You Off To London Again, Then?

Just a quick entry to let my blog readers know I'm off to my favourite city in the world for a week of fun with GroupieGirl - and let me tell you, we'll both have some stories to tell when we get back home! No time to tell you about them now... although don't forget I'm on Twitter if you want to keep in the loop :)

So here's a little something to be going along with until I get back. This is just me, isn't it?

Once Around The Sun

Well, here we are on October 19 again. Why do I mention that? Because it was on Sunday, October 19, 2008 - one year ago today - that I made the first entry here. Amazingly, I have now officially been a blogger for an entire year.

This is entry number 186, which means effectively an average of one entry every other day, although there's been a few long-ish gaps of a week or two between entries in 2009. I seem to be getting back to more frequent postings as the days get colder and shorter though - although I doubt I'll ever manage a full house for the month like I did in December 2008. In one sense, blogging is like songwriting, it's often said that a band has 20 years to write their first album, and only six months to write the second one...

What's kept me going for 12 months is the fact that what I'm writing is being read by people just like you. If you've ever read, commented on or linked to any of my blog entries in the last year, then I just want to say thank you for the interest in my life, such as it is. In the sidebar you may notice my Google Friend Connect gadget under the heading "friends of the alien" - if you want to, feel free to click the "follow" button to show me your appreciation :)

My writing style probably needs a bit of work - I'm no Shakespeare, and I know I overuse dashes, brackets and those famous three dots... in a way I write like I think, but perhaps there's no shame in that. I like to think that what you see is what you get with me - my blog's been described as "honest" by one of my fellow bloggers, and I think that's a pretty fair description. There's certainly been no holds barred about some of those 186 entries!! I am certainly not trying to play a role here - apart from the sensible precautions of referring to people under assumed names (GroupieGirl, etc) this is the real me. (yes, even the "alien" bit!!)

So shall I continue this, as my blog enters it's second year? I hope so - it's been an interesting twelve months (although now is not the time to look back, let's save it till December) and I hope the next year is just as interesting. I've occasionally found myself thinking of ideas for blog entries during downtime at work or on my commute home, and sometimes when things happen I think to myself "there's a blog entry in here, somewhere..."

In order to celebrate, I've compiled a Spotify playlist of sixty of the tracks I've featured at the end of my entries over the past year, handily listed in the order I originally posted them. There's about four hours of music on there, and sadly some tracks I'd have liked to include weren't available, but if you're on Spotify do go and have a listen. I certainly will be :)

Time to raise a glass and work on volume 2 then, eh?

SUGARCUBES - BIRTHDAY
(from the album "Life's Too Good", 1988)

Days Of Wine And Chocolate

I've got that lovely warm glow that you get from drinking just the right amount of wine :) or maybe it's just the fact that things are going rather well in life at the moment. Hey, they could be better, but they could be an awful lot worse and I'm happy to take what I've got at the moment. I spent all afternoon with GroupieGirl and we finally got train tickets booked for our little break in London - talk about the last minute, we'll be there a week tonight!! It's rather difficult (and expensive) to travel anywhere in this country without planning a fair bit in advance, not something you can always do, but we managed to get a fairly decent price by changing trains in Glasgow and Manchester.

We used to do the odd "epic" train journey hopping on and off several trains to get to our destination - notably ten summers ago, when we decided it would be cool to go off to Wales for a bit. It took us no less than EIGHT trains to get to our destination (although it did mean we got to travel on the famous Ffestiniog Railway) So next week should be a doddle :)

Anyway, I'm already thinking about 2010 and possible concert-going trips... don't want to leave things so late next time. Typical of me, not good at motivating myself to get organized - but when I am in the mood there's no stopping me!

Anyway, once the bookings were done, it was time for the wine! This wine is rather special - it's called Chocolate Ruby, and is described on the bottle as "an opulent British fortified red wine with natural chocolate essence" It's 15% alcohol, so just a little stronger than my usual vino. And let me tell you, chocolate and wine is a lovely combination!!

So lovely, that I thought GroupieGirl would appreciate some of it. She's not a huge drinker at all - the occasional glass of Bacardi Breezer is as far as she usually goes, or the odd glass of cherry beer when we're in continental Europe and can find the stuff! So I only gave her about 10cl - sort of a "half glass" - as I thought that would be enough for her. I am not the type to take advantage of drunk women!

Well, she loved it - made her feel all warm inside, and it was nice sitting on the sofa with this stuff as the autumnal sun shone through the window. We'll be sharing some more of the stuff sometime soon I think, thankfully it's got an recloseable top and "will keep for a month in a cool dark place". Since the north of Scotland IS a cool, dark place in Autumn, we should be OK :)

KAISER CHIEFS - RUBY
(from the album "Yours Truly, Angry Mob", 2007)

Turned Out Nice Again

I've got a rather off-beat sense of humour, always have done, and thankfully it's shared by some (though by no means all) of the people I work with. One of the things I like doing is latching on to people making slight mistakes in what they say and spinning that out into something funny - though I should point out it's all in a very light-hearted fashion, I would never intentionally take the mickey out of someone!!

I've found when I try to put these things into words it doesn't sound anything like as funny - perhaps these are true "you had to be there" moments. Anyway, a couple of days back we were talking about the George Foreman Grill, which turned into the George Formby Grill and a good laugh about what that would be like. (And if you don't know who George Formby was, Wikipedia is your friend...)

Well, while trawling YouTube last night, guess what I found :)



Top man!!

Flying The Flag For Franz

So basically, I was watching Franz Ferdinand in concert last night, and, um, you weren't. Yay for me :)

Franz Ferdinand are one of those bands whom I've always wanted to see play live, ever since they first stormed the charts five years ago, but it's not been easy. It's not often that bands of that stature play this far north, which means trying to swing days off work and making travel and hotel arrangements to see them play in other parts of the country. Which is unfortunate, as it's quite a rigid system as far as holidays go at work. Plus of course, once they really start getting famous, the tickets tend to sell out really quickly as well... too quickly to make arrangements.

However, this tour would be different. They would be playing a date in my town! Not that I knew anything about it - but GroupieGirl did, and got me a ticket!! They'd sold out within an hour, she said - and when you remember she doesn't have a computer, this meant she had to be at the box office at 09.00 to have a chance to get it!

So, was it worth the wait? DEFINITELY! The support band weren't that bad either - an American outfit called Music Go Music. We managed to get pretty much right at the front of the crowd, though thankfully away from the mosh-pit which developed half way through - a mosh-pit? Really? Where do you think you are, at a heavy metal gig? That's what happens when you give 15 year olds strong drink I guess, bloody kids, least I knew how to behave properly at concerts back then, rant, rant.... watching them being thrown over the barriers by their mates and chucked out the gig was a laugh. Watching the fight that broke out near the end wasn't.

And before you accuse me of being a moaning old alien, let me tell you about the teenage lads near us who'd obviously spent all day making Franz Ferdinand banners on poster-sized bits of card. Very well made ones too, which they waved at the band from time to time. Now that's being passionate about your interests.

Another thing ticked off the list... and a lovely night out, thank you GroupieGirl!! Actually, she came round earlier in the day with Hallowe'en-themed Jaffa Cakes and we spent some happy hours scoffing them and sorting out her travel arrangements for two gigs she's going to later in the year - and working on another project which I'll blog about in due course. We've both got a fair amount in our diaries coming up - finishing 2009 with a bang!!

FRANZ FERDINAND - COME ON HOME
(from the album "Franz Ferdinand", 2004)

The MCMLXXX-Factor

I'm glad to say I'm on the mend and smiling again :) my digestive system appears to be working as it should be now, more or less, although it's probably another reason to perhaps eat a little more healthily than I currently do - despite being an alien, I am also male and therefore should probably listen to my body a little more, yeah?

I've spent all Saturday night watching YouTube clips of various things, mainly clips of TV programmes from my childhood and teenage years. While this nostalgia-fest was going on I had Tweetdeck open in the background, as I always do, and one of my followers was bemoaning the fact that everyone (in the UK, at least) was watching the X-factor, and wondering if she was the only person who couldn't be bothered with it? I assured her that she wasn't - in fact I've never watched it! Nor Pop Idol, nor Britain's Got Talent - in fact, the only "reality" show I've watched over the last few years was Eurovision - Your Country Needs You, and that's only because I was writing a column on it for a website...

This made me think - I don't watch all that much TV any more, the internet having taken it's place, and when I do watch TV it tends to be repeats of older shows I enjoyed the first time around - or shows from my parents' generation which were repeated during my childhood, such as Thunderbirds and The Saint. The same goes for the music I tend to listen to - 21st century tracks, or even stuff from the nineties, tends to be crowded out by sixties classics, glam rock, punk, synthpop, eighties favourites. And there's nothing I like better than surfing websites dedicated to pop culture from those glory years, like the legendary TV Cream. My earliest memories come from around 1976, but I was rather obsessed with the 60s and early 70s as a young adult - my sisters' time - so stuff from then tends to get a fair airing as well. (Second-hand nostalgia??)

Recently though, I've started worrying about whether or not I'm "living in the past" - which would be ironic considering one of my interests is technology!! The cut-off date is usually the end of 1990 - mainly due to the fact that the early 90s were rather unhappy times for me on the whole. In fact, it was probably to cope with this that I found myself wallowing in nostalgia originally - and I don't think I've ever completely caught up. Oh sure, I had a lot of happy memories of fun in the Britpop years and I'd hate to live without my 21st century gadgets... but give me a choice between the TV or music charts of today and the ones of twenty five years ago, and I'd be off in my deLorean at 88 miles per hour before you could blink.

Why is that, I wonder? Can it be that the music, the fashions, the TV shows - life in general, even - were really that much better then, or am I coloured by the fact I grew up in the 70s and 80s and so have that "rose-tinted" affection for that time? Would I feel different about those decades if I experienced them as a grown-up? Or did those hateful years when I was still quite young "stop time" for me, and it's just I've never really caught up?

When times are bad we tend to look back on the "good old days" and we tend to remember only what was good about those days. And let's face it, times are pretty bad now - what with the recession and the worries everyone has about their future. In fact, thirty years ago, when the country was in an even worse state, I remember bands like Showaddywaddy being almost constantly on the TV singing covers of 1950s rock-n-roll, so there's nothing new about nostalgia trips :)

For some reason, I can't seem to work up as much enthusiasm for 2009 as I can for 1989, or 1979, or even 1969 despite not being around then. With the end of the decade fast approaching, I like many people wonder what the 2010s will bring, and am hoping they'll be good times for myself and those I care about. One thing I am hoping is that I won't spend the decade pretending to myself it's still 1990. Hopefully I'll be able to embrace the trends of the twenty-teens to at least some extent, because when you freeze yourself in time like that, to me, that's the definition of being old.

I'll still want to watch stuff like this from time to time though :)

The Nihilist Amongst You

I found myself lying in bed this morning musing on nihilism and how I really feel like nothing matters any more.

I mean, I'm sitting here in pain and thinking "is this what it's going to be like when I'm old?" Strange illnesses that are just annoying enough to piss you off, slowly increasing in number until your body can't take it anymore and you keel over dead? That's what I've got to look forward to? Then you end up rotting away in a hole in the ground or burned to a crisp and your family starts fighting over your possessions that you left behind. Don't expect them to be treated with respect either. At some point your heirloom is going to be handled by the sort of kid who draws pictures in felt-tip pen on the pages of your Bible, that was presented to you by the Sunday School you attended. I know, I was that kid in the 1970s.

Then you're just forgotten about. And we all will be forgotten about. Or at least, 99.99% of us will be. Unless you're someone like Albert Einstein or William Shakespeare, you're going to be forgotten about in time. Like you never existed at all. And when it comes to my generation - the people who've put all their stuff on the internet - that really could be the case. I've got a couple of floppy discs containing stuff written on an Atari ST word processor in the early 1990s. I can't read the files anymore because I don't have the ST anymore - or even a floppy drive. Who's to say in a hundred years that our PC and Mac documents won't go the same way? What happens if Flickr, or Blogger, or Wordpress closes down? Perhaps future generations will be as clueless about the early 21st century as we are about the Dark Ages, for the same reason - nothing from the era survives.

What is the bloody point?

As I say to GroupieGirl (and others) occasionally, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think...

NEGATIVE APPROACH - NOTHING
(from the album "Tied Down", 1983)

Thirty Six And Life

For Zog's sake. Why is it when I try to make something of my life things screw up? My body feels like it's on the verge of collapse, my work feels like it's on the verge of collapse (I feel like carving "Arbeit Macht Frei" on my desk), bloody travel companies are frustrating my efforts to take a trip to London with GroupieGirl... argh!! I've got bloody male PMS right now and woe betide anyone who gets in my way! In fact, I've been sitting here imagining the grisly and drawn-out deaths of certain people - an angle-grinder ought to do the job pretty well.

I would be pounding back the Beaujolais right now, if not the Jack Daniels, if my digestive system was up to it. But it isn't, which is probably a good thing.

So I'm going to express my anger with my current situation with this classic metal track, reminding me of the penpal I had around that time where we recorded our letters on tape along with cuts from our collections. If this track - and particularly the last few bars of it - doesn't send shivers down your spine, call a mortician, you're already dead.

SKID ROW - EIGHTEEN AND LIFE
(from the album "Skid Row", 1989)

Ow...

I'm in a bit of a state right now. My digestive system is shot to pieces. Has been for days, to a greater or lesser extent. When I've not been sleeping today, I've been lying on my bed doubled up in pain. I'd call the doctor, but it'd be probably over a week before I get an appointment, and if things get worse they can just rush me to Casualty instead. So there's no point, really, is there?

As I've felt every day this week so far, I'm not sure whether or not I'll make it into work tomorrow morning. Hopefully today's day out from the world will help me recover. As I'll need to be at full charge to cope with work, which is another story I don't feel like telling now.

Anyway, I'm not in the mood for blogging, tweeting, texting or even talking at the moment. No great loss to the world, though. Most tweets go pretty much unread anyway - and that goes double if most of your followers are still using Twitter's web interface and/or following more than a few hundred themselves.

Hopefully I'll be in a more genial frame of mind soon. But there are no guarantees.

EURYTHMICS - DON'T ASK ME WHY
(from the album "We Too Are One", 1989)

If Anyone Can, Genghis Khan...

October already?? Wow... autumn's here again, with that lovely feeling I get from the season. Looking outside last night at the light rain and the leaves falling was really enjoyable. Mind you, at the moment I'm taking my enjoyment from any source I can find it, as I'm not feeling particularly well at the moment... and trying to arrange a break in London with GroupieGirl for Hallowe'en is proving to be a bit more difficult than I expected. Honestly, why is it so hard to escape the hellhole of northern Scotland? They might as well build a big barbed-wire topped wall somewhere around Arbroath and set up a checkpoint there. Perhaps there is still time for that.

Anyway, I have the memories of a little trip to Glasgow to sustain me. Groupie came with me for that too, and we had a rather unexpected discount from the hostel we were staying at - they apparently just charged us half the going rate!! I expected somebody to say something at some point during the three days we were there, but no... mind you, the noise from the streets outside meant sleeping was not the easiest task, especially on the Saturday night, and this was despite being five floors up - so maybe it was just karma...

We did some shopping as usual - there are certain stores which we pretty much always visit when we're in Glasgow. In Groupie's case they're the "goth shops" and for me, there's the Apple Store - for the last time as the only Apple store in Scotland, as we'll be getting our own at the end of the month. We also found ourselves at the People's Palace in Glasgow Green, where various exhibits tell the story of life in Glasgow over the last couple of centuries. There was one point where I had to explain to Groupie why I was laughing so much, as I'm the only one of us who can understand Glaswegian :)

We did plan to go on a "ghost bus tour" which would have seen us roaming around a graveyard late at night, which sounds absolutely fantastic - but sadly the tour was cancelled at short notice. Which is a bit of a shame. However, we did end up doing something completely different... a meal at a Mongolian restaurant...

It was with some trepidation that we sat at our table while the waitress explained how the Mongolian experience would pan out - basically, any restaurant where you're given instructions as to what to do can be quite unnerving, and Groupie told me later she was expecting to be handed some sort of Mongolian sword to slice off the meat she wanted! I suppose everything is scary and unusual the first time, but in these situations I like to observe what everyone else does and follow that. In the event, of course, it was nothing like that, but still very different to what we were both used to.

After polishing off a couple of spring rolls, we were invited into the cooking area where we took a bowl each and started to fill it with - well, whatever was on offer. First of all, you get some rice, or some noodles, and then add some vegetables - as much or as little as you want. And then - the meat, in our case, zebra. Yes, really!! You can then add spices and seasonings - again, as much or as little as you want and in any combination you fancy. I really liked that aspect of it - the ability to choose exactly what you want as if you were cooking the meal yourself. Once the bowl was full, we handed it to the chef along with our little red magnet with our seat number on it, and he cooked the food on a large metal hotplate - while you watch, if you like!

A few minutes later, it was time to see what zebra tasted like - and it was a bit strange to be honest. We both got the feeling we'd tasted something like this before, but couldn't place it. It's a very dark meat - GroupieGirl likened it to something like liver - and was OK, but not a huge hit. Thankfully, you can go up to the cooking area as many times as you liked, so we just had a small amount, then went up again choosing more familiar things to eat. Making sure to leave room for dessert of course, as it was included in the price!

It was certainly an enjoyable experience and I think I'd like to repeat it sometime (they offer cheaper deals earlier the day, where you're only allowed one or two bowls) Something else I can say I've done - although, when I told my workmates I'd "gone out for a Mongolian", they didn't fancy the sound of it much...