Panos

Panos from the years:



These are all put together using Autostitch.

(And yeah, that's right, my first post in months, and I don't write anything.)

Quarterly Roundup

This week, I'm going to have to spend a large portion of my Time At Work doing end-of-year roundups -- effectively rehashed stories reminding people what happened over the past 12 months. On one hand, they're a useful review and I don't mind writing them, on the other hand, they're hit-whoring spacefiller (not unlike this blog???).

Anyway, I've been nagged in the comments (Hi Joie!) that I haven't posted in a while, and that is indeed true -- not since the beginning of August, it would seem. As Joie asks, surely something's happened since then??

The past few weeks, not really, as I've been struck down by the cold/flu/-itis to end them all, and have barely left my room this weekend -- or the past few weekends. But I'm starting to feel better, a bit, and as such am OHMYGOD so bored.

Bored enough to blog, it would seem. Bored enough to blog a roundup.

So. Right. August. Went up to Edinburgh in August, for the World's Largest Fringe Festival (tm) -- and damn, it is big. Saw a ton of good comedy, a couple decent plays, and a totally mental and hilariously crap puppet show. And, drank a lot. Didn't see as much of the city as I would have liked, but it looks beautiful, albeit through drunken and bleary eyes. Need to go back when a billion and a half other people aren't there, so I can see the rest of it, and more of Scotland.

A couple weeks after that, flew to Calgary on a hilariously shit airline called Globespan, which never arrives on time. Strangely, Mary -- who came to Scotland with us -- was on the same flight as me, one seat away from me. Weird. The flight was delayed several hours, so we hung out watching the Olympics at a pub in Gatwick Airport, which is exactly as fun as it sounds. Horribly, the delay was not communicated to Calgary, so our families were standing around wondering WTF was going on. (On the upside, unlike Zoom, Globespan remained in business over the next few weeks, so I was able to get back to London... albeit several hours late.)

From Calgary, my family drove to somewhere in Montana, and caught a plane to Vegas for my little sister's wedding, which was a fantastic day, despite me delivering a speech. (DarNat, you know how good I'm not at that...)

Then, back to London. From where I went back to Vegas for work. My life is retarded, and entirely environmentally unfriendly.

When I got back from Vegas (the second time) it was off to a town called Truro, in a southwestern bit of the UK called Cornwall. I've always wanted to go to Cornwall, but Truro is a dump. There is nothing to do there except drink, and they even make that difficult. The hotel we stayed in was like an old folks' home -- the breakfasts included prunes, if you wanted. Still, given the company and the drinking, I had a fantastic time. I didn't, however, have any prunes.

Then, I stayed in the country for a month. It was weird. The Saints and Chargers played at Wembley Stadium in London, so went to see my first NFL came ever... in London.

After that, went to New York for work -- the day after Obama's Historic and Hope-Bringing (tm) election. I'm already planning a trip back -- to New York, not Obama, but if he wants to hang out, that's cool with me.

A couple weeks after that, took a quick weekend break to Shannon, Ireland, with my friend Shannon. She's the master of cheap flights, and found some seriously almost-free ones to the west coast of Ireland, which is one of the prettiest places in the world. Everything is green and cliffy. And have the best pub nights ever. You make friends with everyone in the bar because, why not? They're drinking, you're drinking, you have lots in common...

And that's it for travel... until tenish days from now, when I'm off to Spain to spend Christmas with my parents there. It's my first time not going home for Christmas since I foolishly moved out here, but at least I'm still spending it with family. If I was entirely alone, I'd be entirely drunk -- though how that's different from most Kobie Christmases, I'm not entirely sure...

Now this pretty well reads like a list of places I've travelled to over the past nearly-half year. Between all this, I did lots of stuff, alright. Namely, drinking at parties, drinking at pubs, drinking at people's houses, drinking at shows, and drinking for the sake of drinking, with the odd movie thrown in when I run out of drinking money. My lifestyle, it is retarded.

New year, new leaf, maybe?

Moving on...

I just sneezed, and it sounded very metallic against my laptop. How weird. Anyway, this is the month-between-posts update. It's time I reentered the blogosphere -- is it like entering a pool or a hot tub? Should I go slowly and wait until my body adjusts to the metaphorical temperature? Or should I just dive right in?

Well, I'm a wee bit on the tipsy side -- happy birthday Jerry! -- so I shall dive right in.

I have not posted of late because the things which have coloured my life lately are the type of things one tends not to post about, if one is me and on this medium tends toward the unmeaningful as opposed to the things which matter, at least when it comes to negatives. I could have posted, but that seemed to be tempting fate and my luck has run much too short -- like a creek in a drought, an empty dry bed -- of late, so I've refrained.

This string of painful events started with me getting knocked off my bike and biting the cement. Where it ends I cannot say, but I hope that point has passed. I've spent too much time on the phone to insurance agents and police and upset family, and spent too much time in dentist offices and funerals and hospitals and in bed staring at the ceiling trying very hard not to think before sleep hits and hopefully stays for a good eight hours this time.

It's just a bit too much, some of it clearly a minor irritation compared to other losses, some of it blown out of proportion by me as that's what I do, but just when I think it's about to turn around, that I'm about to have some luck or some compensation, then no, the gods of the universe, the powers that be, frown upon me sternly you shall not have what you want before going to the shop for cigarettes.

Well, there's a smoking ban soon, so fuck that shit. Am I rambling, nonsensically? Shall I post some photos instead? Okay.

So: Whilst in Van, we drove out to White Rock, one of my favourite places in the world. Laidback and pretty, what more could anyone want? More pics here.

And while on the subject of things which are beachfront and pretty, here's some pics from Lyme, which I'm yet to post about. It's like White Rock, but literary. More pics here.

And on the subject of things which make me happy, MaeMae! Sooooooooo cute.



So. After this weekend, I am off to Dresden for work. A city bombed out and rebuilt -- sounds like my kind of town...

Austentatious

This weekend, Mary and I did our Jane Austen pilgrimage, visiting the author's home in Chawton, where she was buried in Winchester, and the setting of one of her novels, Lyme Regis.

Logistically, cramming such travel into a weekend was a nightmare, requiring several planning calls to Network Rail -- a nightmare in of itself.

On Saturday morning, after an hour of tube battles (Northern Line has engineering works, yet again, and I needed to pick up tickets from Kings Cross -- heaven forbid they have ticket pickup machines south of the fucking river), I met Mary at Waterloo station, where we caught a train to Woking where we changed for Alton. From there, we cabbed it to Chawton for Jane's house before returning to Alton station to catch a bus to Winchester. After wandering about that city, we caught a train to Basingstoke, where we changed lines again for the two-hour journey to Axminster, where we caught a bus to Lyme Regis.

It was a long day. But, being completely awesome, we planned it as near to perfect as is possible, and never waited more than about ten minutes for transport, which I think is pretty damned impressive.

Enough about transport. The first destination was Chawton, the town where Austen rewrote/wrote her novels. It's a typically cute and quaint English town, and the local residents (for whatever reason) have recently been battling a new development of a dozen new homes, our cab driver told us. The developers eventually won out (as they tend to do) but either in deference to tourism or in way of apology to the local or just being a bit cheesy, they named this new estate "Pemberley". Hee.

Jane's home there was a cottage on her brother's estate. A big squarish brick building, with a rather lovely garden, it is Janeite mecca. But because it was lived in up until the 1940s, it's not preserved accurately to her era. Still, as Mary and I agreed, visiting the site is more pilgramage and paying homage than educational.


We weren't the only ones feeling that way. After winding ourselves through the various rooms -- the kitchen with the infamous creaky door, Jane and her sister Cassandra's bedroom, the gift shop -- we came to a small alcove where a letter written by Cassandra after the death of her sister had been posted up along a wall. Sent to a relation announcing Jane's passing, it is a moving remebrance of the last days of the author's life -- a beautiful and moving eulogy, even more poignant given Cassandra was not allowed to attend the funeral of her beloved sister. (Stupid ovaries, getting in the way again.)

Two fellow visitors were standing in front of this document. One of the women was reading it, while the other was writing down one section onto a scrap of paper. Both were crying. I do not mean a few tears welling up at the corner of their eyes. I mean bawling. Now, maybe they just lost someone close to them, and Cassandra's heartfelt words struck too close to their own emotions. Who knows. But much as I love Austen -- and think I would have truly liked her -- I can't mourn the loss of someone so long gone. It is very sad she died in pain at a young age, but even if she'd lived to be 103, she'd still be long dead by the time Mary slid her extra copy of Pride and Prejudice into my Gauntlet mailbox back in the day (with the words "Hope you enjoy" scrawled on a post it on the front cover).

After the visit to Austen's creative home, we spent a short time in her everlasting one -- the city of Winchester, where she's buried.

Like so many cities in this country, the focus of Winchester is a grand cathedral. Austen is presumably buried in the crypt, as there's a memorial stone laid in the church. I'm assuming she didn't gain such an honour from her literature -- she published anonymously; stupid ovaries -- but maybe because her father was a rector or her family gave enough money (it's discussed briefly here). This is reflected in the message on the memorial stone -- there's no mention of her being an author at all.

Many years later, the church rectified this apparent error by placing a rather ostentatious (and decidedly not Austentatious) shiny bronze memorial nearby. I can understand why, but it suggests fans wouldn't realise this was Jane's grave without being smacked shinely over the head with it. And really, how important is one's profession in death? Her body of work, her novels, are a grand memorial (despite not being shiny). Will my tombstone read: Nicole, Staff Writer? Will Mary's be carved with the words "English Professor"? Doubtful.

To her family, who wrote the inscription on the original stone marker, she was a loving daughter, sister and aunt. And to me, a memorial showing that side of her life is much more touching. Besides, if I want to remember her as an author, all I need do is pull one of her novels from my shelf...

This is what it says, if you're curious:

In Memory of JANE AUSTEN, youngest daughter of the late Revd GEORGE AUSTEN, formerly Rector of Steventon in this County. She departed this Life on the 18th of July1817, aged 41, after a long illness supported with the patience and hopes of a Christian.

The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections.

Their grief is in proportion to their affection they know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm though humble hope that her charity, devotion, faith and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the
sight of her REDEEMER.

After spending £5 and about ten minutes visiting the cathedral, we headed to Lyme Regis, which features in Persuasion. I've previously been to Bath, which also features in Persuasion, and it is actually pretty cool to see what the hell Austen's going on about.

In the book, during a visit to Lyme, one of the characters takes a fall (a jump, really) off stairs on the Cobb -- a stone man-made breaker which protects the town's harbour. I never really understood that scene. Why would someone get a head injury after landing badly? But after walking along the Cobb, well, it makes more sense... It's not big, slanty, rough pile of stone stuck out into a rather violently-wavy ocean. Take a dive off that, yeah, you might be in a coma. Or you might be dead.

But I'll get into the rest of Lyme in another post, as this one's rambly enough already... and more pictures to follow... we took a lot.

More pony pics

Got some photos developed, so here's a pile of pony pics from the trip to the New Forest...








A big pile of unsorted pictures is also up here.

Oxford

In part two of the surely-to-be-multipart Distracting Day-trip Diversions series, Emily and I went to Oxford.

Emily went there for university -- which is surprising if you meet her, as she's very indie and not pompous at all -- so she gave me the guided tour. There're lots of old buildings, cool museums and students in scarves.

It's a strange place. Kind of has an air of entitlement and "ooh, aren't I special" about it, but maybe I'm just a bitter, angry person, made more so after a day surrounded by young, successful, rich and/or smart people who got to go to a real school, not the lame-ass U of Calgary.

JRR Tolkein used to sit out here
and think of hobbits... how dirty...

Anyway, we saw where Emily went to school -- her college, Merton, is a lovely set of old buildings with courtyards and gardens and all that britishness. It's also where JRR Tolkein studied and taught. It's also where Kris Kristofferson and TS Eliot studied. Ahh, such history.

I had great fun comparing Merton to the good ol' U of C. Emily noted -- unpretentiously, I assure you -- that the school dates from the 1200s. I noted that the U of C dates from the 1960s. Her college, including grad students, is made up of about 130 students. I've had classes with three times that number. She pointed out the grand old exams building, and the amazing hall they graduate in, and the beautiful courtyard where they got their gowns prior to the ceremony. Me, I pointed out where all these things happened while at the U of C: the gym, another gym, and the running track around the oval.

And okay, I admit: pretty architechture and ridiculous tradition are not the cornerstones of a good education. But then, neither is cramming students into lecture halls the size of movie theatres and hoping against all hope that they maybe learn something, as long as it's cheap. /end rant

Even dead ponies are cute.

Then we went to a museum of natural history (full of hella awesome Victorian-era dead-and-stuffed things) and an art museum. Good times had in both. Then we got drunk and openly mocked 18-year-old girls for wearing heels they couldn't walk in. Then we felt old, so we went home.

This is so Tim Burton. The Victorians
were so awesomely crazy.

While waiting at the station for the train to speed us (ha! it took three times as long as the train that took us out there!) back to London, a man walked by wearing no trousers -- he was dressed normally on top, but just sheerish brown underwear on the bottom.

He walked right past us, spoke to a station attendent like nothing was weird, and then (thankfully) got on a train going the other direction.



It's especially strange because I kept thinking: That man has no pants. It's like the no-pants dance floor. But here in Bizarro World, pants=underwear, so in fact he was wearing pants, just not much else. So a no-pants dance floor here would be a scary, scary thing indeed. Just a warning should anyone (looks -- um, virtually -- in Kris' direction) decide to shout out "No Pants Dance Floor!" in a London club. Just saying.

Wow, that last paragraph probably makes so little sense to anyone who isn't me. Well. Sucks to be you, then.

More pictures here.

New Forest

So I really needed to get out of London this weekend, even just for the day, to get some air and chill out and be alone. It's decidedly hard to be alone in this city -- lonely is easy, but being actually physically alone is very difficult.

I couldn't decide where to go. I thought about the ocean, but the only seaside cities I still want to see are hours and hours away. I decided I'd go on Saturday morning to Waterloo station and take the first train going somewhere interesting.

When I arrived at the station, there was a train going to Portsmouth. On the ocean, so that's good. Then, it was cancelled. Okay, fine. A few minutes after, there was a train going to Alton, from which I could get to Chawton House, where Jane Austen lived. But there was a fault on the line, and I'd have to take the bus part of the way. Forget that. Look back at the screens... there's one going to Southampton -- it's near the ocean, good enough. So hopped on the train and off I went.

Part way thru the trip, the conductor-lady announced that at 11am the train would stop for two minutes, in honour of remembrance day. Two guys -- European, with not very good English -- talked thru the whole thing. I'm sure they had no idea what was going on, why the train was stopped, or why everyone was suddenly dead quiet.

Anyway, arrive at Southampton. I have my bike with me, so I pedal down to the waterfront. It's pretty dire. Maybe I was in a bad mood. Or maybe it really is that much of a dump. But Southampton was not offering me what I needed, ie: cheering up. I stopped in a cafe for a sandwich and a coffee, and it was full -- packed completely -- with senior citizens. On a Tuesday morning, sure. But on a Saturday, in the city centre? Lame.

So I biked back to the train station, and went a few stops further down the line to the New Forest, a massive park full of ponies. Why I didn't go there straight off is beyond me. I've been there before (with Dan then, and this time, decidedly without) and wanted to go somewhere different, I guess.

Anyway, right off the train, there were ponies. I wandered into a town called Ashurst, bought a shitty map, then cycled for half an hour in the wrong direction. Oh well, not like I was in a rush. I was trying to head to an area called the Woodlands, but only because it was close-ish on my map. I randomly turned into a closed-for-the-season campground, because I saw some ponies. Bigger ones, like horses. I took several dozen photos, and then walked further in and found more ponies.

It's a beautiful area. Massive old trees, all gold and yellow, with leaves and acorns and horse poop all over the ground. My kind of place.

I was mostly wandering around, petting ponies, taking photos and admiring the view and breathing the lovely air -- you start to appreciate air quality living in a place like London.

I wandered over to one bigger pony -- more of a horse, really -- hoping to get a good photo, as the light was reflecting off the trees around it in a very ethereal way. I got closer, lost the nice lighting, and was standing in a clearing when I heard rustling from behind me.

I turned, and a herd of tiny ponies trotted out of the bushes and trees toward me. It's hard to explain the sensation, of just being somewhere, and having wildlife wander into view. It's one thing to see them from the road and go in for a closer look, it's another to be standing alone in the wilderness (or the closest to it this ridiculous country has) and see animals come out of nowhere, on their daily business, doing what they'd do if you were there or not.

They trotted right up to me, and past me. Much more aggressive than the bigger ponies, pushed their little faces right up me, looking for treats I guess, or just curious.

One walked right up to the nicely-lit bigger pony, and they stuck their noses towards each other. Shamefully, I didn't have my camera ready, and missed the shot of this horse, several times bigger than its new friend, stretching it's neck down to meet the nose of this tiny little pony-creature. Adorable.

After going thru all my film (thank god I had the digital, too), I left the ponies and went for a ride down a trail thru the forest. I had no idea where it was going, so eventually backtracked to Ashurst and a shitty pub, with food that tasted of nothing; it was just warm and solid. Amazing. Almost an accomplishment. And then, with my runners and bike tires caked in mud, I got back on the train to Waterloo and stinky old London...

More pictures here, and video is here and here.

Sharpe's Bath

Bernard Cornwell , the author of the Sharpe series, is doing a mini book tour (mini tour, not small books) of England to promote his newest, Sharpe’s Fury.

While he did come to London on Monday, it was only for a signing. I wanted to hear him speak, so last night, I skipped out on work early to travel to Bath.

I arrived with a few hours to kill, and having already done what touristy shiznit interested me on last year’s Jane Austen pilgrimage, I just walked around, taking pics, as usual (more here ).

When I got to the bookstore for the talk, I was surprised it wasn’t packed. The one in Southampton the night before was sold out.

Rather than read from the book, as was advertised, Cornwell rambled on in amusing fashion, describing his hobby of touring historical battlefields, and making jokes about how we should all buy all of his several dozen books.

Because the series was not written in chronological order, parts don’t always make sense, which seems to really amuse him. He finds himself having to kill off any new characters he creates, as they obviously don’t show up in the “next” book. And why does Sharpe never mention he fought at Trafalgar? Oh, because he was traumatized he just can’t speak of it. Um, yes.

Cornwell spoke a lot about Sean Bean – who plays Sharpe in the TV series – and told some amusing stories about how grumpy Bean is in rehearsal. Apparently, he rehearses like shit. Comes in grumbling, grumbles through his lines, but when it’s time to shoot, he’s spot on.

Also rather amusing… Bean was not the first actor cast, but rather a last minute replacement. Lucky them. But the first actor was much smaller than Bean, and they didn’t have time to get new costumes for the first few weeks. So all those shots of Sharpe with his shirt unbuttoned in the first episode, those were because he actually couldn’t do the shirt up.

Cornwell said that when he’s writing, the characters sometimes “speak to him”, in his head. But with Sharpe, that voice has since turned into that of Sean Bean’s, so now Cornwell sometimes wakes up to Bean’s voice. Some guy in the front row took the cue: “My wife would like that!"

The TV series was the focus of much of the discussion; for many people, they’d have been much happier if Sean Bean had been there and not Cornwell.

While that would have depressed the hell out of me, Cornwell didn’t seem to mind. He told us his least favourite episode – and this is no surprise – is Sharpe’s Gold, which is insane and features Aztecs… in France. “What were the writers smoking? Aztecs? It must have been good stuff.”

And when asked if there’d be another show (not if he would write another Sharpe book…) he told the early-20s girl that even if they don’t make another film, she’ll always have Sean-Bean-as-Sharpe in her dreams.

Ahh, won’t we all. Well, maybe just me. And Nat.

. . .

On the walk from Waterstones bookstore to the train, I happened to pass a landmark from another book-to-film: the columned walkway next to the Pump Rooms where Captain Wentworth and Anne finally kiss in Persuasion (they're making a new TV version ...with Anthony Stewart Head as Sir Walter!).

Such a romantic scene, in a lovely adaptation. But in real life, the spot was full of hoodied teenagers, smoking cigarettes and yelling and flirting with each other.

No wonder I like books so much.

Shakespearienced!

Let me just say this: Reading Shakespeare sucks -- well, it does when compared to seeing it peformed the way it should be. Forced high school readings and local community productions should be banned on pain of death for making Shakespeare difficult and boring, when it should be bloody (actually and figuratively) hilarious good fun.

Some context? Okay. On Friday, Peter, Garth and I trained it up to Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of the bard. It's a bit disneyfied, yes, but who gives a crap when it's also home to one of the finest theatre companies in the world who happen to be doing a complete works festival with some of the best actors in the world.

There's not much else to do in S-U-A aside from theatre, so we wandered aimlessly for a bit after checking into our B&B, having a pint (or I did, anyway) at the Black Swan/Dirty Duck pub.

And then, to the theatre, where we saw The Tempest starring Patrick Stewart. Not surprisingly, it was very good, as was Patrick Stewart. I thought of Natalie during his shirtless scenes... mmm... hot. And weird.

Set on a cold, ice-covered island instead of the usual tropical one, it looked amazing -- blockbuster films don't look this good -- especially the first bit where the boat sinks and the part where Ariel pops out of a dead whale's body all bloody and gooey with spikey wings ... tho I'm not sure that last bit was exactly how Shakespeare imagined it. (Amusingly, The Observer via google tells me that they were once and maybe still are planning a Tempest video game.)

The next day, after returning to London, we went to the recreation of the Globe theatre on the South Bank to see Titus Andronicus. Our (very cheap) tickets were for the standing room around the stage -- all very authentic. The play itself was surprisingly well done and very very funny. The story (read the summary on Wikipedia, it's hilarious) is very melodramatic and tragic, but the Globe production played it for black humour -- quite likely how it would have been played in Shakespeares day.

So the scenes of gore -- with blood spurting into the standing audience -- were very often played for laughs. Especially the bit where Titus' hand is chopped off. And in the final scenes, Titus is running around with a Chef's hat, laughing manically. Though nearly everyone dies in the finale, I couldn't stop laughing. It was all very funny, in a very black way -- but had I read play, rather than see it here, I'm not sure I would have laughed once.

Photos of S-U-A are here. Oh -- and regarding the title of this blog: There is a touristy thing in town called Shakesperience! And no, we didn't go.

Big Green Gathering

I've now been inaugerated into the ways of the British Festival -- well, sort of. We were only there two nights over the last weekend (as opposed to five) and it was a pretty fluffy festival (so I'm told), but good times were had nonetheless.

Summer is festival-time in England. The famous one is Glastonbury, but there are tons of others, too. We went to something called the Big Green Gathering, which was more focused on eco-friendly-ness than music -- tho there was a lot of that, too.

Aside from fields and fields of thousands of tents and camper vans, the festival was full of all sorts of crazy, flakey, hippy-shiznit, including booths for massage and gong baths and zero balancing -- whatever that is -- and rock circles and tea tents and lots of shops of clothes and accessories for the modern hippy (who, judging by this festival, is as commerical as the rest of us).

The best bits -- for me, anyway -- were the horse drawn carts (because: pony pony pony pony) and the music everywhere. It was just nice and relaxed no matter what you were doing.

But how -- some of you may ask -- can a festival of music, ect, be eco friendly? Think of all the energy going power amps and lights and speakers and stuff? Oh, but they thought of that. All the power used was generated by sun, wind, and in some cases, legs:


Safest way to cycle when drunk! In order to power the speakers and lights at this music tent at night, people had to cycle. If too many people got lazy and stepped off this contraption, the music faltered and died, and everyone groaned. But then someone (including myself at one point) would hop on, and it'd be good happy party times again.

I want -- really very much -- to start a club powered in this way. Imagine the bikes, up on platforms above the crowd, sort of like dancers in cages the way some dance bars have. And then just hire some hotties of both gender, put them in skimpy outfits, and make them cycle for the night. Maybe have a few cycling contraptions for the public to use, too -- and they will, 'cause it's actually quite fun. Anyone care to fund this?

Amusingly, on the way out, the bus from the train station broke down. Not so amusingly -- as we were filthy and sunburnt and exhausted and had to work the next day -- Amir's car broke down on the way home, just down the hill from Stonehenge. I blame the druids.

More pictures (of the fest, not druids) are here.

. . .

Also some photos of the weekend before, when we escaped London to go celebrate Pier and Leila's birthday's at their new house, which is just outside a small town, which is just outside Salisbury -- ie, the middle of nowhere. But, it should be noted, the middle of nowhere is often a very pretty place and very nice place to be.