The year of growing up

It's New Year's Eve and I'm in a dentist's waiting room. I broke my tooth on a particularly tenacious pork scratching on Christmas Eve. Turns out breaking a tooth on Christmas Eve puts a bit of a spanner in the mixed metaphor of drunken gluttony I had planned for the last week. Ho hum.

So 2018. That was a year. A whole heap of firsts, some of the real biggies: saw my first badger; moved in with a girlfriend for the first time; first dining in the dark; first family holiday as the adult; first Grand National; first mortgage; first jellyfish sting. Boom.

And the way I drink beer has changed. Turns out I'm a beer snob nowadays. The other week I had a Doom Bar which used to be my go to, but it now seems to taste of boring. So beer of the year? Realistically it's Magic Rock's Ba De Mole but that doesn't count as that's a real special occasion beer. Whilst I feel bad not mentioning House Party (or Pogo or Baladin's Open Amber or Inhaler or Dennis Hoppr or Clwb Tropicana or Even Sharks Need Water), the two beers that get a mention are Watson's Amarazaka which was unexpectedly brilliant (as are the whole Watson's range) and Hatherwood's Twisted Knots which is such good value that it just trumps everything else.

Theatre of the year? In a year when I didn't really see any theatre, it turns out I still saw quite a lot. A Very Very Very Dark Matter made a last ditch attempt, but it was always going to be a Hamilton year.

Music of the year? People have been saying how this has been a great year for music, but I've not been certain. The only new album I've really liked is the new Spiritualised, and that's mainly because it sounds like an album I really liked fifteen years ago.

Book of the year? I'd endorse any of the four from a couple of posts ago, but The Power might just take it - how 2017 of me?

Eye watering moment of the year? I think it's s about to begin. Wish me luck...

Winning at Christmas

Ooh, I had a really Christmassy weekend. That's a sentence that you wouldn't have got in this blog three years ago. But I did. I watched The Nutcracker, ate Christmas dinner street food (that's a roast dinner wrapped in Yorkshire pudding - how comes I've not eaten that before?) and dressed as Father Christmas.

And I won a race.

Yes, yes, yes. I know that those Santa Runs aren't supposed to be competitive, they're just a bit of fun. Yes, they're just a festive photo op; a spectacle of Father Christmasses. Yes, it should be all about raising money for charity. But you're just saying that because you didn't win. I did. It was a race and I won. In your face other Santas.

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To end on a less festive note, I'm still feeling sad about Pete Shelley.

Ten Years

Happy birthday blog. Ten today. Cripes. Ten years since I put up an irreverent nite as Traveller Cliche - a joke that only one of my friends would get - which is pretty far reaching given the ten years of posts since.

So ten years. There's been a whole lot of travelling in that time. And a whole lot of mini adventures. The posts have eased off a bit in recent months as I've tried my hand at adulting - guess that's what a decade does to you. I'm a bit rubbish at adulting, turns out I was far better at being a perpetual kid. Who would have thought?

And the adventures are still there. Had an adventure to Hampshire to watch Hellrunner this weekend (I was supposed to do it but had to bail at the nth hour due to falling apart - another down side of being ten years older than I was in 2008) then followed it up with some Sara Pascoe shaped comedy, which made for a mighty pleasant Saturday.

And it seems that I'm still reading enough. The last four books I've read have all been ace in very different ways:

The Survival Game - Nicky Singer. It's been a while since I read any post-apocalyptic YA fiction, this hit the spot.

Children of Blood and Bone - Tomi Adeyemi. Wasn't sure about the fantasy at the start but everyone loves an allegory. 

My Absolute Darling - Gabriel Tallent. A brutal book, wasn't easy going but crikey.

Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie. felt like I was a bit behind the curve with this one, but made me do a whole heap of thinking about things that I've never really thought about.

Southwold

I don't know, no blog action for a month and then a return to the Suffolk Coast. Boring.

Southwold. That's a place. A place I've been before but remember almost nothing about it - just fish and chips on the beach. Turns out it's the Waitrose of seaside resorts. Delis and galleries a-go-go and probably the most avant garde collection of slot machines I've ever seen.

We skittered along the coast doing smash and grabs of Suffolk Towns:

Aldeburgh - again sonewhere I'd been before but had even less memory of. Pebble beach.

Thorpe Ness - somewhere I'd heard of but definitely could not gave pointed to on a map - I would have guessed the South Coast. Shingle beach.

Warbleswick - cute as a button village on sand dunes. Fluffy sand.

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Weirdest food - whelks. Not very Waitrose - I could have stuck with the truffle infused brie or the fennel pork scratchings, but no, I tried whelks. Turns out they aren't my new favourite.

A Bee, Sea

Ten, maybe twelve years ago someone told me how they really liked Felixstowe, ever since then I've kind of wanted to check it out (Obviously, the fact that it's taken a decade does indicate that it was never that high on my list of priorities, but hey ho).

It started well enough, with a port and a fort and a nature reserve - who doesn't love a container ship? They are massive. But by the time you got to the centre it was all a bit underwhelming. Probably my own fault in that I'd built it up to be a quirky, hotchpotch of a town, without anything at all to justify that expectation. But that's what I'd done.

What I basically expected Felixstowe to be was Lewes. And it wasn't. Fortunately the next day I ended up having to kill time in Lewes. And Lewes was exactly like Lewes, which was nice. Somewhere buzzing with character and identity, even at 8am on a Sunday morning - is that an antiestablishment thing? In your face expectation, we're getting up early on Sunday. Fight the Power.

Eels Eels Eels Eels

I've had some unexpected time off. Turns out unexpected time off is weird, you want to make the most of it but there are so many possibilities it is almost daunting. Anyway, I used the time to potter about East Anglia, seeing some of those things that I've taken for granted. And there seems to have been a very eely twist.

Started off in Constable Country: Dedham Vale, Flatford Mill and all. And saw people fishing for eels, I didn't realise that that was still a thing that people did. Turns out it is. Also turns out that that little corner of Essex is more touristy than I'd given it credit for. North Essex is really pretty.

Since then I've cycled to and through a host of pretty Essex vistas and villages: Pattiswick, Wakes Colne, Greenstead Green, Coggeshall, Earls Colne - for my money North Essex is prettier than Constable Country. Constable Country was just full of nettles and straggly thistles. Today's cycle was mainly fuelled by Elvis Waffles from the Little Book Cafe in Halstead.

Sorry I've digressed from the eels. I went to Ely, the City of Eels. I'd not been to Ely before (box ticked) turns out a. it's really pretty and b. It has a marina, which I really wasn't expecting. I should have expected it really. How else are they going to get the eels to market?

Whilst I was in the Ely area I visited Wicken Fen - I didn't really understand what all the fuss is about (probably eels) - give me North Essex any day of the week.

Stung

I got stung by a jellyfish. That's one of those tickboxes that I never really meant to tick, but now that it's done I'm more pleased about it than I should be. "Remember that time I got stung by a jellyfish" just seems to have more of a ring to it than "Remember that time we saw puffins". At the very least it's good for a self-indulgent blog entry.

Weirdly, I wasn't even meaning to be in the sea. I was going to sit and read on the pebbled area that constitutes a beach in Riomaggiore whilst Carys put in her tri-practice sea swim. But then she saw not one, but two octopuses (octopi? Mmm octo-pie) which was enough to entice me away from the book. Saw a few flavours of bold fish then felt an unpleasant burn on my elbow.

Now I don't know too much about jellyfish stings - the only person I can remember talking to about them nearly died (presumably because getting a shot of adrenaline to the heart makes for a good, memorable anecdote, whereas mediocre stories like this one, not-so-much) - so I got out of the water as quickly as possible to make it easier for people to administer the adrenaline shot / wee on my arm.

Given that I didn't appear to be dying (or indeed in any pain greater than a wasp sting. I opted against the stranger's urine treatment and went to the Farmacia, who seemed entirely ambivalent. Jellyfish stings, m'eh.

So yeah, relocated to Riomaggiore for the last two nights. That's a peculiar place. Couldn't find any eating opportunities between fast food and Michelin Guide, which meant we spent a lot of time eating mixed seafood from a cone and drinking cheap wine on the terrace.

Had a trip to Manarola, the fifth of the five lands, and maybe the prettiest. Technically we had two trips there, one by kayak which was mighty hard work and another by train, which would have been civilised if we hadn't had an impromptu walk to Volastra - the sixth of the five lands. 

Definitive Cinqueterra ranking:

(6. Volastra)

5. Corniglia

4. Riomaggiore

3. Monterosso

2. Manarola

1. Vernazza

Jiggle My Prickles

Who thought prickly pears would be so prickly? I realised my mistake (I used the paw not the claw, despite the best advice of a cartoon bear) pretty quickly and discarded

the juicy fruit straight away. Even then I was picking prickles from my fingers for twenty-four hours. Always take the advice of cartoon bears, kids.

Anyway, I'm in Cinqueterra. Vernazza to be precise. It's pretty, and colourful and uppy-downy, just like it's supposed to be. It has a multi-use harbour that can be used for watching sunsets, thunderstorms or anchovies. And a big, old walking route full of pretties. 

Made use of the walking route yesterday. Wandered to another two of the five lands. Visited Monterosso al Mare for lunch. That's the most commercial of the five (think sunbeds on the prom) but was way prettier than I expected with its wiggly streets, bold fish and unexpected, aerial graveyard. 

Corniglia is a wonky hat on top of a cliff. It looked spectacular from a distance but when you were in the thick of it, it just seemed a bit, erm, small. Tried the local wine and Italian Grape Ale - where beer and wine meet. Turns out there's a reason that that's not a thing. 

We couldn't fly direct to Cinqueterra so had a cheeky night in Pisa. I went to Pisa twenty years ago, but it was a smash and grab - Duomo, Tower, that photo, done. So I kind of assumed that there wasn't any more to the city than that. Turns out I was wrong: there's picturesque squares, buildings with shutters, hip riverbeach bars and Keith Haring's Totomundo painted on the end of a terrace. So apologies Pisa, I was quick to dismiss you. You're alright.

Those Flaws Almost Made Them Greater

It's been a while since I've been to the theatre. Gone is the regular once-a-fortnight theatre visit, replaced instead with the sporadic visits to those things-that-you-really-should-see. With that in mind, I went to see Harry Potter and the Shameless Money-making Opportunity, or whatever it is actually called.

First off, let's just say the stage craft was spectacular, to get that out the way. It really was.

Given that I had read the script a couple of years back and could remember almost nothing about it I'm surprised that I was disappointed in the story. It was just a contrived, over-long non-story. A clunky device to allow the "best" Harry Potter characters to be revisited. A grab-bag of lazy, self-indulgent references.

And don't get me started on the fact that it was two parts, neither of which could be stand alone.

Still the stage craft was spectacular. But if I just wanted spectacle I'd have gone to the circus.

Not All Those Who Rhondda Are Lost

I've spent a fair amount of time in the Valleys over the years but have never really explored the area, partly not wanting to be a poverty tourist but mainly common-or-garden laziness. Read drunkenness.

Turns out its all quite scenic. All those tiny settlements are full of faded industrial grandeur with topography that lends itself to views. Merthyr Tydfil is postcard pretty, who would have thought?

In nature news, I saw a stoat kill a rabbit. That's the first time I've seen a proper mammal-on-mammal kill. I didn't even get that on safari. Go nature.

Tied up in Notts

What do you know about Nottingham? Robin Hood, Notts Forest and that's about it? Time for some learning.

Nottingham takes its craft beer seriously. Not certain if it is significant when compared to other cities, or whether I have just become more attuned to it, but it was definitely noticeable. I mean you expect it in Brewdog, or a pub called Six Barrels but Rock City? I thought that that would be like any other rock club I've been to where they are just serving two for one blue WKD. But no, Punk IPA as standard, with Wild Beer and Tiny Rebel if you knew where to look.

Some other Nottingham things:
The Dragon would have been just another pub, although one with a good people watching scene, but it had a scalextric race track in a secret room at the back. Who even knew that was a thing?

Pizza Storm was Subway for pizzas. Not sure how it hasn't existed before. It was ace. Although fairly sure I'm not the only one whose natural tendency is to go over the top. Maybe too many people want all the toppings and they just have to spend all their profits on rolling people out the door.

Stopped at Melton Mowbray on the way back. The pork pie and stilton combo was accompanied by a folk festival. Which was nice.

Mushroom Mushroom

And a couple of firsts for the weekend:

1. Is a bona fide first; a something that I've wanted to do for a whole load of years first. I saw a badger. After spending last summer and autumn failing to get onto a badger watching session, a big old brock just ran across the road in front of us, like a massive, monochrome rat.

2. Brown bread ice cream. I didn't know it was a thing until it was given to me, and what a thing it is. So super tasty. Add brown bread ice cream to your bucket lists now.

IKB

I've never really been one for stately homes. At least not in England. I've been to a fair few abroad but - after a childhood where I was regularly dragged around National Trust properties - I've been to maybe two as a grown up, and they were both for weddings. 

I broke that duck in a big way this weekend. Blenheim Palace. The so-called greatest palace in the UK (which seems a bold statement) and jeepers creepers was it expensive? Do all stately homes cost that much? Holy moly. 

They lured me in with art, there were a lot of Yves Klein's blue bobbins scattered amongst the history. I enjoyed the juxtaposition plus wondering what you would have thought if you had just been there to see eighteenth century old stuff. 

Talking of juxtapositions, after exposure to the aristocracy we camped on a pig farm. The Pig Place had pigs, beer and bacon and generally was somewhere that suited me much more than the Woodstock estate. 

Also went to Oxford proper for a look at them there dreaming spires. I never knew Oxford had a castle - it's like I learned nothing from His Dark Materials.

Black Pudding

We did one of those dining in the dark things. You've heard of that, right? It's a pitch black room and you don't know what you're eating, so it means that you spend more time appreciating the flavours. Or not realising that you are spilling food down yourself. Or stealing Steve's wife's wine from the table next door, because she's just going to assume that it was Steve. That's a joke, Steve, you sounded like you were bigger than me...

It was pretty disconcerting, I'll tell you that for free. You get led to your table in an unsteady conga line and snake round the table shedding people as they get to the chairs, occasionally leaving people stranded in a solo abyss, hoping that their partner will be brought back.

Your table is carefully laid out so that things can be found again. Turns out, in the Country of the Blind, making a conscious effort to remember where you put things is essential.

The food was ace. Not certain that it was better for not being able to see it, but it was definitely weirder.

Winkle Up

I went to Hastings again, and again it was ace. Is there always a happening in town? Maybe. This time the happening was a Fringe Comedy festival. So a heap of Old Town venues had their back rooms overrun by London comedians, like a tiny, work-in-progress Edinburgh. 

Did some of the Hastings culture bits this time: Jerwood Gallery, Castle, Winkle Museum where they had a pressed heron and a story about the Queen's golden winkle. What more culture do you need?

Double Dutch

I've been a bit quiet of late. Turns out the New Normal takes a whole heap of readjustment. And a whole heap of time. 

A couple of things to mention:
Red was pretty good. Despite it being all about Rothko rather than a stage version of the Bruce Willis film - now that is something I would like to see. 

The Albert Hall is a venue - I saw Walk Off The Earth play there. Must be hard for a band when all anyone wants to hear is other bands' songs.

But mainly. I went to my first beach wedding. It was in The Netherlands. Beaches in The Netherlands? Who would have thought. Mighty fine beaches they were too. A beach wedding in The Hague, with twenty four hours in Amsterdam as dessert. That's not a bad weekend is it?

The People's Race

Continuing with the firsts from the last post. Here's another one. I went to the Grand National. That's a big tickbox item, right? Right?

I didn't understand it. I liked the sitting-on-a-hill part of it - that reminded me of a music festival. But that was kind of it. It was a festival where instead of watching music you just guessed the set list, which doesn't make for heaps of entertainment.

So that leaves you to get your festival kicks from fancy dress and day drinking. Neither of which it does that well. The fancy dress theme for this year was as glamorous as possible, which meant a lot of people were not dressed appropriately for sitting on a slightly-soggy grass bank. Wet bottoms a-go-go.

As for day drinking, the service was so bad it felt like it was designed to stop you drinking, which made it all the more impressive how drunk some of the crowd were. Credit where it's due...

Anyway. Grand National. Box ticked. Let's never talk of it again.

Snowdonia

Snowdonia. It's taken me a while. I've seen it twinkling in the distance but this is the first time I've properly mountained up. 

On the way North we got our first Welsh taster when we stopped for a walk in a place with an eleven-letter-long name, but which contained no vowels. Well Welsh.

First Number One: Snowdon. The second of my Three Peaks and something that I probably should have done twenty years ago. Still box ticked now. The weather had been rubbish the week before so it looked like it might not happen, but happen it did. Yomped up the Pyg track, which was really pretty but unpleasantly full of people. Snuck down by the Rhyd Ddu track, which - after the ridge at the top - was a lot less pretty but felt less like a queue.

First Number Two: puffins. Went out on a boat from Beaumaris to see a lighthouse and some seals. Managed to see a handful of puffins despite it being early in puffin season - I say handful, you would need pretty big hands, even though they were about two thirds of the size I expected. 

Beaumaris had its own chilli shop (what castle isn't complemented by a chilli shop?). Which was where I found out how spicy Carolina Reapers actually are. When they broke me last Summer they were officially the spiciest chilli in town. If I'd known that at the time I would have afforded them more respect. 

What else? Stayed in Bethesda, where a casual run is a little bit more hilly than Essex. Stopped at Llanfair PG for obligatory station pic. Visited the Devil's Kitchen (complete with full Welsh rain) and the Anglesey Sea Zoo which I last visited in the early nineties - my gut feel is it hadn't changed too much, still who doesn't want to see cuttlefish?

We had a break at Ironbridge on the way South. The bridge had put its pyjamas on, which added an element of ridiculous to the nostalgic detour.

Oh and there was a third first I'm keeping for myself. That one isn't for you internet. Hashtag new normal.

The Room Where It Happens

I just don't get opera. I've tried and I tried and I just keep trying but I don't get it. It was La Traviata this time - I recognised tunes and everything. But didn't get it. I'm not certain why. I mean I like music but I don't appreciate classical music on any intellectual level. So that just leaves the narrative.

I've been raised on a diet of films which have complex narrative arcs and intertwined sub plots. You just don't seem to get that in opera. In my limited experience the story seems to be simplistic to the point where it's almost incidental. And I just don't find that that satisfying.

Plus I do like lyrics. And lyrics to the opera tend to be a bizarre mix of repeated nonsense and everyday speech. They don't rhyme "panicky" with "anarchy". In short, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I much preferred Hamilton to La Traviata.

Czech This Out

I've got a soft spot for Prague, it's the very first city I backpacked in, the first city I hostelled in. Back before travellercliche. Back at the start of the internet travel age. So long ago that Prague isn't even in the Czech Republic anymore. Well Czechia.

So I went back. But this time it was a stag do so the wide-eyed wonder of my more innocent years was substantially more red-eyed.

And no-one wants to hear about a stag do. The things that seemed hilarious at the time (the taxodermy tiger, Edgerley Edge, goulash in bread, the Nationwide text, the koala bar, the sinister accordianist, the 80s cafe, and a coffee, etc) will at best seem like cliquey in-jokes. So I shall gloss over that as much as possible and leave you with two recommendations. One for the best bar, one for the best cafe. And by best I mean weirdest, obviously.

Alchemy was a bar that seemed to base itself on Knightmare. Or a nightmare. There was a point in the evening when a cloaked figure in a plague mask carried a box of smoke to the table next door and presented them with a tarot card. You don't get that in Wetherspoons. Often. 

If you find yourself in that bit of Prague between the Old and New Towns follow the chalk signs to breakfast and you too might find yourself in Anicaffe. It's a chintz-lined cafe-cum-spa run by a lady who oozes personality but never seems to be entirely sure where she is or what she's doing. The food was good. Everything else was bonkers. Try and find it.

After All This Time?

I went to that there Harry Potter Studio Tour (first time to Watford - box tick). I took my mum for mothers' day, it seemed to be a popular mother-son destination, although I suspect we were above the expected demographic. 

I really liked it. Is it because Harry Potter is a guilty pleasure? Not really, a. I'm pretty blatant (I came third in a Harry Potter pub quiz a couple of weeks back) and b. I think it was more the scale of it than the HarryPotteriness. I really hadn't appreciated the amount of detail in the films. Five hundred handwritten-and-aged labels on bottles just in the back drop of the potions room. That's ridiculous right? A real chocolate phoenix as a table display in the background? And then there was all the things they made that they couldn't really use because CGI was better - a massive animatronic hippogriff for example. So much detail. It gave me a whole new respect for people who have to recreate worlds. 

Not blogged for a while. Do you wanna hear about the other culture I've done? Not really? Tough, telling you anyway. 

A lot of the gigs that I've been to over the last few years have been legacy gigs; bands I liked back in the day celebrating twenty years since their hayday. I assumed that the David Devant and His Spirit Wife gig would be the same. It wasn't they mainly played new stuff. What? 

Post Modern Jukebox on the other hand were a very different, crowd-pleasing beast. (You've not heard of them? They're worth a YouTube.) I did get slightly disconcerted as it seemed like the name had been franchised out, presumably so that you can have a bunch of PMJs touring at the same time. Is that really cynical? M'eh. Who cares. They were a lot of fun. 

Talking of postmodern jukeboxes, also saw Girl from the North Country. The Dylan not-quite-jukebox-musical that people seem to be raving about. I'll let you listen to their raves instead of mine...

Beer, Whine and Spirits

Well that last couple of weeks has been full of alcohol.

Beer:
I'm still not certain what I make of beer festivals, I think I'm becoming less cynical of them - is that an age thing? Am I approaching the age where I start appreciating the beers enough to stand in a church full of BO and wet dog smell on a rainy afternoon? Perish the thought.

Wine:
In house wine tasting? That sounds sophisticated, right? Turns out it's just someone trying to get you drunk enough that you think £100 for six bottles of wine is good value. Still, we got to pretend we were grown ups and use words like bouquet and depth and earthy.

Spirits:
And ginfestival. This was better than I feared it might be. I've never been one for drinking a neat gin, so had visions of spending the night making this face. Sorry that doesn't come across well typed - you're gonna have to use your imagination. But even in the sample bit they gave tiny splashes of tonic, which was nice.

Turns out I actually learned a stuff too. I now know my Navy Strength from my Old Tom. I now know that if you're going to drink wasabi flavoured gin then use ginger ale as a mixer. And most of all I know that if you are gping to drink gin neat then drink Brockman's. Turns out it doesn't make you make the face...

Verdant Mountain

So Monteverde is a cloud forest. Like a rainforest only inside a cloud, which means you get perpetual horizontal drizzle. Rubbish for al fresco reading but great for orchids. There are some ridiculous orchids here; I saw one that was so small a hummingbird's tongue would have smothered it.

So yeah, saw some more of that nature: Kill Bill toucan (sic), howler monkeys, agoutis and enough makes of hummingbird to fill a baguette. Got a bit more of a sloth fix, saw a two-fingered sloth (sic)

curled up in a slothball, almost touching distance from the side of the road, then got to see it slothing a few hours later. They are peculiar animals.

Stopped for lunch at one of those cafes set up for tourists - nothing Costa Rican on the menu, but a suitably fruity bird table outside. There was a patio of people waiting for the motmots and toucanets to come down from the trees, only to see two capuchin monkeys pillage the tables and make off with a fruity bounty. For the record toucanets are brilliant, they look like a disdainful, furry melon with a beak.

It feels a bit ungrateful to whine when I saw so much of that nature, but I'm going to anyway. I didn't see any frogs. Not one. I checked lilypads and bromeliads and the closest I came was a cane toad. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a cane toad as much as the next man - they are a no nonsense kind of animal - but they aren't the colourful frogs that the postcards promised.

Bromeliad

Bromeliad is a word that I didn't know four days ago, but am now using with gay abandon. Ever since noticing out-of-place pineapple heads on a massive guanacaste tree a couple of days back, I've been looking at trees a bit more closely. I was aware that in the tropics trees were their own ecosystem: like a simpleton I'd assumed that this meant the big trees - those trees which reached all the way up to the canopy. Now that I've used my eyes, it turns out that it's all trees; that a privet hedge will be spotted with epiphyte bromeliads; that an orchid will be growing out of a croton's armpit.

Anyway, I'm on the slopes of the Arenal Volcano and it feels like Costa Rica proper. No offence to the cities from the last post or the towns from the journey (Sarchi for oxcarts; Zarcero for bushes - I know you don't care either, it just feels bad to expunge whole towns from the holiday), but this is more what I came for.

Some nature that I've seen so far:
1. A mummy and baby sloth having a scratch at the side of the road.
2. A coral snake wriggling across a pond and into a field.
3. A toucan, singing for us as we soaked in hot springs.
4. A caiman, getting snappy because we were too close to her babies.
5. Two iguanas having a cuddle.
6. An absolute deli-worth of colourful songbirds hanging out on a table round the back of a restaurant.
7. A cane toad.

All in all, well Costa Rica.

The Way to San Jose

I'm in Costa Rica. I've eaten rice and black beans and tortillas and I've seen a yellow bird and a bird with an orange head and a sparrow with a quiff, so it's sort of what I expected.

So far I've just been in the Central Valley - the bit where everyone lives - which is squidged between a mountain range where they have lots of volcanoes and a mountain range where they have lots of earthquakes. Consequently it's been all about the cities. I've whistlestopped both Cartago, the old capital, and San Jose, the current capital. Neither city would've great for Spiderman. Best building in Costa Rica (I've been in at least three buildings, so I'm an expert) is the Basilica of our Lady of the Angels, a grand, wood-panelled hang out for a small, stone icon (with a good story) which is chock full of knee-crawling pilgrims. 

Oh and turns out the way to San Jose is a direct flight from Gatwick. Can someone let Dionne Warwick know?

Do This

So the battle of the big plays with the all-star casts. Pinter v Shakespeare. The Birthday Party v Julius Caesar. Do this.

Given that The Birthday Party is Pinter's most famous play, and probably the most famous play I hadn't not seen, I was a bit surprised at how little I knew about it. In my head it was an Ayckbourn-esque comedy of manners. Out of my head it's very different. I didn't enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, it was well acted and amusibg enough in places; I just felt a bit cheated at the end.

Julius Caesar (with Cat Stark, The Guv'nor and, erm, Paddington Bear) was a bit less of a wild card - although when I first stepped into the Pit at The Bridge it was channelling the spirit of Brixton Academy and that wasn't how the RSC version started. Anyway, the Pit was ace; got right into the civil war. Made it the most immersive Shakespeare I've seen since That Macbeth. Boom. Quite literally.

Tjitlering

One week ago: So this year I'm not going to travel so much, I'll try and reduce my carbon footprint.

Now: I'm in Denmark.

And what's more I've got a new starting point on my world city alphabet: Abu Dhabi is kicked into second place. And I reckon that this one is going to take some beating, maybe when cities start having numbers in the title 3Mobile Presents Milwaukee.

Anyway, Aalborg - Denmark's fourth city - doesn't seem to be that much on the tourist trail. It's a pleasant enough though, with its old, colourful houses and fancy new harbourfront re-gen. It had a park where a tree played Bob Dylan christmas songs, an art gallery with a Thilo Frank swing through mirrored infinity and a fifteen-meat barbecue buffet. All of the main ones. Get me a roast crocodile and make it snappy.

2017 Reading challenge

Last New Year's Eve (I was going to say New Year's Eve last year, but realised that that would be yesterday, which would make the rest of this post a lot more impressive) Carys gave me a reading challenge, and I bloomin' love a challenge. Here's the result in all its self-indulgent glory.

A book you read at school: Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck.
Now I seem to remember this taking most of a term to get through, this time it barely lasted a commute.

A book from your childhood: Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
I had a pop-up book of this as a kid but had never read the actual novel before. I didn't enjoy it very much.

A book written more than a hundred years ago:
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
I figured I should read it, but did so under a bit of self-imposed duress but I really enjoyed it. Turns out there's a reason why some of these classic books are classics.

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
I was riding high on Great Expectations so I busted out a second Dickens, why not hey? Got an embarrassing story about this book, I'll tell you if you ask nicely.

A book written in the last year:
Turtles All the Way Down - John Green
A book that I was pretty excited about reading, it wasn't as good as I hoped it would be. The perils of too high expectations.

A non-fiction book: 
That's the Way it Crumbles - Matthew Engel
I learnt quite a lot from this, although I'm not certain that any of it is useful.

A book by a male author: 
Plot Against America - Philip Roth
My first Philip Roth book.  That's a box tick, right there.

A book by a female author: 
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler
What a lovely book. Fairly sure that if I say much more I'll spoil it.

NW - Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith seems to write a novel that I really enjoy and follow it with a novel that I don't. I really enjoyed her third book, On Beauty. This was her fourth.

A book by Someone who is not a writer:
A Book for Her - Bridget Christie
Animal - Sara Pascoe
How Not to be a Boy - Robert Webb
Three books by British comedians. Enjoyed the Bridget Christie book as much as you can enjoy a book about FGM. The Sara Pascoe book is possibly the most important book I've read this year. So when Robert Webb's book was being touted as a manifesto in a similar vein I snapped that up. It's not, it's just self-indulgent ramblings. You should read the other two though.

A book that has been made into a film:
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
I've not seen the film - although it is supposed to be ace. But enjoyed the book a lot - again I learnt a heap of stuff and again it will almost certain;y never be useful.

A book written in the twentieth century: 
Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler
Impressively prescient with the whole "Make America Great Again" thing - but I think I've said that before.

The Red Pony - John Steinbeck
I'm quite a fan of Steinbeck, but this was less a novel and more a collection of loosely related short stories. It was also bleak. And just not very enjoyable.

A book set in your home town or region:Want You Gone - Christopher Brookmyre
There aren't that many books set in Essex. I did try to read the Essex Serpent but I just found it boring, and when I was told it wasn't worth the effort I didn't need to be told twice. Anyway this was set in London but they take a day trip to Braintree. That's Essex enough for me. And it was a Christopher Brookmyre so it was ace. 

A book with Someone's name in the title: 
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle is one of those authors that I feel like I ought to like. I'm not sure that I do.

Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
There was a spoiler for the final twist of the book on the front cover - how is that allowed?

A book with a number in the title:
36 Arguments for the Existence of God - Rebecca Goldstein
This is the cleverest book that I read this year. By which I mean it made me feel stupid. Barely a page went by where I din't have to look up the meaning of a word. It didn't endear me to the book...

A book with a character with your first name:
Stepford Wives - Ira Levin
Given I have a fairly standard first name, it's surprising how few characters there are with my first name - if only I'd been called Pressia or Katniss.

A recommendation:
The Lie Tree - Francis Hardinge
This has made me just want to devour Francis Hardinge's back catalogue.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness
Out-John-Green-ing John Green. Really liked this book - I really should read more of his stuff.

Down too a Sunless Sea - David Graham
A fun, apocalyptic, action book but I really didn't like the main protagonist, so it took a bit of time getting into it.

Fiend - Jon Stenson
And talking of fun apocalypses: Zombies versus meth addicts. Nice.

A book with more than 500 pages:
The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell
I drank the first three David Mitchell books right up, then sort of lost interest - not really sure why, because this was a riot.

Twilight Robbery - Francis Hardinge
My start on the Francis Hardinge back catalogue was a bit of a misstep. Not that I didn't enjoy this book, I just probably shouldn't have started with the second in a series.

A book that you read in one day:
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
A couple of hundred pages of stating the obvious it may be, but enjoyable enough that I smashed it in a day.

A banned book:
Ulysses - James Joyce

A book with a one word title: Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater
I just don't think werewolf fiction is for me.

A non-English book: Core of the Sun - Johana Sinisalo
Handmaid's Tale with added spice. Give it a read.

A book to improve yourself: Gut - Giulia Enders
What a peculiar treat of a book.

A Memoir:
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
So whiney.

Oranges are not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
One of those books that I thought I should read, rather than wanted to read. It was flimsier than I expected.

A book by someone younger than you: The Last One - Alexandra Oliva
Slightly flawed but I did like this a lot.

A book set somewhere that you visit this year: Kim - Rudyard Kipling
Does this get bonus points as I bought it in Shimla where a chunk of the novel is set?

A self-published book: ZA - Molly Looby
This probably should have been one of the more challenging ones, but I accidentally bought a self-published book off the back of a Waterstone's recommendation.

Award-winning book:
The Bombs that Brought us Together - Brian Conaghan
I read this right at the start of the year and don't really remember anything about it. Something about chairs and apples.

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead
Two of the big books from the last couple of years. People have said enough about them that I don't need to. Both get a big fat thumbs up from me, they're not exactly feelgood fun, mind.


So that was that, 39 books and some of them biggies, not too bad a haul for a year. OH, hang on a minute in the spirit of making people read more-different books and because I'm that kind of idiot, I added another ten categories of my own (taking it to 51 for the year, tantalisingly close to the book a week mark - can I count Ulysses as two?):

A novella: The Last Day of Christmas - Christopher Brookmyre
Not sure how I missed this when it came out. I stumbled on it when i was trying to find the release date of Want You Gone.  Fortuitous that I did, seeing as it was the prequel to Want You Gone.

A graphic novel: Paper Girls - Brian K
Vaughan
Technically this is a compendium of comics rather than a graphic novel. I still don't get graphic novels: I just don't know how to read them. I think I treat them as a novel rather than a work of art. It's not that I didn't enjoy Paper Girls, it's just that when you compare it to a novel it seemed a bit disposable. Kind of like comparing an episode of a sketch show with a film.

A trilogy of novels: Leviathan, Goliath, Behemoth - Scott Westerfeld
Swash bucklers that I'm far too old for.

A book that's been made into a long-form TV show: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
I read this on a tablet and made full use of the look-up tool.  So many references to obscure gods, I could have really done with a theology A-level. Or paying attention in RE lessons at school - although I'm not certain that they taught us about Slavic gods - fairly sure I'd have remembered a Czernobog.

A book with a non-human narrator: Contagion - Teri Terry
Wasn't sure about this at first. Took a fairly big suspension of disbelief to accept that it was from the point of view of a ghost, but by the end I really enjoyed it. And then Tery Terry first-in-a-series cliffhangered me. What a bounder?

A book from a genre you've never read before: Herland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I have never read a utopian novel before; turns out utopian novels just aren't as interesting as dystopian because everyone's hanging out having quite a nice time, thank you very much.

A book with more than one author: Swarm - Scott Westerfeld / Margo Lanagan / Deb Biancotti
Not sure about this co-writing malarkey, but I enjoyed Zeroes and I enjoyed this. Presumably three authors means that they get churned out quicker - bring on the third in the trilogy.

A travel book: Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
Always dangerous to read books about travelling as it makes my feet all itchy. Fortunately travelling to the Midlands is a whole heap easier than, erm, BIOT.

A book you judged by its cover: The Hate U Give: Angie Thomas
This was in the YA section and it really shouldn't be, just because the protagoonist is sixteen doesn't make it YA any more than Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a kids' book. Everyone should read this book.

A book that fits into at least five categories: The Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman
An award-winning, male-written 500+ page recommendation from the last year. An a book that has had so much press lately that i just don't need to write about it.