I need a holiday…

…was what I kept telling myself. After all, since taking 15 of my 20 allocated days annual leave to travel to the U.S. last April, and excepting ten days off at Christmas and some public holidays, I’ve been working continuously, attending college on day release with all its attendant studying, I’ve completed three night classes and I still managed to find time to fit in NaNoWriMo in November. Thus, I’m a bit worn down. I definitely need a break away from my obligations and the ongoing framework that is my first five year plan. However, as my finances are all tied up in investments, I don’t have a great deal of money to pay for a ’sunshine break’ as the Sun would undoubtedly dub it. Staying in the U.K. is slightly cheaper (although only just), so it looks as if my two weeks off booked in August will be spent recreating John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s bed-in.

However, in the meantime, I had some unfinished business. Three years ago, I’d applied for, and was accepted for interview for a medical illustrator job at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. I didn’t get the post in the end, but while looking at photographs of Cardiff on Flickr, I found mention of an interesting competition called Photomarathon, its premise in precis being that each entrant should take 12 pictures of 12 topics over 12 hours. I was intrigued, and was delighted to find that the 2007 competition was to be held simultaneously in Cardiff and Glasgow, meaning I could compete from the comfort of my own home city. Unfortunately, it transpired that the contest was due to take place the same weekend I travelled down to London for the Muse concert at Wembley stadium. And in 2008, the competition didn’t take place at all. So when idly checking the Photomarathon website one evening to see it was scheduled to take place in Cardiff (only) on 20th June, I paid my £15 and entered. I would think about travel and accommodation later…

Around six months previously, I’d somehow let myself get talked into buying tickets* to see Oasis at Murrayfield Stadium. Now I love Oasis, but having seen them on their arena tour in November, I wasn’t much fussed about seeing them, or not as they case might be, in an enormo-dome. But I paid my £50 (£50!!) for the gig, which was to take place on the Wednesday before Photomarathon. So, it made sense to me to take the day off work for the gig, then the day after to recover. And when my cheap flights and hostel dictated a three night stay in Cardiff, I took the Friday and Monday off work as well. After all, I had leave to spare. Six days off work, it promised to be divine.

Tuesday evening’s now customary game of five a side signalled the end of my working week. It was a decent game, though it was incredibly hot and I just can’t handle any physical exertion in high temperature. The next day I was actually due in to work, for a health check that had originally been booked for a different time, but which had ended up being moved to Wednesday morning. I wasn’t enamoured with having to come into the office on my day off, even if I didn’t have to lift a finger, but it simply made things more convenient that way.

My check up, which was rather cursory, went ok. My cholesterol levels are still slightly below the level of concern, and the physician noted I was a little over-weight. “Pre-obese” were her actual words. I know I’ve put on a little weight in the last few years (two and a half stone), but I still don’t think I’m anywhere near being obese. In any case, the body mass index is fundamentally flawed as it assumes all body weight is pure fat. Muscle however is heavier than fat; thus, all your ripped boxers, rugby players and so on are normally considered obese by dint of their BMI. I’m not saying I’m an Adonis, but I think I do have a fair bit of muscle, especially given the amount of cycling and football I’ve done so far this year. Anyway, she said my stress levels and diet were ok, and as I don’t drink or smoke, I’ve given myself a bit of leeway in that respect. She gave me a few pointers on how to improve my breathing (you think I’d have got the hang of it by now), and I was out of the office by ten.

After a brief sojourn to Glasgow to get a 35mm film developed, I returned home to prepare for the trip to Edinburgh for the Oasis gig. As I’ve stopped drinking for the year, and as I hate public transport, I had offered to drive my sister, her fiance and my friend Kevin through for the gig. It would only take an hour or so, and would be preferable to spending god knows how long on trains with drunken eejits. We eventually parked up at the Park and Ride facility at Riccarton, and a 20 minute bus journey later we were at Murrayfield. Originally, I had a seating ticket, but as Kevin had a spare general admission ‘brief’, as your tabloid newspaper would have it, we ended up swapping and trying to sell the seated ticket, with no luck. I offered to swap back, but Kevin wasn’t having it.

The gig itself was something of a disappointment. Perhaps I just wasn’t up for it, and maybe it’s because I’m not a fan of the band’s latest album, but I really couldn’t muster any enthusiasm. Watching Chris Sharrock drum again was a pleasure, as much as watching Zakk Starkey had been, but it never really took off for me. And I’m a big Oasis fan, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, as if you tell someone you like the music of said band, they automatically assume you’re some kind of unreconstructed neanderthal with a penchant for alcoholism, sexism and any other kind of ‘ism’ you care to think of. Doubly unfortunately, this is because a lot of Oasis fans are unreconstructed neanderthals with penchants for alcoholism, sexism and so on. Being in a stadium with 60,000 of them wasn’t a pleasurable experience. I simply enjoy the music, I’m not into the whole urinating in people’s garden and getting involved in fist fights while the band are playing.

Afterwards, it took as a while to negotiate Gorgie Road, but we got back home, dropping Kevin off in Hamilton fairly smartly. Fortunately I had a long lie on Thursday morning. I was due to play fives with the guys from work, but the game didn’t kick off until 12:30pm, so I could rise from my pit at my leisure. The game itself was fairly non-descript and so was the ensuing afternoon/evening. In fact, it was so non-descript, it may have merged with Wednesday. Nevertheless, one of these two days I got my film developed and bought two cheap, second-hand Xbox games. I didn’t get much chance to play them though, as I had an early start ahead of me. Cardiff beckoned in the morning.

Cardiff, the capital city of the principality of Wales, first entered my consciousness in earnest in the summer of 1992. During a trip to Ingliston Market in Edinburgh, I bought (or my mother bought for me) a Cardiff City away shirt from season 1991-1992, essentially this, but in yellow with a blue collar. This was shortly after the genesis of my football shirt-collecting interest, and I often wonder what happened to said kit. The city become more prevalent to my thoughts in 2003-2004 as I became friendly with Matt and Kate, who were both studying in Cardiff, through LiveJournal, and when my two ex-university friends Sally and Amy (I have recently decided to start calling them The Sally Amy) moved there. In addition, my favourite band the Manic Street Preachers originate from just north of the city and have often used it as a base for recording and rehearsing. Their 2005 album Lifeblood features the song ‘Cardiff Afterlife’, and the singer James Dean Bradfield’s solo album was titled The Great Western, a nod to the railway company that founded the Cardiff to London trainline, and whose name still adorns Cardiff Central Station. And of course there was the lost employment opportunity, something that provoked a tangible sense of regret every time a sense memory passed through my mind.

The flight down to this companion city, sparring partner, caretaker of vanquished dream was due to leave Glasgow Airport at 7am, so I made sure I was there by half past five. The flight is as dull as most until the plane, having flown south of the airport banks back north to approach the runway and you get to see the sumptuous Welsh countryside unfold below you, that you begin to appreciate this is a country that’s inspired music and lyrics in its citizens for centuries.

The trip from the airport to the city centre is no less idyllic. First a bus takes you through winding country lanes to Rhoose Station, a small unmanned halt overlooking the Bristol Channel, that in the glorious, lazy sunshine of the two occasions I’ve caught a train there help fuel the fantasy that you’ve somehow stepped back in time to a more peaceful age. The train journey to Cardiff is relaxed and indolent and most soothing, which helps your brain acclimatise to the bilingual signs on view.

It was perhaps nine o’clock in the morning when I got to Central Station, and I had a full, if unplanned day ahead of me. The only person I know that still lives in Cardiff, Sally, was at work, so I had to amuse myself. This I did by purchasing a 99p roll of film and visiting Cardiff Castle. This killed an hour or so, but I can’t fake an interest in medieval history; it’s just too far outside the timespan I’m interested in, which tends to bookend 1900 until the present day. Fortunately, there is a sight in central Cardiff more attuned to my tastes; the Millennium Stadium. Constructed in 1997-1999, the stadium replaced the previous 50,000 odd capacity ground on the same footprint, although its axis was rotated 90 degrees. It’s the second biggest stadium in Britain, and the only one with a fully-retractable roof. As I’m an architecture student that has a particular interest in sports arenas, I had to take the tour. Our guided jaunt through the endless corridors (used to great effect shooting Dr. Who) took just under an hour and was as distinctly under-whelming as all the other stadium tours I’ve ever been on. Still, it was nice to see behind the scenes, especially as the crew continued the clean up from Take That’s gig there the night before.

After killing some more time, I repaired to the hostel that would be my home for the next three evenings. I’d always avoided the dorm room experience of hostels, mainly because I’m a little shy, but I’d convinced myself this was a good idea because it was a third of the price of what a hotel would cost. The first night however was a nightmare. I’d checked in fairly early, around 5:30pm as I was a little tired from the flight and wandering around, so I thought I’d retire to bed with a book. I didn’t count on the noisy teenage boys in the two dorm rooms either side of me. My despairing texts to twitter at the time sum up my mood nicely I think. “Judging by the noise they’re making, the teenagers next door are attempting to gang rape an elephant.”, followed shortly afterwards by “I think the elephant’s winning.” Somewhat irritatingly, it transpired I was sharing my own dorm with two noisy middle aged men, one of whom would utter “uh” every 27 seconds for no apparent reason. So I didn’t get a good night’s sleep at all, but I drifted off at some point.

The next day, Saturday, was the long-awaited Photomarathon day, and I finally started to feel excited and nervous about the task ahead. The journey on the number 8 bus from Crwys Road to the Millennium Centre seemed to take an age, but I finally arrived shortly after 9am. Although the contest didn’t start until 10am, registration opened at 8:30, and I wanted to get down early before the crowds arrived, as much to allow my head to clear afterwards as anything. I was presented with my entry card, my roll of 24 exposure 400 ISO film, and I had a shiny orange wristband strapped on my arm, for reasons that remain a little unclear. Having messaged Sally on Facebook the week before, it transpired she was also entering, and she arrived shortly after I had. We spoke for a while as we awaited the start of the competition, and the foyer of the centre filled up with more and more excited amateur/professional/brilliant/god-awful photographers. After all the necessary small print was spelled out by the organisers, we were given our first four topics and released into the wild. Sally, who seemed to be taking it a lot more seriously than I’d anticipated disappeared on her own vision quest, leaving me to meander around Cardiff with my supplied bus ticket.

The first four topics then:

Entry Number/Colour
Contained
Roll With It
Chip

For these images, I headed into Cardiff City Centre, and ended up buying half a dozen eggs, a potato peeler, a bowl, some Oasis juice, ten blank CDs for props, and I also paid a quick trip to the Central library and Bute Park, making it back to the Bay for 2pm and the release of the second batch of topics. These were:

Crunch
Age
Black & White
Social Networking

For these shots, I decided to stay in the Bay area and use only what I could source locally, mainly because my feet, knees and back had started to ache. For these shots, I used an apple, the price sticker from my bowl, and some of the local landmarks, and had enough time to have a sandwich from Subway and lose my entry card. Luckily I was furnished with a spare and the last four topics:

Spillage
Missing
Dressed To Impress
Winner

I decided to get on a bus, hoping that inspiration would come to me. So, I jumped onto the first one that came my way, a number 1, which providently took me to the Tesco superstore off Western Avenue, where I was able to buy more props (tin of spinach, tin opener, ‘Congratulation’ card) before heading back to the bay to shoot them all, completing my 12 topics/shots at just after nine. I then took my aching feet back to the Heath where I found the hostel thankfully bereft of annoying teenagers and I slept peacefully through until 8am.

Most of Sunday and Monday could be written off. I had nothing to do and no-one to do it with; Sally had travelled to Swansea, my attempt at meeting up with my one-time best friend and former uni housemate Bex had faltered due to a truculent two-year old, and so I spent most of those two days reading various incarnations of the Independent, popping into various museums/visitors centres, going on a high speed boat trip that didn’t enthrall me in the slightest, and taking the tourist bus around the city. Fortunately, having ascertained I would be in town until at least five pm, Amy offered to babysit me for a while as she was in Cardiff for the day. She took me to a pub in St. Fagans, and then to Barry Island where we sat on the sea front, her eating chips and me eating a 99 cone. It was rather blissful; apparently Barry’s a bit of a run-down town, but I quite liked it. Very pretty for a run down town.

I met Amy on the first day of University, which terrifyingly means I’ve known her for nine years now, and carried a rather pathetic, under-nourished torch for her for nearly a decade as well. What exactly do I feel for Amy, I hear you ask. Well…

Like Facebook or Dorian Gray might say, it’s complicated. It goes like this; a man (or a man child) that might possibly be on the autistic spectrum, who doesn’t really understand other human beings, and whose libido is like an itinerant, absent uncle, knows a rather sweet, kind-hearted, witty, intelligent, talented and driven individual who happens to press more of his buttons than anyone he’s ever met, and whose company he enjoys immensely. Sometimes he wishes they were closer, because he likes the sense of possibility he experiences when he’s around her, but he’s realistic enough to know better.

It’s a strange one. I sometimes feel I should cut my losses and cut Amy and everything to do with her out of my life to see if that would make things easier, but I think that would be a spectacularly stupid thing to do. I don’t have the social skills to spurn offers of friendship because of pipe dreams. And so it will remain like this until I find my orangutan (see my heart-breaking, Ivor Novello-winning song of the same name for details, when I finally manage to write it).

And so Amy dropped me off at the airport, as she had three years previously, when I’d walked into the biggest security alert at British airports ever. I got back into Glasgow on Monday night at nine, and I was back at work twelve hours later. I might see if I can get down to Cardiff for the Photomarathon exhibition, to take place in July, although I’m a little sick of the sight of the town at the moment.

Pictures of the weekend can be found here.

I need to get those songs demoed before I forget them…

*People, at least in Britain, say they’ve ‘bought tickets’ for a gig/show/concert/play/sporting event, when they mean they’ve bought one ticket. Not entirely sure why. Or they do buy two tickets and find it impossible to shift the spare. Not sure why they do that either.

Here comes the summer…

I haven’t blogged in a while, which is mainly down to time and energy levels. It didn’t really occur to me that working full-time, studying architecture on day release and another three night classes over the course of the year, tied in with between 1-3 football games a week would make me feel as tired as it has, but it did. I’ve been neglecting music and photography and writing, although I’ve happily found enough time to read as I rattle from one destination to another on Glasgow’s painfully inadequate public transit infrastructure. In fact, if it weren’t for my constant inveterate rage at the world, humanity and every piece of technology ever invented, I think I’d have faded away to nothing a long time ago.

I did have the notion of writing a long and eloquent paean to my…erm, pain, but I feel so vexed, I’m just going to rant.

So, since my last post I’ve finished all the work required to pass the first year of my HNC in Architectural Technology; whether it’s of the standard required is another matter, but I’m 90% sure it’s fine. This should mean three months of not having to worry about when the next assessment is due in. This also means I don’t have squeeze a five day workload into four days at work, meaning the office should be a less stressful place for the next 12 weeks or so. I would have liked to go on a short holiday somewhere (I had planned on travelling across Switzerland, Germany and Austria, to the point where I enrolled in a German class to brush up my grasp of the language), but my finances mean I’m not likely to be able to afford such a trip. I’m saving up for a car and a deposit for some form of house, and such fripperies cannot be sanctioned I’m afraid.

And so I find myself returning home from work each evening, unable to raise the enthusiasm to do little more than browse the internet. It’s a slightly worrying state of affairs, given that I’m already likely to fret about how little talent I have without wasting the modicum of creative bent I do possess. I’m not sure what I can do about it however as I no longer have the vim I possessed in my teen and early 20s.

I touched on this with my friend Kevin the other evening, as we talked about Blur’s 1997 self-titled album. He commented that it was far superior to the Manic Street Preachers’ new release, while I contended that it was an unfair comparison, as the latter are in their 40s while the members of Blur had just entered their 30s when ‘Blur’ was recorded. It would appear that most pop/rock/contemporary musicians produce their best material in their 20s, and I can’t personally think of too many acts where this isn’t the case, although I invite suggestions. I did have a brief reminder of the passion of my youth this morning when I read a lovely piece by John Harris of the Guardian on Blur’s reformation this year. I’ve been a fan of Harris since I read his marvellous book ‘The Last Party’, and the article reminded me of what I loved about music and music criticism in the mid to late 90s; incisive, eloquent scribes writing wonderful copy about musicians that were producing great works of art in the midst of personal circumstances that would make your average person hide in a cupboard. I found that Q magazine, my preferred read, went downhill markedly around the turn of the century. I suspect this was due to the paucity of characters in the music industry during that period. Coldplay have been one of the biggest bands in the world for much of the 21st century so far, but it must be hard for music journalists to find an angle on writing about them. Aside from Chris Martin’s marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow, there’s not that much for the amateur psychologists, sociologists and philosophers that make up the music press to get their teeth into.

Hopefully though I’ll be able to find a bit of a creative spark over the summer. This coming Friday, I’m going down to Cardiff for four days, specifically to take part in the annual Photomarathon contest. I’ve wanted to enter since I first heard about it in 2006, but due to one circumstance or other, I’ve been unable to until this year. I had to buy a 35mm film camera especially, as I no longer had a functioning one of my own. I managed to pick up a Minolta XD-11 for £25 from the local camera shop, and I’m shooting a roll of film at the moment to make sure it’s working ok. I got a bit of a rush of inspiration the last time I went to Cardiff, so I’m hoping the same thing happens this time around. Oh, and I finally got around to buying a dedicated camera bag for my D300 and all its bits and pieces.

Turning to my other obsession, football, I can happily report all is more or less well. My team Rangers won the league and Scottish cup double, and I’ve been keeping my hand in with 2-3 games of five a side a week despite my ongoing shin problem. It hasn’t all been plain sailing though, I did almost get in a fight one night in Hamilton (over-reacting to being smacked in the face at point-blank range with the ball), and in two Saturday games at Townhead I’ve twisted my ankle and done something to my knee. I really shouldn’t have played the two games I did this week, but I got talked into it…

So, having seen Doves and Manic Street Preachers so far this year, I’m off to see Oasis at Murrayfield on Wednesday. I’m not so much a fan of the latest album, and I don’t think seeing them in a stadium setting will be great, but it should be a fun night out for all.

I think I’ll touch on the ranting in a further update.

Anger Management

My sister tells me I should think about it. Attending some kind of course I mean. I always tell her my anger is a healthy emotional reaction to just how immensely fucked up the world up, how incompetent everyone is, and how nothing, nothing works like it ought to.

I have to continue my recent vein of ranting against the media, as it is that sector of humanity that irritates me the most. In précis, having pontificated about the subject in more depth a couple of posts ago, the role of the media, at least in Britain, has changed in the last 20 years. Modern technology and sensibilities have rendered traditional news outlets’ former roles redundant. And so they’ve found themselves metamorphosing into new, slightly different incarnations of their previous selves. Some newspapers, radio stations and TV channels now devote themselves to the rigorous and thorough dissection of current affairs, while some others simply post contentious clap trap seemingly with the intent of causing some controversy and generating advertising revenue with clicks to their websites.

I’ve felt for a while that the standard of journalism, in the UK at least, has disappeared down the toilet pan of sensationalism and bone-idle cliché and stereotype. This notion of mine was confirmed somewhat when a Guardian writer countered some dismissive comments to a piece he’d written by averring he’d only had half an hour to write the article and thus hadn’t a lot of time to do any proper research.

I’m still not convinced I didn’t dream the journalist’s response; surely no-one would admit to crafting sloppy crap and defend himself by saying he didn’t have a lot of time. It was a fluff piece on Zinedine Zidane’s son’s nationality, so the main thought that crossed my mind, as I’m sure (as I hope) it did several other people’s was “why bother writing it then?”.

To my eyes, this is the path the world is currently treading; style over substance, laziness pervading every corner of our lives, ignorance, arrogance, confrontational nonsense and people shouting the loudest to make up for the fact they have the least to say.

Perhaps I’m just frustrated; I’m starting to feel a little tired through working full time and studying architecture part time (with additional night classes in CAD, music technology and German this academic year) on top of playing football 2-3 times a week. That’s not a huge workload for most people, but for someone as workshy as me, it is. And there’s a minor contradiction. I’m lazy, and I’m having a go at other people for their slothfulness? Well yes I am. Because physical laziness is one thing, but mental lethargy? I just can’t fathom that.

You see it all around these days though; people just don’t seem to want to put even the bare minimum of effort into thinking. You see it every day, from people dawdling in supermarket aisles and doorways, looking faintly astonished when people excuse themselves to get past to people believing the first thing they’re told purely because they can’t be bothered checking if it’s true or not. People stomping along the street clutching umbrellas, not able to see the people they’re blinding presumably because they think if they can’t see any other humans, there aren’t any there.

I get it every day at work as well. People constantly phoning and emailing, asking me how to do things that were expressly delineated in correspondence they’d been sent. Why do they do it? I suspect they just can’t be bothered. But that’s ok. Because if something’s hard to do, it’s probably not worth doing.

So the papers are peddling their crap to a readership that are all too willing to lap it up. The features, articles and essays require no real critical thought to read, and little more to write. I’ve just started reading ‘Bad Science’ by Ben Goldacre, and 50 or so pages in, it’s already proving an illuminating read. For the past few years Goldacre has been writing a column of the same name in the Guardian, and much like his colleague at the paper Charlie Brooker, he rails against and runs through the bubble of hyperbolic bullshit that has permeated British society in recent years, preying on the lazy, gullible minds of the masses, specifically targeting nutritionists and homeopaths and the British media’s approach to reporting medical issues and treatments. I’d certainly recommend it so far, if only because I feel that sometimes only he and Charlie Brooker provide any kind of dissenting voice or play devil’s advocate these days. Indeed, the cynical part of my brain (which is about 57% of it to be honest) thinks they might just be the only people doing any kind of critical thought in the mainstream media in this country.

And if you don’t believe me, and you think I’m over-reacting, just count how many times the word ‘stunning’ is used every day in tabloid newspapers and on the BBC. It usually numbers between 15-20 occurrences. I know I’ve driven most of my friends and acquaintances to distraction moaning about why journalists are so besotted with the word, but I think I’ve got a point. It’s symptomatic of the dumbing down in Britain and beyond. That, coupled with the Plain English movement and people’s reluctance to use a dictionary will result in a generation of humans a few dozen years down the line that are unable to talk in any kind of language that doesn’t resemble newspeak. For instance, I adore the word ‘disingenuous’. I think it’s subtle and versatile and elegant. Plain English would frown upon it however because it has too many syllables and requires an advanced education to understand. This is a hopelessly defeatist attitude in my view, and more than a little patronising. If we stop aspiring to learning new words, then why bother doing anything? In any case, in order to adequately replace that one word ‘disingenuous’, we would have to substitute a sentence of maybe 6-10 smaller words.

This blog probably doesn’t read very well; I’ve written it late at night on two consecutive evenings when I’ve had other commitments. I’m writing it because I need to, I need an outlet for my anger at the laissez-faire, lazy, ignorant and selfish stance taken by so many people in this world. An entire society with the same mantra of ‘why bother?’

What’s In A Name?

As long as I can remember, I’ve had something of a complex about names, other people knowing, using or even forming opinions about my own name, and above all, name badges. I’ve never fully understood the concept of nametags; some people would contend that they open up avenues of conversation by removing the obstacle of having to introduce one another, and I accept this probably works at conferences and school reunions and the like, but I’m not convinced the same concept is successful when applied in the service industry. Again, my cynical brain kicks in here; surely companies only give staff name badges so the customer knows who to complain about? Ok, and compliment I guess, but I’m fairly certain that no-one ever bloody reads the things; too busy staring at boobies if you’re into that sort of thing.

As I mentioned, I always felt incredibly uneasy and self-conscious on the occasions I’ve had to wear something with my name on it. I’m not sure why in the slightest, perhaps it’s my slightly odd name that always results in people asking the same three questions, but I can remember being separated from my father during the Car Show at the NEC in Birmingham in 1984 or 85. I was found by someone and taken to the crèche, whereupon revealing my name, they pinned a badge with it printed on on my chest. I didn’t like it, and I tried to take it off, but I couldn’t. I should point out that this wasn’t the start of my mild phobia, because I was adamant they weren’t putting the thing on me in the first place.

This dislike of badges has continued ever since; I’ve never worn any kind of non-identification name badge in my life, and I can tell you exactly how many times I’ve worn the other kind: 19. I mention all this because recently an email was circulated at work telling us we were required to possess name badges. Frankly, the general reaction was bemusement; we simply don’t meet customers in the office, and we very rarely entertain staff members from other departments. I frankly find it all a little hilarious. Some people are wearing theirs, most, i.e. 90% of the floor, aren’t. I’m not entirely sure what our management are trying to achieve here, but I think it ties in with the general school of thought that your customers have an advantage of some form when they know your name. Although I should point out that 15 of the times I’ve worn a name badge in the past were at my previous place of employment (I was only there three weeks), and I don’t think any customer took a second glance at my name. The only two people that did were fellow staff members.

In any case, I have been given a name badge, and it has since sat forlornly at the bottom of my desk drawer. No-one has said we have to wear them you see, just possess one. The ironic thing is that the font is smaller than that of my ID card, which I and most others do wear, so you have to be standing almost face to face with someone before you can actually read it. I noticed this today when the girl from round the corner, whose name I don’t know, had hers on and I couldn’t read what her name was without appearing to be trying to breastfeed myself.

“I love the rain, It washes the memories off the sidewalk of life.”

So goes the Woody Allen quote. I too love the rain, but not because it washes memories away, but because for whatever reason, it makes the memories I possess seem more vibrant and real, makes me feel as if I’m back in the place and time I was when they were formed. I’m not sure why this should be; I occasionally get these bursts of recollection of time go by no matter the weather or time of day, but the rain seems to be a catalyst of some sort for the synapses and neurons of my mind.

I’ll give you an example. I was at college in Glasgow tonight, and as the train left the station, the moon and artificial light caught the rain-lashed platforms just proud of the engine shed, and in the murky monochrome light I felt the sensation that I could be leaving any train station at any time. This sense of potential always seems to send my mind on a further tangent abound on some neural net/tracery of lifelines, alternate universes and boundless possibilities, where I can access the thoughts and minds of an infinite number of other human beings throughout history. It normally only lasts a split-second, but it’s enough to send shivers through my solar plexus, send the hair on my spine rippling up to my cerebellum, leaving behind a modest selection of ideas and notions in the dusty attic of my imagination, like quires of paper fluttering and cartwheeling through the ether, waiting for me to select one and elaborate upon it.

This is why I feel I’m a writer on some base level; I’ve never felt the desire to question an author of fiction where he or she gets his or her ideas from, because I go through almost every day of my life secreting away little nuggets of information to use as characteristics or plot devices in whatever of my current ‘projects’ I feel they best suit, or letting them fan the flames of a new, divergent notion. The world is a verdant nursery of ideas for those of a creative bent, and while I don’t claim to be a good writer in the slightest, I am assailed with data and information and tiny forges of inspiration every day.

The trouble comes, I feel, with the realisation that I’m not a people person. I never have been very good at making friend, or indeed keeping them, and a characteristic that was described as inveterate shyness as a child I think could now be delineated as some mild form of autism. I’m not entirely sure how one can write novels successfully while the machinations and mimesis of human beings are seemingly always beyond one’s perception.

As a result, the three unpublished children’s stories and first draft novel I’ve written tend to lean more to being crystallizations of my own internal confusion; I ask labyrinthine, meandering questions rather than provide answers. I’d be foolish to try to be honest. I have nothing to offer the world except my own confusion.

It’s still raining outside. I genuinely do love this type of weather; perhaps it’s tied in with some buried sense-memory. What is certain is that goose-bumps will creep across my skin when I hear the percussive rattle of rain and the howl of its accompanying squall, and fire will burn within me again. It’s just about the only time I feel close to contentment these days.

Ever decreasing circles

I was at a family funeral yesterday, of my second cousin once removed, Margery. I’d only met her a few times in my life, but I think the fact we were both devotees of the English language fostered a connection between us. Both my parents and my sister attended, and it was a very emotional service; I think I was more affected by the tangible grief of her siblings and children/grandchildren than my own emotions.

After the ceremony, we repaired to a hotel in Margery’s hometown for the usual drinks and sausage rolls and a chance to once again delve into the horrible mixed metaphor that is our family tree. There were probably around 30 people there that shared a common ancestor just three/four generations back, but none of the younger of us seem to know who anyone else is, so there were a lot of introductions followed by even more head-scratching as I tried to explain to everyone how the concept of ‘cousins’ works and what ‘once-removed’ means. Anyway, I’m glad I got the chance to put some faces to names I’ve seen on Facebook and the like. And hopefully the interminable family stories will make a little more sense now.

But back to my favourite topic now; myself. At one point, as Margery’s three grandchildren ran full pelt through her brother’s house and conservatory, I found myself talking about ‘the kids’, and in one fell swoop I realised I’ve almost completed my journey along the path to the dark side. I’ve turned into a terrifying amalgam of my emotionally crippled father and my uncle, the rather more sensible family pater. Sitting inside the house while ‘the kids’ play outside is one of the signs of oncoming middle age, I’m afraid.

Similarly, I started a leisure class tonight, in German, and after the session had finished, I popped into Borders to buy the module’s proscribed materials, a BBC German Book/CD pack, for full price, at 9pm, before commuting home on the train. I don’t know if other people fully understand the appeal of the middle-class commuter life to me; I’m not sure I understand it myself. Perhaps it’s due to the romance I find in the tragedy of wasted human potential, the fact we’ll all settle for just so much when we think our dreams are beyond us. I think, tacitly, I’ve abandoned all my own aspirations, perhaps even that of becoming a published author, and I’m more than willing to accept the consolation prize of being a competent professional. I think I may need to visit a psychiatrist before long…

However, I’m doing well to keep up the pretence of writing. While I’m currently ‘writing’ a novel, ‘editing’ another, and penning three or four short stories, in reality I’ve typed nothing other than brainless tweets for about five months now. I am honestly constantly thinking about my stories, selecting words and phrases I might use, and won’t use, whittling characters from the jumble of motivations and quirks in my own neural net, and plotting out where tale is going to go next, but in reality, if I’m not actually putting words in a word file, I’m not actually doing any writing, am I?

Hopefully the longer, college free, summer days will concentrate my mind somewhat. I need to write some songs as well, because I’m letting all my rage store up in my spleen, and that can’t be good.

Doors slowly closing

We live in a world of new media, and it’s interesting to see how our traditional, established outlets have reacted to the freshly-minted era of fully interactive news coverage. The balance of reportage has changed markedly in the last twenty years, where the reporter’s and photographer’s roles have atrophied and the reader’s contribution has increased, and we now have a situation where the media is no longer reporting current affairs to the populace, and instead is sourcing material from members of the public on the scene to feed back to those of us who weren’t so fortunate to be there.

There is change evident as well in the way that opinion pieces and features are written. Once, the journalist’s words would be almost gospel; his/her conjecture and subjectivity would go unchallenged save for a response or two published in the letters page later on in the week. Now, with their new found ability to comment on stories, readers (who might just happen to know more about the subject in question than the author of the piece) are now taking inaccuracies, fallacies and logical mis-steps to task in a way that’s never been done before. Even if the readers’ comments are inaccurate themselves, they will more often than not add to a tapestry of thriving debate and discourse that can shed more light on a topic than a reporter’s necessarily shallow and singular viewpoint.

I feel that newspapers have cottoned on and adapted to this fact recently, adopting a new style of journalism that relies less on imparting events and ideas on its readership and instead goads them, with bludgeoning, relentless repetition of mindless, sensationalistic nonsense, safe in the knowledge that the readers will comment and they won’t have to bother researching or writing a feature properly, and perhaps some online advertisments will get clicked as well into the bargain.

Do I honestly believe that, that a national newspaper would publish sub-standard tosh, styled as ‘blogs’ that are more badly written than anything in the blogosphere itself? I’m not convinced actually, but there must be some reason for how bad the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section is. One article, based on a false premise, was defended in the comment section by the author who claimed he didn’t have time to research the piece properly. I’m not sure what terrifies me more, the fact that journalists are now openly admitting lazy practice (something we all knew anyway) or the on-going black-and-white sensationalism of the world, something the likes of the Sun and Mirror always indulged in, but which, sadly, more and more broadsheets are putting their stock in while chasing falling circulations.

This somewhat lengthy, and ironically subjective (I am exempt from my own criticism as I’m not getting paid for this, and there’s certainly no-one actually reading it) introduction is a pre-cursor to my trying to come to terms with the human/football car crash that’s been ‘Boozegate’.

If you’re a fantastically lucky bastard, you’ll live in Australia, support Brazil as your football team and will never have heard of any of the players in this tawdry drama of next to fucking nothing. In a nutshell, a rather large nutshell, the story breaks down like this:

• On Saturday night last week, the Scottish international football team played the Netherlands in Amsterdam. The Scots lost 3-0.
• Between 2-4am on Sunday morning, the Scottish squad returned to their ‘luxury’ (the Sun’s words, not mine) accommodation on the banks of Loch Lomond, and apparently, with the approval of the team manager, a number of the players began drinking in an ill-advised team building exercise.
• The story that at least two of the players were still in the hotel bar at 11am when the rest of the squad woke up began to break on Tuesday night.
• By Wednesday evening, with the second match of the World Cup qualifying group looming, it had become apparent that goalkeeper Allan McGregor and midfielder, captain Barry Ferguson had been dropped from the starting line up.
• The two players in question were photographed on the sidelines, making thinly-veiled two finger gestures in the direction of the massed photographers.

Apparently, the story of two  men getting drunk after a bad day at the office held more import in Scotland than the crash of a helicopter in the North Sea and the G20 riots/President Obama’s visit to the U.K. It’s a sad indictment of the ‘best small country in the world’ that two of our foremost international professional athletes would think it acceptable to get utterly shit-faced between two relatively important football matches and that the fallout should consume just as many column inches as it has. Indeed, as of this afternoon, McGregor and Ferguson were both banned from representing Scotland for life, and were put on the transfer list by their club side, Rangers. So, in the space of just under a week, Barry Ferguson has gone from being captain of both his club and his country to being served his jotters. There’s a lot of shite has been published by the papers regarding the story this week, but I don’t think the full story is being covered. Or rather, it’s being forgotten amidst the hyperbolic, hypocritical, hysterical reaction from both the press and the Scotland support. I’d like to try and cut through the miasmic nonsense and get to the crux of the matter.

Firstly, if it is true that the players were allowed to commence drinking as a team-building exercise at 4am, having just played an international game and with another forthcoming, surely questions must be asked of the manager and the coaching staff? It can be argued that the players were given an inch and took a mile, that they needed to unwind and ameliorate the adrenaline coursing through theirsystems. They took a mile, but they were given a kilometre, not an inch. The manager should have ordered them to bed. Of course, that’s presuming the players respect the manager.

It’s also apparent that the manager found the two players in question in the bar at 11am. Following a heated exchange, the two were told to pack their bags and leave the squad. Some time later it’s alleged that five other players approached the manager and urged him to rethink his decision, revealing that they too had been in the bar, at least one of them left shortly before eleven, and that if two players were ejected from the squad, the would all walk. This is why McGregor and Ferguson were reinstated, at least to the substitutes bench.

Yes, while they were on the bench, they made rude gestures towards some photographers. This  was childish, but was clearly aimed at the media rather than the Scotland support as has been so self-righteously alleged. However, the fans are within their rights to take offence that their representatives were acting like little brats.

The other underlying issue here is an uneasy relationship between Rangers and Scotland, be it the fans, the management or the players. Scotland supporters think Rangers players don’t give their all and claim the fans all support England instead of their country of birth. Rangers fans think Scotland fans don’t appreciate the contribution of their players to the international scene and are distrustful of some of the more outre behaviour of the Tartan Army. The two have never been easy bed-fellows, not helped by the natural emnity between supporters of the smaller teams and both the large Glasgow clubs.

Barry Ferguson, or Mr. Marmite, has never been truly accepted by the Scotland support. To some, he’s an overly-cautious, limited, dirty, whining violent drunken ned that doesn’t care about the team and only passes the ball backwards. To others he’s one of Scotland’s few truly international class players, a metronome in midfield that retains possession by careful and economic use of the ball. And a whining ned. Five years ago, his talent was less in doubt than it is now but a succession of injuries have taken their toll on his frame. In short, the Scotland support, having never fully taken him to heart, were always likely to come down with great vengeance and furious anger should he make any kind of slip at all.

Goalkeeper McGregor is in a similar boat, if only because he has spent his brief international career playing second fiddle to the more highly regarded Craig Gordon. He was given his chance in Holland because he’s been playing regularly and Gordon’s played only one game in three months. Another issue raises its head here; the manager had a very public falling out with striker Kris Boyd last year where the latter was dropped because he wasn’t ‘playing regularly for his club side’. Having made this rod for his back, the manager then found himself having to choose between two very closely matched players using a criterion he himself had made an issue of. McGregor was subsequently blamed for the 3-0 defeat in Holland, despite the poor defending at the first goal, being obstructed by Dirk Kuyt at the second and the third being a penalty conceded by Christophe Berra. From Saturday night through to the breaking of ‘the story’, the wisdom of McGregor being selected for the Holland game was being hotly debated.

On my drive to play seven a side football tonight, I listened to a programme on Radio Scotland about ‘the story’. Stuart Cosgrove was on the panel, and he was making some points, some I disagreed with. But it wasn’t so much what Cosgrove was saying, it was the vitriol and bile towards Rangers players that I found objectionable.

Sometimes, non-Old Firm fans make me laugh. They denigrate Rangers and Celtic fans for their religious and political bickering, but they can be as reactionary, as shallow, as flat-out bigotted as any of any supporter of the gruesome twosome. I’ve heard twisted logic, ridiculous generalistations and advocation of violence from St. Mirren fans, who seem to think this is also acceptable. But on a casual level, there seems to be an inverterate hatred of Rangers and Celtic players and fans that I think has influenced the thinking of many Scotland fans when reflecting on this affair. That said, there is an argument that another Rangers and a Celtic player were involved and they haven’t copped any shite. But neither have the Derby, Hibs, or Tottenham players that going by the lack of a denial were also part of the session.

So what exactly is going on here? Has the manager lost the respect of the dressing room? Why have four players now quit/being banned from the international scene under his reign? Is the fact they all play for the same club a coincidence? Does the SFA chief executive trust his manager? Does the president of the SFA trust his chief executive? What exactly the fuck is going on here?

When the SFA banned the two players for life today, they reasoned it was for the benefit of the team, to minimise ‘distractions’ for the remainder of the qualifying campaign. I suspect our true handicap is the shambles of an organising body. We have an uncertain, seemingly weak-willed manager, a vain chief executive who will not tolerate any criticism, no matter how small, of his regime, and a president that just loves sticking his oar in. Ignoring the larger problems of Scottish football , this holy trinity I think will be responsible for a disastrous era of Scottish football, one that may even match Berti Vogts for plumbing the depths. I’m firmly of the opinion that all this mess, all this commotion, this media circus and the kangaroo court could all have been avoided if some kind of organisation had been in place from the start of the manager’s incumbency.

I think it’s worth keeping sight of what happened here. Seven men got drunk, and two of them got caught by their boss. Nothing more, nothing less. No, they really shouldn’t have been drinking, but spare us some of the moral indignation.

Motherfucking Time Vampire

I really do hate technology. I wonder if my technophobia derives from a similar root as my misanthropy; I can get rapidly and immensely pissed off with humanity simply because I don’t think we’re living up to our potential at times, and I feel much the same about early 21st century technology. Are we rushing things too much? Are our leading IT companies pumping out skimpily beta-tested products that are full of bugs just to keep up with, or slightly ahead of competitors? I only ask as around 75% of the last dozen or so software packages and hardware I’ve used haven’t worked properly.

I don’t want to back away from technology, and end up as an entrenched luddite, living in a wooden shack scribbling venomous invective to Bill Gates jr., but on reflection, I don’t think I need worry. I’ll surely die sometime in the next few years trying to configure Windows Media Player 12.

This post was brought to you by Windows Live Writer. If it works. Which I’m doubtful about.

I haven’t blogged in a while. I suspect it’s down to my processor running at too high a speed; I’m not doing particularly more than I have done in the past five years, but I’m doing enough to give my lazyitis palpitations…that’s a horrible metaphor, isn’t it?

I’m working full time, and studying an HNC full time, with another night class thrown in on top of that (first it was CAD, then music production, and shortly it’ll be German), and I generally feel that I don’t have enough time to feed and clothe myself, doodle aimless guitar riffs and vent my spleen inarticulately on the internet. I’m building up a list of tasks that I really should take a look at, but they’re growing by the week…I’ve contributed virtually nothing to the novel I intended to write this year, and my lack of desire to write in general is worrying me somewhat. I don’t feel as if I’m short of stimulus and ideas on what I could write about, I just lack the perspicacity and enthusiasm to corral it all into some form black and white. Still, the reasons for this might form the central spine of the next blog I put off writing…

That said, I have managed to crawl from my bed to get some things done. I’ve paid off the digital SLR camera I bought last year, and I’ve even used it to take some photographs (!), mostly of my new niece Kate, who was born last Thursday.

And in other news, I have become slightly obsessed with Tina Fey/Liz Lemon, although I’m not sure at all where the former ends and the latter starts.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

I got my haircut today, in a salon with exculsively female tunic-wearing staff. I may have gotten slightly aroused. It occured to me (when I caught the faint whiff of seven working hours’ sweat mingled with her perfume as she moved around me, running her hands through my hair) that getting your hair cut by a member of the opposite sex is a bit like getting a lap dance or sleeping with a prostitute; you’re paying to have your prick teased, and your ego massaged by someone that flatters to deceive for a living. It’s a somewhat odd situation. Other than the fleeting brush with enduring female sexualism, I don’t enjoy getting my hair cut much; I never know what I want as I sit myself in the seat, and I try to convey my vague notions to the hairdresser through a succession of references to obscure musicians, actors and footballers she’s never heard of, and I end up with a style that isn’t unentirely not what I didn’t ask for. This time wasn’t so bad; I managed to get across that I just wanted a trim as I’m trying to grow it longer; it’s not quite Shoreditch standard, but it’ll do.

Maybe my struggles with haircuts are symbolic of my struggles with life in general. I don’t know what I want or what suits me, I just want something that doesn’t cause me too much trilogy. I’ve come to the conclusion that I might not long for happiness after all, and that I’d rather settle for equilibrium. I find myself expressing an interest in golf and snowboarding and becoming determined to carry out some joinery work in my sister’s house. I’m saving up for a house and a car; I have a pension and have joined a union, but I’m also learning about music production and I still find the Guardian too right wing for comfort. In short, I haven’t the faintest idea who I am or who I’m becoming, which is mildly unsettling. Am I returning to the middle class stock I was born into, somewhat against my desire to remain (at least notionally) a socialist, working class proleterian?

I have become smitten with a song from the new Doves album, Kingdom Of Rust. Called ‘Jetstream’, it’s an imagined closing track to Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner, and I think it’s absolutely magnificent. It harks barks to Jimi Goodwin and the Williams twins’ days as dance act Sub Sub, merging subtle electronic flourishes and drum machines with Jez Williams’ always elegaic, atmospheric guitar playing create a dark, brooding and utterly wonderful track. Perhaps my appreciation of its merits can be guaged by looking at the Last FM play stats at the right hand side of this page; I listened to it about 24 times in a row last Friday night alone.

Now I am away to watch a DVD or perhaps play the Xbox. I might venture over to Edinburgh tomorrow and see if I can’t get into Murrayfield for the rugby.

Guitar hero

I appear to be reborn as a guitarist. What feel likes half a lifetime ago, I played lead/rhythm guitar in a post university band. We weren’t very good, but I always thought that had circumstance been a little more in our favour, we could have made a better fist of things. Since I left the band nearly four years ago, they’ve continued, changing their bass player but retaining the name and sound.

Since then, I’ve found myself drifting away from music a little, and certainly the guitar. I’ve dallied with the bass, piano, singing, drums, clarinet, accordian (and I long to buy a trumpet); I’ve familiarised myself with home recording techniques, and managed to record a few of my own songs, despite making things more difficult for myself than they needed to be, and I’m currently attending a night course in music technology. I cannot deny I’ve longed to perform music in public again, preferably as part of a band; however, I’m cautious about responding to adverts looking for musicians because I don’t think I have any talent whatsoever. I feel much more comfortable playing with people I already know and like, as I had with my previous band. Around six months ago, I found myself playing drums with two friends as we tried in vain to get some kind of band off the ground, and recruit a bass player. Presently the band would merge with another group of musicians I’d found myself in the company of, and now the six of us are trying to work out a sound and who should play what instrument. Although F is a better guitarist than me, he’s expressed a desire to play bass or drums, so after a few years of prodigal dabbling, I find myself the principal guitarist of our outfit.

I haven’t been completely neglecting my six stringed instruments however. I have been striving to get a few, fairly tricky songs down pat, to prove to mysefl that I’m not as bad a guitarist as I think I am. And, in the last few months, I have finally mastered ‘Sultans of Swing’ and ‘Breaking Into Heaven’. Well, 95%. I’ve also finally broken a couple of mental blocks with ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘A Design For Life’, which I put down to eventually realising I’d had my fingers in the wrong places.

Hopefully this latest attempt at forming a band comes off. I no longer possess the same dreams of writing the great British album that I used to hold so dear, but there’s something incredibly enjoyable about playing music with other people, in public.