General

We're approaching the end of a decade, and it appears that the fashionable thing to do among those with an interest in music is to write about what we each perceive to be the best music of that decade.  I'm somewhat cynical of the journalistic merits of endless list writing, but they provide a simple enough structure in which to place some opinions, and I'm lazy enough about writing as it is, so I think I'll allow myself a list every now and again.  I also find it curious that lists like this are headed up as being "The best of..." when these things are clearly extremely subjective.

Anyway.  That's enough preamble criticising the post I'm yet to make, so I'd best get stuck in.  Here follows a run-down of my favourite albums of the past 10 years...

10 - Jay Z - The Black Album

I've only started listening to rap music in the past year or so, and Jay Z is pretty accessible as far as it goes.  I find listening to rap music interesting, as the focus on words as opposed to music means that the style of "lyrics" is very different to the rock music that I usually listen to.  With those genres you have to worry about the middle 8, the guitar solo... hell you have to worry about a tune.  With rap you have a beat, and words... maybe a sample to go with it.  The musical side is stripped down in favour of the words, so the vocabulary, the wordplay, the rhyme structure can be much more varied and inventive.

I also enjoy the different content in rap music.  I've listened to a lot of rock and pop in my time - I've heard more than my fair share of love songs, for example.  Rap tells different stories, and while they may be somewhat harsh to our white ears - bitches, niggaz, crack and Glocks - it is an alternative to the over familiar milieu of yet another mainstream guitar band.  I even find the palpable hubris somewhat alluring - it's very different to hear someone like Jay Z rapping about being at the top of his game, the best in his field, in contrast to the overly modest shoegazing Britpop bands I grew up with.

The Black Album is not, I am told, Jay Z's finest work.  The Blueprint is said to be a far better album, for example, and while I enjoy that too I'm just not drawn to it in the same way.  Maybe it's that The Black Album is more in your face and more polished in it's production.  And maybe it's just the fact that Dirt Off Your Shoulder and 99 Problems makes an almost unbeatable double A side.

9 - Semisonic - All About Chemistry

Ah, back in safe territory.  Itunes pegs this as "power pop" and that's a fair assessment.  Guitar, drums, keyboards... I know where I am with this.  This album formed part of the soundtrack to a very happy time in my life, my last post-school summer before going to university.  This choice is more about the memories of that time than it is anything to do with ground breaking music or particular lyrics, so maybe in that capacity it helps that here there is the familiar love and heartbreak that are such a big part of teenage years.

It is slightly bitter-sweet that an album I like so much was a commercial failure compared to it's predecessor.  The band has been on hiatus for the 8 years since, and I'm not holding my breath for another album from them.  Still, there's worse albums that you could go out on.  This is thoroughly competent, well written and well produced pop.  It also scores bonus points for high levels of innuendo, including an entire song about masturbation.  And why not?

8 - Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around

This was the last album released while Cash was alive.  It consists largely of covers, though the title track is of note as an original recording documenting Christ's return in a calm, foreboding manner that I find both horrifically threatening and wonderfully comforting in light of my faith.  The music here is stripped down and minimal, with some songs featuring just an acoustic guitar alongside Cash's distinctive voice.  His voice is absolutely captivating, and there's a brilliant selection of tracks on here in all manner of styles.

The standout track is generally held to be the cover of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt, which serves as a tragically beautiful epitaph to Cash's life, and the place he found himself as he approached his death.  I also like the cover of Sting's I Hung My Head, a ballad about a young man on trial for an unintended shooting, and Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.  Elsewhere, moving from the sublime to the ridiculous there's an old folk song, Sam Hall, with it's refrain of "Damn your eyes!" being hurled at everyone who stands in the way of the protagonist.

I often struggle to listen to just vocals and a guitar (you could throw a million talented "singer-songwriters" at me and I'll struggle to retain interest) but the variety of music here and the voice doing the singing are just too much to resist.

7 - Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit

I was introduced to Belle & Sebastian by my then girlfriend and now wife, who had been introduced to them by an ex of hers.  She gave me Belle & Sebastian, and I gave her the Eels, and we spent a considerable amount of time listening to their music as the soundtrack to our early years together.  The Life Pursuit was released in 2005, by which time we were married, and - to employ a tenuous metaphor - their music has grown and matured as our relationship has, while also getting rather weird around the edges.

This is a diverse album, employing a lot of styles and with some fairly eccentric lyrics, and some very casual use of "the f word" that I can't help but smile at given the way the female backing vocalist echoes the line.  It's also very "full" music, which I like - there's always a lot of different things to listen to on a track at any given time, like a slightly tidier Radiohead.

6 - The White Stripes - Elephant

If Belle & Sebastian's music is full but tidy, then The White Stripes' is full but incredibly messy.  This is lo-fi grungy, and desperately under-produced, like they recorded it in a week on a tape recorder in someone's bathroom, but somehow it works.  Meg might be one of the world's most bizarre drummers (and by bizarre, I mean inconsistent - not a great quality in a drummer) but she serves as an excellent muse to Jack, the creative mind here.  I couldn't even begin to tell you what Jack is singing about, but he definitely means it whatever it is, and the music is performed with a fervour that you don't really find much of these days.  This is imprecise, and all the more exciting for it.

5 - Muse - Origin Of Symmetry

Ah, Muse.  A band on an inexorable trajectory into Matt Bellamy's pretentious little world.  Their albums have been steadily getting more and more ridiculous, with their latest offering tipping right over the edge with a song that ends up being sung in French with a clarinet solo to finish.  Hmmm.

However, look back to 2001 and you find the high point of the band's musical output.  This album is frenetic, driven by it's distorted guitars and falsetto vocals, the best example of which being the unstoppable Plug In Baby with its ba-rock guitar riff.  Elsewhere, a piano dominates Space Dementia, in the face of the onslaught of drums and bass, and on Hyper Music the bass takes its turn to push the verse along with a definite sense of urgency.  There is an air of musical competence about the album, suggesting that someone behind the mic actually knows a bit about musical theory, which is good to hear once in a while.  Yes, that does mean that there are hints of the musical silliness to come, but here they act as inventive tweaks to already solid songs rather than choking things into submission.

This is Muse at their best, and makes for a very welcome listen after attempting to enjoy the latter half of The Resistance.  It was nice knowing you guys.

4 - Radiohead - Hail To The Thief

Hail To The Thief is Radiohead's last "conventional" studio album, before they got fed up and decided to release In Rainbows on the web for no fixed fee, and thereafter gave up on releasing any albums at all.  Radiohead find themselves in a similar position to Quentin Tarantino who, having made his name and his millions on Pulp Fiction, can now do whatever he likes.  After the unprecedented success of OK Computer, Radiohead are in a position to do anything, and the risk here is that they will.  Mercifully things haven't got quite as silly as they have for Muse, but they've certainly got quite weird, and I rather fear they won't be able to come back from where they've taken themselves.

After OK Computer, Radiohead released Kid A and Amnesiac, which are both very inventive and exploratory albums, if not necessarily enjoyable in the conventional sense.  The experimentation was, however, absolutely necessary in bringing Radiohead to a point at which they were free to produce an album on the scale of Hail.  This album returns to the rock band roots of guitars and drums, but is not constrained in any way by any sense of the nature of the band or the music they make.  The music bringis in any number of other instruments and recording techniques picked up in their more experimental phase.  The music is altogether surrounding, almost oppressive and at times exhausting; the lyrics are every bit as weird as you'd expect and more; Thom's vocals are as ragged as ever, except when he's screaming or, on the last track, almost rapping.  This is definitely Radiohead, but more so than ever before.

Looking back on this album, maybe it's not a wonder that Radiohead have decided to stop recording conventional albums.  It must have been a veritable ordeal to put together something as big as this.

3 - Eels - Souljacker

As I said earlier, as my wife introduced me to Belle & Sebastian, so I introduced her to Eels.  Eels are a pretty weird band, and in keeping with a couple of other choices on here, the music wanders all over the place, the production is minimal and the vocals are pretty rough.  Souljacker is very varied in tone, with some very dark songs about persecution, violence and murder, all of which stand in contrast to Fresh Feeling, one of the most beautiful love songs I know of.  The two even collide at times, with World Of Shit taking it's place as one of the weirdest love songs I know of - a marriage proposal as being the best option in the otherwise awful world we live in.  Funny how things work out.

2 - Green Day - American Idiot

American Idiot was a very welcome comeback album, coming after Warning, an album I found to very disappointing.  Green Day seemed to be drifting into much more mainstream pop-punk territory, to have lost their way.  I can't really say that they had "sold out", without being lynched by the hardcore punks who'll claim that they sold out as soon as they signed to a record label that didn't operate out of a trailer and sold more than 37 records, but it wouldn't be too wide of the mark.  I feared that they'd be making safe records from thereon, and had rather lost interest.

In the face of this, came American Idiot, a surprisingly grown up political punk album.  My father has, in the past, complained that no one makes political music any more.  Where is today's Dylan, for example?  Well, if you can accept that he might be using an electric guitar these days, and have started swearing a fair bit, then here is your modern political rock album.  The album has a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with all things middle America, not least the Bush administration and the war on terror, as evidenced on the masterful Holiday, and takes no prisoners in criticising the various things that have attracted the band's ire.  The album was billed as a "rock opera", which could be enough to get you worrying about things getting pretentious again.  It works though, as a cohesive album following it's protagonist on his journey, set against the middle American backdrop, through youth, religion, politics, leaving home, war, death, love...  The album covers a bit of everything, in it's own crunchy, shouty way, and really cemented Green Day's position as one of the great rock bands of modern times.

As an aside, there should also be an honourable mention for Dean Gray's (alias Party Ben) re-working of this album, into the mash-up album American Edit.  Heartily recommended if you like mash-ups.  Which leads us to...

1 - Girl Talk - Feed The Animals

Ah, here we are.  This is my one chance to feel somewhat self satisfied in the face of people who know much more about music than me, because I can be pretty sure that next to no-one will have even heard of Girl Talk.  For those of you with a better memory of the 80s than me, I am not referring to the teen duo who made a minor incursion into the charts with the backing of Stock, Aitken and Waterman.  Rather, I refer to the stage name of an American DJ who specialises in mash up albums.  For the uninitiated, mash ups combine samples from two or more songs to produce something new.  For the Radio 4 listeners among us, One Song To The Tune Of Another could be seen as a primitive precursor to this...

Feed The Animals is just under 54 minutes in length, and is made up of somewhere in the region of 350 distinct samples from music sourced from the past 50 years.  The album is  a single, seamless track.  The length of samples used ranges from fractions of a second to a minute or so.  From a purely technical point of view, I cannot help but be absolutely amazed at the craftmanship involved here, in putting together so many pieces into a coherent whole that rolls from start to finish in this way.  The degree of invention here is incredible.  Busta Rhymes and the Police?  Sure.  Kelly Clarkson and Nine Inch Nails?  Why not.  The Carpenters next door to Metallica?  Better than you might expect.  Salt n' Pepa's Push It, Deee-Lite's Groove Is In The Heart and Nirvana's Lithium all at once?  Hell.  Yes.  The album is beautifully eclectic, by it's very nature, drawing on music from all over the place, and making for a constantly surprising listen.

If Itunes is to be believed, I have listened to this album over 30 times in the 6 weeks since I got it.  I love this.  I really, really love it.  It's a masterpiece.

A friend of mine, who works as a teacher, texted me a couple of days ago to ask permission to use a blog entry of mine for a lesson she was planning.  I asked which entry, and she said she was after the one I'd written yesterday.  I can only assume she'd misread the date on my last entry, but it did rather spur me on to thinking I ought to get back into writing on here.

So, it's been a year since my last entry, and it has been quite a year.  Quite a hell of a year really.  The long and the short of it is that I was diagnosed with depression in August 2008, and since then I've been on anti-depressants and have been attending counselling for some of that time.  I'm now in the process of coming off my medication, all being well, which I'm very glad of, but it has been a pretty rubbish time all told.

Depression, and most mental illnesses, are not terribly well understood.  I can only imagine that it's quite hard to quantify, categorise, diagnose and treat illnesses which take place entirely within the patient's head with very few outward symptoms.  I'm inclined to believe that depression is frequently misdiagnosed, be that false positives for want of any other diagnosis or false negatives for lack of the patient perceiving any problem or the doctor spotting it.  There's also a very palpable stigma surrounding mental illnesses which follows from the lack of understanding, which makes it rather hard to discuss with people.

One of the people I was able to discuss things with was a tutor of mine on a professional course I'm attending, who informed me that he'd also suffered with depression at university.  He said that he'd found the most crippling thing about it to be the utter loss of motivation that comes with depression, and I absolutely must agree.  Depression can rob you of the desire to do anything at all, with the ultimate potential result of not even wanting to get out of bed in the morning.  I was never that bad, but I can certainly attest to a lack of motivation to do anything productive, be it work, study, learn new things, go out... I found myself wanting to do nothing but kill the time, and would perhaps have gone on that way until time killed me.  I could spend hours in front of the TV or computer, watching rubbish, playing games I didn't particularly enjoy, constantly refreshing forum pages on the web, for no other reason than that it passed the time.  I didn't find it easy to take pleasure in many things, or to take pride in anything I did manage to do.  This is bad news for married life, family life, work life... you name it.  Perhaps tied in with the lack of motivation is the hopelessness - the lack of belief that things can ever be better, or that you can change anything.  I have an irrational fear at the best of times whenever I'm ill or have a headache or a hangover that I will be left feeling that way for the rest of my life.  Depression extended that despair to bring in fears about my work, my capacitiy as a husband and father, my potential to be happy.  It's very hard to go through life with such a bleak outlook, and it's not a wonder that I was occasionally suicidal.

I'd been feeling like that for quite a while - I wouldn't even like to guess how long, maybe years - when I went to the doctor's in August last year.  Depression is assessed using a little 10 questions survey, which seems a rather blunt instrument for such a complex and varied condition, but such is the lot of the GP handling hundreds of patients with every ailment going.  Either way, the computer program "confirmed" my depression and I was duly prescribed anti-depressants and counselling, which I think it's fair to say have helped quite a lot, though not without their problems, mainly relating to the medication.  Anti-depressants are somewhat renowned for their side effects, and it's not unusual to have to try numerous types before finding something that doesn't leave you fast asleep, wide awake, sick as a dog or even more suicidal than you were before.  Even given all the potential side effects it can essentially boil down to choosing between actual depression and a collection of potentially depressing side effects.  Mercifully the first pills I tried were largely OK for me (though a friend of a friend tried the same brand and got the shakes and chronic insomnia - go figure) though with some rather cruel side effects.  No sex drive while depressed?  No sexual ability while on anti-depressants.  No motivation to do anything while depressed?  No ability to concentrate while on anti-depressants.  Still, at least the desire to step in front of a train was fading.

So, here I am a year on.  I've finished counselling for now and I'm slowly coming off the pills.  I'm feeling more positive about things and a lot more motivated to get on and do things.  The difficulty now is in making up for lost time and picking up the pieces of everything that was damaged in the interim.  I've a fair bit of catching up to do in my marriage, my studies, my employment... It's quite difficult trying to make up the ground on everything, as though I've been in stasis for however long while everything around me has slowly decayed.

Still, I am at least still married, still a father, still employed and still alive.  In other news, my second daughter has been born and I've bought a Mac, so it hasn't been a totally rubbish year.

It seems that these days it's not enough to be a celebrity. You have to be more than that. You have to be a brand. You must have your name on clothes, jewellery, perfume, make up, music, books, films... anything you can really. You needn't be any good at any of the things you're doing, but that's not important - the key thing is maximum exposure, wherever and however you can manage it. Hell, it's worked for Victoria Beckham, hasn't it?

Taking a step back, I can only assume that the logic behind such aggressive branding is that a certain percentage of people are expected to latch on to a given celebrity and can then be persuaded to buy anything with their name on it. Like Lily Allen's music? Why not buy one of her dresses. Like Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex And The City? Try her perfume. Like Paris Hilton... in her half-arsed sex tape? Dress yourself head to foot in her clobber, wear her perfume and jewellery, listen to her album, read her book and watch her in a film (with her clothes on this time around).  Perhaps this last one is the biggest mystery of all, given that she's famous for taking her kit off and is then marketed entirely towards women, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised - Playboy don't seem to have any difficulty persuading women to buy anything with their bunny on it... But I digress.

In the UK, we're blessed with a particularly mindless power-branded couple in the form of Katie Price/Jordan and Peter Andre. Famous for having a surplus of breasts and a deficit of musical talent, they dominate women's trashy magazines and get their name tacked on to just about anything going. While Peter has mainly just tagged along and sired a few children, Katie has dabbled to a greater or lesser degree in the following:

• Glamour modelling
• Politics (no, really)
• Television
• Music
• Lingerie
• Jewellery
• Haircare products
• Horsecare products
• Books (autobiographical)
• Books (childrens)

The only field to permeate our house is the children's books. Beth's last childminder gave us one of Katie and Peter's "Mermaids and pirates" books after her daughter got too old for it. The story is about Katie the mermaid and Peter the pirate having a picnic, together with an assortment of seagulls and crabs. There's a nice little moral about sharing. The illustrations are nice enough. As a kids book, it's pretty good really.

On the back of the book there is the usual copyright notice and publishing details, and the following text, which I quote here verbatim:

For fun, games and lots more visit www.katiesmermaidsandpirates.co.uk  For Katie Price's adult website visit www.katieprice.co.uk

A brand too far? I think so.

I work in Manchester, just down the road from the Arndale shopping centre. Part of the centre crosses Market Street, so there's a large sheltered area there. You often get buskers and the like there. There's a wicked blind guitarist who plays there sometimes, people do dancing of various forms - George Samson used to dance there, and sometimes people do chalk art on the floor or sell pictures.

One day last week, I was walking past, and saw a small crowd of people watching something. I found a space to watch, and saw a black guy with dreadlocks playing speed chess against a twenty-ish girl, while a very tired looking Ipod dock blasted out Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise. The chap played very quickly and very well from what I could judge, and dispatched his female opponent with ease. He shook her hand and then asked for another volunteer from the audience to play. The crowd started to dissipate, while others taunted their friends to take him on. I looked around at his signs that he'd placed on the floor, which proclaimed him the "Jamaican speed chess champion" who needed to collect money to fly home to see his dying father. Still, the man was asking for a volunteer, with no one brave enough to step up to the proverbial plate.

I sat down with him.

He shook my hand and introduced himself as Pablo. I told him my name, and conceded ahead of time that he would destroy me, as I'd not played for years. We arranged the pieces on the board, he reset the clocks, and flicked the Ipod to playing Killing Me Softly by The Fugees. Game on... I opened the best way I could remember, and he countered with ease. The crowd built around us, as I made mistake after mistake. I dithered over moves, while his hand shot to his pieces before I'd even let go of mine, and we hit mercilessly at the clock at our side. With his queen on my back row, and my king pinned behind a solitary pawn, I conceded checkmate. He had torn me apart in a matter of moments. The crowd applauded. I got up, threw a pound in his collection box, and wandered off to catch my train home, glad of the opportunities that one can find in the cities from time to time.

---

That evening, I decided to take a look on Google for this mysteriously stranded Jamaican chess champion. So, a search for "Jamaican speed chess pablo" reveals... That he's a fraud. Several sites on Google report him as running his little scam in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, as well as Montreal, Perth (Australia, that is), Tokyo, etc. Always claiming he needs to get back to Jamaica in the next ten days, to see this father of his. In the past he's charged for games, though on the occasion I saw him he was just accepting donations. Either way, I had been had. I'd been hustled out of a pound by a phoney. Even at the time I wondered how a champion of his calibre could fall on such hard times that he'd have to resort to this to get home, but I was clearly taken in by his charisma and the quality of his chess. I had fallen for it.

The strange thing is, I am not angry with him for "stealing" money from me; rather I feel I have been robbed of an experience. My memory of playing chess with a Jamaican champion on the streets of Manchester in front a crowd of people is a lie. We may have played chess in front a crowd, sure, but the reason for doing so was a fabrication, a get rich quick scheme for a lazy chess player. I had believed him. I had wanted to experience something as unusual as playing chess with a champion who had fallen on hard times and was using his skills to solve his problems the only way he could. In those fleeting minutes I had played chess with a brilliant man, while people looked on in wonder... Except I hadn't.

I am reminded, in some ways, of the conclusion of Yann Martel's book, The Life of Pi, which I would recommend to anyone with eyes in their head to read it. If you've not and you intend to, look away now, before I discuss the ending... The end of the book concerns the eponymous Pi's claim that the preceding story is entirely true, while the sceptical parties to whom he has related it, disbelieve and say it is a pack of lies. Pi tells them that they are free to believe what they prefer to believe - if they have the faith, they may believe the improbable story that he has recounted, or they may believe their stripped down, straightforward interpretation. The choice is theirs, to believe what they want. In that sense, I find that I prefer to believe the fantastical account of my chess foe, even if the facts clearly show him to be a fraudster. I would like to believe that his story was true, that he really was the Jamaican speed chess champion, struggling for money to fly home to his ailing father. Never mind that I have since found the name of the true champion, and Pablo it is not, or that he has been playing this game in any city he finds himself in, and by extension flying the world on his victim's money... None of this is important. What matters it that for about 3 minutes, I played chess with a champion, was deservedly beaten, and gave him some money to aid him on his noble quest to see his father before he died.

Or perhaps I never met him, but merely happened on his story and chose to write about this...

What price nostalgia? Last week, I spent £15.70 to have a look at the past and see what it was like. A couple of weeks back - probably around the time I was watching the No Surprises video over and over - I had a lengthy chat with my mum to try to get to the bottom of why I'm so predisposed to feeling melancholy; she's known me about as long as anyone, so it seemed a reasonable bet that if anyone knew then she might. I don't know that I got many answers, but in the course of discussion I came to wonder whether I'd been "happier" prior to moving house from Haslemere (Southern Fairy fancy town where footballers live) to Heswall (Northern monkey fancy town where footballers live). It sticks in my mind that I was happier before then than since. Perhaps there's something in that...

Besides, class had finished early for the day, and I quite fancied a nice walk in the sun. If nothing else it would be nice to see how well I could remember places I'd not set foot for over 18 years.

I took a train from London Waterloo to Haslemere, a journey I'd not made since - at best guess - I'd last been to visit London with my dad all those years ago. It seemed odd to be making a journey like that again after all this time, and doubly strange to think of it as a journey that my dad made every working day for about 7 years. I wonder how much faster the trains are these days... It's a very different journey to my commute into Manchester. The railway line appears to carve out a path through woods and forests, where my journey merely runs past a slag heap and through a handful of small towns. I'm struck by how green everything looks, and by the different plants that grow around here - there's bracken everywhere, for example. I don't know where I'd go to find bracken up North, but it's all over the place down there.

The train approaches Haslemere, and I feel nervous, like I'm about to meet someone important, or do something dangerous. I remember travelling to Newcastle, my birthplace, from Durham, while at university, and feeling similarly strange. This is a stronger feeling though - I left Newcastle at 18 months, and don't remember it at all, but I feel I know Haslemere like the back of my hand. I've not brought a map with me, but I'm confident I'll be able to walk about 5 or so miles around the town without getting lost.

Stepping out of the station, I take a right towards Wey Hill, and I see a dentists on the other side of the road. It looks very different to when I was there last, when I had my first orthodontic brace and my brother had his first fillings. Apparently it's the Denplan Dentist of the Year. Heading towards Wey Hill, I pass a pub, and it occurs to me that my landmarks for navigation are completely different to anything I'd have used back in the day. These days, I work on pubs and churches. Last time I was here, I attended one church and no pubs.

I pass the library and a fabric shop that I remember my mum taking me to. I don't see the toy shop where I bought a Lego set and a teddy bear with one year's birthday money, so I guess they've closed down. At the bottom of the hill, I'm disappointed to find that the old leisure centre where I learnt to swim has been supplanted by a Tesco store and a few blocks of flats. I wonder how long it will be before Tesco crushes the Co-Op over the road, the scene of my first shoplifting crime in which I took a tin of Quality Street off the shelf and started eating them. I don't recall if my mother was made to pay for them, but I know she wasn't best pleased. Behind the Co-Op there's a children's playground with a very tall slide that I'm sure I never went on, much as I wanted to. I toy with the idea of going on it now, for old time's sake, but there's kids everywhere and I'm not sure it would go down too well.

On towards Shottermill, I pass a church where we attended a Finnish School of sorts for a number of years with my mum, and a layby outside a newsagent where I remember discussing the withdrawal of half-pennies with my dad. I press on, heading out of town somewhat, towards the roundabout that takes you to Liphook, and pass another pub that I don't remember. I assume it was here when I last was, but I couldn't really say. Shottermill Ponds are as pretty as I remember them, with ducks, geese and swans swimming on them. I take some photos and hope I can put together a panorama later.

I can - click for a big pic:

Rounding the corner into Camelsdale, and heading back towards town somewhat, I pass children in school uniform, playing by the ponds and in a park where I remember a fete of some kind. Some of these children are the same age I was when I left. The younger ones could feasibly be children of people I went to school with. Of course, I don't recognise anyone, and even if I did, what could I possibly say to them? Since our lives diverged they've doubtless run parallel courses, but what could we have in common any more?

I'm starting to get thirsty walking in the sun, so I call in at a newsagent for some Ribena and a Double Decker. The name - Cee Gee's - is the same as it was when I was last here, though it appears to be independent these days, where I remember it as part of the now defunct Happy Shopper franchise. I toy with the idea of asking the shopkeeper how long she's owned the shop, but decide against it. The gentlemen behind me in the queue talk to each other and I wonder how my accent would sound against theirs. They would probably think I sound Northern, which would at least make a nice change from being up North and sounding Southern. I expect my voice will always sound like it belongs in another part of the country.

I walk down towards St. Paul's church and Camelsdale Primary School. The vicarage has been extended but the church is just as I remember it. They've cut down the elder tree from which my siblings and I used to pick and eat the small black berries after church. I look through the church windows, trying not to appear too suspicious to the parents picking up their children from the playgroup in the church hall, and I'm proud to see that a banner my mum spent weeks making still hangs in the church, exactly where I left it. I'm glad they're still enjoying it, given the work that I saw go into it. The school is also much as it was when I was there, barring the removal of a few trees and some rebuilt outbuildings. I don't see the small outdoor swimming pool that used to be there, and either way I'm sure that the laws nowadays wouldn't permit children to get changed in the open air with only a towel to protect their modesty...

Back up the hill and past the street where I went for piano lessons. I recall sitting in our car on the piano teacher's drive while my mum spoke to her, and letting the handbrake off to see what would happen. Had my knowledge of physics at the time been as good as it is now, I would have deduced that the car would roll down the drive and into the road. I may even have figured out that that was quite dangerous. As it was, no such thoughts occurred to me, though mercifully my actions didn't lead to any injury, death or damage.

I approach one of the hills that surrounds Haslemere, and head further out of town, past a builders merchants (I remember it as Jesse Mann - it now calls itself Coomers) and then round a bend in the road to the site of many a grevious crime against humour, as perpetrated by my dad... The turning towards our house is on a bend with very poor visibility so whenever we drove out of that junction my mum had to get my dad to duck so she could see past him. Sometimes when my mum asked him to duck my dad said "Quack", much to our amusement.

Smiling to myself at the memory of this, I head on towards the street where I used to live. The road is quite narrow, and I remember the days after the '87 hurricane (or "storm" if you must insist on meteorological accuracy) when it was blocked by trees and you couldn't get a car out of there. At the bottom of our road I pass a little stream that goes under the road, the venue for many games of Pooh Sticks (Google lists a website for a Pooh Sticks World Championship, which sounds awesome. Alas, the website is rubbish). The houses around here are enormous, and the gardens look like they could have been transplanted directly from Ness Gardens or somewhere similar. I imagine that some of these gardens would be a full time job to look after, but if you can afford to live around here, I imagine that you can afford to pay someone to do that full time job.

I walk past our old house, but I can't linger to look at it for long as the owners - who also own two BMWs - are just pulling into the drive. The house is as I remember it, though I fancy that the end of it has been extended out towards where we used to have a greenhouse and a vegetable patch. I shudder to think how much the house is worth nowadays. Half a million? More?

At the top of the road I turn briefly to the right down an old bridlepath that we used to walk with our nanny, who looked after us when my mum was finishing up her English classes. There's the overgrown remnants of a log pile that we used to hide in and around, and I'd like to walk further but it would deviate from my planned route. I turn around and head back in the opposite direction, past the house of a girl I used to know; my mother informs me, and I vaguely recall, that I used to fret about whether she'd marry me when I grew up. Ah well, it wasn't meant to be! Onwards round a corner, past ponds where I once found a snuffbox - old fashioned even then - and more enormous gardens. There's a small table outside a tired farm building with boxes of eggs and an honesty box, though I fancy the eggs aren't at their best after a day in this sunshine. I take advantage of my age and independence and walk a path that I never trod but always wanted to, through woods that skirt the edge of Shepherd's Hill. I see a fox sat in a field, but I don't have the right camera to get a good shot of it. Nevertheless, it occurs to me that when I was last here mobile phones were the size of a briefcase, the 35mm camera was just in fashion, and the Walkman (the ones that played tapes - remember those?) was hitting it's stride. These days my mobile has Walkman written on it, and a camera in the back of it.

I pass a house for sale with a sign that says "Plot and 33 outbuildings". My mind boggles somewhat.

I get a nosebleed - they've picked up this past week for some reason - as I head into the town centre which seems apt given how they plagued me as a child. At the other end of town is the doctor's where they cauterised my nose after first anaesthetising it with... cocaine.

I have a quick look at the nursery I went to, where I remember puzzling over the difference between addition and multiplication - why should 2 + 2 = 4 = 2 * 2 ? Surely one of the signs in question is redundant? I stay long enough to take a picture of the building, but I feel self conscious, as though in this day and age I could be arrested for even looking at any kind of school with children in it.

The town centre is an odd thing, with a building stubbornly located in the middle of an elaborate roundabout. I look at the shops - there's a bookshop and a Woolworths that I remember, others that I don't. The bookshop's sign doesn't appear to have been painted since I left. I wander past the museum and take a quick look at the doctor's, then head back into town to look for somewhere to eat. I settle on a Wetherspoon's pub, different and the same everywhere you go. I sit down for sausage and mash with a pint of cider. I watch a cat climbing over shop rooves and I call Alison and Beth, and I miss my family. Beth is pre-occupied with her Duplo, so conversation with her is brief. I finish my meal and listen to the surrounding clientele curse out their conversations, and for a moment the only difference here is the accent people are talking in.

I get up and head back towards the train station. Passing a small park, I see teenagers loitering, and I wonder whether they have always loitered here. These ones probably weren't even born when I left, but perhaps others loitered before them and I was just never around to notice them. Rounding the corner on the approach to the station, I come across a gang of men, suited and booted, no doubt returning from their days at work in London. I think of my dad again, coming back each day from work and heading home to his waiting family, and I'm reminded of how I feel like my dad every day, getting the train to and from work, coming back to a house with Alison and Beth waiting for me.

I run over the station bridge and get on to the train to Waterloo (how many time's did my Dad nearly miss a train here?) and reflect on what I've seen...

I think it was easy for me to remember things in a certain way, given my age and the simplicity of my life when I lived here. I didn't know the world was broken at the time, but plenty of bad things were happening when I lived here. Vietnam and the Cold War had just about ended, but the Gulf War was brewing. John Lennon wasn't long gone. Fred and Rosemary West were burying people under their patio. Meanwhile, I was a child, playing in the garden, reading books, going to piano lessons, walking in the woods. I wasn't worrying about exams, girls, popularity, sex, money, work, wars, recession... I was innocent, and protected from all the troubles of the wider world. They would have got round to me eventually though, and I'd have found out about it all, and it would have probably been just as difficult to deal with as it was for me up North.

I wonder if I was slightly naive to think of my time in Haslemere as trouble free - a simpler life - but perhaps it's only natural that my mind has picked such a prominent event as a 200 mile move as the dividing line between my innocence and my... enlightenment?

I'm reminded somewhat of Rob's fixation with Charlie in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (a masterpiece, as I've said before, in both book and film form) and how he had made her, in his mind, the root of all his problems.

I'm not sure what questions I was asking in going to Haslemere, and I'm not sure they were answered, but I definitely learnt something, if only about myself. The ancient Greek aphorism Know Thyself comes to me. I think I do understand myself a bit better following the trip, and that's got to be worth £15.70 of anyone's money.

I only recently found out that the carbon monoxide in that lyric refers to suicide by way of vehicle fumes. It fits with the rest of the song, but it's still somewhat jarring to learn that, not least when it seems so obvious in retrospect.

I've been busy as all hell lately, with work and studying and family and trying to enjoy life at some point along the way. Work has been pretty dire lately, and I honestly don't know how much longer I'll be able to stick it out for before moving along. Likewise studying has been very hard work, though now that my exam is out of the way I feel I've got a bit more room to breathe. Family life is more enjoyable by orders of magnitude, but nevertheless hard work. And even "fun" seems a tremendous effort at the moment. It's much easier to just pass time without regard to whether I'm actually enjoying anything I'm doing.

I came across the video for No Surprises a couple of months back, having not seen it for a long time. The imagery seemed distressingly relevant at the time, and I watched the video several times in tears. It was rather reminiscent of my miserable teenage years, at which time The Bends was a mainstay in my music collection; a time when I felt sure I knew just what the man in the Just video had said, and knowing why he'd wanted to lie down in the pavement and stop...

I wish I could stop. Lie down. Rest.

Anyway...

Alison and I watched Control the other night - the documentary film about the life and death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. I can't claim to know much of Joy Division's music, beyond the marvellous Love Will Tear Us Apart and even that only due to it's presence on the Donnie Darko soundtrack. I did know what Joy Division meant prior to seeing the film, though that's more to do with my obsession with trivia than any interest in the band. Still, even without my having any real interest in the band, the film was engaging and interesting, and quite moving. The story was somewhat reminiscent of the much more well known Kurt Cobain, what with him being unable to deal with his fame and the pressures of performing. It was quite interesting because it was very difficult to sympathise with the lead character. It was much easier to pity him for his mental problems (depression, epilepsy) than to sympathise with him, as some of his actions - particularly with regard to his love life - were basically selfish and foolish. The suicide itself was well done, and very moving. Quite challenging to think of his situation and how he felt, and whether a person could ever be justified in killing themselves and leaving a wife and daughter behind like that.

Sticking with films, but on a decidedly lighter note, Alison and I are going to see the new Indiana Jones film on Saturday. It's getting some mixed reviews, but I'm sure it'll be good at what it does. I'm sure it won't be a searing critique of the work of archaeologists under the pressures of the cold war, as some critics apparently think it should be, but I'm certain that it will contain the following at a bare minimum:

• A hat
• A whip
• A tomb/cave/other dark place
• A car chase
• A fight

which should be about enough to carry it really. I've no doubt that it won't be as good as Raiders, or even as good as Crusade, but with the dross that Hollywood gets by on these days, I'd even settle for anything as good as Temple. It'll be 2 hours of thud and blunder led by Harrison Ford, which will definitely do the job.

Alison and I are picking up the new Lego Indiana Jones game for the Wii too. It looks like good fun, and if it's anything like Lego Star Wars which we both had a great time playing, then it should be £30 very well spent. The Wii has been one of our best purchases of late, and I've been amazed at how much I've been able to get Alison playing it. Gaming has normally been my domain, and occasionally a mystery to her, so it's been quite good to find some games we can play together. Mario Kart and Mario Galaxy have been two recent surprises - I'd never have expected to have got her playing those two.

Right. More another time... I'll write about some films next time.

It surely has been a while...

I've just returned from a few drinks with an old friend of mine. Always good to catch up with someone you've known nearly 20 years. There's a somewhat unusual sort of freedom with someone like that. Like, if you've known someone that long and not freaked them out or driven them away by now, then you should be pretty safe to talk about nigh on anything, right? So, that was nice...

I've had my birthday just lately. I'm now 26 years old. People keep telling me I'm more than halfway to thirty and that sort of thing, as though I'm somehow supposed to be bothered by the inevitable, unavoidable, irrevocable passage of time. You may get the impression that I'm not overly fussed by being 26, or being 27 next year, or even 30 in 4 years time... You'd be right.

I was given money for my birthday, which is fair enough because that's what I asked for when people asked what I wanted. I've bought myself a swanky new Ipod, which is pretty cool. I've ummed and ahhed about getting one for a while now and it is pretty handy now that I have it. I've also finally got into buying music off the 'net with Itunes, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while, and so far it's not disappointed. It's all very easy and the quality is good, so I'm quite impressed. I know there's all the furore about DRM (I'm a geek - I'm supposed to know about these things) but I'm a bit apathetic about all that fuss at the moment. Anyway. The music's good and the price is good, so I'm not too fussed.

Beth is doing well at the moment. She's really getting the hang of talking now. She's apparently supposed to know 300 words by the time she's 2, but I'm sure she knows more than that already. She talks all the time, and is good at assimilating new words and using them properly. She's started to get the hang of talking on the phone too now. I'm currently away on training in London, but I've been calling each day to say hi to Ali and to Beth. I think she appreciates it, even if all she says is "Yes" to about anything you ask. Still, it's progress... a while back, all she'd say was "No".

I've actually got some good photos of Beth, from Christmas, and from a day a while back when we had some snow. I'll post them on Facebook or something, or on here sometime soon.

Training, ah training... It's pretty hard at the moment. I've got loads of work to be getting on with and it's very difficult trying to fit in family life and leisure time. I've come to appreciate the ironic use of the phrase "copious free time" as coined in - as I understand it - the US Navy and popularised by the legendary satirist and pianist, Tom Lehrer. "Sure", I say, "I'll do that in my copious free time". My, how we laugh, my fellow students and I, as we quietly wonder how we'll manage to cram everything into our brains in time for the exams. Panic is already setting in, and the first exam is still two months away. It's not looking good. I'll get back to you in May and let you know how it all turns out.

I've a mind to write about a whole bunch of other stuff, but it wouldn't really fit with this sort of general progress update. I've got a bunch of buzzing thoughts about various items of media... films, books, TV... Rough reviews of sorts. I'll post again soon, maybe even this weekend.

Still, don't hold your breath, eh?

One of the things I was given for Christmas, was a book that you may have heard of. It's called "Freakonomics" and it provides a rather unconventional look at the way the world works, tackling such issues as eduction, parenting, crime and so forth. It's fairly well written and makes for a pretty compelling read. It's occasionally guilty of the third kind of lie, but generally speaking the arguments and reasoning appear sound, if a little of the wall. The tone errs on the side of editorialising, but this is aimed at being a popular paper back for the casual economist, so that goes with the territory. Either way, it's a good read and I'd recommend it, if only to those with a passing interest in statistics and the like.

Yesterday I read a chapter concerning the fall of crime in the USA during the late eighties and early nineties, which surprised everyone as crime was expected to skyrocket at that point. The authors debunk various theories - improved policing, gun control, strong economy among others - and settle, with a knowing air of controversy - on the notion that it was the legalisation of abortion that led to falling crime. The argument goes that unwanted children are more likely to turn to crime, so as the legalisation of abortion (Roe v Wade 410 U.S. 113, for those of you who really want to read a full case note. For the less keen, the edited highlight can of course be found at Wikipedia) leads to less unwanted children, less crime logically follows. The reasoning is persuasive, albeit somewhat distasteful, and it certainly treads a fine line between utilitarianism and Machiavellianism. The idea that we can reduce crime at the cost of however many million unborn babies is certainly difficult to weigh up.

I am reminded, at this point, of another economic notion that I have come across in my limited flirtations with the subject. There exists a logical fallacy, known as "the parable of the broken window" which was conceived by a French economist in 1850. The fallacious argument goes that if a window happens to be broken, this is a good thing, because it makes work for the glazier, who can then spend his earnings on bread, such that the baker then has money to buy a pair of shoes from the cobbler, and so forth. The factor that is overlooked is of course that the owner of the original window has paid out the cost of the repair, and has nothing to show for it. He has borne the cost of the improvements to the rest of the economy, and the end result is that the system as a whole is worse off to the tune of one window.

It may be a sound argument to say that the abortion of many children is a good thing if it reduces crime. Society benefits from lower crime, and there is much rejoicing. The problem that is overlooked is that society has lost millions of children, and has arguably committed an act of corporate murder, depending on where you stand on the abortion issue. As for myself, I come at things from a Christian perspective, albeit a fairly liberal one. I disapprove of abortion for reasons of lifestyle, laziness and contraception, but I think it's probably OK if there is a great risk to the child or mother. All of which leaves me in the position of considering the cost of abortion to be a pretty steep one to pay for the prize of lower crime rates.

The real difficulty with this sort of thinking is that I'm pretty much bound by the nature of this life to think in terms of "the lesser of two evils". The thing is, I don't want the lesser of two evils. What I want is no evils. I don't want to have to pick between two bad things to try to achieve one good thing. The brick wall that I come up against is that this world is fundamentally broken, and no amount of chopping and changing can fix it. The window was broken way back in The Garden of Eden, with the apple debacle, and we've been attempting to pay off the glazier ever since. The sad truth is that the system can not be fixed from within, and requires an outside influence to sort things out - in short, it can only be done by God, by way of salvation through Jesus. That's the only way that this particular window can be fixed. Any other solution is short term and limited. We may fix one thing, but it will always be at the cost of something else, until we look for something beyond this world to help us out.

By the time I get round to uploading this, I will probably know who has been voted off Strictly Come Dancing this week. As it is, I'm writing this in Notepad and will have to upload it later, as I'm on the train and Orange 3G perplexingly classifies my blog as "pornography" and unsuitable for anyone under the age of 18. Obviously my last entry raised more eyebrows than was immediately apparent.

So, I'm probably on decidedly safer territory if I stick with good, wholesome family entertainment like Strictly. I'm obviously getting dangerously middle-aged and middle-class, as I'm an ardent Strictly fan. So much so, that Alison and I are going to see it live when they go on tour in the New Year. Excellent.

We had our staff ball a few weeks back. We all headed down to the Kensington Olympia, ate fairly forgettable food, drank lots of free drink and generally had a good time. As part of the entertainment they had a bit of Strictly Come Dancing competition with various of our partners dancing with professional dancers and being judged. Brendan Cole and Lilya Kopilova from the show were there.

After they were done, and whichever partner it was won and was given their trophy, the dancing became decidedly less sophisticated and artful. The DJ put on the dance music and thousands of accountants descended on the dance floor. I resisted the pressure to dance, informing people that they'd have to get several more drinks into me before I'd go anywhere near the dancefloor... Well, being as the drink was free, this wasn't too difficult to achieve. I went and had a dance, in so far as my uncoordinated flailings can be called dancing. I don't have a problem with rhythm - I'm pretty good at keeping to the beat - I just have a problem with moving my limbs in anything like a sensible fashion and without causing bodily harm to my fellow dancers.

So, I danced for about an hour or so... Me and a thousand other dinner jacketed men and evening gown-ed women, aged anywhere between 20 and 60, letting our hair down and taking a break from our hours sat at desks counting other people's money. "This is weird", I think to myself, my and many other arms raised in the air as Faithless' Insomnia booms out at us. "Dun-dun-da-dun-dun-dun-da-dun-dun-dun-da-dun-dun-dun-dun". I wonder how silly we all look, sweating away in our black suits, dancing with other people's spouses to 10 year old records. I can't bring myself to worry for too long though, carried away as I am by alcohol and deep bass notes and the sheer physicality of this slinking, gyrating mass of people...

It's a curious thing, but it's strangely liberating... Moving to the music, following the beat from song to song. I am, admittedly, relieved that I don't have to try to impress anyone with my "moves" - I don't think Alison really saw me dance till after we were wed, by which point it was too late - but perhaps that just leaves me freer to enjoy myself. I doubt I'll make a habit of it, and I'd rather be able to dance properly, Strictly style, than to do anything that might fit in at a club, but perhaps once in a while it's fun to give it a go.

***

And lo, it was Dominic who left. Not to worry.

"Don't go a strip club - those women have mother's, fathers and they want to have children one day!"

So went the exhortation from a friend of mine, shortly before she left the pub wherein we were celebrating our tutor's stag do. Predictably, we proceeded to go to a strip club, but not before getting a few more drinks inside us, losing several quid to the quiz machine and eating lots of noodles.

I have mixed feelings about strip clubs. On the plus side, there are women taking their clothes off; on the other hand, it's really nothing more than the more socially acceptable face of the sex trade. You see the dichotomy, I'm sure. Strip clubs are respectable and enough to appear on high streets up and down the country, but I'm inclined to say there's something a bit more sinister at work than just a bit of smut at the end of a lad's night out.

I suspect that of those people who would ever go to a strip club, most would only ever go for a stag do or birthday party or the like, irony optional. But what of the numerous people I saw at the club I attended, still in their pinstripe suits after a day at the office? Don't they have homes to go to? Wives? Girlfriends? Or are they too busy spending their Thursday evenings in strip clubs to find any such partner? What of people attending strip clubs on their own, with no leering accomplices? Could there be a sadder way to spend an evening?

I wonder who is exploiting who, in the strip club system. The most obvious suggestion would be that I, the punter, am exploiting the stripper, forcing her to take her clothes off for my money. Having thought about it of late, I think that's a rather simplistic way of looking at things. Rather, I would think it more accurate to say that it is the proprietor who exploits me and my fellow punters, by way of exploiting the girls that he employs. I think it is men who are exploited out of their money on account of being too controlled by their sexual urges. To put it succinctly - it's just too damn easy to persuade us to give an unknown girl a fiver to take her top off for two minutes. I'm not saying that the women aren't being exploited too, but that's not the financial incentive for the guy in charge - he's just out to betray his fellow men by taking our money.

Now, admittedly, this is not exactly what was on my mind when the pretty blonde was taking off her rather inauthentic airline stewardess uniform, but I digress. It's easy to look at this seriously now, when I'm not full of alcohol and surrounded by hordes of baying City workers.

Now of course, the women are being exploited too. We pay women to take their clothes off and show us their bodies for our enjoyment, without really caring a jot about any aspect of their lives that doesn't involve their being nude and in our presence. Anything else is irrelevant. They are paid for their physicality and nothing more. However, the trouble with such a line of thinking is that it paints me into a corner regarding nigh on any other trade that depends on a person's physical traits and abilities. Is a model being exploited any less just because they get to keep their clothes on? Is a construction worker being exploited any less just because he's a guy building a house? The work is entirely contingent on his body. Hell, sometimes even he doesn't keep his shirt on. Is a sportsman any less exploited just because they're using their body to run around a pitch or swing a tennis racquet?

The corollary to that argument is that I'm then obliged to say that prostitution is legitimate, which is rather more difficult to justify. Working on the prior line of reasoning, a prostitute is making their physical abilities available to another person for money. It's their body to do what they want with, surely. Perhaps the problem there arises when you introduce a third party - the guy pimping the girls. Now that's real exploitation, never mind just paying women just to take their clothes off. That's when things get ugly. That's when people start getting shipped in from other countries, bought and sold like animals. That's when people start getting beaten and abused. Clearly there is a line somewhere between being paid to play tennis and being paid to have sex with someone, but for the life of me I'm not quite certain where that line is. That being said, I suspect that stripping lies on the wrong side of the line.

Now, it's all very easy to argue for and against prostitution when I'm not letting morals cloud things, but as a Christian (albeit the kind that occasionally finds himself half drunk and in a strip club - go figure) I'm compelled to think of things rather differently. No, it is not right for women to be exploited for their bodies, be that for page 3 modelling, prostitution or rape, take your pick. I suspect the whole problem arose back in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve first became aware of their nakedness and were embarrassed of their forms, and God gave them their clothes. From that point on, the body was something to be covered and hidden, and from that point on it was inevitable that one person would pay another to reveal their hidden body. Were it not for the fall and our subsequent hiding of our bodies, there would be no need for strip clubs in which to see other bodies exposed.

So, with that in mind I can only resolve to not set foot in such an establishment again.

Tuesday. Training. London. Deferred tax, group relief and a hideous test - 38%. Still feeling a bit sick with whatever Alison had. Take the tube at rush hour - silly mistake. Late to meet a friend. Walk into Soho, talk about work. Someone from The View outside a pub. Fish and chip shop. Good fish for central London, my friend tells me. Can't finish mine. Still feeling a bit sick with whatever Alison had. Talk about The Mercury Music Prize and it's arrogant winners. Talk about holidays, families, children, parents, ill grandmother, marriage, tax, David Cameron. Pay for our meal, the price we pay doesn't match the prices on the wall. Get a VAT receipt, claim back every pound spent. Walk further into Soho. Pubs crammed, drinkers on the street. Recognise this area from last evening of drinking with friend. Drunker then. Not drinking much this week. Still feeling sick with whatever Alison had. Find a pub, not too full, strange sign behind the bar - "Where locals come to be insulted". David Beckham's football camp letters on the wall. Gary Neville is his friend, it says here. Talk about the past, where we've come from, old friends, people we have and haven't seen in a long time. Miss the Wirral - why did everyone move away? Uni, jobs, families. Talk about the future. Need a reunion, but life moves on. People busy - jobs, families, children. How permanent are friends? Who will we maintain contact with? See again? People left behind when we move on, replaced by new friends where we arrive. Comparison to an author from the industrial revolution whose name I forget. I don't know much about literature, and my literary journalist friend knows little about tax. Talk about people we just seem to click with, teenage friends. An unspoken understanding. Raised on Nirvana and Harry Enfield, but surely there's more to it than that... Cider too fizzy. Can't finish it. Still feeling sick with whatever Alison had. Time to move on. Leave the pub. Alison calls. My life intruding into the pause we had taken to examine ourselves. Part company. Friend goes home to review things - CDs and books I guess. Promise to meet again soon. Hug, not weird after 17 years of friendship. Walk to Picadilly Circus. Tourists, adverts, statues. An Angus Steak House on every corner. Friends in TGI Fridays. Back to the here and now.

Sunday. Alison's birthday. Present didn't arrive yesterday, Amazon to blame. Early start, Beth hungry at twenty past seven. Warm milk to drink, sat between us in our bed. Porridge, shower, no time for a shave, friend picks me up, drives me to church. Just gone nine. Guitar, tune up. Amplifier, check levels, rest of the band arrives. Practise practise practise practise pray play worship God. Lead guitar on a ten year old song, can anyone even hear me? Service over, hurry home, twenty seven baked potatoes in the oven. Guests late. Friend from church arrives first. Three children. Mother-in-law next. Then more and more and more. New neighbours, old friends. House full. Garden full. Where is the rain? Food for everyone, kids run riot outside. Pudding. More guests. Babies everywhere. Beer, wine. Football lost on the roof. Friend from church's daughter needs the toilet, demands my accompaniment for some reason, friend from church only too happy to have someone else do their dirty work. Potty, poop, good-grief-open-a-window. When in my life did it became normal to wipe a friend's child's bottom? Return child to parent. "This is the second time I've done that, once more and you'll owe me a beer." Only half serious. Rain sets in. Tidy toys away. Kids locked inside, stir crazy. Time to go, leave our house in peace. Tidy up, black bin liner, dishwasher, cup of tea. Rest, reflect.

In my teenage years, I cleared up after drunk vomiting friends at parties. In my twenties, I'm clearing up after my friend's pooping child. I guess life is different, but it stays the same too.

We got back from our holiday in Finland a couple of weeks ago. We had a good time, and it was nice to be able to take Ali and Beth over there to see it, given how many times I've been and how big a part of my history it forms.

I really like being in Finland... it's beautiful and unspoilt. There's forests and lakes and fields everywhere and its so big and wide open. The population density is a low low 15.5 people per square kilometre (thanks Wikipedia). If you do the maths, that means that if you spread people out evenly (a bit difficult due to there being close to 190,000 lakes in the country - that only counts those over 500m^2, the largest being the 5th largest in Europe at 4,308km^2) then you would be 250m from the nearest person. Somehow I like the idea of having that much space around you... Once you get out of the cities and towns, you can be in the proverbial middle of nowhere in about 20 minutes. It's quiet and peaceful, the air is clean, there's minimal light pollution... It's wonderful.

We spent a couple of nights in Helsinki, the capital city, which was nice as I've never really spent much time there. We had a look around the city and spent one day at a zoo that they have on a nearly island. It cost just 10 euros for entry to the zoo and the boat ride to get there, which should be a bargain by anyone's standards. The zoo was pretty good, and I've got quite a few photos in the album that I'll link to later.

After Helsinki, we drove up to Parikkala (note to self - update that Wiki page, or suggest that my mum have a go at it), where my mum grew up. Between drama over the hired car seat for Beth, and Beth's yelling on the 5 hour journey, it was quite a long day, but we got there in the end.

We stayed in a lovely cottage, about 20 minutes drive from where my Grandma's house is. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The cottage had only just been built and it was extremely nice - very well decked out and extremely comfortable. The place had it's own sauna, which is always enjoyable. We were right by a lake so we could go swimming, although it was pretty shallow around us, so swimming was more an exercise in falling over and making a meal of getting up again.

A couple of our day trips were slightly marred by events out of our control, but we got to see quite a bit of the surrounding area, so that was good. I'd like to go back again, when Beth is a bit older, which would make things on that front a bit easier. We did manage to see Savonlinna (Finnish link, because I'm bored of just linking to wikipedia pages the whole time), spent some time at my aunt and uncles, saw my ill grandma in hospital and went to a nearby nature reserve, though that last trip did involve Alison being extremely startled when an adder crossed her path.

The travelling was OK, though Beth was a bit noisy on the flight there, and very noisy on the flight back. Our trip back involved a 4 hour train journey, which was considerably more pleasant and considerably cheaper (about £80 for the two of us plus Beth) than any 4 hour train journey I've ever been on in England. We got to stay in our own little compartment, with a bit of company from another mum with kid's at one point, and the train even had a play room for kids with a slide and books and stuff. Kudos to VR, Finland's rail network. Apparently you can do stuff like that when you don't privatise your rail industry, and you actually make sensible use of your taxpayer's money, unlike a certain bunch of clowns.

So, all in all it was a good trip. You can see the photos that I've uploaded to Facebook, complete with captions and a bit more explanation of stuff.

I like Finland. Monty Python be damned, it is the country where I want to be. I think I'll learn the language (my initial explorations suggest it is a work of art - logical in ways that please me more than they probably ought) and buy a holiday cottage there. Maybe I'll retire there when I'm older.

Answer me this, if you can...

Are the majority of women so easily manipulated that they will buy a perfume "endorsed" by Sarah Jessica Parker - a woman who almost certainly had no hand in designing it or manufacturing it, but was in fact just paid a wedge of cash to be photographed holding it - believing that by wearing said perfume they will somehow attain the style, success and sex appeal of the fictional character that she played in Sex And The City?

I hate advertising. The sooner Boots take down those 10 foot tall posters of her ridiculous grinning face, the more pleasant my walk to work will be.

I've probably mentioned it before, but I find it tough to buy CDs. I'm usually pretty short for cash, and I tend to buy everything second hand on ebay, but I still have to be really selective in what I pick up. I hate to feel like I'm wasting any money on non-essential things like music or games or whatever, because money isn't exactly abundant...

I get frustrated trying to pick CDs, because it's so hard to find anything that really grabs me - something really outstandingly different or inspired or inspiring or even just really impressively talented. I listen to the radio most days, and while I love the variety of music, there's just so little that I'd ever actually buy and listen to again once I got bored of hearing it on the radio. Sure, the Kaiser Chiefs are pretty good, and the lyrics are quite smart, but is the music really any more impressive than anything I've heard before? Yes, Flourescent Adolescent by the Arctic Monkeys is a great single now that you mention it, but I don't care about the rest of their work because it all just sounds deliberately grimy and underproduced, and apart from the drumming they don't sound wonderfully talented - more like they were just in the right place at the right time. Hey There Delilah by the Plain White Tees is a beautiful acoustic number, but wouldn't I be better just buying a Simon & Garfunkel best of? Hell, even that Kate Nash single is pretty catchy, but I hate Lily Allen so that probably wouldn't work out too well. There's even the odd dance track here and there that's good, but I can't listen to an album of that, God help me.

The only band that's really grabbed me of late are The White Stripes, and that's probably only because it's the first time I've been exposed to any blues music. Even then, though, I'll probably just buy up their back catalogue and won't venture further than that.

So, in a bid to widen my horizons, I turned to... Amazon. Perhaps their recommendations would be able to inspire me? So I sat and browsed the list, let it know I already owned a few things it was suggesting, and then had a look at what remained...

Well, as I like Electric Light Orchestra, I'm apparently supposed to want to buy something by Wizzard or Prefab Sprout. Hmm. This is not off to a flying start...

Ooh, here we go, something that got recommended because I like Belle & Sebastian, that might work. Oh, it's Isobel Campbell's solo album after she quit the band due to breaking up with the lead singer. Sorry, no sale, I don't think that's going to work. There's a slew of other bands from Glasgow, but again I'm not sure that's the best criteria on which to suggest CDs.

Ugh... Oasis albums, recommended because I like Blur. As someone who was around at the time, this seems quite ironic.

Pantera, because I like Rage Against The Machine; Keane and Kasabian because I like Muse; endless Ben Folds records; Enya records because I bought my dad one of her albums as a present years ago... It's probably just a mercy that Amazon doesn't know I like Green Day and Blink 182 or I'd be wading through NOFX albums and other "real" punk that I'm really not into. This isn't working for me.

Sure, a couple of albums turn up that I might look into, but there's far more that I definitely am not interested in.
It all seems to be borne out of people buying 3 albums that happened to be released in the same week, and people like me buying up a bands entire back catalogue such that everyone else is expected to own all their records on the basis that they bought one 10 years ago.

In the end I got fed up and bought a Kanye West album. Rap music. Not exactly home territory - certainly something different. And sure, the albums got some good singles and a couple of other good bits on there, and he's very talented in his field, but it's just not something I can access terribly easily. The swearing that I can handle on a Green Day record bugs me here, and every other word seems to be nigger, which will probably always be a bit weird for my white ears to listen to.

Time to crawl back to another damn guitar band...

I've cut my dosage of painkillers by half. The pain I'm feeling gives me a good idea of why they gave me a high dosage to begin with. The warning of "severe pain" was not unwarranted. I'm trying to put up with a bit of pain, as the codeine I've been taking was thoroughly doping me, and I wasn't much good for anything. So, it's a balance of pain and coherence at the moment. It's not very much fun, but there you go. I'd rather suffer a bit than be completely and utterly dazed.

I've not been up to much really, as one might expect. I've been sleeping a lot, even during the day which is very unusual for me. It's not been terribly satisfying sleep though. I can't eat much either, so that's quite rubbish. It's pretty much soup or soup, though Alison did make a very nice vegetable curry yesterday that I was able to eat.

I'm supposed to be going to London on training next week, assuming I'm well enough. I'll have to see how I'm doing on Sunday I guess.