littorally

On the rocks

An article about the Ice Hotel, at the ever-wonderful BLDBLOG.

photo by Matt Hobbs

Bit more vinegar. Bit more.

A bright day. It’s cold enough to be fresh, but you can feel the warmth of the sun on your face. A couple of hours wandering up and down the beach while the kids discover cannonballs and mermaid’s hair and a piece of driftwood that is combo sword/raft/shark killing machine and mysteriously buried chupa-chups that no, you can’t eat even though they still have the wrapper on. Dogs running headfirst through waves, chasing sticks. Then Queen’s cafeteria for chips with lots of salt and vinegar and bits of batter. Not sure that there are better ways to spend a Sunday.

Our beachcombing turns up nothing more exotic than a Russian tin or some old bits of sticks. What washes up on the shores of Bluefield, Nicaragua, is a little bit different.

Good piece in the Guardian on the fantastic Richard Yates.

Is your outline longer than the novel that will come out of it? Or are you writing the first chapter with nothing more than an idea that at some point in the first three chapters someone is going to get eaten by a fish, and there will be car chases? Both views represented in this discussion on planning the novel at Snowbooks.

I keep a list of PI cliches in my desk drawer, next to the nearly-empty bottle of Scotch.

A copy of Ray Banks’s latest novel has dropped through my door. I’ll let you know more when I get into it, after finishing the current read, David Peace’s Tokyo Year Zero.

Blink, and it moves

We spent yesterday morning at a birthday party for an angel.

It turns out that ten years ago this week, at the same time our son was born, so was the Angel of the North. Well, officially installed, which is kind of the same thing only less noisy. All the children in the north-east who are ten on Thursday, and so share a birthday with the Angel, were invited to have their photo taken as a group, get bags of swag, and so on.It’s impressive, close up, wings wider than the Statue of Liberty is tall.

This was the first time I’d actually been up close to the Angel, and although I like it, my impression is still the same as the first time I saw it from a distance: it should have been bigger. Taller. It should bestride the landscape like a terrifying metal monster, scaring the cattle and looming over the landscape for miles around.

But it doesn’t. It’s impressive, but it’s an opportunity missed. It should impose and dominate, but it’s just…there. Anyway, happy birthday Angel.

No to gam£ 39

If you care, please sign the petition…

Well, you’ll still need a tray.

Eddie Izzard. Live, in Lego. (The full set, here)

God knows, I’ve had my share of looking weird in the name of teenage subculture, but the whole guido thing? Not a good look.

Shortwave music.

Good result yesterday.

And what a pass by Andy Reid, to set up Daryl Murphy’s fantastic goal. Reid came on as a substitute, and everyone sat around me was preoccupied with how, um, chunky he was. But thirty seconds later, he lost three Wigan players, and played the perfect pass to Murphy. I think Reid’s going to be a big signing, no pun intended, a mackem Molby. And when (if ever) the first choice midfield is fit, with Carlos Edwards, Kieran Richardson and Andy Reid all playing (and I’d pick Miller for the fourth), there’s going to be some proper football being played.

It’s just wrong

When I went to bed last night, did I fall into such a deep sleep that I didn’t wake up for nearly two months, and it’s now April 1st?

That would explain the deeply, profoundly wrong proposal by the Premier League that there should be an extra game inserted into the season - against one of the teams already played against - and that this extra game should be held in which ever city around the globe that is prepared to stump up five million quid.

Sorry, I’ve just read that paragraph again because I couldn’t quite believe that I had written it.

Let’s look at why this is a stupid idea. Because it is. A very, very stupid idea.

1) Liverpool-Man Utd. OK, I can see a New York or a Beijing stumping up for that one.

Wigan-Fulham? Erm, Ulan Bator?

2) It’s just wrong.

3) Playing the same team again? WTF? That’s going to work really well, really really well, when a team on the threshold of relegation, desperately struggling to survive the drop, finds out that their extra game is in Tokyo against Arsenal. To whom they’ve already lost six points. Meanwhile, their fellow strugglers find out that their extra game is in Paris. Against Derby.

There’s no way of working this so it is not desperately unfair. In the current season every team knows that they have played the same number of games, against the same opponents, as everyone else. In the Premier League’s proposals to whore the game out to any despot with a fancy to put on a Premier league match to impress his mates, that won’t be the case. One team will play a more difficult season than another team.

4) It’s just wrong

5) All the dedicated fans who go to ever home game, or even home and away. Want to support your team? Plane ticket to Dubai for you then. Just after Christmas.

6) It’s just wrong.

7) For years, there’s been nothing but complaints that there are too many games in our season, that it’s more than other European teams play, that it explains England’s usual sub-par performance at international level, that it’s a factor in the amount of injuries…so the solution is to add a game to the season, book-ended by two long plane flights.

8 ) It’s just wrong

9) Oi, Keano, no.

10) It’s just wrong.

11) It’s not a long step from this to franchising, European super leagues, and all the other bollocks. Want all of football to look like MK Dons? Want to see the Sunderland Black Cats playing the Wigan Pie-Eaters live from Woomera? Step this way. Of course, if you do watch the Black Cats versus the Ginsters, it’ll be in quarters, to make room for more adverts. And it won’t be a relegation six pointer (well, of course, because Sunderland will be in the top four), because there won’t be any relegation any more. Got to protect those franchises.

12) It’s just wrong. Really, really wrong. Leave our game alone.

Drumtastic

Get your buckets rocking.

When the drugs do work

Well, they don’t want to do surgery on my back. Could cause more problems than it solves, the consultant said. So you may just have to learn with this happening every few years. That’s probably not what you wanted to hear, is it, he said.

This is true. What I really wanted to hear is: yeah, sure, we can fix that. We’ve got a new nanotech laser magnetic discatron, cost quarter of a million, state of the art, we’re world leaders in it, sort you out no problem, in and out in a day. Might be a bit sore for a couple of days, you might want to take some paracetamol after, apart from that, you’ll be fine.

Anyway, is better than it was now, am off the drugs which were very good at stopping the pain but were also very good at making everything rather distant and vague, which makes working a bit tricky. I tried a TENS machine for a bit, but that didn’t seem to do anything much to help, although it was fun turning it up at random times to see how big an electric shock I could stand.

And in other news, there’s a novel idea rattling round which might just be the one. Watch this space.