Torridon

It's early in the morning, but I'm awake and typing this Blog entry, just a quick one, in advance of heading to a part of the UK I really don't know, which is exciting.

I have a good working knowledge of much of mainland UK, having driven round it for work and on holidays over the years, but the big chunk that is the Highlands of Scotland has remained unsullied by my presence.  Until now.

At half nine this morning my wee Ford Fiesta, full of luggage and food, will have three cycles dangling off the newly bought carrier on the back window, and with friends I'll be heading north on a five and a half hour drive to Torridon, which is pretty much due west of Inverness on the coast.

Young Elmo will be well looked after for the next week in a Cattery recommended by friends and which to my surprise is actually run by two people I know, one of whom I used to work with and the other from whom I bought my current BMW R1100RT motorcycle about 7 years ago!

So I'll be setting the house alarm, and neighbours have been primed to keep an eye on the place, and we'll be doing a bit of light hillwalking, some cycling, some wine drinking and, most importantly, lots of relaxing.

I believe the cottage we've booked has WiFi, so there may be some posts here as we go along. Watch this space.

Fit like?

I haven't visited the north east of Scotland for a while, but a few years ago for various reasons I frequented the area A LOT, particularly the area north of Aberdeen around the town of Turriff. In fact at one point I started to make initial enquiries into the possibility of transferring my job up there and moving permanently, but things changed and that didn't happen.

I'm heading up there in about 15 minutes though, because RE and I have been invited to a barbecue by a friend and her husband. It'll be my first time in Turriff for probably 10 years and I'll be interested to see if it's changed much, although I suspect it won't. The BBQ is on Sunday, but we're making a weekend of it and visiting a friend of RE in Nairn on the way up, a more circuitous route than I used to take and one that should provide good scenery, and having lunch with her there which I'm looking forward to. Then we've found what should be very nice accommodation for tonight and tomorrow night, travelling back down on Monday which is a local holiday in the west of Scotland, well Glasgow anyway.

RE hasn't seen anything of the north east, so we have a lot of plans about things we want to visit, and hopefully some nice photos will be taken.

Oh, and I perhaps should explain the title of this post which is a phrase in the north east dialect (possibly the Doric but I'm not sure of that) often said when you meet someone and which can possibly best be translated as "how's it going?". I think. But I have a few friends who read this Blog and are originally from that area so no doubt I'll be quickly corrected if I'm wrong!

Review of 2008

It's that time of year again when the TV, Radio and newspapers are full of their reviews of the activity and stories of the previous 12 months. Well I'm not going to be outdone! For your delectation (well, OK, it's actually totally for me as a cathartic exercise) here is how 2008 went for me. Not everything I'm going to mention has already been Blogged about, but some has.

Looking back at the review of 2007 I posted a year ago, I can see there have been some changes to my life in the past year. Almost exclusively these have been changes for the better.

The year 2007 ended with me having rejoined Glasgow Chamber Choir, and continuing to enjoy the experience. This coincided with me coming to the end of a difficult and sometimes turbulent relationship which had been going on for a bit over a year. I pride myself on being easy going and hopefully pretty calm much of the time, but my stress levels were through the roof for a significant chunk of the latter part of 2007. I didn't really Blog about this much at the time, it wouldn't have been right, but I can say now with the clarity of hindsight that this was a relationship I shouldn't have been in, and having been in it, it shouldn't have dragged on as long as it did. It did neither of us any good. And in fact it affected my friendship with other, better, friends too. Another pride I take is that I am still on good speaking terms with everyone (there are not all that many!) with whom I have had a significant relationship, whatever form that took, but this particular relationship having finished part way through the year and changed into a tentative, or possibly even tenuous, friendship, in January something happened which caused the other person to cut off all contact with me, despite my efforts to try to remain friends. I gave it a few weeks though, and after all calls had gone unanswered, including calls being rejected, I gave up and haven't thought about contacting her again. So another dark chapter passes!

The thing that happened in January was that I started a new relationship with RE, a member of Glasgow Chamber Choir. She had joined in September 2007 on the same evening I had rejoined, and over the next weeks and months we seemed to hit it off and seemed to enjoy one another's company, albeit always in a larger group, and so we eventually started dating. And we are still doing so, I'm very glad to say! It wouldn't be right for me to describe RE, or our relationship, or how I felt, or anything like that. So I won't. But she knows, I hope, and that's what matters.

In January, sadly, my gran died after a short illness but a long life. Needless to say I miss her. It was largely for her that I started tracing my family tree a few years ago (I currently have it traced back to the late 17th century in one of the strands) and since her death I haven't put any real effort into researching anything further. I fully intend getting back into it in the new year though.

Also in January I sat and passed my Institute of Advanced Motorists Advanced Driving test, adding that qualification to the Advanced Motorcycling one I passed the previous month. Since then I haven't felt the urge to become a Qualified Car Observer, but I persevered with the motorcycling training and in September 2008 I successfully passed the written and practical tests which make me a Qualified Motorcycle Observer, able to accompany and assist associates who are undertaking training to pass their own Advanced test. The season's finished just now of course, but I'm looking forward to carrying on with helping associates next year.

In March I spent a tremendously enjoyable long weekend in Marseilles with Glasgow Chamber Choir, where we sang in a couple of concerts (pretty stress free) and ate, drank and socialised a lot. I think part of the reason I enjoyed it was that it was my first trip abroad for ages, apart from the trip to Belgium in 2007 when I was in a plaster cast, and the first time away with RE. In fact up to that point our relationship was known only to a very small handful of people, but we had to come out the closet, so to speak, for the trip away so it was nice not to have to hide it from our friends any longer!

I've made my personal peace with St Mary's Cathedral. For a while I had no intention of ever going back, but I have and I'm very happy to have done so. My absence from the choir, and from the building generally, started with my achilles tendon injury when I couldn't walk or even stand without crutches, but it then developed into a wider problem connected with the relationship I was in. I should never have let that happen, but I did, but I'm glad to say that I'm back. I'm not singing in the choir full time at the moment, because they rehearse on the same evening as Glasgow Chamber Choir does, but I am for the moment one of the "occasional extra" singers drafted in when they need tenors. The other side of that coin is that if I see anything coming up on the music list which I'd like to sing, then I just contact FW, the director of music, and he's happy for me to come and join in, even if that means the choir has a boatload of tenors that evening! And in fact the choir is well blessed for tenors at the moment, there are I think about five of them, so I'm not really needed just now. But RE and I do attend Evensong most weeks, which is very enjoyable only not quite so enjoyable as actually singing in it!

This year, and I actually can't remember when it was apart from early summer or before, St Mary's Cathedral played host to a big Evensong service for the organist emeritus, Bernard Porter, who was celebrating a significant birthday. Lots of former choir members, including me, joined the current choir and made a spectacular sound. Some travelled from as far afield as the south of England, the north of Scotland, and New York to join the singing! And the socialising, funnily enough, was great!

In the summer, together with various friends including RE, I joined the newly formed Royal School of Church Music Scottish Voices choir. The initial meeting was a residential weekend at Strathallan School in Perthshire, which seemed to go well, not least because FW, from St Mary's Cathedral, is also the conductor of RSCM Scottish Voices. I should explain that the RSCM choir is not to be confused with Scottish Voices, which is a different choir. Apparently RSCM Scottish Voices is the equivalent of the RSCM Cathedral Singers in England, but they decided not to use that name in Scotland lest it offended Presbyterians and others who have no cathedrals! Political correctness strikes again! So they chose the name RSCM Scottish Voices instead, and presumably either didn't realise there is already a choir called Scottish Voices, or didn't care. Superb!

Anyway, next year's dates have recently been circulated, and it looks like it'll be a busy and enjoyable year.

In September my little cat Ernie fell ill, and after a short illness sadly died. I Blogged about that extensively at the time and have no intentions of reliving it here, since it was an intensely painful experience. I miss him greatly, as does Elmo, his wee pal.

One of the high spots of the year undoubtedly was my visit to San Diego, Califonia to visit my brother and his family. Made even better by RE joining me for the last few days when she was enroute back to Glasgow from New Zealand and made a stopover. I've Blogged a fair bit about the holiday, but I'm conscious that I still haven't told the full story yet and I owe this Blog the final installment, so I'll try to get to that as soon as possible!

I discovered in 2008, or it might have been late 2007, that my blood pressure had climbed alarmingly. It's now down to a better level, and I'm trying to get my act together to get to my local gym regularly in an effort to keep it down, lose a bit of weight, and get fit enough to do the things I want to do, which are many and varied! I've decided against taking up badminton again though, as I don't relish the idea of fucking up my achilles tendon again! Watch this space for details of my progress, if indeed I make any progress!

As ever, I make it my rule not to Blog about work. Suffice to say I'm still enjoying being in the particular department I'm in, doing the things I do, and tempting as it is to go looking for more money elsewhere, and it IS available, I'd rather stay where I am. For the moment anyway!

So, to sum up, 2008 has been a good year for me, not only on the relationship front but also as regards St Mary's Cathedral and trips abroad to sunny places. On the extreme down side, I lost both my gran and my faithful companion Ernie, but such is the way of life.

I've just re-read all of the above and realised it's a bit more of a random stream of consciousness than usual, so apologies for that. If I could be arsed I'd edit it into some better chronological, or at least logical, order, but I can't!

Anyway, Happy Christmas and a successful 2009 to you all, and I refuse to go down the political correctness route and use weasel words detracting from Christmas. If you are offended by my wishing you a Happy Christmas rather than Happy Holidays or similar, then perhaps you're reading the wrong Blog and I invite you never to darken my URL again!

San Diego catch up #2

So what else happened in San Diego, I hear you ask. Well all, or some anyway, will be revealed in due course, but first I'd like to mention that after Evensong yesterday I was very glad to hear that AC has enjoyed my various holiday posts. I mostly write this Blog for myself, but it's always nice to hear of someone who has enjoyed some of what I wrote, and especially so when it's someone I know in real life and even more so when it's someone who's been a friend for such a long long time.

Wednesday 29th October

This was the first full day of being together with RE in San Diego, and my brother, possibly glad to get some respite from being with me all day every day, gave us the keys to his Ford Focus (a bit easier to park than his Chevrolet Trailblazer!) and his SatNav, and left us to our own devices, so we initially went shopping to Seaport Village, which is pretty much an outdoor mall right on San Diego Bay, and near to the USS Midway aircraft carrier I mentioned on 25th October's post.

The weather, as ever in southern California by all accounts and by my limited experience, was bloody hot! Their website carries the tagline "everything under the sun" which is pretty clever and even if the "everything" bit isn't 100% accurate, the "sun" bit certainly is!

As we strolled around popping in and out of shops, one of our popping out moments coincided with a fair sized naval ship leaving San Diego Bay and passing Seaport Village. The top image on the right shows it with the Coronado Bridge in the background (which is apparently the third deadliest suicide bridge in the United States although why anyone would feel like suicide in the glorious weather of San Diego is beyond me. In Glasgow, fair enough, but in that sunshine?).

The bottom image was taken using the full zoom of my Fujifilm Finepix S5700. It has 10x optical zoom, which is pretty impressive on its own, but also has 4.8x digital zoom too. I've never been all that keen on using digital zoom, since my limited understanding of it is that all it does is artificially compensate for the reduced picture quality of the extra zoom by the simple expedient of "making up" the image by adding pixels. OK, I didn't explain that very well, so read this instead.

Anyway, the bottom image of the ship was taken using full digital zoom, and I have to confess that I'm quite pleased with the results of my first try at it.

One good find, bizarrely, in Seaport Village was a New Zealand shop, The Cabbage Tree, which RE naturally had to look round. We spent quite a while browsing and RE spent a while chatting to her fellow Kiwi who was behind the counter. Strange to think that RE had just travelled half way round the world from New Zealand, only to find reminders of her homeland at her destination!

We decided to head to the Old Town next, to soak up some history. I'd really enjoyed it when I'd been there with my brother the previous week, and enjoyed it again with RE.

We'd found out that my brother and his wife really liked a restaurant called Shogun which was about a twenty minute drive from their house, so we booked a table there and all headed off for what was going to be, for me anyway, a brand new experience. Teppanyaki. Ever tried it? I'd barely even heard of it. It's essentially a table round three sides of which the diners sit, and at the other side a chef prepares your food for you using the centre of the table which is a very very hot metal griddle.

But that's oversimplifying it a bit. It's an art. The chef doesn't just prepare your food, he entertains you while doing so, with flashy juggling of knives and spatulas and food bowls full of food, and with spectacular displays of flaming oils making flames shoot from the griddle up into the metal extractor hood above the table.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole shooting match, the food, the sounds, the smells, the sights, and if you get a chance to try Teppanyaki, then do so.

I've just discovered there's a Teppanyaki restaurant in Glasgow, in the North Rotunda, so I'm looking forward to trying it again.

Hi tech stuff

It's a little after 3pm on Saturday 25th October. So what have I been up to here in still very sunny and unseasonably hot San Diego since my previous post on Wednesday afternoon?

On Thursday my brother, D, took me for a whistlestop tour of the place he works, Solar Turbines, in the centre of San Diego right next to the airport. What struck me most in the assembly area was, considering this is engineering on a big scale, it was really really clean. I'm not an engineer myself, and my previous limited experience of it was a week of work experience in my last years at school, probably around 1978, which I spent at the Terex earth moving equipment manufacturer near my hometown, and various short visits to collect my dad from his work when that was at a steelworks. All very noisy, dirty environments. But not Solar, it was all very clean, very hi-tech, pretty quiet, and very impressive.

Thursday evening saw us eating at the Fish Market at Del Mar/Solano Beach. An interesting if unsurprisingly fishy menu full of things of which I'd never heard before, let alone tried! And some beer too. Wouldn't necessarily recommend you try it, but it was OK.

On Friday we set off slightly north of the city, and finding the beach near Carlsbad we followed the coast south again, largely on the historic Route 101, aka the Pacific Highway, seeing groups of surfers on the way. Through a mixture of towns like Encinitas, Solana Beach, Del Mar and La Jolla (pronounced Hoya apparently), which varied from what looked like not much more than beach huts perhaps occupied by people who moved to California in the 1960's and never left (the area or the 60's for that matter!) and huge multi million dollar properties, probably occupied for a small percentage of the year by film stars and other such celebs.

We'll go back to that area next week though, to explore a bit more when RE gets here. On Friday we were headed somewhere specific, not just Pacific. Our destination was the rather large and exceptionally impressive USS Midway, a decommissioned aircraft carrier berthed in San Diego Bay just along from the Maritime Museum we visited earlier in the week. When she was launched in 1945 and for the following ten years, Midway was the largest ship in the world, and she is big! Lots to see, and one refreshing thing was that many of the aircraft on the flight deck have bits sticking out of them at body or head height (edges of wings and suchlike) yet there are very few roped off or protected areas so it would be easy to walk into something slightly painful. The authorities who run the ship as a museum have obviously trusted the intelligence of their visitors enough not to have felt the need to over protect them. I genuinely thought that was a nice touch, and perhaps all the more surprising in the notoriously litigious USA.

After leaving the Midway, we visited Beverages and More, which if it were in Glasgow would be a very regular haunt for me. I got some Gordons Gin and some Pastis, and D got various Belgian and UK beers and some wine. Great store!

So that was us all set for Tapas type starters followed by Jambalaya, sitting outside in the still warm evening, with large glasses of Pastis for me, and red wine for everyone else (except my niece J, who had Sprite!). A good evening, yet again, of good food and drink and company.

This morning, Saturday, and my sister in law and niece, C and J, available to join us since it's the weekend, we all set off to San Diego Wild Animal Park, a few miles north of San Diego. Something like 1800 acres of wilderness tamed and filled with a variety of exotic animals and boutiques selling the usual touristy tat. It's part of San Diego Zoo, which is in Balboa Park in the city and which we'll visit next week, and by all accounts it isn't quite as good as the zoo itself.

Now it's chill out time, because it's too hot to wander about outside, so I've copied all the photos I've taken so far from my camera onto a flash drive pen, just in case. I'd post more of the images here, but I've got the camera settings such that my images are roughly 3Mb each, and while if I was at home I'd use the Microsoft PowerToys image resizer to easily and quickly make small copies with just a right click of the mouse, D's laptop runs Windows Vista and the resizer only works with XP, so I don't want to upload too many big images. I'll upload smaller ones to my Flickr account after I return home, and provide a link to them from this Blog, in the unlikely event anyone wants to see them.

I see no ships

It's Tuesday morning, 21st October, at a little before 8am in San Diego and thankfully it seems my body clock is managing to right itself. More or less anyway. I stayed up until about 10pm last night before I had to sleepily make my way to bed!

Yesterday my brother, D, and I started off at one of the ubiquitous Starbucks where we had coffee and something to eat for a bit of breakfast. My Superman teeshirt apparently caused a bit of a stir as two people, including a down and out, commented on it on the way into Starbucks, and the server inside just wrote "Superman" on the cup before passing it to someone who was going to prepare the latte. Thankfully no one else during the day had anything to say, otherwise it would have become fairly tiresome I guess, so maybe it's just at that particular Starbucks no one had ever seen one before! Or maybe they thought I was actually Superman instead of a Scottish bloke wearing it ironically! It is California after all and I understand that mind altering substances have been used here in the past!

I forgot to mention that on Sunday morning we went to a traditional diner where I had my first experience of pancakes and syrup for breakfast. And eggs benedict with what was essentially a slab of gammon steak, and eggs benedict with crab cakes. And orange juice. And more coffee than you could shake a stick at. Fantastic. And the pancakes were a surprise to me, since I didn't think I'd like them but did! Can't imagine ever doing that sort of thing more than very occasionally though, and indeed D & C confirmed that they do it very rarely.

So back to yesterday then. After breakfast we went to downtown San Diego, next to San Diego Bay, where we parked and bought tickets for the Maritime Museum. They have six ships listed on their brochure, but there were only five there, plus a former Soviet submarine which wasn't in the brochure so we didn't feel short changed at all.

The ships they have are:

• Star of India, the world's oldest active ship, built in the Isle of Man in 1863 and originally called Euterpe. She has been used for various things, including transporting emigrants from the UK to New Zealand, and in the Alaskan salmon packing industry.
  


• Berkeley, an 1898 steam ferryboat that operated for 60 years in San Francisco Bay.
  


• Medea, a 1904 steam yacht built at Linthouse on the River Clyde in Glasgow (roughly 3 miles from my house!) for a rich guy from Argyll.
  


• Pilot, a 1914 harbour pilot boat which for 82 years was San Diego Bay's official pilot boat.
  


• Californian, a replica 19th century revenue cutter, which wasn't there.
  


• HMS Surprise, a replica 18th century Royal Navy Frigate which featured in the 2003 Russell Crowe film Master and Commander: The far side of the world, which I haven't seen but will do so at the earliest opportunity.
  


• B-39 Soviet attack submarine which was launched in 1972, and carried nuclear (or should that be Nucular since I'm here in the states?) weapons.
  

The top photo, taken from Berkeley, shows the stern of HMS Surprise, the bow of B-39, and most of Star of India. The bottom photo shows the saloon of Berkeley.

They were all really interesting, and for only $14 for a ticket which allowed unlimited repeated access to all of them for a day, it was really good value too.

After leaving the downtown area we went to a Mexican food place, Baja Fresh, for lunch, and had fish tacos. An interesting experience! Stopping at a huge, and I mean huge, electronic warehouse called Frys, which sold pretty much everything gadget related and was decribed beforehand by D as being Toys R Us for men, and then at another smaller one called Best Buy, we collected my niece J from school, and pausing momentarily at a local Baskin & Robbins for some ice cream, we headed home.

A good day, well spent.

Body clocks

Here I am in Sunny San Diego. Well I say sunny, but since it's a little after half past four in the morning that would be pushing it!

It's a long way from Glasgow! A good trip though, and the flight connections were absolutely fine. My first full day was spent having a bit of a look around, and chilling with my brother and his family. Today his wife and daughter are at work/school respectively, so D & I will head back into the city for more of a wander around, and maybe a look on the historic ships in the bay.

My body clock still hasn't reset itself, obviously, having hit the sleepyness wall a little after 9 last night, and as I said I'm now pretty much awake. Hopefully that'll all sort itself out shortly though.

This is just a quick post, as I'm trying not to bash the keys too noisily in case I wake the household.

More later, and probably some photos, if I can source either a card reader or mini USB connector, having not thought to pack them with the camera!

Happy birthday

One hundred years ago today, on 18th October 1908, the man in the photos was born.

William Yuill Young was my grandfather, and he was a sergeant in the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards.

Having traced my family tree a bit, I have an idea of what his own ancestry was, but strangely, considering this and the fact that he died in 1972 so I do actually remember him, I don't really know that much about the man behind the photos.

I remember he was tall, tall anyway for our family at around six feet, and I remember he had tattoos on his hands of birds. Bluebirds I think. And I believe that's a traditional military thing of that era.

I understand that the photo of him on the motorcycle was taken in Pirbright camp in Surrey, probably some time during the second world war. Still haven't worked out what sort of bike it is!

Anyway, this would have been his 100th birthday. Happy birthday papa.


Unrelatedly, it's currently half past three in the morning and I can't sleep.

I'm off to San Diego today, and my flight from Glasgow to London is in four hours, then from London to Los Angeles four hours after that. It's going to be a long day, because I arrive in California just before 3pm local time and I guess I'll be awake for a while after that!

Bring on the good times

It's been planned for quite a while, but suddenly it seems to be rushing towards me and will happen very soon.

I'm off on holiday next Saturday for a couple of weeks in San Diego, California, and I'll be staying with my wee brother and his family. They've lived there for a few years now, but I've never managed to get my act together enough to visit, and in fact have never been to the United States, although I visited them when they lived in Dubai.

I'm really looking forward to it, particularly after the emotional ups and downs of the past couple of weeks or so, although I'm hoping Elmo will cope OK with being confined in the cattery on his own rather than being with Ernie as has been the case every time in the past. I'm looking forward to spending time with my brother and his family in some good weather, prior to them coming back home to the Scottish weather permanently next year.

Another good thing is that RE is heading to New Zealand in a couple of days time for a holiday and will make a stopover at Los Angeles on the way back so we can spend a few days together in San Diego. I'm really looking forward to that.

On a less good note, I was trying to synchronise my mobile phone with Outlook on my PC this afternoon and the PC froze. I eventually had to just use the off switch, but when I switched it back on a few minutes later it powered up, but there was nothing on the display on the monitor, and the red light showing hard drive usage was permanently illuminated. Basically it doesn't seem to be booting up. I don't really have time to look at it right now, but I'd better do it soon. So now I'm using the laptop, and have checked that I have a copy on it of the email booking confirmation for my flights next week! Fortunately everything sent to my primary email address, which gets downloaded to Outlook on my (sick) desktop PC, is also copied to a Hotmail address so I can access it from anywhere.

Txt spk is crp

Txt spk is crp, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

Well I suppose I should be thankful they didn't call it the Yoof Centre!

A long time in politics

It's been almost a week since my last post. So much for my silent promise to myself to aim to get back to Blogging every day!

So what's new? I hear you ask. Not that much really. I'm still happy, for reasons which are perhaps now gradually becoming clearer to more and more friends, but which will remain unpublished here for the moment. All will be revealed in due course.

I finally got both my IAM car and motorcycle certificates framed this evening. The IAM were offering a "framing service" which cost, from memory, about £30 per A4 certificate, and all it was was a frame and mount into which you placed your own certificate. I visited an art shop in a local shopping mall (Braehead) and bought a large wooden frame and a mount which will take two certificates together side by side, and all for £22. It looks pretty good too.

Last week Glasgow Chamber Choir finally confirmed that our trip to Marseilles in the south of France is going ahead at the start of May. My flights are now booked and I'm looking forward to spending some time with close friends in a sunny place.

Yesterday, being the second Sunday of the month, was the IAM Glasgow North Group bike ride. I turned up at the appointed place at the normal time, and including me the total number of motorcycles there was one!

Yep, on my own.

One of the regulars though turned up in his car, having come straight from work, to say he was sorry he couldn't make it. That was very nice of him.

So I set off on my own, and headed east along the M8 motorway to Edinburgh. A quick trip round the city centre and up to the view point at Calton Hill which is a high point at the eastern end of Princes Street where I took the photo on the right, which is the view looking north over Edinburgh and the river Forth with Fife in the distance.

I then headed out to North Berwick, a nice little seaside town on the North Sea. Returning via Edinburgh again I completed an enjoyable 5 hour ride, arriving home around 3pm.

Last week, I can't remember which evening, I had a short ride up to Loch Lomond, which is only a few miles north of my house.

The image on the right is of the bike stopped in a layby next to the loch. Not bad scenery isn't it!

And don't forget that this Friday, March 14th, is Steak and a Blowjob day. Mark it in your diary now!

So that's all for the moment. A short random stream of consciousness post. I really must get back to doing this more regularly!

Catch up

You may gather from the lack of posts and also the recurring theme of recent ones that I am busy just now immersing myself in all things of an advanced motoring ilk.

This coming Sunday, adverse weather (i.e. snow or ice) permitting, I am sitting my advanced motorcycle riding test, then later that day I will be sitting my mock advanced car driving test, hopefully followed up as soon as possible with the actual advanced car test. I have been watching videos, reading books, and, not least, riding the actual motorcycle. Very easy to get caught up in all the theory but it's how you put it into practice on the road that counts!

Work is also very busy just now, and last weekend was spent singing with Glasgow Chamber Choir at two concerts, in St Giles Cathedral Edinburgh and St Mary's Cathedral Glasgow, so I feel like I haven't had much down time recently. Really enjoyed the weekend, it has to be said, even if it was French music! On the whole it was a good sing though, and it was certainly good company. That said, the pub we went into after the Edinburgh concert on Sunday evening, Deacon Brodie's (must remember to add it to my Website) was interesting mainly for the very drunk, and rather offensive Irishman with the pint of Guinness in his hand and two little lines of snot coming from his nose, who spat as he spoke while encroaching into your personal space. Staggering around, spilling beer on people, and stealing people's seats by sitting right next to complete strangers (i.e our crowd) and trying to join in in a most inappropriate manner. A quick word with the barman, and then a short period of putting some previous "interpersonal skills" training into practice (i.e. facing up to the bastard eye to eye and not backing off. Well, I say eye to eye, but as I am a short arse and he wasn't it was more like eye to chin!) and he was out the door, after of course getting really close to my ear and, so that only I could hear, firing off the most vulgar, rude, coarse invective that he could muster at me. Sticks and stones and all that. It actually put him up slightly in my estimation anyway! The decision had been made by then and he was about to be heading towards the door anyway so I had already won the battle and there was no point in entering into a discussion with him.

Layclerk 1, abusive drunk, nil.

I really thought I'd put all that "having to be assertive in the face of aggression" stuff into a previous life behind me. Oh well, at least I remembered how to do it I suppose. Like riding a bike. Oh dear, there I go again. Bikes bikes bikes!

I need a holiday. But I have no spare cash, having bought a new house barely 6 months ago and all the expense that entails. I might try to get away at least overnight somewhere over the Christmas holidays when I can finally get a break from everything. By then the seemingly relentless round of carol singing will have abated. I'm getting too long in the tooth and cynical to enjoy many of them any more.

I'm off for a glass of whisky.

Greetings

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alcohol related update

Fuck me, I've actually updated something on my real Website! Another four pubs (surprised?), one remembered from a long time ago and three newly visited.

The bike has now been taken away on a trailer to a mechanic to get it bloody well running again. Grrr. More money. But I'll forget all about it when I am riding into the wild blue yonder on the thing. Soon I hope. And cheaply I hope (but doubt).

Do you like the image on the right? I think it does look rather familiar actually and I'm quite pleased with it! It's me, having been Simpsonized. Real photo uploaded to the site (face shot anyway) and the version on the right created. You should give it a go.

Been busy at work recently, but I've now got three days off. Originally took these three days because I was organising a group of friends to go to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo on Tuesday, but for various reasons mostly outwith my control, that all fell through, but I decided to keep the days off anyway and I now have other stuff organised to fill my time. Of which more later, perhaps. Perhaps some of it might even involve riding a motorcycle somewhere! Here's hoping anyway. It's been two weeks since it broke down, and it hasn't been used since a couple of weeks before that since the MOT expired. I need to get back riding again (did I maybe mention that or give that impression?)

Happy New Year!

I've just returned from a short trip to Berwick upon Tweed. Passed it loads of times, passed through it several times, but never stopped there before. It's a nice wee town just inside England on the east coast (about two miles south of the border with Scotland) and it has a lot of history within its walls.

At short notice I was invited to spend New Year with a friend's family, so we went down yesterday and I came back today, leaving my friend there until tomorrow. It was a good time, and I even enjoyed the two walks round the walls/ramparts in the very high, very cold wind!

We even went to Evensong at the local parish church, one of very very few which were built during the Commonwealth period (i.e. Cromwellian). Interesting service! When we arrived there were nasty "elevator" style carols being played through the sound system. The vicar then arrived and noisily clumped his way down to the front where he essentially flicked a switch cutting the (shite) music dead. He was wearing a longish black Crombie style overcoat over which he wore a black stole (i.e. no cassock). He started the service by saying that for various reasons the organist/choirmaster couldn't be there so there would be no music. He went on to say that his daughter was having contractions at that moment and he had to get back to the house ASAP to look after children while she went to the local hospital, two people from the congregation were in hospital "passing over" by which I guess he meant in the act of dying, several people were unwell, it was awful weather, and basically he was sorry the service was going to be cut short, but thanks for coming anyway (which came across about as insincere as I suspect it was meant). He sang the Ferial responses very flat and of the 8 in the congregation I suspect I was one of the few who sang them back to him (couldn't quite decide whether to alter the flatness but in the end thought it'd be easier not to rock the boat, notwithstanding any flatness with which I normally sing!). At one point he announced we would now say the Song of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis, before almost shouting "Oh no, I mean the Magnificat" just as I was wondering why we were missing out the first canticle! OK he had other things on his mind, but rumour has it that this performance was not entirely out of character! Oh, and we had communion at the end of Evensong from the reserved Host. Bizarre. No communion service, just a request for anyone who wanted it to come up to the altar where we said the "we do not presume to come to this Thy holy table ...." bit, which despite it being probably more than 10 years since I took part in a service with that form of words, I remembered word-perfectly. Good old Anglican Pavlovian response!

Today we took a trip across the causeway to Lindisfarne, the first time I'd been, which is slightly strange because I lived in Northumberland for a few years but never got round to visiting. It was a getting a bit too dark, a wee bit too cold and a big bit too windy to have appreciated it properly but I saw enough to make me want to go back for another look during a better part of the year (two pubs!).

Anyway, just back, so need to chill out a bit after the drive (in the wind!).

Happy New Year to everyone!

Just Google it

Good advice I think you'll agree!

This morning, the first day of a week of holiday, I was up and about not long after 7am. The Cathedral choir was singing live on BBC Radio 4 LW on the Daily Service. Only 15 minutes, and only 3 hymns, so not too stressful, considering it was live radio. In the unlikely event you'd like to hear it, for the next 7 days it's available by clicking here then selecting the "listen again" link for 11th December. Don't know what it sounded like though. Far too early on a Monday morning to sing properly! We even did a metrical psalm. What are we, Presbyterians all of a sudden!

The weather here is absolutely crap (well I am on holiday after all) so I've done nowt since returning from the broadcast except lie on the sofa watching UKTV History and listening to the rain battering the window. I might venture outdoors tomorrow if it's a bit better, and at least now I'm much better informed about Isambard Kindom Brunel's ship The Great Eastern, and about the building of the Panama Canal!

Went into the all new Junkyard Dog on Saturday night. Loud music, no real ale, and a pint of Kronenbourg Blanc cost me £4.20! That's the last £4.20 they'll get from me I think! Robbing bastards!

Belated Happy Holidays

A bit belated, but Happy Thanksgiving to y'all!

I've had a busy and quite interesting old time over the past wee while.

A new tenor has joined the Cathedral choir, DA, and let's just say he turned a few heads (both male and female I am told) when he arrived a bit late to the rehearsal on Thursday straight from work still wearing his Royal Navy uniform!

On Friday four of us were invited for dinner to the new home of MA (who has been in the choir for a wee while now) and her boyfriend J (just realised I don't know his surname!) who has just moved to Glasgow to join her. He makes an excellent Risotto! A very fine night. Too much wine though! And MA makes the best chocolatey desserty sweetie type things ever!

So Saturday should have been a restful day. Nah. We had to sing at a memorial service for Prof Leslie Alcock OBE, former Archeology Professor at Glasgow University and by all accounts a giant in his field of expertise. Leslie was a member of the Cathedral congregation, and his successor, CM, still sings Bass in the Cathedral choir. It was a well put together service, with all the music being chosen by CM.

So straight after the service there was a buffet lunch including a tray of wonderful carrot cake, then I headed off into town to buy some bits and pieces to take along to the east end of Glasgow joining CH and SH in NG and CG's flat. SH and CG are from the US of A (I trust you're following all this!), and we were about to celebrate, a bit belatedly, my first Thanksgiving (well technically not my first, but the first one I've observed/celebrated!). We had tried to find out what Thanksgiving is all about beforehand. What is the tradition? Should we bring presents, should we dress up, do you play games etc etc, but the story was very much "you eat and drink too much". That's it. So we did. Sadly there is now a photo in existence of two of us sitting happily sleeping on the sofa having pigged out fiercely! But then again if we had remained fully awake we might have been forced to sample the Buckfast CH and CG disappeared off to buy at the local shop on the basis that several people hadn't ever tasted it. Despite dire warnings from those of us who had actually tasted this fortified wine (I've consulted my lawyer so I'm not going to describe it further!) they tried it. Hell mend them! Not a particularly late night, we got taxis home before midnight, but it had been a long day.

This morning we sang EC Bairstow's Let all mortal flesh keep silence, which is an anthem I'm very fond of. I was asked to sing the tenor bit at the end, along with CM who was doing the bass bit. I think it went OK, but to be honest it's so rare that I do solo stuff I've almost lost the skill to judge for myself whether it sounds OK or not! One of the reasons I am fond of the anthem, apart from the fact that it's a good one, is that KY has said she always remembers it from the early 1990's as "my" anthem because she remembers me singing the tenor solo when we were both in the choir of All Saints' Church in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.

After the morning service we had the Cathedral AGM, the first one over which KH has presided. I thought he handled it all very well, although I haven't got much with which to compare it because that's the first one I'd been to for years and years. I only went to show support because one of the choir had been asked if she would agree to be nominated for election to the Cathedral vestry and despite several of us counselling her she agreed. It then transpired that there were three vacancies and three candidates, so all became vestry members without a vote. Ah well. She can't say she wasn't warned!

Evensong tonight should be OK, and the pub afterwards will be as usual. Oh and on that note, I am sad to report that the Junkyard Dog (born 1927) may be not much longer for this world. Depending on who you ask the lease is up and the people who have been running it are not renewing the lease so it reverts back to another pub chain, or it's being/been sold. Either way the only reason anyone would surely dispose of it is if it wasn't making money, so whoever takes it on, if indeed they keep it open at all, will surely close it for refurbishment and relaunch. Let's hope it won't be a lager-joint. In the meantime we might have to find somewhere else. And related to the Dog, one of the barmaids seems to perhaps have had some surgical enhancement recently. Either that or she was wearing a "sheepdog" bra (rounds them up and points them in the same direction). Scary.

update: her baps had returned to their normal dimensions by the next time I saw her!

Pepys etc

Here's the view I've had for the past couple of hours.

My wonderful new bike has been a wee bit sick for the past few weeks with a battery which just refused to hold any charge. Consequently I ordered a replacement battery from the motorcycle dealer (not a BMW dealer) to whom I sold my previous bike a few years ago and when I spoke to them yesterday afternoon they said they could fit it this morning while I waited if I got there for them opening at 9am. I duly arranged to start work about 10am, since the garage had estimated that it wouldn't take any more than about half an hour's work.

How wrong they were!

I did my bit. I arrived at five to nine, and then spent the next three and a half hours standing in the service department while the mechanics found themselves on a learning curve which first showed them that the battery on a BMW R1100RT is actually located directly under the fuel tank and is therefore somewhat of a bastard to replace, involving removal of part of the fairing and the moving of said tank. To cut a long story slightly shorter I finally arrived at work some time after 1pm and since it was Friday we all finished about half past 3. A day well spent!

So anyway, not having had the use of the bike for a few weeks I decided that tonight I'd blow away the cobwebs a wee bit so took a trip from Glasgow up the M80 past Falkirk to Edinburgh (and around it for an hour) and then back along the M8 to Glasgow. It was rather dark so I didn't push the speed too much, although I managed well into three figures. Ah, adrenaline, the natural drug of choice! You can't beat the high it gives you.

So now next week is annual leave and I intend maybe spending a night away somewhere, possibly the Lake District.

Did I mention last night yet? All Souls service in the Cathedral went really well. Nicely put together and with good music, albeit it felt not as secure as makes for comfort! Durufle Requiem.

Anyway, it's late. And so to bed.

Honey, please calm down!

Just starting to get back into normal life after recent ludicrous hours of working. I've just got this week to go then off on holiday for a week.

My lovely motorcycle is slightly ill at the moment, having a dead battery, but I've got a new one (battery that is, not bike) on order so it should be fixed in a day or two after which I think I might bugger off to the Lake District overnight next week for a wee break and to maybe look into my family tree which is partially, but substantially, based in Cumbria. Perhaps a casual look at some graveyards would be the order of the day, followed by a night in a pub of course. Unfortunately a friend, MH, isn't available to go away at short notice, and in fact wouldn't go on the bike anyway, but I'm happy enough with my own company, particularly if in a pub, so that's OK.

An excellent weekend just finished at the cathedral. A wedding on Saturday (which I missed on account of a superabundance of alcohol on Friday night), which sounds as if it was, let's say, interesting ......

After the wedding some of the choir went to the Junkyard Dog and I joined them there having recovered enough to be able to scoff beer again. Thereafter half a dozen of us went to the restaurant across the road for food, and then back to the Dog. A good night.

Sunday morning went well, with the Victoria anthem O quam gloriosum. FW, CW and MW were missing because MW had been competing in the final of the BBC Radio 2 Choirgirl of the Year competition in Westminster Abbey in London. It's being broadcast next weekend so it wouldn't be fair to announce the winner in advance, but no matter whether she wins or loses she has done incredibly well to have got to the final and I for one am proud of her. I remember being there in Wells at a summer week of the Marian Consort 16 years ago when her father, our choirmaster FW, dropped her, from a fair height, on her head onto a stone floor. My how we laughed!

Evensong was excellent. Both EJ and AK were there while briefly back in Glasgow from Cambridge and speaking personally as ever it was a pleasure to sing with AK. At one point on Cantoris we had me, GS, AK and FW blasting out the tenor part of one of the hymns, so apologies to the front row for the line up of human trombones behind them! I have it on good authority that it was also a pleasure to sing alto beside EJ too. And it's always great to share a wee swally with them afterwards.

No real reason for the image. I just quite like it!

A good evening

A good evening that was!

Went to the Junkyard Dog with GS and we were joined by several others including PH (with a lady friend, very nice too and I suspect we've not seen the last of her), GW, GY, RN, and GS (not surprising since she is married to GS).

Particularly nice to have a drink with two of those, RN and GW, since drinkies with each of them are sadly few and far between these days, for work and baby reasons respectively. RN is often (in fact it seems always) on call, being of a senior medical bent, and GW is usually on baby duty while her husband CW gets to socialise. And with the greatest of respect to CW, GW is much better looking than him and therefore much better company in the pub!

GS and GS very kindly gave me a lift home, which is far over and above the call of duty, being the best part of a 30 mile round trip!

And I've still got two weeks off work!