Keep fishing

I'm off...

2007-05-31T13:57:00.000Z

112 posts and almost 2 and a half years in, I'm moving blog sites. Why? Because I want to.

Change your RSS's and stuff and go here:

http://alindop.wordpress.com/

Viva la revolution.

Sweaty palms

2007-05-22T19:11:00.001Z

My shiny Macbook has started going yellow. Yes it's a bit wierd, but for the last 2 months the bits where you rest your hands and press buttons bellow the trackpad have got a wee bit discoloured. So I did some research on the net and found its not an entirely unique problem and the Apple are replacing the covers. So I call up Applecare and 5 minutes later a report has been made and I have to take it into the local Apple retailer and they'll replace the cover.

Mundane insights into my life, indeed. But I tell you this for a reason. Inspired by my friend Beth's bletherings about flirty tech help people (I won't say anything about you encouraging him, Beth), I thought I'd mention how good Apple are (obviously it woul dbe better if the discolouring hadn't happened) and how I can be prejudiced without me realising.

Basically when I called the number, and Indian voice answered. "Oh no", I thought, "even Apple have outsourced to India, this guy will have no idea what I'm talking about". Well, not only did he know exactly what the problem was, he knew all about the shop in Edinburgh as well when I mentioned it. So either Apple train their staff in India exceptionally well, or Apple have a multi-racial staff in the UK. Either way, it doesn't matter. They're doing their job well and my predjudices were unfounded. I repent.

Things to do before I leave.

2007-05-17T17:14:00.000Z

As some of you know, I'm leaving the fair city of Edinburgh in 3 weeks time (well, i'll be back in July, but only for 10 days). As I reflect on my depature, I'm realising there's a lot of things I still haven't down. Therefore, I've created a list of things I'd like to do before I leave.

If you live in Edinburgh it'd be great to have you join me in them (or even suggest things you think I should do). Get in touch!

In no particular order

1. Walk the water of Leith
2. Climb the Scott Monumnet
3. Eat at Khubla Kahns
4. Zoo
5. Go camping again
6. Swim off Portabello beach at night
7. Watch the sun rise from Arthur's Seat/Blackford Hill
8. Drink Pimms in the meadows
9. Go to more museums
10. Get more rounds of pitch and putt in

Five Peak Challenge: Journal

2007-05-14T01:14:00.000Z

It's been a couple of weeks since we completed the 5 Peak challenge (which, to recap, is climbing the highest mountains in Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland all withing 48 hours) and I've finally got around to writing some sort of journal/account of what happened. Hopefully it will be vaguely interesting and possibly even useful for people who want to try a similar thing - web accounts were invaluable to our preparation. Anyway, without further ado..

So, April 27, 2007 12:15am, Ralph and I rock up at the pub where we left the car and attempt to squeeze our bags, pillows and mountains of chocolate. We've hired a 7 seater car and although, there's only 5 of us travelling, there doesn't seem to be much room....anyhow, this process takes all of 2 minutes, giving us plenty of time for a quick Guiness before the pub closes and we take to the roads. Lest you worry, our driver, Peter, goes dry.

1am, Led by the esteemed John Cleese on the SatNav (who seems to particularly favour turning left), we depart. 5 Minutes later, we return as Christian realises he's left his hiking boots behind. Numpty.

And so, we drive to Stranraer. Sleep comes pretty quickly, and I wake up in the ferry terminal. So if anything interesting happened, I missed it.

4:55am The ferry leaves and we all find a bench to lie down on. The most blissful 2 hours of the weekend follow and I wake up to a big bright dawn.

7am Drive out into Belfast and intermittently sleep - those who know me well know that I can sleep pretty much anywhere (although I've not managed to do it underwater yet). However I'm rudely awakened by a billboard poster from the British Heart Foundation, encouraging people to take 30 mins of exercise a day. You might expect it to have pictures of old and overweight people jogging, cycling or swimming, but no, here is a picture of a naked old man and a woman in a swimsuit on a beach next to the word 'sex'. Yes, you can get your 30 minutes by doing it on the beach. Not the most pleasant thought to start the morning.

Ireland's road's are terrible. Their motorways are barely A roads and even John Cleese gets lost. When we eventually get close to the mountain we have to ask a half naked man on a tractor (don't worry, we were nowhere near a beach) what track to go down.

2pm Arrive at Cronin's Yard, the start point. Kit up take pictures and begin the challenge!

2:36pm Start Carrantuohill

6:41pm (4:05 hours) Finish. It's a pretty simple climb - Fortunately it was dry and the Devil's Ladder wasn't too wet, although we all had slips and mini falls coming down. I slipped off a rock with my foot landing on a mini ledge, which if it hadn't been there would have meant a 5 foot drop (still feeling the groin strain 2 weeks later though). The view from the top was gorgeous, just a shame we didn't have long to hang about in the area.

7pm On the road again and as we head out along the road we meet two dogs, a spaniel and red setter, come bounding down the road at full pelt chasing after each other. No owner in sight, just 2 dogs, tongues hanging out having the time of their lives, on a well used road. Weird.

1:10am Arrive in Newcastle for Slieve Donard.

1:20am (10:44) After a briefing from our driver Peter on how to climb the mountain (none of us have done it before), we set off. This is where our months of planning come to the fore as we realise that maybe a map would have been a good idea. "Don't worry" says Peter, "it's dead easy, just follow the river, get out the forest and follow the wall to the top". It takes us approximately 3 minutes and 42 seconds to get lost. We can't find the river and a phone call to Peter ensues. Soon we find the river and something that vaguely resembles a path and head up it. Its pitch black and our lostness has a vague Blair Witch feel to it.

Eventually we come out of the forest after another couple of wrong turns and corrections and set about finding a path. We do so and follow it to a waterfall and start climbing. About half way up it becomes pretty clear that there isn't a path any more (when it becomes almost like rock climbing than actual hiking), and our only hope that people have been this way before is the occasional coke can on a rock. Fortunately for us, there's a lot of moonlight and we can see the summit once we hit the ridge. So we set out in the general direction, hoping we cross a path, which we inevitably don't.

It is at this point, as the wind howls around in the early hours of the morning with the bright light of Newcastle far below, that the first pangs of regret cross my mind: why didn't we bring a map (actually this feeling started as soon as we left the car park)? why aren't I in my bed? why are we doing this stupid thing at all? As a group, we're pretty demoralised, but plod on past false peak after false peak and eventually hit the top, where upon we find the wall. Great - we can follow the right path down! Except there are two walls...

So after some frantic phototaking of us looking quite depressed and some terse phonecalls to peter we head down the wall we think is correct. Inevitably, it's not and we find ourselves somewhere on the wrong side of the mountain. It was at the this point that the chaffage started and the real hero of the expedition came to the fore - Gold Bond extra strength powder. If you're an American guy, you might know what I'm talking about. Anyway, in the end (knowing we had a ferry we HAD to catch) we decided to cut our losses and head for the nearest road and let Peter and Laura in the car find us. This journey took us through a river, drainage works, cow fields, more barbed wire fences than I want to count and a farm (why is it that the gates are never in the corner of the field you expect?)

4:55am (14:19)Arrive at some public toilets at a random place called Bloody Bridge and arrange pick up. Phew! Lesson learned - never climb a mountain you've not done before in the dark without a map. We were stupid and I dread to think what it would have been like had it not been a clear night and the weather been worse.

8:45am Catch the ferry in Dublin. We booked the fast one to save time, which only went and ended up being half an hour late due to engine problems.

11am Get off ferry in Holyhead.

12:28pm (21:52) Get dropped off and start up Snowdon. This turned out to be a pretty dull walk. Loads of people around, literally every man and his dog, which made it hard to set a good pace because you were always trying to get around people in jeans and trainers. Eventually get to the top to discover that they've knocked down the cafe and the summit resembles a cross between a building site and a company picnic. Take a picture and get down as quickly as possible. It's at this point that Ralph starts having trouble with his knees (the Pyg Track is almost completely made from flat boulders, giving us a lot of impact stress on the legs), but we get down without too much bother.

3:45pm (25:09). Get down, stretch off and get out of there.

9:00pm (30:24) Start Scafell Pike. Due to the clear weather it's a good hour or so before we have to use the head lamps. On the way up we meet a lot of 3 Peakers coming down and also manage to avoid making the wrong turning which meant we had to go straight up a scree slope when we did the 3 peaks last year.

As I reach the trig point, I let out a (deserved) cheer, upon which I spy something that looks like a bag on a nearby rock. There's no-one else on the summit, so I go over to check it out and trip over a bloke in a sleeping bag. Fortunately he doesn't seem to upset and we sit around eating our cereal bars trying not to make too much noise.

On the way down we pass a few more 3 peakers looking pretty knackered and then see the most wonderful shooting star I've ever seen. It was big and fat and looked more like a firework than anything else. Beautiful.

12:50am (34:14) Get back to the car to find Peter and Laura (finally) asleep. Wake them up and start the long drive north.

According to Ralph, who couldn't sleep (I got the longest undisturbed sleep of the trip), Peter broke several land speed records trying to make up time. I wouldn't like to comment.

6:40am Arrive in Fort William for Ben Nevis. Get out of the car and stare at the bags for a long time. Motivation at this point is pretty low, but at least the sun is still shining. None of the people we invited to walk with us were able to make it - not sure if this is a hindrance or a blessing. We try and stuff more pasta down our throats, and Christian and Ralph chug another of the evil Lidl energy drinks, and eventually, we're ready to start walking.

7:09am (40:33) Finally set off. Half an hour in, for the first time in the trip, we're overtaken - by a lone Aussie guy who seems to be walking on jet powered boots. Somewhere near the top, in the midst of the zig-zag bit of the path, we all crash. Fortunately, the last reserves of nuts come to the rescue and we power to the top. There's a lot less snow than last year (global warming?!?) but the view is stunning. It's an awesome to be feeling to be at the top early on a Sunday morning, before church has even started! At some point while we're up there, we realise that if we get down in less than 2 hours 20 mins, we'll also complete the 3 Peak challenge in under 24 hours (we still have about 5 hours to spare for the 5 peaks) so, with a new target to drive us on, we set off.

We still get overtaken by the fell runner (maybe he was training for this INSANITY ) on the way down, but a bit of fast walking and a little jogging later, we make it to the bottom with 10 minutes to spare!

12:22pm In the end we finished in a total of 45 hours, 44 minutes (and completed the 3 peak challenge in 23 hours, 50 minutes)! We celebrated with a pint at the Nevis Inn (who's food I can highly recommend!) - honestly, beer has never tasted so good!

So to conclude this rather long winded account, advice I would give people intending to do this would be 3 fold:

Have a map for every mountain
Have a car with ample space (you REALLY don't want to be crushed in the back of a Corsa or something) and a designated driver.
Bring something for the chaffage. You'll thank me for this later.

Thanks to those of you who have supported us throughout this - we've currently raised around £2,500!

And here's a little video of our adventure!

You only sing when you're winning

2007-05-08T15:35:00.000Z

On Saturday, I won my first ever trophy. In the past, I've been on the losing team in a football cup final (4-3 after extra time. Nightmare), and more recently been losing in abandoned cup finals (reply next Saturday, incidently) and won some lower divisional stuff in intermural leagues at university (a whole 3 medals to my name), but on Saturday, i finally was part of winning something worth something.

The Haggis Cup was held in Glasgow and featured teams from Dublin, London, Brussels/Strasbourg, Glasgow and us, and to cut a long and not very dramatic story short, we won every game (beating London twice, including the final). The satisfying thing about it was that it was really competetive. It wasn't a bunch of hungover students who halfheartedly play on a Saturday afternoon and win because the other time have got a bigger headache - everyone REALLY wanted to win. Especially London, who were satisfactoraly agressive and suitably angry with everyone except themselves when they started to lose (we even beat them in one game having had a man sent off for retaliating to a smack in the jaw and punching a guy in the face). It didn't rain and my ankles held up. Good times.

I still haven't found what I'm looking for

2007-05-01T12:07:00.000Z

5 Peak Challenge completed: 45 hours 44 minutes

So my feet survived. I was blessed with a blister free hike! Can't say the same for the others unfortunately...and the chaffage, that's a whole new story...

Anyway, there'll be a journal up sometime soon, but for those who haven't seen it on Facebook, here's a link to a selection of pictures. There will hopefully be a video being made sometime soon too.

Question of the day:
Is it possible for a vegetarian in the UK to eat a sufficiently nutritious and varied diet of locally produced food or do they have to rely on imports, or food from heated greenhouses grown out of season? If the latter is the case, is it 'more' ethical (making the assumption that animal rights has ethical value) to be a vegetarian or be an omnivore, eating locally produced meat and vegetables?

The only way is up

2007-04-26T23:02:00.000Z

This weekend I'm going mountain climbing. In a rather serious manner. This is going to hurt a lot. Prepare yourself for pictures of my feet in shreds.

In other news, I bought flights to Honduras today. Prepare yourself for pictures of idyllic beauty.

Adios.

Cuban nightmares

2007-04-21T19:46:00.000Z

Yeah yeah yeah, it's been a while.

So for those following with a keen eye, today was the cup final. The less said the better, as we were losing 2-0 when the match was abondoned in the 55th minute as our captain broke his fibula, ruptured his ligaments and dislocated his ankle. I will have nightmares about looking at it for a long long time.

My afternoon was slightly more pleasant, spent showing my buddy Zac around town, culminating in whisky and cuban cigars outside a pub in Rose Street. Nothing particularly abnormal about that, until we spied a group of guys starting to chat up a bunch of women on a hen weekend in the pub opposite. Again, nothing particularly unusal, until after further spying, we spotted one guy wearing ski boots.

They were indeed a random bunch, some in surf wear, others in public school attire, and were also chaperoned by a small cocker spaniel (no doubt to keep the ladies' interest). All was quite pleasant, until one chap decided to impress the women by drinking a pint by pouring it into his mouth from a distance of one foot above his motuh. The next guy decided to go one further and drank thirstily from his sweaty ski boot. What shenannigans. And the whisky was beautiful. Shame my throat is now more sensitive than the East/West Berlin border (I watched The Lives Of Others last night).

I'm gonna miss this town.

Feminism is evil

2007-04-11T22:45:00.000Z

Feminism is the root cause of our society's (I'm talking UK here) ailments. Discuss.

I wonder whether the title will get the googlers in. :)

It's not quite Wembeley, but still...

2007-03-31T12:16:00.000Z

In case any of you were wondering, we won the semi final 2-0 against the league leaders (We're 4th bottom)! First clean sheet in a while too...April 21st is the final. Hurrah!

Self Tanning Lotion

2007-03-29T17:34:00.000Z

So Sunday began the trip to Skye. The original departure time of 12pm was well missed by Christian's lameness and arrival 3 hours late (which incidentally left me to look after a girl I'd never met before, who we were giving a lift to, for 3 hours in our flat), meaning we finally arrived at the car park in the dark around 8. The one advantage of this was that we got to drive through the mountains on the approach to Kyle of Lochalsh at sunset, but then I cocked up all bar one of the pictures at Eilean Donan castle :(.

However, there was a lot of moonlight, so the 5km walk to our little bothy which we would call home for the next 3 nights, wasn't too bad and head torches weren't required. For those of you who don't know what a bothy is - it's basically a little hut with no heating (bar an open fire), water or power, situated somewhere in the mountains that hikers can use.

Ours was situated in the most gorgeous bay, right next the sea and right at the foot of some not insignificiantly sized mountains (The little white hut in the corner of the picture. And fortunately for us, we got the best weather of the year so far. Two full days of beautiful sunshine and just enough breeze to stop you getting too hot on the climbs.

And so, that is how we spent our days - hiking. The first day we climbed ever single one of the 928 metres up Bla Bheinn, which allegedly has the best summit view of all the mountians in Skye - looking out over the Black Cuillins. And the second day, we took an 8 or 9 mile walk around the sea, a big loch over some hills and far away.

Much fun was had by all, we saw some cool wildlife - deer, a golden eagle (pretty darn rare) and some rabbits, some of us went skinny dipping in the river, most of us went in the sea (it was so hot and flipping gorgeous, we forgot about how cold the actual water was), and all of us had the liberating experience of doing a number 2 in the open air (under moonlight was my favourite). It was also encouraging to see my ankles hold up and realise that I am actually fit enough for the 5 peak challenge (more about that soon).

More pictures can be found here

And then I came home to 42 new emails, almost all of which were important and work related. Joys.

Tomorrow is another exiciting day though. My football team have an important cup semi final clash (against a team we beat 3-1 last Saturday) and I'm heading off to Spring Harvest. This is a christian conference that was a large part of my growing up during my formative years and for a time was the only place I could seem to find girls who liked me. I think I went 19 years on the trot, but this is the first time I've been back for 3 or 4. It will also be interesting going with a different perspective - I'm not a teenager, I'm not a student, I'm a 'full-time Christian worker' (whatever that really means), and it'll be fun to approach it from a different side.

I bore myself...

2007-03-24T15:09:00.000Z

This is my 100th post. Who could know I could write such rubbish, so inconsistently yet, consistently enough to make it to 100. I certainly didn't. Anyway, in honour of the occasion, here's 100 things you might not know about me (and probably didn't want to either).

1. Alasdair is the Scottish Gaelic version of Alexander. Very few people spell it right.
2. The name means defender of men. Grr.
3. I've had many nicknames in my life, most of which aren't an indication of my character:
4. Al
5. Ally
6. I really hate being called ally
7. Bongo
8. Ster
9. Stud
10. Studling
11. Sleazy Al (This REALLY wasn't a reflection on my character)
12. Northern Al
13. Lundip
14. Alan Dop
15. Dop
16. Dopface
17. I'd be happy if people just called me Alasdair.
18. My 18th birthday was spent mostly on a train.
19. My 19th birthday was marred by the Big Brother final
20. My 20th Birthday was spent in a field somewhere in the Scottish highlands
21. My 21st Birthday was spent on my own in LA after a girl (who I was in no way romantically attached to) ditched me.
22. My 22nd birthday was spent recovering from infected jellyfish stings in a field.
23. I still have the scars
24. I say that because I've been told chicks dig scars.
25. I also have a scar from when my sister bit me when I was a kid.
26. So far, the chicks haven't particularly digged the scars.
26. I still love Bon Jovi as much as I did when I was 13
27. But don't like their newer stuff so much.
28. I'm pretentious enough to be proud of my eclectic taste in music.
29. But don't know enough about it to be a music snob
30. Yet I'm still proud enough not to initially like something (regardless of how good it is), simply because it's popular.
31. I used to play the saxophone more than I did pretty much anything else.
32. I haven't played it for over 18 months
33. This makes me sad.
34. Even though I know spend a lot more time playing sports than I do playing music, I still think about myself as a musician.
35. I have spent more than 3 days of my life underwater.
36. Only some of this time was spent being cold.
37. I hate cats
38. I love dogs
39. Small rodents I'm ambivalent towards.
40. I REALLY love the sea.
41. Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not in love with fish - I merely love the who oceanic ecosystem. Fish included.
42. Shipwrecks are my favourite thing to dive on.
43. Making up this list is more boring than I expected.
44. Maybe I'm not as interesting as I expected.
45. I used to be bullied at school and succeeded in getting the bully to miss sports day (Go letters from mum!)
46. I used to a lot shorter and chubbier and played hooker in rugby at school
47. My Chemistry teacher in 6th form had a chart showing how many times people int he class had made me blush.
48. So they shouted vagina and penis a lot. I stopped blushing soon after.
49. I dance a mean waltz
50. I dont dance anything else very well.
51. Apart from ceilidh dances. Which I'm pretty good at.
52. Funk music will get me dancing regardless of my ability, every time.
53. I once spent a lot of money on an oversizes cushion
54. But it gave me a good story
55. In another life, I would like to have been a professional photographer.
56. Or a professional footballer.
57. Or be born in Australia and be a professional Aussie Rules player.
58. But I'm very happy with the life God has given me.
59. I cry at inappropriate times.
60. Such as when I saw Shamu at Sea World.
61. By cry, really I mean 'well up'.
62. I think 'The Notebook' sucks.
63. I'm very opinionated.
64. I really like baked beans.
65. I don't really like chips.
66. I really like fancy sausages.
67. I hate courgettes.
68. I like the idea of having a mysterious persona
69. I'm a commitmentphobe.
70. I would love to live in Edinburgh for the rest of my life.
71. That's not gonna happen though.
72. Newcastle's a good second best.
73. And if I end up on a tropical island somewhere, I cordially invite you to come visit.
74. The only Russian phrase I know is how to order 5 beers.
75. I have only been to one foam party in my life.
76. I'd rather not go to another.
77. I'm allergic to something.
78. The something is possibly mussels.
79. Last May, I nearly died after eating a plate of them.
80. Well, I didn't really die, but I got very ill and nearly passed out.
81. I'm eating a lot more icecream recently.
82. Which leads me to fear I'm becoming too feminine.
83. Which is why I'm not cutting my hair or shaving my beard at the moment.
84. I actually have a baby face, which is the real reason why I have long hair and a beard.
85. Having long hair is much better than it being short.
86. I wish 86=100
87. I'm much more proud of my Scottish ancestry than I am of my English
88. I pick scabs and eat them.
89. I also pick my nose and eat it.
90. It is maybe these that the chicks dont dig, rather than the scars.
91. I have a complete inability to be tidy, as much as I wish I could.
92. My favourite vitamin is vitamin D
93. My favourite food is bread sauce.
94. If I could eat cookie dough all day without it making me sick or fat, I would.
95. My BMI is an apparently perfect 22.5
96. I wish I wasn't so cynical.
97. I have Oriental blood in me.
98. But no-one really knows much about it.
99. If you have read this far, I salute you.
100. .................

I've left 100 blank so you can add something which you think I've missed that you think should be known. A little challenge for all of you who read, but never comment...

99 Red Love Balloons

2007-03-22T22:04:00.000Z

The title refers to Gordon Brown's budget and the associated labour tainted balloons from westminster. If you don't understand, don't worry.

Anyway, forget 300, 100 is on it's way!

Ambiguity is my new friend

Curry with moderately famous people

2007-03-17T15:00:00.000Z

Tuesday saw the return of the public debate to Edinburgh University, when 2 Oxford professors, Alistair Mcgrath (doctorates in biophysics and theology) and Peter Atkins (Chemist) debated "Darwin and Humanity: Should we rid the mind of God?". Student apathy has been made much of this year, with the Student Union AGM struggling to get 100 people at it and was nowhere near getting close to numbers needed to ratify the votes. So it was encouraging to see the largest lecture theatre on campus (allegedly seats 400-500) full to the rafters. In fact, a good 150 or so were turned away as well, which was a huge shame, but i good indicator of the fact that people are actually thinking about these things.

Actually, I was one of those turned away. But after a few sneaky dashes through fire-exits and doors with big no-entry signs on it, I ended up sitting in the dark behind the stage, unable to see a thing, but able to hear everything just fine. As it turned out, the debate itself was a little disappointing. The title didn't really lend itself to clashes and most of what the speakers said was rhetoric, keeping things within their camp. Dr Atkins said we should rid the mind of God because it was a delusion for the weak and led to wars etc., Dr McGrath argued that God provided a framework for life. Peter Atkins also said a few interesting things such as how he didn't be live there were ANY 'why' questions that mattered, only 'how'. And also how he always thought the least complex explanation was right. for example, God creating the universe is more complex than nothing creating it in his eyes and therefore not viable.

Things only really got interesting in the question time, when someone asked why the least complex answer should necessarily be right, which he didn't really have an answer for. It also threatened to get interesting when the speakers flirted with talking about moral absolutes, but there wasn't really time. After the debate I was invited out for dinner with the speakers and some other Christians and philosophy types so ended up at the end of the table with a friend from London and a couple of philosophy students. The curry was very good. The conversation was, shall we say, 'interesting', but very good for me learning how to be graceful in the face of someone taking cheap shots and just on the lookout for a fight. That said, I had some great conversation with the other girl at dinner and have had some really interesting and fruitful times over the week with other friends who were there.

On reflection, I should have written this on Tuesday. The account of my daring caper with another Christian worker to make sure we were able to hear the debate, despite the authorities attempting to kick us out at least 3 times, would have been much funnier.

Only 2 posts until blog number 100. Look out for something special. Probably.

For those that wanted photos of my alternative parting, I didn't take any. Have one of the results of my football match today instead.

And I finally finished my bumper newsletter this week. If you haven't received it and would like to, let me know.

Odd.

2007-03-13T01:01:00.000Z

Today, I parted my hair on the other side of my head. It felt strange and looked almost emo.

At least dogs love us.

2007-03-09T21:06:00.000Z

This week I realised I don't like people. Now it may be just that I'm a grumpy cynic (I can almost hear the dissident cries of "No, Alasdair, you're a great big ray of bubbly sunshine all the time!"), but this society depresses me.

Leaving aside all the sociological stuff about broken families (The Scotsman's front page today ran an article on how divorce rates have risen 19% and nearly 50% of kids are born outside of marriage), failing schools and a TV generation, I don't think people like each other anymore. It's not just me. People don't seem to like anyone else.

The two things that have stimulated this thought process: On Wednesday I went to see The Good Shepherd. This is a LONG film. Not as long as Lord of the Rings, but definately less entertaining. It just seemed that nobody could take this kind of tedium or bum ache - the couple next to us talked all the way through, and a girl in front even had a phone conversation 20 minutes before the end (ok, it was whispered, but I could hear the guy talking on the other end). So the point I'm driving at is that none of these people had any care for anyone else.

And today, I was having a retreat day and went up Blackford Hill to pray and read the Bible. There were a lot of dog walkers around and for some reason (it must be my bubbly sunshiny character) a decided to smile at everyone I walked past. Not one person returned it.

So I'm losing the thrust of this, and because I can't be bothered to proof it and re-edit, I'll summarize. This society is depressing: people are inward looking and largely have little respect for the rest of the community outside their friendship group. David Cameron reckons the breakdown of family values is to blame. I'm inclined to agree. Maybe I'll vote for him this time.

The Big Blue

2007-03-06T20:34:00.000Z

So diving was great. I was wrong about the weather thouhg. It sucked. Typical Scotland on Saturday - torrential rain for 20 minutes, then 20 minutes of brilliant sunshine, wash, lather, repeat. And then on Sunday, it was just the torrential rain. They even got a (possibly first ever) hurricane warning for Monday morning (don't think they got one though). And my dry suit was leaking (I need a new neck seal), so I ended up being damp and cold for most the day. Apart from that, it was great. Once under the water, the rain doesn't matter so much.

We dived the Breda and did a few other scenic things. Some people saw a shark (don't get too excited, it was only a dogfish), but my highlight was a mad nudibranch I'd never seen before. Saturday also involved an interesting "made up 80s super hero night". I'm not really sure who I ended up being, but apparently I bore resembelence to a character called Al from Quantum Leap. A show I've never seen. Decide for yourself..

However, the weekend's exertions did raise an interesting thought - I've currently completed about 170 dives, which equatates to 85 hours at an average of half an hour a dive. That's three and a half days underwater in the last 5 years. Which I think is pretty cool. People come up with all sorts of stats about how long you spend eating, watching tv, sleeping etc., but this isn't just some menial task, this is breathing from compressed air tens of metres below the surface of the sea. It just isn't a natural thing to do. It is, however, really cool and is currently ranking alongside Aussie Rules as my favourite thing to do.

Today it was sunny. I wore sunglasses for the first time outside my car this year. Vitamin D coursed through my body and has made me happy. It's been a good day.

Edit: Another reason why I don't use Xanga. I clicked the worng part of the page and was directed to a personals site for 'Big Beautiful Women'. Not nice. Not that I'm sizeist or anything.

Yessir

2007-03-02T11:55:00.000Z

Yesterday, whilst walking through George Square, I passed a woman walking with (presumably) her son, going home from school. Nothing odd about this, except the kid was dressed entirely in army desert fatigues. Jacket, trousers, boots - even helmet (although this was painted for jungle warfare). The kid couldn't have been more than 8. Very surreal. I would have got a picture, but I was too afraid of the kid attacking me with a swiss army knife if I pulled out my camera.

In other news, I'm going diving in Oban for the weekend today. Hurrah. And the weather finally got better, just in time.

Did I tell the story about my car breaking down and when the AA turned up, discovering it had an embarrasingly simple problem? Oh well another time maybe...

To make up for lack of child pictures, I googled "Kid, camouflage" and this came up. He certainly isn't British. And he's a hunter, not an army kid, but never mind...

Ye of little faith...

2007-02-26T16:49:00.000Z

What good is a man
Who won't take a stand
What good is a cynic
With no better plan Ben Harper, Better Way

What good is a cynic? I would describe myself as cynical. I can't help it. I think most British people are. According to one friend, it's a result of us being 'bruised and damaged idealists', never the same after 2 world wars. Whatever the reason, we're a miserable nation. Now, I don't mind being cynical. It's part of me, and I quite like me. But what good am I without a better plan?

I was eating lunch today and Ben Harper's music video came on the TV and that lyric really struck me. The song wasn't even supposed to be on. The presenter had announced a Flaming Lips song, and it's title came up in front of Ben Harper's face. What good is a cynic with no better plan.

This week we have been hosting 31 Canadians (if any of you are reading this, thank you SO much!) who are associated with Agape (Campus for Christ as it's called) over there. If I'm honest, I was a bit nervous about them coming and being a burden and a pain to look after. In reality, they couldn't have been a bigger blessing. They came with expectation, faith and positivity, blowing my cynicism out of the water. Over the course of the week 8 (EIGHT) people decided to follow Jesus for the first time. That's more than I've heard about directly for the last 4 months.

It's easy to be pessimistic about our culture, the spiritual climate and lame Christian attitudes (myself included). And there are somethings its good to be cynical about because it may well drive change (and if you've got an hour maybe I'll share them with you). But there is a better plan, and if I don't have one, God certainly does. For all of us.

I'm learning.

Forget-Me-Not

2007-02-25T01:11:00.000Z

So, after the rather problematic loss of my keys last Thursday, I have finally decided to compile a list of things my absent minded nature has caused me to misplace. I was going to do this two weeks ago, when another Thursday (these days seem to be bad for me) mishap involved the loss of my wallet on a bus. But the keys put me over the edge.
I told my mum I was going to make this list and she told me not to bother because I'd only lose it. But I feel it's gonna be pretty safe if I post it on the net...

In no particular order:

1. Keys (retrieved when person who's house I left them at discovered them several hours later)
2. Wallet (retrieved when kind person(s) handed it in to the police who used ingenious methods to contact me)
3. Phone (retrieved when man who ran a retreat centre found it in the muddy puddle I'd dropped it in)
4. Dropped at an Electric Six gig (Incredible, incidentally) (lost forever...)
5. Leather jacket, containing wallet (left in toilets at Vienna airport, and retreived when hours later (without me realising it was actually missing), my uncle whilst waiting to pick someone up heard my name on the PA).
6. Passport (retrieved when person sitting next to me on the plane found it where i had left it and chased after me)
7. Leather jacket containing minidisc player - left at a hotel in the country where I'd played a gig. Remembered the morning after and due to Christmas holidays back home, wasn't able to pick it up for a month
8. Wallet insert containing drivers license, student cards, free train pass and other important documents (retreived when the random person who picked it up recognised me in the street from my picture and gave it back to me).

Notable near miss: During the Three Peak Challenge, whilst changing trousers at the end of the Scafell Pike climb, I left my wallet, phone and keys on the roof car. Then got in the car and we drove off. I remembered roughly half a mile later. By some miracle, the car roof had a lip to it, and the things had all got trapped there.

There it is. I'm sure its incomplete and will definately be added to in the future. If anyone knows of any magic cure for the absent mind, I'd love to hear it.

Edit: So I forgot about the favourit jacket I left on a train, the jacket I left in a swimming pool changing room containing my favourite hat, a favourite sweatshirt left in a gym, the hoodie left on the meadows, the football boots also left on the meadows, and the beloved Buff, left somewhere....All never to be returned

Baa.

2007-02-16T16:08:00.000Z

Well, I haven't read much poetry recently, hence the distinct dearth of such postings over the last 3 weeks. Instead I have been working like a bandit. (Although, do bandit's work really hard??)

Anyway, this link has to be shared. Thanks to Red and Josiah for the tip.

The Fainting Goats

A little more poetic

2007-01-20T12:11:00.000Z

To sinful patterns of behaviour that never get confronted or and changed,
Abilities and gifts the never get cultivated and deployed-
Until weeks become months
And months turn into years
And one day you're looking back on a life of
Deep intimate gut wrenchingly honest conversations you never had;
Great bold prayers you never prayed,
Exhilarating risks you never took,
Sacrificial gifts you never offered,
Lives you never touched,
And you're sitting in a recliner with a shriveled soul.
And forgotten dreams,
And you realise there was a world of desperate need,
And a great God calling you to be part of something bigger than yourself -
You see the person you could have become but did not;
You never followed your calling.
You never got out of the boat.

Let us not be those who never risk but those who are the first to climb over the side.

Not quite Agincourt, but.....(something meaningful for once)

2007-01-15T16:47:00.002Z

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk to failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

So, the man (or woman) who does not risk, is not free. The man who lets his actions be determined by uncertanties that the future may or may not hold, is not free. He is controlled by the future.

Jesus said: "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6: 31-34)

Blaise Pascal:

“The present is never our goal: the past and present are our means: the future alone is our goal. Thus, we never live but we hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so.

So it is my hope and prayer that I never live my life bound by 'what if's'; that I live in the 'now' using whatever God has given me and the time He has allowed.

Let us be the people who risk and are free.

One step beyond

2006-12-28T13:19:00.000Z

Here is the answer you've all been waiting for. Once again I'm sat in Black Medicine as my dastardly flatmate has run off with his router, so my time is limited, but at least the coffee is good.

So last Friday, I made the decision to leave Agape in the summer and return to marine biology. This will most likely mean initially returning to Newcastle to do a masters in Tropical Coastal Management. Those who know me pretty well will know that this has not been undertaken lightly, and if there's one thing I've learned, don't give yourself 6 months to make a decision - it's far too long!

But I have prayed and thought about this long and hard and really believe that this is where God wants me for the moment. The pros and cons lists had many reasons for doing both, and in the end I had to go with the heart I believe God is giving me.

This doesn't mean that I will cease to be a missionary, by any means. My context has just changed. God, who I believe to be the one unchanging truth in this world, will continue to be the center of my life, and the reason for everything I enter into.

So there you have it. My life is about to change yet again. Sorry to keep you waiting this long. And sorry you've had to find out about this this way if you haven't seen me face to face. Thanks to all of you who have prayed for me and helped me through this process!

Once more into the breach, dear friends

2006-12-22T13:04:00.000Z

Many of you have been asking me recently how my decision making is going regarding next year (for those of you who haven't, this is about whether I commit long-term to Agape, or return to marine biology). You'll be glad to know, I've reached a decision - not everyone will be happy, some will not be suprised. And I'll write more fully about it when I have more than 10 minutes battery left on my laptop and am not stuck using the internet in a cafe when I should be packing my bag to go home for Christmas...

2006-12-03T16:35:00.000Z

I'm sure I have valuable things to say. I'm sure most the people who write blogs feel they have valuable things to say, but how many of us actually do, or at least how many of us actually manage to convey it in meaningful and instructive ways. With the regularity of my blogs falling to under a week, and the content of it sometimes actually resulting in a net loss of brain capacity once you've read it, my readership has gone down. Or at least no-one bothers commenting any more.

Isn't that what all bbudding writers want? Just on eperson to write a comment? To give them a shred of self worth? To make that 5 minutes, half an hour or whatever spent writing actually seem worth it?

My reasons for writing stuff here are pretty unclear. I originally started it as a way to keep people informed about what's going on with my ministry up here, but nobody ever really seemed to bother with that (although in case you're wondering, its very busy, I'm in the middle of sorting out trips to Lithuania, hosting people from Canada and orgnasising a couple fo film festivals along with all the usual stuff), so it became an outlet for random stuff.

Right now, I'm sat prone on the lovesac after wrecking my ankle (the other one this time) in a classic rendition of Sod's Law. So i've got nothing better to do than write drivel. Actually if you think about it, not one jot of what I've written so far has had any point to it.

But as usual I will insert the promise to write more regularly, and more relevantly. And who knows, maybe people will start reading more and giving me that little bit more sense of worht to the world.

As a reward for reading so much rubbish, follow this link for some YouTube fun

John Piper is Bad - the video

2006-11-24T10:36:00.001Z

My word, this made me laugh

I'm lost....no, I'm really lost.

2006-11-16T01:11:00.000Z

Stories stories. I feel obliged to write something seeing as I'm off to Skye tomorrow and will e away from the entire world of communications (except TV) for 4 days.

I'm really at a loss to write anything of worth; I said I'd write about last weekend (well, 10 days ago) and the diving jaunt, but I'm out of wittism energy. Lets see how it goes anyway.

So we went off to Loch Fyne for the Uni dive club training weekend. The weather was, as usual damp and grey (except the early morning of saturday - see pics here) but the banter was high and generally we had a lot of fun. I learned the joys of driving a transit van whilst towing a boat and how not to take out the wings of parked cars. Quality whisky was consumed and deep, spiritual conversations were had. And then on sunday, all hell broke loose. First one girl had to go to hospital (an impressive 2 ambulances turned up) for a few hours to treat shortness of breath and a high pulse brought on by breathing salt water....and then on the way home, the transit van had a wee accident (I wasn't driving this time) and after nosing the car in front (with near on a ton of weight behind it), decided it wasnt going to go anywhere any time soon. It was a looong day.

With an absence of anything else to say, can I point you to this, for genuine, laugh out loud entertainment.

Because I know Gayle will be reading this...

2006-11-11T21:59:00.000Z

Well I'm a lame-ass, but finally, here's the story of the hostel. My apologies in that it will lack the humour and relevance that it might have done, had i written immediately after the event, a full 12 days ago.

Anyway, so 2 weekends ago, the aussie rules boys took a trip to Galway, Ireland to play a game against Dublin and watch the first test of the International Rules game against Ireland and Australia. Booking hostels is a bit of a nightmare because its the Irish bank holiday weekend and a ton of people are also coming to watch the game, but we manage to get a room for 7 of us at a delightfully named place called the Salmon Wier.

12 Euros a night. Turns out you get what you pay for. For those who google the salmon wier hostel, Galway, and my page turns up, dont go. Our room was a 12 bed dorm, with approximately a foot of space to walk between. Most the beds were taken up by apparentyl long term residents hanging suits and stuff off the bed. But hey, its a bed and a roof over the head. It has a 3am curfew, but we can live that (just about).

We go out, drink some Guiness, listen to some Commitments-style band and most of us get up at 2. I wake at 9:30 to an eastern european accent (you'll have to use your imagination here) shouting "you have 30 minutes to get out!" and "I can make this worse! I will throw your stuff on the street". Oooh, I think, someone's getting kicked out. Until I hear him say "all of you! get out". And it slowly dawns that we're all getting kicked out.

To cut this story slightly shorter, basically we established that apparently someone had arrived at 5am, and someone had let them in. This had woken a couple of people and they'd complained. Now it's important to realise that at no stage was a direct allegation made against any specific person, and also that its a FLIPPING HOSTEL. People come in and out. You wake up, you go to sleep. In my opinon if there's rules against coming back late, then there should be rules against getting up early. Noone wants to be woken at 7:30am to the sight of naked rambler arse (an incident from a cycling trip in Yorkshire).

Anyway, Eastern European justice (see the trial of Michael Shields for an example) appeared to prevail. He point blank refused to even talk to us about it, apart from to repeatedly tell us to leave and hand over the money we'd paid in advance for the Saturday night. I'm not normally an angry person, but this was pretty ridiculous. I've never heard of anyone getting kicked out of a hostel except for attempted arson or walking in on Women only dorms (Monterey, CA).

Anyway, by some miracle, we got a room in another hostel, run by a nice Irish bloke with no curfew. We lost our game to Dublin, blaming the weather (lots of rain, unsurprisingly), Australia lost to Ireland in the last minute and generally good craic was had. But never go to the Salmon Wier. And if your interested in some mediocre pictures, check out flickr.

Next Blog installment, the story of last weekend's diving trip to the west coast - fireworks, 2 ambulances, hospitals, underwater jeeps and transit van crashes.

2006-11-01T17:58:00.001Z

Question: how hard is it to get kicked out of a hostel?

Edit...This question has an amusing story attached to it. I should have written it earlier, but I didn't. So you're gonna have to wait until next week for it. Bet you can't wait.

I'm I selling you out?

2006-10-24T23:19:00.000Z

Today I was walking up one of the Closes that lead from the mound to the Royal Mile and in a hidden courtyard spied two men fighting with broadswords. The ceased before I thought of whiping out my camera, but it brightened my day.

In other news, I watched part of some program, the name of which escapes me, but it was about a load of teenagers from different backgrounds who went off to live together to prove to their parents that they were mature enough to be independant and should be treated as an adult. My emotional response to this reminded why I should never be a youth worker, and if I do, the police should be warned first.

Yeah, I'm More Than Fine.

2006-10-22T23:25:00.000Z

They say a picture says a thousand words. This was taken on Friday Oct 13.

A full 18 days before Halloween and an even fuller 73 before Christmas. And I have no idea how long these had been up before I took the picture. A thousand words would probably not be enough to express my ire. I understand the marketability of Christmas, but is there a single benefit of putting this up so ludicrously early. It almost makes arson worthwhile.

The place in question , incidentally, is the club Why Not? (which lends itself to the huge numbers of obvious jokes, including, why not just keep the christmas decorations in a box for another 6 weeks?) which is in Edinburgh.

Incidentally, this is the first note I've written on the new Mac. It rocks. Bye bye Mr PC. Forever.

Proud Edward's Army

2006-10-08T09:08:00.000Z

Corporate joy is a strange thing. Pack yourself into a pub full of smelly guys, where there is so little space you don't stand a chance of getting to the bar and the unwshed hair of the bloke in front of you infringes on your breathing space and continually threatens to fill your mouth; add a few small girls who have no chance of seeing any of the tvs but have no idea what's going on; throw in a few indiviuals who support the wrong team, and attempt to watch a high tension sporting event.

Twice in the last 6 months have I engaged in serious in such activity - The Calcutta Cup match (Scotland v England) in the Six Nations (which is rugby, for those of you who are Americans) and yesterday, when Scotland played France (at football this time). Both times Scotland we're expected to be hammered and both times Scotland squeezed out a (debatably) deserved win. Which brings me to my point about coporate joy.

Whenever Scotland scored decorum was allowed to go out the window. AFter spending 60 minutes trying not to let your head get in the way of the view of the big hairy guy behind you and subtley trying to elbow the guy in front to keep him from stepping to close to you, as soon as the ball goes in the net, you're allowed to leap, holler and yell. The big guy behind you gives a bear hug while you give the bloke in front of you a big kiss, all the while directing sneers at the french/english around you. It's a strange thing that can manage to strip away British reservation, but it's a good thing. Is it something to do wtih Scotland's underdog mentality? Possibly. People will celebrate goals at any game, but the extent to whcih a win over England, or a goal against the World Cup runners up is celebrated may only be matched south of the border by a win over Germany (rare) or getting somewhere close to the winning the world cup (rarer in football, not quite so rare in rugby - I confess I allowed myself a little loss of dignity when England beat Australia in 2003).

Anyway, a largely pointless thing to write about, but I realised how much fun (and fleeting) these times can be and wan't to savour them just a little longer...
Images after the Scotland v England match watched in sunny Oban...

And if any of you are questioning my nationality, send me a note at the relevant address. P.O. Box I-Don't-Care

I lament the lack of writing talent in this generation

2006-09-27T21:02:00.000Z

So, finally, the story of the lovesac. In pictures. The story starts here...
A lovesac store in Vegas. It's the last day of my holiday, and Tom introduces me to this thing called a Lovesac. Before we go any further, I'd like to clarify, IT'S NOT A BEANBAG!
Anyway, my birthday was the following week, I was feeling splurgy and, spurred on by sales staff who assured me it was light enough to travel back with me on the plane, I bought a lovely a Lovesac (a Moviesac to be precise).

Only, once I got to the airport, it was revealed that actually the beast was too heavy for the plane. 20lb too heavy. Not a problem, I hear you say - leave it with Tom. But Tom lef thte airport as soon as he dropped me off. That's OK, call him up and ask him to comeback, you counter. Actually, it turns out I don't have Toms number - its hiding in the depths of an email some where.

So I'm stuck in the aiport with a 40kg big thing, 70 minutes before my flight takes off and nowhere to run. It transpires that the only internet terminal this side of security is out of order and the lady at lost and found wont let me 'lose' it unless it's been through security. She will, however, check my email for me, which would be fine if she had the intelligence to use my name and password correctly. I blame the airport slot machines.

After much too-ing and fro-ing, frantic attemted and unsuccessful calls to various people, I discovered that the terminal has free Wi-Fi. Simple - just find someone with a laptop and I'll be fine. Except the one time I need one seems to be the ONLY time no American is teched up. Ultimately, however, i do find one, call Tom, who screeches around the corner a full 30 minutes before the flight goes airborne.

Cue my turn to sprint through the airport 'Love Actually' style, only to find the biggest queue for security and the need to take a train to my gate. Anyway, I arrive 15 minutes before take off and make it on, in the process soaking my fellow passengers with the rivers of perspiration streaming from my pores.

This story is long enough, so I will conclude by saying that the process of getting to Scotland was long, drawn out and costly. Basically a big big hassle. I wished I'd sold it on ebay far too late. But when it arrived, Boy was I happy! I jumped in my little car and ran all the way to Glasgow to hunt down a dirty warehouse where my baby was hanging out. This truck is an example of the transport she had to suffer.

And this is her sitting in my boot.
My flat mate John helpfully offered a hand in the final leg of transport.
And then she was cut free and allowed to grow. And how she grew!

In short, my non-beanbag (who really needs a name - any suggestions) is gorgeous and THE most comfortable place to spend hours watching football and scrubs. So I extend an open invitation to everyone to come experience her warm embrace.

Oooh a new feature?

2006-09-13T10:04:00.001Z

IMGP3114
Originally uploaded by Algape.

Turns out I can now post pictures to the blog from Flickr. This isn't so great as I can't see anyway to post more than one picture. If I work it out it might become more exciting. So anyway, this is me and Chris. Chris has just left to go to the middle east to work for Agape for a year and I will miss him a lot.

In other words, I need to blog about the lovesac and 'Honey Alert ' (don't visit this if you're at work!), but that might have to wait until the mayhem of Freshers is over.

Lost and Found

2006-09-07T21:12:00.000Z

I gotchya James, but I don't have your number. Or your new email address. So help me out here...:)

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a Panzer Tank?

2006-09-04T23:24:00.000Z

Right. Since the last post. Malta, Nottingham (agaaain. Why do they never change the menu? Although the duck in orange and rosemary was a surprise and spankingly good). Edinburgh, finally. Normally I would describe myself as a person with persistently itchy feet, but this summer, despite having done more travelling than an STD in Bangkok, I have found myself persistently missing Edinburgh. This place rocks.

So before the trip with Granny to Malta, I realised that it would be my last bit of Fringe Festival action this year, and that a sensible plan would be to make the most of it. So Monday and Tuesday both involved 4am returns to bed (and involved much high jinks and the story of the woman who 'I altered' - I would relate it but it is a little egocentric and people might (possibly rightly) of being big headed) and then Wednesday involved just not bothering to go to bed at all. I had to be at the airport for 6:30am, so rather than getting an hours sleep and trying to make it there, I figured it would be more fun just to stay up (although going to bed might have meant avoiding Mr Old Man obviously lost watching a ska band who relentlessly talked to me about Elvis for half an hour). Needless to say, the rest of the day was pretty hellish, and the family saw the worst of me (apart from when they got to see my athletic prowess, running through the airport Love Actually style to get to a post box), but when we got to Valletta, it was very pretty.

In fact, most of Malta is pretty, as long as you stay near the coast. The rest of it is dry and dusty, but seeing as its a small island, a lot of it is coast. And the diving is incredible. I got to do a couple of dives with a random guy running a dive school out of an old Ice Cream kiosk, on some wrecks and through some caves. This isn't a very interesting story to anyone who doesn't dive, but I saw a few stingrays, and flying gurnards and stuff you dont get in the UK.

The other thing Malta has lots of is old stuff. The have religious temples 1000 years older than stonehenge and lots of catacombic tombs. Here's a picture (OK, there isn't cos blogspot aren't letting me, but check out Flickr instead).

The Nottingham trip doesn't have much to report on other than that I led worship for our Student Ministry staff conference we had, and my voice got likened to Chris Rea's. And the man was serious.

Oh and has anyone heard of Bic Runga? She's incredible and I got to stand right at the front for her concert last night. I know you're jealous.

Edit: In response to the comment - no the Lovesac has not yet arrived, however the saga has extended with the addition of more costs assosiated with customs. But today is the day it's supposed to land in Liverpool docks. So as long as those cheeky scousers don't nick it, we'll be alright.

Lovesac, Baby Lovesac!

2006-08-16T11:38:00.000Z

My hiatus is over folks! Until the next one, expect regular wit, charm and lengthy ramblings from the flotsam in my brain.

In the time gone many intersting and amusing things have happened, most of which have vacated the the well filed and ordered part of my brain, but as and when the numbskulls trip over them,I'll be sure to write about them.

So befiore I forget, I love Edinburgh. The more observant of you will have noticed that I spent the lion's share of the last 3 months not actually being here, but I am now, and it's great. The city is visibly pulsating with festival energy (someone I met last night saw a full on 10 man fist fight and 1pm in the Grassmarket with tourists just wandering by - they probably just thought it was an incredibly realistic show promo) and for some reason right now I'm sat sweating inside not enjoying it because I'm blogging to avoid writing a Newsletter and renewing my car insurance.

Anyway, last night I went to see my first show, the girly-haired Irish comedian Ed Byrne. In short he was very funny. Very funny indeed. References to Jade Goody being a bigger waste of space the more weight she loses and les physical space she takes up, Westboro Baptist church (Those of GodHatesFags.com fame) being mental and James Blunt being a "scheming f-ing rat" made me laugh a lot. But the cliche about things being funny because they are true is, in fact, true. Mr Byrne going on about the times when girlfriends ask what you're thinking actually made me cry. Come up to Edinburgh and go and see him. You can stay with me.

AS you may have guessed from the title, this blog was supposed to be about my Lovesac saga. No, contrary to popular opinion, it's not a euphanism about my genitalia or testicular cancer, but about the purchase of the comfiest thign you will ever sit on. Needless to say, it is a long story. And I'm already wiped after writing this. But it will come. Oh yes, it will come.

Ciao, bella!

2006-08-06T12:14:00.000Z

Apologies for lack of posting. No, I really am sorry. You have been missing my wit and insight terribly over the last few weeks, I'm sure.

Anyway, I'm in Nottingham with hundreds of Europeans. People are speaking all sorts of languages I've never heard before. It's lots of fun. And the sun is shining. And Aston Villa have a new manager. I'm very happy.

Until next time, adieu

Like a burning ring of fire

2006-07-14T23:56:00.000Z

Tom's in a meeting so there isn't much else for me to do except write another post. Wow. 3 posts in a week!

Anyway, VEgas is a lot of fun. Its darn hot though - they're in the middle of a heat wave and tomorrow will be 112 degree farenheit (or 44.5 Celcius). You walk out the door and it's like you're walking straight into an oven. No wonder the US uses so much energy, what with A/C running full blast in ever car, building, office and casino.

Speaking of casinos, I doubled up and won $20 on my first trip to a black jack table, which was nice. Although, when drinks are $6 for about 2/3 a pint, you need as much winnings as you can get! So, I've seen the strip, watched the fountains at the Bellagio, seen scantily clad fat women dressed in some roman attire, and taken pictures of the fake eiffel tower. And yes, it's lots of fun. Tonight I have a poker game, which will give me a chance to prove for once, that I can actually play poker, and don't always fall asleep haf way through.

And tomorrow I'm off to the lake with Tom's church, which, given the heat, is probably just as well.

And Linus, I still don't know who you are and it's driving me crazy. Readership is so low, that I doubt you're gonna be giving many cookies out, so give me some more clues!

Viva Las Vegas

2006-07-13T00:35:00.000Z

This is probably the best holiday ever. Fun is to be had everywhere I look. Except on overnight Greyhound bus trips (incidentally, why on earth are all the greyhound stations in the ghetto part of towns?).

So San Diego was great. I did some tourist stuff, such as visiting the zoo, and sea world (which was great until the Shamu show, the one with the killer whale, started spouting crap about there being 'a truth that two species are trying to connect'. I've never heard such emotional guff in all my life) and going over the Coronado Bridge, which was made famous for me in the movie Anchorman, when Ron Burgendy's dog Baxter is kicked off it. And I also made lots of new friends. My intial plan was to stay in a hostel and hang out with people I knew already, but they introduced me to more people, and I ended up staying in the house of a guy called Nino. He produces a magazine, Bubblemag, which is very good and I thoroughly recommend you look at. Incidentally, there might be an interview with me published in there sometime in the future.

So for the weekend, I hung out with my new friends. I tried and failed to learn to surf (ALWAYS wear a rash vest, until you're very very good). I wen't to Nino's Grandma's birthday party, I went to a Saturday church service at Maranatha Chapel, where I disagreed slightly with the pastor, and I went to some musical stuff and met some very very very talented young musicians. And then in another God ordained coincidence, Nino's roommates parent's were travelling north past Monterey at exactly the time I was heading up there, so I got a free ride and didn't have to take the nasty bus.

Monterey was fun, and rekindled some memories, but nothing much of blogable note happened apart from the girl who gave me her phone number. Now I'm sure some of you might find this suprising (ha!), but I've never been directly given a number by a girl. Basically, what happened was that I headed to the Monterey Aquarium reception desk to try and find my friend who worked there. I oozed British charm and smiled sweetly and the girl, whose name was Misty, was very helpful and helped me find the guy. She also let me leave my big heavy dive bags behind her desk. And so, when I went to pick them up the other girl slipped me a piece of paper with the inscription "Misty, (phone number), call me!". OK, so it could have just been a joke. I didn't call her to find out, but it makes a good story anyway (if I was actually anygood at story telling).

And now, after 18 hours of travelling from Monterey, I made it to Vegas, where it's hot and garish and as soon as I got off the bus, was offered weed, ecstacy and LSD. Party town. Lets see if it's as fun as San Diego.

And by the way, Linus, of course you can be my sixth reader. I'm honoured to have you. But who exactly are you...Stop hiding hehind a pseudonym!

Dooooooode

2006-07-05T18:31:00.002Z

Haha. I got paid $20 to ask a girl to dance. She said no. Seems the British accent can't manage everything in America!

In other news, I just spent 4 days on a boat diving around California's Channel Islands. Sea Lions, Leapard sharks, octopus, and much much more. Lots of fun. A day later I still feel like the ground under me is rocking. And listening to England go out on penalties on a satalite radio at 9 in the morning in blazing sunshine on the ocean blue was a strange feeling.

We Are The Winners, of Eurovision!

2006-06-28T20:01:00.000Z

Blog blog blog. This takes it out of you. I mean not doing it takes it out of you. You start iwth good intentions to write witty, informative and insightful stuff, and then all the urge to write goes out of you.

Well my excuse for not writing more in Lithuania is simple. Leading a team makes you very very busy, and when you do have a smidgen of spare time you don't want to spend it writing a blog, you want to spend it talking to your girlfriend or just getting some quiet personal space.

But for those who are wondering, the project went amazingly well. I shan't write all the details right now - I'm going to write a summary for the Agape webiste, and shall copy and paste that here in case anyone's interested. But suffice to say, we had a great time, God did huge works in all of us who went and a load of people we met.

My personal highlight was the Lithuanian version of Live8 (and it was nothign to do with the girl who turned around and told me "I like your face. Eet's sexy!). A big open air concert for charity with lots of famous (At least locally) Lithuanian bands, the stand out one for me being one called Camp that had an Irish singer (?) and a flipping awesome saxophonist. It was made all the more better by the guy on the laptop who did the samples breaking off mid-song, into a early-90s style white man's rap (and yes, complete with shell suit). He would have made it in East 17 if he was a little younger.

The night was capped off with a performance from LT United, the country's Eurovision Entry - they came 6th by the way- which was composed of members of all the previous bands. Check out the video and watch the bald guy dance. Possibly the best gig I've seen? Well no. But possibly more fun than the Electric Six and Libertines gigs I went to.

So. Maybe no more blogging action for a while - I'm off to California on holiday for 2 and ahalf weeks tomorrow. Maybe I'll get excited and bash something out. But maybe I wont. Maybe I'll post some pictures on Flickr (You can at least see Lithuania pictures on there now). We'll see.

They still play Boyzone here!!

2006-06-04T18:11:00.000Z

Ok, I thought it might be interesting to post a couple of funny stories from here. if you want to know what's been happening ministry-wise, check my prayer email (or ask me to send you one). But suffice to say things are going well and someone became a Christian on the first day!

Story 1. (Disclaimer: I think these are funny, but then I'm tired and have a warped sense of humour. I accept no responsibilty if this wasted all your time)

Walking up a cobbled street in the old town of Vilnius, we were acosted bya rapidly moving bar coming the other way. yes indeed, it was a bar on wheel, fully motorised , with 2 draught pumps and a pretty waitress. Needless to say it was surrounded by raucous british men, perched on tall bar stools, with one of them dressed in a power rangers costume. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new Prague.

Story2. Sitting on the bus with one of the Lithuanian staff minding our own business in a conversation, a man smelling lightly of booze leans over from behind me and says (this works better if you insert oyur own Eastern European accent here), "Excuse me, but you two are Scottish (pointing to me and Steve) and you two are Lithuanian (Pointing to Andy, who is Irish, and Jolita, Lithuanian)?" This was then followed by a conversation where he mostly ignored us and commented on how great Jolita's english was, while she offended him by saying he looked Turkish rather than Lithuanian. Then he finished up with this " I would like to hear you talk English some more, maybe in a restaurant, or cafe? (this is where the accent is most effective). Jolita, slow on the uptake looked confused "What?", she said. "Do you 'ave a telephone number?" he persisted "No!" Jolia excalimed "You're married!". "Oh. I forgot"

At least I laughed loudly when it happened. Maybe it wil lbe funnier when I act it out when I get back.

Iki

We are the winners! Vote for us!!

2006-05-30T19:34:00.000Z

Tomorrow I fly out to Lithuania to lead a team of 9 students on a mission trip for 3 weeks. Tonight my thoughts are mostly of packing and the pint I'm going to have when I'm done. More interesting blogs to follow.

El vino did flow

2006-05-24T23:08:00.000Z

Question: Is blogging self-serving and egotistical or do readers gain significant (going with the statistical definition here) benefit from the author's (particularly mine) creative work. Discus.

And to help your thought processes, here's a picture I took that a faithful reader described as wonderful, thus gently massaging my ego but maybe also bringing here a significant benefit of some kind....

No, I'm not only doing it so I can wear a vest!

2006-05-19T16:37:00.000Z

It's raining outside. I need to go shopping for Lithuania, but instead I'll write some drivel.

Today's topic, Australian Rules Football. This glamourous sport has recently become my new obsession, so much so that I've even had dreams about playing it (that can't necessarily be good). Basically, for years it ranked alongside ice hockey as the sport I really wanted to play but never had the oppertunity to (althoguh I got to play ice hockey at uni). So imagine my childish delight as I walked past Oz Bar in Old Town and noticed a poster on the window advertising the Edinburgh aussie rules team, who were recruiting new players!

For those of you not in the know, Aussie Rules (or Aussie-no-rules as some would say), is a bit of a cross between rugby, gaelic football and wrestling. It's played on a huge oval (up to 200m long), with 18 players each team and the aim is to get the ball between some posts at the end of the pitch. You're not allowed to throw the ball, so you either have to kick it or punch it from your hands, which results in fast fluid play if you're a professional, or lots of rolling around on the ground with six others trying to punch the ball to someone if you're us.

Anyway, so far we've had 2 wins out of 2 this season (Go you Bloods!) and we generalyl kick arse. So far I've staved 4 fingers, whilst the other 6 sit and count their blessing as they know its only a matter of time before it's their turn. I've ripped the skin of my knee entirely, which has led to some nice scarring and I love it! Its so much fun to learn a new sport I don't really know anof the rules for! It's also been really cool to get to know some Aussies and find out what it's like being a backpaker in Edinburgh. And it's probably going to be the biggest thing I miss when I'm in Lithuania.

By the way, I realise that this post is rubbish of the highest quality. I apologise. I really wanted to write a good post about aussie rules, and it had been ages since I wrote last, but for some reason today I just couldn't find the words. Maybe the rain outside is depressing me.

Three Peak (Or should that be Twin Peaks?) Challenge

2006-05-07T16:32:00.000Z

Right. Been a while since a decent post, so this one is going to be mammoth. Prepare yourself for a sore bum. Or just stop reading and do something useful.

Last weekend (29 April), 4 of us set off to the west coast of Scotland to attempt the 3 Peak Challenge. For those of you not in the know, the challenge requires you to climb the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon respectively) in under 24 hours, including all traveling time. To give some scope, that's about 475 miles driving, something over 20 miles of walking and over 3000m (12,000ft) vertical climbing! There wasn't much reason for us doing it, mostly to prove our manly prowess, but towards the end Christian decided to raise money for this mission trip to Lithuania and suddenly there was more incentive to make sure we completed it.

Anyway, what follows is a relatively full account of what happened. Before I left I read someone else's blog of their experience and found it pretty useful, so who knows, maybe someone will google it and come up with me!

The day didn't start amazingly well. I played football in the morning (which we won), but 2 minutes before the end, someone slid in on me and landed right on the bone on the inside of my foot. Ow. And then we had agreed to leave no later than 2pm to get to Fort William and I, as usual hadn't pact properly, so it was pushing 2:30 by the time we got away. The original plan was to leave the car park at Ben Nevis at 5:30, so we could be off the summit while it was still light, and have as little as possible to walk in the dark. But ultimately, Thom, Christian, my dad and I finally ended up leaving the car at 5:57pm, setting off at a fast pace, quickly noticing that we had accidentally parked at the main carpark, not the recommended one by the Youth Hostel that might have shaved 15-20 minutes off our time.
The Start. Me, Christian, Thom and my Dad (he's the old one).

The climb was pretty straightforward, and included lots of showing off and impressing all the people coming down who couldn't believe we were starting to climb so late in the day, by describing our mammoth task. It got a little harder when we hit the snow about 40 minutes from the top, but fortunately it was not the middle of the afternoon and the soft bits had hardened up a little. About 20 minutes from the top we met another group doing the 3 peaks coming down. They looked very professional with 2 walking sticks each (we had 2 between 4 of us) and fancy map holders. But beating them gave us something to aim for and we pressed on and reach the summit in 2hrs 50, which was 40 minutes ahead of what we'd been told to expect. The descent was super fun, and we were able to leap and run down the snowy bits (until dad hit a particularly deep bit and nearly twisted his knee. We also managed to leave the head torches off until half and hour before the bottom although, me being the organized type, had forgotten his and had to rely on my bike lights (which I'm sure were brighter than my torch anyway!). We hit the bottom in 2:10ish, giving us a total of about 5 hours, which we originally thought was an hour ahead of schedule, but turned out to be about on time.

The best bit had to be walking up the west face as the sun went down. Completely clear days on Nevis are rare, and to be climbing as the sun goes down was something pretty darn special. Words can't really do it justice.

Dad on his way to the top.This was where it got hard

Lochaber from near the top.We're the highest people in Britain!

So as we continued on our journey we made our next mistake. We wanted to get some hot food (super noodles not being particularly appetising after 11pm) and Dad due to his ethical stance didn't want to eat at the McDonalds which I'd heard (on other 3 Peak sites) was open until 12. So we parked up in Fort William and walked down the main street looking for the chip shop. Unfortunately, due to Fort William being a typical Scottish backwater town and not at all set up for tourists (despite currently hosting a huge Superbike festival and the annual UK Mountain Bike championships, not to mention thousands of walkers), and every thing shuts at 9. Except for the pubs of course. So we went off to find McDonalds, and guess what? Yep, that was closed too. So advice to people planning to do this challenge, don't rely on civilisation to pull you through, cos you'll waste 20 minutes doing so.

So instead we cracked open the sausage rolls I'd thoughtfully bought from Tesco the day before (after a trip to the aquarium with Beth. A great day incidentally) and settled down for some sleep. Dad drove to Glasgow and Christian took over as far as the services on the M6 at Penrith. Somehow, in my dazed and confused state at around 2:30am, I was persuaded to purchase a 'MOTO traditional breakfast'. To anyone else in this position, DON'T! It was turd. And I had to forgo this month's rent to pay for it. So after wasting another 20 minutes greasing my stomach and refueling, I gallantly offered to drive.

On reflection this was somewhat foolish, but someone had to do it. I'd had about 2 and half hours of semi-sleep, which I decided was enough to take on the roads of the lake district. At least the curves kept me awake. After a couple of hours of unmarked hairpin bends and fox-avoidance, we arrived in Wasdale Head somewhere shortly before 5. We quickly kitted up and charged up the hill (I don't really want to call it a mountain).

Off again.

Personally, I found the middle section the hardest part of the whole trip. I couldn't really get into a rhythm, the grease of the rubber sausages was sloshing around my gut, and I hadn't had any chocolate for a while, and I was trying to keep up with Christian who was marching off at such a speed that Dad was asking 'what country he was invading'. It wasn't much fun. Making it particularly tough were the songs going round my head which I couldn't remove. First on the play list was the Numa Numa song (with the fat guy on the webcam), followed by the Indiana Jones theme and then the worst f the lot, Wannabe by the Spice Girls. This last one wouldn't budge and also reappeared on the way down Snowdon. Eughhh.

And then came our next mistake. Most advice will tell you not to take a certain route due to 'severe erosion'. I had read this but duly forgot, and so we found ourselves scrambling up vertical scree to reach the ridge, blinding the person below us in the process. It was tough, but probably still quicker than the other path.

unfortunately the picture doesn't quite convey the angle of the scree...

The summit was conquered at around 7, and was marked by the calling (and waking up) of various friends and family members. Indeed was a beautiful moment, to be virtually the only people up the mountain at dawn, with spectacular views all around.

Summit view

So we climbed Scafell Pike in around 3hours 20 (1:50 up, 1:30 down), a good 40 minutes ahead of the guideline times. With Wasdale Head being at the end of a very long cul-de-sac, we were determined to get out before all the bank holiday weekend walkers arrived and so had to abandon Dad's plans of making porridge in the car park. Thom took the driving reigns and we charged off towards Wales.

It should be noted that as we descended, we came across the other group of 3 peakers, climbing up, with one man down. I've no idea where we overtook them, especially with our prolonged stop in Fort William, but we managed to overturn what was probably a 20 minute advantage to them into a half hour advantage for us!
Christian gets some 'quality' sleep
The journey from Wasdale to Llanberis (where Snowdon is) is supposed to take about 4 and a half hours, and for the first time, I started to get a little nervous about completing the challenge. The traffic on the A55 was horrendous and for half an hour we were barely making it over 40 miles an hour. Anyway, we made it to the start of the Watkin's Path with the clock running at 21:40, meaning we had a little over 4 hours to make the climb.

To those of you who know Snowdon, you may e wondering why we took the Watkin Path. Indeed, it is also advised against for this challenge due to the last 200 vertical meters being steep scree and therefore knackering and unsuitable for climbers who've had no sleep and already done 2 mountains. The advised route is the Pyg Trail, starting at about 360m above sea level (meaning you have much less distance to climb). As our luck would have it (typically), the car park was full (one of the reasons a recommended driver is recommended is so that they can drop you off here), so we had to carry on round to the start of the Watkins Path at a majestic height of 76m. Its pretty depressing actually, because as you pass the car park, which sits on a ridge, you see the valley just drop away from you and you know you have to climb aaaall the way out.

So we pressed on and on. Accompanied by the Spice Girls the pace was fast and not at all demoralised by all the people who kept telling us we had miles to go as they were coming down. My personal favourite was the gadget freak who glee fully told me as I scrambled up the big rocks and scree "Don't worry, you're very close, only 160m to go!". Right. 160m. That's in vertical height, which works out at about 16% of my total climb, all of which is up this flipping death trap, and you say I'm very close?? Needless to say, I wasn't happy, and was indeed still a good 20 minutes or so from the top, which when we reached the summit in 2hr 20, shouldn't be regarded as very close. Close, but not very close.
What I orginally thought was the top. At this point we were on the wrong path next to a rather large cliff. Notice the German woman in red with exceedingly large pack, who had persuaded us that this was the correct path.

Anyway, the most demoralising thing was to reach the summit and discover, munching on their sandwiches, the other 3 peak group, who had just triumphantly climbed the Pyg trail. Evidently the man down had become the designated driver and they'd been dropped off at the car park. My indignation at them beating us resulted in the declaration that the Pyg trail is for girls, and in fact, they hadn't climbed the whole mountain. We did it the manly way. So there.

The descent went smoothly, apart from a near disaster when Christian and I toyed with the idea of cutting a huge corner in the track, which would have probably involved us falling into a crevice, ending up in a black hole and being dumped at the top of Nevis or something. Anyway, we still had enough energy and adrenaline flowing round to run the last kilometer or so. This was the most satisfying part of the whole thing, running past the people who'd been descending whilst we were struggling to the top, especially that guy!

And so it was that we completed the challenge in a triumphant 23 hours and 22 minutes (Dad and Thom coming in around 23:35). I'm convinced that if we'd not faffed around in Fort William, been stuck in traffic on the A55 and taken the Pyg trail, then 22 hours would have been easily achievable.
Lets do it again...

All in all, it was an awesome experience. A great way to see creation at it's finest, and lots of fun male bonding. Probably the hardest part was waking up in a petrol station at some stupid time in the middle of the night, realising I wasn't in my bed and wondering why on earth were were driving to another mountain. Its fair to say my motivation was pretty low then.

If I had to give advice to people doing it, I'd first suggest not to bring any sausage rolls, unless you eat them straight away, because they STINK. And the smell wont go away. The best bit about having a designated driver is they can cook stuff for you, meaning you don't have to stop in dingy service stations for crap food. And you can do the girly route up Snowdon if you want. Apologies for it being so long. If I was any good at web design, I would have put each mountain on a separate page. Oh, and compedes are a lifesaver!

2006-04-27T10:01:00.000Z

God is Faithful.

And what is this phenomenon about The Notebook? Someone please enlighten me.

He's going for distance, he's going for speed...

2006-04-20T15:13:00.000Z

My social rant is still pending....However, I have more pertinent stuff to write about. Originally this would have been about my diving trip at the weekend - beautiful scenery, great weather and pretty good diving. I could have regaled you with stories of the wood cabin we stayed in, the stories round the bonfire and the awesome 'first barbecue of the year'.

But I don't want to write about that anymore. Last night I experienced this.

Now I've no idea what 'hives' are, and I was spared the diarrhea and vomiting, but I got a full quota of the rashes, itching and nausea. Basically last night I went out for dinner with my Granny and my cousins, and having spotted mussels on the starter menu, munched my way through 25 or so of them. About half way through the main course (a tasty Calzone pizza), I noticed2 or 3 of what seemed to be bites on my stomach and legs. Passing them off as spiting of the fleas which I must evidently be carrying, I soldiered on with the meal. However, by the coffee, the itching had got worse and I thought I was going to hurl. A visit to the bathroom did not manage to procure any vomit (maintaining my record of not throwing up since my infamous incident at the White House in 1999), but did confirm that my body was now covered in a red and white blotchy rash.

To cut a longish story slighty shorter, we visited my aunt (a doctor) who confirmed that it was an allergy, despite me never having a reaction before, reassured me that I wasn't going to die and suggested I had a cold shower to reduce the burning pain from the itch. So I went up to the bathroom, where upon I very nearly passed out (ever had that feeling where everything closes in and you cant see any more? It's great!), and promtly returned downstairs. Ultimately I ended up sleeping (sort of) on my grandma's sofa, valiantly trying and failing to stop itching. And during a trip to the bathroom at 2am, I nearly passed out again twice.

In all, not a lot of fun. And the worst bit, despite my cousin repeatedly telling me how red and puffed up my face was and that I should take a picture, I didn't get any pics to show my devoted readers (all 4 of you). C'est la vie.

You don't need no credit card to ride this train

2006-04-13T19:19:00.000Z

I had an interesting rant to blog about, but having just returned from a staff conference, its probably more appropriate to talk about that, and leave you baying in anticipation for the next post (it's about the state of our 'yoof' ).

So Friday to Tuesday, I was down saaawf. Friday night I stopped off at my folks for the night, and my sister had driven up from London for the occasion, so we all went out to a local (when I say local, I mean in the hills in the middle of nowhere) pub/restaurant for a very tasty duck and lamb dinner, where the famed local (this time I use the word to refer to a regular drinker) who drinks with an owl on his shoulder failed to turn up. Anyway, the food was great, and it was most excellent to spend time with the family, even if at points the conversation descended into inquisitions about respective siblings' romantic lives.

The conference was also excellent. It's always great to hang out with the staff family. The food was tolerable (we were staying in Nottingham uni - makes you never want to be a first year student in halls!), but the program was ace! God challenged me on lots of exciting stuff and I got a lot of vision for the coming 18months. We had a commissioning service for our departing National Director, David Wilson (now to be a European Director) and the incoming guy Andy Atikins, where we all got to wear posh frocks (or at least the girls did. Actually, come to think of it, I can't remember anyone wearing a dress) and clap lots. Even Mr OM himself, George Verwer turned up! It was also kinda sad too because barring a day or so in June, the conference was the last time I'll see a lot of the yankedoodles working in Liverpool (yes, yes, I do have a soft side to my emotions), who are a heck of a lot of fun to be with.Schmoozing with our American friends. Don't worry, the facial hair has gone.

Thee food may be crap, but the campus was pretty.

I also got forced to acknowledge how soon the project to Lithuania is (6 and a half weeks to go) and how much I have left to do. Made a start and bought all the flights yesterday, making a Â£1400 dent in my credit card, so lets hope nobody pulls out!

What else interesting to talk about? The abortive attempt at watching the Back to the Future trilogy in one go,which ended up just being two Indiana Jones films because none of us actually had the Back to the Future Dvds? Or the farcical story of my losing my phone down a sofa? Actually, I'll talk about none of them and go and have my tea instead.

Zwanzig Centimeter!

2006-04-01T17:06:00.000Z

To those concerned, I didn't travel with my face looking like that. To the disappointment of others, i shaved it off. However I'm toying with the idea of growing something similar for the Agape conference next week....

Anyway, the trip to France was great. Short, but a great way to relax and stop thinking about Lithuania projects and such things. It must be said that the weather wasn't great - indeed, the woman selling lift passes tried to fend us off "But monsieur, 'aven't you seen le weather report?" When we replied in the negative she shook her said and muttered stuff about cloud and no visibility. Well lady, thankyou for informing us. Seeing as the weather is so bad, i'm sure it's no problem for us just to nip back to Scotland until the weather improves a bit. Or, on the other hand, keep your negativity to yourself and sell us what we asked for!

Anyway, she was only half right. The cloud brought with it lots of snow, and at some points there was even beautiful sunshine. The off piste runs starting at the top of le Grand Montets in the Italian bowl (so named after the Italian's who died in an Avalanche a few years ago), past the avalanche warnign signs, through the trees and eventually arriving in Argentiere at the at bottom after a vertical drop of over 1200m (three times in a row) was the highlight of the trip for me.

Thursday was a wash out. By which I mean it was proper minging. Ski resorts are supposed to have snow, right? Not driving rain three quaters of the way up the mountain! This meant that only the very top part of the runs had nice snow, and the rest of it was like snowboarding through a half drunk slush puppy - you know when you've sucked out all the syrup and all you're left with is munched up ice. I have never been so wet on a mountain. Fortunately, after a couple hours you hit saturation point and stopped caring so much. By the afternoon it was literally only the British left on the mountian -all the French had gone home to their vin chauds and creme cafe cigars. We even overheard someone in the lift queue complain about the same lift pass girl trying to avoid a sale by giving another negative weather report. At least she was right this time. But us Brits are hardy souls, and cry's of 'watch out for that rock Rupert' and 'Oh, thats a lovely carve Tara' could be heard bellowing from the lungs of folk still having a jolly good time.

Anyway, the whole holiday was great. I would rather had more time in the board park (my attempt on Thursday in zero vis led to me crashing, taking a wrong turn and having to climb out of a gully in thigh deep snow). French food is indeed excellent, and despite being rather tasteless, baby octupus was fun to eat (although is that ethically sound? Can the Octopii maintian sustainable populations if we're eating all their babies??).

Flippin Soaked

No idea what this cross was doing. I just hope it wasn't marking a grave.

Who's that sexy guy?

The top of the 'Italian Bowl'. Everybody heading down was praying against avalanches (of which the chances of one occuring were 4/5)
Mont Blanc. Highest mountain in Europe. Doesn't look it, does it?

Oh, I'm not ashamed at all

2006-03-26T22:52:00.000Z

Off snowboarding for a few days tomorrow, so no posting from me. I know you're upset, so to make up for a lack off my astute and candid observances on life, have a chuckle at some pictures that were taken on Friday.

DTRs? no ta

2006-03-21T16:45:00.000Z

Nothing interesting is happening in my life, so hence no regular or itneresting posts, unfortunately. I currently seem to spend all my time doing admin for the trip to Lithuania I'm leading (in only 10 weeks time...aarrgh!) and fielding calls that my boss can't take because he (well, his wife really) is having a baby. But I'm going boarding in Chamonix on monday for three days, which will be some welcome escapism! So to make it worth your while having read this far, I've picked the 3 most pretty pictures I could find in my photo album for you to stare endlessly (or at least for a couple of seconds) at. Actually, i would have done if blogger worked. But I'm too lazy to delete the last sentance so i thought I would spend more time writing these two instead.

Oh, and if anyone fancies buying me this book, I will love you forever!

2006-03-16T09:45:00.000Z

Its March. STOP SNOWING!

Are the men in yellow unfarily treated?

2006-03-08T13:38:00.000Z

I thought I would leave this post for a while and allow all the other folk to get in their blogs about how exciting the snow was last friday, so that when I finally write about it, it keeps the excitment going just that little bit longer.

So no snow through January, or February, and then on March 3, by which time we're supposed to say goodbye to all the crappy weather and early darkness, we get a whole dump of snow. Snow is only as exciting as the stories that accompany it and this blog is no different. My second favourite story of the day was walking through the meadows and seeing some guys build the biggest snowman I have ever seen with my own eyes. When I passed, it was taking 3 of them to even move the ball they were using for it's body. I returned later and had a cheeky picture taken with the giant.

A story that is indeed not funny in the slightest, but at least made for some intersting pics.

A story that is actually funny happened further up in town. Me and my mate Pete spied an irate woman arguing with two traffic wardens who were in the process of giving her a ticket. Normally hilarious in it's own right (indeed, what is funnier than a grown woman stomping her feet and throwning a hissy fit at someone who clearly couldn't give a rat's ass), this incident was made more amusing by the anticts of a passing family.

Walking along the other side of the road, suitably attired in a chav uniform, the Father, Mother and Son trio strategically picked up snow and started hurling snowballs at the woman, her car and traffic wardens. Unfrotunately for the story's sake, they were awful shots, and none of the victimized partied appeared to notice, robbing the woman of a chance to direct her spittin poison somewhere else. However, to make up for this, the small child (who could barely make his snowballs pass the middle of the road) stood jumping up and down on the curb laughing in a manical manner. Why, I wouldn't be suprised if one day he grows up to take over the world.

You're not leaving!!......SLAP!

2006-02-28T09:53:00.000Z

This is what you're waiting for. I hope I didn't build it up too much.

At the weekend I had a most enjoyable weekend scuba diving in the town of Oban on the west coast of Scotland. Whilst the rest of the UK took cover from sleet, snow, high winds and baltic temperatures, we enjoyed two days of what can only be described as summerish weather. If you were in the UK this weekend, observe the photos and gasp in wonderment. I even got sunburnt!

The diving was great, as was the company, and I saw many exciting things:
A conger eels
Mermaids purse (shark egg)
Starfish feeding frenzy (yep, those critters can go crazy when there's a tasty crab to be eaten!)
Gary Glitter (not quite, but someone looking a lot like him)
A girl riding a bycycle down a very narrow single track road next to the sea with a snowboard on her shoulder. (maybe she was going to use it for wakeboarding)

Watching Scotland beat England at the rugby was particularly entertaining. This weekend also saw the annual Scottish Young Farmers conference decend upon Oban, with 400 young muscley types who sweat beer painting the town red, and we watched the game in a partizan pub full of them. There were probably only 4 or 5 England fans in whole place, and they got a lot of abuse. And Scotland won (for the first time in 8 years or so and deservedly so) -cue much dancing on tables and hugging of complete strangers. Comeon!

Saturday night the whole group of us had an 80's themed fance dress party. My costume was supposed to be Magnum PI - you can decide for yourselves how successful I was. I don't know how many of you ever tried to drink with a fake moustache on, but it aint easy. The hair had a knack of soaking up the beer before it reached my lips, and unfortunately the accumulated moisture was too much for it in the end and it breathed its last and feel off my face after a mere couple of hours.

Anyway, a very strange night ensued. We had planned to go to a few bars and end up in Oban's only club, but then we discovered the juke box in the first pub had an astonishingly wide selection of 80s classics which immediately got pumped full of small change. However, this was NOT the kind of pub you would go to under ANY normal circumstances. It was a locals local, small, very busy and full of people with no teeth, large women with moustaches and tatoos and several lonley alcoholics in severely inebriated states. I was VERY scared as we walked in. I'm guessing that had we been in normal attire we would have been immediately piocked up and hurled back through the door. As it was they seemed to appreciate our choice of outfits and welcomed us with open arms, slurred words and gep-toothed smiles and we stayed their for several surreal hours. (We did make it to the club eventually, but it was so pap and such a waste of £6, it's not worth mentioning)

And finally, my favourite story of the weekend. On Friday night we tried to get into Oban's only 'classy' (note the inverted commas - i say classy because it had a bouncer on the door. and an alleged dress code), only for the bouncer to turn me away because I was wearing tracksuit trousers. On reassesment of my outfit (trackie bottoms, blue hoodie - chosen for comfort on the 3hour car journey), I realised I'd never looked more like a ned/pikey/charver/scally/chav (choose your colloquial term appropriately) on a night out in my life. As we were debating what to do next, one of the guys decided he would have a word with the bouncer. A short conversation followed, after which the bouncer went inside, only to reappear and let us in. But what had Dougal said to make him have a change of heart?

"We're all member's of Edinburgh University Sub-Aqua club, and that guy you're not letting in is a devout Christian"

Evidently, my faith gives me license to wear comfortable clothes and not be a threat to the management or other customers! As it turned out, everyone had much more to worry about with the young famers turning up and throwing bales of hay around....

"It's ok, he's a devout Christian..."

2006-02-26T21:07:00.000Z

Hold your breath for a fantabilocious post soon to come. It's so great, I can barely wait!

11-4. My word.

2006-02-18T01:00:00.000Z

Parkour, or free running (for the less culturally suave) is a sport originating out of France involving running around town, jumping over, through and off stuff. A more technical description can be found here at Wikipedia, but essentially its having a body stacked like a machine, wearing lots of trendy 'urban clothing' and acting 'street'. You also have to have fine poise, balance, technical ability, flexibility and most of all lots of balls (which isn't to say grils can't do it, I've just never seen them) to make sure you avoid landing on your head.

To see what I'm on about, check out these 'traceurs' (prakour practitioners) in action. They're flipping amazing!

So why do I mention this interesting, but slightly random sport? Well, walking through the university campus last week, I spotted 3 young whippersnappers aged between about 11 and 14, fully decked out in urban clothing, running throuhg the campus. But as I looked to see who was chasing them, I discovered that they weren't just running, they were FREE running!! Only they were rubbish at it. For the most part they were too short to properly vault barriers, and they weren't able to leap far enough to cover the gap between walls. But still, kudos for them for having the balls to face ridicule in the face and give the sport a shot. But they've a looong way to go.

In other news this week was the universities Christian Union's missions weeks. Edinburgh put up a huge parquee in the meadows and had a ton of events and stuff going on. It was a super week and loads of really cool things happened, not least the sports day event on thursday afternoon, comprising of a medley of egg and spoon and sack races etc. Tres fun, especially as we won and the prize was a 3 man catapult capable of throwing eggs 150feet (it's supposed to be water balloons but we only had eggs. Fortunately we missed the old lady walking her dog.)!

The fabled prize

Team victory!

Kelly Clarkson believes WHAT?

2006-02-12T18:50:00.000Z

So the weekend. Aston Villa lose the football, Scotland lose the rugby. Everthing back to normal then. Last weekend (with Villa and Scotland both winning) was blantantly an anomaly. It also was a stormer of a weekend in other respects. 720 miles driven, 700 or so folk having the oppertunity to hear the gospel, and 3 people comign to Christ. Yep, it was Agape's stonking National Studnet conference. We drove the 6 hours down to Kidderminster with 20 or so students and had an ace time. I had the fun (and simple task!) of leading a seminar on God's sovereignty in evangelism, which was a great experience, and just gerenarally had a great time gettin to know students better. The guys from Edinburgh really loved it and gave a testimony to what had happened in the CU on Friday night, which to be honest, could have done as the main talk, the spiritual content was so good! Man, it got me pumped! For a full run down of events, check out Andy Dixon's report here.

This was followed by the now annual Vellacott Super Bowl party - a late night extravaganza of hot dogs, cookies and other strange american snacks, and of course spending 2 hours trying to understand the intricacies of American Football. Home at 3:30 and then spending the next 2 days feeling rotten because of utter exhaustion. Fun times.

And so the rest of the week has been uneventful. Edinburgh for once has failed to provide me with unusual sites. The Hari Krishnas are still farting around the royal mile and there is still the people standing outside the 'mind school' on north bridge, but I've got used to them now.

One remotely intersting thing of note is that I have manged to keep to my new years resolution of going to somewhere new every week (thankyou to Antica for the suggestion). Indeed I have so far discovered several funky spots. So far my favourite has been the honeypot, a little bistro hidden underneath George IV Bridge. Crammon Island I'm sure would also be a favourite if we hadn't had to hide out for half an hour in the car waiting for the rain to die down. Today's new place was Cafe Roma, an italian restaurant that had a cheap lunch deal. Nothign special to be honest, but I guess I couldn't have hoped for a hit every time.

Anyway, i'm spouting rubbish now, but I relaised I hadn't posted for 10 days, so thought I would give you some semi-amusing drivel to pass 3 minutes. The pictures are from the weekend

Team Edinburgh

Team Seminar!

Team National Team!

Who's Job Is It Anyway?

2006-02-02T14:49:00.000Z

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Why is it that every time I come to write a new post, I want to start it with a big-text based sigh? I resist most the time, but this time I couldn't supress it. Tomorrow sees the start of Agape's National Student Conference, probably the biggest event of our annual calender (with the exception of summer projects), and a wonderful 6 hour drive to get there, encompasing all the delights of the M6. The weekend will be awesome, but the drive will be tedium. And if I can't stay awake it will end in post mortem.

So, this is my 50th post on here. Cue whistles, bells and party poppers. Or actually, you don't really care. What it really shows is that I'm an ego-manica who has nothing better to do with 20 minutes periods of his day than write fluff about himself. Oh well, at least I still think I rock. Go me!

And so it turns out that I have nothing interesting to write about, save for the good old emergency British topic, the weather. On Monday and Tuesday, it was the coldest I've ever felt in Edinburgh and in the evening on Monday, we were treated to a rare spectacle of freezing fog. To be honest, this was pretty darn beatiful, with ice crystals suspended in mid-air drifting in the breeze, but I didn't have my camera with me so you'll just have to believe me.

And to brighten the post with pictures...I was thinking about my degree today, so here's some memories from it.

Someone needs to give me something interesting to write about.

I can breath for the first time....

2006-01-29T17:45:00.000Z

Friday night, I ventured into Quentin Tarrantino's favorite cinema. Well, they claim it's his favourite cinema. And he definitely went there to see their first screening of Pulp Fiction. And I'm pretty sure he's called it the most beautiful cinema in the world or something. Anyway, safe to say it comes highly recommended by one of the most cult directors of my generation. And it's only 10 minutes walk from my flat. I think that's pretty cool. So it's the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh and you can also read lots of fun information, including substances to my statements, about it here.

The film seen was A Cock and Bull Story which is very funny indeed. If you've ever seen any Alan Partridge, you'll find it hilarious. If you're American, you probably won't find it funny at all. Although Gillian Anderson is in it. But then she's Canadian, isn't she. Anyway, the cinema sat a sum total of about 70 people and the screen was probably only about 4 times the size of a 42 inch plasma TV. I guess the best way to describe it was earthy, although I've no idea what that really means. But it was much more atmospheric than the multiplex, and when the audience laughed, the whole placed buzzed. Which I liked.

OH, and the Demon Barber (to the right of the cinema)? It's great

2006-01-22T21:26:00.000Z

What is it about extreme tiredness that makes me very good at it? I have resigned myself to a perpetual state of it for the rest of the term, but I sure hope it isn't always gonna be this bad. Maybe finally the weight of responsibility is catching up with me. Anyway right now, my head feels like it's at the bottom of swimming pool filled with treacle and is fighting to get to the surface for air. I was supposed to go to a birthday party tonight, but I would either be completely unable to converse with anyone, or would just end up making someone cry. And one day, I'm going to get the bottom of this narcolepsy thing.

Anyway, the last 5 days have been immensely fun, and probably been a major contribution to my current state of mind. When I have more mental virility, I'll write about it.

Sorry for the turdish nature of this post. It isn't funny (some would say I never am), but is merely a stop gap to keep those people who complaing when I don't post happy. enjoy

I'm Already Dead. Think About It.

2006-01-18T00:18:00.000Z

So it seems I'm getting more inconsistent. Another 10 or more days since a post. Mostly because I couldn't be bothered. Christmas seems to have squeezed all inspiration from me. Or maybe nothing interesting happens in my life these days. I haven't even taken any pictures recently. And its raining outside. Probably. hmmm what a depressing load of rubbish I'm writing.

Happy thoughts
So at a certain request (unfortunately my lack of imagination means I finally have to bend and inflate her ego by writing about what she wants). Her chosen subject is "Candy".

Apparently this is the correct spelling of the word, although upon first hearing the word, I thought she wanted me to talk about "canned ee". A quick Wikipedia search for EE turned up things about electrical engineering, Estonia and bra sizes. Even with my extensive imagination, I can't imagine any of them really being canned, and the B-ster is hardly a hardcore pillhead, so it's unlikely to be canned ecstasy.

However, think about that for a moment. If you know Brittney (If you don't you can find pictures of her here (I'm not invading your privacy Britt, just increasing your traffic!!)), just for a few seconds imagine her at an illegal rave in a warehouse in Macclesfield. Wearing a yellow PVC jump suit, with a whistle surgically attached to her mouth and cyalume glow sticks being waved in an elaborate fashion above her head, she dances the night away to pumping happy hardcore whilst grinning manically at everyone. Ok, it could never happen, and I've never been to a rave, so I don't really know what peopel really look like, but the idea made me smile for a good couple of minutes.

Anyway back to the point. Canned Ee. So the letter E? More Wikipedia searches fascinatingly tell me that the HTML code for E is "E". Brilliant. Apparently in the Romanian language it is also a symbol for parthenogenesis. A can full of rat embryos?? In fact the only logical conclusion I can conclude with is that she is talking about Vitamin E. You know how health concious Americans are. That must be it. But why on earth Brittney wanted me to talk about a can of vitamins, I've no idea. I know nothing about nutrition. Let me leave you with some pictures instead...

Ohhhhhhhhh. She was talking about sweeties? Why didn't anyone say earlier?? Got some cross-cultural issues there. Well my favourite sweeties? A tie between Aniseed balls and Jelly Babies. Favourite chocolate bars? Boosts with guarana. And anyone who says american 'candy' is better than British is clearly Amrerican or lieing. Hersheys tastes like cardboard that someone's covered in brown paint. Reeses Cups and Butterfingers are specifically designed to make you sick or die of obesity in the space of two weeks, which ever comes first. Give me a liquorice allsort anyday.

I didn't mean it, I just want you back for good

2006-01-08T16:17:00.000Z

Sooooooooooooooo......17 days since a post and two people have begged me to blog. And I mean literally begged. They got down on their knees and threatened self harm if I didn't write. So rather than further burden the weakened back of the NHS with attempted suicides, I thought i'd best write.

By the way, in case you have any expectations, I doubt anything will be particularly interesting but who knows what might come out of my head?

So Christmas was fun. Lots of sleeping and playing old computer games. I managed to get a new highscore on every table of Pinball Fantasies on the old Amiga, which had stood for a good few years which gave me a good sense of inflated achievement. And then, as many of you know, I went to Wengen in Switzerland from the 26th to 2nd of January. Quite simply it was probably the best snowboarding trip I've been on (rivalling Tignes last Easter).

The snow was pretty much perfect with fresh poweder 4 days out of 6 and although it was apparently very cold (minus 17 C) you never really felt it. The powder meant I was able to keep Dixon (and his bother and my dadat bay for the morning) I rode with him, leaving them eating my proverbial snowy dust. Seeing my dad and Andy flounce around in knee deep snow was a sight to behold!

The people we went with we're also great. We were travelling through Oak Hall, which for those who don't know, is a cheap Christian holiday company. It is also particularly infamous for being a place for women scared of being left on the shelf to pick up husbands, leading to the alternative name, Bloke Hall holidays. Don't worry, I wasn't picked up, but what it did mean is that there were lots of fun people to hang out with. Most the people there were groups of friends in their late 20s (or my family), and it made for lots of fun.

The highlight of the whole week, however was not the discover of a real life Fawlty Towers, but of Shaun, the "professional" musician. He can't ski or snowboard (probably due to the lack of balance caused by his overhanging beergut), but he lives in a ski village, where he does nothing but do his work as a muscian. To be found in Sima's Pub almost every night, he'll belt all sorts of classics including Sting's Englishman in New York, James Blunt's You're Beautiful and Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight, and if you're lucky may even play most of the notes and not leave it all to his clever machines ("EasyJet charged me £180 to get this gear accross!").

Unless of course, he's drunk. Then he'll play Sting twice in a row and get bored and leave the stage. This however, leaves his guitar free for much fun to be had playing Perfect Day, Back For Good )featuring special duet from Shaun) and (this took balls frinm Ed) Beautiful One. Equally beautiful (in my humble opinion) was the certain character belting out Eternal Flame to rapturous cheers from the crowd. What a bar. Viva Apres Ski!

8 and a half hours sleep total over new years eve and the next night interspersed with 6 and half hours boarding wasn't much fun, but making fresh tracks in the powder was worth it! and now I'm back in beautiful Edinburgh. We had crazy fog weather on Wednesday which made the most grogeous sunset at dusk around the castle, but I didn't bring my camera (and had even held it in my hand before deciding not to take it out! grrr), so I can't show you how amazing this city is (again). And now it's so cold I can't type, so I'll leave you with pretty pictures.

Andy and Jason - Oak Hall stalwarts!

New Year flares

Clan Lindop

To the person who suggested it, we're not gay! Just happy

p.s. Does anyone else think Dry County is a flipping AMAZING song? How rock should be. 9:51 minutes (12:10 in the live version) of genius epic (November Rain falls in the same category).

So this is Christmas...

2005-12-22T15:40:00.000Z

Okay...so Derby officially sucks. As a city that is. Derbyshire the county is gorgeous. The city however, just depresses me. Granted, the older bits are sort of nice, but for the most part nasty glassy shops/bars have been squeezed in and the place looses its character. Then there's the indoor markets, which whilst being fun and cheap (I wish edinburgh had one) to be honest, are full of teenage mums and unemployed people (not counting the people who work the stalls), and at this time of year shelves and shelves of Christmas tat. I mean, who buys a plastic santa with a bulb stuck up his bum that will sit in a corner and glow ominously? Actually, I know part of the answer to that question, because I've seen the windows of the houses of the people who hoard them. Now I just need to find out who actually lives in them.

And for my final rant on this topic, i present the German Christmas Market. The one in Derby touts itself as 'The Original German Market'. But how original does it have to be to be original? It can't mean 'original' as in 'the only one' because every city I've been in this month has had one (Edinburhg, Liverpool, Birmingham...). Does it mean the first market? Surely thats in German?? Maybe it means 'the first market to come and slum it in the centre of some dreary city for a month'. But if it was the first market to come here, then surely they would manage to find a city more presitigious and less slumy than Derby?

Anyway, I still love the countryside out here. Its beautiful and smells of country and afternoon walks when its cold and the sun is going down and the mud is still hard and frosty are great. I wish I had my car with me (or my parents weren't using theirs for work), so I could escape further into the hills and see all the places I was forced to go for walks under duress when I was a kid.

So what actually have I been up to since I've been back? Mostly nothing. And it's been great. I've walked the dog a couple of times, I've slept in until midday a couple of times, Ive read some books, I've acheived some new highscores on old Amiga computer games I haven't played for 10 years, and I've even been out drinking in the afternoon with an old friend.

And this mornign I ventured into town (which sparked the rant above). Bus prices have gone up, they've even re-painted them from a tasteful burgendy to a kind of vomit/tangerine mix. Nando's have even managed to put in a restaurant since I was last here, supporting my theory that they're challenging Starbucks for world domination (to my knowledge there's still only one in Derby).

But probably the most exciting (and not very at that) moment was being stopped in the street by a guy about my age asking "excuse me sir, do you have a sense of humour"? When I answered that I thought I was very funny, he then asked me if I liked dirty jokes. Which I found odd. To my mind, dirty jokes aren't really associated with a sense of humour, rather they indicate a lack of a sense of humour, because the only thing you can laugh about is smut and inuendo. But then, maybe I'm a snob. Anyway, apparently this guy was a student selling a christmas book of dirty jokes for £2 (roughly the price of a pint - I'm not suspicious) to support his student loan. I duly declined, and walked 10 yards further on, only to be stopped by another guy doing exactly the same thing.

I hope the sheer length of this ramble has gone someway to making up for my lack of posting recently. Congratulations if you've made it this far! And apologies for the lack of photos, but I really can't be bothered uploading any through a dial up connection.

2005-12-19T23:07:00.000Z

will write something new and exciting sooon, I promise. I'm back home in Derby, so who knows what excitment I'll get up to..... (spot the sarcasm)

Calm down! Calm Down!

2005-12-13T00:33:00.000Z

Well here are the usual apologies about not posting for ages, but I have been away in Liverpool for a week. May I take this opportunity to thank the guys there for looking after me so well. I had an awesome (insert fake American accent when expressing this word) time!

Anyway, with so many stories to relate, where do I start? Well I must mention that I now truly believe Liverpool has it's own evolutionary culture going on all of it's own. I may disagree with it's European Capital of Culture 2008, but it's certainly scoring highly in an attempt to go for British Capital of weirdness. In a mere 6 days, I saw more things I wouldn't expect than I might in 6 months somewhere else.

In no particular order, here's a list of unexpected stuff I can remember (and haven't already banished to the 'please don't ever remember me' part of my brain):
Santa Claus being driving down residential streets blasting out hymnal music
A man in a wheelchair wheeling himself down the middle of a road
A blatant transvestite at a black tie screening of Narnia
A midget and a giant gay couple (sort of - there was at least 2 foot difference between them)
The random meeting of friend from school I hadn't seen in 4 years. Twice. In 2 days.
Scallys (OK, not unexpected but still repulsive)
Beatle's songs greeting me as I arrived on the train (should have been expected, but I hadn't imagined it could be that tacky).
John Prescott at the Maritime museum (For those of you who are American, he's the Deputy Prime Minister - the equivalent of Dick Cheney)

N.B. in case my musings leave you with the impression that I think negatively of Liverpool, let me reassure you that I actually quite like the place (some of it anyway), and had a great time there!!

Highlights of the week included sock wrestling, at which I believe I was overall champion, seeing as the second bout should be declared void due to certain participants cheating. Also up there was persuading the majority of the Americans to eat haggis (this one was 33% pork lung, 21% pork liver and 1% pork heart - mmmmmmmmm) and seeing them actually enjoy it. Oh, and if you ever get the chance to play SingStar, do it. You wont regret it.

The rest of what happened to me is probably not especially interesting to most of you, so if you want a more detailed report of Al's Campus Project to Liverpool. And briefly, Manchester, let me know.

Worthy of not however, is the fun I had on Saturday and Sunday, traveling down to Coventry and then Bristol to catch up with Ed, Chris and Lucie, some of my best friends from uni. We hadn't seen each other together for a really long time, so it was really cool to catch up. We ate in one of my (now) favourite restaurants ever, and on the flight home, you could see the fire continue to rage at the oil depot, 150 miles away, which was pretty surreal.

Here are some photos of the fun I had.

Turns out even Liverpool can be pretty sometimes!

There are things everyone has to do when going to Liverpool....

Boy, that maritime museum had everything - pretending to be naval officers and nurses, old school phones, and even a slave exhibition that smelled of poo

The scary thing is that Kevin almost suits it

It's St Andrew's day, so let's eat some haggis!

2005-12-02T00:20:00.000Z

For those of you who don't know what haggis is, here is the Wikipedia definition (with only a few words removed to make it flow better):

Wild Haggis are creatures native to the Scottish Highlands. It is generally held that the haggis is a three-legged bird with vestigal wings like an ostrich or an emu. Each leg is believed to be different length, a short leg and two long legs, allowing it to run rapidly round the mountains and hillsides which make up its natural habitat. It is also believed that male haggis run only clockwise and female haggis run only in an anticlockwise direction. However, this only occurs when it is disturbed from its normal routine of sleeping on the heather which covers the hills and mountains of Scotland. During Haggis Season, Wild Haggis are hunted, and their meat served up as a local delicacy, the well-known Scottish food, haggis. Scotch eggs are this creatures eggs.

Wild haggis can sense also vibrations in the ground produced by other animals, including humans, and this, along with its nocturnal habits, explain why living specimens of the haggis are so rarely seen. However a haggis can easily be caught by running around the hill in the opposite direction. A group of Haggis is sometimes known as a heap.

There are two species of haggis, one with longer left legs and the other with longer right legs. The two species coexist peacefully but are unable to interbreed because in order for the male of one species to mate with a female of the other, he must turn to face in the same direction as his intended mate, causing him to lose his balance before he can mount her. As a result of this difficulty, differences in leg length among the haggis population are accentuated.

So Wednesday was the day of our patron saint (when will we get a national holiday for it??), St Andrew. Tradition therfore required that we eat some haggis. The brighter one's amongst you will have noticed that infact, wild haggis are a myth, and that the words I removed from the wikipedia description were mostly 'folklore'. Amusingly, however, a survey in 2003 revealed that one-third of American's believed haggises were real animals. What I find particularly hilarious is that 23% arrived in Scotland believing they could catch one. Oh, how my sides hurt.

So as the more discerning reader will note, haggis is actually, little more than some sheep offal cooked up with some oats and stuff traditionally in a sheep's stomach. Whilst my dinner yesterday had a synthetic bag, the primary ingredient was indeed sheep's lungs. And yes, it was very very tasty.

And finally, a little present especially for my good frined Jonny Arundell. Watching this video made me think of you thinking of me. Hellmans delight .
I apologise to any of the rest of you who watch it and actuallly gag. i did. It's at your own risk folks!!

Shake that thang

2005-11-29T17:06:00.000Z

If any one knows a ska or funk band looking for a saxophonist, or can think of ingenius ways through which I might seek out said band/interested persons then please let me know.

Ode to Hummus

2005-11-27T22:31:00.000Z

Hummus my dearest, I love thee
You're the greatest thing to be made from chick pea
All the other dips could never compare
When I eat you, I'm walking on air.

I love you with carrots, crisps and especially flat bread,
I guess it's obvious that you're my favourite spread.
The perfect partner with Turkish coffee,
Hummus my dearest, I love thee.

I always wondered why they never asked me to do advanced English courses.

Ne-ver forget where you're coming from....

2005-11-23T21:04:00.000Z

Ok, so whilst I can admit I have some quirks (occaisional nighttime hallucinations, a penchant for playing cheesy music on my guitar, possible narcolepsy), rathern than list 5, I want to share with you an annoying quirk that has afflicted me for years.

This affliction raised it's ugly head most recently on Tuesday afternoon after I had helped a friend with her research psychology disertation (apparently I'm pretty good at multi-tasking) and I had walked halfway home before I realised I'd left my newly purchased football boots in the lab and completely forgotten them. The cold walk back to campus gave me enough time to ponder my ability to completely forget things in aspurt of total absent mindedness and amnesia, and to consider the full extent of things that have gone missing/I have managed to forget about.

So in no particular order, here's my top 5....

1. Car Keys (replacement cost £50). Eighteen months ago I somehow managed to lose my car keys. No biggie I thought, I have a spare set and the old ones will turn up at somepoint. Unfrtunately it turned out that the spare set didn't lock the boot (which was already unlocked) and as I was doing a lot fo diving at the time, could prove a little tempting to a thief. So, I looked EVERYWHERE for them and they were not to be found. So i arranged for a garage to fit a new lock (£50) and get new keys. However, the afternoon before the service, I was sorting out some clothes that had been washed, and what popped out the pocket of a pair of shorts, but my keys! And yes, I had already looked in them!

2. Car Stereo (value £150). Somehow after a football match, I lost the facia for my car stereo. For 3 weeks I looked high and low, visited the bars I'd been to and couldn't find it anywhere. After being resigned to losing it, it miraculously turned up under the drivers seat. Which was nice.

3. Passport (replacement value £65ish). Leaving a flight one winter, I was strolling to the exit, looking forward to the vast expanses of airport corridors to strech my legs, when I got a tap on the shoulder from the guy who'd been sitting next to me. He was holding my passport. And I had no idea I'd lost it.

4. Leather Jacket with wallet (Combined total £150ish). When I was 15, my uncle got married in Vienna. Whilst waiting for our bags, I visited the toilets and hung my jacket (only containing a wallet - my dad looked after my passport on this trip) up on the door of the cubicle. I did what I had to do, left, and got on with the day. A few hours later my uncle turned up at our hotel to say hello and turned up clutching my jacket, before I had even realised it was missing (yes, I am THIS absent minded). He'd been at the airport picking someone else up and had heard my name accross the tannoy, and picked up the jacket. It turned out some decent fellow had handed in my jacket, restrained from half-inching the wallet, from which they got my name and by some amazing coincidence my uncle was in the airport when they broadcast my name.

5. Phone (twice) This post is far too long already, so I'll spare you the details, but I've lost two phones, once at a gig (Electric Six if you're wondering) and once in a muddy puddle at a retreat centre. Somehow the muddy puddle one was found and returned to me a few days later.

If the list were to be extended, I could add a jumper left on a football pictch, a jacket left on a train, micromachines left on a beach (I was VERY upset) and if I could be bothered to think harder many more. I admit I'm one of the worst people in the world at looking for things, but my absent mindedness is a serious affliction. It has even caused me to miss a university exam, which for some reason I thought was in the afternoon but was actually in the morning (if you ever want to physically feel adrenaline injected into your body, try doing this). And I'm not sure what I can do about it!

Anyway, well done on reading this far. You have been priavelged enough to join with the rest of the internet world in finding out an intimate part of my personality.

And as a treat, check out this video, it's beautiful

And to fulfill my promise to the Brittster, also check out the Evangelistic Linebacker, which is hilarious!

I saw her praying, while I was DJing

2005-11-21T15:46:00.001Z

Frankly, I'm disappointed. I expend hours of energy writing a detailed report on the beauty of sea cucumbers for your benefit, hundreds of you read it (I know because I have spies) and then 3 people reply (one of whom talked about something else). That's gratitude.

Anyway, now I've stopped being a miserable git, I'll talk about something else. It turns out I've been tagged, which is apparently some bizarre online version of kiss-chase or tag (suprisingly enough). I'm supposed to reveal 5 quirks about myself and then tag 5 more people. But I'm not going to do that. Well not unless one day I get completely stuck for something to blog about and fancy ripping open my heart and laying it on the table for you all. I also don't necessarily think I'm quirky. I'm just me. :)

So, continuing my theme of resurrecting old material because I'm too lazy to think of new stuff in the hope that some of you reading may not have seen it before....I present the return of DC Southpaw. Yes indeedy, Baby didn't just get back, Baby got Book.

Altogether now.... "I like big bibles and I cannot lie, you Christian brothers can't deny....."

I know you're dancing...!

Pearl harbourer

2005-11-17T11:26:00.000Z

Now that the furore regarding my hair has died down, I feel it appropriate to answer some FAQs and let the matter go to bed (something I need to get better at myself). Anyway, yes it does make me look 5 years younger, yes I have had my first shave in over 3 months making me look an extra 3 years younger and yes, I'm going to let it grow back because I don't like getting ID'd (not that it has happened since the cut, but it's only a matter of time - the last incident was around the time of my most recent shave back in August).

With a lack of anything else amusing to write about, I feel there is a need to educate you, my dear readers in some of the ways of the sea. Now I realise I may have blogged about this in eons past, so if this isn't new, skip the rest and abuse me in the comments section, but I believe this information of enough importance to share with newer readers.

So here begins the science lesson about the mighty echinoderm, the sea cucumber! Contrary to popular belief, these creatures are much more than a sub aqua version their distinctly sessile terrestial namesakes. In fact they have nothign in common at all, apart from vaguely looking like each other (apparently). By enlarge these beautiful animals are pretty boring - the graze the sand, sucking it up, gleaning the nutrients (derived from tasty decaying matter) and pooping the sand back out. However, they are only boring until you discover the amazing fact about them.....

First of all, they breath through their anus. That is, they don't have gills because they aren't fish, but the pump in water through their bum and do the gas exchange around there. However, the story doesn't end there - a brilliant little oppertunist known as the Pearl fish has decided to grasp the oppertunity and take up residence in the sea cucumber's rectum. So the fish wait until the fish breathes (I don't want to be too graphic here), avoids the protective anal teeth (I'm not making this up!) and then darts inside. Opinion is divided as to whether it's a parasitic or symbiotic relationship, but if you ask me when there's a fish sitting inside you nibbling on your gonads (another endearing trait of the pearl fish), I'm not too sure you're going to be too pleased about it. Especially when the fish gets bored and rather than exciting through the entry route, decides to eat it's way out through your gut. My vote is firmly with the parasitic.

(The pearl fish exits and enters our poor holothurian friend Mr. Sea Cucumber)

Anyway, apparently a third of all sea cucumbers have got one of these little blighters in them. And now approximately a third of you will be able to amaze your friends with your fascinating scientific knowledge!

(Credit to John Arundell for the post title (that's how to avoid plagiarism KC Clarke!))

Feel the magic, hear the roar....

2005-11-15T18:43:00.000Z

So the fabled pictures appear. Of me looking really stupid. But you asked for them. So I say give the public what they want. Someone said yesterday that it made me look like Brian Laudrup. They may have a point. Anyway, send whatever comments/abuse you want my way. It'll grow back.

And if you've forgotten how I used to look, check the post below

Anybody who has my phone number, please remind me to call the council tomorrow...I keep forgetting.

Do the Pussycat Dolls actually need more than one member?

2005-11-13T17:45:00.000Z

"I love technology, but not as much as you you see..."

Friday night saw match 4 of the Edinburgh Poker League season. Now normally, this wouldn't be worth too much of a mention, but this particular evening saw the return of the illustrious Tom 'Thor' Schmidt, my old flat mate. Nothing special about that, you might be saying, merely the return of an old friend, right? Wrong! Tom was infact joining the table all the way from LAS VEGAS!! That's right, through the miracle of the world wide web, microphones and webcams, Tom was able to take his place and not only match the 20 participants, but come streaking from behind to actually win the whole thing! This was an impressive feat worthy of a poker master from the casino town, and all credit should go to him (even if he did take me out).

The picture is of him beating down our local hero Dave Redfern (who also had a mighty late streak to take second place)

Other fun things this weekend included a trip to Murrayfield to watch Scotland play Argentina (Scotland lost 23-19 virtue of a pretty dodgy ref), courtesy of a free ticket. The seat was
awesome - 3 rows back on the 10m line (well at least I could see everything going on on my side of the pitch!), so I didn't feel to bad about going on my own. But it's a wierd feeling to be watching international rugby with all the trappings of huge pyrotechnics and fireworks and pipe bands in a 65,000 seat stadium , when there are only 20,000 people there. It just felt empty. But I guess it'll be full when we get mauled by the All Blacks in a couple of weeks.

One more thing - tomorrow is the day I finally get my hair cut. Barring a bit of a trim in August, it's been growing from this in November 04:

To this:

Who knows what it will turn out like? Mullet or Mohican? The anticipation is almost tangible.....

And the sky, it blazes like FIRE!

2005-11-09T23:48:00.000Z

So this evening it was discovered that our flat can be broken into without smashing any windows. I know this because I managed it. With me having forgotten my keys, my flatmate at location unknown and with phone switched off, I was looking pretty stuck. However, some quick calculations regarding muscle circumference and the width of the letterbox later, my arm was stuffed through the aforementioned hole and eventually twiddled the right knob until the lock was freed (leaving me with only minor welts on my arm).

Depending on how you look at it, this is either useful or scary. It means that whenever I forget my keys again (unfortunately not uncommon due to my seive brain), I know I can get in. I only have to somehow negotiate my way into the stairwell by persuading the grannies in the other flats that I'm not some repo man ready to cart them off to the nursing home.

However, there's also the scary idea that theoretically, any burgular with skinny enough arms could get in. Oh well, we've got a neighbourhood watch scheme. Nothing could get past that.

In other news, I got back from Aberdeen this afternoon having done some evangelism training with a CU up there. Now I'm sure this isn't entierly unique, but their entire comittee is female, as far as I can make out, there are only 5 guys there (making up a whole 15%) of the meeting. how on earth are those ladies gonna find husbands?

What's the international hand signal for "I need the toilet"?

2005-11-07T16:05:00.000Z

The weekend was awesome. Although unfortunately none of the fabled killer octopus were spotted, lots of fun was had, with my buddy and I being the only folk in the club to have found the much sought after jeep, and with a broken compass as well! A flounder as big as a man's chest was also discovered and we found the only shoal of fish in the world on the Atkins diet - at least the crab liked our bread (and was more impressed than the other divers who complained of having no bread to make lunch with).

Possibly the funniest thing all weekend however, was watching the divers from Dundee uni, wander around making all sorts of elementary mistakes, worthy of much ridicule. Every single one of them would wear their masks on their foreheads (cardinal sin), with the pinnacle being a guy wandering forwards down the slipway whilst already wearing his fins (super high risk of serious injury), and of course his mask on his forehead. If only I had my camera on me.

Also worthy of note was the couple having a romantic meal of steak and chips in the hotel/restaurant/pub we frequented. Approximately 5 minutes after 24 smelly divers sat down on the tables around them, they upped and left, each leaving at least half their hunk of meat. What a waste.

And now, feast your eyes on the beauty that is Loch Fyne...

I wonder how long it will be before Blogspot stop me using all their storage space with huge photos

Heroes in a half shell

2005-11-04T14:49:00.000Z

Lat night I saw the most incredible thing on TV - a turtle (unfortunately the program was so dumbed down it didn't even bother to tell us which species its was), taking chunks out of a tiger shark! Just stop and think about this for a second.... Big, sleek, killing machine, the tiger shark tries to take on the humble turtle which has an average swim speed slower than a very slow thing. A certain victory for the thing with teeth (thte turtle merely has a beak and just eats algae and jellyfish), you might say, but no! The normally docile female reptile lashes out and rips out huge lumps of flesh, leaving the tiger shark to whimper away. Bob's Animal Fights would be proud.

Look, it wouldn't hurt a fly.
But maybe to the shark it looked a little more like this:

And now I'm heading off into the rainy sunset for a weekend on the soaked west coast of Scotland for a couple of days diving. Expect reports early next week of heroic fights with giant octopus and titanic battles between me and a fiesty trigger fish.

I can show you the world...(it shimmers and shines)

2005-11-01T19:20:00.000Z

This lunchtime i walked up Blackford Hill, near my flat, to get away from it all and spend some concentrated time praying. The view over the city looked like this.

Man, I live in a beautiful place.

So this weekend saw the Edinburgh CU houseparty in the middle of nowhere somewhere around the England/Scotland border. This must have been the 4th or 5th time I've been to Whitthaugh Park, and every single time it has rained. Lots. As you might have guessed, this time was no different and the bits of green stuff masquarading as grass turned into their now familiar ice-rink alter-egos. With quite hilarious results.

Other less hilarious incidents included me somehow getting to the final of the dancing competition and pulling certain muscles that are particularly useful for dancing in a potentially title winning knee slide across the floor. Unfortunately the resultant muscle twinge and skinned knees rendered me helpless as I lay on the floor whilst my valient opponent pulled out a particularly smooth Moonwalk and promptly coasted to victory. Quite embarrasing in front of 120 people.

I would also like to register my new found love for Tomato Juice. This glorious liquid is highly underatted and has lived in the shadow of its more glamours counterparts, Orange, Cranberry and Apple juices far too long. So all of you, get out the Lea and Perrins and see what you're missing out on!!

Oh and thanks to Sparticus for this link. I've long known about it, but had forgotten the address. So all of you go and visit The JCB Song (A JCB is a big digger, for those Americans who are reading) and share in the joy.

Roll on today's pretty pictures...

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

2005-10-28T11:48:00.000Z

So yesterday was the hottest October 27 in the UK since records began 125 years ago. Apparently it reached 22.4C in some remote part of Scotland. On such a rarity, who could pass up the oppertunity to spend it like this?

Well actually, I didn't, because if you looked carefully you will have noticed that actually, that isn't a scottish beach. But this is...

Anyway, what I actually did was meet lots of people and rather than having to run from the rain and dive into the closest coffee shop or pub available, we had meetings in the park. How nice.
Other interesting happenings this week included winning our local pub quiz for the 3rd tim in a row (keeps us in beers for the rest of the week at least). And gaining a respectable position in the latest event of the Edinburgh Poker League.

And now it's time to head off to the annual Edinburgh CU houseparty, and a weekend away in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception, forfeit darts and strange sunsets. Adios my friends (oh and if you get a chance, watch Layer Cake, it's very good)

Why, Why, Why, Delilah?

2005-10-24T08:45:00.001Z

Weddings are lots of fun, aren't they? Friday was my old flatmate Tim's wedding to AnnaLauren and was an awesome day. Even lots of rain didn't really dampen anything, seeing as the reception was only a couple of minutes walk from the church and the only thing we couldn't do was step out onto the balcony looking out to the castle. So yeah, God is great, bringing two people from the other sides of the world together, and giving us a great day to celebrate it. The ceilidh was awesome - the band had more energy and originality than most bands i've seen and played Tom Jones' "Delilah" for the Dashing White Sargeant and a Proclaimer's song. Super. As I side note, somehow I managed to get slated in the best man's speech more than Tim himself. Surely thats not right.

And almost as exciting, Friday was also the day Pro Evolution Soccer 5 was released! This game is incredible. It is in serious danger of taking over my world and removing any chance of a girlfriend or meaningful relationship from my life. But I dont care. It's THAT good. And more importantly, on current form, I'm kicking my flatmate's arse at it.

And if you've managed to read this far, go and spend 4 and a half minutes at this link. I PROMISE you won't regret it. Thanks to Brittney for providing me with several minutes of joviality. Nintendo Choir

Also, go and see Wallace and Gromit, and The Corpse Bride at the cinema. My word, they rock.

Photos......Wedding, and view from the window at the reception (I LOVE Edinburgh!)

Apparently rude stuff will bring in the googlers!

2005-10-20T15:59:00.000Z

Firstly, apologies to those I promised I would update by Tuesday. That didn't happen beacuse I am lazy. It's an inherent disease. Sorry.

So, the weekend. Bit mental really, 8 Americans were visiting, a friend had a birthday, I had to play football, go to a wedding and my flatmate from Newcastle, Graham was visiting. On the Friday night I went out for dinner with the yankydoodles (sorry guys) at an Italian restaurant. Never before have I been in a place like it, or am likely to again. After flirting with the girls, the restauranteer noticed one of them dancing a little in her seat to a tune, and promptly turned the place into a night club. Not only did he turn the lights down and turn the music up, but he moved the tables out of the way to create a dance floor and even had a lfashyl light spinny ball thingy! It was phenomenal. It was like one of those shops in Discworld novels that never stay in one place but pop up all over the world. Right now, our friend Joe is probably entertaining purveyours of italian cuisine in Dubai, or Phildelphia, or Cape Town.

The wedding was also lots of fun. The kilt came out and we ceilidhed away into the wee small hours (or at least 10pm). And we won our football match by virtue of a spectacular own goal by their sweeper, who played for us last season. Oh how we laughed.

In other exciting developments, I now have a hit counter for this site. It's so sophisticated that I can tell where you're logging in from and what browser you're using. So to increase the diversity of viewers I plan on surrupticiously insert words that might generate hits on google. For example, did I ever tell you how I got the nickname, Naked Al? Lets see if that increases the traffic....

And now, the photos...Notice in particular Danny and Brittney getting their groove on in the restuarant (it's called Rialtos, by the way, if anyone in Edinburgh wants to check it out...). And apparently my hair's getting too long. Any opinions?

Interestingly, I still like Happy Hardcore

2005-10-13T13:33:00.000Z

Its been a week since I posted, so I feel an obligation to write something, but I really have nothing of interested to write about, so don't bother reading any more, cos it'll be really boring.

However, I would like to say thankyou to all of you who asked how I was feeling. I'm not feeling much better - still snotty, but enjoying the fact that I have managed to get rid of the nastiness that has since afflicted my flatmates this week.

Several of my loyal readers have also expressed an interessed in the thought processes that go into creating titles for each of these posts. Well, I confirm that absolutely no thought is necessary, and I write the first thing that pops into my head. Todays title was inspired by a track called Together Forever" which was on a CD entitled Bonkers 3 that I bought approximately 8 years ago. Hearing it harkened my mind back to those heady days, and reminded me that at times, I still do enjoy the pumping beats of a stonking happy hardcore track (it must be noted, however, that whilst Together Forever is indeed a standout track on the album, it cannot compare with Return to Toytown, or my personal favourite, Fly Away). So next time you read my blog, play a little game and see if you can guess what I was thinking at the time. I know you want to

In other news, yesterday I went to St Andrews to lead some training and it rained a lot. Fortunately it had stopped before we attempted to do surveys, and everyone had a great time. Slightly more bizarre than the weather (cos everyone expects rain in Scotland) was the dinner party I somehow ended up at. My friend, Mikaela had said she would cook me dinner, and instead of the beans on toast, or similar, i was expecting, she was having a full on dinner party, which was lovely. However, despite there being 8 guests, I was somehow the only British person in the room, with others hailing from South Africa, America and Lithouania. A strange day.

I was also thinking my blog was getting a little dull, so here's some pretty pictures I took at some point to brighten it up....

How pretty.

Free wife beaters? I'm there

2005-10-06T09:34:00.000Z

Things that annoy me (First in a potentially very long series).

Walking past a shop, on the SECOND OF OCTOBER (!), and seeing Christmas decorations already up. unfortunately I was not in posession of my camera at the time, so proof of my rage is not available, but I'm sure my word is enough.

Anyway, I was strolling past the American eatery TGI Fridays after church on Sunday night, and a twinkle caught my eye. Glancing round, my eyes were bombarded with a feast of silver tinsel, sparkley lights and crackers. I can kinda understand department stores stocking decorations, so people can plan early, but a restaurant flaunting itself like a 16 year old girl trying to get into a club....it's disgraceful.

In other news, I'm ill. Sort of. I feel like I've swallowed a tennis ball and its become lodged in my throat. Yucky.

Your hair is rubbish.

2005-10-04T09:40:00.000Z

One of the most satisfying things in the world is saving a penalty your flatmate took and then having video evidence to play over and over back to him.

Do ya, do ya really wanna

2005-09-28T14:38:00.000Z

Continuing an occaisional series on strange things I see in Edinburgh....

A few days ago I walked out of my flat, and the first thing to greet my eyes was an old chap, riding a bicycle, smoking a pipe. Now I realise that a description in words does not do this visual fest justice, but please imagine for a moment an elderly gentleman, leaisurely sitting on his bike, waiting for lights to change whilst puffing on his pipe. And then add this - he wasn't just riding any old bike, he was riding a Powabike! This really is a techniological gem of a machine - its a bike, but if you can't be arsed pedalling, don't bother, beacuse the bike will do all the work for you, travelling "at a top speed of 15mph, with a generous range of 20 miles per charge". So after my initial amazment, it seems the gentleman in question could afford to rot his lungs with tobacco, beacuse the only energy expenditure required was managing to avoid falling off. Maybe he could share notes with the penny farthing rider.

Possibly more amazing was the sight I witnessed on Thursday. A family group out for a walk up the street, apparently taking their pets for a walk. This was indeed what they were up to, and you'd be forgiven for assuming that they were walking their dogs, or at a push (if they were particularly eccentric) their cats, but NO! They were walking ferrets. Yes, those things that look like rats that have been streched out on some medieval torture device and get shoved down holes to terroise badgers and such like. So there they were, walking up the street with two ferrets on leads, looking like mad people, as I and I'm sure everyone else thought they were.

And before any of you, amazed by the phenominal stories just related to you, start to claim that I'm lying, I'm not.

I'm the Urban Spaceman , baby; I've got speed

2005-09-20T21:22:00.000Z

Words cannot describe the pain
So I let pictures do it instead

Elephant water polo?

2005-09-12T09:09:00.000Z

Yesterday, driving to the airport to pick someone up I didn't know, I saw the most amazing thing - an old man riding a penny farthing. For those of you who are moderately uneducated, this is probably the first ever type of bicycle to be made and frankly, looks ridiculous. I emerged from this experience with two questions.

1. The man was not wearing a helmet, only a traditional Scottish bunnet. Why? Surely he had much further to fall than a regular bike user, and therefore the speed with which his head hit the ground would be much harder, making the utilisation of an appropriate helmet a rather sensible idea.

2. How on earth do they avoid toppling over when they have to stop at traffic lights? The distance from saddle to ground is greater than the length of the riders legs, and unless the rider is Inspector Gadget, their legs wont reach without serious crotch damage.

In other news, yesterday I went to see the film Crash and cried more than I ever have in recent times. Its funny, coming out of these films that make you feel exhausting, you can say it was a great film, but never really say you enjoyed it. Do I enjyo crying and being put through an emotional whirlwind? No. BUt will I do that to myself again? Of course. Why? I don't really know. I suck at emotional psychology.

And for Brittneys benefit, yesteray I picked some crap off my floor. I'm getting there...

When you're near, it all makes sense

2005-09-07T14:21:00.000Z

Sunday was the last night in the festival, which culminates in classical concert and fireworks display, which half the town turns out for. Being the highly organised person that I am, I duly forgot my camera and then had to rely on my dogy memory to record what was easily the best fireworks display I have ever seen (including the couple of July 4th shows i've seen in America). It was flippin awesome. However, thanks to the genius of google images, I have managed to borrow a couple of pics of what it would have looked like (seeing as these pictures are from previous years, but apparently they don't change the show much). And I don't think these images are copyright!

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you have a Royal Bank of Scotland account, this is where your bacnk charges and interest (probably) goes! (And yes, it does look like the castle was on fire, which it did for most the night, but I'm reliably assured that it's ok).

Ikea's cocktail shakers form part of the 'Groggy' range

2005-09-03T18:00:00.000Z

I'm back. And excited. Currently Scotland are beating Italy 1-0, although no doubt by the time I've finished writing this we'll be losing.

So, 13 days of conferences was long long long. I got some serious seminar fatigue by the end, but I learnt stuff at both, got excited by the new year, and got to see lots of friends, so it was well worth being there. But if you really want to have fun, try going to nearly 2 weeks non stop of work related conferences, take a 5 hourdrive home, and then immediately try to clean and pack up your flat to move out the next morning. Actually it's not too fun at all, especially when you start to realise how much serious junk you own. Anyway, I'm in the new flat now and things are slowly starting to look organised.

Italy have just equalised. I should be a prophet.

What was really fun, was the festival, as mentioned earlier. This week I found out we got a 5 star review in the main Festival paper, 3 weeks, which is pretty cool (even if my 8 year old cousin could write a better reseachered and scripted review than whoever did ours). Blogspot doesn't yet let me post videos, but I can treat you to a couple of pictures.

In other riveting news, today I used a new website to search for a car insurance quote, and amongst the 20 odd quotes I got, there was one £90 cheaper than my renewal quote. Back of the net!!

Scotland have managed to hold on for a draw. Best scrap that full time prophet application I was filling out.

It's raining again.

2005-08-18T10:41:00.000Z

Not really much time to post anythign meaningful, but I wanted to write something before I go away to nottingham for 12 fun-filled days of conferences. Ah, back to work, i suppose.

I love the festival again. Its MUCH more funbeing a apart of it, and after the initial frenzy, all the people involved seem to have got down into a routine of working hard promoting stuff, and not being insanely stupid the whole time. The Dirty Rascals show I'm in has been amazing so far - loads of people turing up, and we're starting to sound really good. I can breath a sigh of releif as the disaster I was expecting having not played my sax for a year hasn't happened and it's been suprisingly easy to fall back into.

The other perk of playing is that I get to see any show in the same group of venues as ours for free, so I've been to see some amazing bass player called Steve Lawson and a couple of really good plays and musicals.

Another great thing about the fring is not feeling guilty about staying up late. Its been several days since I was in bed before 3, and on Monday I was at a party until 5, when the police turned up and complained about the noise. Oh, I feel like such a rebel.

Anyway, tonight is my last night and cos of this conrference I unfortunately miss out on the huge last night on Friday. But I've fallen in love with the whole experience - I've even had awesome conversations about God with people every single night - and can't wait for next year to come around again!!

£95 for a blue hoodie?

2005-08-12T16:49:00.000Z

Well, this made me chuckle. And I had fun on wikipedia looking up who the theologians were.

Nothing else interesting is happening. I have been writing newsletters and buying office stationary.

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

79%

Emergent/Postmodern

75%

Reformed Evangelical

68%

Neo orthodox

61%

Fundamentalist

54%

Roman Catholic

39%

Modern Liberal

25%

Classical Liberal

25%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

25%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Have you seen them cakes?

2005-08-09T15:07:00.000Z

I'm already bored by the festival. It's only been on for 4 or 5 days, but I'm fed up of it. Don't get me wrong, I've had fun - I went to a show on Sunday (Sawdust Circle if you're interested - its great), and I've spent time watching the street performers set light to their pubic hairs or whatever they do to get more attention than the bloke before - but I've had my fun, and now I want things to get back to normal. I want to be able to walk into town and not have three squillion flyers shoved down my throat by posh students trying to get me see their incest/nudity/violence/sex/gay kissing filled play, that is of course full of laughs and makes stong 'polotical statement'. Does everything really have to be controversial to make it worth seeing?

Of course, my viewpoint will change next week when I start playing in a show, and I will maybe even join the ranks of flyer pushers, just to see what it's like from the other side.

In other news, I've finally managed to get someone to rent the flat. Through a series of random God-ordained coincidences, I bumped into a student friend whilst playing golf on the Links. He just so happened to be with his 2 mates looking at flats, and it just so happened that I had 3 bedroom flat available to rent. Job done. Takes a big load of stress away - there's 5 extra folk staying in the flat during our show, and their stay would have coincided with prospective renters looking around, which wouldn't have been easy.

Oh and Christy said something about meeting famous people - well I was in the Speigeltent on Sunday night having a beer and saw Simon Taylor (the Lions rugby player, if you're American)

Whoring yourself to the Edinburgh tourists

2005-08-05T08:01:00.000Z

Soooo.........Once again I have rejected xanga, and dumped her by the proverbial text message. Since blogspot managed to creat their own photo-uploader, this site has started to have the attractiveness of Scarlett Johannson, whilst xanga is coming across much more Jade Goody-like (If any Americans don't know who she is, there's a picture just below). I was only using xanga cos people used to look at the site, and who's gonna look if you've got Jade Goody on your arm (except maybe to laugh)?

So here's to the new relationship. With my wit and charm, and Blogspot's sexiness, how can it go wrong? I'll have an army of avid readers in no time. Or not. Most likely I'll just get too lazy to write and my readers will be seduced away by a new, fresher Lindsay-Lohan type blog.

Anyway, enough of the famous actress allusions (and yes, I know Jade Goody isn't a famous actress, but did you see her fitness video?), they're crap. Suffice to say, I'll be writing sproadically here from now on, and it would be nice if you commented every now and then just so I can feel liked.

Edinburgh is starting to go cray-zee right now. Its teetering on the edge of full blown festival madness. Here and there are pockets of public-school educated university theatre societies, crouching on street corners and trying to seduce you into seeing their pointless ego-trip which a barrage of euphanisms and women (or occaisionally men) running up and down the Royal Mile wearing not very much at all. No doubt there will be some very very good things showing this year, its just that there really is so much tosh on, its hard to identify the good stuff. However, it must be noted that this year, I'm playing in a band for a few nights, and of course, that will be amazing (Search for the Dirty Rascals if you're interested - only £8.50 a ticket!!)

If you've managed to read this far, I applaud you, and reward you with a little gift. I stole this link of another blog (isn't that what the whole ideas about anyway), and don't know whether to laugh or cry. Its a serious issue I guess, but its done soooo badly. Anyway, judge for yourself. "People I Don't Know Are Trying To Kill Me"

I know a man Bojangles

2005-08-01T20:23:00.000Z

YES!! Blogspot is soooooooooooo much easier to post pictures with. Enjoy my tigers, and sunsets and canals and stuff (well, they're not really mine, but the pictures i took of them are). And apologies for gettin a little carried away with the number i posted.

i love the smell of neoprene in the morning

2005-05-30T21:44:00.000Z

too lazy to write new stuff, but theres some info and pretty pictures at www.xanga.com/a_lindop

Enjoy!

Fringe benefits

2005-05-05T13:38:00.000Z

The news this week is so exciting I'm gonna post it here AND in xanga! Basically, in the space of two days, i got two phonecalls - one inviting me to play with my old band from Newcastle in the Edinburgh Fringe festival this August, and the other inviting me to teach scuba diving with a company in Edinburgh, pending an informal interview!!

So, if anyone's around Edinburgh 14th-19th August, come and see us!! It could be the best 45 minutes of your day :)

And in keeping with my attempted theme of interesting websites... Can you spot a fake smile??
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

I got 15 out of 20 right. Not bad, even if I do say so myself!

Ian McKellen is WHAT??

2005-04-25T12:22:00.000Z

I found possibly the second funniest video ever recently (after baby got book). No idea how i found it, but find it I did. If you're offended by Lord of the Rings characters being portrayed as gay (and nobody can deny that the last few scenes in Return Of the King are somewhat border line), don't watch it:

http://www.funfry.com/showphoto.php/photo/6183/cat/654/page/1

In other news, nothing interesting is happening.

Sacre bleu

2005-04-21T14:19:00.000Z

Snowboarding kicks ass. Despite the ludicrous expenses of france (£4.67 for a pint of coke), the week was awesome. Mt and Tim met a couple other boarders in the chalet who's dad had been to Tignes 15 times before and we instantly had our own personal guide for the week! The highlight was 2 feet of snow falling on the last night - slopes that had been icy moguls the day before became soft trampolines, you could just chuck yourself down. Roll on next year....