News, Reviews, and Rants...

For some have entertained angels unawares

2011-12-16T12:37:00.001Z

George Whitman passed away this week at the age of 98. I had never heard of him. His fame (to some) derives from the fact that his Paris apartment and bookshop (which is opposite Notre Dame and latterly called Shakespeare & Co), was an open house frequented by numerous struggling American authors and poets. Many went on, after staying with him, to become successful and highly regarded. I rather wish I'd been there. It sounds like William Thacker's bookshop in Notting Hill... the movie... But presided over by a mercurial American who clearly had some considerable wisdom to offer. And didn't only sell travel books. Anyway, I was taken with the news reports and obituaries not so much because of this, but because his shop appears to have been festooned in excellent quotations. One of these:

"Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise" caught my attention since ALL the news features have attributed it to the poet Yeats. Lovely, lovely quotation. Not Yeats. According to an avalanche of web content, the closest recognisable version seems to be Hebrews 13:2 "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." But how would I know? I just Googled it. Oh dear, here come the flames...

Anyway... I don't know why such august rags as the NY Times got it so wrong, or why every journalist in the American speaking world seems to have re-hashed the same article blindly and taken the Yeats attribution as read, but hey... I don't even care. The dude sounds amazing, and the signs he hung around his shop seem to have been an inspiration to many and a true reflection of his hospitality. Another read "Give what you can. Take what you need. George." Perfect.

I would rather read of the kindness, intellect and creativity of a man, than endure the dogma of bible-bashers trying to claim ownership of an infinite number of monkeys. I refer you to my previous comments about Christmas.

A thing I wrote that isn't a book

2011-12-12T15:01:00.000Z

“What do you do?” Hardly a day goes by without someone asking me that dreaded question. What do you want me to say? I get up, I eat breakfast, drink coffee, I brush my teeth? I try to set events in motion that will ensure that I can eat again tomorrow, next week, in a year’s time? I think that’s what some people call “work”? Is that what you’re asking about?

Let’s say you’re a bank clerk. Then one day someone offers you extra money to look after their house for them, and someone else wants to buy a painting you did once when you were bored. Are you still a bank clerk? Or a professional house-sitter? Or an artist?? And which would you answer? Whichever sounded coolest, I suspect…

A friend of mine, when asked what he does, says “Anything I want…” which, depending what kind of mood you’re in, sounds either very smooth or extremely arrogant… or, better yet, there’s Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden character in Fight Club, who simply answers “What do you mean?”. I tried that one a few times and it doesn’t go very well at all. “Anything for money!” used to be my stock answer, but for some reason people always assumed that meant something nefarious, or sexual. Why, I don’t know…

Does the answer have to be your profession? I know a fair few people who say “surfer”, even though they are not a pro. Similarly, “model”, “film-maker” or something über-cool, even tho this may not be their main source of income. Because it’s laden with kudos, and a better conversational gambit than a more ordinary occupation might be. Sometimes their inquisitors let them run with it, and sometimes not. The one I never get away with is “writer”, strangely enough… There must be a lot of failed writers out there, meeting people and introducing themselves as writers, because without exception the next question is “But what do you do for money?” “I write things” say I, “Oh, have you had anything published?” say they, as I slump into my Guinness. No, I get paid to write stuff down and then screw it into a ball and slam-dunk it, what do you think? Of course I’ve had stuff published. Now, far from being genuinely interested, they just want evidence. Where might they find my work? Fuck off and Google it, or look on Amazon or something… or go to a library, I’m sure they still exist. Somewhere...

So my current answer is “I do a bunch of different things - at the moment I’m failing to write a book.” Which is a) true and b) mildly self-deprecating, so I hope they won't think I'm trying to impress, and then perhaps we can circumvent the debacle described above. Well, it sometimes works...

"The Quiet Carriage"

2011-12-05T13:38:00.001Z

I don't know if you've ever had the misfortune to travel on a British train, but the long-haul incarnations of said travesty of transportation feature something that is laughably known as "The Quiet Carriage" ... something of a misnomer from the outset.

The Quiet Carriage is anything but quiet. It's full of children crying, Crackberry keyboards sounding like a plague of locusts, fake nails clattering on horrible PC laptops, whiny people whining and a lot of people who have nothing to say but say it nonetheless, loudly and to someone across the aisle. The one thing you won't hear is the blessed silence of someone sitting quietly with their headphones on. Because the special sign adorning every window in The Quiet Carriage forbids music (even/especially with headphones) and mobile phones. It also precludes smoking. Personally, for reasons of consistency and clarity I think there should be a separate no-smoking sign, or else the carriage should be called something else, like the Quiet and No Smoking Carriage. But that's just me. I digress...

Anyway. I am the first to admit that ringtones can be (usually are) bloody annoying. They are like fashion. Something only your closest peers get. Everyone else thinks you look like an idiot. And people with sh*t headphones and the volume up full? Irritating, intrusive, tinny sound even if you like what they are listening to. And people who speak loudly on mobile phones? Idiots. But that is missing the point. It's The Quiet Carriage. Just be quiet. Converse quietly. Use your phone, quietly. Wear headphones to listen to your tunes, but put both of them in your ears after checking the ambient sound isn't audible. And then petition the rail company to change the sign to something that says "Quiet Carriage. Do whatever you want as long as it's quiet. PS No Smoking."

Or upgrade to 1st Class. Either or...

Inspired by http://www.godwyns.com/2011/04/is-quiet-zone-in-uk-trains-being.html which is a good read btw ;)

2011-12-05T12:29:00.000Z

Something I wrote sometime before I had a TV. "The best thing about Twitter, so far, is that there are so many TV references. I can learn all about the world through the eyes of people who actually have time to watch television. Why I don't have time to watch television, when I do manage to peruse the feeds in Facebook, Twitter et al, is more of a mystery. Perhaps it is because I can read and write. We live in a world where both pastimes are, increasingly, lost arts. I like to do them at the speed of thought, which is a little bit quicker than watching video. TV is too slow. I'd watch at about x2 speed, ideally, but then the squeaky voices would annoy me. Even when the producer has left out everything he/she thinks could possibly be left out, it's still too slow, but you can't fast forward through the dialogue as you might with a porn movie. Because you miss the whole point.

There's a lot of rubbish in the feeds, a lot of people I should have deleted/unfollowed the first time I thought "What twoddle!?!?!" but didn't for whatever reason. But there are also a lot of gems..."

Update - I now have 1000 channels of TV and have watched it almost non-stop for 48hrs. Hasn't changed my opinion (above) and I'm going back to surfing the feeds. Because my "friends'" twoddle is better than TV, let alone the gems...

2011-10-31T09:43:00.000Z

I love driving a car that makes people smile, and a car that makes people point and enthuse is the mustard on the sausage. Waving when you pass a similar car on the road is a different thing. I've always done it, whether in this car or my other one, but a friend was telling me how annoying it is driving his camper, and constantly being waved at by other camper drivers. What a shame, I thought, but then I realised just how often it would happen if the phenomenon extended to prolific vehicles. You'd be waving the entire time. For me it's an exciting thing to see a a distant relative of my VW. I get waved at from Beetles sometimes, VW Combi/Campers usually (unless they're hired), and of course always other Karmann Ghias, though the latter is so rare as to be not even an annual phenomenon. And, strangely, Porsche Speedsters. You have to be a car geek to understand why. It's because they share everything except coachwork and the badge.

Today I was waved at by the driver of a modern Porsche Boxster/Cayman/Carrera (ashamed to say they are all starting to look the same to me), but it's a tenuous connection at best - the cars were conceived by the same mind, I suppose, or perhaps you can see modern Porsches as descendants of the KG... but we don't share anything material, and I bet those guys don't wave at Beetles.

Recently I drove, perhaps for the first time in that car, past a rather intimidating city pub called The Falcon. It looks like a derelict house or perhaps a crack-den, has faded sofas on the veranda with their guts spilling out, and always (I mean always) has a handful of men outside, who vary from scary to hobo-like but never, ever, look high society. It's one of the few scenarios where I don't stare unashamedly as I pass. But today I was in the car that makes people smile, and the scary-looking men pointed and called out gratifying things like "Nice car, mate..." all the while favouring me with their variously gold encrusted or entirely toothless grins. It was the perfect moment to pull over, and go and buy a pint and talk to them, but I didn't. Maybe I'll have to try it again sometime. Because the only other way I'd feel safe there is drinking with a large team of special forces, armed to the teeth.

Country Life Fail...

2011-05-16T22:33:00.005+01:00

OMG, how annoying is the English countryside? I may command spectacular uninterrupted views over a particularly beautiful, luscious, forested estuary, but it's not all plain sailing, I can tell you...

Last night I took one, last, lingering look at the clouds scudding hurriedly across the bright, full moon, and then ran for my life. I have always had an irrational fear of werewolves. But then I've never met one. I had a pretty well-developed fear of sharks, too, until I met some, and they turned out to be lovely. Werewolves on the other hand, are a big no. And in the same way that as a child I was convinced that streamlined bringers of death and dismemberment stalked me whenever I was in the water, I cannot shake the idea that clouds-flitting-moon action means the imminent sudden appearance of a slavering, howling menace with an unholy amount of pointy teeth, propelled by a musclature that would have any self-respecting leopard trotting away to the gym with its tail firmly between its legs.

And people wonder why I hate camping...

Anyway, werewolves are not the problem. I can deal with them by remaining in large groups of (preferably) drunk people, and whenever I am separated from the pack moving very quickly in a sort of alert crouch. And then barricading myself in, somewhere very robust with plate glass windows. Because they can jump through ordinary windows. Anyway werewolves are not the problem with the countryside. Birds are. Whoever named it the "dawn chorus" either slept right through it, or was very stoned. "Deafening cacophony" is what I called it at 0430 this morning (expletives deleted). I thought I had gone to sleep in England and woken up (almost immediately, I might add) in Papua New Guinea! But, when I peered outside, the creeping light revealed nothing brightly coloured, interesting or edible enough to imply a geographical anomaly. In fact English birds are all camouflaged to look as boring as possible, probably to avoid the attention of werewolves. It also sounds as though they too gather together in large drunken mobs, but wait for the world to go to sleep before bursting into something almost, but not entirely, unlike song.

Eventually I became used to constant noise and drifted back into a fitful sleep, only to be precipitously awoken again, I don't know whether by what sounded like incoming gunfire or by actually banging my head on the ceiling (well, a surfboard, actually) which turned out on closer inspection to be a milk float. The noise did, not the surfboard. Duh. Now when I was an urchin milk floats were electric, and hence spookily quiet, so it seems ironic to me that in these days of people trying to heat up the world and cause motorway congestion by driving electric or hybrid cars, the milkman has gone out and purchased something that sounds as if it's powered by a whole row of marine diesels, or someone firing an Uzi on auto under a mattress. It's probably unacceptable everywhere outside of mainland China, and especially so right next to my head at five-thirty in the morning.

Now that I have resolved to have an early night in lieu of the sleep deficit unfairly imposed by these countryside irritations, guess what? The farmer is deliberately goading his cows into a bellowing frenzy, by (it sounds like) racing about in a tractor doing something entirely pointless in the gathering dark. The tractor appears to have a similar power-plant to the milk float, but infinitely more powerful and maybe equipped with a straight-through exhaust or possibly carbon cans and a cherry bomb. The cows are just annoying. Go inside, mate. Have a beer. It's the bloody night time, shut the f*ck up.

Technology fail...

2011-05-09T22:54:00.002+01:00

In a break with tradition, I used the self service checkout at the supermarket today. It's usually against my principles, because it never works properly and you have to call a member of staff to help it carry on scanning stuff or to take the security tag off the vodka, which pretty much entirely defeats the object of using self service. I don't know why people persevere with it - do they not realise it's not for their benefit but the supermarket's? And I don't know why I did today, really. On this occasion, however, the thing was almost flawless and only faltered on two occasions - once to tell me that there was something where there shouldn't be something (there wasn't) and again to complain of an unauthorised error requiring the urgent attention of supermarket personnel. But I was able to overcome both unforced errors by dint of swearing and kicking the machine back into compliance before the uniformed attendant who stands watching over it from afar was able to waddle into frowning and dithering range. So that was a result. I managed to scan two items and put them in a bag and pay for them while only being reduced to a state of apoplexy twice... a relatively excellent automated customer experience, for this day and age.

Flushed with my success at interacting with modern technological miracles, I decided to use the pay at pump option on the petrol station forecourt on the way out, my enthusiasm further boosted by the presence of 99 octane fuel, which does make every petrolhead feel a little more optimistic than perhaps one should. Sadly this payment option also involves wasting much more time scanning things and button pushing than an actual stroll into the "kiosk" would have done, and then at the end of the process it refused to give me a receipt. So I'm going to have a five minute conversation with an accountant instead of a sub one minute one with a filling station employee. That wasn't really designed for my benefit, either, was it?

Tesco, by the way...

2011-04-18T14:25:00.001+01:00

So ends another weekend of being drunk and talking nonsense, and begins a week of training, problem solving, and generally seeking that warm glow that derives from making everything just incrementally better all the time.

Today I have decided to dress as if it's the summer, when it is in fact April. In England. Not the summer, then. Some people (OK, many people) might enquire as to when it is actually summer in England. I remember someone alluding to a two season year - namely winter, and July. I think it's a little more complicated than that. There's March and April, when most days will contain some warm, some cold, and some wet. And then May and June, sometimes warm, sometimes cold, sometimes wet, but for longer intervals, maybe for days at a time. July and August, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, sometimes wet. September, intermittently hot or wet. October through February, consistently cold and wet. So that's five seasons, but I'm going to plump for one more because I think May is, like September, a little bit more pleasant than its neighbours, even though I can't quite put a finger on why. Six seasons make for a massively over-complicated wardrobe, and probably very messy pizzas and orchestral arrangements to boot.

The reasons I'm rocking and/or channelling shorts and flip-flops today, then, are threefold. One, I couldn't find any clean socks that weren't woolly ones. I'm coming from living on a mountain in an Alpine winter to living out of a suitcase in England, Season One above. Sue me. All my summery socks are at my second home (a Transit van) a long way from here. But more about socks later. Two, the shorts are full of pockets that make organising the paraphenalia of a difficult day very much easier, and they really only go with flip-flops unless one is trying (failing) to pull off that metro sockless shoe look that absolutely no-one can unless they are standing on a cove or strutting a runway, and three a cursory glance out of the window led me to the idea that it's one of those sometimes warm days. So... today I am looking like one of those people who irritate me by believing that wearing cargo shorts and flip-flops around town in the winter makes them in any way look like a surfer dude.

2011-03-30T13:21:00.003+01:00

Nutrition-wise, I’m pretty lucky. Because once I believe something is bad for me I stop wanting it, and once I hear something is good, I start to enjoy it even if I didn’t before. I think this must stem from some horrible over-achieving instinct instilled in me as a child. People tell me to chill out and just enjoy life, but the truth is I don’t actually enjoy doing that. I enjoy doing everything better I did than yesterday. The exception is alcohol, something I was not really exposed to in my youth. I enjoy drinking even though I know it’s really bad for me, but that just makes me concentrate harder on my nutrition and my training goals in order to compensate. Anyway, enough about me… I’m getting all verbose because I am displacing work I need to do by writing this instead.

Here's a bit of a rant about food, I originally wrote it as a letter to a friend but I thought it might go well here.

Point no.1 - it’s an increasingly widespread belief that cereal type carbs (wheat, corn, etc) are pushed at us only because they are incredibly cheap to make and the industry that makes them is one of the most powerful and influential in the world. There is a strong argument that we shouldn’t be eating them at all, since there is no way our prehistoric ancestors ever touched ‘em, and they appear to make people fat.

I know this argument is often levelled at dairy food, and rice also, but just because something isn’t natural doesn’t mean it won’t work. The Masai live on meat and whole milk, predominantly. They aren’t fat. A billion Chinese get most of their calories from refined white rice. They aren’t fat. Oriental/Polynesian people are almost never fat until they are exposed to Western diets, and that, I surmise, is because Western diets are full of refined sugar, cereal products, and hydrogenated trans-fats.

There is an astonishing statistic that in the average western diet (meaning American btw) 65% of the calories come from cereals. Scary huh? Mainly because most everything processed, ready-made or lo-fat contains Hi Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) because it’s cheaper than cane sugar and basically a waste product from the cereal industry.

PS to that - there is a lot of ad spend on convincing us that whole grain/meal foods are better for us. Trouble is in the UK (probably other places too) they only have to be a small percentage whole grain and the rest is refined. Also to get the benefits to the heart that athletes are paid a lot to advertise, you’d have to eat a wheelbarrow full of it.

Point no.2 - eating natural unprocessed fat IS good for you. It's the most efficient source of fuel for a human. Inuit (Eskimos, sorry bad word but not everyone understands “Inuit” even now), they live on it. And they aren’t fat. So, don’t eat “lo-fat” stuff that is actually full of additives and “natural” sweetener HFCS.

Truth is, all industries try to tell us the things they sell are good if there is an ounce of research to support it. An aspirin a day is good for you? Wonder how many millions the drug companies earned from that piece of PR? A glass of wine a day, or four if you believe the Italian statistics (or a bottle if you believe my French friend Nicholas)? I remember last year reading one week that bacon is worse for you than crack, and then the following week another article (almost certainly “response PR”) that suggested a full English breakfast is incredibly beneficial and could actually accelerate fat burn throughout the day.

I think you can’t believe a damn thing you read but you can test things. I’ve been testing a very hi fat diet, but only natural unprocessed ingredients, and no cereal based products at all. And I think I am seeing some benefits, although I am having some blood sugar dips I never had before. But I have a strategy to control that. Cinnamon. True story.

I am also testing a theory that we eat too much - a friend of mine (who is very fit) suggested this to me and said while dieting with boxers he came to the conclusion that the tradition of 2000 cals for women 2500 for men is rubbish. He’s active, trains every day, and reckons 2000 is enough for him. And he weighs 80kg and is building muscle on that diet! But you have to remember that that is 2000 cals of actual food. 50% or more of the calories most people eat are junk.

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading that as much I enjoyed writing it. Take it or leave it. Have a nice day!

2011-03-01T12:38:00.007Z

Regular readers may know that tea drinking is super-important to me, perhaps even vital. Long before the much vaunted health benefits became so widely marketed (seriously, is there any food that doesn’t have its healthiness hyped and its poisonous qualities glossed over? No, we live in marketing world) I was already chain-drinking the stuff; if anything I probably drink it less now, but that’s only because I have discovered other things that are fun to drink. Still, tea is still of great importance. I had for years thought that I’d established my favourite variety (PG Tips) and although some people disagree vehemently with this choice, it seemed a fairly sound decision to me and I was pretty comfortable with it. Until on a whim I picked up a box of Yorkshire Tea, because a friend had hyped it, and because I was bulk tea shopping in the UK (impossible to buy proper tea in Europe, they only have Liptons, which is deeply rubbish) and thought I’d risk it. Check me out. I live dangerously. Anyway, this new tea is awesome and now I am brutally self-flagellating for having unnecessarily eschewed other brands for so long. However, having two similar kinds in the cupboard has led to a momentous discovery.

We all know that the first cup of tea in the morning is the best and that it’s rarely possible to match it in round two. I’ve heard a few explanations for why this might be, but nothing very conclusive and to be honest I don’t much care. I just know that I love the first one, and it leaves me wanting a second, which never quite hits the spot. But I’d never thought of switching types for the deuxieme. Which is a shame, because this so works. My current preference is for a cup of PG Tips first, followed by a cup of Yorkshire after I’ve read my email. I know a lot of people favour (meaning can’t function without) a coffee first thing, and I can’t help you with that, except of course to say that you’re wrong, but to any tea drinkers out there I do totally recommend it.

Since I wrote the above, which previously appeared on Tumblr, I have been thinking about the argument that has raged for decades about whether tea (or coffee, and probably other things I'm less interested in) actually counts as a rehydrating agent, given that they are diuretics and "may cause one to lose more fluid than was actually imbibed" This, in my (almost) clichéd opinion, is missing the point. Because the purpose of drinking is that you replace that which has been lost by perspiration and additionally use lots more to cleanse and lubricate the metabolism before passing excess fluid out of the other end. So long as diuretics are not the only things you drink, it's probably all working hunky-dory. Now off to Goooogle derivation - what does that expression actually mean?

2011-02-19T09:38:00.000Z

Every little helps. The strap line for a British supermarket, and a trite cliché that makes my blood boil - I need to invent a word, here. I need a word for things that you assume to be universal truths just because they were shown to be true once. Perhaps "religion" is the word I'm looking for... but I'm going to use the word "querion". Because I can. "Every little helps" is a querion. Anyway, sometimes every little helps, for sure. But that doesn't mean you can say it about anything! For example, if you're trying to move one of the Great Pyramids by pushing it with an with an elephant, it does not really matter how many enthusiastic assistants (or indeed elephants) you enlist, because you are wasting your time. It is not going to move. You need to try something else. Like dismantling it.

Saving our beloved planet is one example of the "every little helps" myth. Incidentally, if I may digress, it amuses me that so many of us talk about saving the planet. We are not trying to save the planet. The planet is not going anywhere. We are trying to save the ecosystem we require in order to carry on living much as we do now. Which is not the same thing at all. Anyway... back to the point... the environmental lobby pleads with us to switch things off, recycle and to bicycle to work because every little helps - well it bloody doesn't! We are destroying the ecosystem in numerous ways, not least by perhaps irreversibly changing the climate, and we need to stop doing it right now if we are to have somewhere nice to live in a thousand years time. Reducing our impact very slightly and hence trashing the place infinitessimally less rapidly is no help whatsoever. We need to stop using, polluting etc. Not do it a little bit less. But that ain't gonna be popular, is it?

2011-02-01T08:34:00.000Z

I hate it when I take off the lid of a carton or bottle on to discover another lid, or sub-lid as I call it, skulking underneath, being pointless. Why don't you make the first lid work properly, and there will be no need for a sub lid that makes me have to open the kitchen bin an extra time. Hatred! Grrr!!!!

2009-12-30T08:29:00.000Z

Hello! A little less than a year ago I stopped writing here in favour of a new platform (soapbox, whatever) over at mattos.tumblr.com - mainly because the site functionality was better and I felt more in control of the layout and content. That's been fun, but the vibe over there is very different and maybe not for everyone (go and have a look), so here I am again, resurrecting this blog, and I hope this readership, for at least some of my deranged and desultory diatribe...

hope you enjoy!

2009-12-09T13:05:00.004Z

Travel Update

So, I'm finally back on the hill for good after nearly three months of flitting to and fro between here, London, and the VOTD, and in all that time I don't seem to have updated once! Seem, though, is the operative word - in fact I've started a number of posts in that period, most of which are still languishing in draft mode. They'll get finished, I promise, but for now they are inspired content, not absorbing reading. Means they're not very good yet ;)

The interlude of involuntary bloglessness started with a roadtrip from the Alps over to the west of France in the trusty Transit, travelling up the Atlantic coast surfing, kiting and SUPing as Hurricane Bill pounded the other side of the pond and sent nice lil long-period swells in my general direction. The weather became increasingly rubbish as I meandered northwardly, and by the time I was in Bretagne it was... well... onshore and very British...

The first week in September, however, just as I arrived in Cornwall UK, it turned out nice as we Brits say. And the winds switched to more favourable ones... for a week I was in the waves every day, and then my lower back, a chronically weak link, let go completely. Three weeks of physio and no surfing. Super-rubbish... Finally on the mend, it was time to fly to the Alps for another road-trip, this time to rescue my pretty old car before the snows come, and then off to China for Nookie stuff, then back to the VOTD for Hallowe'en/Samhain and much partyness.

K, that's the chronology caught up with, see further posts for details.

L8rs

2009-08-21T08:34:00.016+01:00

I'm overwhelmed to be described as an awesome witter.

I've often felt that wittering was something that came easily to me, but wasn't always completely sure that it was a positive thing and had even, in my darkest moments, tried to curb my natural verbosity. This accolade, however, has restored my faith. I'd like to thank everyone who helped me to get here, my publishers, my agents, and of course my family. This is for you. I love you all...

2009-08-14T12:11:00.006+01:00

Dreamed about spiders - really gnarly horrible ones. Woke up to the news that Les Paul has died - it's a very sad day. Not that I'm personally affected per se; I have never met the guy, and I listen far more to the work of people he influenced (most of a generation of rock guitarists) than to his own. But there is something about the passing of an iconic figure - Les Paul, Michael Jackson, Ayrton Senna, Kurt Cobain - that I feel like a "great stirring in the force", with passing apologies to George Lucas.

The other news that struck me, perhaps with even greater force although I am loth to compare a corporate merger to the death of a hero, is that of VW's impending purchase of Porsche GmbH. It seems to me ironic that this should occur because of Porsche's bungled attempt to buy VW, but such is the way with takeovers. It's been a long time since the ways of these two great marques parted, and the world has in no small sense been the better for it, but I'm glad they're back together. And the Karmann Ghia, not the Bugatti Veyron, is still the coolest car in the world.

2009-08-10T13:31:00.002+01:00

Environmental content is super-popular but kinda-dangerous imho - I don't know quite how I feel about this one yet but it is thought-provoking, eventually. It's also a well made and entertaining little film, short, whatever. Fun - take from it what you will ;)

2009-08-04T09:51:00.002+01:00

Music fans, this is amazing... Well, OK, in a way I don't think it's a surprise... but it's still amazing. The title's dull but the content isn't. Nothing I can write is going to big it up any more, just watch it, and if you think, "yeah, whatever..." then you have no soul.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

2009-08-02T21:19:00.007+01:00

Movie thing. Case Not Included is a mock movie short, planned and shot in two hours with a cast of moi and a crew of one, to showcase the potential of a rather cool camera rig. If you know anything about movie shots you'll be blown away by the cinematography and how it could possibly have been done - and it was all made with a Canon 5d professional stills camera on this little aluminium rig. Embedded here is a "making of" video that demonstrates rather well!

If interviews aren't your thing, you can marvel at all the lovely camera work on Case Not Included... here.

2009-07-31T20:00:00.005+01:00

NEW INTERVIEW online here ;)

2009-04-26T11:36:00.001+01:00

AGE Rant...

"I'm getting old!!!!!!" I hear them cry...

Increasingly amused by people who think they're old at the age of 23... you've been grown up for about five years! You are a spring chicken. In all probability your span of grown-up-ness will be about 75 years, and you've done five of them. One fifteenth. Six per cent. And even that is based on the theory that you were adult at eighteen... I know a few people who were well grown up at a younger age than that, but I've met a fair few twenty-something children, too...

What young folks are really good at is learning. Soaking stuff up like a sponge. But there's still no substitute for water under the bridge. That's where the age card trumps all. Let me put it like this - if you're 21, then a 30 year old has been adult for four times as long as you. Think you can compete with that?

Now I just have to work out why it feels as if the older I get, the less I really know... Hmmm...

Young people!!! Save the world while you still know everything ;)

2009-03-15T14:33:00.008Z

SOCIAL NETWORKING Rant...

Myspace, Facebook, Yammer, Twitter... where will it all end?

When I first noticed the phenomenon of online social networking, I was fairly nonplussed and pretty much refused to be a part of it. My philosophy was that networking online is for people who don't have a life out there in the real world. People who spend their time in front of a screen. A network of losers, I called it. I was wrong.

There is little we can do to change the fact that many of us spend a large amount of our time away from our family and friends. Our tribe, if you will. We are either at work, or on some form of transport, or at home recuperating in the evening. Few choose to spend every night of the week out socialising any more. It's too expensive, it's a school night, I'm on a diet, I have a report to write.

My intolerance of social network websites stemmed mostly from the fact that I wasn't one of those people. I wasn't encumbered with a regular job per se, I spent my days playing in the water or working with all manner of interesting folk, and I did spend every night of the week socialising and had the hangovers to prove it! But at the same time, I can remember recognising the fact that I was in a rather privileged position, and theorising that the mobile phone might be the saving of modern society, in that it lets us carry our "tribe" of 100-200 people around in our pocket for instant access at any time.

Sites like Facebook have just taken that ball and run with it, as reported here. The problem with a phone call, text, or email is that it's a brave step - it lays your ego on the line in a way many of us are uncomfortable with. Far better to put something out there publicly, and see who responds. Online trial and error has shown the status update (or tweet) to be the popular mode of expression. Most people simply can't be bothered with any deeper level of creativity. And that is perfectly natural. It's just like seeing a member of your tribe across the campfire - their expression/body language says "I am happy", "I am sad", "I am angry", "hungry", whatever. And you can choose to respond to that, or not. As you wish. On the internet, we can do that irrespective of physical separation. That, and the innate gossip factor of posting photos of oneself and others (and tagging) emulates real life incredibly well. It's genius. If your tribe is spread all over the planet, as I sometimes wish mine wasn't.

2009-02-03T19:13:00.005Z

NOTHING TO RANT ABOUT AT ALL Rant...

I went cross country skiing today. In the tracks, out of the tracks, in the deep stuff... I am super-impressed with my new Nordic toys. It all works. Shame that my execution of said noble sport resembles the antics of a new-born giraffe, but since I haven't actually tried to go around corners on skis since I was about 14, I'm not going to give myself a hard time about that. I went from A to B (and back again) at a reasonable pace, and didn't fall down. Result.

I have to say that I've never really seen a new-born giraffe. I'm extrapolating that experience from a new-born foal, which I have seen, and imagining how it would be if it was taller, with bigger feet... and, err... on skis. That is how it was for me. Only with fewer legs. Ahem!

It's a culture shock of a sport and seems super old school. Makes me feel as if I'm in some grainy sepia film shot! But it's all good.

2009-02-02T08:54:00.004Z

EASYJET FOOD Rant...

I dunno... maybe I don't have a clue about business ( this assumption would seem to be borne out by the events of recent years ;) but I think the budget airlines' business model is missing a trick.

All airline food is unutterably awful. I understand that the scale of the operation, and conversely the confines of a passenger aircraft, dictate that some chefs somewhere behind the scenes need to be awfully clever to make available anything even remotely presentable... and that genuinely healthy and tasty food is probably not achievable. I hope I am not being unreasonable when I say that even the food lauded as "Award Winning" is, generally speaking, barely identifiable as food and, at the other end of the spectrum there are phenomena such as this - food, yes, but executed in a way absolutely not calculated to enhance the quality of the customer experience, shall we say? I think that in the average longhaul aircraft a great cheer would go up if the cabin crew marched down the aisle plonking a McD's Happy Meal in front of each passenger. And this coming from a man who really would rather not grace the golden arches with his presence... just on the basis of judgement and good taste.

Anyway... returning somewhat circuitously to the point... I fly budget when it's cheap - when it isn't I think the non-budgets offer superior scheduling, a better overall experience and something that at least bears comparison to a meal. Inclusive. So... if I buy a ticket that costs 25 of your English squids, and then buy a £4 sandwich/baguette which appears, to my inexpert culinary examination, to have little or no biological content let alone nutritional value, would I not rather have paid £30 and been provided with a repast, say, half as good as a blatantly mass-produced meal I can purchase for £6.95 in any Wetherspoons in the UK? Let me answer that tricky one for you - yes I bloody would! Rip me off, but do it with style and decorum.Your clientele are not regulars at the Pound Shop, Stelios. People who have some taste actually do fly budget. Do you know why? It's because all airlines are shocking, so if we're going to have a bad time we might as well not get fleeced into the bargain... and to most of your flyers, a half-decent bite to eat would justify a £10 price hike. The rail companies do a better job in the face of exactly the same challenges... and the gods know I never thought I'd be saying that!

Grrrrrr......

2009-01-31T19:07:00.000Z

Mon ami Howard came out to do some snowboarding this weekend and I spent much of the time chasing him down hills filming with my petit compact camera. See above pic of... well... my shadow. I was going pretty quick tho. Anyway that's not what this vid is. This is mostly an experiment in uploading vid to Blogger... a lil bit of footage of me and where my house is that he shot with his much better vid cam. Although, he declined to film while riding, which judging by the number of close calls I had and the awfulness of my footage, was a perfectly sound decision. I do want to say that I managed to keep him in frame the whole time while charging flat out down steep-ish pistes... but that's the only good thing about my material... so clearly, set-up shots are the way to go. I live and learn.

2009-01-27T12:01:00.005Z

VAN DRIVER Rant...

I have just had THE best telephone conversation with a French delivery driver:

(freely translated)

FDD - Monsieur Mattos?

Moi - Yes

FDD - You live in Chinaillon?

Moi - Yes

FDD - In The Old Village?

Moi - Yes

FDD - At Chalet xxxxxx?

Moi - Yes

FDD - I don't know where that is... can you meet me at the Tourist Office in twenty minutes?!?!?

I am not sure how a man who knows where the tourist office is in an obscure hamlet in the French Alps would not grasp that they could tell him the way to the delivery address. Neither was I allowed to explain the route chez moi from said tourist office, although this is something even I can manage. So maybe he already knew that completing the mission as his employers might have intended was going to include careering up something akin to a bobsleigh run in a laden front-wheel drive van, narrowly failing to avoid 18month-old luge pilots with their inadequately-shod mothers in hot pursuit, and roundly cursed by octogenarian snow-shoers who have somehow failed to grasp that it's a road! In which case, I applaud him. The upside of our imperfect but frank exchange of views, however, is that I now have cross-country skis which I shall probably be seen stumbling around the valley on tomorrow. I have no idea what I'm doing, but cross-training is always good, and it beats the hell out of sinking in deep snow, of which there is a lot.

I apologise sincerely for my ski-miles - I did not purchase my skis/boots/poles from a local shop because that worked out twice as expensive as some (better, Norwegian) kit from Norway to England and then France. On the subject of being soundly ripped off, I just paid a local woman £12 to wash and dry six towels. You have to laugh...

2009-01-21T20:27:00.004Z

SNOW Rant...

My new abode is very, very snowy. Not that I'm bemoaning that; I came here specifically because it seemed to me that a winter without snow is a winter wasted... but I hadn't really grasped quite how snowy it would be. There is more than enough snow to make a fool of oneself in, and enough sunlight (three overcast days in the last month, and that's 'cos it was snowing) to immortalise it on... some sort of optical media, anyway. I am even considering buying a proper camera rather than the iPhone (sob!) or the compact (you know, party, red-eye) camera that is currently chained to my side lest I miss something of importance to posterity. You know, another mountain. Another drift. Another snowboarder sitting down. Or, slightly better, a snow-laden tree, poised, mantis-like against a cobalt sky, occasionally whispering with intent to unload its icy cargo onto the unwary or the simply reckless. Despite my famously meagre photographic ability, I know just enough about it to understand that my ickle cameras and their even ickler lenses are not doing my surroundings justice.

The other thing about snow that I hadn't fully taken on board [sic!] is just how much of one's energy needs to be spent moving the stuff from one place to another. A local chap avec tractor has been engaged to clear the drive after each snowfall, but he does this circa 4am and to be fair he can do little about any cars that might be in the way at that time. So there's a significant amount of shovelling potential. The good thing about this is a) the free workout, and b) that the tonnes of snow surplus to requirements in the drive, on the steps and outside the front door, for instance, can gainfully be deployed making a snow park at the bottom of the garden. Cool, huh? Well, no, in fact. Bloody hot work, actually. And then after a hit on le spot, as les gens français would call it, it's a hot old trudge back to the take-off. Which encourages one to ride it in a T-shirt, which in turn results in ice-burns to the elbows. Oh well... no pain, no gain.

2009-01-17T12:14:00.004Z

My latest obsession is trying to capture the general awesomeness of my surroundings by stitching together photos to make panoramas. This one an almost 360 from the front of chez moi. To be fair, it doesn't do the place justice, but maybe you get the idea.

2009-01-08T09:48:00.006Z

PR Rant...

Lies, damned lies and publicity. It's long been acknowledged that the public are becoming increasingly immune to display advertising. Most of us flick past the ads in newspapers or magazines taking only a minute subliminal hit, one which needs to be reinforced over and over before it might have the slightest real effect. Yet it's equally well known that the articles and entries that we choose willingly to read have an immediate and substantial impact or influence.

Recently that principle is being taken much too far. I suspect that difficult times have influenced editors to avoid paying contributors wherever possible, and that's fine (except for me as a contributor!) but the net result is publications with no real content. Just cover to cover press releases, advertorial, product placement and sponsored bits. Maybe I'm unusually discerning or something (I'm not, believe me, although I am pretty cynical it's true), but I find this uninteresting and not a little frustrating. It doesn't rank as entertainment, for me, if I'm constantly thinking "what are you selling, your film opens tomorrow, your single is released next week, you are sponsored by X, Y paid for this article didn't they?" It's tedious.

2009-01-05T23:10:00.007Z

iPhone... the beautiful stranger

I'm starting to wonder if Apple adopted a controversial strategy. First they made it so visually attractive that I wanted one immediately. So terribly tactile and pleasing to play with that I couldn't help assuming I was really going to like it, even before I'd properly got to grips with it. And then made it so fickle, flawed and confusing that I fell in love with it for all its faults and to this day spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to work it out. Sound familiar to anyone?

Like all Apple devices, great store is set by its "intuitive" user-interface. But oh dear... most people don't seem to find it intuitive at all, and require constant recourse to the instruction manual. What do you mean, there isn't one? Well, no booklet supplied with the iPhone, anyway... a good thing one might say - all manuals available online, you say? Well, that's awesome, as long as your only way of getting online isn't an iPhone - which was the case for someone I met recently.

On reflection I think that the interface is extremely intuitive, actually. My 80yr old mother, for instance, found the whole thing much less bizarre than most technology she's confronted by. I think the problem arises if you are already familiar with cellphones. Most of us who have used any of the major brands of phone for a while find that they all work in much the same way and that it's just a case of surfing around the menu until you find the function you're looking for. Secure in the knowledge that it will be there. The iPhone confuses us because the feature you seek may not be there. Or it make be skulking in a well hidden GUI cul-de-sac, or called something so outlandish that you don't recognise it. This bears out one of my early impressions... that the designers of the iPhone had not, themselves, much experience of using existing phone operation. Or maybe they were told "Hey, we're Apple - we don't have to be influenced by other people's inferior technologies - you can design this thing in a bubble."

I think if someone designed a car that had no pedals and in which you pushed and pulled the steering wheel to brake and accelerate, it might work very well and be easy for people to learn to drive in. But it would be a huge blow to people who can already work a "normal" car, and many of them would not adopt it. This is effectively what Apple have done with the iPhone, and hence the reason that they have to trick us into adopting it by making it very, very sexy. Once we've fallen in love with it, it seems OK that it actually doesn't do a lot of things we assumed it would, and most outrageous of all, it isn't really very good at phonecalls and text messages. Or multimedia messages - it can't send them at all, and getting one involves going to a website and entering a username and password received by text, much as you have to when using a pay-as-you-go non-multimedia pauper-phone.

I don't want to sound unfaithful or critical of my beloved phone, so without further ado here's a list of really really good things about it:

~ really beautiful and well put together
~ multi-tasks better than any previous phone - you can pull up the calendar, contacts, photos, weather or myriad other things much as you would on a laptop screen, and unlike any other phone I've used, when you go back to a window it's still in the state you left it in. In fact this is the best thing about the iPhone. Halfway through writing a text and something else rops up like a call? No problem. When you go back to text it'll be as you left it, cursor in the same place and everything. You can even be writing different texts to several different people at once, and the same applies.
~does not switch off accidentally, phone people accidentally, answer calls accidentally, or in fact do anything you didn't ask it to.
~ touch-screen navigation combined with tricks like resizing a page between finger and thumb are so amazing they ake you chortle with glee. Every time. I like things that do that!
~ great voicemail window that let's you see who the messages are from without you having to listen to them.

but here's the ugly:
~ no copy-and-paste or select function - phone nos and other links are highlighted in text messages, but you can only use 'em, not copy them. So if Aaron sends you Britney's contact information and you want to forward it to Colin or even just save it? Go get a pencil and paper.
~ the touch screen is sexy but it doesn't give you any tactile feedback and neither does it detect motion 100% reliably. I've missed a lot of calls trying in vain to slide the slidey thing with wet, greasy or gloved fingers.
~ there is no way to delete a text message you have sent or received without deleting the entire thread. Good news for jealous lovers, bad news for prolific ones.
~ you can't bluetooth a business card to someone. You can't in fact text one either, or append anything at all except by email. And that, my friends, is archaic in the extreme.
~ The camera doesn't do video. No... you know what? That should be in the "good things" section.
~ that cool voicemail function? Doesn't have any facility for turning voicemail off. Maybe I'm the only person left alive who thinks voicemail is sometimes better left off.

And here's a typical, comedy example from my experience with the iPhone. I had to spend hours (maybe it wasn't that long but it bloody felt like it) on the internet, reading geek forums that suggested clever ways to import your contacts from your old phone. Because the iPhone is kinda designed to sync your contacts from your computer's email program, and that's not how I roll. It really was a bit complicated and geeky, but in the end I did it. Only later was I to discover that in the Settings menu, under Mail, Contacts and Calendars, if you scroll (a long way) to the bottom, there is a button called "import SIM contacts". I felt a bit stupid, but slightly relieved that most of the rest of the world missed it too.

But you know what? I still love it...

2008-12-29T10:44:00.004Z

Benicio Del Toro has long been one of my favourite actors, so it was with some interest that I noticed him featured in the Sunday Times recently. Clearly the purpose of the article (from his/his PR's perspectives) was to plug his new film which I shall gloss over, partly because I am not interested in it at all but mainly because he's not paying me. No, what struck me most about it was the way his choice of car was skilfully dealt with. I like cars, you see, and the section of the paper I was reading was the bit that is all about cars and other gadgets that boys like. So Mr. Del Toro was clearly required to mention his choices of vehicle. Which must have been rather difficult for him , poor lamb, because he's only ever owned one – a Ford Bronco (gas-guzzling pickup truck) which he has owned ever since he learnt to drive. Nothing wrong with that. Very environmentally friendly, actually, to buy a simple utilitarian car and keep it until it dies. No matter how much gas it guzzles. But sadly the masses don't see it that way (I'm working on it, but it's an uphill struggle) and Benicio's PR clearly felt that he'd be seen as a mindless destroyer of the planet. So his car “history” read like this:

~Merc 500SL (because he was in a Mercedes TV advert once)
~Ford Bronco (because he's actually owned one)
~Some pitiful hybrid I'm not even going to name (because his PR said he should claim he might replace his pickup with something seen as eco-friendly).

Well, I know he has to plug the film. Whatever it takes to get column inches. But I thought it a bit of a shame. I thought we were moving on from the whole “hybrids are environmentally friendly” thing. And especially since what he is actually doing is so the way forward. Boo...

2008-12-22T23:42:00.008Z

Travel blog this usually isn't. I guess I haven't been much of a traveller in recent years. Though I suppose, in the great scheme of things, I'm more well-travelled than most.

Anyway...

The journey from my previous spiritual home in Cornwall to my new abode in the French Alps was... not exactly eventful. But definitely memorable to the point of being well worth forgetting! One might even say emotional...

I thought Portsmouth... because the easy-life Plymouth-Roscoff ferry is all well and good but woulda left me in the diametrically opposite corner of France from my destination. In retrospect I wish I'd driven to Dover, or the Channel Tunnel thing, anyway. It takes almost as long to drive that pitiful road to Portsmouth, and fuel is waaaayyyy more expensive in France than the UK, too. And driving thru, near or around Paris is famously a bit pants, even if you miss the rush hour, which I didn't.

That's the Eiffel Tower straight ahead, its proximity and the traffic on what claimed to be the peripherique a testament to my lack of forethought. Or lack of pace. I can't remember what, if anything, I was thinking, actually.

The most astonishing thing is that I even made it to Paris without crashing the car. The new shouty red car (Evo X) must be a whole lot safer at autoroute cruising than the old one, although the VIII's tendency to vibrate your teeth (and possibly eyeballs) out of your head at motorway speeds might have stopped me from nodding off every twenty minutes. No amount of espresso seemed to counteract my somnolence. But I'm jumping forward a bit. Let's jump back.

My first mistake was to imagine even for one moment that I would be able to sleep on the ferry. My thinkage was as follows:

1. I will be exhausted.
2. It's a perfectly timed, overnight ferry.
3. It won't be that busy on the 22nd December (I don't know why I thought this)
4. I can sleep pretty much anywhere so I don't need a cabin.

Well, clearly I hadn't been keeping up on current affairs. The dramatic exchange rate swing in favour of the Euro-peeps must have led the entire population of Normandy to pop over to Angleterre to do their Xmas shopping. The boat was busy, and all of the people with screaming babies were sojourning in the same saloon as I was. It wasn't a very tolerable situation for my single bloke ears, highly evolved to want to kill everyone in the room the moment I hear that 1kHz wail.
Once the screaming infants were comatose from exhaustion, the cavalry kicked in in the form of the pre-teens, whimpering and whining fairly quietly it has to be said, but triggering a kind of not hushed enough tirade of hissed reprimands and shushes from their parents (mothers) guaranteed to keep single man awake and on his toes. Fathers of children, for some reason, have developed an uncanny immunity that leaves them blissfully unaffected by this type of sound.
Finally, the children and their harassed mothers lapsed into silence, only for the challenge to be taken up at 2am by a gaggle of teenagers returning from the bar, and behaving, well, exactly like drunk students the world over. I had a pretty powerful urge to get up and snarl some abuse at them, but I'm old enough to know that this sort of alpha-male-ness won't work.
a) no matter how scary I make it, pride will not let them back down, because they are teenagers - they would rather die an honourable, testosterone-fuelled death than shut up when they are told to, and b) all the mothers in the room will instantly wake up and berate me for making more noise than the teenagers were in the first place, even though I wouldn't have been.
So, it was a very bleary eyed William who stumbled to Car Deck 5 Door C and watched in incredulity as all his fellow car passengers dutifully started their engines exactly as they were told not to. Except for the one right in front of the doors whose motor wouldn't fire up, and who had to be pushed down the ramp when they finally opened, some fifteen minutes of exhaust fumes later.

So that is how, trusting to satnav and Google maps, I found myself cat-napping on the peripherique in some kind of belated French rush hour. I have never, ever been as prone to nodding off as I was on that journey. I couldn't even make it between fuel stops, which the petrol gods know are not exactly far between! No, every service station, every aire, I was out purchasing double espressos or running around the car like a deranged Englishman. Horrible. I even tried stopping for a snooze, even though I know perfectly well that that never works...

A couple of speed cameras flashed me - no big surprise since I was paying scant regard and the Evo's satnav doesn't either... but foreign-ness seems to preclude any follow up in my experience.

Anyway, I'm here now, and the car's in one piece (which is frankly incroyable), if a little snowy... the lane to the house is like something from the Monte Carlo rally. No, in fact it's more like something from the Winter Olympics. A bobsleigh run, I would say, actually. But that's fun, on my board or in the car ;)

2008-11-15T14:39:00.004Z

What on Earth makes people think they can achieve whatever they set out to do? Hate, hate to reign in your American dream (not), but no matter how much I want to I cannot expect motorsport success like Michael Schumacher, play raging forehands like Roger Federer or be a business guru like Bill Gates. And neither can you. You can try, and you may do very well, but there are limits imposed by nature and by luck. The saddest thing in this achievement-obsessed culture of ours is that nature might have imbued us with potential for greatness in a field that our circumstances never led us to consider. Or even to have heard of! But that, my friends, is life. It isn't fair. Sometimes it isn't fun, either. Suck it up... or don't and leave more opportunity for the rest of us.

I find it REALLY FRUSTRATING when people confuse the well-documented benefits of visualisation and positive thinking with the flawed idea that you can simply wish yourself wherever you want to be. I'm sorry, but you can't just wish yourself riches, talent, looks or social relevance. You can strive for them, or you might just have one or more of them through luck, genes, social circumstances, whatever. In most cases I suspect that both luck and application are required. I particularly like the saying "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity". We aren't going to get anything just because we "want it so much". That, unfortunately, is a myth perpetrated by X-Factor and other horrors of its ilk.

Rant over.

2008-10-19T12:26:00.006+01:00

I am going back to France in December. To the French Alps this time, to live here:

In the meantime, however, I still live here:

Which is also fairly awesome, frankly...

2008-10-17T12:09:00.001+01:00

Strange things found on bathroom walls part II - in the otherwise unbelievably awesome Silverworld Hotel (see pics below) I observed this funny red button thing next to the loo-roll holder. Something about its demeanour made me think it was the attachment point for one of those retractable washing lines, but there wasn't one and anyway that would have made using the loo a bit of an athletic feat, so I have to go with my second guess and say it's an emergency button of some kind. Right next to the phone. Why anyone needs a phone there I cannot say, but if it has a purpose then calling for help when one has fallen and become inextricably wedged in the toilet bowl must surely be one of them. An additional red alarm button seems, then, somewhat redundant. I did not test my theory, I hasten to add. I had visions of a Chinese SWAT team abseiling through hidden trapdoors in the bathroom ceiling. I may have drunk too many cocktails the night before, and instilled in myself a healthy dose of the fear. Or I may be naturally cautious in a land where no one can understand me. Everywhere, then.

2008-10-11T01:53:00.005+01:00

Well, Kowloon city in fact. This Regal believes itself to be a four star establishment and the marble-festooned lobby and ancient modernity would tend to support this view. But what makes a quality hotel for me is not its quota of bling and marble, but its ability to deliver hot water, food, coffee and most importantly information in a timely and accurate manner. And here the Oriental lets itself down. Even more important is the distinct lack of any technology to stop the bathroom mirror steaming up. That's like hiring a car and finding it doesn't have aircon. Archaic, in other words...

On the up side, my room looked great, with everything you might expect plus an iPod dock speaker system and lots of cream leather and marble. More rockstar party than travelling businessman, really. A beer bottle opener attached to the wall next to the loo is a bit odd. I don't particularly want to go into the bathroom to open a beer. Bizarre!
I love this whole old meets new scenario - hi-rises, planes, trains, buses and bamboo scaffolding. Wicked.

2008-10-10T14:27:00.003+01:00

Since the Olympics the rules about applying for Chinese visas have changed. Sadly the government doesn't seem to have published the new rules anywhere obvious, so even the visa service I use in the UK (Trailfinders btw, they're awesome) took the applications in three times and came back on every occasion with tail between legs. Our last shot was to apply for them in Hong Kong airport. So I checked out the website and it said the desk is open 'til 10pm, visas take 4-5 hours to obtain, it's actually quicker than going to the office down town. Cool. We were flying in early Thursday evening so I thought, maybe can get them that night, but worst case the next day sometime.

"Monday afternoon, if we use express service" says the dude. "Whaaaaat?!?!?!?!?!" says I! Rapidly wind neck in, deep breath, use the Force. "There must be a way we can get them quicker"

"Oh yes," he says "If you pay double you can have them tomorrow". Done. While we're completing the forms, two Aussie women rock up to apply for visas, and are told Monday afternoon. They are as shocked by this as I was and bleat about how they were told it took half a day and they're going to miss their onward flight. Visa dude explains that the rules changed half a year ago and they can't have them 'til Monday. I was about to mention the nod-wink speed upgrade scenario but they had legged it in search of another solution. Odd... but typical of the randomness of the place.

2008-09-27T15:34:00.005+01:00

It is oft-times said that I never do any work, though rarely by anyone who actually knows me. I do understand however that I maintain the illusion of inactivity well enough to fool all but the least indifferent observer. It's like peeling an onion and that old frenzied activity beneath the surface metaphor all rolled into one. Anyway...

Last week I, like, "totally" did some work - check it out ;)
This is me tape-sealing a prototype drysuit at the Bat Cave even though the taping lady (who's much better at it than I am) graciously offered to come in on her day off to do it so that James could take it back to Switz with him. Astonishingly he's just emailed to say it keeps all the water out!
And this is me and James making NookieTV - a bunch of product info videos for the Nookie brand, largely scripted and acted by us in a most Jackass stylee. This one's about spraydecks and we thought the best way to illustrate their waterproof qualities was with a jet-wash. Watch this space. LOL.

2008-09-23T13:35:00.003+01:00

Been a long time. I've been kinda busy. Just back from the Gauley Festival in West Virginia, which if not a lifelong ambition was at the very least a thing I've wanted to do for years. Previously I have always been too busy in the Bat Cave at this time of year. Sadly I don't have many pics, but here are the impressions I do have.

At the festival itself I met a surprising number of people I know from the world of kayaking and the industry thereof. Either I'm not as far out of the loop as I had thought, or people don't grow up and move on the way I assumed. Who can say? Anyway, it was a barrel of fun, and I got to run the mighty Gauley on a big release (I'm told) so there we have it - another box ticked :)

2008-08-16T13:05:00.005+01:00

Fashion is the spell society casts upon the imaginary "now". My quest for the fashionable Zen and Tao led only to tea - perhaps a more noble thing, indubitably a more difficult one to master. Where tea is concerned, one man's perfection is another's perfidy - the disappointment felt at a taste/expectation-mismatch as acute as any I can describe. Attempting mastery of it, then, is a 'pleasantly futile task' (with a nod to the genius of the late Douglas Adams) and the satisfaction inherent therein extends across my entire philosophy right now.

Indeed I do live for the moment. The next one.

2008-08-06T15:15:00.003+01:00

Lol it's not unusual for bits to snap off the furniture at the Bat Cave... to say we don't exactly keep our feet on the floor as our mothers' recommended would be a bit of an understatement. Clambering on the furniture, jumping off it, crashing into it at speed and hurling it around are all normal behaviours chez the Nookie workplace. But normally when something broken off it's not because it's become inextricably tangled in Wilson's jeans. I say again... lol :)

2008-07-29T16:30:00.003+01:00

Just found this on my phone :)

I lent my open boat to Darrell and he paddled it a mile up river, then discovered he couldn't work out how to turn it round. I don't think the wind was helping. So anyway, he despaired of this and paddled it all the way home again in reverse. The hull's symmetrical. Why he didn't just turn himself to face the stern I don't know. Oh no, I do know - it's because he's Darrell ;)

2008-07-05T15:58:00.004+01:00

Despite the aforementioned meagre photography skills I managed to take these with a camera phone. Why does it take the photo about three seconds after you press the button? I don't know. Anyway yesterday Cassandra took a short break from waving a very large and less temporally challenged camera around, to make an origami jumping frog. Awesome!

I have no doubt that the photos she took are going to be a little better than mine. Only a little, mind ;)

2008-07-04T15:00:00.001+01:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I suck at taking photographs, and this one is no exception. It is also sometimes noted, somewhat unfairly imho, that my DIY skills are somewhat substandard. That is why I have turned my meagre skills with a camera to recording this, my awesome ceiling fan which I installed unaided and without a hitch, despite the assertions of the instruction leaflet that an assistant would definitely be required. OK, so I did read the instructions, yes. Feel free to question my sexuality. But I installed a ceiling fan! I rock!

Tim and I got drunk and decided to see if we could stick our hands in the fan while it was going round at speed. This questionable decision proved less dangerous than one might have thought, because of beer armour and I expect the fan's designed not to injure idiots too badly anyway... but in the cold light of day I'm fairly astonished that the torque imparted by said experiment didn't rip it off the ceiling. Again, I rock!

2008-06-30T18:45:00.003+01:00

On Congestion...
I visited the frozen North the other day, and on the way home experienced the full force of our nation's overcrowding. Or over-reliance on the car. I'm not sure which. Several times on the M6 I was slowed to a standstill, and spent several minutes crawling along at 30-40mph. Part of the problem is how unutterably rubbish (most of) the English are at motorway driving - they don't so much overtake as queue in the outside lane. The protocol seems to be that if you want to be going faster than you are, you move to the right. When you arrive at the point that moving any further to the right will result in an undesirably close acquaintance with the central reservation, you just sit dangerously close to the car ahead of you. Well done. You are an idiot. The two inside lanes are nearly empty and half full respectively, because hardly anyone pulls back into them when they have passed the car in front. If everyone would just do that, twice as many people could go twice as fast for twice as much of the time. Or something. But anyway you are all f***wits and you drive like tw*ts. Thank you.

On the plus side, the traffic jams were an opportunity to exercise a little positivity, by reminding myself that there are worse places to be than sitting in air-conditioned luxury listening to music. And despite the fact that you don't usually see a wide variety of people in a jam (cos no-one's going anywhere fast) I spotted a professional golfer, a pop star and a Grand National winning jockey. If I was a paparazzi I'd have been in heaven. As it was I was just sitting there with tears streaming down my face. But that was because I was listening to Del Amitri and wanted to go home in about equal measure.

2008-06-20T16:17:00.005+01:00

Yesterday evening was sunny and idyllic, with all and sundry turning out to enjoy a drink by the river. Why, then, did I have an appointment with a prototype drysuit and said river? I question my own judgement, there's no need for you to. And yes, I bite my bottom lip when I'm nervous...

I like to think I make a good splash...

and lo! I was dry. This cycle was repeated until I'd had enough. And yay! still dry. We're so scientific!

2008-06-20T15:37:00.008+01:00

Last week's mission to the Bitches tidal rapid, with both sea kayaks and teeny tiny playboats. Awesome.

2008-06-20T09:22:00.002+01:00

Peru, and why I'm back from France (for a bit)...Basically I came back to go to Peru (see kayakchicama.com) but I am now not going for a variety of reasons. The other guys leave to fly out there today and I wish them well. With luck they'll be able to update their blog regularly with impressions of what promises to be an awesome adventure.

I therefore now have a month free in my schedule. I hope that much creativity can occur.

I was planning to buy a house out in France but since I formed that plan the exchange rate has become truly awful, so I'm waiting. I may go back out and rent again though, if buying is not an option, because I really don't want to do another British winter. For now, though, it's lovely to be here in sunny Cornwall.

2008-06-19T23:14:00.000+01:00

Haven't blogged in soooo long! Since I came back from France, in fact. Because since then it has been a bit hectic. I was kinda smug about getting a photoshoot the very day I came back to blighty (although the ferry was so delayed by bad weather that I thought I was going to deliver my first ever no-show!) Since then I just haven't stopped running around. Metcalfe is at home with her second baby so all things at the Bat Cave fall on my plate at the moment. Add to that some pressing social engagements, more shoots, and a bunch of home improvement, and I have had no time to chill out and write anything, least of all a blog. But now I'm all caught up. Yay!

2008-03-28T20:24:00.005Z

Hardly anyone to play with at all at the hill today ;)

The view from the top was OK, too...

bit dodgy in the powder tho...

Would I?

On the way home I was stopped in some sort of routine check type thing by a whole platoon of seemingly adolescent Gendarmes in full body armour and toting MP5's. It was super funny on so many levels - I wish I had a photo or two but it seemed both impractical and imprudent. The chief stoppage officer (so promoted because he of all of them was the closest to shaving I imagine) took les documents and le permit de conduire to their van where they pretended to read them for absolutely ages. I passed the time staring at the token female one who was very pretty and had exceptionally well-fitting combats as only a French trained killer could. She dealt with this by letting go of her gun and fiddling with her hair, to my considerable amusement. Le Capitan returned to the car. I heard him mutter to the two juveniles who were admiring it with their guns trained on me that "it's too much like work, I can't understand a word". Another terrorist threat averted, I went on my way with a frank exchange of both the French pleasantries I know and some throttle blipping that seemed to go down well too.

Gendarmes have style, manners and the best body armour since Robocop. Especially the gloves, I need a pair of those.

2008-03-27T12:39:00.003Z

Maybe spelling just isn't important any more. Perhaps correct grammar has gone the way of the dodo. I myself experience a constant sense of dichotomy between a deeply ingrained belief in the correct use of language and an acquired distaste for un-necessary correctness, political or otherwise, when it stands in the way of freedom of expression.

Here's an example. Or two.

I like using plurals like "mouses". Collectives like "a flock of dolphins". Pronunciation like "FENG SHOO-EY" rather than "fUng sH-wAy". What do all of these things have in common? Clearly, it is the fact that no-one, I mean NO-ONE who is reasonably fluent in the English language could fail to know what I mean by any of these things and yet, in addition to the meaning so clearly understood each has conveyed something else, whether about my personality, my lack of commitment to learning the correct collective term for every type of animal and then arguing about it (Pod? or school?) or my dislike of people obsessing with local pronunciation (you do know Tao is pronounced D-OW don't you dahling?). Long sentence. I know. Trying to avoid the (incorrect) comma/and construct makes for breathless reading ;)

It's just language, damnit! But woe betide you if you've written "manger" instead of manager or "plague" instead of plaque (two examples I happened across just today). Or have failed to grasp the difference between "refuse" and "refuge". Why? Because it's ignorant, that's why. Delivers less than the meaning, whereas the deliberate wrongness (sic!) that I favour delivers considerably more.

2008-03-23T18:36:00.000Z

Was kinda snowy on the way to the hill today... so much so that there was zero visibility for most of the morning.
I stopped to say hello to the huskies who lie in the snow all day looking exceptionally relaxed. Some might even say lazy. One of them even deigned to open one eye and look at me.
Otherwise it wasn't a particularly great day despite masses of snow - couldn't see the piste and off piste kinda dangerous esp tout seul, so I came home early and watched the Malaysian GP on British TV. Yay me. Yay Kimi ;)On the plus side it snowed all night again and the vis seems a little better this morning. I've just looked at the webcam - two lifties thigh-deep in snow trying to dig the nursery slope lift out of the snow. Heaven knows how deep it is up on the mountain, but I'm going to look :)

2008-03-22T18:24:00.003Z

Oh, OK

here's my local hill (30 mins)...

and here's this morning's untracked powder forest (white out unfortunately) at Gourette...

2008-03-22T18:22:00.002Z

Need I say more?

2008-03-21T15:32:00.003Z

I stayed in a hotel in Chamonix - it didn't look even slightly Gothic from the outside. The interior decor was admittedly fairly Victorian, or whatever is the French equivalent. But studded leather panelling and furniture isn't exactly unusual, anywhere in the world.

It was only when I opened a wardrobe to find that even the coat-hangers were studded leather that I began to ask myself...

"Am I in a fetish hotel or something?"

2008-03-20T12:00:00.003Z

Happy Vernal Equinox, Eostre, Ostara or whatever you like to call it. Happy Easter for Sunday in case I don't remember. Why does the date have to be an exercise in institionalised randomness? The first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Equinox? What the hell (?) are you trying to prove?

2008-03-19T11:16:00.005Z

It's a mystery to me how the snow conditions can go from this sort of thing (blizzard, deep powder)...
... to conditions like those below, in only a matter of days. Above is Nikki btw, mostly obscured by very advisable crash hat. Wish I'd been wearing one. Vanity, all is vanity. See earlier post about my aerial starfish ;)
Where has all the lovely snow gone, I ask myself? Hazel and I valiantly ripped up the slush at le weekend, at times surfing across big puddles, at others tearing the a*se out of our boards on the rocks. But I want powder.

Me me me... Apparently it's back at the weekend. Hoorah!

2008-03-18T18:01:00.002Z

Yay... the car is complètement fixed. Je suis très heureux. It's not really surprising that it was making a bit of a noise. What's surprising is that it managed about five hundred miles of hurtling up and down mountains when the only thing carrying the weight of the front right corner was a tangled mess of rusty metal with some ball bearings mixed up in it. So I'm pretty impressed that it was just humming quietly instead of screaming for mercy.

2008-03-10T20:10:00.003Z

The List

Not usually one for counting mishaps, but this week has been carnage for which I was mentally ill-prepared.

1. Deprived of the internet almost as soon as I arrived and got connected. Boo.

2. Forced to spend the first day house hunting as it snowed, and snowed and snowed some more... To be fair some of the houses were awesome, but I still woulda rather been on the hill.

3. Trashed an old woman skier in a lift queue - well, it wasn't my fault in reality but that didn't stop her husband from getting shouty, taxing my patience and my French. In fact I had joined the line behind her and then decided to shuffle off to a different lift. As I did she stepped back and put one of her planks on my board, so of course I took it with me. She fell over and started faking like a Premiership footballer while her spouse took the bull by the horns and acted as though I'd charged into her full-tilt like, I dunno, some outta control snowboarder or something. Rubbish.

4. RTA. Got rear end shunted by a French lady (no, no, no) because I stopped at a pedestrian crossing. I know it's not obligatoire en France but there was a pregnant woman trying to cross, OK?

5. Hiked into an untracked powder bowl forgetting that my bindings were not real far back. Got grumpy because someone else had ridden it while I was on my way in. Dropped it anyway and got a big starfish somersault for my trouble. Was able to ride out rather than swim, luckily. Sore neck and head though ;)

6. Aforementioned mechanical nonsense. The car makes a bit of a noise. I find a wheel is wobbly and it ain't the wheel nuts. I suspect the wheel bearing. Local mechanic he say "Non. C'est pas le roulement". So I leave him the car to fix, and when I come back he says he tightened some big nut thing and it's all good now. I drive it up the road and of course it isn't. I explain this to him and he says it must be the wheel bearing after all. Fantastique. A new roulement can be fitted on Friday, apparently, for only slightly more than the cost of a bijou residence in the foothills. OK I exaggerate. But not as much as I'd like.

So, these things come in threes, do they?

2008-03-10T18:11:00.004Z

Recent updates have not been forthcoming because the jolly old internet connection got toasted in a storm. That's the bad news. The good news is that said storm, and its aftermath, has furnished moi with a non-stop supply of snow. Which shows no sign of letting up. It's a relief to me because when I left to come out here it hadn't snowed for a month!

OK, actually there's more good news/bad news. For some reason, driving very sensibly in the snow (of course) has trashed something in the cleverness that is the Evo's drivetrain. It's making a funny noise. The local mechanic is super keen, but I can tell he's trying not to reveal that I might as well have asked him to diagnose a flashing dashboard light in the Millenium Falcon.

Hey ho - at least it still goes and there's snow.

2008-03-03T22:14:00.003Z

The shouty red chav car has made it from top to bottom of France, attracting a lot more attention than it would in England but only incurring the wrath of one speed-camera the whole way. It's wearing its snow shoes (thanks Keith!) and I'm looking forward to taking it up the hill but tomorrow I have to spend all day viewing houses. French estate agents are way too keen. Boo-hoo...

2008-02-19T10:48:00.004Z

Perhaps it's a good thing I'm fleeing the country. I've had two parking mishaps in the last week. Both of them right outside my house. First I left the roof down overnight, and because it was a beautiful top-down day, of course it was a flippin' freezing night, duh. Very frosty in the morning, sitting on rapidly melting ice. Not good. Then I got a a parking ticket. In the middle of the night. What is that about? Oh well. It's been a decade of parking wherever the hell I like for £30. Bothered? Lol...

2008-02-17T23:59:00.000Z

Canoexpo was a bit of a roaring success in my view. I don't know whether anyone made their fortune, or whether I did for that matter, but it was a marvellous thing for the industry and the boating public. Helga enjoyed it enormously, too.

2008-02-10T13:27:00.001Z

I'm moving to France at the end of the month. Motivated mostly by proximity to snow, rivers, surf and airports. Turns out I can be within half an hour of each. Who knew?

Many pics and words relating the trials and tribulations of this transition (see what I did?) shall no doubt follow :)

2008-02-09T13:20:00.000Z

Camera phones are at least useful for one thing - taking pictures of photographers - this one the marvellous Cass. Most of 'em seem to hate having the tables turned on them, but they can't exactly complain when they're pointing an infinitely bigger and more intrusive camera at you, can they?

Also very useful for the time your mate answers the door wearing his girlfriend's pink bathrobe (which really isn't long enough) but that pic's staying on the phone because it's NSFW and not that good for my personal wellbeing either!

2008-02-08T19:37:00.000Z

Random restaurant. Amused me.
Food was great, but had to listen to Japanese style (Chinese language) live rock (covers of Western songs) while watching the Dixie Chicks on the big screen behind the band. Like I said, random restaurant.

2008-02-08T12:15:00.001Z

The cat is simultaneously alive, and dead. I am right and wrong at the same time.

Paradoxically... ;)

2008-02-07T12:08:00.000Z

Worth a watch, not just because it's a lovely singer/song. Makes you think. Made me think.

2008-01-04T18:36:00.000Z

I am disturbed to discover that I like the music of My Chemical Romance. Enough to buy an album. Or maybe that should read 'I'm sufficiently disturbed to like...' Yay me. Either way, something deep within my psyche assures me that this is very wrong, but I can't fight it - it's really nice music!

Heartfelt apologies to avid MCR fans btw. I know you want it to be something a bit more special than "nice". But wait 'til you're my age... you'll understand, I promise. Yes, I know you aren't planning on living that long. The odds are that you will though. Yes, years and years more of this torment. But hey... great bands like that come out every year, which should keep you amused. What? No one could ever... sob... ever... sob... replace... sob... etc?

*sigh* just play the track again.

2007-12-31T18:11:00.000Z

It's a new dawn, a new day, and a new life... fo-o-o-or meeeeee... and pretty much everyone else. Every day. There's nothing very special about New Year. But I suppose that it's easier to mark our progress, or lack of it, with milestones that everyone understands and recognises (!), and that we are all the happier for it. Last year I made a lot of resolutions - too many as it turns out. I did learn the Argentine Tango, and I did stick to my exercise and diet regime. I did not learn moderation in everything in general or drinking in particular, I did not buy a new house, and I did not learn a new language. I did achieve various firsts that I didn't write down before and no, I'm still not going to now! In retrospect, I think I did OK and the shame of it is that I promised too much. In doing so I made what was a fairly successful year look like a catalogue (!) of failures. So this year, I will only resolve to do one thing.

I wonder what that one thing should be...

HAPPY NEW YEAR to Everyone. I hope 2008 is kind to you.

2007-12-28T14:18:00.000Z

Btw the (!) is for every time blogger-spell tells me, by dint of some red underlining, that I've spelt (!) something wrong. I'm English, you moronic machine. I have also selected English (United Kingdom) as my language of choice. So favourite (!), colour (!) and centre (!) are all correct, and you are wrong. And, presumably, American. But mostly just wrong.

2007-12-27T14:07:00.000Z

There is a Boxing Day tradition of all-day drinking, chez moi. Since I am experimenting with moderation, I started late - around three. I'm sure this was more than early enough to render me a gibbering idiot by tea-time. I have little or no recollection. In fact, since I can no longer reliably distinguish dreams from reality, I have spent much of today filtering the memories I do have for the impossible, or very improbable. Like, I know that talking to my friend Steve was a dream, because he is in Austria, and I was in my local. I am also fairly sure that I dreamt (!) someone stole my favourite (!) white boat, because I have never owned a white boat. Simple, really.

2007-12-22T06:08:00.000Z

Winter solstice is always a day when I look forward with much positiveness. (Sooo much better a word than positivity. I don't care what you think.) But this one was difficult, stricken as I was with a slight cold. All important work done. All shopping shopped, all decorating decorated. Wham! As if by magic, 'tis the season to be poorly. As usual. And when one recovers and sallies forth for a medicinal tipple? There is no escape from the mockery of women, is there?

"What have you been doing lately?"

"Not much, I've been a little under the weather..."

"Oh, man-flu, eh?"

This conversation happens so often I feel as if I'm in Groundhog Day.

Well, I've learned my lesson well (what's wrong with "learnt", blogger-spell? Is that not a word in American?), or at least... eventually.

All such questions shall now be answered "Oh, exciting, manly stuff. Travelling to exotic locations. By rowing boat, to reduce my carbon footprint. Mountaineering, too. On live volcanoes. Lava-surfing. Rescuing damsels in distress, slaying dragons. Stuff you can't do, being a mere woman."

How well would that go?

2007-12-19T15:48:00.000Z

Another of life's bizarre ironies. I was saying the other day that I haven't seen a milk bottle for years. Or a milkman, now I come to think of it. I honestly thought we all got our milk in plastic cartons these days. From a supermarket. Or in my case a corner shop - I drink a lot of tea. Even milk cartons seem to have been consigned to history, which is ironic in itself - the people who invented them made one of the more impressive fortunes of modern business, yet milk isn't sold that way any more. Presumably because the cartons themselves were actually a bit rubbish.

Anywayz... shortly after mentioning this I walked out of my house and what was the first thing I saw? Yup, a milk bottle. Stranger than fiction, but then as Stephen Fry once said, "Wouldn't it be spooky if that never happened?"

It wasn't this milk bottle btw. I just thought this was an exceptionally amusing one.

2007-12-18T13:40:00.000Z

I'm not well. I sensed it at the weekend but managed to hold it together until I was on my way home from the Smoke, at which point I turned into a wheezing, shaking wreck. Epiphanously, though, I now see why primitive peoples are so down with their rubbish drugs - it's just that delirious remote sensation that provides the most vivid memories and moments of clarity. And presumably, they get up with a bit of a hangover, rather than the flu. Not that I have flu, I hasten to add. I have a bit of a cold. Nothing really to write home about. Not man-flu. Oh, no.

My headlong exit from London has left me with some interesting memories. The smartly dressed gentleman at Canada Water, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was vomiting down the front of his coat. The girl who sneezed on my hand on the Jubilee Line. The tall blonde stunner on Waterloo station who was so busy ignoring me that she fell over a dwarf (I nearly wet myself). The businessman I shared a table with on the train who couldn't take his eyes off my watch. And then home to bed and a seemingly endless night of scary hallucinations.

2007-12-17T23:23:00.000Z

I have to sleep but just wanted to record that I have lost yet another water bottle.

2007-12-15T10:27:00.001Z

It's that time of year again. The solstice looms and the cold crisp mornings have everyone reaching for scarf, gloves and hat. But the morning tide is a magical thing, and if the sun comes out, so must the glitter boats. Beats scraping the ice off the car.

Photo by Andrew Coulter

2007-12-13T14:06:00.000Z

First of all this is a kind of apology to all the things I've abandoned, left behind, lost by accident. Maybe it's because I hate waste... maybe I form too emotional an attachment to inanimate objects I happen to like (I luuuuurve my iPod, new shoes, car)... I don't know. But I feel a pang of genuine sadness when I realise that I left my favourite shower gel behind in a hotel bathroom yet again. And the number of water bottles I leave lying around defies reckoning. Railway station ticket office counters are favourite for that one. I also lose one every time I fly, these days – the result of an over-zealous security system, at best. I curse the loss of my faithfully re-used container, filled from a tap, as I buy yet another undersized, overpriced bottle and continue to fuel a moral and environmental disaster. And then there are the more important possessions – I don't often lose 'em but I am really sad when they break or end their useful life. Apart from phones, which these days have to be regarded as disposable, despite their apparent cost. I try to keep a reasonably functional spare one in reserve. It doesn't cost much to keep in touch, but nothing is forever.

On my way to London, it's an early start. As I drive to the station, other early birds are also on the pre-dawn journey to work, braving icy roads. They're mostly travelling in the opposite direction, I notice. Coffee in cupholders or clutched to the steering wheel, headlights dipped too late or never on full-beam at all. Normally I have scant respect for these drones. I would have more if the ones I met didn't always complain about their work. But today their lights, at least, are my friends.

I realise that on my journey I morph from tribe to tribe. I get up like so many people where I live – someone without a nine to five. Someone for whom going to work is a special mission, planned for hours if not days in advance, clothing and equipment packed in readiness. Not for me the daily routine. But on the road I have turned into one of the 6am commuters. I try to imagine what they do for a living and I hope they like it, but fear that the truth is quite the opposite. They get up early and get home late, of that I'm sure. It's the same for me, just for today. But by the time I get to the station I'm a different kind of traveller. Most of the other men on the platform are in smart suits, cashmere coats, discreetly expensive shoes. They have briefcases, smart laptop bags. They look at me askance, wondering perhaps who this incursor might be in his jeans, Converse boots, urban-retro shoulder bag. Thinking I dress like their children, perhaps. Or maybe I just don't know the code, how to acknowledge these alpha-males who work in the City, in finance, in publishing. I will earn more than you today, I broadcast in a telepathic flash. If only it was every day. But then again, no.

On the train I am someone else again. For the next three hours I am a writer first and foremost. There are others in the carriage working on portable computers but mine is the only Mac – it's a powerful statement. They have their spreadsheets, their databases and reports, creating wealth and status, saving for Xmas or a conservatory. I'm writing this. Technologically I connect more with the arts/fashion/design students. They know the score. Or at least, they understand why someone would need a Mac. Some of them are also wearing Converse. But they don't wonder who I am, what I'm doing, because they are young. Their own lives take up all their thoughts. By contrast I think only about them, judging books by their covers, stealing souls to give shape to my words. I drink more water than anyone, it seems.

The old ladies probably don't notice me morphing. They just see a nice young man – a little scruffy perhaps, but more approachable than most of the others. They wonder what I'm writing, but they don't ask.

Later, I imagine myself a ghost on Waterloo station. It's one of the few places I ever find myself killing time. I feel as though I could drift here for ever, un-missed and un-noticed. In reality I expect I'd get bored – I enjoy people-watching, but I can't do anything for more than an hour or two. Perhaps when you're dead there is no sense of time, and hence no boredom. I hope so. Of course, I'm not a ghost. I wander around, dreaming, stumbling and veering constantly, breaking the unspoken rules of foot traffic and tutted at by seasoned commuters. I wonder how it looks on CCTV. I expect they see hundreds, thousands of tired, preoccupied people doing much the same dance. Nothing special about me here.

Then I sit still in a café and look between the people, and I fancy I can see the real ghosts. They look like smoke, or the waves that wind squalls make in rain-showers, like armies of falling water marching through the air. But there is no smoke, or water - no medium for them to bend at all. Just spaces the between the people, when you don't look at the people. Like reading between the lines.

The paper-sellers are giving away free umbrellas with the Evening Standard – an oddity amongst increasingly bizarre marketing gambits. I have a strange compulsion to buy a copy, so maybe it actually works! I never buy the papers. And I have several times the number of umbrellas normally required by any household, a result both of the forgetfulness of my friends and a misguided shopping spree in China. But I see other people carrying their new umbrellas still wrapped in the plastic, and I want one enough to start rationalising the purchase. I should keep more up to date on current affairs (rubbish, you peruse several news websites a day) and I will need something to read on the train (nonsense, you have a catalogue to proof-read, two books to write, an iPod and a laptop). Perhaps I just like umbrellas a lot. The evidence would seem to support that theory. But certainly I would leave it somewhere, sooner or later, and that would make me sad.

2007-11-28T12:56:00.000Z

Philosophy - I've never studied it. But somehow I had the impression that the ancient Greeks had a bit of a monopoly on it, and that Socrates and his students like Plato were the pinnacle of human thought and argument, an inspiration to us all. I have even read that Socrates is widely credited for laying the foundations for all Western philosophy. Although, to be fair, that was only on Wikipedia. Which doesn't even mention me!

So imagine my delight when an otherwise disappointing foray into my local pub brought me face to face with a translation of the Dialogues of Plato, mine for only £1 (it's that kind of pub)! I took it home and devoured it eagerly. And arrived very rapidly at a dilemma.

Either, a) I am very stupid and completely missing the point of the cleverness of this chap Socrates, or
b) there has been some significant improvement in the arguing skills of people over the intervening 2000 years, because... well...

it just didn't seem that convincing.

The Socratic business model seems to revolve around finding someone who is quite highly regarded and making them look stupid with a series of searching questions and deft syllogisms. Now, foregoing the fact that this isn't really big or clever even if you are good at it, I have to say that the arguments S uses to confound his previously respected victims are flimsy to say the least!

A typical example is the following dialogue. S is talking to a bloke called Ion who recites and explains Homer for a living. He's famous for it, and (by his own admission) knows Homer's work better than anyone else. So S can't resist trying to take him down, and says

S. "Surely you don't know best about everything Homer wrote?"
I. "Everything, yes. I've won prizes and stuff."
S. "What about when he wrote about medicine? Wouldn't a doctor be a better judge of that?
I. "Well, I see your point, but..."
S. "And what about when he wrote about chariot racing? Surely a professional chariot driver would know more than you about that?"
I. "Well, yes he would, but..."
S. "And what about..." and so on

Now, Ion's a bit full of himself but he doesn't deserve this rubbish. If they were down the pub in the modern era, I'm sure Ion would say "You're being a prat, Socrates. I didn't say I was the fount of all knowledge, I just said I was good at reading and explaining poetry. Shut up and drink your drink."

Who knows, maybe he did say that. I doubt that Plato was averse to a little poetic licence (and you can see that I'm not ;), and he wouldn't have wanted to recount the tale of his esteemed master getting a good hiding in the village square.

Anyway, the whole book's like that, and I'm very disappointed. Greek philosophers won't be making it onto my reading list any more.

That's called a parable, btw :)

2007-11-16T14:07:00.000Z

Here's a teeny thumbnail from Tuesday's shoot in London.I hope I can get a less pixelated copy, it looks hilarious.

2007-11-15T13:14:00.000Z

Apparently I have some new books out. Does anyone else think it's weird to find out about your own career on the internet?

I have to tell you I didn't write the sailing part. I can sail a boat but only because my parents put me in one at the age of seven, explained where they were going and told me to sail there. Wasn't as hard as it looked, but I'm sure my technique is as flawed as my understanding of why what I'm doing keeps working. Which is a microcosm of my whole life, actually. Also they probably knew that the tide would take me there anyway. So that's why I didn't write the sailing part.Ultimate Survival is just a new floppy paperback version of Extreme Survival which published early this year. It should have been called that in the first place, since they edited out great chunks of my text that were deemed "too extreme"!!!

and Urban Survival is ... well, about Urban Survival. I haven't seen a copy so I can't tell you much about it. I'm sure it's very good. I like the cover, particularly as it features me punching Denson in the chin. Way to make a living.

for book sales check out Amazon

2007-11-14T14:50:00.000Z

This is what happens if you take your eye off the ball when playing squash. My opponent put his full 14st behind a shot that travelled all of a metre before hitting my unsuspecting arm. Not his fault, I was looking the wrong way. The injury was even funnier (?) at the time - there was a dent in the arm and a muscle had got shunted out of the way making a great big lump between the impact and my wrist. By the time I got home it had mostly realigned, leaving only this amusing telltale, which disappeared the next day as most of my arm turned blue! The moral of the story is - look at the ball not an empty wall!

2007-11-12T15:18:00.000Z

Facebook isn't perhaps the fount of all literary wisdom but it's super-nice to be bigged up by people you respect, wherever that might happen :

'Debra Searle added "Kayak Surfing by Will Mattos is the best instructional book for any sport ever" to her favorite books.'

Thanks D.

2007-10-29T21:23:00.000Z

There are only so many pics you can post... seen one bicycle/hotel build, ya seen em all. Here are my more iconic ones, such as they are.

This is the biggest foyer I ever saw. From the door you can't actually see the people at the desk. There's a tree growing behind them though, to help you spot 'em. The chandelier is bigger than my living room at home.

Here are some chefs fishing for crabs in HK harbour, and putting them in a champagne ice bucket. Classy...

And bamboo scaffolding is always a favourite, especially when counterpointed by steel containers and western-style graffiti.

2007-10-15T14:24:00.000+01:00

Just a quickie - in China this week... after about 27hrs of travelling I just had the best Japanese (?) meal ever and my hotel room has coathangers that don't suspect you of being a tea-leaf, so it's all good. Pics to follow ;)

2007-10-11T11:21:00.000+01:00

Just needed to do a bit of shameless promotion - I LOVE this Tshirt...
Also available in a ladies' T I believe :)

2007-10-01T10:42:00.000+01:00

Nice to work again with Abi Galatia. I met her ages ago on an assignment for Adrian Rogers, (see a previous post about that) and she seemed perfect for this. Anyway, more of her at the Nookie site. Enough links already lol...

2007-09-26T17:42:00.000+01:00

Why has it taken me four years to realise that "delete" on a Mac is Fn+Backspace? Why is it that Macs don't have a delete key anyway? Is it just that and the weird drag-to-trash eject concept that still exists despite the recent inclusion of an eject button? What other idiosyncrasies lie therein?

2007-09-26T17:30:00.000+01:00

Everywhere I go I like to eat out at an Indian restaurant at least once, and take a picture of a sunset. Trouble with sunsets is that, unlike Indian cuisine, they all basically look the same. What matters then is what indigenous (or otherwise) flora, fauna, topography or architecture can be prettily composed in said sunset. It's especially difficult when all you can find facing west is empty and featureless coastline, with not a single rock big enough to be interesting. Luckily, a scooter!

2007-09-25T08:48:00.000+01:00

More wedding pics - Sian & Jamie getting hitched in Cyprus - party on the beach - v.cool

2007-09-23T16:53:00.000+01:00

From one wedding to another - on Saturday my good friends Bern & Tam got hitched in Devon, which was lovely (left), and on Sunday (today) I flew to Cyprus for niece Sian's marriage to Jamie, which takes place tomorrow. Pics to follow of that.

I'd sort of forgotten that when you go to weddings there are lots of other people there that you like as well. It was wicked to see all the peeps that came over to Devon, including the Canada ex-pat kayakers, and I expect that the Cyprus mission will be good for that too but in a more family way maybe.

In the meantime here are some first impressions of my hotel!

In best Mediterranean tradition, the view from my bedroom window seems to be mostly building site. I think I'm in the Brit-bar "way-hayyyyyyyyyyyyy, 'ave iiiiiit!" part of town by the looks of things - I can see a giant KFC bucket looming over some remnant of local architecture...

In the hotel things look a 'lil better...

It's got a lot of atria? full of this sort of thing in the middle of it... and outside a bunch of swimming pools and seaside and so on... here's a sunset.

so I'm muddling thru, at the moment...

2007-09-13T15:55:00.000+01:00

Here's another thing that was actually a while ago ago. I only just tracked down a copy of the mag to scan the pages. It's a review of the marvellous Valley Sneaker surf kayak for CKUK... pics by Steve Childs taken earlier in the summer. I think the whole thing looks pretty sweet.

You can download a pdf of the whole thingy here if you'd like to read :)

2007-09-12T15:36:00.000+01:00

I've got a Macbook Pro, hooray! The ageing Powerbook is now winging it's way to NZ with young Denson, who is going to wring the last out of it.

So far the main benefit of the McBk seems to be it's built-in webcam, with which I took my new profile pic. Glad I got some use out of it, because I won't be using it as a webcam, despite the admonitions of various dubious fakers who will no doubt soon be the only people actually using Myspace, Facebook etc. Incidentally I deleted my Myspace account. What a waster of time that was! Anyway, you have no idea how hard it is to take that overhead self portrait more often associated with persons of more cleavage than I, when you have to hold the entire computer over your head in order to do so!

Other benefits appear to be the larger screen (now 1440 pixels wide and still not enough for the average Myspace page.. I know, I'm ranting...) and the fact that it now actually prints with all the printers I installed.

I will keep you posted ;)

2007-09-11T12:30:00.000+01:00

Nobody tells me anything - I just found myriad translations of my first book... French, Spanish, Danish, Polish... Polish!!! I notice the French publisher felt the need to strike my photos from the cover - merci mon ami...

2007-09-10T22:25:00.000+01:00

Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Chortle.... I'm in there somewhere ;)

2007-09-09T14:28:00.000+01:00

Here's fun - had forgotten about these photos until I was researching for last Thursday's shoot and found the catalogue on the Perception website.

The whole thing is available as a pdf download from their site. It looks quite funky!

Must emphasise the pics are not from last week's shoot - last week's will most probably be for next year's catalogue and website I would imagine...

2007-09-08T14:20:00.000+01:00

"The Hermit denotes a need to have some space between you and everyday hustle and bustle of a busy world. The Hermit needs to retreat. Indeed, happiness for The Hermit requires seclusion, freedom for material wants and time for intense introspection. The answers The Hermit needs cannot be found in our physical world. The truths he seeks are internal and spiritual. The distraction of a well developed social life can only impede his quest for personal truths. Still, The Hermit does sometimes need to share time with others so that he can learn or teach, guide or be guided. The Hermit’s time spent amongst people depletes his energy quickly. To avoid an overload, he has to retreat from social settings quickly." From Facebook's Tarot application - I have taken the liberty of correcting the typos!

Hmmm... this would appear to be me. Damn...

2007-09-07T14:12:00.000+01:00

It's Friday.... and... relax. Drink beer... not too much though since I have to get up and finish my DIYing - living in a building site is quite frankly doing my head in! It is nearly finished though. It is nearly finished though.
It is nearly finished though.
It is nearly finished though.
It is nearly finished though.
It is nearly finished though.
It is nearly finished though.
It is nearly finished though. It is nearly finished though. It is nearly finished!!!!!!!! Please!!!!!!!

2007-09-06T14:01:00.000+01:00

Thursday's photoshoot was some sea kayaking for Perception & Delta, all mashed-up with some petrol-head craziness for Explorer Marine. It's Daniel Hall and Alex (f) Allden in the kayaks btw. All photos Metcalfe.

2007-09-05T13:53:00.000+01:00

Wednesday photoshoot with Tuai on his mountain board. Crazy airtime with no place soft to land. Utter madness if you ask me! This time it's moi on the fat end of the camera, so I'm counting my blessings that a few of the shots are in focus and correctly exposed, cos that boy just doesn't stay still in flight. I'm lying in the dirt here and he's jumping over me. Again, for more pics see the Nookie website and pdf catalogues :)