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.