21 Feb 2010
Posted in Juggling, People at 11:27 pm by alby
Yesterday was the nth Ballring wot I’ve been to. And the first UK convention (for me) since last year’s BJC way back in August 09. A major shame that Leeds didn’t happen to break up the long stretch between.
Got there to find the PBs there and with friendly folk cooing near them.
Juggling was done. Me and Clurb actually managed some pretty good old patterns we’ve not done together for 8 months or so.
Fun was had with weird Korean rice crackers and Annabod had some crisps which tasted like candyfloss. Well only me and Kate reckoned there was a strong candyfloss taste; the others clearly don’t have the “candyfloss taste gene”.
I didn’t get to stay for the show though.
Hi to all I chatted to. Was lovely to meet you all again. Looking forward to a few more conventions this year.
Photos here.
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15 Feb 2010
Posted in News, People, Rants at 2:11 pm by alby
Apparently the truth can be decided upon by sheer popularity. I knew this happened in the past (see religion for details) but surely now we actually know some stuff.
From a letter in the local rag from an MEP no less:
I may sometimes take a nuanced view, for example on climate, I am at least in line with public opinion.
A recent BBC poll showed that after the scandals around the Climate Research Unit and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, only 26% of voters still believe in man-made global warming.
Ah so that’s alright then. Lots of people don’t believe it therefore it’s not happening. Glad to see we sorted out the whole ecogeddon thing simply by closing our eyes and singing la la la.
At least it’s someone I now know not to vote for. Idiot.
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30 Dec 2009
Posted in Life, People at 4:04 pm by alby
For the first time in years Christmas was not spent at home with mates coming round in the evening. Rather I was invited with R to her sister’s place for food and company.
A fine time was had. Met one of the remaining 2 sisters I’d not met before who turned out to be perfectly pleasent and chatty.
Photos were taken too and can be found here.
The last few were of a walk in Belper where we found the most disturbing nativity scene I’ve ever clapped eyes on.
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23 Dec 2009
Posted in News, People at 4:42 pm by alby
This needs no comment from me. Here’s a letter from today’s Leicester Mercury. OMW.
I enjoy all forms of music from heavy rock to punk, garage, hip-hop, disco and even classical. Every Christmas from the very early 1960s I have bought the Christmas No 1 song and have never been disappointed.
Over the many years they have all been relevant to the season and most have contained in some form the spirit of Christmas. They were all able to be enjoyed and understood by the whole of society.
The current Christmas No 1, to be brutally frank, is the worst piece of music I have ever heard. It has not one solitary thing to do with this time of year and was apparently composed and played by a group of talentless and mindless youths who have engaged the “power” of that other waste-of-space, society-destroying junk, Facebook, which they have used to rally an easily-led and seemingly mindless section of our society into making some form of protest.
Rage against the “whatever” gives the truth to the story. Exactly what that protest is about I dread to think.
Even as I briefly watched the so-called performance of it, I could only describe that as being performed by a group of seriously demented individuals who had no idea of how ridiculous they looked.
Hopefully, this will be their one and only entry into the music world and they will disappear. Any DJ who gives this “music” airtime should be suspended – thankfully, some DJs have already stated that they will not play that piece of auditory torturous junk. Those are the ones I will listen to – and my extensive collection of CDs of past No 1s, too.
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06 Sep 2009
Posted in Life, People, Reviews at 8:55 pm by alby
Life continues to be fun.
I’ve spent the last couple of weekends with R and her daughter (N).
Last weekend was spent visiting Lincoln with R and meeting up with my folks for a meal and a couple of drinks. The Bank hols was spent with both of them at the Beacon Hill Wood Fair. This was a strange event of “learning about woods”. It should have been awful but was actually a nice way to spend a day.
N got to see a scary green wild man telling stories, me and R got to eat nice food including a self-made pizza and some proper burger. After that N went climbing and very nearly rode in a cherry-picker. Then we watched some countryfied version of the World’s Strongest Man with some butch lumberjacks chopping logs for our amusement.
As I said, very strange.
This weekend was spent in Derby watching some stuff at the “Derby Feste“. We saw the opening thing which had 2 groups of kids wandering into Derby square and playing an annoyingly repetitive riff over and over and over and over…..
Each group had their own mascot. One had a bird thing. The other had what we assume was meant to be the Derby Ram. In reality it was a bloke in a costume carrying a huge sheeps head thing. It was rubbish. Really very bad. It looked like it was manky from years of lying in a cupboard and patched together with bandages. It was horrible at best and scary at worst. Just nasty.
Anyway after about 3 months of them playing this tedious riff they headed off again, still playing it. We zoomed off to a small park where the fest had set up a stage.
Once there we found a small group of folk. Some of them clearly just liked hanging around the square normally and seemed mildly annoyed at this intrusion into their Sunday afternoon. The rest had, like us, a mild curiosity at just what was going on.
One small group seemed to be a juggling group. They had one guy juggling 3 teddy bears and then a couple of them doing quite basic diabolo tricks. After an hour or so they all stood up and then spent the rest of the afternoon playing catch with not 3 balls each, not 4 balls each, but 1 ball between them. Very poor. Earlier in the day I’d been thinking about going over and chatting but even my measly juggling skills would have shown this group up badly.
So the fun on stage starts. A hip and happening guy comes out giving it all “Come on Deeeerrrrrbbyyy!!!!” to muffled “hello”s and such from the mainly apathetic crowd. He witters on with some (I guess) street vocab for a bit until very few know what he’s on about. At this point he decides to do the “tell the crowd what to do” schtick that I loathe.
So we have to cheer when he shouts one thing and scream “Derby Feste” when he shouts another. N loved it, for about 3 minutes. When you’re boring to a 4 year old then you really need to change your spiel.
Then who shows up but the parading kids and their loathsome riff. Yes they’re still playing it, still annoying as hell.
The musicians turn out to be part of a Latin band that starts the show. Some good music and some dodgy singing later they depart to be replaced by a duo doing ukelele covers (oh the originality!). This would have been good if they’d bothered doing anything any good and maybe shortening some of the long songs. EG they did Thriller in its entirety. Come on guys give us a break and boil it down to the bits we know; that way we might not get bored off our tits with you. And no, we won’t be buying your CD.
After this we had a tired 4 year old on our hands so we went home. I don’t think we missed a lot.
Photos from Wood Fair here.
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02 Sep 2009
Posted in Juggling, People at 7:35 pm by alby
Was just watching “Would I Lie To You?” on the telly and Owen from off of the Gandinis was on it.
Coo.
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26 Aug 2009
Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews at 9:49 pm by alby
Finally got some time to write stuff and edit pics!
Wednesday was a work day and I was to pick up Mats and teh Biskups in Leicester before heading to Norwich for the delayed BJC this year.
Mats has been local in the past so “knows Leicester”. Hah! At 5.30 he was supposed to have them both at my work (taking an hour off the trip should I have had to go home and then to Norwich). Quick phone call and they’re miles away in the wrong bit of Leicester completely. Still not as far as they would have been if they’d gone to my house tho.
After a decent drive and registering I went to put my tent up before it got too dark. At least 1 person approached me for advice on twinges before I’d even got to the campsite. Nice to know I’d be useful at least.
Met a few bods and pitched near to some nice folk. Whilst putting the tent up Mini was stomping around letting us all know that “The Sharpe Twins”(sic) were going to do a show. Looking over from the tent they seemed to be performing in the dark. I got there more or less as they finished. Ah well, an evening of hugs and hellos ensued.
That was day 1 really. No open stage and I didn’t stay up for renegade.
Thursday – Woken by 2 annoying teen boys in the next tent. Wittering about “Meat slurry” and trying to sound big and clever by using pointlessly over-long words. V tedious (and yes it did remind me of my teen life).
Day was spent alternately chatting and snoozing and with a big wodge of clinic time being done.
I was down to do a gym ball workshop too but this didn’t happen due to me not having heard I was doing one and thus hadn’t taken any gym balls along. As it was a few folk turned up and we did a basic Pilates thing instead until the combination of Mandy and Liz (stars) came up with 1 gym ball and a pump between them so we did a few of the sillier exercises to round off our session.
I briefly managed to say hello to Duncan (from Canada) too just before he disappeared off to move home from Edinburgh. Sorry to see you go Duncan, hope to catch up with you again some day.
After a day wandering through the site (one tent had the very large words “I piss myself” daubed on it) the evening was spent with the Lugeburf crowd (a good lot of them were there) chatting and ta to Kate for supplyage of beer. Best decision of the day was when we all thought “curry after BYJOTY then!”
I avoided renegade again but there was the fire show. A decent number of people I chatted to were going along to have a look but weren’t expecting much. It turned out to be better than most were expecting. There were still rather a lot of pointless body moves but a couple of the poi acts were bang on with their pairs moves and there were lots of pretty shapes being made. The finale was quite nice too with fireworks and flames shooting off all over the place. Definitely a step up from many fire shows I’ve seen but still not sure that it holds my attention that well. I don’t have the “ooh fire” factor any more so it’s just pretty lights moving around. I’d rather see that in a theatre rather than in a courtyard. Mind you Luke did make the point that it was fun to see a fire show and not be freezing whilst watching. The man with the fire wheelbarrow was quite fun too (if a little limited).
Friday – woken up by annoying teen boys in the next tent. This time they were cooking bacon and seemed to be bollocksing it all up right royally (and noisily). And one of them kept sniffing which is so bleedin’ annoying. I dragged myself out of bed and handed him some bog roll, much to his surprise. But he did accept gratefully and apologised for his sniffing. Ta.
More clinic time but no workshop afterwards so more napping done.
In the evening me, Kate and Graeme went into town for the BYJOTY show. I managed to wangle my way up into the balcony on the pretence of doing the photos. The show was ace but there’ll be another post for that.
Afterwards a whole bunch of us found ourselves a nice Indian place (Ali Tandoori) – thanks to the man in a pub for the recommendation. Again a lovely evening with nice folk but this time with excellent food.
Back to the site for renegade, chatting and more beer. Later I was introduced to some of Lizzah’s new southern pals and we played a bizarre dice game.
Renegade started off with Jay hosting but after a couple of uninspiring acts I gave up and went to bed.
A short while later I heard Jay announcing Ben Beever to the stage. Ah well that’s the problem with renegades; you have to endure the rubbish to find the odd nugget of worthwhileness.
Saturday – woken up by annoying teen boys in the next tent, complaining about the mess in their tent – for about an hour. Note – not “doing something about the mess in their tent” just “complaining about it”.
As I was woken early I needed yet more nappage through the morning.
Wandered into town with Lizzah for the games and then the show.
We did get to Pizza Express for lunch but they totally failed to live up to their name and we left before they got round to coming to ask us for our order. We ended up in the Norwich market where we found a chip stall – it just did chips. And nice ones they were too.
The games were a surprise for a few reasons. Firstly I was watching them, second I was in one game, third I came about 2nd or 3rd in it – it wasn’t very obvious to be honest. I was sat next to Luke and we watched the first round of club distance passing. They were all pretty awful and Luke seemed actually offended at how bad the first round was. “Come on we can do better than that” so he got me involved. It was the first time I’ve juggled for months and we came about 2nd. Not bad I reckon.
I left shortly afterwards thus missing what turned out to be the shortest 5 club endurance game ever when a sudden gust of wind blew up at the exact moment of the start of the game meaning only 1 person got more than a flash.
The games were ok. The compere was audible (credit due for not succumbing to the usual problem of not being heard easily) but I didn’t think the order of the games was too hot. The first one took some organising whereas maybe a quick and easy round of unicycle gladiators would have been the ideal “splash” intro to the non-BJCers in the audience.
Later he put the hardcore ball games together so we had first up 5 ball endurance. Followed by 7 ball endurance followed by 9 ball endurance. The problem with this was that the only people who could take part in the 7 and 9 ball games were also in the 5 ball game and were very good at it so were in it for a long time hence getting tired. Maybe it’d have been better to split them a bit to give them a rest before the harder games.
Anyway I’d gone shopping at this point to find myself another memory card for my camera. I was hoping to get lots of pics from the show later so thought a card for the show would be a good idea. Unfortunately I hadn’t reckoned on the cost of the larger cards. I would have needed a mortgage extension to get the 16Gb card so I settled on a 4Gb card instead. Big enough for something like 1400 pics so that’d do.
To the show venue at 3.30 for the early show. Show description coming in another post though so I’ll leave the show there for now. Oh apart from one item of non-show note. I got a text message telling me that 2 lovely people (Rob and Annette) had had their baby (welcome to the world Nico) and the text was written in a “just happened” style. I dashed downstairs to share the news with other folk. First person I met who’d know them was Lynne who responded with a blase “Oh yes that was yesterday”. Thus stealing my thunder somewhat.
After the late show me and Lizzah were both starving and looking for food. We ended up at 3 Ways Lebanese restaurant which turned out to be rather good. Recommended.
Back to site for beer and renegade. I left when the uninspiring acts just carried on being uninspiring. Tired so to bed. As I was walking there I heard them announce Komei to the stage. Ah well again.
The night was very difficult to sleep through as the show seemed to have energised everyone. Shame it couldn’t have energised them away from the tents though. So I had to put up with lots of shouting and screaming and drunkeness – part of the deal I suppose. At about 4am the annoying teen boys in the next tent came back shouting something about a man who gave them some sort of chilli flavoured foodstuff. “That man is awesome! I’m going to give him a Dr Pepper!” This last sentence had someone else coming back at him (from inside a different tent) with “Dr Pepper is minging – urgh!” Thus began a spirited discussion between opposing world views.
Later they moved on to chatting about Haribo and how the word should be used by Hari Krishnas instead of Gouranga. They eventually concluded that shouting “Haribo” would cause more happiness than “Gouranga” does. Hard to argue with that I suppose.
Then one of them got into an infinite loop of worrying that every time he swore he’d lose the game and swore about this therefore he lost so swore again etc etc… Ad nauseum.
After this they moved onto phoning one of their friends, giggling at how funny it would be to wake someone up. Har har.
After that interlude they went onto a “Who can sing the highest note?” competition. This was annoying but it turned from annoyance to entertainment quite quickly as these 2 drunken fools’ contest degenerated into 2 boys squeaking a lot and giggling even more. I was in hysterics. Ah bless ‘em.
Tired on Sunday morning I was. And I don’t think the man ever did get his Dr Pepper.
Sunday was a very quiet day of mellowing and packing. I’d managed to get teh Biskups and Mats to pack up before 12. We weren’t going before 3 as Pol and Freddy were to do the closing show. It was originally due to be on in the big top, then as we were sitting there we were told it was on in one of the gyms. The gym was packed but the 3 of us managed good seats on a table at the back.
Pol and Freddy were excellent. Lots of 2 person manipulation stuff with a very thick layer of clowning on top. Clearly very well practised and very entertaining.
A very fitting end to a very good weekend.
Thanks to all who contributed, even those 2 teen boys in the next tent.
Pics here (show and BYJOTY pics to come later).
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25 Aug 2009
Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews at 7:59 am by alby
There is loads to write and loads of pics to sift so there’s not much from the weekend here yet. It’ll get there sometime this week.
So in short.
- BJC was excellent.
- BYJOTY was excellent.
- Catch-22 was excellent.
- Weather was excellent.
- Company was excellent.
- A sizeable bunch of US Christians don’t seem to realize that Jesus’ schtick was the forgiveness and mercy thing.
- England cricketers can actually play occasionally.
- Lebanese food is excellent.
- as is the food at Ali Tandoori, Norwich.
- There is no 10th thing.
More later!
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16 Aug 2009
Posted in People, Travel at 8:34 pm by alby
As P and C get ever closer to being parents it was noted that P would have fewer time to go off and do his own thing in the near future. Thus was born the plan of me and him charging up and down a stonking great hill.
We decided on Snowdon as I’ve never been up it before. No really.
We headed off later than planned on Saturday but ended up at the correct camp site around 4pm. The plan was smaller hill on Saturday and then Snowdon on Sunday.
The camp was under the minor hillock known as Tryfan. The weather wasn’t wonderful but that was expected. So off we went.
After a good while of off-route scrambling we figured that we’d not have enough time to reach the summit and get down again before dark so we reluctantly headed down before we’d planned. We did manage to get to a high ridge between two peaks though. No idea if it’s called anything, prolly.
So down we went. Quite a steep route down but for the most part pretty easy.
But then. Oh then.
My legs were a little worn out and were trembling a touch with the effort when I missed a step and my body went further forward than my legs. There was a large stone to my side that I tried to grab and vaguely managed but I couldn’t stop myself sliding further forward and down. At this point I was still confident that I was going to be fine. My head seemed to be coping happily. Unfortunately for it (and the rest of me) it was mistaken.
My chin smacked into the stone with a mild thwack. It hurt a bit but I was more worried that I had hurt my jaw. I’ve had problems with it before and don’t want the bother of dealing with it again.
(Incidentally, while I’m typing this it’s making my chin and jaw ache a tad.)
P saw me on my face and shot back up from where he was to make sure I was ok. I felt not too bad but was bleeding a bit from my chin.
P didn’t look too impressed when I showed him the cut.
But no matter there was no other option but to carry on walking down. The next hour was tedious descent whilst noticing that the bleeding hadn’t stopped. By the bottom of the descent my shirt was mildly gory. P looked at it again and thought that it now looked worse than it did when I first cut it.
So off to A&E to get it looked at. I did wonder whether this was an over-reaction but I preferred to get it at least checked.
Once there the triage nurse thought it might have been ok to just tape together but was concerned enough to ask me to wait to see a doctor just in case. I think our A&E plan was justified right there.
After some waiting I was called in to see the doc and he said just one word (other than pleasantries); “glue”.
So my chin wound was superglued together!
Well not actual superglue but something very like. The stuff they used is not water-proof. Meaning I can’t wash, shave or shower (that bit) for a couple of days.
Main concern now was “what about Snowdon?” We’d come all this way and I didn’t want to let the side down. We’d already wasted our one evening there waiting in a bleedin’ hospital.
We’ll see in the morning I guess.
Now we needed food. We’d had to come to Bangor to get to an A&E dept so we found ourselves a sit-in Chinese place called The Garden. Very nice it was. I’d changed from gory shirt to “near-rags” shirt but they had a big mirror in their waiting area and when I saw my chin I wanted to walk straight back out again.
It looked like it was still bleeding badly. One of the waitresses gave me a paper napkin using which I discovered that the big blob of blood on the chin was set solid, rather than still oozing.
I still wasn’t best pleased sitting in a public eatery looking mildly gored up. Never mind they found us a quiet place. Food turned out to be rather good too.
Back to the camp-site via some extremely strange directions from P’s satnav. We finally figured it out when I used mine instead.
Windy night in my new one man tent. It worked fine. I may be a touch too tall for it however.
And then to Snowdon. Started at Pen-y-Pas and headed up the pig track (PYG track). Harder work than I’d thought it would be and took ages. Oh and the weather was quite close so once a certain height up there the visibility dropped right off. We walk these things to get the views yes?
I rather liked the gallows humour of the other walkers and it was a proper sense of achievement getting to the top. Woot.
Coming down P had picked the Miner’s track. Some fools seemed to have chosen to try and ascend this way. It’s far steeper than the PYG and that’s after a long slow incline to the start of the scramble. I did feel quite sorry for those at the bottom of the scramble who asked how far they had to go.
“Well about 300-400m straight up and then you’re about half way”. Seemed a rude answer to give those who were already struggling.
I should note that P had originally planned to go via Crib Goch. But the weather conditions really did suggest that this would be a more bad idea than it already was. The combination of very strong (to 50mph) winds and poor visibility meant that only the loons would bother this route on this day. But there still were some folk trying it. Idiots.
As we headed back along the easy end of the Miner’s track we saw some very unfit looking folk heading up the hill. I’d say a good few of them should have turned straight round and gone home. The depression they were setting themselves up for didn’t seem worth it to me. These were people red-faced and wheezing up a mild incline with 1km to go before the really harsh bit.
At the other end of the fitness scale there were a few lunatic fell runners. One of whom passed us 3 times. Once on the way up and again coming down (as we were still going up). Later, on our way down, he passed us again on his way up again! Fool.
There was a couple who made it to the top with a baby being carried in a rucksack thing. Fools.
And back to the car.
Pics of the weekend (including mild gore) here. No summit shots though as it didn’t seem worth getting the camera out in howling winds and no visibility.
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09 Aug 2009
Posted in People, Self-indulgence, Travel at 9:33 pm by alby
Hi all
Most of the locals know by now but I’d like to make a welcome to the woman who shall be known as R on here now and again. She lovely and I’m happy.
[edit: just spotted that this pic looks rubbish in IE. You should be using a decent browser anyway but there's a better version of this pic in the weekend photos, link at end of post]
Anyways we went away this weekend. We ended up camping near Edale in the Peak District. Beautiful place and we had stunning weather.
The field we were in had rather more than the average amount of sheep poo but was well located near an ice-cream shop and some wonderful scenery.
The owner seemed to be an very old man who lived in a decrepit farmhouse. The house itself didn’t look too habitable but he seemed to manage.
On Saturday we walked and walked. We started going up from the site to Edale and then up Mam Tor and along Rushup Edge before getting lost and finally making our way back to the campsite.
We’d bought barbecue stuff and a crappy portable BBQ. We managed adequately with food but that was enough for us.
Sunday was spent de-camping (slowly) and then more walking, including a trip down Blue John Cavern. Nice guide by the name of Brian and worth a look.
Then it was back home via rellies (hers) and more food.
Photos here.
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