So, by this time on Tuesday I’ll be in flight over the Atlantic Ocean bound for California. I can’t claim to be excited, mainly because I think my primitive brain can’t process how excited I actually am, and has instead suggested I instead feel slightly blithe about it all. I have holistically packed (which is to say I haven’t packed a thing, but I’ve thought about it), and all my documentation is in place, so all I have to do is get through an Old Firm weekend and I’ll be all set.

I don’t know what this trip is going to be like; I can’t wait to see Ru and Matt again, but I’m apprehensive about my detours to Yosemite and New York. I hope it’s as good as it promises to be and I don’t let my own insecurities fuck it up. It’s the kind of holiday I’ve always wanted and aspired to go on; I’m going to assimilate some culture while I unwind and I’m getting to experience some minor things that wouldn’t appeal to other people but which excite me; flying in a jumbo jet for one, and landing in JFK.

Until then I have other things to occupy my mind. Rangers and Celtic meet at Ibrox tomorrow at lunchtime, fresh from rumours of Celtic fans being investigated for alleged sectarian singing in Barcelona. This, given the circumstances and taken in context, is hilarious. But only in a bitter, phyrric way. Anyway, I have to finish the song I said I’d record for Ru’s wedding, so I’m going to concentrate on that while I have the house to myself.

And on Sunday I’m meeting Kev to make beautiful music. Wait, hang on, that can’t be right. No, we’re going to stand in a converted warehouse and clang guitars at each other. That’s it. We’re supposed to be starting a band, but as there are only the two of us at the moment, we’re struggling to find enthusiasm for the endeavour. Still, we shall have a blast and see what arises. I hope to find some inspiration in the U.S. to be honest; I still like to think of myself as a musician, a writer and a photographer despite my limited success in each field, but I’ve found recently I’ve been bereft of inclination if not ideas. I was looking through some of my novel ideas in work earlier, and I was quietly pleased with some of them; if I can then work them up, I might have something…but not now. Just now, my creative bent is actually snapped in two. I want to write and photograph things, I just can’t be bothered. I blame work.

And I was thinking about Her last night. Yes, Her. You’d forgotten about Her, hadn’t you? I thought I had too. After that business with Michelle last year, She kinda vanished from my horizon for a while. But now She’s back. From outer…no, I’m not going there. This situation has basically arisen because I’ve been watching ‘The Big Bang Theory’ on C4 on and off, and it starts Kaley Cuocco. Now, I’ve watched, and coveted, her in both 8 Simple Rules and Charmed, but I’ve never thought she particularly resembled Her. But in Big Bang, for some unknown, soul torturing reason, she does nothing but remind me of Her. A sensible person would just stop watching the programme; while it’s cute, it’s not that funny. But maybe I’m more of a masochist than I’d like to confess…

James Bond in ‘Gold Never Dies Twice’

I wasn’t very exciting in my teenage years. I couldn’t afford it. I seem to be attempting to make amends for this in my late 20s though. As I don’t have any real responsibilities, most of my income is disposable, and I’m free to whittle it away in ways that amuse me. 2005/2006 I went to the cinema a lot. Last year it was gigs and football matches. This year, my enthusiasm seems to be travel. I’d been invited to Ru and Matt’s wedding a while ago, so a three week trip to the U.S. had been pencilled in for a long while.

 Then Alan, a slightly strange individual I know from the Internet invited me to a house party at his friend’s house. In Dublin. I hummed and hawed about it; the date was too close to my U.S. trip, I didn’t have a great deal of money spare, I didn’t want to risk losing my passport and so and so forth. Alan however talked me into it, by pointing me in the direction of RyanAir, where I was able to acquire a flight for £20 including taxes. And so I decided to go.

I’d wanted to go to Dublin for years, but the opportunity had never arisen before. I was also slightly apprehensive about people finding out I supported Rangers (yes, I know; very daft, but hey), but writing this seven or eight hours after my flight touched down at Prestwick airport, I’m really glad I went now.

 The trouble with cheap flights is that you usually have to get up at the arse end of Beelzebub in the morning to get the bloody things. So it was I found myself driving down the A737 from Paisley to Ayrshire at 5am to catch my outgoing flight, landing in Dublin at half past seven. It’s a very strange feeling emerging from the airport in Ireland, because it feels like the United Kingdom, but a United Kingdom in some kind of alternate universe where perhaps dinosaurs didn’t become extinct or it rains doughnuts. You know what I mean; it’s more familiar than any other country in Europe, but it still has enough differences to feel like a completely different country. We were met at the airport by Alan, who lead us on the complicated and tedious bus and tram journey to other Alan’s house in the south west of the city.

My overall impression of Dublin is that it’s a bit like being on a building site and going to the burger van for a cup of tea and being charged £17.  There is a lot of construction work going on in the city; you see your first new building under way as the plane taxis to the airport terminal, an extension to the airport, and the cranes and heras fencing don’t stop there. A new toll tunnel has recently been built to link Dublin Port with the M50 motorway, and several projects are underway across the city, including the redevelopment of Landsdowne Stadium. My host however tells me that the Doozer like activity comes with the price of thousands of unoccupied apartments and buildings and sky-high unemployment. Ireland apparently is currently home to around a million Eastern European immigrant workers and the long term repercussions of this are still a little unclear.

 We reached Alan Too’s house around 8am. I’d never spoken to Alan Too before, but I soon understood he wasn’t a morning person. Mind you, I don’t think any of us were that particular day. I won’t go into what happened between then and sixish, because frankly nothing didhappen. Several plans were aborted and several attempts were made to catch some sleep before the drinking began before Alan Too and I eventually found ourselves in a little (tiny) pub in St. Andrew’s Street in the City centre the name of which escapes me right now. We were on our third pints of Guinness by the time Alan and Karen joined us, having discussed all manner of gloriously pretentious pub wank from the relative merits of the construction and media industries to assassination attempts on Hitler, to the names of James Bond films. It was here we decided that ‘The Quantum of Solace’ should henceforth be renamed ‘Gold Never Dies Twice’ to better fit with the franchise’s previous film names, and we were all sufficiently merry enough to laugh far too hard and far too long at this.

Karen and Alan

We were sitting upstairs, in a sort of mezzanine floor/gallery affair and had joked about how it resembled the similar pub in the film ‘Trainspotting’ where Begbie causes the minor riot by dropping his pint glass into the crowded mass below. Little did we know we’d experience a similar scene when Alan One knocked a glass over showing off, and Alan Too hurled his to the floor in frustration. We left soon after, and caught the tram back to Alan’s house, stopping only for more booze and some chips. Hilariously, Alan One missed the tram after nipping into a shop for a bottle of juice; the site of him trying to vault the fence  at the tram station and instead landing on his arse and thus just getting to the doors after they’d slid shut was priceless to a trio of drunken eejits. Unfortunately, karma punished me for this by ensuring I was to cradle an almost full to bursting bladder for the entire 30 minute duration of the trip. My piss after we’d alighted was a primal explosion of relief. I seriously thought my kidneys were going to explode at one point.

The party I couldn’t tell you much about, because after spending a couple of hours in the kitchen eating pasta from a pot on the hob and polishing off a half bottle of vodka, I was violently sick and retired to bed. Unfortunately this meant I missed the Smiths karaoke session whereby Alan and some of his friends sang along to the entirety of all four Smiths albums, and it also meant I looked a bit of a lightweight as well. Never good.

Sunday started slowly. Very slowly. Karen, Alan One and I didn’t get into the city for our sight seeing until 1:30, and so I didn’t really stand a chance of seeing some of the things I had wanted to see. I tagged along with the other two as they rummaged various second hand record shops for vinyl, and still managed to see a few sites of interest that way, including the GPO (and opportunely witnessing a parade commemorating the Easter Rising) and the ‘Prick’, Alan Too’s, not-so-affectionate nickname for the huge steel spire erected in O’Connell street, officially called the Monument of Light.

A bullet hole in one of the columns at the front of the GPO

 The Irish Declaration of Independence

The Monument of Light

Sinn Féin march

 

Statue of Jim Larkin

From there we passed once more through Temple Bar and Grafton Street to St. Stephen’s Green, and eventually the statue of Oscar Wilde at Merrion Square. After a few pictures at the very strange statue (just to prove I’d been to the bloody country), we walked back to the city centre, cutting through Trinity College. The Book of Kells wasn’t open, but I’m not sure I’d have wanted to go in had it been.

Dylan Moran’s inspiration for Black Books?

 

A green post box? Those mad Irishers…

Statue of Oscar Wilde. Or is it Chevy Chase?

And after a short stroll along the south bank of the Liffey, we caught the tram at Jarvis and back to Alan’s house. Another small meet up had been planned for the evening, back in the city, but Karen and I jointly vetoed it, being fed up with travelling on the LUAS (and the expense of buying tickets for it), so we ended up spending the evening watching Batman Begins and classic sitcoms, including Father Ted. Well, when in Rome after all…

And the Scottish contingent were back up at 5:45am to catch the plane back to Prestwick. I’m knackered. I was sick. I may have done irreparable damage to my kidneys. But I had a bloody great time, and I’ll definitely be going back at some point. It’s a great city.

 Although there’s just a bit too much green for my liking…

You may or may not know that I’m going to North America in April. Two of my best friends are getting married, and were kind enough to invite me; I couldn’t really turn such a multi-faceted opportunity down. Apart from the cost, there are no cons to this trip I can see, and I’m hoping it lives up to my very vivid dreams.

Just as I’d put the finishing touches to my itinerary, I was asked by someone I know if I fancied going over to Dublin for the weekend. And after consulting with RyanAir and finding they were charging £20 for a return ticket, I decided I did. I once made a promise to myself to stop being so cautious, to stop worrying and procrastinating so much. And I didn’t. Whether or not I’ll regret it is another matter entirely, but as the epigram runs, it is better to regret things you have done than things you haven’t. I’m certainly keen to find out if this is actually the case.

And I’m now going to Manchester in May on top of it all. FD are having a North of England meet up, and I decided I wanted to go. I’m not quite sure why I was so keen to travel hundreds of miles, but I was. Perhaps I was influenced by reading Pies & Prejudice which sold me on a vision of Manchester I didn’t quite get to experience on my fleeting three hour visit there on Christmas Eve 2000. I’ve elected to fly up the following day, so hopefully I will have a bit of time to explore the city in more depth. It is after all home to almost all of my favourite bands, erm, and the Guardian, which I loathe, and some other good things as well.

I have a busy few weeks ahead of me. This is a good thing as I, like many other people, need to keep my mind busy lest I desire it dragged off to the wastegrounds of futile, ruinous pontification.

 On a similar theme, Rangers are but half an hour away from being shown up in Europe once more, so I’m off to swear at the television.

I generally play five-a-side football twice a week, but most times I come off the pitch at the end of the game ruing chances I’ve missed and generally grumbling about how poorly I played.

 This is because I’m a poor player. If I were better, a little faster, with keener reactions and a hardier engine, I might be playing football part time for some struggling amateur team somewhere. But I’m not. I find playing with guys twice my age hard going, and most games I play in I’m absolutely awful. Well, maybe I’m too hard on myself. I certainly don’t set the astroturf alight.

I wasn’t quite so bad tonight. In fact, I was pretty damn awesome, even by my own pitiful standards. I’ve had games like this before, when my judgement and vision is on form and luck is on my side, and the exhilaration I’ve felt afterwards has gone above and beyond the usual post-exercise rush. Having a really good game of football is something you cherish; you replay it in your mind, savouring your goals, your tackles, your occasional defence splitting pass.

Unlike most of the other guys, I always have a thorough warm up before the game due to some muscular injuries I suffered some five and a half years ago now, and during this time I’ve recently started to try and clear my mind of the day’s work and any other of the thousands of distracting half thoughts that flutter around inside my brain. I really think I succeeded tonight, as I was quite composed and relaxed during the game, and not running myself to distraction. I scored seven goals tonight, and tellingly, even shots that shouldn’t really have troubled the keeper were going in. I think this was partly due to me making good decisions, making the right run, choosing the right type of shot, and partly due to luck.

 Anyway, the upshot is, I’ve been feeling mildly blissful for the last few hours. It won’t last; should my shins start to ache once more on Thursday, I’ll no doubt be awful again, and the dreary reality of my limitations will strike hard. But just for now, even if it’s fleeting and hopelessly euphoric, I feel that I can take on the world, which is no bad thing at all.

I’ve felt a little off recently. I like that phrase, as it’s nice and vague and could refer to a multitude of maladies without explicitly revealing how trivial my concerns are. I think I’ve put my finger on why I’ve been ‘off’.

 The thing is, in general, I’m quite content. But I’m not happy yet. But as I allay and assuage more and more worries the older I get, I find that instead of attaining peace of mind, I instead raise the gold standard of what it will take to make me happy. Conversely, the closer I get to being happy, the easier it is for those trifling incidents to throw me off my stride. Appositely, when I find myself with a job, nay a career, I find myself pining for a better job and another career. I’m sure everyone feels like this, otherwise as a species we’d all still be living in caves. I’m also not going to insult your intelligence by pretending no-one else has ever realised and wrote at length about it before, but it simply serves as an aesthetically pleasing segue into the next paragraph.

I had quite a nice day today. I went to bed before 12am, something of a rarity for me on a non-work-night. This allowed me to wake naturally nine hours later feeling the best I’ve felt in months. And I had the whole day ahead of me. I really should stop going to bed at 4am on Friday and Saturday nights…anyway. I didn’t really have anything planned, save from returning some CDs to the library, and that wouldn’t take up much time. So, somewhat tragically I journeyed to Greenhill Road in Paisley to take some photographs of the new St. Mirren stadium, currently under construction there. I know how sad this sounds. Much as I’m likely to silently mock people with notebooks and cameras perched at the edges of platforms as my train rolls into Glasgow Central, I’m guilty of far more anal behaviour. Even before I started working in the construction industry, I’d been interested in buildings and civil engineering, especially if football or man’s shortsightedness was involved, and so the new St. Mirren stadium has piqued my interest on at least one count.

Yes, it’s not going to be a very interesting stadium. It’s a very basic, cost-effective scheme, designed to maximise the money the club will make from selling the land their current stadium stands on. But it’s interesting to be able to watch a new building emerge from land that has been desolate for 15 years or so, since the former council housing scheme was demolished. I took a few photographs, including some from the overlooking St. James railway station, and walked back to the car as I had remembered another buried gem I wanted to visit.

Abbey Books has apparently been in business selling second hand books to a largely apathetic indigenous audience for 20 years. I’ve been patronising them for 10 years if not more in their little shop in Paisley’s Gordon Street. If you were familiar with Terry Pratchett’s concept of L-Space, you would have found no other emporium in the world more likely to grant you access to said mystical dimension. A tiny, dank store, almost every square inch of its walls and linoleum floors were covered with books of all genres and sizes. At some point they took on the lease of the store next door, and knocked a wall through, supplanting all their classics and crime novels to the new annexe. You could browse these titles, but you could only scan the shelves from a distance of around 12 inches before you backed into the bookshelf behind you. Anyone taller than me (6′2″) would have not been able to stand fully erect, so low was the ceiling. A set of stairs once led to a mezzanine level, but had long since been bricked off at the top, and so carried most of the shop’s science fiction selection. Put frankly, I loved the shop and spent many an hour browsing (sometimes fruitlessly, but then I am stupidly fussy) for something that would occupy my brain for a few hours more. I quite often found myself in conversations with either of the genial sixty something female shopkeepers about any such subject, and I’d heard persistent, troubling rumours that the owner (one of the aforementioned shopkeepers) was going to sell up and move up north.

 However, it seems the future was not quite so grim after all. The shop has moved a good mile or so west, but it’s still open and…I guess, thriving is the appropriate word as seems to do a steady rather than brisk trade in its new premises. This was my next stop, and after a short search, I found it. The sign above the shop still designates it as being a bakers, and so I’d passed it by as I walked along the other side of the street. I do get worried that they can’t possibly sell more books than they buy, and that the owner will someday sell it, and that Paisley will lose its only dedicated bookshop, which is a fairly ridiculous situation for the country’s alleged biggest town, a university town at that. I try to buy something every time I go in, and I wasn’t just idly browsing this time. I was looking in particular for guide books relating to San Francisco/San Jose and New York, to give me a better idea of what I want to visit next month, but I did have a good long rummage. Having gotten used to the layout of the old shop with its idiosyncratic and illogical arrangement, the layout of the new shop, seemingly planned by the same excited if clearly mad bibliophile will take a little bit of time to get used to. I’m pleased to report that the new premises do still retain the ramshackle character of the old shop, with no two book shelves remotely resembling each other, and with novels and anthologies stuffed in every available nook and cranny. Even the paper towel and newspaper spread on the floor to soak up the rain water coming through the large crack in the ceiling added to the charm…don’t worry. All the books were carefully kept away from the leak. But I do hope they get it fixed. While I perused the lines of cracked spines, I listened to two customers engaged in flighty conversation with the much younger than usual (but no less cerebral) shopkeeper, thinking that there should be more shops like this in Paisley, and less selling family packs of Monster Munch for a pound.

I bought two books in the end, a San Francisco guide book, and a weathered, stained copy of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, inspired somewhat by reading Wiganite Stuart Maconie’s Pies & Prejudice: In Search of the North, and took the short walk east to Paisley Museum and Art Gallery. The west end of Paisley isn’t quite as salubrious as its counterparts in other flung places of the world. It doesn’t have the theatres of London or the boho chic of Glasgow, but it does have…well, it has a Co-op. And a musical instrument shop, a second hand record shop and now a second hand book shop. But don’t let that fool you; there’s not much else to speak of in that neck of the woods, save some tenement building, an admittedly impressive church and a decaying cinema/bingo hall, and as a result the entire area always has the faint whiff of despair. At least to my nose. 

The museum itself is more in the town centre, and like most things in Paisley, isn’t very impressive. Your train of though when encountering it will go something like this: ‘Yeah, that’s quite nic…oh, what’s the point?’ I’d received a circular email at work yesterday, informing me that there will be a display of movie and TV sci-fi memorabilia in the museum for the next six weeks. I thought I’d give it a look, being the mildly refurbished sci-fi geek I am. I was initially heartened by the sight of the first two exhibits, after finally finding the room it was in, and then disheartened when I realised there were only about 25 pieces in the entire collection. It was ok; there was a fairly wide range of films covered, but none of the props seemed to be screen used, so although they gave a close up view of, for instance, the alien from Alien, it was slightly tarnished.

After the museum, I bought some messages at Sainsbury (always good for making me feel more worthy for some reason), and picked my sister up. She wanted to buy mum a mother’s day present, and she’d decided to go to the Phoenix retail park in Linwood to get it. I can’t really buy into mother’s day; I know I probably should, but it just feels such a fabricated occasion. I know its older than Hallmark, but still. I don’t know if anyone who reads this has been to the Phoenix centre on a Saturday, but the phrase ‘cattle market’ is far too demure to describe it. It’s absolute chaos, with seemingly every low budget family with add addled children taking the opportunity to fill up on Super Noodles and lager for the forthcoming week. Yes, I know that’s appallingly snobbish of me, but you’ll think in exactly the same way when you find yourself gridlocked at the corner of the seasonal sale and magazine aisles, hemmed in by four or five goon-piloted trolleys.

Anyway, we escaped eventually, and I even managed to pick up a pair of trainers for my holiday. And some DVD-Rs, should I ever acquire the urge to back up my photographs again. Which I really should do, along with updating my website, but I’m being far too lazy at the moment.

Still, a good day, made better by Rangers managing the no mean feat of beating Aber ‘we only play four games a season’ Deen at Ibrox, keeping us four points ahead of Celtic in the title race. Christian Dailly, our transfer window free signing from West Ham scored the equaliser after Aberdeen had taken the lead. We did go on to score a further two goals and win the game, though it remains to be seen how important Dailly’s goal might be in the long run.

Two or three years ago, if you’d asked me my favourite Scottish footballer, I would have undoubtedly said Christian Dailly. At a period of time when the Scottish national team was lurching from one unmitigated disaster to another, shedding experienced players and blooding wide-eyed, naive youngsters who couldn’t even get games for their club side, Dailly provided an inspirational and determined bracing to a wounded uncertain team. He scored goals, he battled, he ran his lungs out, and he stopped us from becoming an even bigger joke than we were. I idolised him until the emergence of Messrs McFadden and Boyd. That said, I was slightly dubious when Rangers signed him. He’s 35 this year, and though he’s fitter than most players, he would surely not be much more than a stop gap player.

 That’s what I though anyway. He’s played three games for us now, once as a substitute right back, and twice as a holding midfielder. He was apparently brilliant on Wednesday night, and again today. Nearly twenty years ago he started off in professional football as a striker, and he still carries a goalscoring threat from set pieces, as he proved today. He’ll never go down as a flashy player, and I don’t think he’s won many trophies over his career, but he’ll definitely go down as a hero in my book. An unsung hero, a cult hero perhaps, but a hero nonetheless.