See that Tattie run!

Welcome to a new year

2012-01-22T23:43:00.002Z

And trust it finds us all in fine fettle?

Big news here is that I'm nearing the end of Day 20 of no alcohol after an impetuous (some would say rash / foolhardy / deranged) decision to have a month off the plonk after New Year.

It's led to being inevitably lumped in with the annual January abstainers and meant I've been subjected to numerous rants outlining the health risks of stopping and then binge drinking as soon as the calendar clicks into February; how I'm an idiot for thinking I'll save my liver this way and that, in actual fact, I'm doing more harm than good by laying off it for a while.

One friend, upon hearing of my efforts for the first time, even sent the following text to me - which, whilst absolutely tongue-in-cheek on her part, is one of the most twisted, brilliant, pieces of reverse psychology I've ever heard:

"You do realise that quitting for a month is one of the signs of alcoholism?"

Love it. How do I prove I'm not an alcoholic?! Shit! Best make sure I go to the pub on a regular basis, for fear I go too long without a drink, thus demonstrating my addiction!

I do get the whole reference to some alcoholics who go cold turkey and then binge drink themselves to oblivion, Ms Winehouse included, but I was already pretty sure I wasn't an alcoholic and certainly hadn't set out to prove anything to myself or others that I was capable of surviving without booze. I'm also not doing it in some puritan attempt to purge myself of the excesses of the Christmas period, which were reasonably subdued in any event.

No, for me, the time of year is just coincidence; I've fancied having a full month off for a few years now, just to see - well - what it's like. Whilst I'm not traipsing down to the local offie at 8am for a top up of Special Brew or even managing to last the pace with my friends these days, I still drink regularly - by which I mean that I don't remember a full 7 day week that has passed without a degree of alcohol being consumed since I reached adulthood way back in 1996.

I'd heard stories about bursts of energy being experienced, and I was just getting bored with the same routine - finish work on Friday, go for something between a single and many beers; wake up with a degree of hangover on Saturday morning, drink again on Saturday night, then spend Sunday feeling at least slightly ropey. I was bored. And at an age where suddenly, all that time spent boozing or recovering from the effects of it starts to look like a waste of the best years of your life.

My last beer was on January 1st when we met friends for a New Years Day meal down the pub; my last 'alcohol-proper' was with breakfast the following morning (*nb, not an alcoholic, honest) when J & I finished off a spare bottle of Bucks Fizz leftover from Christmas. We had the 2nd of January off work as well, before you ask, and made the most of our new found liberation (and the effects of slightly alcoholic fizzy orange juice) to go to a photography exhibition on the South Bank.

So. Nearly 3 weeks in. "How's it going?", you may be wondering. Well... hard to say. It's not proved difficult to stop (thus removing the outside chance I was an alcoholic and just hadn't noticed, which is a bonus) and I've not found myself becoming a hermit at weekends to avoid being put in the path of temptation. I've seen my friends as much, if not more than I did before Christmas but it's been more civilised due in part to it being January - so more "come round for dinner" than "let's spend the afternoon in a sun-drenched beer garden". I have been around people drinking, but have actually only been in a pub once.

I don't think I've been any more or less "fun" than I am when I'm on the booze (although my friends may disagree) - I've found myself being aware of being tired much more quickly though, and in all honesty haven't lasted more than three hours or so before making a move for home. I felt similar before Christmas, however - if anything, the non-drinking just means I now have an excuse to leave everyone to it and head for the exit. You're allowed to be boring if you're sober.

My life hasn't suddenly become any richer or more fulfilling. I haven't picked up any new hobbies; I've not been to anything cultural since the bucks fizz-fuelled photography exhibition trip and I haven't discovered any talents or skills that have been suppressed under a fug of stale Staropramen throughout adulthood. In a way, this is disappointing, but in another it is a positive sign - I have not been wasting some God-given talent, through which I would now be rich and famous; I just don't have one, and whether or not I drink doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. This sounds pessimistic, but it's not meant to. It means I've got to focus on different things if I want to have a more fulfilling life and can stop sitting in a depressed haze blaming beer for my woes. There is an argument that at least I don't have the added handicap of a motivation-sapping hangover getting in the way of my discovering that new release of creativity or perfect job, which may be true.

Up until this weekend, I was, at least, appreciating the lack of hangovers. Sleeping is a pleasurable experience, and it's great to wake up on a Saturday morning knowing that you're pretty well rested. The anticipated surge of energy has yet to appear, however, and I found myself having a total of 19 hours sleep last weekend yet still waking up exhausted on Sunday morning. I'm pretty sure I was very run down by the end of 2011 and that I'm still recovering, which hasn't helped. This weekend, however, I contracted what appears to be Norovirus, or the "winter vomiting bug", which ironically made me feel like I had the hangover from hell for all of Friday and Saturday. I'm just about out of the woods now, in that I've eaten three meals today and haven't yet brought any of them back up, but it's funny that I normally purposefully make myself feel that bad (without the associated puking/pooing) each weekend. Kind of a timely reminder of what I'm missing now that the novelty of being 'dry' is starting to lose its lustre somewhat.

There are still 10 days of my "official" trial remaining, which doesn't seem that long. I can't see me noticing any discernible benefit to be had from abstention in the next week & a half, in which case it will only have proved that there is no point in trying to stop. Booze is not the cause of all ills, and stopping it will not magically cause one's life to improve immeasurably. It takes a lot more effort than that. Which is a result of sorts, I suppose.

Inspiration & nostalgia

2011-11-12T14:52:00.000Z

Well done to my old uni mate Gav, with whom I ran the Scotland Run 10K whilst in New York back in April, for completing the New York marathon last Sunday in a superb time of 4hrs 5 mins.

The wonders of modern technology meant I was able to follow his progress around the route and get updates on his lap times - whilst slumped on the sofa in a hungover fug after the Lambeth fireworks display in Brockwell Park the previous night.

It almost - almost - got me back out running again. Work somewhat got in the way this week, which is becoming par for the course; the dark side of technological advances being that I can now connect to my work desktop from the comfort of my own home. Things are hectic and stressful in the office at the moment, and on numerous occasions I've found myself sitting in my spare room at 11pm staring wearily at the screen after putting another 3 hours stint in when I should have been relaxing or spending quality time with my girlfriend (not that the two are mutually exclusive, obviously). Where there used to be a distinct line between work and play, now there is none. I no longer view my home computer as a portal to fun and knowledge; rather it reminds me that I could - and probably should - do some work over the weekend.

Hence I'm determined to spend the afternoon and evening browsing and messing about for leisure today - J is off to look at her friend's holiday snaps and I, alas, am not invited. I haven't blogged properly for months due to the aforementioned work and the Steppe by Steppe blog has died a death before we even got to the start line! It's next on my list to update, before senility takes hold and the internet morphs into some sort of giant thought-based cloud where this type of content no longer exists.

Blogging does feel a bit passé these days, with Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr etc all competing for our social updates. None of these, however, provide the level of detail I sometimes want to go into and none of them will allow me to look back in years to come and think "oh yeah! I'd forgotten about that!". This particular slice of web-logging has been on the go since '06, since I was in my twenties, since I was single. Whilst all of that seems not that long ago, the 942 posts that precede this one have captured a huge amount of life, significant events & adventure for posterity. At least it seems that way to me.

Anyway - back to the running. I'm going to creak back out on to the pavements of SW2 tomorrow (assuming no inadvertent drunkenness this evening) in the same pair of trainers I've had since the blog began. I think that 5 years and a few hundred miles of running has finally destroyed them; whilst they still look reasonably good, I get blistered feet every time I attempt to jog more than a couple of kilometres in them. That shouldn't be a problem tomorrow - it's four full months since my Personal Best was smashed in the British 10K, during which time I've pulled on the ex-spangly Nikes a grand total of once. A cheeky wee lap of the park tomorrow may be all I can hope for.

Pay day is next Friday, and I'm determined to finally bite the bullet and get gait analysis and a proper pair of running shoes. Of course, true to form, I've procrastinated so long that I have now moved office to Hammersmith, and after having a branch of Runners Need round the corner from work for 2 years, I now have no idea where the nearest one is. Wait and see - guarantee I end up just fishing a pair of Reeboks out of the bargain bin in JJB Sports instead and then wondering why my knee keeps popping out every time I try to go up hill.

Autumn's here...

2011-10-17T22:55:00.000+01:00

...and the wind is buffeting my spare room curtains, thanks to the thoughtful air vent that a former resident / landlord thought might be a useful feature in a bedroom window. No way of closing it, so if you're thinking of coming and spending a weekend as my house guest, probably best to hold off until spring.

Another month-long gap between posts suggests that life has once again been too busy and interesting to bother writing about.

I'm happy to say that both I and the rest of the family made it to the top of Ben Nevis back in September; I'll stick a couple of pics on the blog once I've got them onto Flickr (because you can never pollute the internet too much with duplicate uploads). The mountain's pretty high - higher than I was expecting in all honesty. Yes, it's the tallest point in the UK, but I'd been led to believe it wouldn't be too much of a mission getting up there. There was something other-worldly about walking inside a cloud across the crushed rock that forms the summit - but the trek was definitely worth it.

Whilst halfway up, I learned that Ireland had defeated Australia in the Rugby World Cup, which is currently nearing its denouement as the hosts prepare for what should surely be a walkover against an under par and extremely fortunate French team, who were aided by some shocking refereeing in the semi final which saw Wales - the best team to watch in the whole tournament - play for 3/4 of the game with only 14 men after their captain and best player, Sam Warburton, was sent off for an over-exuberant tackle. Letter of the law 1, Spirit of the game 0. As it transpired, had Wales nailed any one of the 4 kicks they missed during the match, they'd be preparing for the biggest game of their lives now, but it wasn't to be. Ireland, alas, didn't reach the heady heights of their upset in Auckland again, and were comprehensively dispatched by the Welsh in the Quarter Finals. Still, the boys can hold their heads high.

Besides that, our flat was completely redecorated whilst we continued living in it, which was a logistical nightmare of epic proportions but has been well worth it, in that we can now have showers without soaking the plaster on the wall (amazing invention, tiles), although the effect of all the fresh paint is somewhat detracted by the carpets, which were shoddy to begin with but now bear the scars of flamboyant painting by Martin the decorator, who didn't bother covering them as he was told they were being replaced. That, I fear, has been put on ice by our landlord who seemed to baulk at the cost the rest of the decorating amounted to.

At least the place was looking good for the arrival of J's parents on their first trip to see where their daughter hangs out. They seemed to enjoy London town, and seemed happy enough with where we're living - although given I still don't speak Polish, they could have been slagging me off for the whole week for making her live in a squat for all I know. Grasping some basic sentences is back on my list of 'things to do this winter', although yet again is just below 'sit in the pub all weekend'. We'll see how that goes.

Bestival

2011-09-15T13:19:00.000+01:00

Ideally, I'd like to say I'm now fully recovered from the glorious weekend that was Bestival 2011, but given I'm nursing a hangover after meeting my friend Helen for 'a pint' to return her tent, and was wearing my Bestival hoodie during the 3 hours in the pub, I'm blaming the festival for my current state of distress.

Just as well, then, that I don't have to get up at 3am tomorrow to catch a flight up north, or attempt to climb Ben Nevis on Saturday. Oh. Wait.

Yep, despite my lungs feeling like they're clogged with half of the Isle of Wight's topography & shrivelled by a lack of non-smoking, and although my legs haven't seen any exercise since the British 10K on 10 July, the charity climb for Marie Curie that we signed up for in January is almost upon us. Flights and accommodation are booked, and all that remains is to get up there and hope the weather and our stamina hold.

Bestival was amazing - something about the atmosphere and site this time made me wander round in a state of cheeriness all weekend. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was positive for an entire 4 days in a row - which hasn't happened to me since I was about 6. The lack of 'must see' bands (from my perspective) meant I was pretty relaxed about where we went and who we saw; my early recommendation for opening band of the weekend (Fenech Soler) were a huge disappointment in the flesh - their stomping tunes let down by a cheesy as hell front man (all sun tan, muscle tee and pretend drum-playing during the instrumentals) and a stage show which suggested they believed themselves somewhat more famous than they are - and after that I was content to shut up and let someone else drive.

Over the course of the weekend I managed to catch Brian Wilson, Public Enemy, Kitty Daisy & Lewis, Frank Turner, Willy Mason (my personal highlight, playing on the bandstand at 11pm on Saturday night to a crowd in the hundreds), Goldie Lookin Chain, PJ Harvey, Toots & the Maytalls, Grandmaster Flash, Bjork, Mogwai and many others who's names and performances are lost in the clouds of my addled brain.

As with most festivals though, it was more about hanging out with your mates rather than ticking acts off a list - with adulthood and increasingly stressful jobs and responsibilities, I don't see my friends as much as I once did, and it was great to just have a long weekend in the company of some of my nearest and dearest, who were all on top form. There was quite an organic flow to who was hanging out with who over the course of the weekend, meaning I got to spend quality time with just about everyone - whilst Helen & Lucy were off raving on Saturday, Jennie & I watched the Cure with Craig before heading off to see Willy Mason; whereas Helen & I were the last two standing on both the opening and final nights. Likewise, Brian Wilson's journey through the Beach Boys' back catalogue took place next to Craig, as we sang our heads off in the sunshine on Friday afternoon. The only person I didn't spend any time alone with was Lucy, but then I live upstairs from her, so she's probably sick of the sight (or at least sound) of me.

The transport organisation on the Isle of Wight was, as usual, abysmal - they're just not prepared for such an influx of people (despite this being, I believe, the 8th Bestival), and their sleepy islander brains seem incapable of making decisions or ensuring any amount of order. I'm basing this sweeping, rude generalisation on the performance of one employee of Hovertravel, who managed to actually make the attempts to get on a shuttle bus worse by trying to organise it than if she'd stuck to her original plan of whistling nonchalantly to herself whilst deliberately looking the other way.

After 4 hours standing in a car park in Ryde, Lucy eventually came to the rescue by catching the eye of a local taxi driver, who gave us his word he'd come back and collect us next. Given the alternatives, we left the scrum waiting for non-existent buses to arrive and took up residence at the edge of the car park. Sure enough, 45 minutes later, Bernie - the nicest taxi driver in Christendom - reappeared and we were finally en route to the festival. As with the trip home in 2009, the travel chaos had its advantages when we reached the site itself, with virtually no queue to get in. Bernie's good deed and cheery banter got us back into the right frame of mind, and set the tone for the rest of the weekend - but it could have been oh so different.

The fancy dress wasn't as well supported this year as previously, which was a disappointment. It seemed the Rock Stars, Pop Stars & Divas theme seemed to fire people's imaginations. Our shop bought outfits looked great though - I'll post some photos once I get the edited highlights onto Flickr. The presence of the Village People on the main stage on Saturday afternoon, combined with the theme, did result in probably the most amusing sight of the weekend - an extremely confused looking bloke (assume drug dealer) being roughly manhandled through the crowd and into a holding area, his arms crushed behind his back by two burly undercover officers dressed as a gay construction worker and a red indian! I'm not entirely sure I agree with the approach of catching someone in the act rather than having a visible presence to prevent the act in the first place, but it was pretty hilarious for the crowd of onlookers - especially as the cops chose to wrestle him to the ground and sit on his back behind a mesh fence which offered no privacy to them or their captive.

Final mention has to go to the weather - it held up surprisingly well for the majority of the weekend (I have sunburn as I write), but on Saturday night the heavens opened and a downpour ensued. As a result, the grass had disappeared from the arena by the time we made it in on Sunday - but was bearable, even if it meant we were unable to sit down. On the final night, however, after waiting for Bjork and the end of festivals fireworks to finish, the rain returned - and this time it had brought its friend gale. One am saw me hanging onto our gazebo for dear life, as a pop up tent popped up from its mooring nearby, sailed through the air, bounced off the top of the gazebo above my head and fly over the back of our 4 man tent. Having got the gazebo down, I returned to my own tent, which was backing onto the path and therefore had nothing to act as a windbreak, and endured one of the most uncomfortable and concerning night's 'sleep' of my life, as the wind flattened the tent down over my face, and imagined objects ripped loose and flew across the camp site towards me.

Thankfully, nothing did actually hit me, we all survived intact, and our trip home was nothing short of miraculous - after leaving our camp site at 9am, we were back in Brixton shortly after 2pm and drinking in the pub by 3. The sun came out, the wind had disappeared and a few pints in the Hootananny was a perfect end to a brilliant, if exhausting, weekend.

Could do with a few more weeks rest though.

Katarzyna Pilarska Photography: Głowa w chmurach, serce na dłoni i Londyn analogow...

2011-09-07T22:16:00.000+01:00

We'd the pleasure of welcoming our second guests to the flat (not bad for over a year of living here) last weekend - J's cousin Kasia and her husband.

She's posted her pictures of the trip on her blog - including some taken in Brixton Village and in our neighbourhood. In particular, she has captured our rocking chair (I say 'our'; it's on loan from a friend) in a way I could only dream of seeing, never mind capturing.

Katarzyna Pilarska Photography: Głowa w chmurach, serce na dłoni i Londyn analogow...: Jakże niewiarygodne jest to, że w dzisiejszych czasach człowiek jednego dnia spędza popołudnie w Londyńskim Chinatown, a drugiego dziarsko m...

Trains

2011-09-07T19:30:00.001+01:00

Am standing in City Thameslink as I write (the wonders of moderner technology), perusing my preference for overland trains rather than the underground. Had I taken the tube from St Pauls, I'd be relatively hurtling towards Oxford Circus right now, rather than attempting to ignore the couple of pints of IPA that are slowly working their way to their exit point.

But then I'd be squashed in a hot tube with a smorgasbord of travellers across London - whereas here I'm in the relatively subdued and refined surroundings of fellow office monkeys just trying to get homewards after a hard day at work. That's what I'm looking for at this point on a weekday - none of the vocal exuberance of recently-arrived tourists, no shady characters lurking by the doorway. And, leaving Blackfriars station and crossing the Thames, the view (Tower Bridge on one side, the London Eye on the other) reminds me how exciting it is to live in one of the greatest cities on earth, when travel beneath terra firma sees you depart one urban street and pop out in another.

I have Paul Theroux's "The Old Patagonian Express" for company, allowing me to mentally relocate from the Sutton Service to other trains on the other side of the world, and disembarkation in Herne Hill with a walk through the park towards home.

So, then. A more civilised way to travel. And one that means some poor French exchange student doesn't have my beery stench being breathed all over them from close quarters.

Hits on the blog (hits on the blog y'all)

2011-08-30T20:47:00.001+01:00

That post title sounds better if you lazily croon it in the style of mid-90s ganja-toking hip hop legends, Cypress Hill. Which is fitting, as I've been experiencing another mini peak in visits to the blog, once again due to a post about music. Or music festivals, in any case.

Last time it was because of Supajam and their free Feis tickets - something I don't really want to be reminded of for the simple reason that they came good on their offer, I ended up absolutely wasted and don't really have any point of reference for the entire event except a dark stain of shame on my subconscious.

This time, there has been a building crescendo of hits on the site (almost scraping double figures per day!) based around the same 6 words: Rock Stars. Pop Stars. And Divas.

I assume some frantic Googling is taking place in desperation for Bestival fancy dress inspiration, with the fun on the Isle of Wight kicking off in a mere 8 days. For once, I'm sorted. Yes, it's a tenuous costume, and yes, I bought it off Amazon. But it'll be a damn sight comfier (and easier to construct) than my efforts of 2009....

Bestival - my Mr Spoon outfit

2011-08-30T20:40:00.001+01:00

Bestival - my Mr Spoon outfit, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

it didn't quite work out how I planned in 2009 - when the theme was "Space". It became known as "Pritstickgate", as the forgetting of the eponymous white stick, combined with the mother of all hangovers after a 5am finish the night before, sank me into parcel-taping misery - much to the amusement of my fellow festival-ers.

Wouldn't half mind the weather to be the same this year as back then though.

Steppe By Steppe: Mike & the art of Kangoo maintenance

2011-08-29T23:45:00.001+01:00

I've finally got round to putting a new post up on Steppe By Steppe - waxing semi-lyrically (and at length) about our crash course in 'not grinding to a halt somewhere outside Antwerp'. Click on the funky red link to be whisked magically across the ether to my other blog.

Steppe By Steppe: Mike & the art of Kangoo maintenance: Apart from enthusiasm, we didn't have too much in the way of qualifications to suggest it was wise to drive a quarter of the way 'round the ...

Further efforts to deal with the endemic dog poo problem

2011-08-22T23:24:00.001+01:00

Further efforts to deal with the endemic dog poo problem, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

we didn't see any dog poo on the beach whilst we were there - no doubt due entirely to these genius public health signs

A fishing boat returns to port

2011-08-22T23:23:00.001+01:00

A fishing boat returns to port, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

Watching a local boat return to harbour on our final morning

Trouville restaurants

2011-08-22T23:22:00.001+01:00

Trouville restaurants, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

The main strip of bistros & brasseries after sundown

Seafood in the market

2011-08-22T23:21:00.001+01:00

Seafood in the market, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

Some of the vast range of seafood available in the fishmarket in Trouville

Trouville

2011-08-22T23:19:00.000+01:00

This blog has been in existence for about 3 months longer than I have been going out with my girlfriend, whom I refer to affectionately (some may say 'lazily') as J. She turned 30 in July, and - unable to whisk her off to a 5 star hotel in Rome as I wanted to - we ended up in the French seaside resort of Trouville, in Normandy. The "Parisian Riviera", no less. Or at least, right next door to it (the true posh spot being the neighbouring town of Deauville).

We left London early on Friday morning and arrived in Calais at lunchtime; having not realised that toll booths accept debit cards (given we had no Euro), the mighty Clio meandered through the French countryside for several hours before the majesty of the Pont de Normandie loomed into sight.

45 minutes later we were cruising the main promenade of Trouville itself, a bustling seaside harbour and resort dominated by a faded casino at the junction of quay and beach, and famous for the seafood that arrives by the trawlerload on a daily basis. We'd chosen it as our destination for the weekend by that most scientific of methods, Google. When I finally gave up pretending I could afford Rome, I asked J where else she would like to go - "to wherever the best mussels in Northern France are", came the reply.

A swift internet search later, up popped Trouville - round the bay a bit from Le Havre, and a more manageable drive from the ferry than Mont St Michel. Not the most romantic of reasons for choosing it, but the squeals of delight from the passenger seat as we jostled our way along the street convinced me we'd done ok.

Our hotel turned out to be perfect, and the town itself was exactly what we (or more importantly, J) had been hoping for. We managed to exist in a little French bubble for most of the weekend until hearing our first English accent late on Sunday - and for two full days we strolled, sunbathed, drank beer and ate fantastic food without a care in the world. It was my first time in the France beyond Paris as an adult, so imagine my surprise when my GCSE French not only wasn't mocked, but resulted in my getting everything I asked for. Ok, so it was a surprise to find myself eating goats cheese quiche on Sunday morning, but I did ask for it, even if I thought it had bacon in it. Again, it was only on Sunday that the spell broke, when a well-meaning bartender answered my pidgin French enquiry in English. I have to admit though, I was exhausted by that point after a full 48 hours dredging the dark recesses of my brain to uncover some half-remembered 17 year old piece of vocabulary so that I could buy a pen to write a postcard.

Mornings were spent drinking coffee and watching the population of the town stroll past - obligatory baguette under their arm. I'm pretty sure people can't eat that much bread; I assume it's just the done thing to have a baguette under one arm and a cigarette in hand, should anyone doubt the true Gallicism of your nature. Afternoons involved a beer with the elderly locals watching the world go by outside a local bar, a stroll through the market, and a bit of gentle sun-burning on the beach.

We followed Trip Advisor's tips on eating out, which resulted in us tucking into delicious duck and steak on the Saturday evening in "La Bolee Normande", a small family-run restaurant up a steep side street near the quayside. The ambience was great, the service friendly, the food delicious - but it deserves special mention for its unique take on fresh seafood. As we were mid-meal, two middle aged French ladies and what appeared to be a daughter came in, ordering a seafood platter which duly arrived around 10 minutes later. After a moment, shrieks and the sound of chairs flying backwards filled the air; I turned round just in time to see the centrepiece of their meal - a crab - making a break for freedom across the table. The women were shouting (but laughing) as the young waiter came ambling over to try and catch the crab, which had launched itself off the table altogether and was attempting to scuttle across the tiles to safety. The young fella got down on his hands and knees and returned triumphant, crab in hand, just as his dad - the chef - appeared to apologise, explain and grab the plucky crustacean to return it to the kitchen.

Reading between the lines & fluent foreign language, it would appear that the wife / head waitress had scooped up the crab to finish the dish, assuming it cooked. As the husband / chef pointed out - and as was evident when he returned with our hero - still steaming from his hot bath - 5 minutes later, a cooked crab looks completely different to a raw (or indeed, "live") one.

There's something about the atmosphere in the place and the general friendliness and openness we experienced from everyone all weekend that I would use that story as part of a recommendation to visit la Bolee Normande if you're ever in Trouville; the same goes for Le Noirot where I showed my cosmopolitan class by ordering salmon in a restaurant renowned for its seafood, yet was treated like a long lost son by the exuberant old head waiter.

Thanks Trouville - you made a nervous boyfriend and the birthday girl very happy indeed.

Rock stars, pop stars & divas

2011-08-17T23:06:00.000+01:00

As usual, the arse end of summer has crept up on me unawares, and tomorrow sees my final payday before heading off to the Isle of Wight for Bestival, which somewhat unbelievably all kicks off 3 weeks tomorrow.

I am, of course, bereft of ideas for a costume for the fancy dress day on the Saturday, and am currently trawling the internet looking vainly for inspiration, like a desperate boyfriend in Muji at half past four on Christmas Eve.

The theme is "Rock Stars, Pop Stars & Divas" this year - which leaves the scope pretty wide, but it's proving more difficult that I thought. Apart from the truly iconic stars (yer Elvis's, Michael Jackson's et al), it's potentially difficult to dress as a rock god from yesteryear without just looking like a generic 80s hair-rock legend or a country & western singer. Likewise, take the likes of Boy George & Freddy Mercury out of the pop star equation, and you're left with a lot of formulaic nobodies in the main. Of course, there'll be someone wandering about with 3 packets of Birds Eye burgers defrosting on their person as they 'do' Lady Gaga, but I was hoping for something not immediately obvious (but recognisable) that hopefully half the other festival goers haven't emulated but bettered.

I've settled on two themes of investigation - abstract band references (e.g. putting a palm tree on my head and going as Oasis), or just dressing up as one of my favourite artists from the early-mid 90s, when my consumption of music was at its height.

If nothing else, the last two evenings have been an orgy of nostalgia, with everything from Snow to the Bluetones blasting out to the neighbourhood. At the risk of sounding like an old codger already, we really were spoiled back then in terms of the sheer depth of good tunes. Helped if you were into cheesy dance music followed by Britpop, obviously, which my age ensured I aligned with perfectly.

Taking it back to the old school

2011-08-09T20:04:00.000+01:00

The ongoing rioting reminds me of being in Northern Ireland back in the mid-late nineties, when each summer would bring with it the familiar spectre of "Drumcree" and the associated civil disobedience that went with it.

Each year we would be subjected to around a week of riots, with local people rising up against the police in protest at being banned from marching down the Garvaghy Road in Portadown. Unlike London - where the main focus has been on looting shops - the goal was to lock down entrance to, and exit from, key strategic points in the country - be that towns, motorways, ports or airports. The weapon of choice was the petrol bomb & vehicle hijack, allied to the fact that in the majority of cases you didn't have the anonymity afforded to you by the big city - rebel against these people at your peril; hell, you probably recognised them (and they you) even with their faces masked. It had, of course, added significance attached in that it was perceived as being a religious & cultural issue - and woe betide you if you suggested you weren't supporting whoever it was that was taking affirmative action. In Ballymena, they were well served on the main dual carriageway into town, a massive Ford dealership on a hill above the road proving a perfect source for vehicles to roll down to the tarmac and torch.

When I was 17, I helped my sister move back home from university in Warwickshire. My first ever road trip involved a trundle up the M6 in her 12 year old Vauxhall Nova. There was nothing remarkable about the journey up to Stranraer, but the radio was keeping us abreast of developments back home. When we got to the ferry they confirmed that the road to the port of Larne - our destination - had been barricaded by Loyalists, and no one was getting in or out.

When we docked, imagine our surprise therefore to see our parents waiting for us. Somehow my dad had talked his way through the barricade, where the local "commander" had allegedly not only allowed him to pass through, but had also guaranteed he could get back out once he had collected us. Quite how he'd come to this arrangement, I don't know and if I'm honest don't want to, although I do retain a degree of intrigue and respect for the fact he plied his trade across the rural wilds of Northern Ireland as a salesman throughout some of the darkest periods of the troubles.

We travelled in convoy back up the deserted road from the port, hazard lights flashing as instructed to announce our arrival, only to reach the blockade (a hijacked articulated lorry turned sideways across the dual carriageway) and discover "our man" was no longer there. His replacement knew of no arrangement to let us through, and we were forced to return sheepishly to the port and spend an uncomfortable night with the rest of the ferry passengers, trying to sleep in the food court on plastic moulded seats.

Around 5am, word reached the terminal that a route may be open up the coast road towards Glenarm. Some discussion and decision amongst a discrete group of passengers later and we were slipping into our cars in the early morning sunlight. My dad somehow emerged as the ringleader once again, and he and mum headed up the convoy as we quietly eased out of the port and turned towards the back roads along the shoreline. My sister and I followed in the Nova, followed by a couple of other cars who were willing to take the risk to get back home.

It was an incredibly surreal experience - the watery daylight, the early hour, picking our way round and through still-smouldering car shells in the middle of the road. At any moment, I expected to round a corner and be confronted by a group of men in balaclavas - but it never happened. It seems that, wherever the intelligence came from, we had timed it perfectly to coincide with the night shift heading home to get a few hours kip. Eventually, after around 30 minutes, we turned left, tooted the horn in solidarity with the cars heading further north, and rose into the hills to head back towards home.

A few years later I was working for Belfast International Airport during my summer holidays from uni. My shifts started at 6am, and I remember plotting my route to avoid the roadblocks based on the information available at the time (as a rule of thumb, "take the most remote roads you can find"). I found myself high on the side of a hill overlooking the plain on which Antrim & Ballymena nestle, and remember just looking down through the mist at fires burning across the countryside - I could spot at least ten spots where burning barricades were clearly blocking access on the main roads.

Its weird - at the time it was just something you dealt with and were used to. Guys I knew at the airport had tales of previous years where they'd had to stay overnight at work because there was no way in or out. They ended up at the airport hotel having a by-all-accounts raucous party with some stranded air hostesses. Every cloud, and all that.

Riots in London

2011-08-08T23:48:00.002+01:00

I was planning on posting something about our trip to France for J's birthday. Instead, I've got BBC News 24 playing in the background as pictures of Lewisham, Peckham, Hackney & Croydon ablaze fill the screen and news of trouble spreading to Birmingham filters through.

Tonight's rioting has even overshadowed what the shitty state of affairs bestowed on my adopted home town of Brixton last night. That it has spilled over into a 3rd successive night of violence ensures the whole thing is taking on a somewhat surreal quality. The news earlier reminded me of that bit in Shaun of the Dead where Huw Edwards is giving out official advice on how to cope with zombie attacks.

As I speak, Clapham Junction is overrun with jumped-up little vandals grabbing as much loot as they can from destroyed shop fronts - it tells you all you need to know that Currys & JD Sports are emptied whilst Waterstones remains unscathed.

This is my home. I've lived in Brixton for 8 years. That's a quarter of my life. The only place I've lived in longer is my childhood house. Apart from travelling across the river to work each day, my entire life is strung out in a roughly straight line across South London. Brixton in particular is that rare beast - a real community within central London, a fact borne out by the wealth of responses to last night's events on social networking sights and traditional news channels. All had the same message - that this is a vibrant community and a great place to live, and we're not going to let a few hooligans destroy that.

The people that looted our hood last night were not doing so to protest against anything. It wasn't a demonstration. It was just a focussed attempt to rob as much free shit as possible from the companies that have put their faith and money behind the regeneration of Brixton over the last few years. In 2009 the place was wobbling - Woolies was lying empty as were numerous other prime shop units, and the only businesses that seemed to want to come down to SW9 were Poundland and its imitators.

But then something changed. Windrush Square was redeveloped. H&M and T Mobile took over the old Woolworths building. Brixton's heart had a new look and was a genuinely pleasant place to inhabit. What will the little looting pricks have achieved if they drive those businesses out? There's a difference between gentrification and regeneration - naturally the former will leave the 'real residents' of Brixton feeling alienated and pushed out, and it will rob the place of its unique character. The squat evictions from Clifton Mansions on Coldharbour Lane were a case in point the other week, and it may well be the death knell for the community and atmosphere if the focal point of that most Brixton of streets becomes some yuppie apartment complex.

But regeneration is different. It gives an area a new focus & pride, attracts investment, makes people happy to live where they do. That's what Brixton has got in the last couple of years and that is what a crowd of 200 teenagers may have sacrificed in return for a free iPad and a pair of Nike Air Max last night. It's like they actually want to drive these businesses out so they can live in a ghetto and have something to justify their outlook on life.

The fact that I, and so many 'non-Brixtonites' like me feel so upset at the sights that greeted us in central Brixton this morning, means that we may just be able to stop them achieving their aim. I've been here 8 years. I am a Brixtonite. And apparently I care a damn sight more about it than a hell of a lot of people born and raised within swaggering distance.

Bonne anniversaire, mon petite filous

2011-07-25T22:48:00.000+01:00

I'm a crispy husk of a man sat before you, after a drunken night at Mango Landin', south Brixton's finest Caribbean-themed pub, saw us usher in J's 30s in some style. Everyone was incredibly generous and on top form, and we eventually made it to bed around 4am. There was only one thing for it yesterday - a hair of the dog and a burritto to soak up the excesses of the night before. Unfortunately, one hair turned into the drinking equivalent of a blocked plughole, and before I knew it we'd been in the pub for 5 hours - or more precisely, been in the beer garden sunshine for 5 hours.

I'm itchy, dehydrated and stingy all over today, which compounded my misery at work after the usual rubbish attempts at a night's sleep on a Sunday. The only thing keeping me going is the knowledge that it's a 4 day week for me this week; we're off to Normandy on Friday for the extended birthday celebrations.

I'd never heard of Trouville-sur-mer until I googled 'best mussels in northern France' (J's proposal to help us choose where to go), and this small fishing village popped up. A token attempt to research the place later, and I've discovered it's actually pretty famous as being the location for one of Monet's most famous paintings. "The Beach at Trouville", shown above, hangs in the National Gallery in London.

Relaxation is the order of the weekend, and we have our fingers crossed for sunshine. If not though, it'll give me the perfect opportunity to drag J along to see the Bayeux tapestry - something that mesmerised me at the age of about 11, but which I have to confess I'd kind of forgotten about in the past 20 years. Means nothing to J, of course, and trying to explain it to her is similar to her trying to get me all worked up over Grunwald. But I will, hopefully, be able to get along to see it and relive my childhood imagination of the Norman conquest.

Happy birthday J

2011-07-19T23:06:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow, my lovely girlfriend Justyna turns 30. I remember when we first met, it seemed so far away - she was a young whipper-snapper of 25 and even I still had a year of my twenties left. Yet here we are, in 2011, still going strong and the big day upon us.

Alas, nearly 5 years of build up has not helped me think of the perfect present for her. 30 is significant; I wanted to make sure I bought something really fitting. Of course, this has translated into me spending the past 2 months stressing about it without actually coming up with an idea for what that might be. I feel shit but didn't want to buy some sort of tat for the sake of it. I'm hoping she's not too disappointed and we can go shopping together at the weekend, or when we're in France for a birthday long weekend towards the end of the month. It just sucks that she won't have anything from me to open, and I know I won't help matters by constantly going on about it - so even if she isn't bothered at first, she will be after me moaning about how crap I am for a couple of hours.

We are, at least, going out for dinner tomorrow, to a small but highly rated restaurant nearby. The menu changes every couple of weeks, but limits itself to a couple of options - you pretty much get what you're given. I hope, for both our sakes, it's at least an improvement on J's birthday meal last year, when we had crossed from the Ukraine into Russia and found a hotel on the outskirts of Rostov-na-Donu. Even then, I had big plans of flamboyant gestures and a luxury hotel room for the night (scuppered when the best hotel in town advised that yes, they had rooms available, but unfortunately no hot water). What I treated her to was a room underneath a raucous wedding reception, and a trip in the dark to a nearby shop to buy bread, cheese and beer due to the hotel kitchen being closed. She didn't complain though.

Justyna cuts some birthday bread with my multi-tool, in our Rostov hotel room

Happy birthday J - even though I'm rubbish at showing it, you make me the happiest guy in the world.

If you see slightly ugly looking links to another blog like the ones below...

2011-07-12T23:35:00.000+01:00

...never fear, it is not spam (at least not by the standard definition - whether or not you class it as such is your prerogative*).

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I've finally got round to starting to blog about the Mongolia trip in more detail - subtly ignoring the fact that this year's Charity Rally departed on Saturday, meaning I'm over a year behind schedule.

As and when I post something new to Steppe By Steppe, I'll chuck a link on here in case anyone fancies a gander.

*if for nothing else, at least Bobby Brown should feel proud that he has ensured a generation of pop fans can now spell the word 'prerogative' without need for consultation of spell checker.

Steppe By Steppe: The pre-trip shop

2011-07-12T23:30:00.001+01:00

Steppe By Steppe: The pre-trip shop: "We were stupidly, horrendously over-prepared. You don't need this much food. In fact, I'd suggest you don't need any (although I accept a co..."

Steppe By Steppe: Saturday 03 Jul 2010 23:03Duh duh duh duhhhh! Duh ...

2011-07-12T23:30:00.000+01:00

Steppe By Steppe: Saturday 03 Jul 2010 23:03Duh duh duh duhhhh! Duh ...: "Saturday 03 Jul 2010 23:03 Duh duh duh duhhhh! Duh duh duh duh... by Tony Edgar of Steppe By Steppe The blog title is a vague referenc..."

The Personal Best Brigade

2011-07-12T22:30:00.000+01:00

Gordon, Murray and I post-race

The British 10K

2011-07-11T23:44:00.002+01:00

So, the British 10K is done and dusted, and I sit here smugly in possession of a new Personal Best, a mere 5 years after setting the benchmark with my first ever attempt at running a race.

I was seriously starting to become concerned that my steady decline into old age was irreversible, but a few decent training runs had given me a smidgeon of hope that I may be able to potter round in a decent time. Having completed the Homecoming Scotland Run in Central Park exactly 3 months beforehand, I also knew that I was coming into this race having begun training with a greater level of fitness than ever before.

The pressure was on, then, and I was determined to give it my best shot. I simultaneously impressed myself with my willpower and bored my friends with my sober 'banter' over the course of 3 non-drinking hours in the pub on Saturday; a tagliatelle-loading session and restless night's sleep later, I woke at 06:30 on Sunday morning ready to go. It was slightly odd, getting up at that time on a Sunday, although somewhat fitting given that exactly a year previously we had wakened at roughly the same time - albeit in a Renault Kangoo, in a car park in Bruges.

Having arrived only slightly late at the bag drop near the Mall, I met up with fellow competitors Gordon and Murray, and we made our way to the start line - via a potential collective act of treason as a lack of loos forced us to use Green Park for pre-race slashes. I remembered the melee over the first few kilometres in 2008 - comparatively narrow streets combined with no pace-determined starting slots mean it's a free for all until the race reaches Embankment. We elbowed and sneaked our way as close to the front of the expectant participants as we could.

In bright sunshine, and only half an hour late, we were off. I knew I'd gone too quickly almost immediately, but in homage to that afternoon's Formula 1 British Grand Prix, I was doing my utmost to out-drag as many people as possible before the first corner. Gordon, who was aiming for sub-45 minutes, went with me, and we swapped our own personal lead a few times in the sprint to the first kilometre marker.

As usual, there was the usual collection of panting chunkers walking before we even passed the 1 KM sign - yep, they'd paid their money (or committed to their charity), but apparently not even bothered training enough to be able to jog 1,000 metres. Seriously. Why? You're putting yourself through, I assume, several hours of humiliation and discomfort, and pissing off everyone else who has made an effort and now has to run at 90 degree angles to try and avoid you strolling down the middle of the course.

As it was, Gordon made better use of the pavement & traffic islands than I did, and as we approached the 2km mark he was stretching ahead of me. I let him go - there's no way I could have maintained that pace and come home in under 45 minutes. After he disappeared I settled into a decent enough rhythm, although when my legs started to feel fatigued by the time we reached the turn at Blackfriars (around 4km in) I knew I was going to regret caning it in the early stages. Thankfully I was still able to maintain a steady pace and dodge the flood of urine in the underpass, as guys made use of the temporary respite from spectator-lined streets to relieve themselves.

I was doing ok until around 6.5km, when I became convinced that I'd clearly missed the 7km sign as I "must have passed it ages ago". To my despair, it slowly came into view as I lurched round a tree-lined corner; thankfully by that point Big Ben was also in sight and I knew that in 20 minutes it would all be over - if I only kept going and didn't listen to my legs which came closer than they ever have done before to convincing my brain that no one would mind if we just, y'know; stopped for a bit.

Westminster bridge. 8km. The majestic Gothic splendour of the Houses of Parliament forming a fittingly grand backdrop for a souvenir photo as we ran past. Alas, by that point I'd been shuffling on empty for over a mile and await with dread the results of the numerous photographers' efforts appearing on marathon-photo.com. Mind you, I think Murray's portfolio may turn out worse, given he accidentally blew a bubble of snot out of his nose as he attempted to smile for the camera on the way past.

Entering Parliament Square, I allowed myself a small smile; it was nearly over, given the finish was in Whitehall. Imagine my surprise and disgust, then, as we took the second exit from the roundabout rather than the fourth, and found ourselves trudging towards Victoria, for what felt like an eternity. I wasn't expecting this, as they've either changed the course since 2008 or I'd been fondly recalling it minus the shit bits. Eventually the turn came and I was heading back towards Whitehall, dreading there might be a final twist in the course.

I hadn't been checking my time as I ran - if I was ahead of schedule I didn't want to get stressed about seeing it through, whereas if I was behind I knew I had no more in the tank to raise my game. I adopted the tactic of pushing myself as hard as I could at each point in the race, without overdoing it to the point where I had to stop. Imagine my joy, then, as I rounded the corner and saw the finish line in the distance, and the glorious big old-school yellow clock, ticking its way past 56 minutes. My slowest ever time, recorded in New York, was 57 & a bit, and I knew if I made it over the line before then I was guaranteed to have done at least better than that. I also knew it had taken us a fair (if indeterminate) amount of time to get over the start line in the first place, and started to think it might be worth trying to speed up a wee bit.

I busted a gut along the final 400 metres, legs wobbling akimbo, and virtually collapsed over the finish line whilst reaching for the pause button on my Nikeplus. As I stumbled towards the water stattion I was just happy just to have made it without stopping - then I looked at the time. 49:25. Almost two minutes faster than I'd ever gone before and under the 50 minute barrier that I'd started to think was mythical (for me, at least). The official time has since rounded me up to 49:35, which is a little annoying, but nonetheless a still Personal Best by a significant distance.

Happy Days! I'm starting the think there may be merit in the whole "you can achieve anything as long as you try hard enough" school of thought.

The above graph is how my Nikeplus saw it - pretty consistent, despite what my legs were yelling at me as we cruised along beside the Thames with all the grace and pace of a pontoon barge. As usual, the uncallibrated piece of plastic has diddled me out of the majority of the last kilometre, albeit it is closer to the correct distance than some of my training runs.

The final point of note is that I didn't at any point feel like having a celebratory cigarette, thus bringing to a close one of the less sensible rituals I've adopted in life and opening up the possibility of a fag-free future. Didn't stop me dreaming about smoking last night though. The obligatory sweaty photo with post-race grin was taken, and will be posted tomorrow.

And Gordon & Murray? Both also got personal bests, and both also achieved their aim. Gordon came home in a sterling sub-45 minutes, whilst Murray destroyed his previous best by 3 minutes (and his best training time by 15) to scrape the top edge of the hour mark, finishing in around 62 minutes.

We earned our beers yesterday afternoon - all 5 of them.

Not sure if baked bean loading is known for improving performance

2011-07-09T15:39:00.001+01:00

But I'm giving it a go. Big race tomorrow! The nerves are starting. Ordinarily i'd have a wee beer to calm myself, but am settling for lucozade sport instead. Not quite the same.

Rawhide

2011-07-06T22:44:00.000+01:00

Wind-down to the British 10K on Sunday is officially on. I did another 10.1km training run on Monday night round Clapham, in a respectable 51 mins, and followed it up with a cheeky wee 5.5-er this evening round 2 laps of the park, breaking the 30 minute barrier for the first time in years in the process.

I'm feeling in pretty good shape, all things considered. Apart from the thigh chafe. Something has happened to my legs - they've got chunkier or I've started running like a constipated penguin. Whatever the reason, as proven tonight, I can't even do a 30 minutes without lycra if I don't want to be walking like John Wayne for two days afterwards. Don't know which is the worse image - me in lycra shorts, or with red raw inner thighs. Can post some photos if you ask nicely to help you decide.

I was thinking back to my preparation for the last race as I tootled round the park this evening, and recalled that the Wednesday before the Scotland Run, I spent the evening getting soggy at Yankee stadium followed by drunk in the East Village, before walking approximately 20 miles a day for the next 3 days as we sight-saw all of Manhattan (in some cases more than once). I'm revelling in the fact I can do virtually no exercise now until Sunday, sleep loads and focus on stocking up on pasta. Less so, the 'not being in New York' part.

Congrats to Gav & Imogen

2011-07-03T22:42:00.000+01:00

Huge congratulations to one of my best & oldest friends, Gav, who this evening is sitting somewhere in New York City with the weary grin of a boy who has just become a man.

Earlier today, his new son finally decided to make an appearance - only a week and a bit late. News from across the pond is that mum Imogen is somewhat exhausted but otherwise in fine fettle, as is Junior. No name as yet, apparently - I had to resist the temptation to suggest my own unwieldy moniker, despite the fact it would clearly set the young lad up for a lifetime of success and fame.

Gav & Imogen were amazing hosts during our recent trip to NYC and the joy of sprogdom couldn't happen to two nicer people. We could tell when we were over just how great a family the three of them are going to make.

In a true demonstration of the sacrifices I'm willing to make for friendship, I've offered to babysit if required. Any excuse to get back to Brooklyn.

1 week to the British 10K

2011-07-03T22:28:00.000+01:00

Rather impressively, I avoided boozing to go straight home on Friday after work, and went for a run. Almost as impressively, I thought I was taking it pretty easy but ended up doing 3 laps of the park / 8.5km in around 46 minutes, which is a fair pace, especially given the massive hill I had to wheeze up 3 times.

I don't feel particularly fit - I've a sharp pain in my chest at times that feels like I've been smoking too much; and still get out of breath quite quickly - but I seem to be faster at running than I was (I just get the same amount of knackered going fast as I did going slow). I'm not sure if the non-smoking has much to do with it - my 'quitting' iPhone app reckons my lungs are pretty much still as bad as ever - but if nothing else I'm pleased that this will be the first race I've done where I haven't been a practising smoker at the time. Even before the Reading half marathon last year, I fell off the wagon about 3 weeks before the race.

I'm now off the patches again, having only had one slip up during the 10 weeks of the programme (a sly cig with Jimeoin a couple of months ago). I don't feel particularly 'non-smoky' at the moment, but I have survived 5 days and one weekend without nicotine and the cravings haven't really been noticeable. I can quite easily imagine myself enjoying a cigarette, and that's the sort of mental effect it's having on me at the moment - I don't so much crave smoking, as suddenly think it looks like the most relaxing and enjoyable thing I could possibly do. I'm still managing to remind myself of the more minging aspects of it (coughing up phlegm and the like), so for now, I'm holding off on a relapse.

It does, however, mean that the British 10K will hopefully be the first race I've ever done which hasn't been celebrated with a post-finish fag. I'll survive.

perhaps I spoke too soon

2011-06-28T23:42:00.001+01:00

Huzzah! Perhaps my endemic pessimism has been misplaced once more?! Having had the weekend off exercise yet again, I decided to go out for a bit of a run tonight on flatter ground than I've been used to, if only so I could cover more distance. It gets a bit boring doing the same route time after time as well, so I decided to run up to Clapham Common via the delights of Kings Avenue & the South Circular, do a lap with all the hardcore joggers, and head back to Brixton through the back streets.

It's a route I followed many times whilst training for the Reading Half marathon last year, and it was nice to be back. I went out reasonably quickly but was struggling badly by the time I got to the turn for home at the top of Battersea Rise - the remaining minutes were spent doing a weird kind of "50s dance move" action with my legs as I tried to struggle home.

I'd mapped out the run on Nike's website before I left, so knew it was about 9.9km - in fact, as I have just discovered, it was actually 10.1km due to my meandering attempts to cross Brixton Hill during rush hour traffic. Ignoring the fact that my woefully inaccurate Nikeplus chip chose to knock a full 1.2km of the distance it reckons I ran - over 10 PERCENT of my total distance - I'm focusing instead on the time.

50 minutes 37 seconds. For a full 10k! Wahoo! My aim for the race in two weeks was to try and better my fastest ever run, which was 51.11 in my first ever 10k (almost 5 years ago - shudder). I'd sort of given up on it though, as my training has been disjointed, not unlike my knees. I figured get round, and try and sign up for another one towards the end of the summer when I've new trainers and no shin splints.

But maybe. Just maybe. I can do it!

.....ah, forget it, I've no energy to think of a title

2011-06-27T22:35:00.000+01:00

I write this with some difficulty, given my arm is stuck to the computer desk. I think it may have melted. After no summer to speak of so far, Mother Nature appears to have accidentally leaned against the thermostat after one too many sherries and south London has turned tropical.

We were promised a thunderstorm to dispel this two-day heatwave, but it has yet to arrive. It's pretty damn unbearable, made all the worse by my aversion to mosquitoes (or rather, their attraction to me). I'm too scared of getting exposed wobbly bits munched during the night to leave the window open.

The British 10K is in less than two weeks, but I've not done any training since Thursday. I was supposed to go tonight, but any thoughts of bettering my fastest time are pretty much done and dusted for another event, and I'm buggered if I'm risking heat exhaustion by trudging round the park in this weather. In more exciting run-related news, I have progressed to the point of emailing Runners Need to find out if I can just rock up to get some gait analysis done and finally, after 5 years, buy the right trainers. I also got an email from New York Road Runners this evening offering me some discount merchandise - although quite why they feel I need a "skort" is anyone's guess. Perhaps they've heard about my tendency to accidentally purchase women's sportswear, which has seen me return home over the years with a tennis skirt from 'Style 'N' Sport' in Ballymena (thought it was a pair of swimming shorts - in the 90s both were fashioned from the same acryllic shell suit material) and some ladies running shorts (in the wrong section in TK Maxx a few weeks ago; I didn't check the label, except to see the word 'large').

2011-06-26T14:01:00.002+01:00

We've escaped the city for the weekend and I'm writing this in the sunshine outside my sister's house in the Cotswolds. A lamb roast is in the oven, as we await the return of her husband Chris from sheep-shearing duty. In the absence of tractors or landrovers coming up the lane, the scene makes me feel like we've gone back in time to the 18th century - half expecting a horse-drawn hay cart to appear around the corner at any moment.

Nostalgia for this time last year is in full effect - 365 days ago we were recovering from our pre-rally leaving party at the Prince Albert, and had just booked our tickets home from Ulaanbaatar. Am insanely jealous of everyone heading east in a couple of weeks, even moreso as they're launching from Horse Guards Parade this year, rather than Woburn Safari Park. Who knows, we might even have turned up on time if we'd left from central London!

Off my Feis

2011-06-20T23:03:00.001+01:00

Right - first things first - the Supajam offer was entirely genuine and we got in to the Feis on Saturday with absolutely no trouble. Fair play to them - considering there were allegedly 500 tickets, the queue we were in had what appeared to be a couple of thousand in it by the time we arrived. But they didn't seem to be arguing - my friend's bar code had apparently 'already been used', but his name matched the barcode so in he came.

The event itself was enjoyable enough, from what I remember. The rain was sporadic, the food was tasty, the bands were enthusiastic and the people were friendly. I suppose it's somewhat inevitable that at a festival which is essentially 40,000 Irish people in a confined space, some drink would also be taken.

It's pretty clear I overdid it, even if I don't know exactly how it happened. Suffice to say I returned to my concerned girlfriend several hours behind schedule, having done a few laps of central London, and spent yesterday suffering through the hangover from hell. Chuck in a horrendous night's sleep last night, and at work today I was rough, sweaty and miserable, staring at my computer screen and barely uttering a word.

Tonight when I got home, I still had a sense of being drained, but alongside it was a weird recollection that this is what my Mondays always used to feel like. Waking up with "The Fear" on a Sunday morning; tossing and turning on a Sunday night; tolerating work on a Monday and resolving not to drink until at least the weekend again.

I don't know when it happened, but this isn't me any more. And this evening, I am incredibly grateful for that. The weekend served as a timely reminder of how life used to be, before I calmed down and grew up (a bit). I still get drunk regularly - I'm no poster boy for a healthy lifestyle - and I thought I still feel rough most weekends. I now realise I don't - I've just adjusted my tolerance levels in light of my reduced wastery.

So, in hindsight, thanks Supajam, for reminding me that I no longer want to be a pisshead stumbling round London after an all day drinking session. Or, for that matter, forking out £35 in a taxi ride home after a couple of fruitless attempts to negotiate public transport ended in fiasco. Every cloud, and all that...

We're in!

2011-06-18T16:08:00.001+01:00

Cowering from the rain behind an ice cream van listening, aptly, to the Waterboys. Thanks Supajam! Less than an hour to get in. Now revelling in Irishness with several thousand countrymen

... But we're not exactly at the front either

2011-06-18T15:12:00.001+01:00

At least we're not at the back of the queue

2011-06-18T15:01:00.001+01:00

At the back of a very long queue

2011-06-18T14:48:00.001+01:00

It seems the whole of London was the lucky winner of a Supajam ticket

London Feis

2011-06-18T13:10:00.006+01:00

It's raining heavily on and off; the wind is battering the branches of the tree in the back garden off our bedroom window; I'm nursing a gentle hangover - all the ingredients of an Irish June afternoon, and therefore fitting that the London Feis is taking place in Finsbury park this weekend.

Time to test the Supajam free ticket offer. I received an email from them during the week confirming I had the ticket but necessitating download of a barcoded version instead, to present at the box office today. No problem. They also asked for an admin fee which they apparently forgot to request at the time I got the ticket. If I was feeling generous, I could pay the admin fee when downloading the new ticket. This may go a little way towards explaining the 'too good to be true' offer of a free £70 ticket - in that it was too good to be true. Supajam held their hands up though, and didn't 'force' anyone to pay the fee - no doubt realising what a PR disaster that might prove, especially (given the amount of hits I've had on the blog through "Supajam scam" keyword searches) that people don't entirely believe they're above board.

I'm leaving in about 20 minutes to head up to north London - will try and post to the blog if and when I'm "in". Although given O2's less than amazing performance at mass participation events, I probably won't have a signal. Can't guarantee I'll stay until the end - it's currently a toss up between Bob Dylan and avoiding pneumonia, unless the weather improves.

In tribute to the afternoon's entertainment, here's my favourite song from the day's headliner....

Steppe By Steppe - the blog

2011-06-11T23:39:00.001+01:00

A mere 11 months after leaving for Mongolia; only 10 after arriving in Ulaanbaataar, I have finally begun blogging about our adventure.

I was able to post limited messages from the road via SMS to the official charity website whilst we were away; I've always intended to flesh out the story in greater detail so that when I'm old and doddery, I can look back and remind myself that we actually did it.

As we approach the anniversary of departure, and try to quell the frustration and jealousy of not being involved this year, it seemed appropriate to finally commit what memories remain to type.

It's over at http://steppe-by-steppe.blogspot.com - I'm chucking on the build up at the moment so there is a lot of posting going on. Eventually, as I inevitably get less productive, I expect to add an update every few days or so. I think I can repost the entries to here, so will do so if I think it's worth reading.

The idea of the Steppe by Steppe blog is to bring together memories, photos, music and anything else that is significant of our 5 week road trip, so that in years to come we can look back and go "oooh" - who knows, maybe someone might even come across it when they're considering doing something similar, and realise that you don't have to be particularly capable to do so.

And as suddenly as they began...

2011-06-11T16:59:00.000+01:00

...the views of my photos on have Flickr ceased....

Guess I'll never know what was directing people to the two Pepsi sign photos. Bit disappointed they stopped just short of 1,000 views though.

Mum's on a road trip

2011-06-08T23:50:00.000+01:00

Yep, as we speak, my mum is in the sleepy Spanish town of Loja, in Granada - halfway through a road trip from Alicante on the west coast of Spain, to the Algarve on Portugal's south coast.

I got a text from her this evening saying that they had stopped at a basic but comfortable hotel because they were knackered from driving all day; the next plan was to get some food in the restaurant and have a drink.

I smiled when I read it - it took me back to last summer, as those were exactly the sorts of updates I was sending back home from the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia. Less so Mongolia - it was more about "we've randomly stopped behind a bush and popped open the tent for the night" when we reached there.

Driving takes it out of you - more so than you'd realise before setting off on a long, multi-day journey. There was truly nothing better than seeing a hotel in the distance just as dusk was beginning to fall, getting a room and being able to relax, eat whatever indeterminate dish they had available in the restaurant, have a beer, and sleep in a decent bed for the night. I can imagine exactly how mum feels at the moment - especially as Loja seems to be a very pretty town and one that, no doubt, she would never have visited but for this slightly barmy adventure to surprise some friends who are on holiday in Portugal. Nothing beats just experiencing strange and unknown places by chance.

Token running post

2011-06-08T23:35:00.000+01:00

Finally got back out for a run tonight, and it wasn't as bad as feared, in that my shin didn't splinter into a million pieces as I trudged up a hill.

The time wasn't actually too bad, and I don't appear to be in any more pain afterwards than I was before I started. Maybe I'll be ok for the 10K after all....

Even the dumbass middle aged munter who tried to run me off the path in the park by pointing her bike directly at me (despite there being no one else near us) couldn't ruin my mood - I was annoyed to begin with as she quite clearly did it on purpose for reasons best known to herself, but later on took on a more philosophical bent. What's the point in making myself irate over something so bizarre? Certainly not going to change anything and won't get my own back on her either. If only I could be so level headed all of the time, let alone at the moment as I wean myself off nicotine. Well done me.

Running update

2011-06-07T22:40:00.000+01:00

Was gonna go for a run tonight to test out my wonky shin. Ended up having a couple of pints in the Regent on the way home instead. Best to rest the leg for a bit longer I think. Can't be too careful.

Put my feet where my mouth is

2011-06-06T23:02:00.000+01:00

As it were.

I've just been idly clicking on the 'next blog' link (at the top of the screen if you cast your eyes upwards) to see who my neighbours are on Blogger. It appears that in the years that have elapsed since I last tried this, Blogger has somehow worked out a way of categorising the sites, and they have me down as a runner with a passing interest in New York. This is all well and good, save for the general lack of running-related posts these days and the fact I've spent a total of 8 days in NYC, albeit I'll be banging on about it for years to come.

Anyway, I should probably subject you to more tales of bunions and fartlek training in the future for fear of being outed as a fraud - or worse, a 'jogger'.

By way of introduction, here's a picture of all the training I haven't done in the past week:

Supajam part two

2011-06-06T21:15:00.002+01:00

I've noticed a lot of traffic coming to the blog trying to establish whether or not Supajam is a scam - as I alluded to in my earlier post, I don't think it is, albeit I'm not 100% convinced that there'll be as many tickets as 'ticket holders' should everyone decide to rock up en masse on the 18th of June.

For what it's worth, and given a further fortnight's reflection, I can't really see what they would have to gain by offering completely non-existent "free" tickets to a festival. If they'd been flogging them for, say 50% of face value and then scarpering with the money that's one thing - but I've done nothing more than give them my email address and name. I give that to hundreds of websites a year and don't harbour too many concerns for the consequences.

I haven't changed my opinion that the worst outcome from the whole thing would be getting up early on the 18th to drag my sorry carcass from south London up to Finsbury Park, only to discover there is no ticket. What have I lost? 45 minutes of my life? You might even say that I'll have added some time to my life, given I'm normally still bumbling about in my pants at 1pm most Saturdays. The flip side is that, if it turns out to be true, I get £70-worth of Bob Dylan et al for bugger all. That has to be a chance worth taking, surely?*

Edit @ 22:05 - just noticed that the latest Supajam offer is discount tickets to Hop Farm, at £100 a pop, which somewhat negates my point in the 2nd paragraph. But the Feis tickets are free, therefore no risk as far as I can tell.

*NB - unless I post about it, assume I slept in / "couldn't be arsed going the whole way up to north London" when it actually came to the crunch, and am therefore unable to confirm if a lonely unclaimed ticket did, in fact, have my name on it.

Wonderlust King

2011-06-06T20:57:00.002+01:00

Have I posted this before? I make no apologies for sticking it up here again, if so. It seems odd that I wouldn't have already shared it - my favourite band, one of their best songs and part of the official soundtrack to our trip to Ulan Bator last summer - not to mention being an inspiration for getting off my arse and seeing a bit of the world in the first place.

Admittedly the official Steppe by Steppe soundtrack only consisted of 5 Gogol Bordello CDs, the Mumford & Sons album and a compilation that J's mate and her boyfriend had made for us, due to a massive planning error on my part. In fear of having my favourite CDs scratched, nicked or melted in whatever awaited us beyond the boundaries of the Latin alphabet, I wanted to take copies of the albums deemed worthy with us instead. As it was, I ran out of time - not only to choose the music or make the copies, but even to grab anything as we flew out the door, already late for the launch of the rally.

Gogol Bordello was, therefore, starting to get a little 'samey' even before we had left the EU and were lurching L'viv-wards. I just love this music though, as borne out by the 5 times I've been to see GB in concert, and to be experiencing the motherland of Eugene Hütz as he belted his Gypsy Punk through the Kangoo's speakers just made it all the better. Not that he'd probably allow me to call the Ukraine his motherland - with his Romany heritage I guess it's a lot more complicated than just being born somewhere.

900 up

2011-06-06T18:51:00.000+01:00

I promised something epic for my 900th post to the blog, but after 5 days spent not writing anything because it seemed inadequate, I looked back through previous significant milestones and discovered that I've pretty much failed to acknowledge 800, 700 or 600 either. Pressure off, then. Maybe I'll time my new-found productivity to coincide post 1000 with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee this time next year.

In running news, I've got about 5 weeks until the British 10K - the latest run I've targeted to try and get a PB in. Alas, I ignored the health warning on the training plan I was using and launched myself into week 5 of 12 from the off (given time constraints when I began a fortnight ago). Four runs in 5 days later, I've given myself shin splints which even an easy week last week hasn't cured.

I'm feeling a bit tetchy sitting here when I want to be out getting fit and healthy, but there's no point going if my shin doesn't recover. I'm not having 5 weeks of pain just for the sake of a jog round central London.

It might finally persuade me to retire my old trainers and get some properly fitted ones, 4.5 years after starting running. Or I may just keep repeatedly mentioning it and failing to do anything about it.

привет!

2011-06-01T23:47:00.003+01:00

Ever wondered what our friends in Russia see when they log on to this very site? Of course you have.

The sight of Cyrillic takes me back to last summer, as we bumped and juddered through Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan & Mongolia. In particular, the "Who am I" section in the top left - translated to "Кто я?" - reminds me of the song that sound-tracked our first few minutes in Siberia, having just crossed over the border from Kazakhstan.

A deep orange sun was setting, we were out of Kazakhstan (kind of cause for celebration in itself), and we were not only back in Russia - the country that surprised us most on the entire trip - but in that mythical, infamous faraway land of Siberia. Our Russian dance CD, purchased in an Astana shopping mall, was blasting on the Kangoo's stereo..... This was the best song on it, and the video's a far slicker affair than many - or at least I - would have given the Russian pop music industry credit for before I travelled east.

This, by the way, is my 899th post on the blog. Expect the written equivalent of Wills & Kate's wedding celebrations by way of my next update. Cheers for sticking with it through the lean times, of both quality and post regularity (if, indeed, you have - if you're some sort of automated spam bot, feck off).

Wrong again

2011-06-01T23:06:00.001+01:00

So, turns out I conformed to stereotype once again last night, jumping to a pessimistic conclusion that I hadn't 'won' any Olympic tickets when there was still a full hour for the money to leave my account.

Admittedly, it wasn't so much negativity as a general inability to grasp basic tenets of timing - something I excelled at in New York, whether dragging everyone out of bed to get to a pub at 9am on a Saturday morning to watch my team play rugby (the game was actually on Sunday), or planning our entire trip around a Monday evening return flight to London (only when I went to check in online on Monday morning did I discover we had a 'free' extra day in the Big Apple...).

Yep, when my weekly text message from my bank arrived this morning, it confirmed that I have in fact been successful in my application for 25% of the tickets I applied for. I can't work out if this is a decent return or not - I had tried to offset the fact I was only going for the cheapest tickets by choosing events I figured wouldn't be as popular as others. I'm just happy to have any.

So it is, I wait with baited breath to find out where & when we will grab our own little slice of Olympic magic. The opening ceremony's out, due to the amount debited from the account; that leaves Men's Handball, Women's Volleyball (both Polish specialities apparently, in the notable absence of Ski Jumping from the summer programme), or - dare I dream - an entire morning in the Olympic Stadium itself, watching the opening heats of the Men's 100m. Bring on the confirmation on the 24th of June so I can start reading up on the rules of Handball.

Bringing it back to the general theme of the blog for a moment...

2011-05-31T23:27:00.000+01:00

.....which (when it started) was running, in case you hadn't realised - can't think why...

As mentioned in a few previous posts, whilst in New York last month I competed in the Homecoming Scotland 10K with my good friend Gav - it coincided with our trip over to see him and was a good excuse to pull my gutties on in anger again after nearly a year off.

The course is essentially a full lap of Central Park - what better place to drag one's aching limbs around at 9am on a Sunday morning? Beats the hell out of a dark Wembley industrial estate in a thunderstorm, that's for sure.

My time wasn't great, which was to be expected given my lack of training, head cold and general levels of excess during the preceding week, but I think I managed to style it out for a photo as I ran past our cheer-leading duo on the home stretch and the black & white photography cunningly disguises the worryingly red rings round my eyes at the end.

Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it hundreds of times.

2011-05-31T23:01:00.000+01:00

I've always liked the above quote from Mark Twain, it sums up everything non-smokers need to know about the difficulty with which we self-afflicted junkies kick the habit.

Whilst not into the hundreds yet, I'm currently in the throes of what I believe is my 6th attempt in 2 years to quit the demon weed. This time around it's going pretty well - the only time I've done better was my first attempt back in spring 2009 when I gave up for 6 months before starting again in Sicily "because I was in Italy and all Italians smoke". I've had one cigarette in 6 weeks, and that was only because I got over excited talking to Jimeoin the other night.

Tomorrow marks a downgrade from Elephant-strength nicotine patches to something akin to a Silk Cut once every couple of hours. With it will come short-temperedness, moodiness, aggression and sulking. Whether anyone will notice the difference is open to debate.

Olym-not-picked

2011-05-31T22:39:00.000+01:00

Well, according to the 2012 Olympics, today should have been the day that money should finally have left my account, if I were to prove successful in the ticket ballot. Despite one of my friends securing some U23 football action, and another (slightly concerning) mate off to the Rhythmic Gymnastics, my bank balance remains resolutely no closer to its overdraft limit than it was two weeks ago.

It seems I somewhat underestimated the demand for session 4 of the men's preliminary handball qualifying, whilst it should have been a no-brainer that a midweek session of women's volleyball would be equally over-subscribed. I'm disappointed. Like all regular lottery players, I've spent the last month lazily contemplating my application for £20.12 tickets to the opening ceremony being pulled out of the hat, safe in the knowledge that at least my decision to head to two lesser watched sports (at least in the UK) would prove sufficient backup. Not to be.

As it stands, I'm heading into the second round of ticket sales like an X Factor contestant singing to stay in the show. I'll take table tennis. Archery. Modern Pentathlon. Anything. As long as the tickets are no more than £20, obviously.

2011-05-26T22:40:00.001+01:00

Bit drunk. Leaving do. Lots of Peroni. I wouldn't normally concern you with this triviality but I just downloaded the Blogpress app.

Never again will a lack of computer prevent me from sharing reams of inane wittering. If nothing else, the iPhone's spell checker may make for some amusing typos

bringing sexy back

2011-05-25T22:58:00.000+01:00

I love the way that hits on my blog have been steadily decreasing since I started posting again. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like feedback like that. A complete absence of content is better than anything I choose to share with the world. Cheers Google analytics.

On a more positive note, I drafted some communications blurb at work last Friday afternoon, having left approximately 45 minutes to do so - to which the Comms manager responded that she thought it was extremely well written! She 'really likes my style', apparently. Who knew I could even make software implementation sound sexy? See? Even just saying the words, on this blog, in this style.... "Software implementation".... Admit it, you're just a little bit moist now, aren't you?

With great power, etc etc

2011-05-25T00:01:00.002+01:00

Shaved my beard off on Saturday morning, c.6 months after growing it.

No one's noticed.

Supajam

2011-05-24T23:46:00.000+01:00

I got sent a link yesterday by a mate, from a company called Supajam. In return for completing a couple of details, I apparently have been given a free day pass to the London Feis - an Irish festival in Finsbury Park next month featuring legends of the celtic world such as The Waterboys, Van Morrison and, umm, Bob Dylan.

All seems a bit too good to be true. Day tickets are pretty expensive (I know because I was checking them out a few weeks ago, although when I went to the homepage a few minutes ago it had crashed due to the number of people trying to access it - not overly encouraging), and I had to provide the closest amount to nothing of information. And yet, an email sits in my Hotmail as we speak, stating thus:

My assumption is that the 'free ticket' will be in much the same way as provided by the BBC and other TV companies to entice audiences to programme recordings - more tickets are 'won' than available on the day, working on the assumption that not everyone will turn up (the perils of giving people free things, even if it is for a full day's worth of quality entertainment). See also EasyJet as a case in point - I believe it to be true, rather than urban legend, that they always overbook their planes, relying on no-shows which are apparently 100% guaranteed for every flight. Or 99% guaranteed, which is why it occasionally gets out into the media, when a disgruntled passenger gets stopped from boarding their plane because everyone else actually turned up before them for once.

But I digress. The emphasis in the email is on 'getting there early' to get the tickets - so the assumption is that around 1,000 of us have been 'lucky enough' to win one of the 500 tickets. It certainly sounds like a good enough reason to trundle up to Finsbury Park in a few weeks time though, just in case. If anyone has had any dealings with Supajam in the past, let me know how it went.

Someone sounds funny

2011-05-22T20:13:00.002+01:00

Must say thanks to Jimeoin for a quality Friday night's entertainment in the form of his Something Smells Funny show at the E4 Udderbelly on the South Bank.

Udderbelly have rigged up a most agreeable venue with a couple of bars, food stalls and tables & lanterns in amongst the trees. It's a very nice alternative to the limited areas to have a drink on the south side of the Thames, which weirdly only has about 5 pubs between London Bridge and Westminster.

My girlfriend and her mate pounced on the star of the show at the burger van after his performance, and before the poor guy knew what was happening he was being led back, burger in hand, to sit with us at our table for a while.

Thankfully, he's a thoroughly nice, down to earth chap and spent about 30 minutes chatting to us about anything and everything, barely even flinching as I wheeled out another fact about him that I'd gleaned from checking Wikipedia before the show started.

Turns out he's from Portstewart, just up the road from Ballymena - upon hearing I hailed from there he mentioned that one of the guys in charge of security was from my neck of the woods. So far, so stereotypical, albeit this time the "I know someone from your town, do you know him too?" chat was being perpetuated by a fellow countryman. Of course, I responded with the "well, you know, it's quite a large town in Irish terms" and that was that - until Jimeoin spotted the guy in question and beckoned him over to meet me; turned out I'd been in the year below him in school, our sisters used to be best friends and we used to see each other around Glasgow 10 years ago!

The other thing that sticks in my mind is that he often has Australian people coming up to him to say their kid is called Jimeoin - because the parents wanted an "Irish" name. Which they have got, albeit a highly unusual one - given his mum made it up as an amalgamation of a couple of male relatives' names. Must be weird knowing there are people running round the antipodes named after you.

Anyway - cheers Jimeoin. Top bloke, good company and a funny bugger to boot. Highly recommended if he's playing in a venue near you.

You try to be clever, and look what happens

2011-05-19T23:52:00.001+01:00

So, roughly 24 hours ago I was all chuffed, having forked out the princely sum of approximately £7.50 for the ownership of seethattattierun.com. It felt like I had my own website. The rush of excitement proved too much. What if someone else called Tattie Chomper decided tonight was the night to register tattiechomper.com? At $10 for the privilege, it was a chance I couldn't afford to take.

So I dived back in to Blogger, went through the process again and emerged, triumphant, from the other side metaphorically grasping tattiechomper.com in my sweaty little palm. Result! If I ever need two embarrassing-sounding website addresses to infect the internet with my ponderings, I'm sorted!

Except. Well, except when I bought the second web address, Blogger kind of decided that it will be the one associated with the blog. I say 'Blogger decided' - I may have accidentally told it to do it. So in the future, if you try to go to the current see-that-tattie-run.blogspot.com address (God, that's a long and convoluted name to write), you'll be automatically redirected to tattiechomper.com.

No biggie, I guess, given it's also the name I use on Flickr, Twitter and a variety of other websites. But what has become of seethattattierun.com, I hear you cry? Well, at the moment it appears it has done the equivalent of Woody Allen's mother in New York Stories, and disappeared into the ether. It's floating about inside the internet somewhere, wondering what's going on.

I still own the domain, and can log into the dashboard. But when I key the address into my browser, I get a 'not found' message (the process of setting up the new address can take a couple of days, but tattiechomper.com is working fine already). When I try to change the target address of the blog back to seethattattierun.com, I get a message saying that "another blog is already registered to this address". I know! This one! I dunno what's going on. Looks like I've potentially banjaxed it and lost a couple of quid into the bargain. There are probably ways and means of recovering it, but Google's help pages are far from straightforward on that front and to be honest, I don't care enough to learn about what's going on. So, err, welcome to tattiechomper.com.

Udderly brilliant

2011-05-19T23:19:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow we're off to take in the delights of Norn Irish boy done good, Jimeoin, at the Udderbelly on the South Bank. It's a rare foray into "proper London" on a Friday evening ("a quick pint" x6 after work most weeks notwithstanding), and where better to spend it that inside a large purple cow listening to some top notch comedy?

It's only going to be the 2nd comedy gig I've been to since moving to London - a frankly rubbish rate of return on 8 years in the nation's capital. I always seem to favour music gigs when thinking about buying tickets - but have been keen to see Jimeoin since last year; I wanted to go to his show at the Udderbelly then, but we were somewhere in Eastern Europe at the time, en route to Mongolia.

I only saw him once on TV when I was younger (I think he's mainly based in Australia these days) but the guy with the local accent and his amusing, surreal take on life clearly made an impression. About 18 months ago, I was searching on You Tube to show my girlfriend and her mate a fine example of local humour, and this guy is who came to mind. It clearly had the desired effect; it is with those two lovely ladies that I shall be attending tomorrow night's performance. Not only is it in a cow, it's in a cow with an al fresco bar outside, and I've not had a beer since last Saturday. It's all coming together nicely - provided I don't overshoot on the pre-performance merriment and end up being dragged out by a bouncer for drunken heckling with my trousers round my ankles . We can but wait, pray, and hope.

Look at me, all shiny and professional

2011-05-18T23:19:00.000+01:00

If you scoot your eyes upwards (and are reading this approximately 24 hours after I posted it), you will perhaps notice that the long, unwieldy URL address for the blog is no more. It's now the altogether shorter seethattattierun.com, which is still a mouthful but less so than the old one - see-that-tattie-run.blogspot.com. Even I got bored typing all that gumph into the address bar.

I was toying with going for "STTR.com" or "tattie_chomper.com" but decided to stick with the name of the blog for the time being. May still go down the tattie chompin' route though, given it's a mere $10 a year. Makes me feel like I've got a 'proper' website now!

Pepsi-Cola sign, Long Island city

2011-05-18T22:36:00.001+01:00

Pepsi-Cola sign, Long Island city, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

This picture has just pipped the other one (posted on Sunday) to become my most viewed Flickr photo of all time - thanks to the same, metronomic 35-40 views today as have been occurring for the past week.

Just wish I knew where the regular trickle of punters was coming from!

Flexing my fingers & cracking my knuckles

2011-05-16T23:51:00.001+01:00

The wholesale revamp of the blog this evening and the posting, en masse, of photos from our trip, would imply that I am in the throes of yet another attempt to start blogging again. I want to. More so than before. The advent of Twitter kind of distracted me there for a couple of years, along with other minor inconveniences like planning 8,000 mile trips to the other side of the world.

Twitter, however, is partially responsible for my renewed vow to make more of an effort. Whilst watching Dulwich Hamlet FC in the Rymans League (Division One South) the other week - which is, I suppose, my local team - I made a comment about the fact that it was somewhat fitting (given the relative wealth of the area) that their shirts appeared to be inspired by Hackett and had "The Hamlet" written in gastropub font on the back.

This was duly picked up by another supporter - @vornstyle - and retweeted. Curious as to who had decided it worthy of sharing, I took a look at his timeline and liked what I read, and began to follow him.

Vornstyle also blogs, at http://sportingdeviance.wordpress.com/, and this evening having picked up a few of his tweets during the day, I idly clicked on a link and read some of his stuff. I got sucked in by the content, and his tribute to his girlfriend saw me following the link to her website as well (http://www.seaneenmolloy.co.uk). An hour later I've come up for air.

There's no doubting that they're both talented writers - moreso than me by a significant distance - and have much more of interest to say (including, y'know, the opinions on 'stuff' which I've never quite developed). I didn't expect to find myself becoming so engrossed in their blogs though, and it's kind of inspired me to keep plugging away when I get the chance, even if it's just something that I can look back on in years to come.

And the new design does look kinda sexy, eh?

Band at Death by Audio

2011-05-16T22:02:00.001+01:00

Band at Death by Audio, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

And here is the band referred to in the previous post... As you can see, they proved a big draw for the locals....

Toilet at Death by Audio

2011-05-16T22:01:00.002+01:00

Toilet at Death by Audio, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

I wanted to go to a proper Brooklyn dive bar or back-room club to hear some authentic New York rock (and perhaps the next Strokes or Yeah Yeah Yeahs). So it came to pass that Gav, fulfilling our wishes yet again, led us down a darkened street to an old industrial unit in Williamsburg, where we paid $3 entry and bought cans of Pabst from a dude behind a desk.

Death by Audio didn't disappoint on the decor or atmosphere front - shame the same couldn't be said for the band we watched, who played a 9 minute instrumental called "Paranoid Cat" and then made a highly topical joke about Eric Clapton's son.

Fuck Me. Chair sitting in the street in Williamsburg

2011-05-16T21:59:00.001+01:00

Fuck Me. Chair sitting in the street in Williamsburg, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

A chair. Sitting on a street. With a rude request sprayed in something or other on it. If I was more pretentious I'd claim I thought this was 'artistic' and had some kind of message. It's actually just an excuse to swear on the blog (sorry mum)

Looking over the railing

2011-05-16T21:57:00.001+01:00

Looking over the railing, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

I was aiming to get the Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building in focus on this one, but my woefully amateurish aim resulted in my focusing on the fence railings instead. Which in hindsight, I'm very bloody happy about.

Inside the Guggenheim

2011-05-16T21:55:00.001+01:00

Inside the Guggenheim, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

You're allowed to take photos inside the Guggenheim from ground level only. Any attempts to take a shot from the top, no matter how subtle, will be met with an embarrassing telling off by a stern, loud, but polite security guard.

Trust me on that one.

Stephen P Driscoll Memorial Pipe Band

2011-05-16T21:53:00.001+01:00

Stephen P Driscoll Memorial Pipe Band, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

It was the annual Tartan Day parade on 5th Avenue on the Saturday of our trip. Scottishness, American-style.

Empire State Building

2011-05-16T21:52:00.001+01:00

Empire State Building, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

It really is 'everywhere' in New York. It became a standing joke when we were there that every time we saw it, we would ask each other what it was. Funnier if you were there. Actually, probably not.

Flatiron Building

2011-05-16T21:51:00.001+01:00

Flatiron Building, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

taken on a rare sunny day during our visit

Statue of Liberty, viewed through the Manhattan & Brooklyn Bridges

2011-05-16T21:50:00.001+01:00

Statue of Liberty, viewed through the Manhattan & Brooklyn Bridges, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

Not actually one of mine, but a Justyna special. She battled to the front of our boat to get a shot of the Statue of Liberty as we sailed back towards the bridges

Lost in a world of neon, Times Square

2011-05-16T21:46:00.001+01:00

Lost in a world of neon, Times Square, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

Gav and Justyna, pausing to gaze in wonder at the neon blitz in Times Square. I'll never look at Piccadilly Circus quite the same way again.

Man waiting to cross 5th Avenue

2011-05-16T21:45:00.001+01:00

Man waiting to cross 5th Avenue, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

Probably my favourite photo of the whole trip, if I can work out how to use Photoshop to make the blacks a bit, well, blacker.

Walking down past the New York Public Library, en route to the Empire State Building, we had to take a right onto 5th Avenue. This is one of a set of about 30 photos of the Chrysler Building taken in the space of about 5 minutes as I attempted to get one I was happy with.

It was the last.

Mike's Art Gallery Clearance Sale

2011-05-16T21:42:00.001+01:00

Mike's Art Gallery Clearance Sale, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

This is our host with the most, and one of my oldest and best friends, Gav, stood in the doorway of a souvenir shop near the Empire State Building.

I don't know why I like this photo - it just looks very American to me...

Manhattan by night

2011-05-16T21:40:00.001+01:00

Manhattan by night, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

Flickr have introduced a handy posting mechanism so I can add photos to the blog direct from their website. So what the hell, here's a few more of my favourites from our trip.

This is the view north from the Empire State Building. In front is the GE Building, aka '30 Rock' or 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and behind, the big dark square is Central Park.

UN HQ & Pepsi sign, from the Empire State Building

2011-05-16T21:33:00.001+01:00

UN HQ & Pepsi sign, from the Empire State Building, originally uploaded by tattie_chomper.

In the space of a week, this photo, from our recent trip to New York, is about to become my most viewed on Flickr of all time.

That honour currently belongs to a pretty poor photo of Dominican college in Portstewart, taken in early 2006. But that's the weird thing. It's had 246 views in 5 years.... This one has had 178 in 5 days.

The most frustrating thing is that I can't even tell where people are clicking to it from, as Flickr can only class it as an 'unknown source'. It's something Pepsi related - close behind it in the rankings is the same sign, from the water, the following day.

Curious.

Cheeky Russians part 2

2011-05-15T20:13:00.001+01:00

I've been getting a load of hits from 'unknown sources' on my Flickr account of late, which the forums suggest may be down to people directly linking to my photos from blogs.

At a loose end this evening, I decided to search for references to my photostream, and the first that popped up was this shot of Khovd that I took from our campsite in Mongolia:

Nice as it was to see that they appreciated what I thought was a pretty mundane shot of some goats (or at least, as mundane as views ever get in Mongolia), for the life of me I couldn't see where they had acknowledged it was one of mine.

Ah yes, there it is. I've circled it in red to highlight it, but you may still have to view the full size picture to see it.

TourNavigator.Ru - sailing close to the boundaries of cheeky behaviour....

back down to earth

2011-04-18T23:02:00.000+01:00

Almost a week since our return from the Big Apple, and it seems like a lifetime ago. Amazing, exhausting, fascinating, colourful and hectic - it was everything we hoped it might be.

Gav & Imogen, our hosts with the, err, 'mosts', were absolutely stunners - they took us everywhere, showed us everything and made sure that no NYC experience was left undiscovered.

Took some great pics, ate some great food, discovered that not all American beer tastes like fizzy piss (take a bow, Brooklyn lager) and even managed to stumble my way across the finish line in the Scotland run round Central Park in an adequate (if 'personal worst') 57 mins. Given the amount of drinking, eating, smoking and walking that I'd subjected myself to in the previous week, that amounts to nothing short of a miracle.

Will whack some photos with assorted anecdotes on the internet once my additional RAM arrives from Crucial.com - my PC's 6 years old now and whilst still adequate for the majority of what life throws at it, it struggles when it comes to video editing or the new breed of photo software (where, by 'struggles', I mean 'crashes'). Am looking forward to souping up the old girl by doubling the memory and then sitting back as she 'does computing' at the speed of light... I can't fix cars, so will settle for having a rusty old Dell box with as much up-to-date kit inside it that I can manage.

2 weeks until Enn Why See!

2011-03-21T20:42:00.000Z

The countdown is on to our impending departure to the city that never sleeps... For once I'm almost not pissed off that work is so busy at the moment - the weeks are rocketing past and it seems like no time since we booked the tickets; as of 14 days from now, we should be somewhere over the North Atlantic about halfway through our flight.

I am, of course, relying on Old Father Time slamming the brakes on once the day of departure arrives, in order for our holiday to last as long as possible. If there's one thing I've learned in my time on this earth, it's how to make the good stuff last and the bad stuff whizz past in the blink of an eye. To be honest, if that were true, my life would have been getting progressively more shit since the age of about 16...

We've got a rough list of things we want to experience whilst we're out and I'm currently trawling the net trying to buy some sort of tourist pass that will get us discounted entry into the majority of attractions. London has it pretty sorted when it comes to free museum entry etc, but even here things like the London Eye are fecking extortionate. I'm determined we make every effort to ensure we don't have to skip anything just because it's "too expensive" - what a rubbish, if perfectly understandable, reason for missing out on a potentially once-in-a-lifetime experience. We're normally quite good at being skint on holiday and making the best of it (walking up Mount Etna instead of taking the bus being a highlight), but if I can plan ahead then all the better.

The budget for the trip is also somewhat out the window as it's turned into a celebratory tour following my promotion the other day - the first since that announced on this very blog way back in late 2006. Admittedly I've moved to a different business in that time, but it was weighing a little on my mind that I was still stuck at the same grade, especially as I'd been 'stepping up' for months. Essentially, therefore, not much has changed except for the fact that I can now add the word 'Senior' to my job title, but it means that I'm no longer on the bottom rung of my current career ladder, which for a boy of 33 can only be a good thing.

Beware the sophisticated internet phishing scam....

2011-03-03T21:02:00.003Z

There certainly are some out there.

But not this one. It's just lazy. Must try harder Miguel!

Should be out training tonight

2011-03-03T20:29:00.000Z

I'm not. I trawled my sorry arse back from work after 7.30pm for the second night running and, on top of having had a job interview on Tuesday following a heavy weekend north of the border for my friends Al & Susan's wedding, I'm shattered.

Not so shattered, however, that I can't raise this tab or can of Red Stripe to my lips, whilst mindlessly staring at a computer screen for what feels like the 85th hour this week.

Got four weeks til we jet off to New York; 5 until the actual run. More than enough time to go from a standing start to enough fitness to run over 6 miles.... right?

Meh, who cares. I'll be in New York!

Rocketing down the rankings

2011-02-23T00:23:00.003Z

Mindlessly perusing my blog's stats this evening, I came across the Wikio Sources website, which apparently has been analysing this, and a multitude of other blogs for the past few years.

http://www.wikio.co.uk/sources/see-that-tattie-run.blogspot.com-pXBF

It was somewhat disheartening to discover that I have plummeted from the heady heights of 6,545 in the "General" category rankings in October 2009, to my lowly position of 8,378 at the last count (as advertised by the pretty new widget in the top left of the blog).

Although with my recent average post count approaching 1 per month, and Wikio's "topic cloud" suggesting my main source of inspiration has been, err, 'Bulgaria', 'Lifestyle' and French car-derived vans, it's perhaps not that surprising.

Cheeky Russians

2011-02-20T23:18:00.000Z

I've had a compliment of sorts for one of the photos I took whilst in Kazakhstan last summer - Russian website turj.ru has robbed my copyrighted image from Flickr and claimed it as its own here:

http://turj.ru/blog/history/1730.html

My original photo is on Flickr, here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tattie_chomper/4924300871/

They're the same feckin photo! Right down to the location of the crane in the top right, and the people walking along the pavement in the bottom left.

Anyone know how to rant about intellectual property in Russian?

Never so happy to be buzzed at 7am...

2011-02-15T20:19:00.000Z

I was shocked out of an abnormally deep sleep at 7am this morning (well, 7.03 to be exact), by the flat buzzer going off... Momentarily confused by the fact I had slept through my alarm, which was blaring in the corner, and the lack of girlfriend next to me, who I'd not even noticed getting up, my mind cleared sufficiently to establish what was going on.

A whoop of delight from the front door a couple of seconds later confirmed the happy news - J's passport had returned, resplendent with a new red, white and blue insert stating that she now has clearance to travel to the US for the next 10 years!!

Although she sailed through the embassy interview last week, we're both pessimistic enough that we didn't want to start getting too excited before we saw the visa in black (or red & blue) and white. It was therefore with baited breath that we waited for our happy arrival this morning, and full Noo Yoik planning to begin in earnest.

Must admit, there have already been some preliminary notes made, after we allowed ourselves to buy a guidebook on Sunday and then sat in the pub, half-watching the rugby whilst planning the attractions we need to see. Pretty much one a page in the 350 page book. Suddenly a week doesn't seem like nearly long enough.

Back on the jogging trail

2011-02-13T23:01:00.000Z

I returned to exercising ways for the first time in nearly a year yesterday, having taken a sabbatical following the Reading Half Marathon last March and, well, forgotten to start again.

Following that race, there was so much else to focus on with regard to the Charity Rally that I was happy to put my gutties back in the cupboard until further notice.

As with everything in life, however, I found it impossible to motivate myself to start getting back in shape without a carrot dangling on the end of the metaphorical stick - until now...

I'm doing another 10K. Not just any 10K, mind. This 10K:

http://www.nyrr.org/races/2009/r0411x00.asp

Yes, whilst over fulfilling one of my dreams in New York at the start of April, I have voluntarily agreed to give up the option of getting absolutely battered on my only Saturday night in town, and instead rise early on the Sunday morning for a race around Central Park. My mate Gav has done it the last couple of years and asked if I fancied it - the combination of such a stunning location and the chance to stop wheezing every time I climb some stairs proved too hard to resist.

I only have 6 weeks to get in a semblance of shape for it though, which even by my lackadaisical training standards is making me think I may not be particularly well prepared. At least I can blame it on jet lag, I guess.

Just call me Tattie Z

2011-02-10T21:44:00.000Z

Ahh, fohgeddaboudit....

This is an exact representation of me in a couple of months - after 6 years of sort-of-planning to, and 30 years of dreaming about it, I have finally booked tickets to the City That Never Sleeps.

What is it about New York that unlocks all these feelings of excitement inside me? Years of being bombarded with tv, films, music and fashion from the coolest city on earth. I am 100% sure that everything about the place will live up to my expectations - I'll just have to see a Yellow Cab or the Statue of Liberty and I'll be off.

Justyna is, of course, going to be at my side as I stare manically around, a demented-but-friendly grin on my face. We got so stressed before her visa interview it was crazy; if either of us had been going for our dream job I wouldn't have been so on edge. But like the star she is, she apparently sailed right through the process and now we're waiting for the courier to arrive with that magical little piece of paper affixed to the inside of her passport.

Then all that remains is for me to get sorted with some Rocawear, buy the lady a sequinned jumpsuit and some piano lessons, and slip into that Empire State of Mind...

Spam-tastic

2011-02-01T23:31:00.001Z

The blog has been getting bombarded with spam of late, occasionally in Chinese, sometimes in Cyrillic, but always, always, laden with links enticing readers to pass over details of their worldly possessions.

The Blogger spam filter usually does an excellent job of quarantining them before they get a chance to appear on the relevant post (I only see them via an email link), but today, it went too far. Yes, the comment is by "anonymous". Yes, it appeared on a post I made back in November 2009, about nothing in particular. But there's no link to click. And I really can't understand why anyone would bother spamming it, unless they want to encourage as much self-referential droning as possible to clog up the internet.

I'm as narcissistic and in need of validation as the next person, and for this reason I have rescued it from spam box purgatory. You never know, much like Astrology (which only ever "makes sense" when it tells you your life is about to improve immeasurably) it might even be authentic. Except I'm still pretty sure astrology's a pile of crap.

"Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "the most spontaneously arranged plans....":

What a great web log. I spend hours on the net reading blogs, about tons of various subjects. I have to first of all give praise to whoever created your theme and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an fabulous article. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only very few posses and honestly you got it. The combining of demonstrative and upper-class content is by all odds super rare with the astronomic amount of blogs on the cyberspace. "

Anonymous, I honestly could not have put it better myself. Except that with my clearly obvious abilities, I probably would have spelt possess correctly. I fully concur that the content of my blog is both demonstrative and upper-class - in fact you pretty much have summed up my vision for it. And as for the theme... Well, I'm afraid I must take all the credit for that too.

I'm available for consultancy work should anyone wish to get in touch via the usual channels (i.e. a comment on a post about what I had for my tea, from March 2008).

Sofia, so good.

2011-02-01T23:20:00.000Z

I went, I saw, I survived. And that, my friends, counts as a result. The fact I managed to have a bloody nice time into the bargain just adds to the experience.

Yes, for the second time in my life, I joined that rite of passage as a man-child becomes a, err, committed man-child and flew to Sofia for my mate Al's stag do. Have to admit I quite looked forward to Bulgaria; it's not the kind of place people generally go, and after our experiences in the former eastern bloc during the summer I have a soft spot for former communist republics.

I was a little concerned about hijinks and tomfoolery - being a sensitive, self-conscious and largely puny soul -and all too aware that the locals may not take kindly to a crowd of pissed up Brits stumbling around their fair city being loud and obnoxious. I need not have worried - the debauchery was cranked up to "just right", and as it turns out my fellow staggers were as lovely a bunch of chaps as you could hope to meet.

The focal point of the weekend was a day's skiing in Borovets - I'm stunned and proud to announce that even with a gap of almost 18 years since my last foray onto the slopes, I remembered how to ski straight away. Like a penguin to snow. The fatigue in my legs kicked in pretty sharpish after lunch leaving me incapable of anything except gentle snow-ploughing, but I've got the bug back now. The rest of our time was spend boozing, in a controlled-ish manner, at a variety of pubs and bars in the city centre. I even managed to blag my way into the VIP section of a local nightclub and myself and fellow friend-of-stag Ryan are now immortalised in all our glory on clubbing website Disco.bg (pic 99)

Alas, it seems my dance moves themselves were deemed "too hot for the internet"

Updating my CV

2011-01-24T21:13:00.000Z

There's a promotion going at work, so my Monday evening is spent updating my CV to get an application in by the deadline. Busy week this week - got leaving drinks for my friend Laura tomorrow, then have Wednesday & Thursday to get sorted for my trip to Bulgaria on Friday morning.

My mate from uni, Ally, is getting hitched so we're off to paint Sofia white, green & red - with a bit of skiing chucked in for good measure on Saturday. I've not skied since 1993; I imagine my attempts at the weekend will entail falling over on my first go at the drag lift, then spending the rest of the day waving at the others like a proud parent as I sit at the bottom of the mountain in all my clobber, sipping a beer.

Back! By popular demand...

2011-01-20T22:47:00.000Z

Inspired by the fact that one of my 3 readers left a comment on the last post, combined with a nostalgic trawl through previous comments as I attempted to remove the spam that has been afflicting my little corner of the internet of late, I'm gonna get back on the virtual horse (blog) and start riding (writing) again.

I've wanted to wax semi-literately in more depth about the trip for months, and that will form the basis of my inspiration over the coming weeks. 35 days with a post devoted to each may not make for enthralling reading for anyone else, but it will give me an opportunity to record what memories remain for posterity.

It will also help get my creative juices (tears) flowing as I find it bloody difficult to write anything without decent subject matter - not for me the world of the tabloid hack. Potentially, given "changing rally-gate" that kicked off in the spring, it might also give people thinking of doing the rally a flavour of what to expect and encourage them to make the leap - it's more likely that the posts will appear on Google than via the official site, and any encouragement I can offer to someone thinking of signing up to the trip is worth a broken finger nail from typing.

So sit back, relax, and suppress the uneasy feeling that you've heard all of what is about to unfold somewhere before....

cough ahem. Hello?

2011-01-17T21:13:00.001Z

2010. What a year that was. A year so packed full of joy and adventure that I managed to hit the blog a grand total of 56 times. Even by my lazy, can't-be-arsed standards, that represents something of a low.

What can I say? Rally prep went into overdrive around April time, and was an all-encompassing obsession by the time June arrived. We went, we saw, we came back, but then it was straight back into work and catching up with neglected friends, and before I knew it it was January the 1st all over again!

The months following our triumphant return from 110 degrees east also saw me wading through over 1800 photos and 2 hours of video from the trip, in an attempt to weed out the worthwhile memories from the out-of-focus thumb shots. I managed to get the photos fully uploaded to Flickr around the middle of December, and you can check 'em out here.

Likewise, I cobbled together a reasonable first effort at a short film of our highlights - by which I mean 'the parts of the trip where I remembered I had a camcorder with me'. It's viewable in the post below, and I lucked out somewhat both with the music working really well, and some of the edits almost looking slick. After all - it was my first attempt, and was using Windows Movie Maker, which isn't renowned for being particularly amazing. There is a helluva lot of room for improvement though, and my latest attempt to make a rally opus is currently beached on the soundtrack options. It's bloody hard to find the right sort of music that has a bit of meaning and works well with the footage it's playing over the top of. The mutterings on the film soundtrack itself are either non-existent or mediocre, boring mumbling, hence the need to make it more of a musical endeavour. I'm plugging away though - I won't stop until I'm happy with it. It's kinda nice to get home and tinker with the footage, in the absence of a driveway and clapped out motor.

I'm going to re-post our updates from the road here for posterity, just in case something goes tits up with the rally website. I also hope to expand on the short, SMS-length posts we did whilst we were away, but that fully depends on my 33-year old memory helping me out with the finer points of our 5 week expedition (now over 6 months ago), and me having a bit more commitment to clogging up the internet version of the airwaves than was displayed last year.

We bloody made it

2010-10-28T23:11:00.000+01:00

Just in case any of you were concerned for our well-being, given the lack of posts since before we started getting snowed under with rally preparation - we've been to Ulaanbaatar and back in our mighty Renault Kangoo!

Read the blogs from the trip here: http://mongolia.charityrallies.org/teams/11725/blogs

and here's a little video I cobbled together when we got back, just to prove we were actually there... Will do a longer, better edited one soon

My Mongolia Charity Rally website is up and driving

2010-06-10T00:04:00.000+01:00

Just in case you weren't aware....

We have an official site for the Mongolia Charity Rally, which has a blog, photos, news of our sponsors and route and a whole host of other fascinating tit bits of information.

With just over four weeks 'til the off, things are pretty mental, so I'll probably only be updating the rally blog when I get a moment. All I talk about is the bloody rally these days anyway, so it's probably more appropriate.

Our website is http://mongolia.charityrallies.org/steppebysteppe

We'll be updating from the road via text message as well, so definitely keep an eye on the rally blog from 10 July.

Cheers!

International relations

2010-06-08T00:10:00.000+01:00

Well, the witching hour has just arrived, as I make the finishing touches to my Russian visa application. I started at 9pm.

The process saw me pay the price for the somewhat strained relations between our two nations over the last 50 years; three screens of pretty searching questions for me - my current and previous two employers' details (which considering I've been working in my current place for 7 years took a bit of remembering); details of any and all political, religious and charitable groups I'm affiliated with; details of whether I've been in the military or have any nuclear or bomb-making expertise; statements about whether I'd been in a conflict as either aggressor or victim; have I used drugs; my mother's name; my father's name - the list was long. I got there though, and everything's in place to head to the consulate tomorrow and pay the £90 fee for my visa.

I'll also be taking Justyna's considerably shorter application. Name, address, workplace, dates of entry and departure - all pretty straightforward and a bargain too at a mere £50. I thought it was down to old habits dying hard that Poland (and perhaps other former Eastern Bloc countries) got a bit of an easier ride until I noticed the names of the two documents we'd created.

Hers: generic 'visa application'
Mine: 'US-UK-Georgia visa'

Ah.

39 days

2010-06-01T23:08:00.000+01:00

hello you lovely people. How the devil are you?

We've got Mongolian visas! So if all else fails, we can still make it to Ulaanbaatar - although clearly if all else fails it might make the trip that little bit more difficult.

Our passports are currently huddled together, shivering, in an unfamiliar cupboard in South Kensington as they endure their next right-of-passage at the Kazakhstan Embassy. Fingers crossed things go ok for them; this visa application is the one I have been most concerned about screwing up. It's not that the questions are harder; more that I've heard that any mistake, no matter how small, can result in the visa application being rejected. It will be an anxious wait until Friday.

In other news, our Russian visa support letters arrived today! Just waiting on Uzbekistan now, but we will be able to get the Russian documentation sorted next week, all being well with the neighbours.

Hard to fathom it is a mere 39 days til the off. It really is close now and my stomach contracts in knots every time I think about it. I can't quite grasp how much we still have to do in the four remaining weekends before we go - yet again I am cursing my lack of organisation as even a 9 month head start on the trip of a lifetime has seen me desperately try to cram everything into the last few weeks.

Maybe it's time to accept that it's just how I will always be, and learn to live with it. We have a vehicle, we may have insurance soon, we should hopefully have visas, and we'll just have to wing it with regard to being able to fix the van if it breaks down or read Cyrillic road-signs for, err, about 65% of the trip. We're trying to track down deals on the remaining equipment we need - camping gear, sand ladders and perhaps a roof box to hold a load of our crap, as well as some spare wheels. It's all awfully pricey; I've sent a couple of emails to specialist companies to see if they'd be interested doing a deal but am not holding my breath. We'll get it sorted somehow. Tally ho!

2010-05-25T23:37:00.001+01:00

It's apparent from scanning down the page that updates to old faithful STTR are somewhat infrequent these days, even by my standards. What can I say, it turns out this whole rally planning malarkey is proving somewhat time consuming.

the major stresses at the moment are regarding visa applications - I never realised that completing two sheets of paper correctly would be so difficult or have so much riding on it. Good news though - finally made it to the Mongolian Embassy today and our first visa applications are go! All being well, I should collect our passports on Friday with a shiny new stamp in them.

I was shaking on the way to the Embassy this morning - a mixture of excitement and terror that we'd somehow messed up the application form and would be refused the visa. My stomach was in knots on the tube and I tried to remind myself, "it's not like it's a job interview or something". Unfortunately my inner Bill Shankly chose to chime in at that moment with, "no, it's much more important than that". Thankfully it seemed to go ok; the girl in the consulate briefly checked the form when I submitted it and didn't highlight anything untoward, so fingers crossed.

Elsewhere, we hope to get the van someday soon, and are starting to look at camping gear. Insureandgo have sportingly offered us 5% off the cost of travel insurance and my mobile phone company, who asked not to be named, have made a goodwill gesture of £25 towards the cost of texting back home whilst we're away. It's all helping, and I'm immensely chuffed to be able to direct your eyes diagonally upwards to our Justgiving widget, where at the time of writing we have achieved exactly two thirds of our fundraising target.

All of which brings me seamlessly to my final piece of news: our fund-raising night in the Prince Albert, Brixton on 25 June. We've just had the date confirmed but will hold off on details until it's all definite. Thankfully, we should be guaranteed a good crowd as it's piggy-backing on a very popular monthly night, so we're hopeful of getting a few more quid in. It's dangerously close to departure day, but far enough away we can hopefully get some friendly faces in the crowd. See you there.

Woooaaahhhhh! We're halfway there.....!

2010-05-17T22:53:00.001+01:00

Not to Mongolia, obviously. That would see us somewhere in Kazakhstan.

Nope, where we are is pretty much just as exciting - a chunky donation from Colin yesterday took us through the magical £500 mark and meant that I could finally break into some classic Bon Jovi. It also gives me the perfect excuse to post the video - a benchmark of wacky, hair-related antics and no mistake....

Thanks to everyone who's donated so far! More donations from J's fellow Geologist Melissa and my birthday-sharer Paul have taken us up to the heady heights of £542 by the end of today. Amazing stuff - can't believe people's generosity! Just think of the quality music I might inflict on you should we near our target soon...

more route planning

2010-05-11T23:30:00.001+01:00

This Mongolian driving looks to be a piece of piss! Check out Google's directions... at least it appears that there is absolutely no chance of us getting lost. Mind you, roundabouts can be confusing...

Route planning

2010-05-10T23:42:00.002+01:00

We finally got the ball rolling on our visa applications tonight, sending fof the required info to apply for Letters of Invitation to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In what I think is a hangover from the former Soviet days, many tourists need to be "invited" to visit by someone in the country - no rocking up on the border and milling about aimlessly once inside. In reality, the process has become more of a 'visa support' function - essentially a travel agency within the country will submit your details to the government, and all being well will provide you with a reference to take along to the local consulate. Given the main bit of the admin has been done and dusted, visas apparently only then take a couple of days to get sorted.

It's proved a bit of a bonus for us - much like the vast majority of the rest of our plans we've ended up sitting here in May going "Whuh?" at the realisation that this adventure, which has been in the planning stages since October, is now a mere 60 days away. Throw in an ill-timed (but much looked-forward-to) few days away in Belgium this weekend, and it was starting to look a bit tight to get 5 visas sorted in the time we have left. The LOI process means the bulk of the red tape can be sorted based on scanned documents, so hopefully we'll be ok.

One of the questions we had to answer for each country was our intended entry point, which forced us to properly look at the maps for the first time. Unfortunately, a fat red line indicating a major road in that part of the world can be misleading, and it's only thanks to Google Earth that we didn't take the "better" route (in terms of itinerary and seeing western Uzbekistan) down the west of the Aral Sea - satellite images show a barren and desolate part of Kazakhstan with a road that in places is nothing more than a dirt track. In addition, it seems to be about 100km from the nearest town and the thought of our non-existent car repair skills being pressed into action is just that little bit too terrifying at the moment. We've decided to go for the 'main' border crossing into Uzbekistan instead, near Tashkent. It has the advantage of tarmac, greenery, towns and a couple of very volcano-y looking mountains that got J very excited...... Apparently the time taken to get through this way is hit-and-miss - could be simple, could take 6 hours. But whilst we're out for adventure and remote villages, we'll quite happily go for being stranded at a major border for a few hours than lost in the desert somewhere near Turkmenistan....

Our intended entry point:

The 'other one'

We can do it too! With Kangoo

2010-05-04T19:33:00.004+01:00

We have wheels! And a dashboard! And seats! And.....well, you get the picture...

We received official confirmation from Mongolia today that our vehicle has been approved! On July 10th, we will purr out of Highbury fields in a pretty dang sexy little white Renault Kangoo van. It's a veritable young pup of a thing - only emerging, blinking, into the world in late 2002 and currently almost as poorly-travelled as its occupants, with a mere 70,000 miles on the clock.

The journey from "souped-up Toyota Hilux Surf" to Kangoo as the wagon of choice for our journey was long, twisting and at times frankly preposterous - much like our eventual route from London to UB will no doubt prove to be. Following the rally meet up in November, we returned enthused and determined to do something huge for charity. Several glasses of Cava later, we'd nailed it: why not take a load of teaching supplies and name ourselves "Ulaan Book Tour" - and do it all in a mobile library?!

It quickly became apparent "why not". Mobile libraries are huge. They only have one seat. They weigh a ton. They cost a fortune. You probably need a special licence to drive one and the thought of trying to get it out of a pothole in the middle of the Gobi desert didn't exactly fill us with confidence.

So we kept planning and searching; licence restrictions meant Justyna could only drive a van up to a certain size, and once we were down to two in the team it was clear we'd need something we could manouevre, and conceivably push out of a sticky situation, between us. We also had to ensure we could meet the customs rules on tax exemption - which eventually led us to the perfect solution: a car derived van.

For those who aren't skilled tradesmen or small business owners, a car-derived van is one with the same front end as a car, but a van bit on the back. You probably could have worked that out yourself. Our theory, such as it goes, is that these things are meant for a bit of abuse by white van men up and down the country - if they can survive being revved around building sites and barged through non-existent gaps in city centre traffic, they can surely cope with a bit of corrugated desert track? Also, the space in the back could potentially provide enough room to curl up for a sleep should fear of the Mongolian Death Worm prove too much for us as we travel through the wilderness.

We've been really lucky to get the van we have, and I have to thank everyone involved in making it happen. Our focus was eBay and trying to fix up a 'spares or repair' Ford Escort or the like - to be presented with the opportunity to take such a mighty French steed is beyond our wildest expectations. We've not yet picked it up but the V5 is off to the DVLA and we're trying to sort insurance out.

Pics will, of course, follow once we can post them. Now, just got to sort some corporate sponsorship to give it that authentic "rally" look.

back

2010-04-20T23:26:00.000+01:00

Hello! Can't believe it's been nearly two weeks since my last, rather painful post from my phone. Flat stuff somewhat took over, and it took a deluge of one comment to prompt me to get back on the computer to update the blog. Unfortunately it demanded that the reader be entertained, a skill largely outside my realms of expertise. But you never know, I might wing it.

So... the last couple of weeks. What's been going on? Well, for posterity, a massive volcano has been screwing the airspace over the UK, which seemed quite exciting for a while until I realised that people I knew were being affected - J's friend is trapped in Cyprus, meaning her son is having to stay with his dad in Edinburgh for an extra week; Facebook is awash with tales of people not getting to where they want to go; perhaps most rubbish of all, avid blog readers Helen and Lee have been grounded from their long-anticipated trip to Australia to see a couple of old friends. Gutted. J and I are also now wondering whether or not we'll be able to make it to Poland this weekend to see her folks - again, something that has been looked forward to since Christmas by all concerned. It's a bit different to a huge trip like Oz, and we can conceivably rebook for a few weeks time, but disappointing all the same.

Elsewhere, I won on the nags for the first time ever thanks to the Grand National and a sentimental punt on AP McCoy - a cheeky fiver transformed to an £80 profit just thanks to a horse and rider not getting wiped out on the way round the course. Probably more skill to it than that, but in that particular race, not much I'd wager (and probably win, now I'm an expert).

Rally-wise, organisation has been affected by the same issues as my general internet consumption - decorating, shopping, furnishing and sleeping (a bit). Dangerously close to leaving it too late to get our visas sorted in good time, but we need to wait until we return from Poland anyway as we need to send off our passports. Err, actually, in that case we need to wait til we've returned from our weekend in Belgium in a few weeks time as well. Oh bugger, not planned this very well, have we? But....and it's potentially a HUGE but.... we may have a vehicle! Can't really say too much about it but a generous benefactor has offered us a slightly damaged van for donation to the charity - the details have been submitted to Mongolian customs for review so it's with baited breath we sit.

The flat is pretty much sorted now, and we can almost look forward to relaxing in it. Our new bedroom paint job looks rather marvellous, if I do say so myself. Will be needed, with hectic times ahead, starting this weekend and followed by my niece's christening & the aforementioned pilgrimage to fookin Bruges. All go, as they say.