All things come to an end

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Pleasance Courtyard, Mosque Kitchen, on Arthur's Seat in the Bongo

Piemaker Scotch Pie (minced beef, fat, spices), Brunstfield Links

Bordeaux

I went to Bordeaux. It was a very nice time. Two months living with Isa, Matthieu, Buzz the dog and Isa's bump. They're going to be parents in October (that's not their kid in that photo up there).



I worked in a primary school, then in a centre de loisirs as a stagiaire. It was nice to go back to France and start speaking French again. It's been a long time.



I ate an awful lot of good, good food and drank an awful lot of good, good wine.



More here (click on French Bred):

French Bred

Surprise Visit, London to Melbourne

'Course I didn't disappear. I went on a trip. Here's the short account:

DAY 0
The plan: London to Melbourne overland as much as possible to surprise visit my sister and meet my niece. Thanks to the usual culprits (time and money), I have 31 days.

DAY 1-2
Riga: bad start. I've brought the wrong money. Who knew Latvia has its own currency? Still, it's Ratification Day. Right time right place, I meet the Prime Minister of Latvia. He has a firm handshake.

DAY 3-7
I bus overnight to Moscow. Not the best preparation for 4 days on a train. I have 3 hours turnaround in Moscow, so I change socks in Red Square.



DAY 7-9
Irkutsk, Siberia. Mayonnaise is ‘Mayonnaise’ in Russian except spelt with a backwards N, an H and a 3. Apparently swimming in Lake Baikal gives longer life. It's snowing when I arrive. Not a snowball's chance in hell I'm going in. Eternal life be damned.

DAY 10
I spend more time in No Man’s Land between Russia and Mongolia than I did in Moscow.



DAY 11-12
Ulaan Bataar. I get fleeced for 10,000 Tugriks by a monk. All he says is, 'Ho!'. I admire his salesmanship. Could you make 10,000 Tugriks with 1 word? Ho. I thought so.

DAY 13-15
Terelj National Park. I stay in a ger. I have the park to myself. Each morning I pick a peak from the horizon to hike.



DAY 16-18
Rolling out of UB, we enjoy our large, clean train window. Then a Mongolian lady hurls milk all over it. Good luck, apparently. Me, I prefer milk with cereal.

DAY 18-20
Beijing. I hit the great wall, swept up in a million Chinese tourists. They hawk, clamour, shove, spit. It's an experience. It's part of the experience.



DAY 21-23
Yangshuo. I rent a bike. The lady hands me a map. I think, 'Lady, I eat maps for breakfast'. I get lost, the trail gets technical, I fall in a rice paddy. My shoes grow mouldy.

DAY 24
I have to cancel my train through Vietnam: there’s no visa on arrival by train, after all. Instead, I fly to Kuala Lumpur to fly to Saigon. Beats me why.

DAY 25-26
I book a tour on the Mekong Delta. We ride various forms of transport: bus, big boat, little boats, bus. We all wear pointy hats on the little boats and float along like perfect asses.

DAY 27-30
I fly to Melbourne via Darwin. They ask why only 4 days. I give them the short version. I tell them work.

I surprise my sister and her husband on their doorstep. They're skyping Dad. I walk into shot and surprise him too.

I meet my niece, Bella. She's 8 months old. She's the first 8 month-old person I’ve ever met. It's a pleasure.



DAY 31
Endings- never drag them out. Keep it clean, keep it quick, don't ever stop in Perth for 1 day returning from Melbourne.

I wander. I eat half a roast chicken. I sleep for 3 hours. Then I go home.

HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY

Paganello, San Marino

London Marathon 2011

I feel like I have some excuses to make.

3 hours was the dream time to complete my first marathon. With hindsight, this was ambitious.

Failing that, 3 hours 15 minutes was the next target, and one I hoped to meet. If I missed that, I thought keeping it inside 3 hours 30 would be realistic and towards the latter stages of my training, I thought of it as more of a formality (pah!).

In the end I staggered through the finish in 3 hours 28 minutes. Along Embankment my pace had slowed to a shuffle, and there were plenty of runners zipping past me. I finished in 3,787th position, and along that last stretch to Buckingham Palace and back round on the Mall, there were points when it felt like all 3,786 people were zipping past me at once. On the upside, the crowd picked me out as the runner most in need of attention and supported me so much along that last stretch.

Things hadn't really started as well as they could have. I was late. I arrived with 20 minutes to use the loo, throw my kit bag on the kit bag lorry and find my start zone. There were runners milling about everywhere, kicking back and chatting in the park and I figured I had more time than I actually did. I had just enough time to jog to the very front (I'd put myself in the 2'30" - 3'00" finish time bracket..), stretch my calves out a bit and watch Jonathan Edwards walk past to get things started before we all raced off.

The first 10 miles felt like a dream. I didn't need water, certainly not carb gels. I was high-fiving the crowd as I went. Smiling for cameras, taking it all in- the ticket tape blowing along beneath us, the pubs, the bands, the sun peeking out from under the clouds and a runner with a bright red 2'59" stick marker just ahead of me.

At about 1'15", I felt my quads starting to hurt. This hadn't really happened previously, ever. Usually they are the very last muscle to tire, since I do a fair amount of cycling to and from work and they've built up. At that point, I knew it was going to be a longer race than I'd reckoned on. The 2'59" marker started to get further ahead of me.

At somewhere around 2 hours, my legs tanked. I saw the house-mates at 18 and yelled out, 'It hurts! It hurts!', trying to indicate my legs and not really sure why. I'm not sure how I got through the rest of it. I saw people stopping to walk and thought to myself I didn't want to do that. I saw people throwing up and I thought I definitely didn't want to do that. I forgot about hitting times, or trying to calculate them. I focused on the next water station, the next opportunity to run in the shade, the next bend and mile marker.

Anyway I did it. There wasn't really a euphoric feeling- all that had come before. I cannot express how good the crowd was- the support was by far the best thing about running the marathon. There was a long, long walk to my kit bag lorry, right at the end of the line. There was a phenomenal reception by all the Oxfam staff, a long walk up some steps to the British Academy building where the charity's after-party was held, a tunnel of pom-pom girls I danced down very gingerly, a sports massage and a jazz band in one of those private gardens they usually lock, and then a bus and a cab to the pub to mull over a slightly disappointing day.

You can take the Japanese out of Japan, but you can't take Japan out of the Japanese

44'16"

Here's a map of a route I've been running for months:





I started on 48, 49 minutes to do this. Gradually I whittled this down to 46-something, which I took as a good time. Turn of the year, suddenly I'm sub-46 and all I can think of is sub-45.

I ran 45'02"as I stopped for a bus at the finish line for the route (a zebra crossing). Then I ran 45'00"19 and started to think I was never going to crack 45 minutes.

This morning I ran 44'16" in probably my last hard run before the marathon, in broad and brilliant sunshine all the way.

Drowning on Dry Land

Timing’s essential. These days, celebrity careers are born and ruled by it. Drowning on Dry Land was fortuitous to premier at Scarborough in spring 2004 in the immediate wake of the news of David Beckham’s affair with Rebecca Loos. This real-life celebrity snafu and subsequent fallout matched rather neatly with the play, in which protagonist and media darling of the moment, Charlie Conrad (Christopher Coghill), is caught in flagrante with a clown hired for his son’s birthday party. The play has now resurfaced for a London run in the year that brings the regrettably landmark watershed of the demise of the Big Brother television series.

Our hero Charlie is famous for being inept at everything he turns his hand to, like some bastard brother to Midas. From the moment his knee popped at his one shot to be a middle-distance running champion, to his situation at the beginning of the play opening supermarkets and toppling pyramids of stacked cans, he has never been good at anything and the public love him for it.

They have warmed to his vapidity, his everyman charm, while he himself frets over falling apart completely should those around him desert and leave him to disappear not only into anonymity, but altogether. Or course, this is exactly what happens following his indecent romp with Mr. Chuckles, delightfully rendered into a twitchy number one fan of Charlie’s by Helen Mortimer.

Ayckbourn’s play scrutinizes the modern celebrity from every perceivable angle and while the premise should tire over two hours, it doesn’t, thanks largely to a sharp, crackling script brought to life by a tight cast. The play has ripened nicely since 2004 and the intimacy of Jermyn Street Theatre together with the play’s solitary setting in the shadow of a Victorian folly in Charlie’s garden evoke 2011 media saturation of celebrity coverage very well. These days, if it’s not tweeted, it’s Liked, or webcast, or disseminated through a thousand different micro-media and our celebrities can sometimes seem more like neighbours or old school friends, such is the triumph of social networking and 24-hour news coverage. In the same way, you just cannot escape Charlie’s torturous descent, as near, hot and flushed as he is at this venue.

Between Bez from the Happy Mondays and an Eastenders paedophile, Christopher Coghill is perhaps more accustomed to playing colourful and complex parts. In spite of this track record, he impresses as a wonderfully flat Charlie who matures into a genuinely pitiful and compelling presence as his ultimate failure dawns on him. Siobhan Hewlett is excellent as the young, successful television journalist, Gale Gilchrist, particularly in a breathtaking and energetic scene that leads into Charlie’s moment of madness. Hugo de Préscourt also deserves special mention for his teeth and spittle legal defence of Charlie, as hot-shot lawyer Mark Farrelly. Last, Les Dennis: himself no stranger to the ups and downs of life as a celebrated media figure, Les is perfect as Charlie’s agent Jason Ratcliffe and puts in a performance full of patient and knowing smiles as his client’s career enters free-fall.

http://www.playstosee.com/page.php?sad=play&id=103

Miss Hope Springs: Je m'appelle Hope

‘I’ve had many a dream to squander’, sings Miss Hope Springs in a warm, rich timbre as she takes her station behind the piano at the beginning of the show, and it doesn’t take long for you to believe her. Ty Jeffries stars in this one wo/man act, touted as a musical comedy cabaret but really much more than that- the show is all at once a tribute act, a follow-up, an indulgence, and simply an evening at the pleasure of Hope Springs (the clue is in the name).

Washed-up cabaret chanteuse Hope, recently jilted by her husband Irving and successfully escaped to Paris in her winnebago in search of a new life, recounts for us her story and ongoing struggles in between cute, witty and memorable little numbers. Son of the late Lionel Jeffries, Ty is clearly a chip off the old block and no stranger to the glitz and glam of the stage. Hope is no different- all feather and sequins, lip liner and heavy mascara, she has led a life in the spotlight. In a delightfully sordid tale of casual sex, indecent, wanton exposure and murderous jealousy, Hope runs through the songs and hosts like a natural.

The humour is fast, ribald and set to Hope’s personal take on life- in spite of all that befalls her, twice she trills, ‘Live, laugh, love and be happy’. Some of the jokes fall flat, but even these are carried off by Hope’s character and you can’t help letting it slide until the next gag or song, never far behind. To say anymore about the characters that populate the story and cause her so much heartache would be to spoil it, but rest assured Jean-Jacques and Fifi the Russian bodybuilder in particular have their moments.

In one sense, it’s hard to know where Ty Jeffries ends and Miss Hope Springs begins. She bawdily recounts an ‘audition’ with Gene Kelly and drops a dozen more names. His programme biography sees him tapping down Sunset Boulevard with Fred Astaire, modeling for Jean Paul Gaultier and befriending Andy Warhol.

Although we’re under no illusion as to which of the two is the real star, a certain blurring of them has become inked and fixed. Hope has even been released from the confinement of the stage- her website reads, ‘Miss Hope Springs is available for private parties, weddings and bar mitzvahs.’ It seems she is less an alter ego and more of a complementary identity for the man himself. Hope Springs isn’t the only one with a new life. Like all the best character comics, Ty is in danger of becoming trapped inside Miss Hope Springs- but then, with such a sunny outlook on life, that doesn’t seem like such a bad place to be.

http://www.playstosee.com/page.php?sad=play&id=133

Spring

First time in a while back on the roof.

Looks like Stumpy didn't make it.

Early Lunch + 2nd Lunch

From the latest information from Oxfam:

'In the 4 days leading up to the marathon it's a good idea to try and load your body with carbohydrates. This practice is known as carb-loading...

This process takes time so you shouldn't try and carb load the day before. It's best done 4 to 1 days before the race to give your body time to store the extra energy.

You should be aiming to eat an extra 300-400 calories of carbohydrates a day. The easiest way to do this is not by increasing your meal sizes, but by adding another meal into your day. Start by having breakfast, then perhaps an early lunch, followed by a meal around 3pm and then a normal dinner in the evening.'

Hels Bells, The question on everyone's lips, Red Velvet Cupcakes

9.9 school in the news

Things in Japan have lurched suddenly from the awful to the surreal. The BBC is now reporting from Yamagata, with regular updates and interviews with two old friends of mine, from a private English school I used to do some evening work at.



I spent most of today watching it all on TV. The media are running with all kinds of stories. This is all getting of hand.

Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside, Ingleborough

11th March in Japan

Thursday I get a call. It was the other Japanese TV company I applied to work for last autumn. The big time, central London one.

Things aren't working out with the guy they hired. They're looking for someone, again. They don't want to go through the recruitment process again. Did I want to put myself back in contention for the job? A whole new direction opens up, but I have plans til September, and then I'll be training to be a teacher. It's a done deal. I've handed in my notice at my current, less impressive Japanese TV job, and I'll finally be shaking Japan out of my system- nearly 2 years after I left, and a lot longer after most of my foreign friends in Japan have come back and moved on.

Back in the interview for the big time time job, they caught me out with a yorker in the general knowledge quiz. Who's the Prime Minister of Japan? I didn't know. 'There have been so many changes recently, I've lost track', I answered. 6 months on and I think everyone is aware who Naoto Kan is. Some footage has surfaced very recently of the Japanese Prime Minister in a Parliament session the moment the earthquake hit on Friday:



What's terrifying about this footage is that he does nothing. Of course, there is nothing he could do, except look around and hope it ended soon.

Friday morning I woke up and saw a friend in Yamagata had posted on Facebook, 'Was that one big enough for you'. Minutes later the news starts filtering through and the Today Programme picks it up. The disasters unfold threefold and we have the news streaming on BBC and NHK at work. The British newscasters stumble through unwieldy Miyagi ken and Iwate ken town names. Images of black waves and boats shoring in combeenee parking lots surface. Another friend wearily announces the 200th aftershock in the Kantou area. One lady ambles around a place she once knew and no longer recognises and pronounces blankly, 言葉が出ない- Words fail me. I think of Matsushima's tiny pine islands on the coast near Sendai and wonder if it is still there.




Friends in Tokyo and Yamagata seem fine. Each of them has friends with bad stories though. The more I think about it, the more people I think to contact and check on. People I knew in Sendai, even Ishinomaki. I think of friends to be concerned about, and that prompts more friends to think about and contact. Just when I thought I had shaken Japan from my system and taken a step away, I realised in a pathetically individual way that I am bound to that weird little archipelago in more ways, and through more people, than I knew.

PUB QUIZ DEUX

'...He was quite impressed by the fact they understood him..'

From an office window, from the end of the street, from the top of a hill

17 miles

17 miles hurts, but not like I thought it would.

I fell after 3 by the canal along the towpath, just at the bend where the route led up to the road, a flat road with no gravel nor puddles and a lot wider than the path beside the canal. Put a hole in my tights.

12 miles later and the guy running next to me for 6 or 7 of them tells me he's had a stone in his shoe since the towpath. It takes forever to overtake people when you're going marathon pace.

The miles ticked by.

Tonight

Tonight I saw this man in the flesh.
Spellbinding.

Postscript to 17th February

NME bags a shot of a normal night Friday night at Hachiko and passes it off as thousands of Radiohead fans

The Procrastinators

The Procrastinators - episode 2 from Lernert & Sander on Vimeo.

Wrong place, wrong time

Tesco MoneyCard

Lemon Tart and the Leftovers