Hey Bruce Willis, I like your sister

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

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

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

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

Growing up

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

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

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

Rotterdam or Anywhere

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

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

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

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

Come and Gdansk With Me

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

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

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

Is This An Ostrich I See Before Me?

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

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

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

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

Hot Crossed Pun

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

Things I've learnt since my last blog entry:

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

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

3. Barbecued python isn't great.

Always be a Town in my Eyes

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

Whoop.

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

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

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

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