Category: Personal

Out and about

Been a reasonably busy couple of weeks on the gig front, here’s the potted summary:

  • Colin Murphy: Nor’n Irn comedian, a weel-kent face on the telly over here, but first time we’d seen him do stand-up (as opposed to sitting at his desk on The Panel, of which we’ve been to a couple of recordings). I remember enjoying it at the time, but I couldn’t actually recount any of his routine now… I suppose that means I’m more likely to enjoy it next time we go and see him though 🙂
  • Deacon Blue: reformed Scottish earnest 80’s popsters (half of whom are better known for their television roles on Sportscene and River City these days)… bounced their way through all our favourites (Dignity, Fergus Sings the Blues, Real Gone Kid et al.), although Julie thought the intervening years hadn’t been too kind to Ricky Ross!
  • The Feeling: a lively and listenable bunch on stage, even managed to pull off a passable cover of Video Killed the Radio Star… suspect when I get around to listening to the rest of their album, though, it might seem a bit low-key in comparison.

In the bleak mid-Autumn

Is it just me, or does anyone else in the northern hemisphere find it bizarre that here in Ireland, November 1st is considered to be the first day of winter, rather than December 1st? (Likewise, spring is considered to be February-April rather than March-May, etc.) Or is it just in the UK that summer includes August…?

All set… ish

So, here starteth my last week’s work as a single bloke. The next time I sit at my desk on a Monday (the first one in October), it’ll be with a resized-but-still-doesn’t-really-quite-fit ring on my wedding finger, if I haven’t managed to lose it on a South African beach by then.

The arrangements have been far from smooth, and I’m secretly regretting not having a stag night1, but otherwise (largely thanks to Julie) things are about as organised as they’re going to be before Saturday week. Speaking as someone who generally hates weddings2, churches and being the centre of attention, I’d be lying if I said I was completely psyched up for the occasion just yet, but I’m sure the end will justify the means!

Now, back to all that work stuff I need to finish before I disappear for a month…

1A choice I made partly because most of the people I’d want to invite are scattered too thinly and widely around the planet to have any chance of attracting a critical mass, partly because stag nights in Dublin aren’t quite so appealing when you live here and have to wade through scores of them any night you go into town, and partly because the majority of frat house stag night antics have never held much allure for me anyway. As many pints as I could squeeze in at GUADEC was the closest I managed instead, but I’d have been having those anyway, and there wasn’t exactly much chance of a final fling there now, was there? :o)

2Don’t ask me why, I’ve just always had a strange aversion to them– I won’t even watch them in films or on the telly, if I can avoid it!

The indisputable leader

Cool, there’s a Top Cat cartoon on TV just now without the canned laughter. God Bless the BBC1! I wonder if they’ll get the same backlash when they revert that they did when they accidentally showed a chortle-augmented episode of M*A*S*H?

1 When I was a lad, they wouldn’t even call it “Top Cat” in the listings, because there was a cat food on the market at the time with the same name…

Back to back

Dobey, I’m sure you’d rather avoid iTunes, but it does let you do what you want, in a roundabout sort of way– you can tell it to rip any two or more consecutive CD tracks as a single file, so they’re always played back to back. Of course you then lose all the ID3 info for one of the tracks, and you can’t apply it retrospectively to already-ripped tracks, so we could certainly do better.

Ee aye adio?

Congrats to the Scotland U19 fitba’ team, who’ve reached the final of the European Championships in Poland tonight– although they’ll probably get humped in the final against Spain, having already lost 4-0 to them in the group stages. But what with that, the big team winning the Kirin Cup (against Bulgaria and Japan) in May, and our subsequent 18-place climb up the FIFA rankings, you could almost believe we might have a respectable team again soon. If nothing else, we’ve reached two more finals than England this year* 🙂

* Okay, I expect England have probably reached some equally-diddy finals this year, but why let research get in the way of a good story…

Germany So Far…

Not too many dud games in the World Cup so far… Sweden v. the Scots’ adopted team of Trinidad & Tobago was probably the least action-packed, but livened up considerably by watching it on the big screen in a pub full of Trinidadians and Tobagans (and one bloke from Montserrat).

Of course there were all the usual jibes from the English media in the build-up to the opening Germany v. Costa Rica game, about how the Central Americans beat Scotland 1-0 in Italia ’90. It’s funny how everyone conveniently forgets that in same group, Costa Rica also beat Sweden (as did Scotland) and were unlucky to lose 1-0 to Brazil (as were Scotland), thus progressing to the next round (where they were, admittedly, whipped 4-1 by Czechoslovakia). They certainly weren’t the mugs that everyone makes them out to be; it’s just unfortunate that Scotland had to play them first before everyone else cottoned on!

Incidentally, any British fans who are bemoaning the lack of Baddiel and Skinner’s Fantasy Football on the telly this time around might be interested in their World Cup Podcast instead– I only came across it by accident, so you might not have noticed it either (unless you read The Times, presumably, as they’re sponsoring it…)