First IAM in over a year

Today being the second Sunday of the month it was the Glasgow North Group of the IAM motorcycle run, and a good run it was, albeit the first one I've made this year I have to confess! In fact it's the first one for me for just over a year, because the last one I was on bored me so much by being a slow procession of bikes, apparently unable to overtake anything!

So this morning five of us turned up at the assembly point at PC World at Finnieston for 0930hrs and we decided that the weather forecast suggested Ayrshire as a viable route.

Down via Barrhead, Stewarton and Kilmarnock to the A76 where we then turned off towards Ayr and then headed south past the Electric Brae (negotiating a 35mph car driver on the way!) and Turnberry (where the 2009 Open Golf Championship will take place in July, apparently) to Girvan where we partook of variations on fish and chips in a local cafe, followed by some Nardini's ice cream while we wandered over to look at a substantial (and bright yellow) trike parked at the harbour, which turned out to be for hire. The rider/driver, who was sitting nearby, didn't appear over-friendly it has to be said, since whereas normally bikers will happily chat to each other he sat there five feet away and pretty much ignored us. Prick. And he is, I think, the one sitting on the bike on their homepage, if you followed the link. I suspect he's trying to pretend he's Billy Connolly! Did I ever mention I had lunch with Billy Connolly in Glasgow a few years ago? I'll bore you with that story sometime!

So anyway, after having travelled south to Girvan our route became, ahem, a bit flexible, and we trekked north east a bit to Maybole before heading back down via Kirkmichael and Straiton then across to Dalmellington (which from a personal point of view was nice as my relatively recently passed-away grandmother got married there a number of years ago) before heading to New Cumnock and then Cumnock where we did the usual final starburst and went our separate ways (although we did lose one at a pre-planned split earlier) with three of us continuing east along the A70 to Douglas and finishing with a blast (at a maximum of 70mph, of course, M'lud) up the M74.

I covered almost 200 miles on the day, which was marked by glorious weather for most of the time apart from the stretch from Dalmellington onwards when it rained reasonably heavily, although it had cleared up by the time we were reaching Motherwell on the M74. And I saw a spectacular forked lightning strike at one point on the hills in the distance ahead.

A day well spent, particularly considering that I had forgotten about it and coincidentally passed PC World just after 9am and saw two bikers assembled there so changed my plans and joined in instead

On an unrelated topic, the Glasgow Chamber Choir concerts last weekend were a spectacular success. Glorious music performed, I have to say, bloody well! The fly in the ointment was my overindulgence of Hendrick's Gin after the Sunday concert, leading to the mother of all hangovers on the Monday which at least I'd had the foresight to take off as a day of flexi leave. This was the start of four days when I took no alcohol. Me. Who drinks every day! Never again. Honest. Coincidentally I passed the Hendrick's Gin Distillery today near Girvan, Made me feel queasy when I saw the sign!

Went to see Angels & Demons last night with RE and thoroughly enjoyed it. Good film and good company. Followed by some Mexican food, and a walk along the riverside at Glasgow city centre to the new pedestrian bridge, known apparently as the squiggly bridge, a name presumably linked to the squinty bridge which was opened a year or so ago further down river. A day well spent.

Passion

This week would seem to be the right time to watch the film.

Particularly the DVD extras.

Charming

The one and only Mr Johnny Cash, ladies and gentlemen!

Now here's a thing. I was about to put his full name in this post, since I know his initials are J R Cash, but according to Wikipedia he was actually given only initials by his parents because they couldn't agree on a name. When he joined the Air Force they wouldn't accept just initials so he adopted John R Cash as his legal name, and when in 1955 he signed for Sun Records he adopted Johnny Cash as his stage name. And yes, I know Wikipedia can be wrong, but it's a good story if it's true! And you should read the Wikipedia entry about Cash, it's very interesting.

As you may have guessed, I watched Walk the Line on DVD yesterday. Great film.

The other thing I did yesterday was view a flat in the evening, and I liked it enough to have instructed a survey today. Let's see what happens, and I won't jinx it by giving any details yet.

That's a bloody long time!

Collected my sick note from my GP this morning. The first one I can remember ever having in something like 27 years of working! I had asked that, having self-certificated for a week, my GP give me a certificate from Monday 26th until my next appointment at the fracture clinic on 20th April. This would give me about 3 weeks of certificated absence plus the first week, then I would re-address whether I need to stay off work for longer, in consultation with the doctors at the clinic and my GP of course. I thought 4 weeks was a long time to be off and had hoped that I might be able to return after then.

So I collected my pre-prepared sick note (written after my GP received a letter from the hospital so I didn't actually have to see her) this morning and took it straight to work. To my surprise, when I got to work and looked at the certificate it said I was to stay off for 6 weeks from 26th! That's 3 weeks longer than I had hoped to be off for this initial period. Although I'm mindful of the very real possibility (actually it's a probability) that I'll be off for the full 3 months, I don't want to accept that as for definite and was hoping to fool myself by staying off for repeated shorter periods. But now the earliest I'll be back to work is about 7th May. Fuck.

So, anyway, went for lunch to The Lansdowne with dad, who had kindly come and collected me to deal with said sick note. Very enjoyable it was too.

For the first time since starting to look for a place to buy, I've seen somewhere which has sparked my interest enough to actually go and look at it. So I've emailed the estate agent asking to arrange a viewing. It's slightly further away from the west end of Glasgow than I'd have really liked, but the property looks interesting. Hopefully no one gets in in front of me. No doubt further posts will reveal all!

The image? I watched a bit of Shaun of the Dead last night on TV. Good film. I have it on DVD and need to watch all of it again soon.

I hobble the line

I may have slightly overdone it yesterday.

Was collected by a friend and we went for a bit of a drive up the A82 as far as the start of Loch Lomond, then turned left and across the hills down into Helensburgh and then back towards Glasgow. We were both hungry by then so decided to eat out at The Lansdowne Bar and called ahead to book a table. To cut a longer story mercifully shorter, we had a nice meal and two bottles of wine (the car having been dropped off en-route), but by the time I got out of the taxi at home my leg was aching and felt, well, congested might not be a medically accurate word but it describes the feeling quite well. I think basically it was swollen a bit inside the cast, so I spent a wee while before going to sleep lying on the bed with my leg balanced on the end (i.e. raised a bit) and wiggling my toes as much as possible. I don't know whether it actually made a difference, but I felt a bit better by the time I lay down to sleep.

This morning the congestion was back, and it's been quite painful, but the medication has sorted that a bit. I don't really feel like doing anything today, although I'm supposed to be going to a concert tonight just round the corner. I'll wait and see how I feel at the time.

The other thing I did yesterday was watch the first of my DVD mountain. Well, as I mentioned, it's not quite a mountain but more of a hill. Maybe a Munro. Yes, that's it. I have a DVD Munro. But I digress, as usual. Yesterday I watched The DaVinci Code and I enjoyed it. I know it largely got slated by the critics, but so did the book and I enjoyed that (more so than the film to be honest). I even enjoyed the line "I've got to get to a library ... fast!" which is a rather strange quote.

I've set up the Sony DVD Cinema Surround Sound system (of which I'm very proud - can you tell?) with the next film I'm going to watch (so I can press the buttons and start it without moving from the sofa) and I've decided on the Oscar winning Walk the Line, the story of Country Music legend Johnny Cash's life. maybe a review will feature once I've seen it, but probably not and in any case it would probably only consist of either "it's shit" or "it's great".

Cats hate crutches

Day four in the house and the inmates, one human and two feline, are at breaking point. Or at least the human one is. The cats couldn't care less as long as I have sufficient mobility to hobble to the cupboard to put out their food. Their reactions when I use my crutches are funny though. Very scared of crutches, cats seem to be! I guess in the wild, crutches must be cats' natural enemies!

When at work, the thought of spending a few days at home sitting with your feet up seems quite attractive. But when it's forced on you, and with the prospect of it lasting three months, the attractiveness disappears somewhat!

Anyway, yesterday I actually managed to get my arse outside for a wee while. Of sorts. Was collected by a friend in a car and we went up to Tesco at Milngavie to recycle some old clothes. I stayed in the car, but boring as that may sound, it was really nice to get out the flat for a wee while.

Today's excitement was that my delivery from Sainsbury's arrived! Whoo-hoo! Realising that traipsing round a supermarket isn't the easiest thing to do on crutches I went online the other day and registered with them, then placed an order and booked a delivery slot. It all arrived safe and well this morning. Getting the crate of Miller along the hallway to the kitchen exercised my ingenuity for a while, but I managed, and the bags were reasonably easy, if tiring. So now I'm all set for a period of self-sufficiency with enough food and drink to last a few days anyway, and a pile of DVDs to watch.

On the subject of DVDs, relatively recently, and for reasons which if you're bothered could be worked out by reading previous posts but which I will not bother specifying now, my DVD collection halved in size and I have spent the past few months buying replacements. Not direct replacements necessarily, but some films I've seen before and some I haven't. Having bought them though, I haven't actually got round to watching most of them yet! Well now's my opportunity. My task will be to work my way through my (smallish) DVD mountain while I'm being forced to stay indoors anyway. It'll save me spending ALL my time surfing anyway.

I found this picture on t'InterWeb recently and thought it was very interesting how society, or at least technology, has changed in a little over 50 years. It's apparently from a 1954 magazine, and in case you can't quite read it, the caption is:

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve those problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.

I have to say I've a wee sneaky suspicion that it might not be an original article, but rather a later (recent) spoof with words added to an original photo, but leaving the words aside (and the slightly suspect grammar), the photo looks real I think.

Update 24th March: In a wonderful example of the 48 hour rule(*), I have stumbled across this article on Snopes which shows that this is, as I suspected, not an original article, but also, as I didn't suspect, isn't an original photo either! It's actually a photo taken in 2000 at the Smithsonian Institute of a mock-up of the maneuvering room of a nuclear submarine which has been Photoshopped.

The original image is on the right.

* the 48 hour rule states that if you mention or hear of something, then within 48 hours you will hear of it again.


While typing this post I had a call on my mobile from a very good friend I haven't seen or spoken to for a long time. She had read on this Blog about my wee accident and, clearly being bored at work, decided to give me a call.

Leaving aside the fact that it was really nice to speak to her, and great to hear she's doing well, I couldn't help being surprised at how her accent has changed.

Born in Northumberland she was brought up in Scotland, and apart from a brief spell living in the north east of England in the early 1990's she spent all her life in Scotland before moving to London in 1995, since when she has lived there, then in Nottingham and now in Buckinghamshire. So essentially she has always had a cultured Scottish accent, and having spoken to her fairly often when she was in London and slightly less often when she was in Nottingham she still had essentially the same nice accent, but it seems the move to Bucks has altered it a bit and, as I said to her on the phone, for much of the conversation I wouldn't have been able to recognise it as her speaking because she has a posh English accent now!

She won't thank me for that, but it's a fact. And it's not a bad thing. We all to some degree or other subconsciously take on board all sorts of influences in our lives, and it's natural that the way we speak, for example, should change over time to reflect those outside influences. Anyway, it was really nice to speak with her, and good to hear that her mum and brother are well too.

Martin Scorsese's Sesame Street

There goes my innocence!

Click here to go to see the movie trailer.

I am not responsible for the content of any external site, much as I'd love to claim this one, and when I looked there was no porn or other nastiness apart from the sort of language you'd expect in a Scorsese film!

Enjoy!

Surely you can't be serious .....

Watching Airplane right now. A classic. And it looks like I picked the wrong week to give up Amphetamines!

A favourite film

Just re-watching the Mel Brookes film Blazing Saddles. Class!

And yes, I know it's not even 8am on a Sunday, but my body clock seems screwed right now!

The Meaning of Life

I'm just watching a bit of one of my favourite films on Sky Two right now, Monty Python's Meaning of Life, although I don't know why I'm bothering because I've got it on DVD along with their other films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the best one ever, Life of Brian.

Of all their songs, The Galaxy Song from Meaning of Life has to be one of their best! This link is to a great Flash animation of it, and I've reproduced the lyrics below.

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Pure quality!

Another cracking song is the Medical Love Song

Inflammation of the foreskin reminds of your smile
I've had ballanital chancroids for quite a little while
I gave my heart to NSU that lovely night in June
I ache for you my darling, and I hope you get well soon

My clapped-out genitalia is not so bad for me
As the complete and utter failure every time I try to pee
My doctor says my buboes are the worst he's ever seen
My scrotum's painted orange and my balls are turning green

My heart is very tender though the parts are awful raw
You might have been infected but you never were a bore
I'm dying of your love, my love, I'm your spirochaetal clown
I've left my body to science but I'm afraid they've turned it down

My penile warts your herpes, my syphilitic sores
Your moenelial infection, how I miss you more and more
Your dobies itch my scrumpox, our lovely gonorrhoea
At least we both were lying when we said that we were clear

Our syphilitic kisses sealed the secret of our tryst
You gave me scrotal pustules with a quick flick of your wrist
Your trichovaginitis sent shivers down my spine
I got snail tracks in my anus when you spirochaetes met mine

Gonoccoccalurethritis, streptocalbalinitis
Meningo myelitis, diplococcal cephalitis
Epididymitis interstitial keratitis
Syphilitic choroiditis and anterior uveitis

And then there's the one they've just had on screen, The Penis Song which has to be done in the proper Noel Coward accent

Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis
Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong
It's swell to have a stiffy
It's divine to own a dick
From the tiniest little tadger
To the world's biggest prick
So, three cheers for your Willy or John Thomas
Hooray for your one-eyed trouser snake
Your piece of pork, your wife's best friend
Your Percy, or your cock
You can wrap it up in ribbons
You can slip it in your sock
But don't take it out in public
Or they will stick you in the dock
And you won't come back

Did I mention I've got the complete Monty Python Song Book!

And on another note, Mr Creosote is now onscreen. Waffer-thin mint anyone?

I'd better stop now otherwise this'll turn into a running commentary on the film!

As an aside, I have the complete scripts for Holy Grail and Life of Brian on my Website. I've got the Meaning of Life script on my hard drive but I haven't got round to formatting it for uploading to the Interweb yet.