Ralph the Wonder Llama

I’ve been busy. Sooooooo very busy I’ve hardly had time to think lately. Work has been a bit mental and isn’t showing any signs of getting less busy any time soon. Generally that’s a good thing, but last week in particular was stressing me out quite a bit and not so much fun. Yay and woo, then, for the Motivational Present. Or, this month, presents. Yes, kit fans, this month it’s a double whammy on the motivation front and yet for the sum total of only half the notional monthly budget. Two for the price of less than half of one. Or something. I had hoped to find something more substantial in the sales, but the sales didn’t really have much in them. I was a bit stuck. Whatever’s a llama to do? So I bought a couple of things I’d been toying with for a while that were on the kit list and would probably come in handy eventually.

First up, the Buff. I have terrible trouble with headwear, on account mainly of my unusually vast skull – home, of course, to One Of The Finest Minds in Twickenham™. So here was a solution I’d been meaning to try for a while and whaddayaknow, it works, mostly. Here’s my particular example (its blackness picked out nicely against the black background – blackground? – of my sofa):

It’s sort of like a bandana, but made of a single seamless tube of microfibre that can, with a modicum of practice, be contorted into a variety of practical headwear. Eminently suitable for the modern global traveller. Probably.

Second up, and bonus present for the month, the Light My Fire spork:

Not sure how Jim Morrison would feel about this, but there we go. That’s what you get for playing fast and loose with bathtubs. It was cheap, and I fancied it, and I’m sure it’ll come in handy one day. Like, the day I badly need to lacerate the inside of my mouth while eating. Yes. Plus it’s red, so it’ll be faster. Obviously. Two more ticks on the kit list – you wouldn’t believe how hard it’s going to be choosing the bag it all eventually goes in

So before tonight the first, last and only [Edit type=for the pedants among you]English [/Edit]side to beat Barcelona at the Nou Camp were Liverpool in the 1976 UEFA Cup when Welsh god-like being John Toshack scored to seal victory. Fast forward 31 years (count ‘em) and part-time football player, part-time thug Craig Bellamy scores the equaliser in Liverpool’s unlikely (I admit) win over the Catalans away tonight. The fact that you could, apparently, have got 100-1 against Bellamy scoring and then doing a golf-swing celebration, never mind the fact that he laid on the assist for arch-combatant John-Arne Riise’s equally unlikely right-footed winner is by the by.

What a win. Fantastic stuff – all we need to do now is not to fuck it up at home…come on you Reds!

Yes, yes, of course I know what day it is. For once. I refer, of course, to Chinese New Year, which is what it is. From today it is Year of the Pig, foretold since days of yore to signify the coming of a Tory government. No, wait – apparently it’s good luck and prosperity. Also, according to my extensive research, it’s not just any old Year of the Pig, but an especially auspicious Golden Year of the Pig, or Year of the Golden Pig, signifying extra-strength good fortune and prosperity, occurring only once every six decades. Perhaps. But it wasn’t quite so fortunate for the former pig that contributed towards the bacon I bought this morning in Sainsbury. But then I guess he would have been from a non-pig year. Whatever.

Any road up, today Narenrda, Bridge and her mum Penny came through from the hinterlands of the Borders for a visit. We had tickets for the Chinese New Year show at the Festival Theatre on Nicholson Street and so we met up for a swift pre-show lunch. Appropriately, we went Thai, in a nice little place right across the street. It was good, I haven’t had Thai red curry for lunch since Intapps days and forays to The Fox. But that’s another tail. Ho ho. They were most accommodating and turned us round a quick-fire lunch that was both tasty and top value. Most excellent.

We dashed across the street just in time to take our seats for the Chinese extravaganza. As the show was put on by the Edinburgh Chinese School and featured many students and staff among the performers, quality was understandably mixed, but then this was a show about community and cultural celebration as much as anything else, and some of the very young kids did really well. Of particular note were a dance group called Step Out Arts who were a little older and genuinely very good indeed, with a mixture of traditional dance and martial arts-styled pieces. There was some slightly odd Shanghai Jazz, and a very strange take on the Monkey story that could have done with more mobile microphones and, frankly, more Monkey.

But anyway, it would be churlish to be too critical and overall it was a jolly good show, especially for a fiver. All well and good. And then things started to get very weird indeed. We were introduced to a man who, it was claimed, wanted to sing a Scottish song to help celebrate New Year. What we got was a living, breathing cliché in the guise of an individual called Tom Collins. I strongly suspect this is not his real name. I also strongly suspect that Bridge was right when she said that he must have been dragged off a cruise ship fresh from entertaining very very old people. He was breathtakingly awful. Comedy Scotsman par excellence, and total variety show over-performance gone utterly mental. When I could stop laughing I was literally drop-jawed in amazement that anyone would get on a stage and so systematically nail themselves up to a showbiz cross in the name of ‘entertainment’. Worst of all it was totally out of keeping with the rest of the show. And he go a very early plug in for his CD, on sale in the foyer right now ladieeeez ann gennnlemnnnnnnn. Yikes. You had to wonder whether he’d paid to get on the bill. Truly, utterly terrifying.

Still, we made it out alive and passed it off as one of those episodes of surreality that usually only come to Edinburgh during the Fringe. Come to think of it, there’s the makings of a good show there. Only not, I suspect, in quite the way it was meant. La la.

Fun was had by all, though, and here’s the picture to prove it:

Note the relief show by Penny now that she has been made aware of the horrors of Crystal Meth, one or two of whose advocates we may have seen coming back along the Bridges, by the way. Just a standard Sunday afternoon’s entertainment in Edinburgh, folks.

Never, ever, ever again. Today, finally, as if proof were needed, I have shown myself to be the single most incompetent DIY proponent in the history of the universe. Der Über-Münter. I knew this anyway, deep in my heart, and yet I continually manage to plumb new depths of awfulness. Today I have reached the end. And it’s almost a relief.

This morning I realised that my shower hose was broken. Water was not being contained in quite the manner it ought. Stressful enough at that time of day, especially for one who isn’t really up to dealing with anything untoward at that hour. But still, I thought, just nip along to B&Q and get a new one on the way home, five-minutes to fit, job done. Or not. What I did instead was to get a new one, then not put back in a crucial component. I wasn’t sure whether the plastic sleeve-y thing was part of the tap or the old hose. So I left it out. Then the new hose didn’t really seem to be very watertight at all. In fact it was when my socks started feeling wet that I realised I was flooding the bathroom. It wasn’t going well.

So I tightened it up some more. Then a lot more. No use. Then I tried taking it off and managed to unscrew the connecting metal threaded connector from the bottom of the mixer tap body. Couldn’t get the thing off, and the absence of proper tools (which, obviously, didn’t stop me trying) was threatening to remove the thread from the aforementioned (soft, brass) piece.

Even I recognised that this was an important component, and much damage to it would result in the entire shower being rendered permanently useless. By this time, of course, I had realised my mistake. The small white plastic sleeve thing with an extra rubber washer on sat there on the edge of the bath, looking self-important, rightly as it turned out. Being mocked by a small lump of off-white plastic is a humbling thing. Not at first – at first it makes one very angry. And then later, humble. Much later. The only way I could think of to get the new (rapidly becoming old) hose off the Important Bit was to cut it nearly through with a hacksaw and then widen it with a screwdriver enough to prise it off the thread without further damage. To my little credit – a bit late – this worked a treat.

So then it was time to pay the price of this particular episode of education, and head back down to B&Q for another new hose. I had, with much foresight, noted that they had several. I made a rather pathetic attempt to pass off the broken hose as shoddy manufacture, but we all knew it was my own ignorance that had done the damage. So I bit the bullet, bought the thing and took it home. Armed with actual knowledge, and that bastard off-white bit of plastic, it took about three minutes to do the job perfectly. Perfectly, providing you discount the waste of an hour and a half, one broken pair of pliers, two hoses, a very wet floor, a minor humiliation, a very great deal of frankly appalling language and a bag of broken bits:

And so it is that I have finally decided, after many many self-taught lessons, to never attempt anything remotely DIY again. Granted, this job doesn’t really even fall into the category of DIY, but nonetheless I have seen the light at last. I’m not ever doing any more DIY, not ever again. I’m not even going to put right the things I’ve started and given up on (see earlier skirting board incident) – I’m going to pay someone else to do them. That way they’ll get done, properly, and I will be spared the angst and self-loathing that accompany most of my efforts. DIY – I hate it, it hates me, so that’s the end of it. It means expense, yes, but I’d rather that than try and fail myself and end up paying someone anyway. And I can certainly live without making myself feel like such an idiot. So it’s a positive thing in terms both practical and psychological, and in that sense, it’s quite a relief. Plus, I may finally get my lounge painted

One of my oldest and dearest friends came to visit this weekend. With her she brought her new(ish) husband. I borrowed some books from her. Blue? Nothing here, my friends, nothing at all.

I have had a top quality weekend. Imogen (or Bridge, as she shall henceforth be known – a woman not to be crossed) came to visit with husband Narendra whom I’d yet to meet. We managed to work out Bridge and I hadn’t seen each other for four years, almost exactly, and plenty has happened since then. Not the least thing is that she moved to India, met Narendra, and eventually got married. They have a piece of land up in the mountain country near the Himalayas in the Almora region of India, where they’re building a life and a business together surrounded by views of the mighty Himalayas between the treetops, a spider-chasing puppy, marauding packs of itinerant goats, house-building and general all-round life-improvement. It’s inspiring and the very stuff of life as far as I’m concerned. Were there but more people like this in the world. As it is, they’re in my life and I feel lucky

The weather sucked fairly badly, so we spent much time eating, drinking and catching up, comparing slide shows and exchanging gifts. I received some good luck charms in the shape of Indian deities that indulge in good fortune and wellbeing, some apricot kernel face scrub, a large pile of books (stack += 6) and a bangle from their village temple which, I suspect, may not leave my wrist for some time to come. I gave them my collection of old mobile phones (3, bizarrely) for distribution to their neighbours – calls are cheap, but handsets are prohibitive. We dined on Crombie sausages and mustard mash and lashings of red wine, and breakfasted on goodies from Valvona & Crolla. Marvellous.
Any road up, some pics – both cozy and windswept:

And Bridge manages to keep her eyes open long enough for a whole picture – again!

An ace weekend all round – the sort one would rather didn’t end

…I can’t believe it – Australia 0 – 2 England. Blimey.

Paul Collingwood (Most Brilliant Englishman).

Yay

This morning I had to wait in for the man to come and sort out my gas plumbing issues, namely a boiler service and a replace-the-piece-of-noddy-pipe-put-in-by-the-munter-DIYer. Oh, and replace a tap washer. Being self-employed these sorts of things can be expensive, not to mention the actual expense, which will be considerable. But these things must be done.

On the plus side, this meant that I got to drink seven (7) cups of tea and watch England win a game of cricket before I went to work.

So logically if I had my boiler serviced every day, I’d be that much happier. Maybe. Only much, much poorer. Erm…

Regular readers (how are you both?) will know that motivation is a recurrent theme. In order to stick to The Plan™ it is essential that I provide myself with encouragement and give myself things to look forward to, little milestones or treats, whatever.

So it is that I find myself with a Hep-A booster sitting in my fridge, awaiting deployment on Monday morning by the travel-savvy nurse at my GP’s practice. Last time I was in for a blood test she rather helpfully pointed out that if I had it now on top of my jab in 2005, I’d be covered for 25 years. Bargain. And by that time I probably won’t be able to remember my name, so it won’t matter that I become slightly less indestructible.

Being stuck with needles. What more motivation could a llama want?