Y'know, I'm expecting some of the items on the Beeblebrox List to be hard, and some to be fairly easy. Some will be fairly easy once they pass a certain level of achievability - segway riding, horse riding etc, which have weight restrictions.
Then there's the Pink Floyd Challenge.
I'll be honest with you - I don't want to do this challenge. It has long been my contention that life is too short to listen to Pink Floyd. In fact, it's partly the fact that I've always contended this that's making me do it now. My brother Geraint is, and for this statement I make no apology, much more of a musical geek than me. Which should scare the living crap out of any of you who know me.
While protesting to like music, though, my brother has these occasional bizarre blind spots. Some I share, others...notsomuch.
He's obsessed with B-sides, for one thing. Now that, I can sort of understand. B-sides are sort of like Easter Eggs on DVDs - they're the things that weren't quite good enough to be A-sides, but are still interesting enough to get an airing. One of my favourite Adam and the Ants tracks ever was a B-side.
Queen always did interesting B-sides. And so I can see where he's coming from with that.
But he also manages, somewhere in the labyrinthine meanderings of his brain, to hold two entirely contradictory opinions simultaneously - a kind of musical doublethink, if you like.
"I like music," he thinks, perfectly reasonably for a man whose iTunes account, while posibly not quite yet at the comuter-breaking levels of madness of my own (although I dunno...), still has a farily capacious collection of at least reasonably tuneful stuff.
"I like Pink Floyd," he thinks, at more or less the same instant.
The only way this can possiby work, I think, is that he's come to a realisation that allows these two statements to be something other than entirely contradictory. He's come to the realisation that Pink Floyd isn't music.
I'm now fairly strongly convinced that Pink Floyd was a 70s anarchist social experiment, a kind of pre-punk, pre-Cowell investigation into The Art of Getting Away With This Shit.
To his credit, my brother did advise against approaching Floyd's career in any kind of structured or linear way.
"You're much better if you cherry-pick," he said. "Some of them are real...erm...growers."
It's not that I don't understand about growers. Guns 'n' Roses' first album, Appetite For Destruction, for me, was a grower. I stil remember where I was when the growing happened. I was on a coach, coming back from a Gary Moore gig, trying to drown out the rumbling miles of motorway. In those circumstances, probably anything would grow on you.
But as yet, I have yet to discover a grower in the Pink Floyd stable. I have discovered squealers, shriekers, and run-away-yellers, if they're any use to anyone, but not, as yet, a grower.
I speak, ladies, gentlemen and assorted gits, as a man who has just gritted his way through the debut Floyd album, Piper At The Gates of Dawn. The nature of the experiment becomes clear quite early on through the album, and then they almost literally in some cases, just turn it up to 11, throwing things at the ear canals of their listeners in an increasingly desperate attempt to get them to turn off or tune out before they rumble the central idea, which is that the band have absolutely no idea what they're doing in a recording studio. And are more than likely miles off their tits.
This latter factor of course is absolutely no barrier to producing phenomenal, world-changing music. And I know of course that the ultimate in slapstick demands the greatest mastery over comic timing, meaning that the less rehearsed a thing looks, the more likely it is to have taken blood, sweat and tears to produce the effortless wonder in front of you.
Piper At The Gates of Dawn isn't that. It's quite clearly the result of a bunch of blokes who find themselves in a recording studio without any particular idea of how or why this has occurred, utterly taking the piss.
Still - one down...29 to go. On, once my lugholes have recovered and my nerves have been soothed, from 1967 to 1968's A Saucerful of Secrets. The title track is a 12 minute instrumental in four named parts, ranging from "Syncopated Pandemonium" on the one hand to "Heavenly Voices" on the other.
Sigh...I swear jumping out of a plane will be easier than this...
Thursday 31 October 2013
Wednesday 30 October 2013
The Caterpillar Crawl
Sigh. Progress today?
Only to miniscule degrees, really. Bought d the latest version of the UK Citizenship Test - I swear no bugger who was born here would pass that bloody thing. Helped my mother with her Welsh homework...does that count as starting to learn a new language? Not really, lacking the concerted effort required, but one thing I've learned is that Welsh as a language has gone to the dogs - or at least the chavs - in the thirty years since I last studied it. Conversational Welsh now appears to have been radically ellided to remove initial, presumably 'confusing' pseudo-vowels (mostly "Y"). Humph...hate the idea that this nation takes this language so unfathomably seriously at the best of times, but that didn't help.
Downloaded a few apps tonight with recipes in (to add of course to d's legion of cookbooks), with the idea of beginning to make some progress on my attempts to learn to cook at least five dishes.
Also, looked up flights for a holiday in January, to a country I've never been before. So, vague and tentative progress there.
Have faced a number of perverse temptations over the last few days. Firstly, as I mentioned at some point earlier, Starbucks launched their "red cup" Christmas flavours the day I swore off chain coffee for a year - thanks for that, guys.
Yesterday, Facebook got in on the Tony-tormenting. The BBC website sent me a notification by email. I am one of the legion of overgrown Doctor Who fans on the planet, and it's celebrating its 50th anniversary in slightly less than a month from now. So the BBC have launched an app that lets you put your name, and your picture, into the title sequence.
Only available through Facebook.
Arse...
What's more, following last night's post, I've just downloaded Spotify to help with the whole Floydathon. But in setting it up, it's talking about 'people to follow'...which makes me worry that it's actually a form of social media. Anyone? Verdict??
So today has been largely a day of caterpillar crawling - progress on a number of fronts...just not very much of it.
Only to miniscule degrees, really. Bought d the latest version of the UK Citizenship Test - I swear no bugger who was born here would pass that bloody thing. Helped my mother with her Welsh homework...does that count as starting to learn a new language? Not really, lacking the concerted effort required, but one thing I've learned is that Welsh as a language has gone to the dogs - or at least the chavs - in the thirty years since I last studied it. Conversational Welsh now appears to have been radically ellided to remove initial, presumably 'confusing' pseudo-vowels (mostly "Y"). Humph...hate the idea that this nation takes this language so unfathomably seriously at the best of times, but that didn't help.
Downloaded a few apps tonight with recipes in (to add of course to d's legion of cookbooks), with the idea of beginning to make some progress on my attempts to learn to cook at least five dishes.
Also, looked up flights for a holiday in January, to a country I've never been before. So, vague and tentative progress there.
Have faced a number of perverse temptations over the last few days. Firstly, as I mentioned at some point earlier, Starbucks launched their "red cup" Christmas flavours the day I swore off chain coffee for a year - thanks for that, guys.
Yesterday, Facebook got in on the Tony-tormenting. The BBC website sent me a notification by email. I am one of the legion of overgrown Doctor Who fans on the planet, and it's celebrating its 50th anniversary in slightly less than a month from now. So the BBC have launched an app that lets you put your name, and your picture, into the title sequence.
Only available through Facebook.
Arse...
What's more, following last night's post, I've just downloaded Spotify to help with the whole Floydathon. But in setting it up, it's talking about 'people to follow'...which makes me worry that it's actually a form of social media. Anyone? Verdict??
So today has been largely a day of caterpillar crawling - progress on a number of fronts...just not very much of it.
Tuesday 29 October 2013
Two For One
There are, in my life, staggeringly few times when I wish I understood cricket. Cricket, as far as I can tell, is one of those human activities that could be manifestly improved by the addition of live hand grenades.
Like Pass The Parcel.
But just ever so occasionally, a cricket reference is appalingly called-for, rather saving it from the confines of Hell or Room 101, to which I would otherwise be entirely delighted to consign it.
Occasions like today.
Because today is the one-week marker of the Year of Living Beeblebrox. It has been pointed out to me that to do 42 specific things, within the space of a year, means achieving one a week for very much of the year, with just ten weeks' leeway to not have achieved any of them.
And so there's a certain smug pleasure in accouncing that in Week 1, both Sian and I can claim to have crossed two items off our respective lists. That means we're two for one, not out.
She, I happen to know, has begun making her charitable donations, setting up a regular payment. She's also baked her first, and really rather fine-looking Battenburg. Two down, 40 to go, and hoorah say all of us.
I on the other hand have spoken in public, last Friday, and yesterday, I made an appointment to get back to my regular blood donation schedule. Technically, if you want to suck the joy out of life (and frankly, who doesn't), I won't actually achieve this till November 4th, which is when the next mobile blood donation unit turns up in my town. But the appointment's made, the lift is booked, and to paraphrase many a B-movie sci-fi villain, "Nothing can stop me now! Bwahahahahahaaaaaaa!"
As one week of the 52 in your standard year has passed without me using social media or having chain store coffee, I feel I'm entitled to claim I've got 1/52th of Items 1 and 2 done. And as at my weigh in this morning, I was half a pound lighter than last Tuesday, at 17st 9.75, I'm also going to claim to be 1/84th of the way to my goal of losing three stone over the yer (and yes, I do realise there aren't 84 weeks in the year, so this needs to be significantly stepped up to avoid failure of that task).
Spoke to my brother, Geraint, a couple of nights ago, and he mentioned the inadvisability of the Pink Floyd Challenge - and it should be borne in mind, he's a fan. I've always maintained that life's too short to listen to Pink Floyd, which is pretty much the point of this challenge - if I do it once, I feel entitled never to have to listen to them ever again, with the exception of a very, very few tracks - and you all know the ones I mean.
As we were discussing the inadvisability of listening to every commercially released Floyd album, he muttered a sentence that cast the thing in a whole new light.
"Ah, the genius of Spotify," he said.
This honestly hadn't occurred to me. As something of an old stick-in-the-mud, I'd intended to grumpily, miserably buy all the Pink Floyd albums, listen to each of them once, and then sell the bloody things before my iPod strted to think they'd be sticking around.
But he's right of course - embracing a degree of modernity will allow me not only to achieve this task without paying for the misery of it, but also will allow me to do it while I work (the joys of working from home, it must be noted, are wondrous and manifold), thereby combining two wrist-slitting impulses into one big head-on-desk-banging week of unconscionable ordure.
I sense a plan forming. To Spotify, and don't spare the horses!
Like Pass The Parcel.
But just ever so occasionally, a cricket reference is appalingly called-for, rather saving it from the confines of Hell or Room 101, to which I would otherwise be entirely delighted to consign it.
Occasions like today.
Because today is the one-week marker of the Year of Living Beeblebrox. It has been pointed out to me that to do 42 specific things, within the space of a year, means achieving one a week for very much of the year, with just ten weeks' leeway to not have achieved any of them.
And so there's a certain smug pleasure in accouncing that in Week 1, both Sian and I can claim to have crossed two items off our respective lists. That means we're two for one, not out.
She, I happen to know, has begun making her charitable donations, setting up a regular payment. She's also baked her first, and really rather fine-looking Battenburg. Two down, 40 to go, and hoorah say all of us.
I on the other hand have spoken in public, last Friday, and yesterday, I made an appointment to get back to my regular blood donation schedule. Technically, if you want to suck the joy out of life (and frankly, who doesn't), I won't actually achieve this till November 4th, which is when the next mobile blood donation unit turns up in my town. But the appointment's made, the lift is booked, and to paraphrase many a B-movie sci-fi villain, "Nothing can stop me now! Bwahahahahahaaaaaaa!"
As one week of the 52 in your standard year has passed without me using social media or having chain store coffee, I feel I'm entitled to claim I've got 1/52th of Items 1 and 2 done. And as at my weigh in this morning, I was half a pound lighter than last Tuesday, at 17st 9.75, I'm also going to claim to be 1/84th of the way to my goal of losing three stone over the yer (and yes, I do realise there aren't 84 weeks in the year, so this needs to be significantly stepped up to avoid failure of that task).
Spoke to my brother, Geraint, a couple of nights ago, and he mentioned the inadvisability of the Pink Floyd Challenge - and it should be borne in mind, he's a fan. I've always maintained that life's too short to listen to Pink Floyd, which is pretty much the point of this challenge - if I do it once, I feel entitled never to have to listen to them ever again, with the exception of a very, very few tracks - and you all know the ones I mean.
As we were discussing the inadvisability of listening to every commercially released Floyd album, he muttered a sentence that cast the thing in a whole new light.
"Ah, the genius of Spotify," he said.
This honestly hadn't occurred to me. As something of an old stick-in-the-mud, I'd intended to grumpily, miserably buy all the Pink Floyd albums, listen to each of them once, and then sell the bloody things before my iPod strted to think they'd be sticking around.
But he's right of course - embracing a degree of modernity will allow me not only to achieve this task without paying for the misery of it, but also will allow me to do it while I work (the joys of working from home, it must be noted, are wondrous and manifold), thereby combining two wrist-slitting impulses into one big head-on-desk-banging week of unconscionable ordure.
I sense a plan forming. To Spotify, and don't spare the horses!
Friday 25 October 2013
The Unconscious Blonde Incident
So - That's Item #8 crossed off.
Spoke in public today. Was a bit mad, to be honest - was supposed to write about the joy of grammar (yeah...exciting, eh?). It was only about an hour before I opened my mouth that I realised I'd written a speech that was mainly about punctuation...rather than grammar as a whole. I quick re-write in a local , independent cafe (oh yeah, still keeping that up), and I had enough to just about get by. I'd been told I'd been talking to a bunch of adults, but as it turned out, it was due to be to a bunch of 16 year-olds. Some of whom were dressed up for Hallowe'en - if you've never explained the tremendous significance of commas and clauses to a roomful of people including Hermione Granger, Alice in Wonderland, and a guy dressed as Sherlock, but in Doctor Who socks, you've never entirely lived, trust me.
If I told you that that was by far the least weird thing that happened today, would you believe me?
d and I went out for dinner to celebrate a day that may well have brought in some business. Not a great night for the losing of the three stone, but still...
Got home, discovered an unconscious blonde woman sprawled at the top of the staircase. Red dress. No shoes, no bag...erm...no underwear (dress hiked up). Presumed drunk, but also, as it happened, epileptic - having had a fit a while ago, which explained a bandage on her wrist with an old bloodstain.
d called the ambulance service. They eventually got her to an ambulance to take her and check her out.
So - Speaking In Public - done. Spotting mysterious blondes in red dresses and bog-all else...Sigh...Clearly I really should have put more thought into the damn list...
Spoke in public today. Was a bit mad, to be honest - was supposed to write about the joy of grammar (yeah...exciting, eh?). It was only about an hour before I opened my mouth that I realised I'd written a speech that was mainly about punctuation...rather than grammar as a whole. I quick re-write in a local , independent cafe (oh yeah, still keeping that up), and I had enough to just about get by. I'd been told I'd been talking to a bunch of adults, but as it turned out, it was due to be to a bunch of 16 year-olds. Some of whom were dressed up for Hallowe'en - if you've never explained the tremendous significance of commas and clauses to a roomful of people including Hermione Granger, Alice in Wonderland, and a guy dressed as Sherlock, but in Doctor Who socks, you've never entirely lived, trust me.
If I told you that that was by far the least weird thing that happened today, would you believe me?
d and I went out for dinner to celebrate a day that may well have brought in some business. Not a great night for the losing of the three stone, but still...
Got home, discovered an unconscious blonde woman sprawled at the top of the staircase. Red dress. No shoes, no bag...erm...no underwear (dress hiked up). Presumed drunk, but also, as it happened, epileptic - having had a fit a while ago, which explained a bandage on her wrist with an old bloodstain.
d called the ambulance service. They eventually got her to an ambulance to take her and check her out.
So - Speaking In Public - done. Spotting mysterious blondes in red dresses and bog-all else...Sigh...Clearly I really should have put more thought into the damn list...
Thursday 24 October 2013
The Public Speaking Preamble
Well, now this is interesting.
After a bit of friendly goading, Sian, my co-conspirator in the Year of Beeblebrox, has set up her own blog (Right here), with her own list and everything. You can also see her list now on the top-right of this page, underneath my own.
What's more, she's taken an early lead, crossing off "make a monthly charitable donation", her Item 18.
Bugger...am behind now. Makes me want to go and accost a fully deaf person and make them teach me some rudimentary sign language, so I can claim to have made a start on learning a new language. And such shenanigans are in no way beneath me, I simply don't have time. having made a start on a few of my Items, it occurs to me that, for instance, the no-social-media and no-chain-coffee Items will only be cross-offable after the entire year has passed...which is a bit of a bugger to realise. (I'm not sure how I thought that was going to work, but I'm still disappointed. Nehh...)
One thing that becomes immediately apparent of course when you cut yourself off from social media is that nooooobody knoooooows you're theeeeeeeere...I posted the first entry to this blog, and the list, the day before I began Beeblebroxing (Hmm - have I created a new verb-form here?), and they got respectable numbers of hits. First entry after I turned my back on social media, total viewers - eight. Humph. Good thing I'm an only child, conditioned to loneliness by years of solitary reading in my room and a weird personality, isn't it?
Anyhow, I get to cross off an item tomorrow, for better or more likely worse. Public speaking.
Funnily enough, although I have staggeringly little evidence to support the idea of my being any good at this (except a couple of wedding speeches, which went down well - one of them was a tame audience, as it was my own wedding!), it's not something that's ever particularly filled me with dread. Like acting, it's pretty much a case of "Once you get out there, the only way back off is once you're done," so whether you crash and burn or soar and triumph, the end is only a speech-length away, and any embarassment lasts only till the end of the night, if that.
In the meantime, an Item on Sian's list reminded me that I intended to put it on my own. Parasailing. Saw that on an episode of The Amazing Race once, and was all sorts of "Ohhhh Hellyeah!" So that's going on the list. Sian also inadvertantly reminded me that some of the things on the list, we can (and probably will) do together - the flying, the sailing (on her list - I have people who can make that happen too!), the jumping out of a plane, etc.
"The skinny dipping?" I asked, raising a textual eyebrow. Never understood why people want to do that, really - that, to me, is why we invented baths - but whatever. Of course, she's got "Fall in love" on her list, which sounds like an admirably practical way of going about the business of organising affairs of the heart, so perhaps there's an underlying order to her list, as on some levels there is to mine. Fall in love - check. Skinny dipping - check. Throw self out of plane with Tony (or, as I should probably explain she's called me for over two decades, Marty) - check...
Hmm...Maybe I should add "Make A Will" and "Get Life Insurance" to my list...
Now, you'll have to excuse me - I'm not actually writing a speech as such for tomorrow, just the notes on which to free associate. First time I've ever stood up and done it that way. Is this even remotely wise, I ask myself...
After a bit of friendly goading, Sian, my co-conspirator in the Year of Beeblebrox, has set up her own blog (Right here), with her own list and everything. You can also see her list now on the top-right of this page, underneath my own.
What's more, she's taken an early lead, crossing off "make a monthly charitable donation", her Item 18.
Bugger...am behind now. Makes me want to go and accost a fully deaf person and make them teach me some rudimentary sign language, so I can claim to have made a start on learning a new language. And such shenanigans are in no way beneath me, I simply don't have time. having made a start on a few of my Items, it occurs to me that, for instance, the no-social-media and no-chain-coffee Items will only be cross-offable after the entire year has passed...which is a bit of a bugger to realise. (I'm not sure how I thought that was going to work, but I'm still disappointed. Nehh...)
One thing that becomes immediately apparent of course when you cut yourself off from social media is that nooooobody knoooooows you're theeeeeeeere...I posted the first entry to this blog, and the list, the day before I began Beeblebroxing (Hmm - have I created a new verb-form here?), and they got respectable numbers of hits. First entry after I turned my back on social media, total viewers - eight. Humph. Good thing I'm an only child, conditioned to loneliness by years of solitary reading in my room and a weird personality, isn't it?
Anyhow, I get to cross off an item tomorrow, for better or more likely worse. Public speaking.
Funnily enough, although I have staggeringly little evidence to support the idea of my being any good at this (except a couple of wedding speeches, which went down well - one of them was a tame audience, as it was my own wedding!), it's not something that's ever particularly filled me with dread. Like acting, it's pretty much a case of "Once you get out there, the only way back off is once you're done," so whether you crash and burn or soar and triumph, the end is only a speech-length away, and any embarassment lasts only till the end of the night, if that.
In the meantime, an Item on Sian's list reminded me that I intended to put it on my own. Parasailing. Saw that on an episode of The Amazing Race once, and was all sorts of "Ohhhh Hellyeah!" So that's going on the list. Sian also inadvertantly reminded me that some of the things on the list, we can (and probably will) do together - the flying, the sailing (on her list - I have people who can make that happen too!), the jumping out of a plane, etc.
"The skinny dipping?" I asked, raising a textual eyebrow. Never understood why people want to do that, really - that, to me, is why we invented baths - but whatever. Of course, she's got "Fall in love" on her list, which sounds like an admirably practical way of going about the business of organising affairs of the heart, so perhaps there's an underlying order to her list, as on some levels there is to mine. Fall in love - check. Skinny dipping - check. Throw self out of plane with Tony (or, as I should probably explain she's called me for over two decades, Marty) - check...
Hmm...Maybe I should add "Make A Will" and "Get Life Insurance" to my list...
Now, you'll have to excuse me - I'm not actually writing a speech as such for tomorrow, just the notes on which to free associate. First time I've ever stood up and done it that way. Is this even remotely wise, I ask myself...
Tuesday 22 October 2013
The Chainlink Conundrum
Alright, so here we go on the Year of Living Beeblebrox.
Of course, there'll be a kind of natural timing some elements of this. I've discovered for instance that the maximum weight at which one is allowed to get on a Segway (Item 3 on the list) is 17 stone. The maximum weight at which one is allowed to zipline (Item 25) (at least anywhere near me), is 16 stone. Ditto for horse riding (Item 4). All of which is determined by the outcome of Item 11 - lose at least 3 stone. It's determined by that because as I begin this year, I weigh 17 stone 10.25 (up two pounds from last week, though this is understandable in a week which has included two curry nights and a pizza night).
So losing 14 pounds (one stone) unlocks not just a third of Item 11, but also enables Item 3 to become a realistic possibility.
I'd be surprised if I made any headway toward Item 11 today - too much bread, all told, and no exercise.
Tomorrow though, am going to the gym first thing, and will probably use my exercise bike at some point in the day as well - Item 11 needs cracking.
Items 1 and 2 though began in earnest today - Giving up personal social media, and chain coffee stores, respectively.
I will say, while I don't miss social media yet as such, it's become such a learned instinct to check Facebook, and to share my experiences on it, that I've had to fight the itch a couple of times today.
The coffee thing was harder, especially as I was down in Cardiff tonight (home of my favourite Starbucks - no really, they've pretty much christened one corner of it my "office)).
d, my ever-loving and not-really-caring-about-the-Starbucks-thing wife, acted as Tempter on this last night, saying that really, as today was the beginning, the no-chain-coffee thing shouldn't really kick in until tomorrow, Wednesday. I texted my friend Sian - who's largely responsible for this whole thing - and she granted me an exemption on this article, agreeing that the no-chain-coffee item should begin on Wednesday...rather than today, when everything else began.
So I went to Cardiff with the intention of a final de-caff lattefest.
But then I thought no. I thought maybe I should use this as an opportunity to find a local coffee shop within walking distance of Cardiff Central Station, for the occasional Mondays and Wednesdays when I have to go to London and back in a day for my job.
Found one - we walk past it every time we go to Cardiff, so this time I went in and ordered my de-caff latte from them instead. It was as I was taking my third sip that something occurred to me.
"Erm...this is just a single outlet, isn't it?" I asked. "I mean, you're not a chain...right?"
"We have five outlets, all in Cardiff," the pretty young barista advised me. "The nearest one to here is..."
"Five?" I asked, interrupting her flow.
"Yeah," she said, a little irritated by my interruption.
"Bugger," I said, immediately texting Sian.
"How many links make a chain?" I asked her.
"Depends what the chain's used for. As many as it takes for the chain to do its job I guess..." was her faintly philosophical response.
Makes sense - you want to keep a cruise ship at anchor, you're going to need more than five links. You want to keep a person captive, five links is probably sufficient. Since I guess the effect of the chains I'm trying to avoid is the homogenization of the coffee experience, nation or worldwide, I'm guessing that having five links all in the same town doesn't qualify it as a chain. So, whether you agree or not, I'm judging that as yet, I haven't broken or diluted the principle of Item 2.
Going forward, I should probably confess something - some of the items on the list are there because I genuinely want to do them and happen to know there are opportunities to do them coming up. Item 8, for instance - speak in public - I should be able to take care of this weekend, when I give a speech to anyone who cares to listen, here in Merthyr, about unlocking the magic of words. Haven't written the speech yet, so that would be a major step forward towards achieving this goal. But it strikes me that if I'd only thought ahead, I could have given myself an additional head start. If, for instance, I'd put "Get a hug from a personal hero" on the list, I could calmly have crossed it off tonight. I was down in Cardiff to see a comedy group of whom I've been a fan since I was about...13...but had never yet seen live.They're called Fascinating Aida, and if I was at all sure that YouTube didn't count as social media, I'd link you to some content of theirs, because they're brilliant. Anyhow, they raised the roof on the place, and were out in the foyer signing after the show. I didn't get the album I bought signed because...well, largely because I tend not to do that, and don't see the added value. But I did get to speak briefly to Dillie Keane (founder of the group), and tell her they'd made the day something special.
"Oh, is it your birthday?" she asked, with remarkable enthusiasm having just come off stage. I said it was, and she leaned across the table to give me a birthday hug. I went toddling off to the train station with an unwipeable grin. Truly, if you get a chance to see Fascinating Aida, take it. They're on tour right now, running around the UK till Easter.
It occurs to me that I have a particular weakness for comedy songwriters. I've had conversations in person and by email with Mitch Benn, corresponded comically with Roy Zimmerman, and now got a birthday hug from Dillie Keane. Going away now to make moderately stalkerish plans to have a conversation with Victoria Wood and interview Tom Lehrer. Hmm - one for the list, maybe?
Of course, there'll be a kind of natural timing some elements of this. I've discovered for instance that the maximum weight at which one is allowed to get on a Segway (Item 3 on the list) is 17 stone. The maximum weight at which one is allowed to zipline (Item 25) (at least anywhere near me), is 16 stone. Ditto for horse riding (Item 4). All of which is determined by the outcome of Item 11 - lose at least 3 stone. It's determined by that because as I begin this year, I weigh 17 stone 10.25 (up two pounds from last week, though this is understandable in a week which has included two curry nights and a pizza night).
So losing 14 pounds (one stone) unlocks not just a third of Item 11, but also enables Item 3 to become a realistic possibility.
I'd be surprised if I made any headway toward Item 11 today - too much bread, all told, and no exercise.
Tomorrow though, am going to the gym first thing, and will probably use my exercise bike at some point in the day as well - Item 11 needs cracking.
Items 1 and 2 though began in earnest today - Giving up personal social media, and chain coffee stores, respectively.
I will say, while I don't miss social media yet as such, it's become such a learned instinct to check Facebook, and to share my experiences on it, that I've had to fight the itch a couple of times today.
The coffee thing was harder, especially as I was down in Cardiff tonight (home of my favourite Starbucks - no really, they've pretty much christened one corner of it my "office)).
d, my ever-loving and not-really-caring-about-the-Starbucks-thing wife, acted as Tempter on this last night, saying that really, as today was the beginning, the no-chain-coffee thing shouldn't really kick in until tomorrow, Wednesday. I texted my friend Sian - who's largely responsible for this whole thing - and she granted me an exemption on this article, agreeing that the no-chain-coffee item should begin on Wednesday...rather than today, when everything else began.
So I went to Cardiff with the intention of a final de-caff lattefest.
But then I thought no. I thought maybe I should use this as an opportunity to find a local coffee shop within walking distance of Cardiff Central Station, for the occasional Mondays and Wednesdays when I have to go to London and back in a day for my job.
Found one - we walk past it every time we go to Cardiff, so this time I went in and ordered my de-caff latte from them instead. It was as I was taking my third sip that something occurred to me.
"Erm...this is just a single outlet, isn't it?" I asked. "I mean, you're not a chain...right?"
"We have five outlets, all in Cardiff," the pretty young barista advised me. "The nearest one to here is..."
"Five?" I asked, interrupting her flow.
"Yeah," she said, a little irritated by my interruption.
"Bugger," I said, immediately texting Sian.
"How many links make a chain?" I asked her.
"Depends what the chain's used for. As many as it takes for the chain to do its job I guess..." was her faintly philosophical response.
Makes sense - you want to keep a cruise ship at anchor, you're going to need more than five links. You want to keep a person captive, five links is probably sufficient. Since I guess the effect of the chains I'm trying to avoid is the homogenization of the coffee experience, nation or worldwide, I'm guessing that having five links all in the same town doesn't qualify it as a chain. So, whether you agree or not, I'm judging that as yet, I haven't broken or diluted the principle of Item 2.
Going forward, I should probably confess something - some of the items on the list are there because I genuinely want to do them and happen to know there are opportunities to do them coming up. Item 8, for instance - speak in public - I should be able to take care of this weekend, when I give a speech to anyone who cares to listen, here in Merthyr, about unlocking the magic of words. Haven't written the speech yet, so that would be a major step forward towards achieving this goal. But it strikes me that if I'd only thought ahead, I could have given myself an additional head start. If, for instance, I'd put "Get a hug from a personal hero" on the list, I could calmly have crossed it off tonight. I was down in Cardiff to see a comedy group of whom I've been a fan since I was about...13...but had never yet seen live.They're called Fascinating Aida, and if I was at all sure that YouTube didn't count as social media, I'd link you to some content of theirs, because they're brilliant. Anyhow, they raised the roof on the place, and were out in the foyer signing after the show. I didn't get the album I bought signed because...well, largely because I tend not to do that, and don't see the added value. But I did get to speak briefly to Dillie Keane (founder of the group), and tell her they'd made the day something special.
"Oh, is it your birthday?" she asked, with remarkable enthusiasm having just come off stage. I said it was, and she leaned across the table to give me a birthday hug. I went toddling off to the train station with an unwipeable grin. Truly, if you get a chance to see Fascinating Aida, take it. They're on tour right now, running around the UK till Easter.
It occurs to me that I have a particular weakness for comedy songwriters. I've had conversations in person and by email with Mitch Benn, corresponded comically with Roy Zimmerman, and now got a birthday hug from Dillie Keane. Going away now to make moderately stalkerish plans to have a conversation with Victoria Wood and interview Tom Lehrer. Hmm - one for the list, maybe?
Monday 21 October 2013
The Year of Living Beeblebrox Begins Tomorrow
I turn 42 tomorrow.
I was talking to one of my best and oldest friends, a moderately demented woman named Sian, who has a tendency to do things "because they're there", about her own impending 42ness on 29th September, and we decided that instead of "turning 42", we'd think of it as "joining Team Beeblebrox". For those of you who've never read Douglas Adams's Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy books, firstly, I'd say what on Earth have you been doing all this time? Go away and read them now. And secondly, I'll translate "joining Team Beeblebrox" for you as essentially "looking for excitement and adventure and Really Wild Things".
"We should do 42 new things," said Sian. "Things we've never done before, but wanted to."
42, incidentally, is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything in Adams's books - hence the significance of turning it.
"OK," I agreed. "Let's make a list and see what we can get done." My list, if I can figure out how to work this blog-site, will appear constantly on the right hand side of the page, and I'll run this blog for a year - the Year of Living Beeblebrox.
I've tried to choose things that I think I stand a chance of genuinely achieving but which are things to cross off a bucket list. So there's nothing especially massive or outlandish here - for the most part, the only things required are time, money and a bit of effort on my part. I suppose, ultimately, the list, and this year, are an experiment in Making An Effort. I'm frequently "too busy" to do the things I genuinely want to do. So this is an experiment in still being busy, but taking time out to achieve some of the little pleasures I'd like to be able to say I've had, and be able to look back on.
What else do you need to know before the year kicks off? My name's Tony, I'm an editor with my own company, my wife's named Donna, though for reasons largely understood by her (and probably, I imagine, plenty of marketing people), she's known largely as d (yes, lower case, this is not a typo). After living in London for about (in my case) eight years, we moved back to the town in which I was born and raised, Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales Valleys, at Christmas 2011, and are still largely enjoying the change of pace. I'm significantly overweight, which is why one of the things on my list is to lose at least three stone (that's 42 American pounds or...erm...some number of kilos), and my attempts to lose weight are actually chronicled more regularly - or at least were till recently, at the Disappearing Man blog - a link will be on the right hand side.
That's about it for now, I think. So why not come along for the year, and see what I manage to get done, what I don't, and what turns out to be entirely beyond my reach. Let's have a Year of Living Beeblebrox, and see if it's fun!
Oh, should have said: At the moment, I only have 32 of my 42 things on the list. Am leaving some slots open for things that occur to me as the year progresses. Any suggestions gratefully received.
I was talking to one of my best and oldest friends, a moderately demented woman named Sian, who has a tendency to do things "because they're there", about her own impending 42ness on 29th September, and we decided that instead of "turning 42", we'd think of it as "joining Team Beeblebrox". For those of you who've never read Douglas Adams's Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy books, firstly, I'd say what on Earth have you been doing all this time? Go away and read them now. And secondly, I'll translate "joining Team Beeblebrox" for you as essentially "looking for excitement and adventure and Really Wild Things".
"We should do 42 new things," said Sian. "Things we've never done before, but wanted to."
42, incidentally, is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything in Adams's books - hence the significance of turning it.
"OK," I agreed. "Let's make a list and see what we can get done." My list, if I can figure out how to work this blog-site, will appear constantly on the right hand side of the page, and I'll run this blog for a year - the Year of Living Beeblebrox.
I've tried to choose things that I think I stand a chance of genuinely achieving but which are things to cross off a bucket list. So there's nothing especially massive or outlandish here - for the most part, the only things required are time, money and a bit of effort on my part. I suppose, ultimately, the list, and this year, are an experiment in Making An Effort. I'm frequently "too busy" to do the things I genuinely want to do. So this is an experiment in still being busy, but taking time out to achieve some of the little pleasures I'd like to be able to say I've had, and be able to look back on.
What else do you need to know before the year kicks off? My name's Tony, I'm an editor with my own company, my wife's named Donna, though for reasons largely understood by her (and probably, I imagine, plenty of marketing people), she's known largely as d (yes, lower case, this is not a typo). After living in London for about (in my case) eight years, we moved back to the town in which I was born and raised, Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales Valleys, at Christmas 2011, and are still largely enjoying the change of pace. I'm significantly overweight, which is why one of the things on my list is to lose at least three stone (that's 42 American pounds or...erm...some number of kilos), and my attempts to lose weight are actually chronicled more regularly - or at least were till recently, at the Disappearing Man blog - a link will be on the right hand side.
That's about it for now, I think. So why not come along for the year, and see what I manage to get done, what I don't, and what turns out to be entirely beyond my reach. Let's have a Year of Living Beeblebrox, and see if it's fun!
Oh, should have said: At the moment, I only have 32 of my 42 things on the list. Am leaving some slots open for things that occur to me as the year progresses. Any suggestions gratefully received.
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