Ralph the Wonder Llama

Pants. We lost. Oh well. At least we made a decent fist of it, aside from the chronic inability to score often enough that has plagued our entire season. My memory of the game is a bit hazy to say the least, which may be just as well. I rather badly mismanaged the consumption situation, despite planning it well. So I’ll just have to remember that and try to do something about it from now on. Honest.
That aside I had a fine time, spending good quality time with Steve and the kids, catching up with old friends like Tavs and Brian and Nikki, and some rather newer ones like Gerry and Heidi, so that all helped restore the balance of happiness.

Back at the flat and things are a bit, erm, flat though I must confess. Just seems like plunging back into the drudgery tomorrow. I have to do my expenses in a mo. And I’ve just put off thinking about my tax return again. Bleh.

La la.

Now here’s an exciting end to the weekend – I’ve just booked myself a flight to Delhi! Woo! Yay! Hoop-la!
I’m off to visit Imogen and Narendra in the second half of October, something we talked about when they were over. They asked last weekend if I was still on for this October and it took me about three microseconds to say yes (I’m getting pretty good at that now). So to get there it’s a mildly epic journey that will go something like this: bus to Edinburgh airport, flight to lahndahn, flight to delhi, overnight sleeper train and a three hour jeep ride to their village in the himalaya outside almora (see here or the slightly shonky map below – looks a bit better in hybrid mode).

I am soooooo looking forward to this one

What fresh madness is this? Well, following on from JJ’s recent promotion of Talk Like a Pilot Day, and the by now well-established favourite that is Talk Like a Pirate Day, I should point out that next Friday, 25 May, is Towel Day. It’s on 25 May every year, for no better reason than that’s when the first one was, and it sort of stuck.

So, don’t be a strag – know where your towel is.

you’re going to have to trust me on this one because I can’t actually photograph it. I don’t know whether that’s because of the camera or the operator but in any case: from my kitchen window there’s a view directly West. It has a tendency to produce extremely good sunsets, at any time of year. We’re far up enough here to have a fairly flat view of the sun going down, and so late at night, at times like this, over the earth and under the clouds, there can be had some healthy eye-fests.

And tonight, from my kitchen window, the weird waning moon looks just like pacman, about to take the lone (from here) north star as it’s next ten points, high above the usual blacked-out tenement blocks with random blinking yellow lights. I can almost see it getting closer. I have been watching Hendrix on the telly and smoking the bad weed. But I bet that’s got nothing to do with it.

Well, that was exciting. Not. The first FA Cup Final in Wembley for, erm, years. Nice new stadium, shiny shiny. Yes yes. But where’s the football? The best two teams in England™ and the most dire game for yonks. Yeovil were way better than that last night. Pfft. Bet the boys at UEFA are glad that wasn’t a dress rehearsal for Athens.

Well I’m off to Cpenhagen in three days for some fun and skullthuggery. Come on you Reds. Let’s see what it’s all about.

With apologies to the late great ernie wise, guess what? I submitted a little article to my favourite travel site, and lo and behold they deemed it worthy of public consumption! It’s not much and there was no money involved or anything, and it’s intarwebs only, but it is a first for me – I’ve never dared submit anything before. It’s been a bit of an ambition of mine to give it a try for a while, though, so I’m a tiny bit chuffed.

It’s a right rivetin’ read, honest

Oh, and before anyone says anything, some of the punctuation is the editor’s, not mine. I shall say no more than that…

I quote HH The Dalai Lama:

“In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.”

I somehow became embroiled in a set-to in my own local, the venerable Robbie’s, this evening, when there was really no need so to do. I could have avoided it. I feel I chose not to, but rather to give vent to my feelings. Ultimately this concluded in a situation worse for myself and my friends than it might have. For that I am sorry.

What concerns me is that while I have recognised fear as my undoing, still I have not overcome it. I battle fear. Tonight it won. Let it not always be so.

[EDIT] Actually I’ve changed my mind about this a bit. Admittedly I didn’t react in the best way, but it could have been a lot worse. If I’d done to this neanderthal what he did to me I’d probably be in hospital by now. I didn’t ask these two braindead creeps to start in on me for no good reason, either. I’d love to know where I acquired this ability to attract loonies though. Learning not to react at all would also be good, but I guess I still have a lot to learn in that direction. Still, I can’t keep apologising for not being perfect.

I was having a bit of a clear-out at casa llama as a sort of pre-emptive strike on some spring cleaning, and was chucking a load of old junk into a large bin liner when I came across this:

The first sentence of the foreword is great: “The approaching Year 2000 Problem may have the same affect [sic] on software systems that severe epidemics such as the black plague have had on human populations”. The chapter headings read like a 12-step recovery programme. Of course lots of preventative work was done that meant that apocalypse didn’t happen and blah de blah de blah. But that’s dull. Far more amusing to regard this as something of an instant historical artefact that looks quite quaint now, and just go Well, Duh.

Or more accurately, Copenhagen here we come. Yes, after our fabulous and completely deserved, I thought, victory tonight, I am headed to Copenhagen once again for the Champions League Final. I shall be booking my bar-side seat at The Globe as we speak. I am very, very, happy right now

Here at casa llama we’re preparing for the biggest game since this one. Such preparation mainly involves drinking plenty of san miguel to soothe the nerves and making some chicken fajitas to provide sustenance for the trial ahead. For here in this little corner of the Edinbarrio we are die hard liverpool fans, in a very much vest-wearing and gun-toting sense. Sort of. Well, the vest is a reds shirt and the gun is a fully-automatic fridge full of ale, but you know perfectly well what I mean. Tonight promises to be difficult, and victory is yet distant. But as we know all too well, it’s only half time, and anything, anything can happen.

Come on you reds. Here we go…

…also, today was my mum’s birthday – so, cheers mum