Ralph the Wonder Llama

Yes. In another attempt to make myself plus one irresistible to womankind, I have flung myself out of my own home, rendering myself of No Fixed Abode in addition to my voluntary joblessness. Not worked yet, but hey, it’s early days.

So, I’ve been very busy of late, since I decided to go away again, mostly putting things in boxes and other things in the skip. This has taken up a considerable amount of time. I think when I decided to let the flat I hadn’t realised it effectively meant me moving house, which has been a royal pain in de ass. Still, my lovely friends the Strachans and the Mathesons have put up all my stuff in garages and lofts, thus saving me both worry and expense. Thanks guys.
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…anyone keeping up with this? I’d hate you all to become as lazy as me.

Actually, that’s not strictly true – considering I’m supposed to be resting in this immediate post-work period, I’ve been pretty busy. It’s only the past few days I’ve been able to sit down and do not much, using as my excuse the First Test in South Africa, the first time I’ve been able to watch the majority of a game for ages. Who knew an England batting collapse and dramatic last-over draw could be so therapeutic?

Anyway, since I am currently waiting for a parcel to be delivered (which will, naturally, turn up sometime between four and six while I’m out being shrunk), I might as well use the time to bring you up to speed. Edited highlights only, mind, cos I carnt really be arsed to be honest. Sorry.

So, after finishing work on 27 November I met up with some very old and dear friends of mine in the Guildford Arms, the prelude to a weekend of good company and celebration of my first retirement (regrettably not the last, since I’m not nearly wealthy enough, but for now at least). We then all headed to the Gurkha Brigade for dinner, where I have in recent times become rather popular, possibly on account of taking all my friends there at some stage or another. Trouble is, I’ve now run out of friends, so should probably take advantage of the offer of accommodation in Pokhara in Nepal sooner than later. On the Saturday we had a little party which was good fun, and Jan and Dave bought me an enormous cake, which was, and in fact still is, very nice:

Lovely people. And Steve bought me a pipe and slippers. Git.

We (Steve, Jean, Gerry, Claire and I) indulged in a spot of home-town tourism over the weekend, taking in the castle on Saturday (free courtesy of St Andrew) and Mary King’s Close on Monday (though Claire had left on the Sunday afternoon), two things I’d never before seen in eight-and-a-half years here. Right, now I can safely leave…

All in all, a good weekend, if bloody freezing.
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That Philip Pullman’s a clever chap isn’t he? It’s nice to see that people don’t just pull these names out of thin air.

Anyway. What am I blithering on about now? Well, since it’s been so long I thought I’d say hello, but I’m far too tired to bring you up to date just now. Some stuff has happened in the past three weeks, but nothing that can’t wait to tell. I’m tired because I’ve spent six hours cleaning my flat, and only the kitchen and bathroom are done. Like Lyra, my life is currently dominated by dust. Mine is rather more mundane than hers, though, consisting as it does largely of plaster. The decorators have gone, and they’ve done a pretty good job (pics to follow when the place is back to normal), but it looks like nothing so much as a well-decorated plaster factory in which there’s just been a rather nasty explosion. I shall be sleeping upstairs till the rest is done, since most of my stuff is in the bedroom, and I shall be starting to sleep there very very shortly, since I’m knacked.

When I get a chance I’ll tell you about parties, cake, visiting old friends, totem poles, decorating, visas, stupid bankers and yoga. Probably.

I got back from The Hill on Thursday night. Lots to tell, but to be honest I’m still processing a lot of what happened and what I learned, so a proper comment on it all will have to wait for now, and I’ll get some pics sorted soon, too. Suffice to say, for the moment, that I’m feeling a lot better – more centred and grounded, and I’ve learned a few things as well, both about recent events, and those not so recent. I met some truly excellent people and along with some hard work and some difficult experiences, there was a lot of fun and laughter too, and I did my share of restin’ and recuperatin’. The Hill is a beautiful, wonderful place, run by beautiful, wonderful people.

In the meantime, I have some recommendations: I picked up a parcel from Amazon on Friday evening and it contained the new Dan Arborise album, Of Tide and Trail, which is fantastic; the new Black Crowes album, Before The Frost…, which is also superb (and contains a download key for extra album …Until The Freeze, which is more low-key, countrified fare, but still great); and finally the Crowes’ Warpaint Live DVD which I haven’t had a chance to see yet but which promises much.

So, tomorrow starts the last ten weeks of this job, and then, well, who knows after that. Only India is booked, and I’ll see how I feel after a while there. It feels a bit like I’m auditioning for my own life at the moment – I confess to being a little nervous at times. I think it’s the first time I’ve consciously (or probably any other damned way) said to myself I’m going to try to live in the moment. I’ve spent a lot of years living with a past, and a few years more recently living in an imagined future that didn’t really exist either. Always missing the moment. Not any more, I hope. Don’t get me wrong, there are things I would like in my life, things I want to happen. But for the moment I must accept what is here, now, and be ready to accept the future when it becomes the present.

It’s fair to say I’m not the cook I once was. Some would say I wasn’t then, either, but then they never got invited round for dinner. So there. Anyway, this morning I was seized by the urge to cook myself a roast beef sunday lunch. This is something I used to do regularly when I was a kid, but like so many things over the years, the habit died away. My yorkshire puddings were once the stuff of legend, and my roast potatoes were ever things of beauty, even if I say so myself. Now, I’ve still got the roast potato knack, as evinced by christmas dinner, but I haven’t made yorkshire pudding in decades. Time to bite the bullet, then. As it were.

I think I’ve been encouraged by the venison experience. Beef is a little more fatty than venison but is somewhat less, erm, deer. Ahem. It is, of course, pretty simple to cook, and now I wonder what I was worried about. A lack of confidence more than anything I think. My gravy still isn’t the best, it never was, but one can always improve, n’est pas? The yorkies came out well enough, though, especially for a first effort in so long. Behold, today’s lunch:

washed down with a very nice bottle of Languedoc from my ever-lovely local vintner, Mr Cornelius, who now opens on sundays, which is very civilised of him.

“But Ralph”, I hear you cry, “have you no qualms about the cooking of your beefy brethren?” Not so, dear reader, not so. For you see we llamas are Camelidae, rather than Bovine. So we can munch beefs quite happily, thank you. Your concern is appreciated, however – we are well known for our delicate temperament.

A quick mention is due to the England women’s cricket team, who last night won the ICC women’s one-day world cup. Well played, indeed, even if I was too tired to stay awake for the batting.

Another quick mention for the rather spectacular week enjoyed by the capricious liverpool fc, beating Real 4-0 in the home leg of the CL, then coming from one down to beat Man U 1-4 away, and today beating Villa 5-0 at home. Nice, especially after Fulham’s performance yesterday. The PL title is still out of our hands, but this sort of thing is most enjoyable

This evening after work I peered out of the tunnel long enough to pay a brief visit to my solicitor. There, in a quiet, well-lit room, on a large table, she showed me the three inch-thick pile of documents that constituted my ownership of this flat. Actually, most of even that was superfluous, strictly speaking. The one thing that really mattered was the thin, yellow-covered A4 Register of Title, no more than ten pages long, that had about three very very long sentences in it, along with an address, my name and next to it, an important word that defines my legal relationship to this place: Proprietor.

She was right: it isn’t much to look at. Then again so was I: it depends very much on one’s point of view. Gone, lost many years ago unfortunately, was the possibly slightly more characterful and interesting, but long since redundant, original Title Deed. This would have shown an unbroken record of owners – the flat’s genealogy, if you like – stretching back all the way to that first transfer of ownership in 1886. Now, a new document is prepared on each sale and the previous one is annulled. There were fragments of this history, mainly from the records of Burdens – those shared obligations upon occupants of feudal dwellings such as these. There were plenty of supporting documents that would prove expedient in the event of a sale, that give the flat more context within its existence as part of the whole building. A clean, simple Ordnance Survey map. Much of it I could have taken away, but it seemed sensible to leave it in one bundle, bound with a rubber band and hidden in the safe. A home from home for my home, as it were.

We probably spent as much time talking about what I should do when I come to rent the place out as anything else. My lovely solicitor, Robyn, even recommended a decorator for me, and promised to email me the names of the better letting agents. In many practical ways it was a useful visit. It also helped put the whole thing behind me, I think (good, I hear you say – now maybe he’ll stop banging on about it…), in the sense that having seen the evidence, I can believe it’s really mine, and file it away mentally. There’s nothing more to be done.

On the way home I mused to myself that this is typically me – ever a llama of little faith, I seem to have trouble believing in things. Once I’ve had it proven to me, of course, there’s nothing much to believe in anyway: it’s just there. On to the next thing. Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy about the flat, of course. I’m happy, too, to have the whole thing done and neatly tucked away – it frees up some mental space. I just wonder sometimes whether it’s a bit reductionist. Or maybe that’s just the way of things: that whatever I learn, whatever I do, it just informs me how much else there is left to learn and to do.

The other week I finally received a letter from my solicitor telling me that the deeds to my flat had arrived back from the registrar and were now sitting safely in her, erm, safe. Now, six months after I finished paying for it, I officially own my own home. And I have proof.

I’ve arranged to go and see the proof, just to have it sink in properly, I hope. Apparently they’re not much to look at but that, I suspect, depends very much on your point of view. Ever one of little faith, it will be good for me to see the evidence of what I spent all that time saving for. I’ll let you know how they look

Ok so can we just take it as read that I’m late/lazy/whatever and dispense with the usual apology for being so very quiet of late? Thanks. You know it makes sense.

First things first: I should put you all (well, JJ then) out of your (his) misery and tell you what the new stuff I’ve been waiting for is. Well, first the addictive – over Xmas I borrowed the Strachans’ copies of the LoTR trilogy, super-extended mega long playing editions, and became even more addicted than previously. Especially to RotK. So, with Amazon having a post-Xmas sale, I picked up my own copy of the boxed set for a mere twenty of your Earth pounds:

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Hello everyone. Alright, I flatter myself. Both. Ok, ok. You. Me.

Whatever.

I thought I ought to put my head above the parapet, so to speak, before the month is over and you all/both/one think I’ve disappeared somewhere unpleasant, like that last stretch of tunnel before one arrives at Queen Street Station, where for some reason it always smells really badly. In fact that wouldn’t be terribly far from the truth. The weeks seem to dissolve to a great extent, since I hardly see the sun and move in one seemingly constant transition between Edinburgh and Glasgow, east and west, sleep and waking, tedium and, well… At least now when I leave home there’s a faint glow in the east and the birds think it’s almost day, which helps a deal.

The job, I shall not speak of it too much, for t’is dull in the extreme, yet not a little stressful. No-one said it was easy, right? At least it’s now busy, so the days pass more quickly. I shall be billing them for overtime this week, too, since I’ve been doing more hours than is reasonable, so that someone can be there to communicate with the newly liberated Americans. I’m even working this weekend, of all things. Thank goodness I put that clause in my contract…

Anyway, I’m still here, just about, keeping life and soul together, just about. We’re off to Tigh Mor (props due to Sue’s folks for the chance to get posh for cheap) for a short but swanky trip the weekend after this one coming, and I think I’ll be well in need of it by then. In the meantime I hope to take delivery of something cheap but highly addictive, and something less cheap but super-cool. One will help me while away what short hours I seem to get here these days, and the other will help occupy me on the train between here and Weegieland.

Ooh the suspense. You might even come back to find out, eh?

Today must have been the annual torchlight procession through town to Calton Hill, where it culminates in a spot of boat-burning, as previously imparted in these very pages. The clue came when on my way home from the gym, after another long day at my non-job which I’ve promised not to mention (I mentioned it once there, but I think I got away with it…), I spotted a child waving the flaming remnants of a wax torch in the air by the bus stop. I blame the parents, at least one of whom was standing nearby.

Anyway, as some of you are doubtless aware, the views from the rear windows of my flat are often very fine of an evening. This is not so much the case in the winter when it’s just various shades of dark. Tonight, however, with the bonfire on Calton Hill going uproariously well, I had fireworks:

They weren’t quite as shaky as that in real life, but I was in a hurry, and couldn’t be bothered to open the window for more properer braceage. Anyway, it looks sort of arty. Or something. Look, it’s cold out there, ok? No pleasing some people…