Year End Charts

Okay, so this might be controversial but I'm pretty sure that there've been no good albums out this year. Been scoruing (that was supposed to be scouring, but somehow scoruing seems to sound more thorough) those year end charts, thinking that there must be something tucked away somewhere; somewhere, I dunno, in the early-twenties of the Piccadilly Records chart. But no.  That's not to say that everything (in the early twenties of the Piccadilly Records chart) was bad. Pale Green Ghosts was good, but not as good as Queen of Denmark. Push the Sky Away was good but not as good as Abattoir Blues.  Basically I've become a grumpy old man and have spent the year moaning that nothing sounds fresh anymore.

Even the best new thing I've heard this year isn't fresh. Turns out that the Horse Head song was doing the rounds as long ago as 2009.  That's nearly half a decade ago. To be fair I wasn't paying all that much attention to Youtube in 2009, as longterm readers (both of you) will know (if you missed 2009, here's a recap). 

So, aside from out-of-date (but ace) antifolk, what else have I enjoyed? Theatre. I've been to the theatre a lot.  If you count stand up too (it's on a stage. Sometimes) it must be the other side of fifty times. Which is obscene by any standards.

Disappointments:
When A Star Danced - amdram at its most amateur; very much not the incisive comedy that the flier had led me to believe.
Beard Envy - bad enough to put anything that wasn't great at Edinburgh into context.
King Lear at the Globe - I should have loved this.  I didn't.
Hot House - I don't get Pinter.  By no means in the bottom five of things I saw this year, but something that I had way, way too high expectations for.
Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic - The best thing about it was that it was almost an hour shorter than the last time I saw MAAN.

Particular Applauses:
Sophia Blackwell - okay, so it was performance poetry, but it counts because it's my list.  So there.
Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time - not having the balcony collapse on me is pretty celebration-worth.  Confetti.
Book of Mormon - A lot of fun, but probably not as funny as...
Peter Pan Goes Wrong - A late contender. I went to this with trepidation and have since hyped it to everyone.  Everyone. Which means no one is going to enjoy it as much as I did.  But hey.  It's still on.  Go and get tickets.
Chimerica - I don't think I could do justice to this.  If you saw it you know how good it was. If you didn't then you probably missed out.
 

All boys, except one, grow up

Have you been to the Pleasance? The London one? I've been to both the Dome and the Courtyard in Edinburgh but had never been to the London one. It said it was in Islington. In my head I'd be skipping there from Angel passing sun blushed olive stalls like the middle class fool I am. Not quite how it worked out. Turns out it's on an industrial estate by a prison. Not a smoothie bar to be seen.

Saw a farce -Peter Pan goes wrong. Now I generally avoid farces. The two that I've seen in recent years (Noises Off and ...Guvnors) were both ridiculously hyped and I don't really remember laughing. Maybe a noisy smile but nothing more.

PPGW made me absolutely hoot. Really wasn't expecting it, but there were belly laughs, tears, at one point I even found myself pointing. Most unbecoming.

Christmas. Yay.

Christmas is here, in all its baubled glory. At the risk of coming across a bit grinch, there's not that much I like about Christmas. I find both giving and receiving presents a bit uncomfortable. Is that normal?

I've been to Bristol since I last wrote. I quite like Bristol. It's somewhere I've been quite a lot but never really explored. Solved that now. And went to my first ever closed door bar. Box ticked.

I've finally got round to watching Winter's Bone. It is exactly a prequel to the Hunger Games. Well, maybe not exactly but if you replace 'mine explosion' with 'crystal meth' then you really won't be far off. Turns out rural Arkansas looks a lot like District 12.

I had a dream last night where I dropped my gloves and hermit crabs moved in and no one would let me take them out because they looked cute in their knitted caravans, so I had cold fingers. Does that mean anything?

Celebrity Love Island, North Korean-style

The Catching Fire film is out. And I enjoyed it quite a lot, thank you very much. But I will say, it just hasn't inspired me to get involved in a televised fight to the death anywhere near as much as Pitch Perfect has made me want to get involved in a capella riff offs. 

Frankly I reckon I'd be brilliant. Other than I'm not part of an a capella group. And can't hold a tune. And that the chances of anyone else knowing any of the elitist, esoteric songs that I know well enough to harmonise are close to zero. Although a barbershop version of Bingo would be truly beautiful.

Febreezing the Little Mermaid

Just got back from Copenhagen and my clothes stink. Spent last night in a series of dive bars in Chistianshavm, which were a lot cheaper than the bars in the city centre, but also a lot less aerated. Now all of my clothes smell of stale tobacco. Guess that they always used to smell like this after a night out, I'm guessing that without the smoking ban I'd've spent a whole heap more on Febreeze.


Copenhagen was cool, despite the clothing situation. Ate a lot of pastries and pig products, drank bad lager, went to Tivoli Gardens. Well weekend.

I tell you somewhere else I went this week.  Margate.  Never been before, so that's an actual box tick. Mainly went to see From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes; I appreciate that it's ridiculous going to a faded seaside town in November just because of a tongue in cheek piece of modern art, but I'm comfortable with that.

Rosencreantz and Guildenstern are Alive and Well

I saw Hamlet the other day.  It's really clever.  They took one of the minor characters from Stoppard's Rosencreantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and show the action from his point of view.  They built a whole back story around him and everything.  It even uses some of Stoppard's original speeches.  Really clever...

A Walk on the Wild Side...

I left you in Fort William, having just come off a mountain, quite a lot seems to have happened since then...

Headed back south via a night and a day in Glasgow.  Got well and truly Rennie Mackintoshed.  Didn't get stopped from getting home by a storm, which was nice. Didn't get too affected by the storm at all; a few trees interrupting my cycle into work, and some power lines in a river.  Standard. 

Here's a confession, I didn't see Jerusalem. I missed it both times. Boo. So Mojo was my first Jez Butterworth play. I enjoyed it - the acting was immense as you'd expect from that cast - but I'm not certain that I got it. 

And Lou Reed died. Everywhere has been chock full of tributes and whatever I say (as a British Gen X-er who didn't form a band after peeling slowly and seeing) really won't amount to much, but you know... 

 

Bagging Munros

Crikey we did some walking in the Mamores today - scrambled up some mountains that sound like Arabian hotels (Sgurr a Mhaim - that's not a real name) and went over the Devil's Ridge. There was snow, there was wind, there was rain, there were bogs, there were scree slopes. Felt like proper adventures.

Bagged three of those Munros (Sgurr a Mhaim, Stob Ban and Mullach nan Coirean) and three further Munro Tops (kind of like a lager top, but with more mountain - Stob a Choire Mhail, Sgorr a Iubhar and one without a name), which seems like a respectable day's haul.

Yesterday was a bit of a write off. The weather was grim, so we kept it low level. Went to Glen Coe. Kinda pretty, but guessing the rain didn't do it justice.

We're staying in the middle of nowhere, out of season, so there's not too much to do in the evenings. We've mainly been playing trivial pursuit. Unfortunately the pack is from 1988, which makes the entertainment and (recent) history questions pretty tough, and renders about 10% of the geography questions obsolete. Also there's a surprising amount of answers that are just wrong. When I was little I'd thought that the people that wrote trivial pursuit questions must be the cleverest people in the world, turns out they're not.

Big Ben

Ben Nevis: box ticked.

I'm not going to lie, I'm not in that much hurry to do it again. The last 45 minutes before you get to the summit were above the cloud line, which means a. It was pretty cold and b. All you could see were outlines looming out of the mist. Well bleak. It would be a half decent setting for a horror film.

There's quite a lot of warnings about taking the mountain seriously. We'd taken all of these at face value, assuming that they were many for us. With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect they weren't. I suspect that they were aimed at the girl in shorts, or maybe the man with two young children who'll almost certainly be descending in the dark, which will be exhilarating.

Still, box ticked.

Highland Fling

I'm up in the Highlands, doing the walking thing. It's taken me far longer than it should to get here - in terms of history, rather than your actual travel time (although we did have a goose-induced - ingoosed? - aborted landing, which added a bit to the travelling), walking in the Andes and the Himalayas before the Highlands is somewhat disgusting.

Completed day one - a jaunt round Glen Nevis. It was supposed to be a gentle warm up but I feel a bit broken. Hmmm. Gonna be aching by the weekend.

We're staying just outside Fort William. Turns out that the town is a bit less pretty than the surrounding countryside. That is an understatement.

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be

So Betrayal is Pinter's most accessible play? I can sort of see why - it's witty and bubbly and kinda fun and the version I saw was (#accidentalpalindrome) well acted and on a decent set, but - and I'm not sure how to put this that doesn't make me sound like a Philistine - the story's a bit rubbish. If it had gone forward rather than backward it would just be a hackneyed subplot of a mediocre soap opera. Overrated.

Also saw David Walliams in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It takes some doing to make a Shakespeare character seem like it had come out of a Little Britain sketch but turns out it's achievable. This was my second AMND of the year: I preferred the other one.

Have I seen too many plays this year?  So many that I've just become even more of a cynic (I didn't even bother reporting back on that turgid Much Ado that I saw a couple of months back, by not committing it to pixels I'd hoped that I could erase it, turns out it's lingering on in the back of my brain, being my go to reference for anything boring or bad). Or after seeing Chimerica is everything else just not up to scratch?

In other news, I recently went up that Shard thing. I liked it, although it was expensive.  Hadn't realised quite how much of London was made up of train track.

Tonight was possibly the last time that the original line up of Quiz Team Aguilera will be doing the White Horse Quiz. Been doing it most weeks for the last eighteen months, but now a quarter of the team is due to eject a baby from their womb, which is going to hinder quiz participation somewhat. We won (which hasn't happened all that often) which is quite a nice way to bow out...

Don't Mockingjay me, Higson

Bloomin' love teen fiction.

I've been reading The Dead.  I read it in the wrong order; I read book 2 first, then 3 and 4.  Just finished 1 this morning - turns out it's not too bad an order to read them in.  Maybe 2,3,1,4 would have been better.  All I know is that I've bought wholesale into this universe that's been created, I can't think of a (series of) book(s) where I've cared as much about so many of the characters (Not Pure, It comes close, but I think I read the first two too far apart - although to say I'm not a bit excited about Burn would be a lie. Not HG, wildly addictive story but all the characters are idiots. Potter at a push? His Dark Materials maybe? Stuff I read decades ago like LotR and Narnia? Nope, I'm all out) and I'm itching to see what happens next.

Fortunately, The Fallen came out this week, I think it's going to follow from where Book 1 left off. I'd say I can't remember the last time I was this excited about a book, but I can, to the day, 24th August 2010. You better not be Mockingjaying me, Higson...

Tiananmen Squeg

Just seen Chimerica.  Now that was something that's been hyped to tipping point in just about any publication that can hype stuff. And you know what.  The hype was right. I won't write too many words, as there's a heap of people that actually know what they're talking about that have written informed bobbins about it.

I'll just say: you should probably go and see it.

Keep it Carbohydrate

The Doughnut Dash.  Five kilometres; five doughnuts.  I like running I like eating - I'm reasonably adept at both  Sounded like a hoot.

It wasn't.

They used iced doughnuts.  That wasn't in the small print: I was expecting sugary rings not jammy clown faces. I reckon I just about scraped the top ten - it was almost as though any actually good runners were worried about what that amount of carbohydrate would do to their fitness regime.  Turns out it will make you buzz for about three hours, then fall asleep.

In other news I saw Darth Vader in Much Ado About Nothing.  Didn't make the play less boring.  Yawn.

Lingonberry Jam

Who goes to Finland for a holiday?

I started in Tampere (pronounced as in 'What's she gonna look like with a chimney on her').  Now it's the second city and I'd heard that it was a bit industrial.  And yes, you could see three industrial chimneys whilst standing in the town square but if you walk for about ten minutes then this is the view.  Ridiculous.  That's not industrial, that's lakes and trees and sky and clouds and not a fat lot else.

I snuck down to Helsinki for a night. Now there's one of those cities that I had pretty clear visions in my head of how it was going to look / be before I got there. Obviously I was wrong, it wasn't the edgy cool that I had in my head, although there were a lot of soviet straight lines. The city itself varies wildly between being a proper buzzy metropolis and a tiny fishing village, sort of epitomised by the town square being on the harbourfront and used as a berry market.  For the record, all markets should be berry markets - normally I avoid them because they're chock full of idiots, this one I just wandered around salivating.

Talking of salivating, I didn't go to Finland expecting culinary delights but I did inadvertently stumble on two. The first, reindeer, was a whole new meat for my tickboxiness, the second, mustamakkara, was like an especially juicy blackpudding.  Both were made ace by lashings and lashings of lingonberry jam.

Four Star Review

Well that's one of the biggies ticked off my bucket list.  The Edinburgh Fringe, finally.  How's it taken thirty something years to get that one off the list?  How comes that's after Rio Carnival and New Orleans Mardi Gras?  It doesn't make sense. I've got mates that go regularly.  Mates that have performed there. It's on this island.

Anyway.  Done now. Let's move on.

I had been to Edinburgh before, but hadn't seen much of it.  My only real memory of it was that it smelt of corned beef (it still does); so I interspersed my fringing with a soupçon of exploration. Now, whilst I'm new to this Fringe malarkey something that I do know is that it doesn't need any more reviews, there's so many that it distorts everything and you have no idea whether or not something is good.  I'm going to try not to present any opinions and merely (selfindulgently) give you a rundown of my diary, so you can recreate it in the comfort of your own home using Youtube, irnbru, a treadmeal, a deep-fried pizza, and maybe a tramp urinating in front of you whilst you sunbathe, if you happen to have one.

Wednesday:
Limbo Sketch Comedy: Fisting for Biscuits
The Men Who Stare at Jokes

Thursday:
Barry at Arthur's Seat
We've Become Mango
Blam! - someone jumped an office chair over a table, did not know that that was possible.
I'm Sorry I Haven't Haiku - the western world's first haiku based panel show
Rubberbandits

Friday:
Candyfloss and Barbed Wire
Mitch Benn
David Mills
Sophia Blackwell - who, for the record, was amazing
Beard Envy - who very much weren't
Scroobius Pip
Bo Burnham

Saturday:
Short and Swede
[insert weeing tramp here, ideally on the roof of a shopping mall accompanied by a pooing dog]
Ross vs Violich
John Kearns - this was a free show - I'm guessing it won't be free next year.  Well zeitgeist.
Andrew Maxwell
The Boy With Tape on His Face

Standon Delivers

It's festival season.  Whoop. Just got back from Standon Calling, I'm pretty brand loyal to Standon even though they keep spurning us in the fancy dress competition.

One of my favourite things at a festival is seeing bands play ridiculous covers.  Top 3 Standon Calling 2013 covers:
3. Bastille: Corona - Rhythm of the Night
2. Alunageorge: Montell Jordan - This is How We Do It
1. Gideon Conn: Outkast - Ms Jackson

Best thing I saw this weekend tho was Erin K's song about a horse head, can't remember the last time a song  stuck with me so much on one listen.

The List Gets Longer...

A Field in England - yet another thing that's critically acclaimed that I just can't even pretend to get.  It was flashy and gory, which I liked but I'm not sure I can say much more. Hmmm.

Lately there seems to be a lot of things that I'm adding to the list. Am I dumbing down?  Maybe.  It just seemed to me to be the kind of film that's played in a dark room in the corner of an art gallery: if that's where I'd seen it I wouldn't've lasted two minutes.

Next time I hear of it it will be top of all the films of 2013 lists...

One of the Main Ones

I saw my first Pinter play - Pinter's one of the main ones right? I didn't get it.  It was the Hothouse - The John Simm / Simon Russell Beale one, so about as high quality as a cast gets - didn't get it. Didn't get the point of it, didn't really get the plot (although I think that that perhaps is the point of it), didn't like any of the characters.  Can someone explain it please?  Or should I have just started with the Birthday Party, rather than being lured in by a starry, starry cast?

What I did get was the final part in the Cornetto Trilogy:  Three Colours Mint or whatever it's called.  There'll be reviews all over everywhere for it this weekend so I'll just say it was a lot of fun and leave it at that.

Talking of films, just seen the trailer for Ender's Game. I'm currently reading the novel. It's actual proper sci-fi. Not certain I've ever actually read proper deep space science fiction before (I tried - lots of people seem to rate William Gibson, Philip K Dick and Iain M Banks, didn't get more than 30 pages into any of them before I dismissed them), I was pretty embarrassed about reading it with its planets on the cover - had to hide it inside a copy of Fifty Shades - but I'm quite enjoying it and looking forward to the Hollywoodisation of it.  Guessing it will be a 12a, everything's a 12a nowadays, all the gritty edges taken off films so that the Man can sell more tickets. Boo.  Still holding out for an 18 cert for Catching Fire, think I might be out of luck.  Sadface.  

All My Basques in One Exit

I've just been to the Basque Country.  I tried blogging whilst I was away but my technical ineptness left me floundering so I spent my time drinking Rioja and eating pintxos instead.  So guess I'm just going to have to chat about rioja and pintxos:

We tried to get to La Rioja but made the mistake of trying to go from San Sebastian, a place which just isn't designed for the budget traveller.  Someone there thought that 245 Euros was an acceptable amount for a day trip to three vineyards. For the record it isn't. Not when the wine itself averages about 3 Euros a bottle and there were vineyards within walking distance of Zarautz, where we were staying for the bulk of the week. The vineyards were Tzakoli, a quasi-fizzy white wine, rather than tasty tasty Rioja, but they had pretty good views and enough grapes to tick a box. For the record, when we got to Bilbao we found a Rioja tour for 20 Euros, so if you're in the region...

Do you know what pintxos are? They're the mid-point between tapas and meals and just hang out at the bar all day, waiting to be munched.  When we first arrived they seemed like the greatest invention ever; by the end of the week the novelty had warn off somewhat.  Man cannot live on jamon Iberica alone.


So yeah, we based ourselves in Zarautz and bobbed along the Basque coast to a scattering of places (Deba, Getaria even San Sebastian) which, whilst superficially touristy, seemed off the Brits abroad radar.  We topped and tailed the trip in Bilbao and Guggenheimed it right up; Bilbao's a city that's better in the sun - I'll tell you that for free.
 

Ten things I hate about Hume

So continuing the theme of not getting stuff that I feel I should, I don't get Gary Hume. Never have done.  I just don't understand why he's rated.  And I feel bad about it, on the whole I like modern art.  There's some of it I don't like, but "get" - like Lichtenstein - and there's some that I "get" for all the wrong reasons - that jumping pixie video in Tate Modern.  But it's quite rare that there's a big name artist that I just don't see any merit in at all. Please can someone explain it to me (and whilst you're at it, please can you explain Cy Twombly too).

Something else I don't get is the second half of Taming of the Shrew.  Now the first half is Ten Things I Hate About You, which is thoroughly enjoyable; but I can't help but feel that the casual misogyny of the second half dates it somewhat.

And also, support your local giraffe hunt.

Belgian Waffle

Amsterdam: city of sin and stag parties. I went to the Rijkmuseum - well "Lad".  It had just been refurbished after however long and I figured it was one of the big ones to tick off.  And yeah, the refurb is pretty good, the building is impressive and all the rooms seem all light and airy, the downside of the new, light, airy rooms is that it completely emphasises how brown ALL Dutch art is.  So. Very. Drab. All of it.  

Mainly though, I went to Antwerp. Which may just be the coolest city I've ever been to.  That is if you count "cool" by how many art galleries and cheese shops somewhere has, which I do. Seriously, so many art galleries. Maybe 1 in 5 buildings, until you get to the artist district, by which time it's 2 in 3 - and the things that aren't art galleries are trying to be - clothes shops called Your with a sign in the window "We will rip you off"; basically an art gallery. It was a whole city of Chorlton.

Slight gripe: I feel like all I've eaten is chips, sorry frites.  Even going out in the evening my bucket of mussels came with chips (conversation: "Have you tried muscle sausage?" "Erm?" "Sausage, for your mussels." - he meant sauce - I didn't correct him). I feel somewhat starchy.

More Rained Against than Raining

I was going to call this "Paris When it Drizzles" - the wordplay pleased me - but it would be inaccurate, it didn't drizzle it was full on rain. Rain rain rain. The sort of rain that lets you know it's raining.  Still Paris was pretty good on the whole.  Didn't get to the Musee D'Orsay due to unnecessary queue lengths, and the general meandering was cut a bit short by the aforementioned inclement weather, but apart from that all pretty Parisien, which is no bad thing.

Continued by Peter Nichols fest by going to see A Day in the Death of Joe Egg over in Kingston.  How comes I've never been to Kingston before? It's both quaint and bustling at the same time.  Pleasantly impressed. Play wasn't bad either, nice mix of zany and borderline taboo edginess.

Whilst we're talking plays - and this will lose me some culture points - I didn't get King Lear.  For a play that's often lauded as being The Best Tragedy I just found it boring.  Does that make me a bad person?

Just checked out my blog stats - I'm trending in Malaysia and Indonesia right now.  Guess there's a Peter Nichols revival there too...

Peon Play

I've had quite a Nicholcentric week.

I went to see Peter Nichols' Passion Play.  Enjoyed it but didn't love it.  Not certain that was because the first half is a lot better than the second half or because I was surrounded by cretins who spent the bulk of the play whispering.  Obviously being English I didn't tell them to keep the noise down - that would be far too easy, I just stewed on it for a few days before referring to them as "peons" in a blog that they won't see.

I saw Phil Nichol accidentally.  I'd mainly gone to see Dan Antopolski supporting; he was on first and crashed and burned: always a bit painful to see a comedian die on stage, especially if it's someone who's stuff you like. Not sure what I made of Phil Nichol.  I'm fairly certain that none of his jokes were actually funny - it was all fairly obvious lowest-common-denominator stuff - but he sold everything with such conviction that us peons lapped it up.

Support Your Local Comedy Festival

It's been the Colchester Comedy Festival - hooray - but it took me a bit too long to get into it - boo. They had a pretty good line up, but a mixture of other commitments and laziness meant that I didn't get there until Richard Herring, a few days before the end.

I went along to that there New Comedian of the Year competition - one of the heats and the final.  It was in the old bus station waiting room, which had been turned into a rather tasty little venue.  I don't remember it being half as nice when it was an actual bus station. Toilets were a bit weird, with everyone relying on a radar key tied to a walking stick; queues a plenty.

Congrats to Ben Clover, a most worthy winner, not least because he did a different set in the final to the heats. Feel I should drop mentions at Ed Hedges and maybe Mark Sidcox whose party popper joke was one of the funniest things I've heard in ages.

Aswan

I like Aswan.  It's a bit more chilled out than either Cairo or Luxor.  By which I mean there's a lot less dudes with guns, which is quite a relief.  i get the feeling I'm not great for Africa. Aside from a couple of weekends in Morocco I've had three proper holidays in Africa; the main destinations of the first two - Zimbabwe and Mali - went absolutely nuts as soon as I left and this Egypt place seems to be absolutely on a knife edge.

Went to the temple of Philae (the one on the island).  Now don't get me wrong, all these temples are proper old (this one's a comparative baby dating back only to Roman times; but all the biggies date back to 1400BC, except the pyramids which add an extra millennium and a bit to that) and it's amazing that they managed to do what they did, and even more so that it's lasted so long but they do get a bit samey after a while, what with all these Pharoahs (that look the same) giving gifts to all these gods (that look essentially the same as the Pharoahs, give or take the odd animal head).

I feel a little bit hieroglyphicked out...

Exit Through The Crocodile Museum

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I didn't realise that Luxor Museum was in Luxor - I've seen pics of it. I assumed it was hewn out of a cliff - it's not. It's bang in the town centre.  Still wherever it is, it's a pretty good place to spy some sphinxes.  Between there and Karnack there is pretty much loads of them.

Saw that Valley of the Kings place too, whilst I was in Luxor.  Didn't get to go ballooning, apparently they're looking into the safety aspect.  Big fat boo.

Currently cruising the Nile. The boat goes from Luxor to Aswan, via two other temples which, whilst plenty temple-y, don't have the big name cache of, say, Valley of the Kings.  So they've tried to do something a bit different to make it memorable. In Edfu (formerly Apollopolis which is a lot more fun to say) they've made it so that the only way to travel is by horse and cart. In Kom Ombo (fun to say as it is) they found a heap of mummified crocodiles dedicated to the local crocodile god, consequently you exit through a crocodile museum, which makes a change from a giftshop.

Pharoah 'Nuff

So Cairo, biggest city in Africa; one of the biggest cities in the world.  And it looks big, anytime you get up above the building line the barrage of ugly, beige, half-built blocks stretches further than you can see. After the bigness - in fact, well before the bigness - you notice that the temperature here is a whole heap more balmy than that sub zero nonsense back in Blighty.  It's just about the first time I could classify the ambient temperature as "not cold" since leaving Latin America last year.

Cairo is pretty much empty of tourists at the moment due to the old civil unrest thing.  Not certain whether this (the emptiness) is good or bad. On the plus side you do get the big sights - like King Tut's mask - almost to yourself; conversely the millions of people that rely on tourism are all trying to sell you a statue of a cat anytime you do anything.

So yeah, been doing the cliches. Perhaps not in the order we intended, again due to politics (FYI avoid "the Garden City district on a Saturday" is a bit like saying avoid the Trafalgar Square area, it takes a bit of a dent out of the 'stuff what you can see').

Saw the museum and the Tutankhamun stuff. Not meaning to belittle him, but he wasn't one of the big Pharoahs, what with dying when he was still a kid, and if his tomb was so chock full of trinkets the important Pharoahs - your Ramses and whoever - must have been, well, quite shiny.

Staying in Giza, so can see the Pyramids from the roof, which is a bit surreal. Just been out there for a spot of Sphinx watching. Only saw one, poor show.

Haven't You Been There Before?

So Egypt.  That's one of the biggies, right?  With its sphinxes and pyramids and deserts and camels. I guess it's understandable that everyone assumes I've been there - it's Africa 1.0: the bit that everyone knows about; the bit with the resorts and the Wonders of the World.

But I've not been before. Time to pack some Immodium, get a typhoid booster, check the FCO website and see what all the fuss is about.

To Cairo...

The Oyster is Your World

So in the last week I've finally got round to doing some of the things that people have been raving about for ages but I've either not got round to doing or been blissfully unaware of.  Here are three of them:

Mersea Island Oysters
Essex strives to be derivative.  We really don't have anything which is truly ours - one of the things that we do have is oysters and the best place to go to eat them are the oyster shacks on Mersea Island. They had common-or-garden rock oysters there, as well as the Blackwater oyster - which is the proper local delicacy.  I Pepsi challenged them - I preferred the rock oyster - presumably because I'm a pleb.

David Thorne
Not certain what I've been doing thats meant I've been oblivious to David Thorne until now. His 27b/6 website is proper funny.  At least two of his emails made me lol my face open way harder than that Book of Mormon thing did.

The Fault in Our Stars
I've been meaning to read this for a while.  Crikey it's hardcore, it made Looking for Alaska seem as emotionally charged as a knock knock joke. Had one slight downside, more to its juxtaposition with me watching Breaking Bad (something else which really should be mentioned on this page, but I can't help but think that writing any commentary at all on Breaking Bad is a waste of your eyeball juice), namely any slight niggle I've had this weekend I've assumed is cancer.  It's clearly not - all evidence points to an old running injury, a stitch and a 24 hour sickness bug, but turns out I can be somewhat suggestible.

Tired of Sal Tlay Ka Siti? Tired of Life...

Just had the sort of weekend (well 27 hour window) that you can only have in London - absolutely jam packed.  Let's do this chronologically:

Peter and Alice: Dame Judy Dench and Pingu from nathanbarley in a play about the real Peter Pan meeting the real Alice in Wonderland. Sounds bloomin' ace.  Hadn't really looked into it (much like when I went to see Bingo last year and was expecting a comedy about a clown); let's just say it was gloomier than I expected and move on.

Kangaroo burgers at Borough Market.

Old Operating Theatre: I'd never been before - I'd seen it in lists of quirky things you should do, but never bothered to find out where it was.  Happened across it and there was little chance I was walking past.  Just bobbed in for a cheeky amputation, as one does on a Saturday afternoon.

Rose theatre: Now the ignorance is pouring out.  I didn't realise that the Rose Theatre was an actual thing.  I knew it used to be a thing, but was blissfully unaware of its continued (sort of) thingness.

Maslenitsa. Nothing like celebrating the Russian Sun Festival on a grey and drizzly day.

Book of Mormon: I don't really need to say much about this as it's been hyped right up already.  The hype is entirely justified.  It is a lot of fun.

The Curious Incident of the Trains in the Night Time

I went to see that show about the dead dog.  Dead good it was.  The show, not the dog.  The dog was dead, so was a little bit past ethics.

What was less good, and therefore far more fun to talk about was the journey home.  The trains were an absolute joke.  An hour standing on the concourse at Liv St, followed by a scramble for the train on Platform 12, a half hour wait then a dash to platform ten.  It was two hours before we'd left the station - well pumpkin.

Something else that was rubbish was the Essex Book Festival event that I went to.  All publicity is good publicity (I say that as someone who's pretty stoked about the prospect of ballooning over Valley of the Kings - didn't even know that was a thing until 2 weeks ago...), so I'm not naming names, suffice to say your man wasn't a raconteur.  Or someone who knew about the book that he had allegedly written. So, Essex Book Festival, you had a chance.  You blew it.

Game over.

Confetti.

If the band are divided

Support your local live music venue.

I heartily applaud Evoke's attempts to become a credible venue for live music. Since the demise of the Army and Navy, and Club Y, and The Cave, and the Basement, and Barhouse, and hooga we could do with an actual venue in Chelmsford City and so far they've managed some pretty good names.

Now Sham69, they're a name.  Don't know a great deal about them - the words to If The Kids..., the chorus to Hurry Up Harry, and that's about it - now I know a tiny bit more.  It seems that there are two different Sham69s touring.  One which has most of the members of the 77-79 version and one which has none.  It turned out that the one that played in Chelmsford was basically a Sham69 tribute band. Feeling a little bit cheated...

City of Sausage

"Excuse me do you serve food?"

"I'm sorry, we only have sausages."

It's exchanges like this that means Frankfurt should be a dream destination, somewhere that only serves beer and sausages? It's even named after a type of sausage.  By anyone's reckoning that's a porky paradise. But, they didn't sell sausages, they sold wurst; I'm not 100% sure what the difference is but it's definitely there.  I think it's something to do with needing a run up with your fork to get through the skin.  But it could be to do with the day-glo colour. Either way it means that you can only eat a finite amount. Boo. By second dinner we'd had to leave the world of sausage and head for something with a more defined pork content, I feel like I'd let myself down.

And that's before we get on to currywurst. Adding bbq sauce and curry powder to a chopped-up, pre-cooked sausage isn't a 'thing', it's a way to use up leftovers before your student loan comes in.

As for the less-sausaged elements of the city, it was nice enough but a little bit soulless.  Sort of like if you go to the Square Mile  at the weekend.  Only with rubbish sausages.

An Honourable Man

Things that Chelmsford has now:
A pretty good museum.  There's always been a museum up in Oaklands Park (I say "always" I don't mean always "always" obviously), it never used to be all that - I remember the last time I went giggling at the coin exhibits as some were just rubbings.  Now it's been redone and it's proper good - I realise that I'm about a year out of time to write about that.

An African restaurant. It's called Lekki's and it's a pretty good alternative to going for a curry. Now I'm not averse to eating weird food, but word of caution, I'd advise against the cow tendons, just a little bit too knuckle-y for my delicate palate.

In the wider world (what, there are things beyond Chelmsford City limits?), I went to the Donmar to see the all-female Julius Caesar.  All the adverts had made it look Pussy Riot-inspired.  It wasn't.  Boo. Still it was pretty good, for the most part, if not quite the dizzy heights of last year's RSC version.