Sean.

For want of posting something better..

Aw, bugger it, this blog has lost its direction recently, mainly because of a tremendous sense of weariness on my behalf. I actually feel totally physically knackered, and have done for the best part of this year. This is, as far as I can work out, mainly the fault of work, which seems to be getting in the way of everything else right now, but also there is this tremendous reticence to write within me, an invisible wall built for no reason, having no purpose, and leading to no output from me.
Anyway, let me get writing rather than talking about writing. Eurovision, for want of anything better. This is usually a sodding farrago, but this year has clearly beaten anything yet. The vote went to Russia simply because so many countries were afraid of having their gas supplies cut off. Well, that's what it looked like. As Sir Terry of Wogan said, it's nothing to do with music anymore. I disagree with the last word of the latter sentence. Since when has the Eurovision ever been to do with good music?
However, this year has shown it in all its grim glory: a popularity contest. This is meant to be a celebration of belonging. Instead, it's a tawdry playground game of my gang's better than your gang. And, stupid as it may seem, it tells a lot about what the European Project is, and how it may turn out. In some ways, it's a good thing - we're seeing a gradual readjustment between the rich western European countries and the neophyte members of the continental club. It's a bit unfair for the big, rich countires to start whinging about how they aren't winning the competition anymore. Come on, let's share the cost of hosting the bloody thing around a bit.
On the other hand, it has become colossally tiresome to watch the same old voting blocs: All the Scandinavians vote douze points for each other, Greece gives Cyprus 12, Cyprus arse-licks right back, etc, etc. There needs to be some kind of change to the system, though what, I haven't a clue.
As for the UK complaining about not coming anywhere near winning over the past decade: Which language is used? What muscial format do most countries use? Don't worry, the Anglo-Celtic Cultural Hegemony, even if we get next to nul points for our acts, is still dominant across Europe.

ok, let's see if this works then.

Myyy Precioussss...!

..or, what are the most valuable things I own? This is apropos of a couple of minutes' thinking about what to write here, and waiting for my fingers to start doing the magical thing they do once they start their dance over the keyboard and I can feel my mind slipping into The Zone. What are the valued things? Here, I am not talking about people, or love, or gripes, things that are talked about as being possessed, but which is never true. I'm talking about things, pure and simple. Take my need for my family as a given; take my not very well paid job for what it is; understand that what I am considering of value here is not things that are, per se, valuable, except that they are of worth for me. Let's start.
1) right now, my hands. only after you've had a limb out of use for a while can you truly appreciate having full use of all of them. I suppose I should extend this to all my bits, but my hand will do for now. Hands in general fascinate me: I remember one time at university, when I was in my halls of residence, watching a Sudanese student washing up his plates in the sink, and seeing the gentle, clever grace of his hands as they caressed the plates into cleanliness. Whenever I accidentally catch sight of my own in a reflection, there is always something slightly shocking in the moment, simply because they look so delicate and poised, yet I know how much strength there is in them.
2) The table at which I'm sat, which is in fact a bureau. An old, cheap bureau, a hand-me-down, but one at which I feel at home, and which feels like a thing born to be written upon. It is warm to the touch, I feel stories woven into it, and I love its simplicity.
At this point, I feel I should mention that this is a random list.
3) My key ring. This is in fact liberated from a gym bag, coloured white and red with the slogan 'Play Football!' upon it, over thirty years ago. It is the oldest thing that I have continuously owned upon my person, and it still performs the function to which it has been adapted. Why change what works?
4) A Citizen Automatic, a gift from Nur several years ago, which is currently languishing in the bureau, its mechamism in need of some TLC. I didn't appreciate it at first, but it's a truly lovely bit of watchmaking.

Yum!

This evening's meal was mainly a freezer clearout, and involved stuff you just shove in the oven then shove in your mouth. However, I felt a hankering for cilbir, so I made that too, and realised how much I missed it. I've posted something about it on here before ages ago, but it's worth a repeat mention, because it's so ridiculously simple but so bloody delicious. The first time I heard of it, I thought it would be utterly bloody disgusting, then I tried it. Trust me, if you make this, you'll get hooked. And it's perfect with raki - or a dry white wine, or a well matured and chilled fino.
Cilbir, aka eggs in yoghurt
you will need:
eggs
garlic
yoghurt
mint and/or dill
flakes of crushed chilli.
total time: 5 minutes - 15 minutes, depending on your eggs
first of all, decide what you want to do with your eggs. for this dish, they should, traditionally speaking, be poached, but I think it's far better when scrambled. If you go for the latter, fry the eggs in butter and a bit of sunflower oil.
Crush garlic, and either chop up or crush with a mortar and pestle. take your yoghurt (Turkish or Greek style, but not strained yoghurt - you need to be able to smooth this over, or pour, over the eggs), put it in a bowl, mix with the garlic. make sure your eggs are cooked. put on a service dish. pour yoghurt over the top. garnish with mint and/or dill, and flakes of chilli.
that's it! Eat with big chunks of fresh crusty bread.

A novel cure for Haemorrhoids?

I just recieved this slip through the letterbox.
It reads:
have you got piles?
need help to bring them down again?
well if so give sue a ring on xxxx xxxxx xxx

Oh, sorry, forgot to add the top line:
Ironing service.

Muddy.

That pretty much sums up my sunday afternoon ride up to Goring via the back roads past the Mapledurham estate and back via the Thames path to Pangbourne, Purley and Reading. You'd think a path that is a river route would be pretty flat: not a chance of it. It was up and down, up and down, and some clever bugger put large steps on some sections. The bridge tolls at Whitchurch show the prices from the early 1800s, which remained unchanged right up to the early 1980s.

well, you don't see this every day...

...snow in the south east, that is. Sunday morning. It lasted all of six hours. Of course, I had to build a snowman.
However, it was looking a bit to cute, so decided to make it a bit more sinister.

My desk.

Pinata!

so much to write, so little time, so it seems, so it is. Like so many other people, I am not entirely in control of my time management, and so I allow little jobs to slide until they end up as one colossal bloody mountain of sodding little jobs, and there's me at the base wondering what to do. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of my friend Marcus' book, or rather blog: The enlightened path may not lay at the top of the mound, but rather by walking round the side of it. Hopefully with a nice cup of tea to hand.
I find myself bogged down at present, having to juggle the various needs and desires of not only myself but also others. Sometimes it is frustrating: However, it is my life as it is. I'm well aware that I don't earn enough money, and that doing my Dip is the only current way forward, yet I still wonder whether I am on the right path, and whether I should be moving into something else. I want to study, I want to write, yet I seem to not have enough time for either.Perhaps I should walk around the mountain.
On a different topic, I've had quite a few reactions to the whole Jesus Pinata thing. Most agree with what I said at the end of the post, ie a sick stupid idea, yet it later struck me that theologically speaking it was actually appropriate, as long as it was done on Good Friday. The act of striking a Jesus Pinata until it breaks (spilling communion wafers and wine?) would be hugely symbolic of the mockery, abuse and pain heaped upon Christ in his final few hours, and therefore apt. I formed this opinion while watching BBC/HBO's hugely impressive 'The Passion', which didn't shirk from showing what a miserable, vile and humiliating death crucifixtion was, while not lingering on the thing with the sadistic pleasure evinced by Mel Gibson's film. However, the actor playing Jesus looked a bit too much like Ben Fogle with a beard to be entirely convincing.

Easter

..and chocolate and bunnies. Yum. I was discussing it rather flippantly with a colleague the other day, and wondered why we didn't have any lo-calorie chocolate Jesuses. They'd go down a treat. And what about a Jesus Pinata? All the kids could dress up as roman soldiers and poke it with spears.
Yes, I know, deeply sick.

Dear fellow cyclist...

,yes I think you know who you are, and I hope you're reading. You overtook me on Hemdean road this morning, almost pushing me into the kerb, and disregarding your own safety vis a vis the car directly behind you. There you were, you hero, straining against the wind, your work suit bulging against your paunch and the hi-vis, expensive yellow cycling jacket; you wobbled under the weight of your pricey cycling rucksack and your head bowed under your pricey cycling helmet; And yes, you overtook me,regardless of anyone's safety, least of all your own, you hero, you. Well, the wind was against us, and just for a bit of sport, I thought I'd catch you up and see if I could beat you to the end of the road. And I did, didn't I? However, you didn't like that, did you?It showed you up on your pricey bike and pricey clothes and pricey kit, you hero. So, when I cycled onto Church street, you came racing behind, regardless of the car bearing down on you, hero, its horn blaring. I guess your piggy little eyes were bulging with fury behind your pricey little glasses. And of course, when I reached the mini roundabout, I indicated right, as I always do, but it's a good job I checked behind me, as I always do before I turned right, because I saw you just about to barrel into me in your yearning to get past me, regardless of the car about to turn into your path, you hero. So I hope you're reading this:
YOU ARE A TOTAL FUCKING TOOL, AND IT'S NO WONDER PEOPLE GET PISSED OFF WITH CYCLISTS WHILE ARSEHOLES LIKE YOU ARE AROUND.
Thank you.

the last post was horribly pessimistic. Blame it on reading too much James Lovelock, watching the news unfold about price increases, the threat of recession, and being 40.

Do you know what you're doing?

No, really. Do you really, truly know and understand exactly what you're doing and why? Or is your life just little pockets of control, pushed and whipped around by great storms of total bloody chaos? Now there's a question that I'd like to see a politician answer with a straight face and an honest heart. The fact of the matter is, very few people really know what they're up to. The rest of us just try to control what we can, and are at the mercy of the shitstorm that is life. We might delude ourselves that we're in control, that we are masters of our destiny, but by and large that's bollocks. Yes, we might have the luxury of choosing where we live and what jobs we do: Yes, we have the freedom to have leisure time, go on holiday, buy what we want: But it is controlled choice, limited freedom. The slightest thing could send our lives spiralling out of control.
And of course, we expect those in charge to be able to control things in order to make our own lives easier, to give us a little less to be concerned about. What we neglect, or even choose to ignore, is that these are people just like us, not some race of ubermensch. And as such, they are prone to the faults and follies, mistakes, prevarications and lies that we all are. And these are the people I'd like to grab gently by the throat, stare into their eyes, and ask the question at the top of the page until I see fear gathering in their faces.

quote of the day.

From my son, Angus:
'Dad, you and mum aren't friends, you're husband and wife!'

Old fartdom beckoning?

well, my hair hasn't fallen out overnight, nor my teeth. The Beige Gene - the one that makes you start thinking, 'actually, beige is nice' - hasn't kicked in. I haven't developed a predilection for jackets with leather patches or slippers in a plaid pattern, nor have I developed a yearning for a sports car, golf, or polo-necked sweaters in a diamond pattern. In fact, it's all pretty normal so far.
Happy 40th birthday, me.

marinading.

Home remedies can be a wonderful thing, inasmuch as they show the triumph of hope over cruel reality. For example, my wife has been applying a mixture of almond oil, olive oil, garlic and onions to my head for the past few weeks, because, apparently, it will strengthen my hair, make it more lustrous, and aid new hair growth. I have gone along with this, even though I'm sceptical. I'm being made even more sceptical by the fact that my head smells like a garlicky marinade, and has done for several days despite regular washing. And why all this? well, it's because I'm losing my hair by degrees, and my wife wants to help me keep as much of it as possible, as long as possible, and as coloured as possible, even if it means having to smell like something you'd smear over a leg of lamb and leave in the fridge overnight. It doesn't matter if I go on about telomeres, genetic inheritance, the loss of melanin, the gradually increasing friability of hair once the cell begins to die - 'try this, it'll help'. And because I'm a bit on the vain side, I go along with it, even though I know that it won't work. I don't think I'm alone in this. Having to face up to the, er, bare fact of the balding process is one of those things most men have to go through - the knowledge that one's youth is passing and gone, stupid evanescent thing. Yet still we try to avoid it for as long as possible. It's not that my hair loss is that bad: compared to my dad and grandfather, I actually still have hair, and it's mostly the original colour: No, it's the fact that it is ongoing.
The situation bears a similarity with the inevitable fact of death, the occurence of one's own, that is. The only consolation of my demise will be that I won't smell of onions. Hopefully.

A few more pics

These are from 1987 (21 years ago! How is that possible? there are people at my uni now on the verge of graduating who weren't even born when I first started boozing it up there), taken in the Mandela Bar and outside one of the entrances to the Main building. the former are of Michelle Shocked, a folk and protest singer of the time, and still among the very best gigs I have ever been to, and the latter of a very bored John Webb picketing the massed hordes of students trying to get to a 9.30 lecture. These pictures are all very typical of their time.

back in the saddle

I finally got back in the saddle today, after seven weeks. My arm's now feeling a bit sore for it, but it was good to ride again, even when I had a sudden wobble and thought I was about to go over again. I took it easy, riding by the river to work and giving myself half an hour for what would normally be a 15-20 minute journey across town. Whether I'll do it again tomorrow remains to be seen.
The feeling of mellowness engendered by the gentle release of endorphins into my bloodstream due to exercise was then completely buggered over by the discovery that my external HDD had been nuked my the computer in the classroom. I arrived home, plugged it in, and found it wouldn't work - 'the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable'. This is a bit of a bugger, as I haven't got a backup of it. Cue grinding of teeth, attempted hacking, a brief interlude to smack my head against a wall, then downloading of a file recovery program, which is now running oh-so-slowly on the main tower. I just hope I can save my info.
Nevertheless, even if it is lost, I'll be able to recover the majority of it from here and there, I think, and build it slowly back up again, datum by datum. After all, it's just another way of getting back in one's saddle, of taking control again, getting back in the (not always) right direction.

Nothing.

A somewhat hectic day halfway done....I've had to cover someone's group this morning, and now I've got four solid hours' of teaching to go. Whoopy-do. I'm also not really in a mood to scrawl anything, but feel I should make a more concerted effort than I have been doing recently. Anyway, I have three minutes before the start of my lesson, so I thought I'd take a leaf out of mys sister's blog and write frantically and not necessarily accurately over the space of a couple of minutes.
So, er, what should I write? well, there's the usual domestic stuff and, in exciting news, I put up a load of shelves yesterday. My arm continues its progress back to health, although I still can't bend it completely and the bicep looks distinctly wimpy compared to my other arm. Right, that's three minutes and nothing written - bye!