26th April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something To Me #9

"Tiger Feet" by Mudd is a song that still stirs my dancing legs. If I hear it on the radio, I have to heave my old bones up off the sofa and stir my feet into the special "Tiger Feet" dance. I believe that it is the only song in the world that inspires the special patented "shoulder strut".

"Tiger Feet" by Mudd is a song about which one can only feel happy. It is a song for silly parties. It is a song to let your hair down to. It is a song which your dad should dance to at a wedding. If you are feeling sad: listen to "Tiger Feet". If you are stressed at work: "Listen to "Tiger Feet".

"Tiger Feet". It is the univesal panacea.

25th April - 10 Songs That Mean Something TO Me #8

There is a song on the flip side of Rush's 2112, called "Limelight". It is a wee song that I love cos it reminds me of a little room in my parents' house where I had set up a record player. It was that period of my life where music was pretty much the most important thing. It was that time of my life where the neurons in my head were lining up in little patterns that I guess will be firing in my head for as long as I am conscious.

And "Limelight" is a song that I felt I had discovered. A song that I thought was perfect, and that no-one else had found just yet. It is a little piece of perfection. If I could write songs I'd want to write this one.

24th April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something To Me #7

"Being Boring" by the Pet Shop Boys is a nice anthem for doing inappriate things with inappropriate people.

Nuff said.

23rd April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something to Me #6

"We're All Going On a Summer Holiday" by the One and Only Mister Cliff Richard, does what it says on the tin. It says:"We're All Going on a Summer Holiday".

It is a song that has always been sung in my family's car when we are going on a summer holiday. And while there is still breath in me, and holidays to be had, it will ever be so.

22nd April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something To Me #5

The greatest guitar solo that there ever has been anywhere ever in the universe is so obviously the tiny little guitar solo in Journey's "Don't Stop Believin" that it is lmost not worth having the argument. People who hold the contrary view are so obviously deranged, that they deserve pity rather than scorn. Actually they deserve to be taken round the back and beaten mercilessly by the Musical Taste Police.

It is a perfect song. It reminds me of my pal from school Davie Robertson (whom I haven't seen for years - I was very envious of him once because he was a ball boy at the Hamilton Accies). He knew about Journey before the rest of us, and he had a grainy old video recording of them that was like switching a light on to what music could be.

It also reminds me of being in the van with the stage crew travelling down to Stranraer and singing our heads off, in what can only be described as a cab full of happiness.

And if you hven't seen the but in the film "Monster" in the roller disco, you haven't yet fully experience all that life has to offer.

21st April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something to Me #4

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was my Mum and Dad's song, and it always brings a lump to my throat.

It is odd, but my wee girl loves it too. She sings it to me sometimes, innocent of all the emotional charge it carries to me. She has a little blue and white checked dress that she dresses up in to look like Dorothy, and she wanders out into the garden and leans against a bush and sings about a place over the rainbow that blubirds can reach but that I can't quite manage to get to.

For the first time in years I forgot myself yesterday. I reached for the phone and for just a split second I was about to phone my mum. She died some years ago. I wonder if I had forgotten myself completely, the connection might just have reached over the rainbow for a moment or two.

20th April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something to Me #3

"There She Goes" by the LAs is - for me - like a feeling of pure pleasure and excitement and friendship rolled up inside a pop tune. It is not really music for me: it is something that seeps into my bloodstream, leeches onto strands of DNA and realeases endorphins.

Our techman - who lights all our shows and provides all the music - always plays this at the Fringe when we are running shows, and the second it comes over the speakers I know we are on the point of the beginning of something that I've been working for for 6 months or more.

It is release. It is pleasure. It is a good time subtly bound up in between the notes.

19th April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something To Me #2

I split up with a girlfriend when I was about 19. I was heartbroken, and in order to wallow properly and fully in my teenage angst I would take the bus to Blantyre Sports Centre and play "With or Without You" by U2 on the jukebox. I would play it repeatedly. This was not appreciated by many of the New Romantics and Nutty Boys who peopled the little cafe. They would slurp their Leapin Lemon n Lime Slush Puppies and look at me with undisguised malice.

I did not care though. I was the only one who had ever felt so low. Except for Bono. He understood.

"Every toim oi click moi fingers, your heart will break a little more..."

18th April, 2009 - 10 Songs That Mean Something To Me #1

There is a song by the B52s called Hot Pant Explosion which makes me think with some fondness of a drunken evening at Virgo's Show Bar somewhere in my late teens. This was one of those terrible theme bars which sprang up in the 80s where the bar staff had to dress up as Hollywood film characters and do little routines when particular songs came on.

I had a bit of a crush on the Marilyn Munro lookalike, and now and again I would dress up in my best going out clothes - button down shirt, multi coloured braces, chinos and a dress jacket with the sleeves rolled up - and watch her singing "Happy Birthday Mr President" to some lucky punter. I had 4 birthdays that year.

Anyway. They didn't play "Hot Pants Explosion" at the show bar, but I had it on my Walkman. After going to the bar I used to sit on the garden wall and listen to it on my own.

Sometimes I danced a bit on the front lawn.

17th April, 2009 - Turkish Delight

As some of you will know, I moved this blog over to Blogger from Yahoo 360. One of the nice things about Blogger is that I have been able to add a bit of HTML code to the site to track who reads the blog. (I said that last sentence as if I actually have any idea what it means - I did that to sound impressive and am now inserting this parenthesis as an afterthought as I realise what a plonker I am)

Mostly, tracking the readers is a bit of a sad affair, since it confirms what I have suspected for some time, namely that only me and one of mates ever visits. I would have been better off inviting Laughing Boy out for a cup of tea and a natter. It would have been healthier I am sure for my mental health and psychological well-being to enjoy the companionship of another human being, rather than to spend my life tapping away at a soulless keyboard and sending my words echoing out into the void. (In Cyberspace no-one can hear you blog).

However, interestingly, I have discovered that I seem to have a regular reader from Turkey. I find this a bit perplexing. Generally I find it perplexing that anyone at all would ant to read this, but it is downright weird that one regular visitor comes from Ankara. Is he/she an ex pat? Are they improving their vernacular Scots for a business visit? I want to know who they are and why they come here. If you are reading this let me know. Please.

16th April, 2009 - GOMA

We - the kids and I - were at the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art yesterday. It is a good place to go with wee kids. It has a library in the basement, there's a good cafe (with high chairs) and there's a great wee art room full of stuff to play with. This latter is designed to inspire tiny minds to creativity I think. Unfortunately, it only seems to inspire my two to empty large volumes of small items onto the floor so that daddy has to put them away again. Building blocks, crayons. pieces of wool - all are tipped onto the floor in one great heap.

I would not mind, but they forget that I am an older father, and my knees are not what they once were. I should be resting in front of a roaring fire with a fine old malt nowadays instead of scrabbling about the floor of a playroom. It is not dignified.

15th April, 2009

We have installed a new digital dictation system in the office. Instead of dictating my work on little dictaphone tapes, my work is now recorded on the system's harddrive until my secretary types it.

I am astonished by computers sometimes. They seem miraculous. I can kind of understand how a steam engine works - someone could draw it on a bit of paper and i could understand the principles. i can see how someone would think it up. Similarly, I can even see how aomebody might conceive of a V2 rocket engine - I couldn't do it, but I can understand the mechanical principles - I can conceive of them at least.

But computers? I do not like to think of them too closely. They seem as dark and mysterious to me as alchemy. I cannot even begin to start to begin to imagine how someone might think of the idea. There seem to be no building blocks - just a miracle that is now commonplace.

14th April, 2009 - Busted Laptop

My new laptop - which was promised by the IT men to be the living embodiment of the Risen Christ - has packed in. This has happened - naturally - at absolutely, positively the least convenient moment that it could have happened, when I am in the middle of putting together the script for the show, which involves writing at all sorts of times in all sorts of places. Just the time, when a laptop is essential really.

So - I am back to my old faithful Dell for now. It has its familiar purple line running down the screen which is oddly comforting. But it is having trouble converting the Word file from the new laptop. A message keeps coming up which reads -

"I be an olde machine and do not recognise thy Newfangled format. Be afraid. No goode wille come of modernity. Renounce all pleasures of Vista. Be Warned."

13th April, 2009 - Writing

I am currently desperately bashing down the script for our new Edinburgh show "21 Girlfriends". This is involving me getting up unreasaonably early in the morning to try to find some extra hours in the day. It is a bit like the process of squeezing an apparently empty toothpaste tube to eke out every last precious globule of minty whiteness.

It is utterly weird and fascinating procees. We've spent a long time putting together character histories and improvising fragments of stroylines. But now I'm having to try to distill it into a script that will work onstage in Edinburgh in about 7 weeks. I think there are laughs there, but the show has quite an abstract format, which is unusual for me - I'm normally more interested in stories that run in quite a formal way. The challenge is to make something that is enteretaining and comprehensible. And also to reduce the number of scraps of paper that are lying all over my desk.

12th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #10

I remember getting one of my essays read out to the class. I think it might have been the first time I ever felt proud of something I’d done. We had to write an essay aboiut TV, and everyone else had pointed out that TV was ruining their lives; making them fat; and was liable to turn them into violent young adults.

I remember writing about how much I loved the telly; and how (in the right hands) it was a force for good. I took the view that the telly was a nuclear reactor rather than I hydrogen bomb. Obviously, I didn’t put it that way when I was 10. I am much better at metaphors now, which is why you are reading this blog.

11th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #9

There was a big slide in the playground at the back of the school. Not a chute. But an icy slide the kids made in winter. The thing about the slide was that, clearly some kids were better than others at sliding.

I, for example, was not a good slider. I would run at the slide tentatively, and then set off rather gracelessly down the icy surface, turning slowly through 180 degrees, before falling clumsily to the ground. But other kids – well – the knew how to slide baby. They would run pell mell at the thing – like Carl Lewis in his pomp tearing towards the plasticine strip in the long jump – and then, they would hurtle like bullets along the slide. Whhhoooooosh. I swear they would travel a quarter of a mile – maybe more on really cold days.
These kids were friction free. I swear it.

10th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #8

I remember footballs on the top of the flat roof. Countless footballs, of all shapes and sizes. Tens of them seemed to become stranded up there every day. I can remember the sinking feeling when the last available ball of the day got stuck up there, and you knew that the game was ended and its resumption rested on the capricious whim of the Jannie, a man who seemed to derive great pleasure from the power of confiscation.

9th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #7

I remember the heatwave. It must have been about 1975 or thereabouts, and the world was scorching. We seemed to spend weeks being taught in the shade in the playground, while the sun beat down on the tarmac.

I think we were drawing. I remember carrying the seats outside. I remember the wrinkled plastic of the little chairs and the rubber stoppers on the bottom of the legs.

8th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #6

The coolest thing we ever did at Primary School was devise our own nativity play with a drama teacher from the local college. We worked out ways to represent the Roman soldiers close in on the Baby Jesus, and we came up with our own lines and I can remember as clear as day it dawning on me what “symbolism” was. I didn’t use that word of course, but the idea of the abstract – of something representing something else – woke up inside me as the Roman soldiers lowered their spears towards the cradle, just before the doll was snatched and spirited off to Egypt.

7th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #5

I played with a toy farm at the back of the class on my first day at school. I have a vague memory of it, which seems to be a first hand memory, instead of those second hand memories that seem to burn themselves into your brain after you look at old photos.

I remember it at the back of the class. There were fences I think. And grass. And it seemed to me to be a marvellous thing.

6th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #4

A guy called Peter blew his thumb off while playing with a railway detonator.

5th April, 2009 - Ten Random thoughts About Primary School #3

Even worse than the Number 5 was the dark art of the Greater than/Less Than signs. These were a complete mystery to me until I reached secondary school. Whenever I was asked to deal with these little symbols my mind went blank and I began to hyperventilate.

Sometimes I still dream about Greater Than and Less Than Signs. They are talking to me from their little acute angled jaws and they are saying: “You do not understand us. We are complex and beyond you. Other children in this class are destined for bigger things. They will drive fast cars and live in luxurious converted barns in Newton Mearns, whilst you will die a lonely death in a garret at the age of 23.

4th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts About Primary School #2

I remember being extremely upset about trying and failing continuously for a whole morning to put the stroke at the top of the number five on the correct side of the vertical line leading upwards from the semicircle. Every time I came to it, I wanted to put it on the left.

The rest of the class seemed to have mastered this piece of witchcraft, and most of them seemed to be well on their way to solving quadrilateral equations. But not me. I was stuck on attempting to master the dark arts of writing the number 5.

4th April, 2009 - Ten Random Thoughts from Primary School #1

The thing I remember about going back to my primary school when I was an adult is the height of the urinals in the gents toilet. They seemed unfeasibly low, and it seemed to me that I can never have been of small enough that they were of the right scale for me.

I have seen photos of a wee me of course, so intellectually I realise that I was once small. But I still don’t really believe that I am the same person who stood peeing in the little tiny receptacle.

3rd April, 2009 - Ten Toys I Remember #10

The spacehopper takes a bit of beating. There is something truly odd and mildly creepy about the spacehopper. I am fairly sure that the Spacehopper was designed by an acid-dropping hippy from the sixties, who saw the weird creature during a particularly vivid trip.

What animal is the face of the Spacehopper supposed to be exactly? Come to that, is it actually supposed to be emulating any sort of creature at all? If there are actually herds of spacehoppers somewhere in the universe, it will be a kick in the balls for Darwinism, that’s all I’m saying on the subject.

2nd April, 2009 - Toys I Remember #9

The blackboard took a bit of beating when I was about 10. Usually, it would become the intricate instrument panel of a spaceship. Sometimes I still think about contacting NASA with some of my more interesting theories about the way that a Space Shuttle cabin should be laid out.
But the thing I really remember about the blackboard is the way that powdered chalk smells on a duster; it is the crack cocaine of childhood.
Not that I take crack cocaine now that I am an adult. Cheesy biscuits are the crack cocaine of adulthood. Which leaves me with an awkward question – if chalky dusters are the crack cocaine of childhood, and cheesy biscuits are the crack cocaine of adulthood, when am I actually going to take crack cocaine. Presumably, until I actually do take crack cocaine, you are unlikely to take my metaphors very seriously, untested as they are by the crucible of experience.

Perhaps i will get the crack pipe out in my dotage, as I sit in the nursing how. But if I do, I may discover that the comparison with dusters and cheese was inept. All my work on this blog will have been worthless, and I will die miserable.
.

1st April, 2009 - Toys I Remember #8

My mate Vincent from across the road was quite the best person that I could possibly have been pals with when I was at Primary School. His upbringing was quite unconventional. His dad was a minister at the local church, and held quite astonishingly good Christian values to the point where he seemed to donate all of his income and most of his time to helping the poor and underprivileged. When I look back at him and his family, it seems to me that they really were good people.

But the reason that this is important to this retrospective on toys is that Vincent – who was my best pal for many years – did not own a television set and lived in a cold and dusty old manse, and there I played and played and played for years.

And Vincent - probably now that I think of it partly because of restricted means in the household – used to invent games of astonishing imagination and complexity. The one that springs ro mind now is his athletics board game which I can see still in my mind’s eye – with its race track; its shot putt are; the javelin; the discus (with a rotating spinning pointer). He had rules for everything from how to clear a hurdle to what constituted a foul throw in the hammer.
There was so much imagination. I hope my kids meet someone like him and are not wholly seduced by the world of electronic gadgetry.

31st March, 2009 - Toys I Remember #7

Pick Up Sticks seem to hold a low tech hold on my heart. I remember that my Grandma and Papa had these tucked away in their pantry, and for some reason it was (for a few months of my life anyway) quite the single most important reason that I had for visiting them.

Yes Grandma the scones you have spent all morning baking along with your homemade rhubarb jam are quite delicious, but WHEN CAN WE PLAY PICK UP STICKS?

30th March, 2009 - Ten Toys I Remember #6

I loved and still love the board game “Diplomacy”. That, along with “Risk” are probably the only two games from late childhood that I carried into adult life (if you exclude Dungeons and Dragons, which – as you should all know by now – is not a game at all, but is a perfectly acceptable and quite adult form of entertainment akin to reading classic literature or watching the films of Frederico Fellini).

Diplomacy was a curious mix of war and politics set in Europe at the turn of the century. It rewarded backstabbing and back room manoeuvrings. I think that anyone who works in a large corporation would benefit from mastering the game of Diplomacy. Promotion would be theirs for the taking.

29th March, 2009 - Ten Toys I Remember #5

Stickle bricks stand out pretty strongly as the first toy that I ever truly loved (teddy bears, perhaps, excluded). I don’t know if stickle bricks were common, but I loved them. They seemed to my small mind, nothing short of miraculous – they were not sticky (in the way that jam or glue is sticky) and yet they were sticky (in some sort of marvellous way).

I have a feeling that, if only stickle bricks were subjected to proper scientific study, they might well prove to be the solution to the housing crisis.

28th March, 2009 - Ten Toys I Remember #4

Subbuteo may well rank as the top game ever of my childhood. Everything about it seems to be tailor made to appeal to mind of a young boy. It is as if the manufacturers had somehow looked directly into the brains of young boys and cunningly come up with a toy designed to stimulate simultaneously all of their pleasure centres.

It simultaneously satisfies the need for competition; the insatiable desire to collect things; the inbuilt love of young boys for football; our love of intricate rules systems; and – of course – our natural desire to impersonate Archie MacPherson followed by the simulated roar of a crowd.

27th March, 2009 - Ten Toys I Remember #3

Pocketeers!

How I loved the Pocketeer. Even the very name – Pocketeer – speaks faintly of adventure. When you had a Pocketeer, you were a bit like a Muskateer, except you were not an Eighteenth Centrury French dandy with a rapier, but instead were a small boy from Lanarkshire with a snorkel jacket an a cheap plastic toy.

But – Pocketeers were the computer games of their day. In the days before the Game Boy, the manufacturers of the Pocketeer had realised that there is nothing – nothing! – that small boys of a certain age like better than to have a game that fits in your pocket.

26th March, 2009 - Ten Toys I Remember #2

For several summers, the top toy of my childhood was undoubtedly the Toy Soldier. Parents take heed: little boys like war. It is inbred in their little testosteroney bodies.

I remember being endlessly fascinated by the different weapons that the soldiers had. The odd shape of the German stick grenade was a particular favourite of mine. Even now, as i type this, I am kind of tempted to pop down to the hobby shop and pick up a packet of Desert Rats and some of Rommel’s troops, just for the thrill of watching them square off with one another in a sandpit.

25th March, 2009 - Ten Toys I Remember #1

The first toy that springs to mind is the Evel Knevel stunt bike. This was, for a short period in my life, the absolute number 1 I Must Have It I Simply Must Item. It was advertised on the telly in a way that made it appear that the toy was actually capable of clearing several real live double decker buses.

The reality of course was much more prosaic: you cranked it up, pressed the switch and then the bike scuttled along the ground for about 18 inches before topping over and then spinning helplessly in ever slower and sadder circles.

24th March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #10

Big firms from the city centre are a fairly constant source of irritation.

I think that they believe that we in the provinces largely specialise in the conveyance of cows and the occasional lease of manure heaps. (The fact that these actually happen to be my own specialities is entirely co-incidental. Some small firms actually do real work).

2rd March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #9

I am not terribly keen on Work Experience Persons (WEPs). Now and again, as responsible members of society we allow young persons to come into the office to see what the world of work is like before they make career decisions.

WEPs seem to be invariably spotty and bespectacled. They stare blanky across the in-tray at you as you try to explain what a title deed is. They snarl up photocopiers. They do not believe you, when you say it is all right to go home early. No. Really. It is ok to go home early. Go on. I’m sure you have a Playstation or something.
Get out my hair!!!

22nd March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #8

I hate Letters of Engagement. It is now a rule laid down by my professional organisation that I need to send one of these to every single client for every single new piece of business. The theory is very sound – you ought to tell your client at the start of each case what you are doing for them , and how much it will cost.

However, in practice these letters have grown enormous. They are full of smallprint and provisos and jargon. In the old days – about 5 years ago – a client asked you to do a job and you did it for them. It does not seem to me that we need 8 pages of bumph to say: “You have asked us to buy your house. We will do it for you. If we make a mess of it, you can sue us.” I imagine that most intelligent people can work that out for themselves. They seemed to manage reasonably well for several centuries.

However, we have a word processor, and we’re gonna use it.

22nd March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #8

I hate Letters of Engagement. It is now a rule laid down by my professional organisation that I need to send one of these to every single client for every single new piece of business. The theory is very sound – you ought to tell your client at the start of each case what you are doing for them , and how much it will cost.

However, in practice these letters have grown enormous. They are full of smallprint and provisos and jargon. In the old days – about 5 years ago – a client asked you to do a job and you did it for them. It does not seem to me that we need 8 pages of bumph to say: “You have asked us to buy your house. We will do it for you. If we make a mess of it, you can sue us.” I imagine that most intelligent people can work that out for themselves. They seemed to manage reasonably well for several centuries.

However, we have a word processor, and we’re gonna use it.

21st March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #7

Immoveable deadlines are one of the occupational hazards. People must get their keys on a particular day; court appearances must be made; actions must be raised before the time bar. It is this issue of critical deadlines that probably create most of the stress in my job.

And sometimes they stack up in an unavoidable way that makes you need to stay in the office far too late when you want to be watching a re-run of "Zoolander".

20th March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #6

I hate it when people come up to you at parties and say:

“So. You’re a lawyer are you? I could never do that job. I could never defend someone I know is guilty.”

19th March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #5

The paper! The paper! The endless paper.

The Law Society of Scotland insists that we store files for a period after they are completed. Many files that I deal with have to be kept for at least five years, and often much longer than that. We have a storage facility where all the dead files live, a little mausoleum to the disputes and petty grievances of days gone by.

If we freed up all the storage units full of the dead files of lawyers, we would actually find that there is enough space for 1,000,000 Japanese tourists. Gordon Brown heed my call – burn the files – let the Japanese come and spend their Yen.

18th March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #4

The unreasonable expectations of clients seem to be something that is now part and parcel of the law. I fear that we are now part of the Brave New World of consumerism, and that clients who have had their expectations elevated to fever pitch by round-faced smug-boy Nicky Campbell off of Watchdog, now expect their e-mails to be answered within 15 nanoseconds.

I particularly enjoy receiving e-mails that say “Did you receive my e-mail?” or “I phoned you 15 minutes ago and you haven’t phoned me back.” These are messages that fill my day with joy, and make me leap to my feet and shout: “I love my work – I was born to serve.”

The customer is not always right. Now and again the customer is irritating. But – and it is an important but – the customer also pays my mortgage.

17th March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #3

I hate the worry. It feels to me that, as I get older, I worry about stuff at work more and more. Not long ago I found myself lying awake in bed at 6am thinking about a file that I’m dealing with and worrying about an obscure tax rule. I got so worked up about it that I had to go into the office to look it up.

It seems to me that, if I had become a gentleman’s barber, that it is unlikely that I would have had these stomach-churning concerns. All I would have had to worry about would be ensuring that my trusty scissors were sharp, and that the bristles on my Neck Dusty Brush were not too harsh for the necks of my gentleman customers. I would snip away at their hair knowing that when the last head had been shorn, I would close the door, and sleep untroubled until the next morning.

16th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #10

There is a stretch of one of General Wade’s military roads at the head of Loch Lomond that I suspect might be what the roads in heaven are modelled on. The Loch stretches away below you and the hills are – well – the hills are just bonny. And you realise why people say “Oh – you’re from Scootland – beautiful country I hear.”

Well mate, you heard right. It is a beautiful country.

15th March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #2

Paperclips!

Paperclips are the work of the devil. Or if not the devil, some sort of minor demon who specialises in creating mayhem through the loss of important documentataion.

Oh yes, they seem innocuous enough, but that is part of their evil plan. On the face of it, they even seem helpful. They offer you the promise of neatly clipping little groups of paper together in an organised manner, so that you give the appearance of a man who knows which papers should be grouped together. What could be wrong wih that?

I’ll tell you what is wrong with that. The paperclip is an accident waiting to happen. The paperclip invites other papers to become ensnarled at the back of groups of paperclipped papers. This is not a problem which arises with all of the other, superior paper-organising devices. The bulldog clip for example does not allow other papers to get entangled. The bull dog clip stands proud and snarls at loose papers say “Be off with you. My jaws are firm.”

And the chances of papers accidentally getting on to the wrong treasury tag are infinitesimal. Similarly the stoic old staple, is firm and strong in its attachment. Only human error can result in the wrong papers being stapled together.

But the evil little paperclip is an entirely different story. I hate you paperclips. I hate you.

14th March, 2009 - Ten Things I Hate About My Job #1

I ran a little series about things I love about my job recently, and I thought I’d have a go at the flip side of the coin. If nothing else, it should take me ten entries closer to The Great Day of the Blog Catch Up. Let’s face it – they said it couldn’t be done, and they may yet be right, but damn it I’m gonna try.

I’M GONNA TRY.

Top of my list has to be other lawyers leaving things until the last minute. There are certain lawyers whom you can guarantee will leave a whole transaction until the week before everything is due to happen. It doesn’t matter how much you remind them about things; the deal will all have to be finalised at 4.45pm on the last possible day before the sky will collapse.
This leaves you in an unenviable position with your own client, of trying to point out at the earliest possible time that everything is going to have to be rushed through, because the agent on the other side has spent too much time rolling Havannah cigars on plump breasted girls from Musselburgh instead of settling down to get some work done.

13th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #9

Positively the best bar in the universe is The Horsehoe bar in Glasgow. Visit some night at the weekend and feel yourself part of the human race.

It reputedly has the longest bar in Europe. That might or might not be true, but I have never know a place like it for the hum of atmosphere. It seems to me to be a bar that is utterly at home in its own skin. It is unpretentious in that literal way – it is not pretending to be anything other than it is. And what it is is a place to have a drink and catch up with old friends in a space devoid of music and fashion. It is place for pints and crisps.

Whilst I’m sure they know how to mix a Manhattan, I’m pleased to say there seems to be very little demand.

12th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #8

There is a tiny little cafe on the Grassmarket in Edinburgh which I love so much that I am not even going to tell you the name of it. But it serves great coffee and croissants and it is the best place in the world to read the paper while the passage of time soothes a mild hangover.

11th March, 20009 - Ten Excellent Places #7

Being in your bed on your own on a Sunday morning with the Sunday papers. I can’t remember the last time I was there. Children and marriage and the press of things to do have robbed me of this lazy and self-indulgent pleasure. I miss it.

It shall be mine again.

10th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #6

Being at the races is thrilling. There is something about the colour and the glamour that gives me a thrill every time I go. There is a strange mix of gentry and working class at the races – posh frocks and Benson and Hedges are cheek by jowl, and the press of humanity having a good time is hard to beat.

The colours are what I think of – the jockeys’ silks flashing past the post in a blur of primary colours. And people cheering.

9th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #5

Backstage in any theatre takes a bit of beating. It is an odd little world with a kind of familiar landscape. It doesn’t really matter what size the theatre is, or where it is, the landscape backstage seems to be familiar territory. There are usually little reminders of the show that was in before yours – a list of scenes taped up somewhere or some forgotten prop in a corner.
There are usually signs of unhealthy eating – fast food wrappers and empty ginger bottles betray the poor eating habits of the backstage crew.

The place also has its own little language – and its always good to hear people talking about flying and cans and birdies and lanterns and FX cues.

8th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #4

I love the little spot outside the Greenkeepers Hut at the Eighteenth Green of the Old Course in St Andrews. The course stretches out in front of you in all its lazy timeless glory, and tourists pause lazily at the fence to look at fat Americans slicing their way up the fairway.
It is a place where leisure seems the norm, and there is no bustle, no hustle, just the thwack of golf strokes and the soft hissing of North Sea breakers.

7th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #3

Railway platforms.

There is nowhere that gives you the thrill of life’s infinite possibility than the railway platform. On a railway platform it is possible to feel the interconnectedness of all places, and whenever I am standing on one, it is all that I can do to keep from leaping onto the next available carriage and setting off for God Knows Where.

6th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #2T

The next excellent place is in a car, on the motorway at about 3am. Most of the joy of motoring has vanished with the rush hour and the Model T. Personally I long for the day when petrol prices make it impossible for poor people to run a car. Then, the thrill of the open road will be experienced again for those with money, and we shall again experience the joy of driving through muddy puddles just to splash the lower orders. Car ownership should be an automatic bar to any claim for social security benefits in my opinion.

But, though congestion has ruined most driving experience, 3am on the motorway is still a good place to be. Just you, and a few truckers and graveyard slot radio.

5th March, 2009 - Ten Excellent Places #1

The first place that it is excellent to be is in a tent. It does not matter where the tent is, it is always excellent to be inside it, with that peculiar smell of canvass and wet socks. There is something about that tiny little barrier between you and the outside world that creates secrets. It is odd, because the membrane in a tent is so thin. It might as well not be there at all, and yet, it seems to create your own space in a way that bricks and mortar cannot hope to emulate.
Whenever I see someone carrying a tent on top of their rucksack, I feel jealous of their adventures.

4th March, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #10

Here we are then.

This time I’m in hospital looking at the Round Faced boy. He is lying on the bed all naked and velvety and new, and my Significant Other and I are looking down. He looks a bit bemused and grumpy, which is not surprising given that he has popped into the world at short notice and alarming speed.

“What do you mean you don’t think we’ll get to the hospital on time?”

He is looking a bit crumpled and ugly as a result of the ordeal. But it is nice to meet him. I suspect we are going to be friends.

3rd March, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #9

Ah. We are nearly finished our little walk along the back alleys of my memory. I didn’t think you’d last the course, like some blistered hiker bailing out on the foothills, but here we are, summit in sight. I should have had more faith in you.

Where are we this time?

Ah. We are in a hotel room somewhere in Europe and my Significant Other is in the ensuite bathroom. I am laughing a lot because I have just invented a character called The Dirty Bugger who sits outside hotel bathroom doors and says rude things in a very gruff and perverted voice.
He says things like “I can see you” and “I can see what you’re doing” and suchlike.
I am finding this very amusing. In a few moments I will discover that my Significant Other does not.

2nd March, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #8

Hello faithful friend and reader.

Ah. St Andrews again. Walking up the beach in the moments before I propose to my Significant Other. I know why they call it popping the question now, because here – at this moment – I can feel the pressure of the Big Ask welling up inside me. I am like a bottle of champagne that’s been shaken too vigorously by a winning racing driver.

1st March, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #7

Nearly there now. I’m glad you came. It’s far better to a have a bit of company.

This time I’m 19. I’m walking along at Glasgow Uni just outside a wee pub on Park Road with my girlfriend and I am being a teenage student pain in the ass. I am having a crisis about turning 20. I am of the opinion that all my best years are behind me, and I am now sliding down the road to adulthood, responsibility and car-ownership. I am, of course, correct about these things, but I am still a student prat wearing a long coat because I think it makes me look arty.

If I ever get the chance to time travel, I plan to revisit this moment and give myself a right good kicking.

28th February, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #6

I forgot you were there for a moment. Hello again.

I’m in Borders Cafe this time at the Fort. Alone with the round-faced girl. She looks like a big fish. She is looking at me and smiling. She is watching me closely and seems to be under the misapprehension that I know how to look after a baby girl.

I am singing something nonsensical about a flying baby and she is smiling a bit but mostly watching me with big fishy eyes. She is mostly bald apart from a few wispy strands. I am and always will be enraptured.

27th February, 2009 - Ten Moments I remember #5

I’m beginning to enjoy your company. You can stay if you like.

For some reason, this time I’m at the bottom of a pile of bodies at a party in the Couch Potato’s flat. I’m fairly sure there’s an Extreme track playing much louder than it ought to be at this time in the morning in a tenement flat. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to do some moshing. It might have been me.

The weight of the whole party corporate is bearing down on my rib-cage, and they are bouncing above me. I’m gasping happy laughs and staring into the goggle eyed grinning face of my mate Corran who seems to be shouting something like “Yeah. Extreme! Moshpit!” repeatedly.
My ribs are sore. But I am happy.

26th February, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #4

Oh dear. You really are struggling for something to do aren’t you? Never mind. You can keep me company if you like.

This time I’m in the hospice I’m afraid. The last time I spent any time on my own with my mum. She is talking a bit to me through a fug of drugs and pain, but mostly we are watching a Robbie Williams concert and holding hands.

At one point she tells me that she’ll have to knit me a woman.

25th February, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #3

Ah. You’re still with me. I get the impression that you might be in this for the long haul, but don’t feel obliged to stay if you feel like going out for a brisk stroll or something.

This time we’re in the staff room at my old school. I’ve just finished the run of the first show I directed – a ripped off version of “Little Shop of Horrors” which we’ve subtitled “Little Breach of Copyright”. And I’m elated. We – me and some folk who will go onto be my closest friends - are drinking champagne and enjoying some self-congratulatory chat.

Here we are then. Champagne in plastic cups. Just at the starting point. The point where everything is new and there are no anecdotes and no stories of old times.
We are creating future anecdotes, and we don’t even know it.

24th February, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #2

Still there? What a shame you haven’t found something more constructive to do. Ah well. Come on then – let’s visit another day that I remember.

Now I am about 17 and I’ve just lost the final of the Scottish School’s Volleyball championship, and I am sitting in the dressing room with lactic acid and defeat coursing round my veins. I am thin and fit and dejected. Best efforts not good enough. 5 years of coaching and playing games in tired old school gym halls leading to this moment, spent and hang-headed.
I still don’t like losing.

23rd February, 2009 - Ten Moments I Remember #1

I am in the mood for reminiscing, so you will just have to indulge me. Of course, you could always choose not to read any further. Go on. I dare you. Turn your laptop off.

No? Oh well. Come with me down memory lane.

I think my earliest joyful memory is being with my dad at St Andrews, on a day when the sky was as blue as heaven, and my soft little hand was being squeezed in his big strong, golfer’s hand. I can feel my knuckle bones crunching around under my skin, and I’m laughing.
We are singing “The Bare Necessities” which, now that I come to think of it seems rather apt. And I am singing my heart out under the blue blue sky in sunshine that seems to be composed almost entirely of rays of happiness.

22nd February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Law #10

I rather like the freedom. I am a little autonomous unit in my profession. I can – to some extent – do things the way that i like to do them. Provided I comply with professional rules, no-one is going to dictate the way that I do the work. It must be irritating being a teacher, where wholesale changes to what and how you teach can be imposed at the whim of a government. Or a civil servant where on any given day your department might be amalgamated with some other team.

It suits me to be self-employed. To be honest, it suits me to have my own room where I can shut the door sometimes and just get on with my work. I am a largely grumpy and misanthropic person who hates humanity.
Do Not Disturb.

21st February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Law #9

It is good to earn your living from such a direct profession – people essentially buy your time and knowledge when you’re a lawyer. If you are half decent and prepared to put the hours in, then you can earn a living (more or less and market conditions prevailing). In that respect it is a bit like being a plumber – there is a very direct relationship with the customer and with the time you put into the job. It is a job where it pays to have your sleeves rolled up and to put the hours in.

20th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Law #8

It is nice occasionally to know your onions. Just occasionally someone asks me something and I know the answer. It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally someone asks me a question and I know the answer. On those rare occasions, it is good to feel that, in one little corner of the sphere of human knowledge, you have a little tiny bit of knowledge and worth.

Oddly, this feeling seems to be with me less and less as I get older. As I get greyer, I seem to recognise the gaps in my knowledge more and more. Questions that once seemed straightforward now seem loaded with traps and pitfalls for the unwary. Every letter that I sign looks thin and lacking in detail.

19th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Law #7

I like the fact that no two days are the same. On any given day something new and exciting may cross my desk – an urgent interdict; an odd query about a right of way; a contractual wrangle about the performance of a tractor. Odd things cross my desk – not every day – but often enough to make me glad that I’m not an accountant.

18th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Law #6

I like law libraries. I like the old books, neatly stacked in rows. They seem to me to be bursting with stories. If you sit still enough, you can almost hear the disputes begging to be released from the pages. All the vexatious litigants; all the people who wouldn’t let go; all the people who had a point to prove – they’re all there within the pages – all their arguments set out there in black and white for centuries to come.

Yes, they are all there now neatly marshalled into chronological volumes, like tamed lions in a cage at the circus. All that passion, all that fight, all that money spent, and now the dispute covers a dozen pages in a dusty volume.

17th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Law #5

It sounds rather pompous to say it (but, hey, I’m a lawyer and you all know that we are pompous anyway) but there is something satisfying in helping clients in some of life’s more difficult journeys. This, I suppose, is turning one of the mainstream criticisms of the profession on its head – that we deal in people’s misery. I suppose that is one way of looking at it – that we trade on death and dispute and divorce.

But then again, people die. People separate. People fall out with one another. I suspect that, even if there were no lawyer, these things would still happen. And people would still need to sort out the effects of these tragic and stressful events. I suspect that the law sets boundaries and rules that eases the journey a bit. Sometimes, I feel useful, when I help people in a small and fairly insignificant way.

16th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Law #4

I like the morning mail. I like the arrival of the post bag, and the fact that you’re never sure what the day will bring. Cases twist and turn; title deeds pose problems; and conveyances collapse and revive. There is, every morning, a pleasant feeling of anticipation as the envelopes arrive on my desk. Narratives unfold and the world keeps turning.

15th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About my Job #3

I like The Law. This seems like an odd thing to say, but I do. I like its complexity and its adaptability and the way it has grown over the years like some rather ancient mansion belonging to an ancient family. It was constructed generations ago on the site of some other prehistoric building, and over the years an extension has been added here, a garden room there. Parts have been remodelled and built over again, and now and again, a whole wing is demolished to make way for some ne an unsympathetic modernist annex.

But on the whole, it is an interesting place to wander around in, with twisting corridors linking unlikely rooms, and doors into hidden gardens.

14th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About my Job #2

There isn’t anything like winning a court case. It is like a little war. For those of us who have soft hands and spectacles, the court room is as close as we will ever come to hand to hand fighting. Don’t get me wrong, if you are ever involved in a scrap, don’t call on me for assistance. You would be as well to call on your nan. Your nan can almost certainly punch better than me.

So I save my little battles for the court room. Or at least I did, since I fairly rarely deal with court cases myself now. But I sometimes miss sitting in my little trench, behind the piles of books and papers masquerading as sand bags, and hurling authorities at the other side like grenades.

13th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About my Job #1

One of the good things about my job is drafting conveyancing deeds. This is not something that I would ever have imagined would be true when I was at university. Conveyancing (the transfer of property) was a deathly dull subject. It held none of the romance of criminal court work; or the glamour of the cut and thrust world of corporate law.

But the curious thing is that – here – out the real world - conveyancing is, well, rather satisfying. There is something of the magical about it. If you use the right words, in the right order, then you mysteriously transfer ownership of some ground or a building or the airspace inside a flat from one person to another.

I suspect that for you that sounds mundane. But think of what you need to use land – access, rights to water, to electricity, telecommunications. And at the same time your neighbours need those rights over your ground. It is a big web of interconnectedness, and just sometimes, if you do your job right, an weave the right spell, you can make things work.

12th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #10

My mate The Bison’s pancakes on a Thursday morning are tough to beat. It is good to be woken with the smell of batter on a hot pan and the promise of sugar, lemon and the early edition of the Scotsman.

Best consumed in your pants, with instant coffee and some chit chat from your pals. I recommend.

11th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #9

I am quite keen on winsome young women in black. Edinburgh in August is the international capital of the sub-type.

10th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #8

I like the students. I know that it is not correct to say it if you are a hardened Fringe veteran, but I do.

If you are a hardened Fringe veteran you are supposed to get pissed off at the 2 eighteen year olds playing the Odd Couple, and you are supposed to run a mile when you see the chorus from Sheffield Polytechnic’s Production of anything by Terry Pratchett approaching you on the Royal Mile. But I don’t I like them. I like the youth and the endeavour and the infectious happiness of it all.

9th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #7

Old friends.

I am getting to the age now where I have old friends; people whom I truly haven’t seen for years. And lots of them seem to turn up in Edinburgh in August. Usually in pubs which is a good thing, and I get to see them and chat to them, and shed the years like an old dog shakes off water after a dip in the sea.

I am happily also getting to an age where – like the trampy lady – I seldom bother with people I hate. So – if you are broing, dull and a nasty piece of work, stay out of my way in August. Otherwise, feel free to text me. I am likely to be in the Underbelly. Mine’s a Fosters.

8th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #6

The parties of course. I love the parties.

The Fringe never fails to disappoint. The place is crammed with talented people. Many of them have guitars. Some of them are funny. Most of them are drunk. Everyone is out to have a good time. So, every year, there is some astonishing evening of joi de vivre: improvised blues singing; late night chat with a Canadian comedian; love triangles and heated arguments.
It’s all kicking off and it’s great.

7th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #5

I like seeing minor celebrities.

There. I have said it. I get a kick out of seeing people close up that I’ve only seen on the telly up until now. It is fun to see a minor soap star drunk out of his box in the Pleasance Courtyard clearly chatting up inappropriate women. It is good to see David Dickinson, immaculately pinstriped sipping a red wine on the Grassmarket, and living up to his image.

I don’t read Heat magazine, so it is good to indulge my prurient black heart once in a while.

6th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #4

I feel like I’m firing on all cylinders during the get in. When we are bringing our kit into the venue and transforming it from a heap of wood and junk and ideas into a working production, I am operating at my peak capacity. There is no period like it that I have to make snap decisions, and take immediate actions to make things work. There is a deadline. It is fixed and unmoveable. Tickets have been sold and we must press on.
In short, it gets my motor running and I am out and about on the highway. Happiness is working well.

5th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #3

The third thing that I love about the Edinburgh Fringe, is going hunting for reviews in the early morning. I sometimes slip out of our flat before breakfast and set off for the newsagent. I am unshaven and hungover, and sometimes I will find a little coffee shop on my own and sit and read the Arts pages.

I should say that, for 51 weeks of the year I am uninterested in the Arts pages. Drama is a hobby for me, and the press releases and reviews of shows that I will never see don’t interest me. I think the only way to work out whether you like something is to see it for yourself. I am not enormously interested in critical opinion. But, during my week in the sun, I let myself go a bit. I indulge myself in the fantasy that what the papers say about my little productions actually matters.

It doesn’t of course. Not in the grand scheme of things. But, for a half hour or so, with an espresso and the papers in front of me, it is nice to have this as the biggest focus of my life.

4th February, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #2

The next thing I love about the Edinburgh Fringe, is my first pint in the Courtyard at The Pleasance. It’s an open air area surrounded by some of the biggest venues on the Fringe, and the whole place has a buzz about it. As I sit here and think about it, I am almost there. Is that what happens in important events in your life? Do they press themselves somehow on your neurones? Do they burn themselves in like light on photographic paper? Because I can feel it; like the re-run of a film. But in the first person.

3rd February, 20009 - Ten Things I Love About the Edinburgh Fringe #1

Here I am. At the biggest Arts Festival in the World.
In the whole world.
There is nowhere that I’d rather be than here. Nowhere on the planet than here, amongst everything that is alive.
Nowhere in the whole world.
Right now; right here; I am a round peg in a round hole. I am where I want to be, with whom I want to be, and I am happy.

2nd February, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Theatre #10

The tenth thing that I love about the theatre is actors. I know that I frequently run them down in this blog, but actually I have a soft spot for them in all their insecure yet extrovert peculiar ways. They are endlessly entertaining. Generally they like a drink, and usually they have a decent anecdote or two hidden up the frill cuffs of their loose fitting white shirts.

1st February, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Theatre #9

The ninth thing I love about the theatre are Little Moments of Magic. This doesn’t just relate to shows that I do, but to any production. It doesn’t always happen, but occasionally in a show there is some moment (or if you are lucky moments) where a happy series of coincidences and effort produces a moment where the hairs on the audience’s collective necks stand to attention.

Sometimes this is nearly unavoidabl because of brilliant writing like in Liz Lochhead’s “Perfect Days” when Barbs’ mum re-appears briefly as a ghost. And sometimes it’s more studied and contrived by the backstage team – lights softening at the right moment, or a pyroflash going off, or a gunshot echoing through the theatre.

The point is that there ought to be moments in a play that work only in a theatre. Things that would be meaningless on the radio or the telly or in a novel. Moments that make the audience glad that they made the effort to get out the house.

31st January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About the Theatre #8

The eighth thing I love about the theatre is the feeling of family. My significant other and I have had our own little theatre company for about ten years now, and the core of the company has been identical – the two of us producing, my great friend Little One stage managing, my mate Creaky Knees building and designing the set, The Bison crewing manfully and Not Drew running lights and sound. Sure, there have been shows and gigs where some of the team are not involved for one reason or another, but we are a proper team. We are the backroom boys. We are the engine room.

We are a little family who run a circus. We live in a caravan that tours from town to town and knows how to raise the marquee, set out the ring and put the sawdust down.

30th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love about the Theatre #7

The seventh thing I love about the theatre is problem solving at high speed. Just about the only skill that you really need to have if you direct plays is an ability to make decisions at high speed in technical and dress rehearsals.

It doesn’t matter how organised you have been in rehearsals and in your discussions with the crew, when you actually get into your venue everything changes. The set doesn’t fit. The extension cable for the pyros isn’t long enough. The actors can’t see backstage. And so on and so forth.

These are the times when the director has to prove his worth by making the calls. Hopefully you get them right. But the important thing is to make the call and then move on to the next one.

In fact, it’s the same for all the technical team. The lighting manager needs to improvise with the equipment he has. The stage manager needs to beg borrow and steal some essential prop that has somehow escaped everybody’s notice. There are lots of expert hands on the ship’s rigging, all making last minute adjustments. But the deadline for departure is fixed and must be met.

29th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About the Theatre #6

The sixth thing I love about the theatre is a top notch get out. The “get out” is the process of stripping the show down after it’s finished: removing the scenery, packing the props and loading the van. There is something inevitably a little sad about the process. Well – unless you hated the show – and then you can’t wait to see the back of it. But usually, you are a little sad to see it go – it’s like one of your kids going off to get married.

But there is also a rather nice community feeling about the thing The banter is usually at its best and there is the common goal of getting to the pub. It is the closest I get to manual labour and it is rather nice to have the fairly simple goal of packing the van as the most important thing in my mind.

28th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About the Theatre #5

The fifth thing that I love about the theatre is after show parties. Not all after show parties – just some of them. I can count some parties amongst the best nights of my life. They are like little bubbles of life; moments when you are. They are like little bubbles of life; moments when you are really living.

There are little fragments of memory for me –

Dancing with the funniest people I’ve ever met in a tatty Edinburgh disco

Kissing my Significant Other for the first time

Looking at my wee girl sleeping while a long-lost pal played guitar in the next room

Sitting in a deserted staff room drinking champagne with people who really matter

27th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About the Theatre #4

The third thing that I love about the theatre is putting on a bad show. This seems like an odd thing to say, because no-one wants to put on a stinker. No-one starts work with that in mind.

The fourth thing I love about the theatre is the opening night of a great show. This, of course, is in direct contradiction to the previous entry. But for me, the best feeling that I ever get is immediately after a show that has gone undeniably well on the first night.

If I’ve directed the thing, I know whether I’ve got it right or not. And if I have, it’s the best feeling outside of family life that I’ve ever had. There is a great scene in “The Colour of Money” where the ageing Fast Eddie Felson goes back to playing pool and beats the young upstart. After the show he is perfectly courteous in victory, shaking hands and then packing up his cue. But afterwards, he sneaks outside through a fire door, all alone, and he whoops with delight. That is what it is like for me. A purely personal feeling of satisfaction, realisation and relief.

26th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About the Theatre #3

The third thing that I love about the theatre is putting on a bad show. This seems like an odd thing to say, because no-one wants to put on a stinker. No-one starts work with that in mind.

However, the curious thing about it is that a real stinker pulls the cast together in a curious kind of way. If the show is not a hit with the audience, oddly the cast seems to pull tighter together. There is a slightly peculiar “us against them” things happens with the audience. I was first taught this by a great pal of mine who is a musical director. I was directing a show and he was doing the music for it. At half time during one performance (which was going down like a lead balloon) he rushed up tot eh stage. He insisted that the whole cast congregate on the stage behind the curtain. I imagine that the cast thought they were in for a roasting of some sort, but instead he insisted that the whole cast give a two fingered salute to the audience lurking behind the curtain.

That has stayed with me. Time and time again, shows that are slightly below par, seem to be the one where you make the best friends, or have the best laughs. There is probably some kind of moral there, but I haven’t worked it out yet.

25th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About the Theatre #2

The second thing that I love about the theatre is the smell of newly sawn wood. The theatre largely relies on two skills – acting and carpentry. You can take just about everybody else out of the creative team, but if you don’t have (a) people who like cavorting in front of strangers in brightly coloured trousers, and (b) people who are handy with a woodwork kit, then you don’t have a show.

The smell of sawn wood is pleasant enough in itself, but it also reminds me of my dad’s garage, where there always seemed to be a bit of wood in a vice for some reason or another. In the theatre it’s the same – some door always needs planed.

It is a smell of action and work and happiness.

24th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About the Theatre #1

The first thing I love about the theatre is the little moment between when the lights come down in the house, and the lights come up on the stage. I can’t claim originality for this thought – there’s a bit in Angela Carter’s brilliant book “Wise Children” (which might well be my favourite book of all time). She points out that, in those little moments immediately before the show starts, the world is full of anticipation and expectation. It’s a place where just about anything might happen.

It feels to me like pausing at the top of a zip line, ready to leap off the podium. The world is always at its brightest at these moments, when something unkown is about to unfold.

23rd January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #10

The tenth and final thing that I love about Dungeons and Dragons is that women do not play it. It is an entirely male bastion. In order to achieve this, we do not need to impose any “male only “ rules. We have never banned women from the table. There is nothing stopping them.

It is just that, they don’t seem to want to play. There is something about grown-ups pretending to be pseudo-mediaeval sorcerers that puts them off. For some reason they find the idea of middle-aged financial advisers pretending to be a raging babrbarian from the Mythical Plains of Kurock to be faintly ridiculous. Well, not “faintly ridiculous”. Totally ridiculous.

We don’t mind though. It means we can fart a bit without fear of reproach.

22nd January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #9

The ninth in my exciting series “10 things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons” is a good cliffhanger. Like the episodes of Flash ordon that I used to watch on telly on a Saturday morning, a good D and D session is much improved by ending it at a moment of high tension, like the characters being swept off the deck of a soaring airship, or the floor of the cave giving way revealing a fifty foot drop onto a row of vicious spikes.

Overtly, this serves the purpose of making the players want to come back – they want to know what happens next. They also have a couple of weeks to think up various strategies to extract themselves from some ridiculous situation.

However, the more important purpose is that it gives me two weeks to taunt the players by e-mail about their impending demise.

21st January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #8

The eighth thing that I love about Dungeons and Dragons is snacks. No evening’s gaming is complete without a nice cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit. There is something about the caffeine and sugar that fuels the imaginative spirit.

Personally I like Thai Curry Flavour Crisps from the ovens of the lovely Mr Walker. I find that their exotic tang is just the ticket to carry me off to the mysterious jungles of X’endrik where wild things walk.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes there is no substitute for a custard cream. But the important thing is that, for a good game of Dungeons and Dragons, there must be snacks.

20th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #7

The seventh thing I love about Dungeons and Dragons is the Rule Books. These are quite distinct from the rules which I mentioned at number 5 in this list. The rules themselves could be printed off from the compter nowadays, but it would not be the same. The game’s designers have hit on the idea of producing beautiful hardback books that are made to look – well – like Books of Spells that a magician might have. They are clearly designed to appeal to our adolescent notions of the type of thing that Merlin might have consulted when Arthur was in a tricky situation.

To the outsider, these books look foolish and childish; the kind of thing that ought to have been left with The Scout Handbook, The 1979 Victor Annual and the Figurini Panini Sticker Annual. But the player of Dungeons and Dragons is by nature an outsider – the type of person who accepts ridicule and derision as part of everyday life. We are prepared to suffer for our magic.

I read my rulebooks in the pub at lunchtimes.

19th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #6

The sixth thing that I love about Dungeons and Dragons is the co-operative imagination required. The interesting thing about the game is that it relies almost entirely on the imagination. In that way, it is a very childish thing. It is like a story unfolding inside your head as you read it.

Except that it is better than that – the story is infolding inside the heads of all the players around the table at the same time. It is like a movie, except that there is no film screen – just imagination. And when it is going right, you are all inhabiting the same space inside your heads. You are all creeping together along the same dark and damp tunnel towards the room where the dragon sits on top of its pile of gold.

Entry for 18th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #5

The fifth thing that I love about Dungeons and Dragons is the rules. The game has an elaborate series of rules that is designed to provide structure to the odd little Dungeons and Dragons universe that exists only inside the mind of the players. There are rules for how to fight; how to cast spells; how to climb; how to break down doors; how long it takes to travel over rough ground in the dark while encumbered by the body of a slain comrade.
Of course, the rules are so complicated that none of us players fully understands them. Which is good in itself. There is nothing a boy likes more than to debate an ambiguous rule. That is why it is boys who sit on committees and not girls. It is why more boys than girls want to make up laws in parliament.

Entry for 17th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #4

The fourth thing that I love about Dungeons and Dragons is the fact that all the payers in any game have their favourite seat. It is a bit like the system inside a molecule. Each player seems irresistibly drawn to sit in a particular place. If they failed to do so, I suspect that strange magnetic forces would come into play and drag the chairs in the room around until order was restored.

Entry for 16th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #3

The third thing that I like about Dungeons and Dragons is The Wee Chat Beforehand. As the players assemble for the evening’s game, there always seems to be a few minute’s of faint embarrassment that we five grown men are gathering to indulge a frankly rather adolescent fantasy. And we feel obliged to have a little chat. “How’s the family.” “How’s work going?” “Has your sore throat cleared up.” All that sort of thing.
It is patently obvious during these conversations that no-one is really interested and that we are all bursting to get started, so that we can escape out of the world of sore throats and work and family obligation and into a world of fireballs and invisibility potions and heroic deeds.
It is a bit like “exchanging pleasantries” before a football game. It is a ritual to be followed, but it is not the game itself

Entry for 15th January, 2009 - 10 Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #2

The second thing I love about Dungeons and Dragons is the Dungeons and Dragons bag. For the true player of D and D, it is important to have a special bag within which you store your D and D stuff. Ideally, the bag should have compartments. One for rule books; one for pencils; and one for dice (ideally stored in a special dice pouch. Ideally there should be several unnecessary compartments too just for the hell of it.
It is important to realise that Dungeons and Dragons is a game played almost exclusively by boys. And boys like to “get organised” with their hobbies. Witness the golf bag; the tackle box; and the model railway set.
It is not just the game that is important. It is getting ready for the game.

Entry for 14th january, 2009 - Ten Things I Love About Dungeons and Dragons #1

The first thing I love about Dungeons and Dragons is, of course, the funny shaped dice. For those of you who have never played the game, vital moments are determined by the roll of dice.
Hoiwever, the game does not really simply on conventional dice with 6 sides. In dungeons and dragons, there are dice with 4 sides, 8 side, 10 sides, 12 sides and even 20 sides. It is like a geomotrist’s wet dream. If Pythagoras turned up to a session of D and D, he would need to sit with a cushion on his lap.
And the dice are one of the main reasons that I like D and D. It makes the whole thing seem vaguely magical. True D and D players keep their dice in a little pouch, which makes them seem like runes. And I guess they are – little objects of randomness. Adventure generators.

Entry for 13th January, 2009 - Jack Vettraino, How I Hate Him

I hate Jack Vetrraino pictures. I hate their ubiquity. I hate their lack of emotion. I hate their ersatz nineteenfortiness. I hate the fact that a complete lack of emotion is confused for an enigmatic quality. I hate the fact that if I say I don’t like them I will be accused of being snobby and elitist.
I hat the people in those pictures. They are cold and lifeless. They look to me like they have had the blood sucked out of them by vampires. I wish some of them would stop staring wistfully over the bar at the unsmiling woman wearing the suspenders. Instead I’d rather they took her down to a karaoke club and got drunk of tequila slammers, before going home to fall asleep in front of re-runs of Fawlty Towers.
If Jack Vettraino ever tried to paint me, I intend to grin at him as he paints while giving him a big cheesy thumbs up sign.

Entry for 12th January, 2009 - War Huh What am I Good For?

It doesn’t look like I will ever go to war. I am past 40 now, and even if Al Quaeda swarm through North Lanarkshire in the next year or two, I suspect the army will now regard me as too old, even although I have watched a lot of stuff with Bear Gryllis in it. (If we are invaded, give me a ring, I know what types of slugs are safe to eat).
I am, of course, deeply privileged to live when and where I do. By happy accident I have never had to risk life and limb for king, country or (more important) family. We are lucky us lot living under cover of the last 60 years.

Entry for 11th January, 2009 - Scrap Scrappage

I am hugely irked by the government’s car scrappage scheme. It has been vaguely dressed up in environmental clothing, as being beneficial because it will reduce carbon emissions. That of course, is a lot of pigswill. It is fairly easy to work out that the amount of energy required to manufacture a new car is enormous.
It seems to me like we are not actually interested in environmental matters. Not really. Not when it hurts. We are happy enough to put our beer cans in the recycling, but God forbid anyone suggest we consume a bit less or brew our own. We are happy enough to reduce our carbon footprint provided we get to buy a shiny new car.

Entry for 10th January, 2009 - There's No Business Like Show Business

It is approaching time for my Significant Other’s annual show for her dance school. I know this because my whole house is full of tutus and small bear outfits. I can no longer get to my wardrobe for boxes upon boxes of bright orange fishnet tights. This morning, on my way for breakfast, I tripped on a pile of golden glittery bowler hats.
I don’t mind a bit of showbiz. But not when I haven’t yet had my cornflakes.

Entry for 9th January, 2009 - Tea Biscuits: Biscuits of the Gods

Tea biscuits you surely are the biscuits of the Gods. With your lightly fired colour, and little dimples you are pleasing to the eye, but you do not flatter to deceive. For – provided you are stored carefully in an airtight container - you are crunchy without being brittle. You are crumbly without being soft. And you taste as if you have cooled gently upon the windowsill of Great Aunt Fanny’s cottage.
When the Gods sit around on Olympus discussing the fate of us mortals, they do not munch custard creams or bourbons. They crunch tea biscuits my fiends. Tea biscuits. Those are the only biscuits for immortals.
Accept no substitute.

Entry for 8th January, 2009 - Real Men Eat Curry

One of the great pleasures in life left to a man is going to get the curry from the fast food shop. In this world of paper-shuffling and beurocracy, there is little that we can do that recreates the world of the hunter gatherer.
But a trip to the curry house. Well: that is enough to make the genetic memory of hunts for woolly mammoth stir deep in a man’s soul. The walk to the shop is like stalking the prey across the tundra; as I gaze at the menu I feel that I have the beast in my sights; and when I place my order I have made the kill.
It is good to know I am still a real man. Soon I will be eating bear poo with Bear Gyllis.

Entry for 7th January, 2009 - Looking after kids is not like painting the Forth Bridge

My Significant Other commented tonight that tidying up after the kids is like painting the Forth Bridge.
But it is not like painting the Forth Bridge. If you are a Forth Bridge painter, you get a lunch break, and you get to stop at five o’clock. Plus you get paid, and probably you get a pension.
Plus the Forth Bridge is not sick on your shoulder, and does not defecate in its pants every two hours while singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Entry for 6th January, 2009 - Piers Morgan; Man of Talent

Have you been watching Britain’s Got Talent? I was forced into it this evening as Bear Gryllis was impossible to watch whilst eating a Cheicken Balti (see my previous entry).
I hate programmes like this. It is dressed up as a talent competition, but as far as I can see, the audition rounds seem to be an opportunity for us to sneer and snigger at the mentally ill. On top of that, the programme stars slimey rat-boy Piers Morgan, whom I can’t stand. My suggestion for entertaining Saturday Night Telly, is called “Let’s Give Piers a Right Good Kicking”. What happens, is that ordinary members of the public come on and give Piers Morgan a right good kicking until a big buzzer sounds.
And then, after the big buzzer sounds, nobody stops. They just keep kicking Piers.

Entry for 5th January, 2009 - Does a Bear Eat Shit in the Woods?

I settled down on the sofa tonight with my Saturday night curry for some entertainment. No sooner had I started to tuck into my Chicken Balti, than I was greeted by the sight of Bear Gryllis wolfing down some bear dung.
Generally, I have no objection to Bear. I know that there is every chance that I will one day be trapped in the Arctic circle with nothing but a tooth brush, a bar of soap and a copy of Horse and Hound magazine. If I do not watch Bear Gryllis in Extreme Survival there is every chance I will not make it out alive.
However, I draw the line at eating faeces on prime time telly while I am eating a big brown steaming curry.

Entry for 4th January, 2009 - Get your hands off of my clockface

I have been worrying a bit about my own mortality recently. It seems to have co-incided with becoming a father, and I suspect that the two may well be linked. Until the kids were born, it was relatively easy to ignore the passage of time. My life changed remarkably little from year to year. My hobbies were the same, my lifestyle unaltered.
However, with the arrival of the roundfaced people, it has become impossible to ignore the hands on the clockface. Every day seems to bring something new with them, and just a quick glance at photographs taken only six months ago shows just how much has changed.
But it’s more than that. Everything suddenly seems finite. The indolent days of youth have gone. Days when I sat around in the university café chatting about nothing in particular seem to have vanished.
Ah well. Must get on.

Entry for 3rd January, 2009 - Mr T

My daughter and I have continued to name the animals in the Big Book of Baby Animals. In addition to Mister Guinea Pig, we now have a puppy called “T”.
“T” is, if anything, funnier than Mister Guinea Pig. I almost had a hernia.

Entry for 2nd January, 2009 - Mr Guinea Pig

I had the best laugh for ages today with the Roundfaced Girl. We were reading a book before bedtime because I am a pushy father who believes that literacy at an early age is likely to ensure that my girl ends up unhappy in a stressful career.
Tonight’s book was all about baby animals and there’s a bit in it where you invite your toddler to name the cuddly animals. So I was getting her to do this. The kitten was called Dorothy; the donkey was Sam and so on.
However, by the time we got to the baby guinea pig, she had clearly run out of ideas. I asked her what it should be called. She hesitated for a minute, then looked at me a bit slyly and said “Mister Guinea Pig.”
This occurred to us both as quite the funniest thing we have ever heard.

Entry for 1st January, 2009 - Tracked Changes

Does anybody out there actually know how to worked Tracked Changes on a Microsoft Word Document properly? I toy with it every now and then at work when I’m revising contracts, but every time I do, my document quickly becomes full of mad boxes and lines and stuff. Little messages like this appear –
“AB deleted a whole lot of important stuff by accident that is now gone forever.”
And
“Formatted by a juvenile monkey on an acid trip.”

Entry for 31st December, 2008 - Snakebite

I had a glass of Snakebite for the first time in years at the weekend. A friend of mine had brought some scrumpy to a party I was having, and I could not resist making a wee Snakey.
Some of you may be unfamiliar with Snakebite. If so, you are probably either foregn or a member of the upper classes. For those of us who come from comprehensive schools in the UK, Snakebite is a rite of passage. In the tee pees of the Sioux they dangle their adolescent boys by wires hooked through their nipples. In Australia, the aborigines send kids who are coming of age out on walkabout in the outback.
In the UK we send our adolescents to parties in the houses of people whos parent are on a romantic Citybreak in Prague. And there, in the dark, those youths on the cusp of maturity huddle together and drink Snakebite – a dark cocktail of lager and cider.
Oddly, it is not a cocktail served in the bars of the Ritz and the Savoy. That is probably because it smells of vomit and has a strange scum on top with the consistency of a damp prawn cracker.

Entry for 30th December, 2008 - 1066 and all that

I have been watching “1066 – The battle for Middle Earth” on Channel 4. I have to watch it furtively and alone late at night. My Significant Other regards documentaries with the suspicion of a vegetarian towards a mixed grill. So, I am a bit tired today, following watching the telly until 1.30am last night.
There is still something utterly pleasurable about watching television on your own in the wee hours. And on this occasion I am not talking about the pleasures of Television X (although there is a time and a place for everything). I am talking about the simple pleasure of being on your own.
Solitude is something that is hard to find in a family of four, and in the little oases of it that you can find, you have to fill up your water bottles, because it’s a long camel ride to the next group of palm trees.

Entry for 29th Decemebr, 2008 - I don't like my new top any more

My new badminton top (the lighter than air one that I mentioned yesterday) did not perform satisfactorily. I was soundly beaten this evening. And not even by Darth Vader, but by a bloke who builds garden centres.
I doubt if Yoda will be contacting me any time soon.

Entry for 28th December, 2008 - More News about my New T Shirt

I have a new badminton top. It is made of some sort of new fabric, which is apparently so light, that it actually makes you weigh less than you did before you put it on. If the manufacturers are to be believed, wearing this shirt will allow me to leap from the court, hang poised in midair for several seconds and then smash the shuttle effortlessly into the corner of the court.
Essentially, if you put this shirt on, you become the badminton version of Luke Skywalker using the force in the trench on the Death Star. Except that you are not flying a cool solo starfighter, but are playing badminton in Wishaw Sports Centre. And the fate of the universe is not in your hands. All that is really at stake is whether your mates will rip the pish out of you for losing. And your adversary isn’t Darth Vader but a bloke that works in the accounts department of Glasgow University,
You are still using the Force though.

Entry for 27th December, 2008 - He who wields The Punisher must dress like The Punisher

In addition to purchasing The Punisher (my new badminton racket) I have also bought a new badminton top. It is black. I always buy only black or white sportswear. I tell other people that this is because I don’t need to worry about finding stuff to match (because it all goes with all the other stuff).
However, that is not true. I only get black or white stuff because that is what Mohammed Ali did. And the parallels between me and the greatest sportsman who ever lived are obvious.

Entry for 26th December, 2008 - Memory

I have been thinking a lot about girlfriends recently because of the show we are developing for Edinburgh. Specifically, I have been thinking about first dates.
My own first date (if my memory does not desert me entirely) was to see Rocky 3 at the Odeon. I couldn’t quite summon the courage to make for the back row, and instead ushered my date furtively to a secluded seat at the side. As I recall we held hands and it was very nice. The film was good too. Frnakly I don’t look for much more in a woman now – a liking for Sylvester Stallone films is a reasonable barometer of compatability in my opinion.
The Odeon is long gone alas, and with it a little bit of my romantic past. So there is nothing physical to mark the site of my first romantic encounter. It only lives in my unreliable memory. And that is all we are really isn’t it? The memories. The past is all we certainly have or are. And even that is not reliable. Our sense of selves is made up of an imperfect cache of random experience that we think we remember.
How odd

Entry for 25th December, 2008 - Fat IT Guys

Why are all IT guys so fat? Why do they all wear short sleeved white shirts, and trousers with a waistband at least 8 inches smaller than their gut? Why are they all slightly unshaven? Why do they tuck their ties into their trousers?

Entry for 24th December, 2009 - Mission Impossible

Part of the reason I have got a new laptop is so that I can connect to the office computers remotely. I tried it last night and I got in! I felt like a member of the Mission Impossible Team (the nerdy one who hacks into stuff) as I manoeuvred my cursor around the screen miles away. Admittedly, the Mission Impossible Team rarely got a call from head office telling them their mission (should they choose to accept it) was to break into a provincial solicitors’ office and log into a style of Contract of Excambion.
Or perhaps maybe they did get those kind of mission, but they just didn’t televise them.

Entry for 23d December, 2008 - New Laptop/Old Laptop

I have got a new laptop. It is upstairs now as I type this, because I cannot quite bring myself to give up the old Dell Inspiron just yet. I cannot quite get over the feeling that it is like an old dog who is soon to be sent to the great kennels in the sky. Every time I open the screen and Windows blinks into life, I feel like the laptop is looking at me eagerly, recalling days when we gambolled in the fields together, when I tossed a stick to it and it ran to fetch it. “Come on,” it seems to say, “One more walk around the block.”
It does not know that soon the men from the Ecological Computer Disposal Team will come for him. I will hear the van doors closing and I will know that I will never again hear the happy hum of his hard drive.
Goodbye old chap.

Entry for 22nd December, 2008 - Sex in a Big Furry Suit

I have been at the holiday camp in Nairn. They have entertainers for the kids who dress up in enormous outfits as cuddly characters which are very cute. The kids love it.
However, I cannot shake the notion that the entertainers – perhaps after a few drinks – probably have sex whilst wearing the outfits.
Let’s face it. You would, wouldn’t you?

Entry for 21st December, 2008 - NHS 24 is Great!

I have been trying to get an appointment with the doctor. Well – that’s what I thought I was doing. The NHS had other ideas. They apparently thought that I was wanting to enter a novel by Franz Kafka.
I have had a persistent sore throat for a few weeks which I caught from the kids. I suspect that they caught it by licking some stranger’s shoe in the supermarket. At any event I have got it. The kids have both been given antibiotics, and have perked up remarkably. By process of deduction I have decided that I might benefit from some antibiotics too.
So. I phoned the surgery. I got a recorded message saying that I should phone NHS 24.
I phoned NHS 34. I told them what was wrong. I told them Ii wanted an appointment with my doctor. They said I had to answer a lot of questions. I answered the questions. They said I needed an appointment with the doctor.
I explained that I knew I needed an appointment with the doctor and that is what I had tried to arrange before I was told to phone them. They said I should phone my doctor. I told them I had phoned my doctor already, but the message said to phone them.
They said that was very odd.
They said they would phone the surgery.
They phoned back. They said there was a message on the machine saying to call NHS 24. They suggested that I phone the surgery tomorrow.
I still have a sore throat.

Entry for 20th December, 2008 - More Information Aabout Compost

The compost heap/fruit fly problem is becoming a bit more pressing. Every time I open the compost bin, hordes of drosophilae scramble from their rotting air fields and soar into my face. They are the RAF and I am the Luftwaffe.
Actually that is not a very good analogy is it? The one about the flies being the RAF and me being the German air force. For it to work German pilots would have to be flying very large aircraft in compassion to the Brits. Very large and shaped like a big middle-aged lawyer. And also, their aeroplanes wouldn’t actually be flying machines, but instead large bipedal robots capable of wading through the channel.
Actually – if you come to think of it – if Hitler had invented enormous robots in pinstripe suits that crossed the sea to invade our coasts, then we would have been toast. I would currently be typing to you in German, whilst wearing a pair of lederhosen. As it is, I am typing in English,
I am still wearing the lederhosen though.

Entry for 19th December, 2008 - The World in Monochrome

What is it about black and white photography do you think? I have been playing with my photographs recently and, almost without exception, every picture looks better in monochrome. People look more interesting; landscapes more dramatic; action shots more intense.
My theory, for what it is worth, is that cutting out the colour makes us look more closely at the image. We get at the heart of the matter in monochrome. That seems odd I suppose: colour is more realistic, but I defy you to look at a decent black and white portrait, and not get the feeling that you are glimpsing something that is more real – closer to the truth – than a colour shot.

Entry for 18th December, 2008 - They Hold All the Cards

I have been considering buying an iPod dock for my car. You would have thought that this might be a relatively simple process.
You would have thought wrong.
For one thing, my car was built in 2000. That was before MP3s were even a glint in the eye of Mr Apple. Back in 2000, if you wanted in-car entertainment, then you had to pay for a tiny brass band to sit in the ash tray. Do you remember them? The tiny little Salvation Army people with their itsy bitsy euphoniums and tamborines. I miss them. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer an elfin brass ensemble to a Bang and Olafsen surround sound system.
If you go into Halfords and tell them you want an iPod system for a car built in 2000, then they laugh at you. “They” here are the spotty young men in white short sleeved shirts. Normally, I would look down upon them, and view my life as superior. But, here – here in the world of Halfords – they reign supreme. They are young Gods, and I am but a passing pilgrim.
In short, they hold all the cards. And so, I must endure their derision, whilst they search in vain for a system that is compatible with your antediluvian mode of transport.

Entry for 17th December, 2008 - Compost Again

Regular readers of my irregular blog will know that I have become a composter this year. I am doing it entirely because it is trendy and middle class to do this. It is fashionable now to have a rotting pile of decaying vegetable matter next to your French windows.
However, I am getting a bit worried about the compost heap. There are quite a lot of flies in there now. Whilst, I am pleased to be doing my bit for the environment, I am not entirely convinced that giving over a corner of my garden to a swarm of disease ridden insects is a worthwhile price to pay for the fuzzy feeling inside engendered by the fact that I am a proud eco-Dutch-girl sticking my finger in the dyke of global warming.
In fact I suspect that the fuzzy feeling might actually be because one of the flies landed in my slice of Gallia melon earlier tonight.

Entry for 16th December, 2008 - A Very Noisy Night

We have mad the mistake of introducing the Roundfaced Girl to a children’s story called “The Very Noisy Night”.
Essentially, the plot of this little classic of the pre-five genre, is that Big Mouse has gone to bed. Little Mouse is having trouble sleeping because of noises in the house. Little Mouse gets a bit frightened. Little Mouse repeatedly gets out of her own bed, initially to investigate the noise but then creeps into the bed of Big Mouse, where Little Mouse disturbs the sleeping patterns of Big Mouse.
Can you see why this might not be exactly the best story to read to little children? Can you see how an impressionable young mind might identify with the character of Little Mouse? Can you imagine being WOKEN UP SIX TIMES IN ONE NIGHT BY A WRIGGLING LITTLE CHILD STICKING HER FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH?
CAN YOU SEE HOW IT MIGHT GET TO YOU?
CAN YOU?
CAN YOU?????

Entry for 15th December, 2008 - Rocknrolla

I have been watching the Guy Ritchie film “Rocknrolla” (I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it) and I can see what all the fuss is about Guy. It’s a rollicking little movie full of pace and action and humour and drive. I give it my personal little thumbs up. I have actually stopped typing briefly to physically give it the thumbs up.
I like a bit of action in my entertainment. “Rocknrolla” contrasts fairly vividly with “Brideshead Revisited” which I am currently listening to on an Audiobook in the car. Whilst, I can appreciate the literary style, I have to say that Evelyn Waugh would have increased his appeal if his plots occasionally included the odd car chase and a colourful villain called called “Big Jamesy”.
There is only so much wistful recollection of homoerotic picnics at Oxford that I can take.

Entry for 14th December, 2008 - More of what actors say

To continue on yesterday’s theme, here are some of the things that actors say, and what a director thinks:

THE ACTOR SAYS: “What is my motivation for eating this sandwich?”
THE DIRECTOR THINKS: “It is cos I told you to.”

THE ACTOR SAYS: “Do you think these trousers are too flamboyant for Hamlet?”
THE DIRECTOR THINKS: “For God’s sake, pick your own bloody trousers. I’ve got enough on my mind worrying about the fact that two of the actors have acute diarrhoea, and we don’t have any buckets backstage.”

THE ACTOR SAYS: Yes. But I don’t think he’d use a word like ‘supposedly’”
THE DIRECTOR THINKS: “You should have leaned your bloody lines before now.”

Entry for 13th December, 2008 - Things Actors Say

I have been overdoing it with rehearsals for shows recently. I had a little glut of rehearsals running for two shows simultaneously, and it’s all been a bit too much. Spending that amount of time around actors is liable to make you lose touch with reality. Instead of worrying about proper things, like what to buy for dinner, or what happened in The Budget, your head becomes full of the sort of nonsense that actors seem to be concerned about:
“Do you think these trousers are too flamboyant for Hamlet?”
“Do you think that I should use ‘Oooh’ or ‘Ahh’ as the expression of surprise?”
“What is my motivation for eating the sandwich?”
“Do you think he would actually eat a sandwich at this point?”
“Do you think Hamlet is the kind of guy who would like a sandwich?”
“I think he’s more of a potato scone man.”
And so on. I need some real life.

Entry for 12th December, 2008 - Secret Urban Places 2

I mentioned in my last post about the big roundabout that I plan to visit. It’s a secret urban space. (Or at least I think it is. I bet when I actually get there I will find a group of local neds drinking buckfast. But for now please let me have my dream).
It’s got me thinking though. I wonder if there are any more spaces like this in my town. Little undiscovered places which the world passes by, and which the developers have overlooked. If you know of any, let me know. I am planning to pack my picnic basket.

Entry for 12th December, 2008 - Secret Urban Places

I was driving to work this morning, as I do 5 days out of 7, 48 weeks out of 52 throughout my adult life. And I drove past a big roundabout at the Raith Interchange. You’ll know the type of big supersize roundabout if you live in the UK. There’s bound to be one near you – the kind that’s planted out with tress and grass and bushes.
The odd thing that occurred to me today, was that the roundabout is actually a little bit of wilderness. It’s a properly established little copse. And it occurred to me then, that I bet that no-one ever goes to the middle of the roundabout now. You’d have to cross 3 lanes of traffic to get there. And of course, there’s no pavements here, at this big junction.
In fact, the centre of that roundabout is – oddly enough – probably the most unspoilt part of my town. It has become a wild place. An undiscovered place. The sort of place that might be worthy of exploring.
I have decided to go on a picnic in the middle of the roundabout one day soon. I will let you know how I get on.

Entry for 11th December, 2008 - The Wok of Life

I have been watering the grass today.
By the cuts of a thousand tiny little knives, I become more and more middle class and aged every day. Soon, I will be wearing Farrah trousers keenly snapped up from the pages of an A5 catalogue that fell invitingly out of a Sunday supplement. I will be joining the neighbourhood watch. I will wear driving gloves.
I hate myself. I am a suburban, conventional nine to fiver. I am become all the things I dreaded. And I find myself strangely comfortable. Radio two plays in the background now, providing the soundtrack to my life in my house in the housing scheme, with two cars in the drive.
I could grow old like this. Older. And sooner than I would like. I need some spice. I need some ginger in my stir fry. There’s too much monosodium glutamate in this wok. (The Wok of Life).

Entry for 10th December, 2008 - Sore throats are good

2
I have been thinking more about being ill, and why there seems to be something comforting about it. I have come to the conclusion that it’s because being ill reminds you about all that is best about having a mother. When I was ill as a kid, my mum would make sure I had cool clean sheets every day. She would make a special effort to give me the food I found appealing (toast and butter; scrambled eggs; French toast).
Above all, I suppose, instead of being in school I got to be in the house all day, alone with mum. All that attention. All that love. All that comfort. If I close my eyes even now when I am ill, I can almost hear her rattling around in the kitchen.

Entry for 9th December, 2008 - Sore Throats Are Good

My stubborn sore throat has finally cleared up, and I find myself once more to be in the pink. Having a sore throat is faintly nostalgic for me, because I was prone to tonsillitis as a child. Whilst my peers were learning their four times table, I spent most of my formative years tucked up in bed, listening to Radio 4 and eating ice cream. As far as I am concerned, one is not properly sick, unless you have heard ten consecutive episodes of “The Archers”.
There is something oddly soothing about being a bit ill. Naturally, I don’t want to have anything serious. But a bit of a sore throat, so that you have to spend the day in bed, ideally with a glass of Ribena and a packet of strpsils beside the bed. In many ways, that is not too great a hardship. Nowadays, you can even text your colleagues from your sickbed, and explain to them how sorry you are that you can’t make it in. If you feel like it, you can even tell them how cozy it is in the house, and how you hope that work isn’t too stressful.
Being ill isn’t all bad.

Entry for 8th December, 2008 - Nappies

I am sick of changing nappies.
There. I said it. I am a bad dad, and will be punished by the social services. I will be invited onto Jeremy Kyle’s show and I will be bood at and spat upon by the audience.
But it is true. I have been changing fucking nappies for 3 years and 1 month. Every day. Without fail. For fully one fourteenth of my life, I have been wiping shitey wee arses, and getting keech under my fingernails.
It is no longer novel. It is no longer cute. It is no longer funny. I will not miss the sight of little brown sphincters. I will not miss the smell of shite

Entry for 7th December, 2008 - Towns

An odd thought occurred to me today. It occurred to me that towns are much older than people. Particularly old historic places like Oxford and St Andrews. I was looking at old photos from the late 19 th century of St Andrew and the views across the golf course are practically unchanged. I have had the spooky feeling all week that I am just a temporary visitor strolling through streets that will be here long after I am gone. I feel a bit insubstantial.
I suddenly feel the presence of all the ghosts who have walked down these streets before me. And I can feel the press of all the folk who’ll walk along the pavement in years and years to come. I feel like the here and now is precarious and a bit of an illusion.

Entry for 6th December, 2008 - Photo

Here’s a wee shot taken with my exciting new camera lens. My wee family strolling back to the caravan. If you look carefully you can spot me. I am the fat man taking the photo.

Entry for 5th December, 2008 - Debacle

Periodically, my theatre company takes a show on tour. This is an ambitious project for us, since we all – actors, producers and backstage team alike – have day jobs. And to be honest, the task of taking a whole production on the road at weekends, is probably stretching us just a little thin. But I suppose that we are all the type of people who – for some bizarre and unclear reason – like to be stretched thin, and who find that pushing ourselves up a hill we thought that was beyond our limits opens up new horizons.
Having said this, sometimes we don’t quite make it up the hill, and we wind up panting at the side of the path, throwing up into a whin bush. Our sojourn to Castle Douglas, was such a trip. Our gig will not go down as an artistic triumph. It is hard to pick a highlight. Was it the actor who wandered on in the wrong scene? Was it the comedy sound effects randomly coming on in the last scene? Was it my own abject failure to finalise the position of the set for two long hours?
I have mentioned before that the theatre is sometimes magical. However, more often than not, it is a bit crap and involves driving a rattling van back through the countryside at 3 in the morning while the other members of the crew have fallen fast asleep and are drooling on your shoulder.

Entry for 4th December, 2009 - Gardening and ghosts of summers past

The sun is out and I have been in the garden. I am not a very good gardener, but I do love being outside with my hands in the soil. It seems like an odd thing to say, but it makes me feel connected to my family. My mum and dad were (and my dad still is) great gardeners, and I seem to remember a childhood which smelt of cut grass and bluebells.
And I remember, as a kid, pulling weeds out of my grandpa’s garden. And being pushed around the garden in a wheelbarrow. And eating plums off a tree in the garden.
I know that this is making me sound like a tree-hugging hippy who thinks that growing his own potatoes makes him understand the ways of the aborigine. I can tell that I sound like a twat. But it is still nice for me to be in the garden,

Entry for 3rd December, 2008 - Golf - a religious experience!

I mentioned a couple of blogs back that I went for a game of golf recently. Without exaggeration, that is my first game of golf for four years. It is probably the most expensive game of golf in human history, given that I have maintained my club membership throughout that period without making a single appearance on the course. I suspect that the club secretary thinks that I am dead but my executors have forgotten to cancel the direct debit.
In spite of the fact that I mostly hate golf (on account of the fact that I am terrible at it and a very bad loser) there is something incredibly comforting for me in playing it. You see, I grew up around golf. My Old Man is mad keen on it, and througout my life I have gron up around the game's rituals. I can see him standing at the sink, cleaning the face of the irons with a nail brush, the clubs standing leaning agaisnt the kitchen work surface in a neat little row. I can see him slotting the clubs into the bag in the correct order. I can hear the sound of the clubs as they are dropped gently into the boot of the car.
I suppose this must be a bit of what it is like to be religous. Of course, I don't mean to belittle religion here. I don't equate a round of golf to beief in a supreme being. What I mean is that I think religion offers a lot of little rituals which, if you grew up with them, you must find familiar and comforting. The smell of the incense; the lighting of candles; the repeated phrases.
I get an odd sense of that as I put my bag of clubs together.