Ambivalent
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2018 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »
This year is currently a weird one for me with regards to the Festering Season.
Usually by now I’m totally done with it, had enough, and generally pretty fucked off with the entire thing.
This year, though, I’m just ambivalent about it. And I don’t actually know why.
We’re still being faced with the same inanity and vapid bullshit on TV adverts and the like. We’ve had Christmas Shit™ (cards, confectionary, blah blah) in the shops since September. Now we’re in December they’re playing sodding christmas carols and tunes in the shops and on the radio, and various fuckwits are already blithering about “It’s christmas”. (No it’s fucking not, it’s just December)
And on the face of that paragraph, you’d think I am hating it. But I’m not. I still feel the same, that it is all crap and bollocks, but it’s not enraging me this year the same way it has in the past.
It annoys me that I don’t know why it’s not annoying me as much as usual. But I’m also not going to complain – in some ways it’s quite nice to be a wee bit more tolerant of the whole farce than usual.
I don’t like (let alone love) the season and what it does to people – and I honestly doubt I ever will. But at least this year I also don’t hate it the same way I usually do.
Coming To A Close
Posted: Mon 10 December, 2018 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Out More, London, Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »This weekend, I saw my final performance of the year – I know there’s only three weeks to go, but still, I’m pretty sure I was seeing stuff ’til later in the year last time round.
This weekend I was at the BBC Radio Theatre (as a plus-one for the friend who’d managed to get the tickets) to see Neil Gaiman recording a programme that will go out on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day. As it turned out, he’d also brought along some friends, including Mitch Benn, Peter Capaldi, and some refugees (his words, not mine) from the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. It was a good evening and lot of fun to see. It’ll also be interesting to see what makes the actual broadcast.
The previous weekend, I’d been to see Tamburlaine at the RSC in Stratford for the matinee performance on its final day. I did enjoy it, although some casting choices were a bit odd to me, particularly in the second half, where the same actress is doing two roles – one as the wife of Tamburlaine, and one as the heir of the dead king, aiming to overthrow Tamburlaine. It’s a credit to her that it was impossible to confuse the two roles as she played them, but it still made things rather more complex and odd than they needed to be.
I’ve already got several theatre visits lined up for next year, but just for now it’s on pause. Which is fine by me.
Dickhead
Posted: Fri 7 December, 2018 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Music, Stupidity, Thoughts, Toronto, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »There are times where (as many people already know) I’m an absolute dickhead. This is the (fairly short) tale of one of those times.
One of the reasons I wanted to visit Toronto (which I finally did earlier this year) was because I’ve been a fan of a band called the Cowboy Junkies (who I’ve written about several times, and saw twice in November) for a very long time – since the first time I heard their “Trinity Sessions” album, in fact. The Trinity Sessions was an album that was all recorded at the Holy Trinity church in Toronto, with only one ambisonic microphone to pick up all the voices and instruments. It’s one of my all-time favourite albums. However, I’d never seen a picture of the church. (This is relevant)
Then, on the anniversary of the recording of Trinity Sessions, they put a photo on their Facebook page of the church
And I thought “I recognise that church“. It turns out we’d gone in and visited it while we were in Toronto, and I hadn’t even realised it was the same place. Indeed, we only went in because it looked interesting (and was hidden away down a little side-street, so we’d only glimpsed the place and its architecture) and it turned out to be a great little find, because it’s beautiful inside, as well as having an absolutely massive organ. (Fnarr) And I knew it was called the Holy Trinity church. I just hadn’t connected the two.
So it took me another six months to realise that I’d actually been in the place, despite all the clues that were there.
And that, in this case, is why I’m a dickhead.
Shakespeare Park
Posted: Mon 19 November, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, Creativity, Domestic, Milton Keynes, Thoughts Leave a comment »Last week, I noticed signs around Milton Keynes pointing to a new development of homes, called Shakespeare Park.
I’d really hoped that they would make a big thing of puns/content based on Shakespeare stuff, but no, it’s all very dull.
OK, they’ve named most of the house types after Shakespearean characters – but still, there’s so much more they could’ve done
“Shakespeare Park – ”
- it’s no ordinary hamlet
- Your home, as you like it
- Your midsummer night’s dream
And that’s just off the top of my head. I could probably come up with a bundle more.
I just think it’s a bit sad that Taylor Wimpey don’t seem to have tried…
Nasturtia
Posted: Tue 13 November, 2018 Filed under: Domestic, Food, Getting Old(er), Health, Single Life, Solo Dining, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »So far this week, I have been Unwell. It was very similar to the episode in February where I was also spectacularly Unwell – thankfully this time wasn’t as bad, but it’s still been no fun. Well, I say it’s been better, whereas actually it’s been just as nasty, but in different ways – and I’ve been more prepared this time to deal with the warning signs early.
In February I wasn’t sure what had caused it – I’d had a meal at a (now closed) Michelin-starred restaurant, and was pretty certain that it wasn’t food-poisoning in any way that I recognised. This weekend was the same, no real idea of causation – although I’d had another couple of spectacular meals in the preceding days.
However, there’s only been a couple of common ingredients through the various meals, and with the whole set of symptoms being so similar, they’re what I’m looking at in particular. (And this is also where it’s really useful to have taken photos of the stuff I’ve eaten, to be able to use them for reference on stuff like this)
The conclusion I’m being drawn to is that I have a *really* unpleasant reaction to either nasturtiums or marigolds. It takes about 24-36 hours to kick in, and then yeah, no fun at all. In the case of this week, the lunch I had in Manchester on Saturday was very heavy in nasturtium garnishes, and I think that’s what triggered everything. And looking at WebMD (via a Google search) I found that nasturtium can cause stomach upsets (look in the “side effects” tab) – which is one nice term for what’s affected me on both occasions.
I may at some point decide to experiment a bit, by trying another meal with nasturtium garnishes and see if the results are the same – but it’s not something I’m going to be eager to do.
In the meantime, it’s not an allergic reaction – and I’ll never be dramatic enough as to claim it as one – but at the same time I think it’s going to be something I might need to start mentioning to restaurants when I book in. Which sucks, but when all’s said and done, it could be a lot worse. And at least I’ve now got a fairly good idea of what’s going on.
Daft as a Brush
Posted: Mon 12 November, 2018 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Food, Getting Organised, Introspective, London, Personality, Public Transport, Solo Dining, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »In an ongoing thread, there are times where I realise I really am a silly sod. This is another of those things.
A fair while back, the Cowboy Junkies (one of my all-time favourite bands) announced they were coming to the UK. It had been a fair while since they’d been here last, and even better, it was happening the weekend after my birthday. However, that was also the end of the week I was already booked up to spend in Northumberland, which was a Friday to Friday booking. And they were playing Manchester on the Saturday, and London on the Sunday.
So I figured what the hell, it’ll be a weekend, and booked tickets for both Manchester and London. Well I was up in the area anyway, and the London one was billed as being different to the Manchester one (although that has since changed). So why not? (Other than mileage, of course) I’d drive over from Northumberland to Manchester on the Friday, stay in a hotel overnight, do the gig on the Saturday night, and then drive home afterwards. Easy.
And then the plan changed a bit. When I saw the play Queen Margaret in Manchester, I realised how painless the journey was by train. So instead I figured I could drive home from Northumberland on the Friday – allowing me to get laundry and so on done in the evening and so on. Then on the Saturday I could get the train up, have lunch somewhere new and fancy that had grabbed my attention, then walk down to the hotel, check-in, drop off bag etc., go to the gig, stay overnight on Saturday, train home on Sunday morning, then down to London for Sunday night.
Yes, I’m an idiot, and an absolute loon. But I cut my mileage by taking the train, and improved my own safety by not driving home from Manchester late on a Saturday night. So that, at least, was sensible…