Monday, 30 December 2013
Year End Charts
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So, aside from out-of-date (but ace) antifolk, what else have I enjoyed?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.
Saturday, 28 December 2013
All boys, except one, grow up
Saturday, 14 December 2013
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?
Friday, 29 November 2013
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.
Sunday, 17 November 2013
Febreezing the Little Mermaid

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.
Friday, 8 November 2013
Rosencreantz and Guildenstern are Alive and Well
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
A Walk on the Wild Side...

Thursday, 24 October 2013
Bagging Munros
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.
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.
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Big Ben
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.
Still, box ticked.
Monday, 21 October 2013
Highland Fling
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.
Sunday, 13 October 2013
Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be
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...
Saturday, 21 September 2013
Don't Mockingjay me, Higson
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...
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Tiananmen Squeg
I'll just say: you should probably go and see it.
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
Keep it Carbohydrate
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.
Monday, 9 September 2013
Lingonberry Jam
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.
Sunday, 18 August 2013
Four Star Review
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
Monday, 5 August 2013
Standon Delivers
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.
Monday, 22 July 2013
The List Gets Longer...
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...
Saturday, 20 July 2013
One of the Main Ones
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.
Thursday, 4 July 2013
All My Basques in One Exit
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.
Sunday, 23 June 2013
Ten things I hate about Hume
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.
Monday, 27 May 2013
Belgian Waffle
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.
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
More Rained Against than Raining
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...
Sunday, 12 May 2013
Peon Play
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.
Monday, 29 April 2013
Support Your Local Comedy Festival
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.
Friday, 12 April 2013
Aswan
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...
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
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.
Sunday, 7 April 2013
Pharoah 'Nuff
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.
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.
Friday, 5 April 2013
Haven't You Been There Before?
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...
Monday, 1 April 2013
The Oyster is Your World
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.
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Tired of Sal Tlay Ka Siti? Tired of Life...
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.
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
The Curious Incident of the Trains in the Night Time
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.
Saturday, 2 March 2013
If the band are divided
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...
Monday, 4 February 2013
City of Sausage

"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.
Sunday, 20 January 2013
An Honourable Man
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.