Ralph the Wonder Llama

I’ve spent the last I-don’t-know-how-long – a year or more? – filling a tub with coppers and 5p pieces in an attempt to pursue all areas of financial prudence in the name of The Plan™. Today I finally got round to taking the proceeds to the bank to change into proper money. I’m glad I don’t have one of those enormous whisky bottles, as my bag was heavy enough to make me look like I a had a nasty limp as it was, and this from a Real Foods dried apricot tub.

At the bank, I am the annoying person whose come to chop in their big bag of coppers, although in truth it didn’t take long to weigh it all. The grand total? Fourteen (14) of your Earth pounds. Taking into account the time it took to count out, never mind the initial gathering, it is safe to say that I won’t be bothering to refill that tub. Still, I guess it’s £14 better than nowt. I shall be adding it to a small gift-to-myself fund that currently comprises some birthday Tiso vouchers

Which has, of course, succeeded. I make the rules ’round here. Well, it’s been a bit stressful at work of late, what with impending financial meltdown and the ever-increasing takeover of contract-type responsibilities by the bank’s off-shoring arrangement, but such is life. The irony of not having long left to go on a theoretical plan and it all having been relatively plain sailing up to now means that the threat of job insecurity was perhaps inevitable. Still, we shall see what we shall see. Maybe I should flog the flat before the crash hits scotland, no?

In other news, Joe is off down south to prepare for his nuptials by spending time with his fiancée (even to my amateur eyes, seems like a good idea), and the strachans are waiting for their house out of town to be built by an undoubtedly confused construction company. Soon I shall have no friends left in Edinburgh. The time to move on is nigh, I feel. I have some work to do this weekend (nothing I can talk about – I could tell you, but you know I’d have to kill you) and there’s a trip to see the foxgang boys in the offing tomorrow evening to provide a distraction from that, but that’s the weekend’s focus. Beyond that I’m heading into a month of madness come late June that will test the spirit, but should be fun.

There’s no footy left, not even the playoffs, to watch. Much talk on the radio this morning about who the finals-deprived among us will ‘support’ in Euro 2008. Frankly, who cares? But I guess it would be nice for Spain to win something at last, and Torres is on fire so why not? Then again they’ll probably get beat by Latvia or something in the first round, maintaining their status as “perennial underachievers”. Blah de blah.

That is all. Continue as normal. Those of you having trouble with the RSS feed: :-p

Simon Cowell – your days are numbered.

Well, actually that’s just a cheap headline for what was a vaguely sad moment. Despite the fact that I haven’t played in ages, I’d never had a pressing reason to get rid of my old beloved drum kit, until this year, the Year of the Great Clearout. I don’t want to be storing anything unnecessarily while I’m away, and all sentimentality aside I wasn’t using it. So, like quite a lot of other stuff I’ve accumulated over the years that serves no more useful purpose, the time had come to let it go.

Accordingly, last night I took some photos of it and put it up for sale on the gumtree, the national/local free listings site. Sort of like craigslist, for those of you of a north american persuasion. Today I had two bites, and this evening, just a little while ago, a nice Polish guy came round and bought them for his (very lucky) eleven year-old son. And that’s that, for now. If I ever decide to get back into it, kits are easy enough to come by. Now I have a large space in my hallway cupboard, so I can see what else there is to get rid of.

I kept my stick bag and sticks for old times’ sake. Farewell then – you have served me well:

Don’t panic – I’m not dead yet. But I have been a bit of a ‘tard, more on (moron?) which later.

I have been to London for the weekend (the first of four – count ‘em – trips in the next few weeks, which have turned up like so many routemasters), partaking of the very excellent hospitality of the Noogent and Mel in sunny Tooting, in their very nicely refurbished pad. They looked after me exceedingly well, and I thank them.

On friday evening I met up with several erstwhile members of that group once known as The Finest Minds in Twickenham™. The O’Connors had even flown in from Canadia:

We convened at the NFT bar on the south bank. This was the first time I’d been there for years, and the first time I’d seen some of my former colleagues in far too long. A fine time was had. Later Nick, Mel, Andy and I found ourselves in a former tram-shed hostelry in Tooting for a late nightcap. Or two.

On Saturday we took ourselves off for a stroll along the thames, to see the ‘telescope to america’ that supposedly utilises an abandoned pipe under the atlantic to offer sundry ne’er-do-wells the chance to write at each other on a small whiteboard. I’m still not sure I believe it – surely it could be some form of video tape? We were too hungover busy and important to wait for an hour for a close-up view, so we settled for some lurking. To my mind it’s all trying a bit too hard to be oh-so Jules Verne to be real, but I may well be wrong:

Surely that amount of brasswork isn’t really necessary? Anyway, it’s sort of partly true, and sort of partly cheating.

After that we went back along via borough market (where we bought the Most Expensive Loaf of Bread in All of London Town) to Tate Modern, which was overrun with tweakers a la Modern Ranch Living. Inside was someone from Fluxus making a salad which was all a bit odd. We declined on the grounds that (a) it was being made with a shovel and (b) there wasn’t enough meat.

That evening we took ourselves round the corner to the very wonderful, and staggeringly cheap, Apollo Banana Leaf Sri Lankan restaurant. This is a fine, tiny, BYO place serving very authentic Sri Lankan and South Indian dishes at prices that only make one wonder how they make a living at all. Popular with the local Tamil community, which is always a good sign, we had a right good feed for less than £25. For three. Fantastic.

So today, after a hearty breakfast, I made The Mistake of getting caught up in the Monaco GP, leaving ten minutes later than I’d meant to, and reaching Kings Cross just in time to see the 16:00 to Edinburgh sail down the tracks. Bugger. I’m very rarely late, especially for transport, usually on account of being ultra-conservative and getting there in plenty of time, especially in London where it takes So Bloody Long to get anywhere. But this time I half knew I’d arsed it up as soon as I got to the northern line platform in Tooting and saw I had 36 minutes to do 32 minutes’ advertised travel. No chance. I nearly made it, but that ten minutes made all the difference. By the time I got there, I felt a bit like the unknown creator of this graffito that we saw in a back street around the shad thames:

£101.40 later, I was on the next train, nursing a couple of cold beers to numb the pain. My own fault, and out of character. But there we go, no-one’s perfect eh? And it certainly hasn’t spoiled a very splendid weekend. Just means I’ll have to put a few extra hours in this week

Which crashing irony will doubtless clue you in that it’s been a quiet week. Not much has happened. I did see joe for a swift beer on tuesday evening. He’s off down to the smoke soon ahead of his wedding and is likely to be living in glasgow when they get back from honeymoon. With the strachans planning on a move to the sticks, my city-based friends are disappearing rapidly. Ah well, maybe the timing is relatively apposite.

Anyway, I bring you news from the, erm, heady world of hair care products. You may not be aware that I am engaged in what feels like a life-long search for the perfect hair gel or gel-like product. It’s very hard to find the right one, and if ever I do, it generally disappears from the shelves shortly thereafter. Safe to say I have tried many, many brands. Today’s latest instalment came about when my emperor fish ran out. Boots, predictably, had none for sale. I finally plumped for this:

It appealed on the grounds that (a) it looks posh (indeed, and rather mavellously, Hackett sponsor the aston martin racing team. Excellent.), (b) it has the words ‘essential british kit’ and ‘made in england’ emblazoned on the front and (c) it was reassuringly expensive. Is it any good? Only time will tell. In any case, for all the reasons stated above, it’s unlikely I’ll ever buy it again.

In other news, Having finished reading vs naipaul’s india: a million mutinies now, I moved on swiftly to heinrich harrer’s seven years in tibet which I thoroughly enjoyed and have just finished. One of my favourite lines from it comes in one of the earlier chapters when he describes their attempt to journey into inner tibet and ultimately to lhasa. He has been set up anonymously by some villagers with provisions and is on the point of leaving to continue his journey:

As we parted the easygoing Tibetan said something which was to serve me in good stead. The haste of Europeans has no place in Tibet. We must learn patience if we wished to arrive at the goal.

This chimed with me – it’s much the attitude I try to adopt when away somewhere, especially somewhere unfamiliar. I tend to find myself much better-tempered and more patient. Maybe it’s just an illusory feeling brought on by being on holiday, but it is something I’m quite conscious of. Whatever.

Anyway, having finished that rather quickly, I have now moved onto this:

which I’ve only just started. I usually loathe abridgements but, in this case, am happy to make an exception since the original is noted for not having been a best seller in its day largely because of its vast size, a fate, as I recall, shared by that legendary monetary unit, the triganic pu. Mine of information, me.

Another one JJ will understand, if no-one else. I’m watching the cricket (or rather, not – they’ve gone off for light) and Gower is ripping the piss out of Nasser like there’s no tomorrow. They’re discussing england’s new Cillit Bang-white kit – “You must have had lucky trousers, Nas, surely? Or maybe not, looking at your scores.” Nas sits there, no comeback. Genius.

Anyway, this reminds me of the soon-to-be-infamous clip I heard on the radio this morning, of the one and only CMJ yesterday venturing into that garden of madness previously the territory of the late Jonners. Words (not even the words ‘Vettori stays on the bank and keeps his rod down, so to speak’) don’t do it justice, one must listen.

Perhaps. But for me it’s a bit dull. Not, however, as dull as my windows had become. Unlike the slightly dubious Mr Formby (ah, but those were more innocent times, no?) I was looking out rather than in, and I could barely see across the street. I had not cleaned them in a long time.

I blame the weather. Today, then, being the first proper warm, sunny and still day of the year (and probably of last year, too) that I haven’t been at work (today being a Holiday from the Bank) I took the opportunity to clean the front ones. Don’t ever say I don’t know how to have a good time. And – look! – you can hardly even see them now:

Marvellous! Just the back ones to do then. Well, one can overdo these things you know.

Yesterday myself and the estimable Mathesons headed up to Glencoe to do some walking. We’d worked ourselves up to it by talking about it for a year, and finally felt the time was right. It seemed that quite a number of people had decided to get away from it all by forming an alternative crowd in the countryside, but in fact by the time we got there, the hill itself was pretty quiet.

For our first effort we’d chosen Sgorr na Ciche, also known as The Pap of Glencoe (on the left, below). In one of several mistakes of the day, we’d thought it a Munro – but it isn’t. It’s next to one, but it is in fact, and rather excellently, a Graham:

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1 May was my mum’s birthday. Not much to say about it other than I like to remember her on this day. She’d have been 73, which is kind of hard to imagine somehow. I don’t have a digital picture anywhere I’m afraid – I’ll have to see if I can’t get one scanned somewhere.

Fascinating Family Factoid: my mum, dad, brother and I were all born on the same day of the week (Wednesday). Different weeks, obviously. And different years. Duh.

Anyway, happy birthday mum.