As chic as Switzerland can be, the lack of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord is a critical design fault. I was reminded of this during my six-day London fun package which, apart from the funeral, the Guardian weekend writing workshop thing, some hospital visits and a two-day work conference, included a few nights in the pub to renew acquaintance with friends human and friends liquid. I even had a good excuse for my trips to the local Hatch End hostelry. They had Wi-Fi, while my permanently offline elderly father has never felt the broadband urge. It was where the previous, rather forlorn, entry was created — so blame the beer. The funeral was the usual mixture of gloom and euphoria. But it’s … …
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Hell is other people and their fridges. Me and mine included, I’m sure. I am subdued. Welcome to damp suburban London. Much as I love the city of my birth, I will never feel affection for these featureless outer stretches, where the nineteen fifties never quite escaped. Being carless isn’t helping. In the last two days I’ve trailed around Harrow and environs on the bus and overground train. Wretched. Not had to wait long, and the Oystercard system is good. But there is something so down-at-heel about the London experience now. Everyone seems to be on the edge of suicide. The same sensation struck me in New York a few months ago, when we took the A Train through the … …
It was a yoghurt of two halves. The first began full of hope, but petered out. The lower reaches of the pot remain uneaten, and the doctors are shaking their heads. Perhaps strawberry isn’t one of her favourite flavours. Or wasn’t. Maybe her bags really are packed this time, and she doesn’t have time to waste. Who knows? Not me, not the medical staff. We’ve asked them enough times, and are getting exasperated by their incompetence in the star-gazing department. This does not match our benign prejudices about weary-eyed people in white coats. A reporter at the scene quotes one of them as saying: “It could be weeks rather than days, and weeks rather than months.” My comatose sister “stopped … …
I bought an iPad a few weeks ago: my first ever bite of Apple merchandise. Is it true that Apple has a person, or perhaps a department — heck, let’s make it an entire business unit, one should believe everything one hears about Apple — devoted solely to enhancing the experience of removing the cellophane on the iPad box? I hope so, because I thought of her/him/it a few minutes ago as I… removed the cellophane on the iPad box, deciding as I did so that they hadn’t earned their corn. There was a small tear on the plastic in one corner for a start, which distressed me. Unless. Unless the tear is programmed into the wrapping process, giving the … …
I have less than 5 seconds to hold your attention before you drift off to less challenging destinations. Quick, let me put this to you: You’re in a new car, or a hire car. Or perhaps you have just stolen a car. Or it could just be an old car you are driving while very drunk. You pull into a gas/petrol station to fill up. As you approach the pumps, you realise you don’t know which side of the vehicle the petrol cap is located. What do you do….? Are you aware that there’s a simple way to tell which side your car dresses without dislocating your neck trying to spot the petrol cap? Without winding down the window, … …
Remember when I used to give training updates? No, nor do I. Here is almost another one. Little to report. And anyway, I’ve never been convinced that the training regime of a rotund, indolent, middle-aged plodder can be of interest to anyone outside the psychiatric profession. Some say they find encouragement in this sort of thing, but I suspect that any comfort or motivation to be found here is more a case of “There but for the grace of god go I”. The latest revival began in November, when I pulled my running shoes on 7 times in a 12 days. The spreadsheet looks good — three or four miles each time, but as always after a lay-off, the first … …
Excuse me while I adjust these twenty-twenty hindsight goggles. They are causing me some discomfort. An old boss of mine used to say, in response to a mention of the H word: “Hope is not a strategy”. I should have listened to him. The 2012 Hyde Park 10K was strongly reminiscent of the 2010 iteration, and it needn’t have been. The two years separating the races could have been better spent ensuring that I had more than hope to rely on for an improved experience. I started today’s race with a dull ache in my right calf, and it steadily got worse, becoming bad enough to force me to limp and run-walk the final 70% of the race. These are … …
Here we are again. It’s usually with a sigh that I consider New Year resolutions, but this time around I feel strangely relieved. I need to break the downward Dolcelatte and Barolo spiral, and the appalling chaos and depravity it produces in a small community like, well, my apartment. The approach of 2012 is as good an impetus as I’ll get for a while. So resolution number one is to avert my eyes as I pass the bulging Käse counters in Migros and the Coop. Cheese, as I’m sure someone must have opined, is a good servant but a bad master. To my shame, I’ve shown I can’t be trusted to handle the substance responsibly. Alongside cheese on the naughty … …
Ugh. Post-nebbiolo cranial throb. I lay in bed and considered the day ahead. The trailer didn’t promise much, so I arrived at a decision to do nothing more strenuous than a spot of keyboard tapping, and later, to spend some quality time with the TV remote. A modest blueprint indeed, but with the lake barely visible through a curtain of blustery rain, no less than such a day deserved. The very possibility that by mid-evening I’d be grinning like a shark on payday, sipping Buck’s Fizz from a half pint glass, and reflecting on having run in my first race in two years, was a thought too insolent to dare present itself. But remarkably, it’s how this humdinger of a … …
That title might sound like a reflection on my previous post, but no — it’s a pun-charged reference to NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to produce at least 50,000 words of fiction during the 30 days of November. I’ll save you the trouble of opening a spreadsheet to do the calculation: that’s an average of 1667 words a day. (Warning: more statistics on the way. Try to contain your excitement.) I first came across Nano, as its lonely practitioners, known as Wrimos, like to call it, in October last year. I briefly considered giving it a go then, but on November 1st I found myself sitting not in front of a keyboard with a … …