Last Ditch Culture

I've been spending my last weekend of the year squeezing in some more culture, trying to make sure I've not missed anything that I should have a 2012 opinion on.

First off: music and an album with a very orange cover, probably the most excited I've been about listening to an album this year; not Frank Ocean's Channel Orange (which seems to have swept the year end polls but which I don't get, which is probably a function of me getting old as much as anything else) but the new Beans on Toast album (which for some reason has been omitted not only from the year-end charts but also from any review section of any non-niche music publication).  Turns out it's about as good as an album has got this year, but this again may just be a function of me getting old and this not sounding like David Guetta / everything else.

This year's seen me going to the theatre a lot.  I've seen some really fun stuff (Three Sisters - who'd've thought?), some really boring stuff (Bingo) and loads of Shakespeare.  To maximise my Shakespeare exposure I saved the biggest 'til last (I'm taking the histrionic Americanised version of Mayan astronomy in my definition of "last" - tomorrow night my calendar runs out so it's the end of the world, right?). Mark Rylance! Stephen Fry! Trigger from Only Fools and Horses! All on stage together! Exclamation mark explosion of excitement!! I've not seen Twelfth Night before and it was well acted and funny and that but crikey the first half is boring. I appreciate that that Bard fella is handy with words but he can drag out the set-up of a comedy.

So Shakespearian highlight of the year (the Pete of ten years ago has just been sick in his mouth at how bourgeois the concept of "Shakespearian highlight of the year" sounds)?  Was it Mark Rylance in Richard III? Simon Russell Beale in Timon of Athens? No and no. Both were good but both get soundly beaten by the Globe to Globe, all-African Julius Caesar. Which in any other year yada yada... How good was Macbeth at the Clerkenwell House of Detention? It makes a pretty good case for the dropping of "Shakespearian" from that first sentence...

Last Tango in Guatemala

We were going to miss out Guatemala City, what with its reputation for being a bit shooty, but we figured that it needed seeing so see it we did. And you know what, I'm pretty glad.  It had good levels of random which I'm a big fan of - we got a mussel soup with a beer in one bar; there was a line of sheep and goats outside a milk store - and we never felt particularly unsafe, although the high levels of guards-with-shot-guns on the street meant that you never forgot that there may be a bit of a risk somewhere.

So that's it then.  Guatemala whizzed around.  Jungle trekked.  Didn't get shot. Didn't get erupted. Don't think I've got Dengue fever.

A couple of weeks ago I thought this was going to be about the most ridiculous trip I'd ever taken.  Turns out that it didn't ever really feel that crazy and, like most other travels, it's just left me envious of everyone else whose trips sounded more hardcore.  Hmmm, itch still not scratched...

The Lost City of El Mirador

Lost jungle city - box ticked. And, at the risk of sounding like I'm doing things for all the wrong reasons, that particular box has pretty good blagging credentials. Five days of walking through jungle to find some 2000-year-old ruins.  Way cool.

Although, like a lot of things, it turned out to be nowhere near as hardcore as I was expecting.  The donkey we hired turned out to be a mule train, so pretty much all we had to do was turn up and walk.  It was like staying in a hotel, albeit a hotel where the aircon is set at 95% humidity.  With insects. And snakes - we saw a coral snake.  If you're going to see a snake it may as well be a really dangerous one.

The ruins themselves were pretty cool.  All jungle and monkeys and tombs and toucans and pyramids.  Enough to fulfill your schoolboy, Indiana Jones, Lara Croft dreams.

Back in Flores now and looking forward to eating something that isn't refried beans.

Maya Mistake

Right, I learnt something today and I'm going to share it.  The "Mayan" people don't see themselves as Mayan - they see it as an insulting, colonial tag (incidentally, it's based on the indigenous word for "I don't know what it is" - which is what they said when they saw the Spanish).  They would pigeonhole themselves as the Ixi'm - people of the corn. Consider yourselves taught.  Or at the very least consider the lies that I wholesale swallowed passed on. (If anyone can be bothered to Google it and correct me I'd be grateful.)

Had an impromptu trip to Tikal this morning.  That's Guatemala's premier tourist attraction and the largest pyramid in Meso-America.  Pretty impressive stuff, if you can get above the jungle canopy you get to see ruins poking through like the noses of massive stone moles.

Also got put straight on this "end of the world" thing, turns out it's a massive distorted exaggeration.  Who would have thought? Them Ixi'm just ended their calendar in two weeks' time as it was when the sun completed its slow, slow circle.  Still word on the street is Tikal should be quite the party place that night...

Hermano Pedro's Finger

There's a lot of churches in Antigua.  Loads of them. As there's very little else to do in town and we're not leaving until this evening, I've ended up visiting quite a lot of them. Religion's weird, isn't it?  I saw a dead man's finger just before lunch.  It was in a display case with gold trim.  And a lady tried to sell us rosary beads to kiss whilst looking at said dead man's finger. I really wish I understood.

We climbed a live volcano this morning (Pacaya since you asked). Now that's something that I understand - rocks and pummice and steam rising through cracks. Noone told us until we were at the top that you can toast marshmallows in the vents. Rubbish. Failed to see molten lava though, booo.  Guess that's one that stays on the bucket list.

AntigWaaaaah

Right, in Guatemala. Weird Travelling. The holiday begins now.

We managed to escape from Miami, never really did find anything to do.  Apart from a bit of self discovery - apparently I´m now too high maintenace to use a shower that someone´s vomitted into.  How I have changed...

Planed into Guatemala City - it looks big and sprawlly and a little bit horrible.  Think we will try and avoid that.  Instead we are in Antigua (pronounced AntigWaaah, so you do not confuse it with that there island thing) which is a tiny ramshackle colonial town with more churches than you can shake a stick at - unless you have a stick which is designed for the purpose, obviously.

The City Where The Heat Is On

As all of you know, if there's one thing that I always try and do it's follow Will Smith's advice - I'll go with the flow and not fight the feeling. If I see a hot summer mix that isn't broken, I'll think WWWD? And then not try to feel it.  I even went for three months getting chicken with everything, until I'd realised I'd misheard - So it was only natural that in Miami I should party on the beach til the break of dawn. I can only assume that Mr Smith was a lot less jet-lagged than I was - barely made 11.

Miami is a funny place.  Miami Beach is exactly as you'd imagine it: lots of massive shiny cars with massive shiny wheels all going everywhere at two miles an hour. Lots of opportunity for people watching.  Not a fat lot else to do other than sit in a bar or sit on the beach.

We're staying in the Art Deco Historic Quarter.  Art Deco is soulless isn't it?  Feel like I'm stuck inside a box of fondant fancies.

____________

Things I've recently learnt: 

1. You can get seatbelt extendors on planes - they are bright orange so that everyone knows you're a fatty.
2. It's very easy to lock yourself out of your own Facebook account. Apologies anyone who's using that to contact me - you may want to try email instead...

It Is On...

Holiday time again:
I wanted to go to Guatemala;
TR wanted to go on a big, fat, stupid walk.
We managed to combine plans.  This could result in my most ridiculous adventure yet, which is saying something as I've adventured in quite ridiculous ways.

I've replaced the batteries in my head torch, hired a donkey, impregnated a mosquito net, stocked up on hypodermic needles, deet and Immodium. It is on.

Come on adventure, you gnarled, old flirt.  I'm ready for you.

Groove is in Den Haag

For the second time in two weeks I found myself in a foreign city that I'd been aware of since I was a kid but still know next to nothing about. This time it was the turn of Den Haag, The Hague, a city with no discernible centre that seems to exist purely as a very trendy Dutch Lakeside.

Given that The Hague is so very trendy it was a bit of a surprise that it was attached to Scheveningen, an especially tacky sea-side resort.  I thought down-at-hill seaside chintz was a purely British thing, but evidently not.

I ate me some raw herring - that's pretty Dutch, right? It had a tail and everything. Raw herring = good.

Rounded off my Dutch weekend with a visit to the newly opened Stedelijk gallery in Amsterdam. All the other galleries around were closed so it was full to its overflow pipe and, being a scathing cynic as I often am, there just didn't seem to be the art to justify the crowds or for that matter the shiny new building.

Right in the Gulags

Warsaw is one of those cities that I've known of for about as long as I can remember, yet I know almost nothing about it.  Turns out, having spent a weekend bimbling around it, I still know pretty much nothing about it - still, it was a most pleasant place to bimble.  I genuinely would like to say more than that about it - I feel like its stature in my mind deserves more - but there's just not much more to say that's in anyway interesting.

I try not to comment too much on current affairs - mainly because I don't really understand anything, ever - but Pussy Riot have been sent to the gulags and that doesn't sound like a fun day out.  I don't really know what a gulag is but I'm fairly sure that they don't have ferrero rocher there. And that was just for singing a song in a church, I went to a wedding the other week - I sang three songs in a church - in your face Putin.

But really, between that and those Italian geologists who have been convicted of manslaughter for not being able to do the impossible I can't help but think that the world is somewhat unreasonable.

Hiphop Karaoke

In my limited experience of hiphop karaoke one thing I've found is that I don't actually know the words to any raps.  I think I do but what I actually know is the sounds, consequently if you try to read said lyrics it will say something ridiculous, like "Muggs is a funk fest" which just confuses you.  In the end it's a straight choice between making sort-of-right sounds at the sort-of-right time and trying to recreate what's actually been written; I'd suggest that the second option is the first step on the path to karaoke disaster.

Live Sport

Now I appreciate that this isn't a very manly thing to say, but live sport?  What's all that about?

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing sport - on the whole I'm rubbish, but I enjoy it.  Watching sport (well some sports) on the television is normally a satisfying way of wasting an hour or so, but sport, live, in a stadium - nope, just don't get it.

In the last couple of weeks I've been to both athletics and rugby and in both instances I've just come out a bit confused. If you're near enough to see anything up close, then you can't see what's happening anywhere else so have no real idea what's going on. If you're far enough away to see the entire event, then you're probably so far away that you may as well be looking at a formicary.

Don't get it.

It's almost like the sport is incidental and really the event is just an excuse to get drunk and holler noise at strangers as part of a mindless herd.  Which is nothing like a live music gig...

A Play of Two Halves

How good is the first half of Timon of Athens?  Answer: Really good. It's not like any other Shakespeare I've seen: often when you see Shakespeare in a contemporary setting it still feels very Elizabethan; this didn't, this felt like a contemporary play that the author had decided to put into blank verse. Great story, great characters, great acting - by the time the interval I couldn't understand why it's not really put on.

How bad is the second half of Timon of Athens? Answer: Pretty bad. Plot is dispensed with in favour of a series of the free-form jazz ramblings of an ADHD child. Nothing seemed in anyway credible - in a contemporary setting or anywhere.  By the time the end (if you can call it that) came round my eyes were sagging and I'd stopped caring.

Cork It

Ever since someone told me that Cork is "sort of like Venice" I've been curious to go there.  I assumed that it would be all canals and boats and hats and stuff.  I hadn't realised that the main similarity would be that there's a couple of shops selling over-priced pizza.

Still the town was nice enough, even if it wasn't all that Venetian.  The Victorian prison was pretty impressive and everybody loves a butter museum, right?

Good Things and Bad Things

Good thing #1.  Julius Caesar at Noel Coward Theatre and set in an unnamed African state was about the most accessible Shakespeare I've seen.

Good thing #2.  I've been to two Kate Tempest things in the last couple of weeks - both her book launch and her solo, erm, hiphopera at the BAC.  She's a talented mammal, that Tempest girl. I'd not been to the BAC before, what a great building.  It made me want to open an art centre in England's Newest City (TM) but I fear that it would be about as unsustainable as anything can get.

Bad thing #1. My bike got stolen.  Rubbish. I hadn't really realised how reliant on it I'd become.  I'd forgotten how annoying short haul driving is, and how long walking anywhere takes.

Bad thing #2.  Linked quite closely to Bad thing #1.  The act of buying a bike from Halfords was probably more frustrating than the act of having my bike stolen. Impressively incompetent. I'd heartily recommend not shopping there ever.

There's been other good things and bad things over the last couple of weeks, but the bad things are pretty boring to start with and the good things have been written about so much that they're teetering on the yawnsome precipice so could do without any nudging from me.

Racist Hogroast

It's all kicking off in Chelmsford City today.  I'd assumed that the high police presence was all about VFest but it turns out there's a riot goin' on. For those of you who aren't down with da goss' of da 'Ford, they're planning to build a shiny new mosque on a rundown industrial estate in the, ahem, city centre (still can't take myself seriously saying that). The EDL have taken issue with this and are organising some kind of angry, semi-evolved, anti-cosmopolitanism march thing (for the record the new mosque is being built as part of a complex with a Waitrose, which will really shake-up Chelmsford's 96% white-British demographic, the EDL must be quaking). United Chelmsford (not a football team) have organised a counter march.  So far, with the backdrop of V weekend, sounds like the most interesting thing to happen in Chelmsford since, erm, 1381?

What got my goat (and I know I shouldn't blog when I'm irked as it comes out as a hotchpotch of poorly expressed and easily misconstrued bobbins), was I got handed a 'free hogroast' flier by someone trying to get me to go to a nearby church. Now, maybe it was a coincidence and maybe I'm reading too much into it but part of me thinks that giving out pig products (on a day when even the farmers' market wasn't selling pork) looks a bit like you're trying to court the far right rather than those people that might be supporting a mosque. WWJD?

Right, rant over, in other news i went to Hot Tub Cinema last night.  Odd that sitting in a hot tub with six strangers on a roof in Hackney gets relegated to the 'in other news' bit.  And i didn't even mention that I saw Richard III the other day - that Rylance fellow, he can act.

...To The Imitation Zone

Standon Calling is probably my favourite festival. Don't get me wrong, V and Reading serve a purpose and I've had a couple of great Glastonburys but I just think I've grown out of big festivals.  Even Bestival, the first time I went it was all fun and excitement; the last time I went it took me over twelve hours to get there which just takes the shine off it a little bit.

Standon Calling though. It's great. Showers. Good toilets. The kind of bands I want to see. Good food. Few queues. Limited idiots. And it's only an hour's drive away. Best Fest.  No messin. 

That said the idiot quotient was obviously higher than I thought as ****** **** were filming there. Now I don't know if you've seen ****** **** but it's about as bad as it's possible to make television (which is why it's not getting a mention). It's a half-hour TOWIE-themed Blackberry commercial and every bit as bad as that sounds. I feel that my whole Standon experience has been tainted. I'd heard through the Essex grapevine that we were on it, so I turned my brain off and steeled my eyes for punishment. 

The juxtaposition was almost worth the tedium. One of my mates was shown wearing a full home-made duck costume, quickly followed by someone in a shop-bought Indian headdress saying 'do you think we're we're the only ones that have made an effort with fancy dress'. The correct answer was 'No, fake girl, other people have made more effort than we have.  We're just wearing what the ****** **** stylist put us in.'

Incidentally someone there asked if I'd made my costume. I was wearing a limp cardboard horse.  I thought it was fairly obvious that I had, but it did make me wonder whether there is a market for slightly rubbish but high effort fancy dress. #possiblecareeropportunity

London 2012

London, I don't know how to say it, but I think we need some time apart.  I've tried to get excited about this sport's day thing you've been banging on about but i just don't really get it.  It's not you, it's me, I appreciate that, but you only seem to be interested in one thing; what with your hoops draped all over everywhere and your streets brimming with high-stoppability idiots.

I think it could still work.  I just think we'll get on a lot better if we have a break for a couple of weeks.  Are you cool with that?  Grand. See you in September.

__________

In other news I went to the ballet again.  Play Without Words.  That's supposed to be good, right.  Everyone raves about it.  Didn't get it.  Not at all. Found it boring and I didn't really understand what was going on.  A series of technically adept set pieces, I can see that.  But not sure i'd call it a 'play' more like a particularly tepid episode of EastEnders where everyone does everything really slowly. Guess I'm not as culture as I think I am.

I went to the Tanks, too.  That's the new bit of Tate Modern.  Dead good bit of artspace.  Liked it a lot.  Not certain about the art that's in it at the moment - but we've established that I know nothing about culture so it's probably great.

Ibsen - He's one of the biggies, right?

I saw A Doll's House last night (note the capital letters, that's the A Doll's House not just a doll's house; that's probably not newsworthy, although, to be fair I probably see more plays than doll's houses so maybe that would have been more newsworthy than my so-called news.  I appear to be waffling...).  I figured I ought to see it whilst it was on, it is one of them-ones-what-you're-supposed-to-have-seen, after all. That Ibsen fellow, father of modern theatre, in't he?  It was pretty impressive - well theatrical. Weatrical?  I can see what the hype's about, although not sure that I loved it but then I'm not an 1890's feminist so I'm probably not the target demographic.

One thing that did move me was the price. It was only about 70 pence more to go and see "one of the greatest plays ever (TM)" in London than it was to go to Braintree and see some dire Hollywood dross last weekend. There's something wrong with the world.  Or specifically, there's something very wrong with cinema's cost:quality ratio.  There's a few of those film things coming up that I'm half curious to see but that last experience made me feel 3% more stupid and i'm not sure I want to put myself through that again. The only thing that would have made it worse is if it was in 3D and I had to wear those eye-bleeding glasses.  I was going to add a flippant comment there but then remembered what was in the news today - still quaking from a masked psychopath would have at least given me a story to tell rather than just led to me whinging.

This week I've mostly been eating scorpion death chilli chocolate. I appreciate that it's a lot hotter than chocolate needs to be but I'm finding it strangely addictive in a masochistic way. I've got used to it a bit, now - don't get me wrong, it's still a little bit like getting kicked in the mouth but I can eat it without a fire extinguisher to hand - and am probably being a bit free and easy with offering it about.  Is it rude to break your mates?

It looks like my Blog has got a medium-sized Russian following.  Hello Russia.

Hotel Shampoo

I saw Gruff Rhys last night, not so much news in itself, I've seen Gruff in his various guises many times before.  What's probably more news is that I'm fairly sure that this was my first 'proper' gig of the year.  It's July.  That means the first six months of the year were completely devoid of live 'pop' music.  Is this still that growing up thing? I've seen jazz, opera, choral and ballet this year.  But no 'pop'. I feel like I'm losing my edge.

I managed to not see the Olympic torch.  I was tempted - I set an alarm and everything but it was raining so I went back to sleep. Once in a life time opportunity - like the Jubilee Regatta - which I also slept through.

I feel like I ought to pass some level of condemnation on the nasty nasty goings on in Timbuktu.  I'm not going to, mainly because i don't understand it (and by it I mean religion) but it does make me feel a bit lucky I went when I did what with all these military coups, kidnappings and desecrations.

This cross will make you jump

The biggest cross in the world is on the top of a mountain overlooking Skopje. That's 60m of religious symbolism goading you wherever you are in the city. Now I'm not one for getting goaded, especially not my religious symbolism, so I climbed that there mountain to give it a piece of my mind. Nearly killed Chappers in the process. Innocent casualty caught in the crossfire. One of the perils of goadability.

We'e been pootling around Skopje or a couple of days now. It's a great city. I genuinely can't understand how it had slipped under my radar or so long.

We visited Mother Theresa's house. She wasn't in. Booo.

Another booo is that it's last day of the holidays, so what have we learned:

1. That bimbling around a city generally means you take about 18,000 steps a day, which is a lot. Surprisingly it doesn't make a at lot of difference if you actively try and walk to somewhere. Even yesterday's mountain scramble didn't change the totals all that much.

2. If you're asked at customs 'what are you doing in this country?' 'Wearing a hat.' is
the wrong answer, even if it is true.

3. There's a gap in the market for both Mother Theresa and Alexander the Great action figures. Can't find them anywhere.

Kosovo

So it seems like all of Bitola's alleged beautiful people are sipping expressos in Pristina - who'd've thought? Turns out that there Kosovar capital is way more trendy than I'd given it credit for.

I didn't really get Kosovo as a country. It seemed to be one long sprawling ribbon of breakers yards from the border to the capital, occasionally interspersed with a trendy looking new build that would put an equivalent building in Blighty to shame. Not what I'd expect from Europe's poorest country.

Pristina itself was fairly much the same thing only concentrated. Lots of things that shouldn't go together together and the whole thing topped up with more cars than a city twice its size needed.

The whole city seemed to be in a state of flux, as though it hadn't quite worked out its identity. Give it two years and it will be chock full of stag dos.

Bitola

Right, back in Macedonia. Specifically just arrived back in Skopje after a sweaty four hours on a train and an only marginally less sweaty twenty four hours in Bitola.

Apparently Bitola is super trendy. Milan to Skopje's Rome. Allegedly. It just seemed like a town to my ignorant, fashion-unconscious eyes. Ho hum.

We found some Roman ruins. They were fun. Most places don't let you clamber over millennia-old ruins. Prudes.

Tim's banned me from choosing journey snacks. My previously foolproof method of choosing based purely on the name was found sadly lacking. Chipsy Kings were alright but Hello Flips were kind of like polystyrene, only not as nutritious. Whilst we're talking confection it seems that Macedonia has a drink that's sort of like Inca Cola, at any rate it's bright yellow and tastes of sweet shops. My Cyrillic's not great but I think it's called Gazoza, if you're interested.

Albanian Rhapsody

Well Albania's a bit more like it. This seems a whole heap more like weird travelling, none of that European nonsense that Macedonia as pedalling. This is just that little bit off kilter, can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's because we got a lift from the border in a beaten up van. Maybe it's because there are hundreds of men playing dominoes and almost no ladies. Or maybe it's just that there was a stuffed bear in the snack bar we ate in earlier.

We're in Pogradec. So I'm probably not in any real position to judge Albania from this alone. Kinda like saying "yeah, I've seen Britain" when you've only been to Clacton on Sea. It seems a bit cheaper here too. We're in a beachfront, town centre hotel - the kind of hotel that has a grandfather clock in the lobby - and it's substantially cheaper than last night's dorm room.

Whilst I think of it, Albania also deserves praise for its flag. It's great, but for completely different reasons to that there Macedonian flag. Whereas the Macedonian one was all full of hopeful positivity, the Albanian flag has based itself on the baddies in eighties cartoons. Proper sinister.

Lake 'Orrid

We're in Ohrid, pronounced Okrid, apparently, but given that it's the Macedonian holiday destination of choice (think 18-30s; think sunbeds; think whooping), our original pronounciation might be more appropriate. Still the town's pretty enough, chock full of cobbled streets and tiny orthodox churches.

Went to Snake Island today. It's not in Lake Ohrid, it's in the next lake along, right by the Greek / Alabnia border. What do you think when you think of snake island - something a bit like whacking day in the Simpsons? Indiana Jones' pits? Snakes everywhere? So did we. Perfect for a snake-o-phobe (similarly the two hour boat trip there was pretty good for someone with an explosive stomach. It's all about being kind to your mates).

He needn't've worried (well, about the snake bit), the island was a complete misnomer. Cormorant island would have been more appropriate, as would snakeless island. Closest we got was a fistful of tortoises. Ho hum.

Green and Pleasant Land

Macedonia, you little cutie, you kept yourself all quiet didn't you? Like the mousey secretary in an action movie, you said nothing until people started to take note and then, wow.

It was the green, green mountains on the approach to the airport that first gave it away. Then finding that there was more history here than I'd given it credit for - significantly more than the twenty years that I was expecting. Then that flag. Best flag in the world? Almost certainly. It looks like a child designed it.

We're in Skopje at the moment. I'm not going to lie, I was expecting weird but in a tolerable way. I was wrong, not much weird at all - only about as weird as a Rotterdam. The only real weird is some of the statues they've got and the shiny planters in the river, but you get the impression that they're deliberately, quirkily weird, rather than 'donkey in a bus shelter' weird.

They're currently going through an unnecessarily ambitious building programme so you've got air-conditioned acropolises emerging all over the show. There's a shiny new Alexander the Great statue in the town square which would definitely beat our Nelson's Column in a straight fight.

In short: Skopje = so much better than expected.

Homage to Macedonia

Following on from the last post, my knowledge of opera is a veritable compendium when compared to my knowledge of Macedonia. Which can be summed up thus:

- It's north of Greece, south of Kosovo and east of Albania.
- The Capital is Skopje.
- There's a lake called Lake 'orrid.
- It was part of Yugoslavia.

That's less than thirty words of knowledge. Only one way to solve this. Let's go to Macedonia...

Keep it Highbrow

I don't really like it when I don't know about stuff (apart from pop culture, I've long since given up being able to recognise anyone off the telly) so I try to do something about it. Sometimes this leads to a bit of internet swatting (like when I realised that if they had a Shipping Forecast round in a pub quiz I'd be, erm, all at sea, so learned to tell my Forties from my Fisher - incidentally, this extra knowledge hasn't helped at all in anything and possibly never will), more often it leads me to taking a more interactive approach.

So Opera, that's something I know nothing about. Off the top of my head I can only think of two (the Magic Flute and la Traviata, since you ask), even puzzling over it I reckon I'd be hard pushed to reach double figures. I've been to an opera before (Candide, not a real opera, I'd read the book before and it was in English) but that was part of such a weird series of events (Transylvanian crime and lightning strikes) that I'm not sure it counts [Don Giovanni?]. So I went to the opera.

I saw Salome at the Royal Opera House. Well high culture. Quite enjoyed it but even I found it a bit pretentious. [Madame butterfly?] The ROH is magnificent. We were right up in the cheap seats so the view was a little bit Vertigo. But really shiny. The whole thing is immersively multi-media reading surtitles, listening to music and watching what's happening on stage all at the same time. Quite an overload for my non-highbrow brain.

Salome obviously was a ridiculous story - [La Boheme? It's like I've got opera tourettes] - are all opera stories fairly ridiculous. Is that what high art is all about? Ridiculous stories? I've seen Swan Lake - that's about a guy who falls in love with a swan, I'm fairly sure that's never been an 'Enders plot line.

Marriage of Figarro? That's six, plus the two I've seen. Is Barber of Seville an opera? Not sure. I'm gonna count it anyway. Nine and I'm all out.

_________________

Less high-brow-ly I've just finished the Chaos Walking trilogy, That's dystopian teen fiction for all you grown ups. very enjoyable. Just heard that Charlie Kauffman is doing the screenplay for the Knife of Never Letting Go - quite excited.

Once More Unto The Breach

The helicopters pounding overhead did help to create a war aesthetic, however I can't help but think that it was rather more Operation Linebacker than Agincourt. Not entirely appropriate for Henry V at the Globe. Ho hum.

On the way back from that there theatre we stumbled upon the Naked Bike protest, now I'm all in favour of a protest, but there is something a little bit icky about cycling naked on a rented cycle. Next time I borrow a Boris bike I'm gonna try and remember to take some wet ones.

Chattin' at Robins

Still got this beef about aging.

I'm contemplating buying gardening gloves - that's not something that a young person buys. Did some of your actual proper bank-holiday gardening today, it's a lot of hassle, was at it for two hours, and the only thing that's really changed is how full my brown bin is. Boo. Was being helped by a robin, pretty much sitting on my shoulder waiting for worms to be dug up, the precocious domestoid.

What else? Slightly worried that I might have become a monarchist. That's an age thing as well, right. Don't get me wrong, I've not been out mummified in buntings standing to attention. I've not even turned the TV on. But I have read some of the republican-esque comments and frankly I'm not sure I approve. a. they sound like killjoys when they could just ignore it - which is never going to endear me to them. But more importantly b. what's the alternative? I suspect it's a presidency. I fully admit I know nothing about politics, but given the current crop of politicians, I'm really rather uncertain that that would be an improvement.

Let's finish with a riddle. Why does the library have an out-of-hours book return box, if you can't get to the out-of-hours box out of hours because of a big metal gate?

Hey Bruce Willis, I like your sister

I've spent the weekend in Morocco and all I've got to show for it is mild food poisoning. Nothing too bad - not like last year's Valencia incident or that time that we don't mention - but it really isn't a convenient time for the flush on my toilet to stop working.

So yeah, Fez, that was a weekend. Bit of a culture shock. It's a city of two halves is Fez, a new town and an old town and I think you'd struggle to find a more strangely juxtaposed set up. The old town was a medieval maze of markets and mosques - spices and donkeys everywhere - as stereotypically Arabic as you like. The new town could have been just about anywhere. I say that, they sold pigeons in the market place; you don't really get that in, I dunno, Wigan.

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FYI I finished Poisonwood Bible, my assessment was correct, the story finished well before the book.

This week the countries reading this blog are UK (understandable) and Moldova (less so).

Growing up

I seem to have started reading the business section of the paper. I'm not sure I approve of myself. Combined with the facts that cryptic crosswords are one of my preferred ways to waste time and that all music released in the last ten years sounds the same, I can't help but think that I'm getting old.

Things that I've enjoyed over the last couple of weeks:
- The middle bit of the Collaborators - the first bit was too slow, the last bit was too serious, the middle bit was a riot.
- Dawkins casual undermining of Michael Gove.

See, even the things that make me smile are curiously middle aged.
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I'm currently reading the Poisonwood Bible, I feel like I've been reading it forever. I'm fairly sure the story finished fifty pages ago but I've still got another 100 pages left. Is it worth finishing?

Rotterdam or Anywhere

Now I can just about see how you could confuse Rotterdam with Liverpool (both big port cities with shiny new waterfronts) but Rome? Really? I've been to very few cities that are less like Rome than Rotterdam. The only similarity is that capital R.

Rotterdam gets a big fat thumbs up. The buildings are well architecture (I was able to namedrop Renzo Piano and sound like I knew what I was talking about) and there seemed to be a background hum of exciting stuff happening across the city. You know? Like art and culture and stuff?

Just been on a bike ride through that there rolling Utrecht countryside. Cycled through the red light district - most bizarre - just like the Amsterdam one, with its knocky windows, but on a series of houseboats right next to a motorway.

One thing I've learned this weekend is that my phone doesn't work abroad. I don't know what's more surprising, that in 2012 there are phone networks which don't have international roaming as standard, or that it's taken me four countries to notice.

Come and Gdansk With Me

I kinda went to Gdansk at the weekend for a joke. Don't get me wrong, it was a lovely joke. I ate sausage soup served in a bread roll and listened to Polish versions of Irish sea shanties. So far so lovely.

It went a little bit sour on the way home. Had my first emergency landing. I say it went sour, it went way more sour for the guy having a heart attack in front of 200 other people with no other in flight entertainment. Someone was taking photos on their phone - makes me embarrassed to be human. Poor guy - absolute best case scenario he's stuck in Germany and missed his holiday, whilst some arse blogs about it.

In other news Heart-shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne is very good, unlike Blogger which has decided that it no longer likes paragraphs.

Is This An Ostrich I See Before Me?

Now I'm fully aware that this little blog thing that I write isn't one of those things that informs the zeitgeist. I don't have to worry that me saying I like something is going to lead to a rush of panic buying and general unavailability.

That being said, I don't really have any other outlets to big up things that I like, so I'm going to have to use this. I saw two things that were really good yesterday.

The first - Inside Out Animals - is pretty well known. Even the most a-cultural amoeba has heard of the Natural History Museum, right? And Inside Out Animals is Gunter Von Hagens latest derring-do so has arrived in a demi-maelstrom of hype. That in no way stops it being brilliant, it just means I don't need to do anything other than give it a casual thumbs up.

The second was a version of Macbeth set in a disused prison in Clerkenwell. By talking about it I risk turning into a gushing fool, so I'll be succinct. It was definitely the Shakespeare that I've enjoyed the most and, off the top of my head, I can't think of a play I've enjoyed more. It's on for a month. See it.

Hot Crossed Pun

I really want to go for a run. Why is that? For the last while I've felt like I should go for a run because I was "in training" for a race and I really didn't want to, because if you've got to do something it becomes a chore. But now that I can't put all that much pressure on my ankle without it hurting, I know that I shouldn't go for a run, but really want to.

Things I've learnt since my last blog entry:

1. There's a reason why people don't do cross-country races in dresses and fishnets. Neither very good for running in when muddy.

2. Dean Macey and Dean Gaffney are two different people (my friends are starting to get irked by how little I know about popular culture).

3. Barbecued python isn't great.

Always be a Town in my Eyes

So the football team is no longer a misnomer, it now is Chelmsford City.

Whoop.

But hang on a minute, something doesn't sit quite right. Doesn't this increase in the number of cities there are devalue city status, more than it bigs up bland, suburban nowhereville?

Chelmsford, like Preston before it, is a town. No two ways about it. It's a medium-sized market town with a small, ill-equipped centre, acting as a commuter base for a nearby metropolis. That's not something to be celebrated. It's like putting an ornamental nameplate on a garden shed, it just serves to make ornamental name plates seem tacky.

Pleasant? Yes. Safe? Yes. Somewhere you would want to raise a family? Undoubtedly. A City? Nope. Not a chance. I appreciate that Chelmsford is marginally more city-esque than some of the other "cities", St Asaph and St David's spring to mind, but that doesn't justify anything, except maybe that we've already got too many cities. If I had my way I would reduce it to a manageable number - ten maybe - and only include cities that are actually cities: big urban areas where things happen.

Obviously if you're not from Chelmsford and try to say it doesn't deserve city status then you are categorically wrong, it does - it's got a Cathedral,a Crown Court, a Prison, a University and a whole heap of history - but it's my prerogative to slate my hometown. Illogical, but fact. So there.

Till the End

Lately I've been getting annoyed with till receipts. I just seem to end up with so many of them balled up in coat pockets / tucked inside my wallet. Surely in an increasingly green world there is no need for a small piece of paper to exist saying that when I bought a pint of milk I received 6p change. It's littering my person.

Speaking of littering. Virgin Media seem to be doing their best to litter inside of my house, they seem to send me at least one offer of cable tv a month, normally more. Not sure how many they need to send before it counts as fly-tipping or harassment. I'm going to do my best never to buy another Virgin product.

In other news, I went to the theatre last night - Bingo with Professor X. Didn't really get the play, it was a bit too, erm, cerebral for me (given how excited I am about the Hunger Games at the moment, that's not saying much - incidentally, did you read Gary Ross's splendid denial of how much HG is like Battle Royale? Quote "I promise you, the main character in Battle Royale didn't end up in a revolution and become a Joan of Arc leading an uprising." I'm not sure I like how casually this man breaks his promises). Highlight for definite was the older lady in front of me falling asleep then waking herself up by projectile vomiting on the row in front. The chunky arc looked beautiful in the theatrical lighting.

Concrete Jungle That Dreams Are Made Of

New York, New York - so good they named it twice. Only one thing to do with that kind of hype - a one-day smash-and-grab of Philadelphia. In your face you over-sized, pomacious metropolis.

Philadelphian highlight? Was it the Liberty Bell? Was it the birthplace of America? Of course not, down in the boho ghetto a crazy man has turned his house into a mosaic - Philadelphia Magic Garden, down on South Street - and whilst you're down on South Street you can get yourself a Philly cheesesteak. Or not bother, because it's just a hard to eat sandwich. Overrated.

Speaking of which, one of the big things I was aiming at whilst in the States was to eat as many of the local dishes as was viable. So here goes the Traveller Cliche guide to the cuisine of Louisiana - remember I eat these things so you don't have to:

Biscuits and Gravy
Biscuits and gravy? Get right in my face you. Oh no, wait, you're not what I was expecting at all - you're flavourless bits of dough in a boring white sauce. How mundane? I was expecting chocolate hobnobs in beefstock - at least that would've provoked a reaction of more than an ambivalent shrug.

Crawfish Etoufee
What is the fuss about. People go crazy for this and I don't understand. It's not unpleasant - well the taste isn't unpleasant, the smells fairly bad and the texture / look reminds you just how crawfish live - but it's not something I'd go voodoo for.

Grits
Feels a bit like you're eating an ants' nest. Taste's alright though.

Gumbo
Watered-down curry.

Shrimp Po'boy
Right, shrimp bo-boy sounds really quite exotic whereas a scampi sandwich sounds a bit Kerri Katona. They're the same thing.

Oysters
If you deep-fry stuff in breadcrumbs it tastes of chicken - why would you do that to the poor little oysters?

Jambalaya
Jambalaya=good

Fat Tuesday

I don't get Mardi Gras.

Actually, that's not true. I completely get Fat Tuesday itself - a day of indulgence where everyone wears fancy dress and gets so drunk that they can't stand up and uses the parade as their preferred method of transport (got to get to Rampart and Dumaine? Gonna need at least a trombone for that kind of journey).

What I don't get are the proper parades. What we'd call carnivals. You stand in the cold for up to twelve hours at a time, whilst people on lorries throw stuff at you. A drive-by beading if you will. And people seem to take the accumulation of beads seriously - the locals all go out with step ladders and massive beachbags to put the beads in. I just don't get it in anyway - and it goes on for five days. Five days of people throwing tacky plastic beads at your face. Five days.

Me? I lasted about twenty minutes.

The Big Easy

So, I made it to New Orleans.

New Orleans is just about everything I expected it to be - a hotchpotch of old houses and spicy food. The whole city is limbering up for the big one, which makes the whole place seem a bit more, erm, Jersey Shore than I was expecting (for the record, I'm not really sure what Jersey Shore is, but I imagine it to be a lot like Bourbon Street is at the moment. i.e. A lot of drunk Americans whooping - if Jersey Shore isn't like that, then please imagine I used the word frat party instead).

Weirdest thing I've eaten since I've been here - 'gator jerky.

What happened there then?

Funny how things turn out. Originally I tried to book this trip via Chicago but it was going to be really expensive, so I didn't bother. Now, due to a series of clerical errors by United Airlines I appear to be getting paid to be in Chicago. Which is nice.

I've already had a cheeky smash and grab just been up the Willis (nee Sears) Tower - it's impressively full of pro-Willis Tower propaganda - I was reliably informed that it was the tallest building in the Northern Hemisphere by one of the attendants. Maybe she's trapped in 1986?

Seen Anish Kapoor's shiny bean thing too - now that was ace. I might even post a photo of that.

Chicago's been my third city in three days. Yesterday I had a cheeky smash and grab of Baltimore, wandered around for the day pretending to be Stringer Bell. Ate crab cakes in Lexington Market - they were as good as the hype.

One of the downsides of this predicaent is that my bag is a couple of thousand miles away, which means I need to get me some clean pants. I'm on a road called the Magnificent Mile - there's a Tiffany and a Gucci opposite - I'm not sure I'm in the best place, wish me luck...

A Washington Post

I can't convey quite how unreflective the reflecting pool was. I always thought it worked quite well in a double kind of way: it was made out of water so it physically reflected stuff; it was all peaceful so allowed you to do some metaphorical reflecting. It was nether. It had been drained and was being dug up. There was a lot of plant there. And to add to the noise, there was a fleet of helicopters shipping dignatories in to the White House.

Apart from that Washington had a very impressive world-famous-stuff-what-I-saw to photos-what-I-took ratio. I saw loads of really famous stuff off the telly - The Capitol; the White House; the Lincoln Memorial; the Washington Monument - and didnn't take photos of any of it.

Dystopia

Shoe shopping is one of my least favourite things. I can't think of many worse examples of style over convenience. The shoes are almost always laced up so that you can't tighten them and inevitably there'll only be one available so that you're at the mercy of an over-worked sixteen-year-old running her legs into nubs. Angers me. Still, I faced it today. Hopefully that will see me through another five years or so.

Lately I seem to have been reading a whole heap of dystopian teen fiction, apparently it's the hip new thing. Here's some words about some of them:

Hunger Games
Yes it's almost a straight rip off of Battle Royal. Yes it's about a teenage love triangle. Yes it's obvious. Yes the third one stretches the suspension of disbelief so far past snapping point as to be laughable. Yes the film is about to come out and smear my expectations against a massive hunk of disappointment (Prince Harry as Cato? Really?). But if you can think of a more enjoyable book I will fight you and I will prevail because I will have right on my side.

Wither
Yes it's almost a straight rip off of the Handmaids Tale. Yes it's about a teenage love triangle (well pentagon). Yes it's obvious. Yes it's only the first part of a trilogy and the next two could very easily be rubbish, but I for one am going to find out how good they are as fast as I possibly can - which will probably be about eighteen months - come on Lauren de Stefano get back to your writing.

Pure (no not that one what's been in the news, the Julianna Baggott one - incidentally, if you google Pure Julianna you get someone trying to sell you pigs)
Well hello, Pure. I was told that you were going to be teen fiction, but you appear to be rather more literary than that. You're like a book for grown ups that just happens to have sixteen-year-olds as the main characters. You're also mighty twisted, with your deformed lead characters and your brutal, brutal world. You know, Pure, I think that we could be friends.

I'm too ______ for Milan

It was only when I went to buy a paper this morning and saw the dregs of humanity that had managed to make One stop that I truly realised how stylish everyone, that's EVERYONE, in Milan looked. There was no one who looked like they'd just stumbled out of bed and landed in something resembling the outside. Everyone was tailored up to their eyebrows.

I liked Milan 'though. It's dismissal as an industrial hellhole seems somewhat unjustified. I guess when you're comparing it to VeniceFlorenceRome it comes out short, but it seems to be a proper place, rather than the upper-middle-class Disneyland of the big three.

Pleasantly surprised.

Bags of Belgravia

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London, I'll show you something to make you change your mind. Bags of poo. That's what I'll show you. Loads of them. All over Belgravia. You know what this means, don't you?

Dogs have got opposable thumbs? Nope. Initially I thought that it was semi-polite dog-bothering cretins that were too lazy to find any kind of formal, respectable receptacle. But that doesn't make sense. I mean, what kind of demi-human trollboy takes a plastic bag to clean up after a dog then leaves said bag festering on the side of the road? Surely no one.

Which means people in that end of London must have got so posh that they are refusing to have toilets in their houses. It's the only logical explanation. Word of advice, if you're in West London and you see a man in a top hat carrying a small M&S sandwich bag do not accept the offer of a sweetie.

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In other news, during karaoke the other night I got told that 'at points the noises coming out of your mouth were indistinguishable from real singing'. This is the highest singing praise I've ever received. Unless you count the guy who asked if I was a professional - which I don't because he was clearly an idiot.