Exit light, enter night.
// September 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // Comedy and Satire, Media, Misc., Uncategorized
Bill Bailey with a message for James, Lars and co.
Archive for Misc.
Happysad
// September 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Edinburgh, Misc.
My tolerance for the kind of weather which afflicts this country of mine from September through until May gets eroded a little further with each passing year. In my younger days I would be spending rather a lot of my time with jovial drunken friends in the many wonderful bars of our capital city and the inclement weather outside was rather incidental as a result. As a home-based worker and 40-something stay-at-home father I spend rather less time in those bars now and am required to soberly face the dreariness of our climate with metronomic grinding monotony. What colour is the sky today? Oooh, it’s grey again! There’s also drizzling rain for texture. My PC desktop-borne climatic temperature gauge reports 12°C but I know that to be one more in a series of filthy lies.
The thought of living further north has sometimes flitted through my head, in much the same way as a thought such as I wonder if it’s possible to survive the 40 metre fall from the Forth Road Bridge into the freezing waters of the Forth Estuary?. Sometimes, while staring out into the half-light of yet another blanket-grey morning, I chill myself by imagining what it must be like to live on the Shetland or Faroe Islands. Perhaps such places are studded with windowless pubs, filled with intoxicated inhabitants.
It cheered me to read the story of one such inhabitant on today’s BBC News website …
Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg
I know how that elk feels.
The War You Don’t See
// December 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Media, Misc., TV
A cursory glance at the programming schedule for ITV1 on any evening of the week usually prompts a deep sigh of disappointment. Tonight, for example, one can wallow in the bilge of Celebrity Grimefighters at 9pm and after a short break for the ITV News (which needs to sharpen up its ideas a bit) it’s an empty-headed leap into the fuel-injected gracelessness of 2 Fast 2 Furious. Unless you are a particularly vacant yet excitable teenage boy this film is not for you. It was with a great deal of surprise then that I noticed that the same channel had devoted upwards of 95 minutes to the broadcast of John Pilger’s new film The War You Don’t See on Tuesday evening at 10:35pm.
The film focuses mainly on the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the manner in which public consent was, in the opinion of Pilger and others, manipulated by the US and UK governments with the aid of largely unquestioning editors in the mainstream media. Pilger’s passionate viewpoint is, I believe, too politically idealised to achieve the fait accompli he clearly believes he is presenting, however much in the film should be mandatory viewing for all thoughtful people and certainly for all working journalists.
You should watch the film (for free) on your own particular TV-on-demand service or on the ITV player (for the next 28 days).
Nostalgia and national pride. A potent mix.
// November 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cycling, Edinburgh, Misc.
This morning I watched a video (available below) showing Scottish mountain bike trials pro rider Danny Macaskill performing all manner of jaw-dropping stunts during a journey from Edinburgh to Skye and it evoked some strong emotions within me. Not only is there the warm nationalistic pride in seeing familiar areas of my beloved (but mainly cold and grey) country shot in HD video but there is also an aching nostalgia for all the carefree time I spent as a teenager on a Haro Master BMX bike. A Haro Master bike not dissimilar to the one pictured at the top of this post (click on it to enlarge). (more…)
Her spelling’s really coming along!
// October 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // Misc., Parenting, Uncategorized
Scene: Sunday 4:30pm. Very busy soft drinks aisle in Tesco Extra, Drumbrae, Edinburgh. Father (in this instance played by me), 5-year-old daughter in the trolley seat (played with determination by Rachel, 50% of the fruit of my loins), supporting cast of a dozen docile consumers.
Rachel: Daddy?
Me (expecting request for something treat-like): Yeeeees.
Rachel: How do you spell cock?
Woah! This is from leftfield and not at all what I was anticipating. I frantically scan the shelves to try and figure out what might have prompted such an unwittingly frank question.
Me: Do you mean Coke?
Rachel (loudly): No Daddy! COCK!! C (kuh), O (ohh) ….
Me (increasingly uncomfortable in these very public cicumstances): Shhh! What are you talking about?
Rachel: You know, you hit it with a racquet and it goes up in the air.
Me (slightly relieved): Oh, you mean shuttlecock?
Rachel: Yes shuttlecock …. but just cock. C (kuh), O (ohh), C (kuh).
<adopts loud sing-song voice> I can spell cock. I can spell cock!
Good Christ! I hurry from the aisle and the increasing number of raised eyebrows, picturing myself in a courtroom desperately trying to talk myself off some register.
