we're done.

So when we started in on the wine at shortly after 4 in the afternoon, I should have known the direction the rest of the evening was going to take. Wine, especially Zinfandel (or rosé of any kind, tbh), is just too easy to drink. Before you know it, your glass is empty and, with excellent hosts like Ian & Gill, it's mostly refilled again without you even asking. Or noticing.

Which makes it incredibly easy to lose track. That's my excuse anyway. Not to mention that we popped around the corner for short pub session before the main meal.

From what I remember of the rest of the evening, we all had a fabulous time. We proved beyond doubt that Ian & Gill's table will seat eight, and I proved that if you sit me in front of a cheeseboard for long enough then eventually there'll be nothing left of it except a few crumbs. I'm not going to write in adolescent fashion about how drunk I got. Certainly drunker than I've been this year. If I'm being honest, drunker than I can remember being since... umm... well, you get the picture.

Trouble is, these days, I don't need to *remember* how drunk I was. There's evidence. Firstly, the email from Ian which arrived this afternoon. And I quote:
"Sober viewers must be warned these people had drunk quite a bit (18 cans, 12 bottles of wine + 2 rounds in the pub) which may explain hangovers on Sunday."

And secondly the video footage which that email introduced showing, among other things, Ritchie and I at around 1am drunkenly singing Supper's Ready at the top of our (slightly out of tune) voices. I hope they have understanding neighbours.

We have a week of similar, although hopefully not quite so intense, evenings to look forward to. Let me just check we've put paracetamol on the shopping list...

The pipes, the pipes

It's been a while since I related how we're getting on with album #2 - Weird and Wonderful - although progress continues to be reported over at our other home. I say progress, but it's been a bit sporadic of late, what with one thing and another.

As predicted, we only managed one recording session last month, but we started well this month - on Wednesday - both in terms of it being the first Wednesday in October and in respect of the quality of the singing. By far my best number so far, the performance was helped firstly by the song being right in the middle of my range, and secondly by taking a few minutes out to do some crazy warm-up exercises that Annie passed on from her experiences at drama school. I wish I could let you hear the difference between the first take of the first verse (pre-warm-up) and the second take (post-warm-up). It actually sounds like a different person is singing, and the added depth to the sound really took me completely by surprise, as well as it being a whole lot easier to deliver.

Well hey - athletes warm up their muscles, right? I know at least one reader who'll be slightly exasperated (a) at my surprise and (b) that I wasn't warming up before. What can I say? Sometimes you just have to learn the lessons for yourself!

The Call of the Wood

Been fixing up and painting the bathroom door since Sunday. Don't know about you, but when I'm doing a job as mindless as painting, my hand might be painting but my mind is otherwise engaged. Plotting The Literary Novel (as it's recently become known in my head), or testing out snippets of conversation between the main characters (or even minor ones come to that), or generally wool-gathering.

Something of the manual activity has patently impinged on my consciousness though, manifesting itself in two painting-related gatherings of wool. 1: how stripped doors sound attractive until you actually see them, and 2: how I'm probably bringing these doors full circle (or actually, more like 540°, because clearly being wood, they started life as... well... bare wood).

I like stripped wood as a rule. A few (umm... probably about 12) years ago I took a hot-air stripper and a shave-hook to the wooden window casings in the main bedroom of the family cottage, gradually revealing the mellow silkiness of their ancient yellow pine, but it was a task to remove all evidence of old repairs - every last lump and grain of filler - sand the wood to a fine smooth finish and then apply copious quantities of beeswax-based polish to feed and nurture the wood until it gleamed. The end result soon dulled the memory of the hours of exhausting, boring stripping, sanding and buffing.

The previous owners of this house had an altogether more slapdash approach to their stripped wood. As far as I can tell it involved a quick dunk in a bath of chemical stripper and... er... that's yer lot. For the most part, this left the doors looking rough and ill-treated. Exposed splits and cracks in the old timber, long clumps of old grey filler in the spaces between the carcass and the mouldings, lines of yellowed dots where the filled nail heads lived, and all the long years' scratches and gouges in full view. And then, to add insult to injury, they'd painted on a wash of disgusting blue woodstain that gave them, if anything, an even sadder and more forlorn aspect.

Quite the most depressing example of stripped wood I'd ever seen and one of the earliest mental notes I made during our first visit to the house. Hence Thought #1 above.

Thought #2, bubbling into view as the brush turned the dirty matt effect into smooth fresh white, is the realisation that all I'm doing is returning the doors to the state they'd more than likely been in when the previous owners first arrived. All trace of the expense of the chemical dipping, and the splashing on of dishwaterlike stain, will soon be erased. Makes me wonder if, at some remote future point, a new owner of this house will have an urge for stripped doors and set to to re-undo all my hard work. No wonder B&Q (aka Home Depot) profits remain healthy.

Blue rinse

Well, the Tories are here this week. Party conference. The week has so far been punctuated with various friends posting on various social websites about "Tory scum" and similar pithy observations, and all week I've been building up to some erudite exposition on the subject of enlightened self-interest, public servants and realism.

But you know what? I really can't be arsed.

And on reflection, I still like the idea of fitting every politician with a tiny remote-controlled personal explosive device located somewhere essential, like adjacent to the carotid artery. Said device hooked up to a red button owned by every single person in the country. If more than, say, 60% of people are pressing their button at any one time... kaboom! Or should I say... *phlut* (because it's only a very tiny bomb).

It's a Revelation!

This afternoon's family movie was this one. Revelation. For the first time ever, when it had finished, I took the disc out of the player, and threw it straight in the bin. It's not even worth putting on eBay. In fact I wondered, in the end, why we'd even bothered watching it through.

Later, leafing through the comments on IMDb, I discovered we weren't alone in our opinion.

I'm not going to attempt a review. It's not that it would be hard to write, I've just got way more important things to do with my time. Suffice to say this is one to steer clear of, unless you like to watch really atrocious movies so you can laugh at them. The kind with a plot that wanders aimlessly through time and space like a Time Lord with no map, dialogue that was apparently written by a five-year-old (a pompous five-year-old at that), and performances so wooden they would have been kicked out of Pogles' Wood.

Meeting up with old friends

Umm... perhaps "old" friends was not such a sensitive title. She's not *that* much older than us. But she does have a bus pass. Yes, this afternoon we got together with an old Corrie mate for drinks and a meal and to pass on hugs from a variety of mutual friends. We've not seen her in Manchester since our housewarming party at our previous house, which was over seven years ago.

We decided it would be fun to maintain the Corrie connection by starting off at the Grapes - the pub in town owned by Liz Dawn. It has a nice atmosphere and although the beer isn't the best, it is passable. We found some very comfortable armchairs and settled back (almost too far back) for a natter. As usual it was difficult to make yourself heard over the bar music and we hadn't helped ourselves by sitting almost directly under one of the speakers, so after only one pint we ventured further down Deansgate and onto Liverpool Road in the direction of the Ox. Another old favourite of ours - we've even stayed there on occasion - and another pub with a Corrie connection (in this case, the site of the general assembly of fans last time we visited the set).

Food at the Ox continues to win awards, so along with a pint of Deuchars we found ourselves a table and ordered something substantial from the menu. Pork & Leek sausages on herby mash for me, followed by a delicious raspberry & vanilla panacotta.

I've noticed recently that although pub portions often look small when they arrive, they prove extremely filling. Maybe they've discovered a secret ingredient that expands in the stomach, or maybe it's an age thing. Either way, once we were done no-one had room for more beer, and having talked non-stop for four hours or more there was no more catching up to be done, so we headed home.

Ayo Gurkhali

Things move fast in the apparently sleepy sleeper town of Wilmslow. The curry house we visited for Simon's "not" stag do back in July - Garlic Spice - had closed down when we gathered again for the monthly curry last month. Clearly their Summer Special was TOO good a deal!

But lo! Now it has re-opened under another name, and with a fetching purple neon frontage. It's "Ayo Gurkhali" now. Which, when I Googled it to see if anyone else had written a review, I discovered is the Gurkha's war cry of "The Gurkhas are coming!" (or "the Gurkhas are here!" depending on which source you trust).

Well they're certainly here alright. Here being Wilmslow, and Nepalese cuisine being what they're all about. Dressed very smartly in what I took to be Gurkha outfits and attentive without being servile or pushy, the waiters introduced the various Nepalese dishes and made helpful suggestions when called for, but otherwise left us alone to "enjoy" the strange music while we pondered our menu choices.

After a short while drooling over the delights of the chef's specials (they do a range of more traditional curries - madras, jalfrezi, etc - but fully half the menu is devoted to "proper" Nepalese dishes, which we all chose in the end. Well... there's not much point going to a Nepalese restaurant and having a chicken vindaloo, is there?) we discovered that the new restaurant also had a meal deal on. Slightly more expensive at £11.95 than the Garlic Spice's Summer Special - which hopefully will mean they make enough profit to stay in business - the deal included poppadums, starter, main, rice or naan, coffee or tea. Another bargain! Although once I'd waded my way through all that, I found myself wishing I'd paid only a few pence less and missed out the starter. Once again I was full to the point of pain. Will I ever learn?

It was worth it though. The food - uniformly excellent - arrived in REAL PORCELAIN serving dishes! Which came as a very pleasant surprise to someone who's used to having his curry served in the rather more traditional battered tin bowl sat atop a tea-light-fired heater. No heaters here - the porcelain kept the meals hot enough - and each meal had a different, intriguingly-shaped dish! Nice heavy modern cutlery too - not something that looks like it was stolen from Boots' canteen. All these little touches add up to a much classier and more refined experience than "yer usual curry house" and guaranteed we would be back to explore the extensive menu in greater depth next time.

I chose Gurkhali Cham Cham for my main course and I can't begin to tell you how good it was, except that it contains most of my favourite herbs and spices and came with some of the fluffiest boiled rice I've ever tasted. Brilliant. I'm already thinking about what I'll have on my next visit.

The invisible man

I just got to the end of a really long and involved technical problem.

Project Manager to the tester: "Thanks Bob - great job."

Umm... hello? The tester did a great job? Well, yes, he did. He did exactly what I told him to do. And when it failed, he sent me the results of the failure, and I analysed them, worked out where it went wrong, specified the changes and whether the tests also needed changing, in long and annoying detail. He reran the test. When it failed, he sent me the logs, and so we carried on.

I'm dealing with something whose syntax is arcane, whose documentation is non-existent, in an area of the system I'm unfamiliar with, and against the background of a "red status" project whose lateness is exasperating the customer. I'm learning as I go along. I'm sticking with it, day after long bloody, tiresome day, peeling back the layers of this particular onion until I get it just right.

And now... after weeks of wrangling, head-banging, reading technical forums trying to glean the least HINT of how it should work... now... it works. Finally.

And who gets the praise? The fucking TESTER, that's who.

Sometimes. Just sometimes. I'd like some small crumb of evidence that I'm not the invisible man around here.