Thursday Night Lights

Thursday nightis probably my favourite night of the week. I meet up with my climbing buddies in the pub, discuss the week that was and make plans for whatever the weekend has in store. Tonight was particularly good.

I rushed out of the door at about ten to eight to go and see Guy Robertson speaking about some of the climbing he's donme in Scotland and abroad. There's nothing quite like an enthusiastic climber beaming about the things thay've done, and Guy was certainly enthusiastic. And incredibly inspiring. I'd reccommmend going to see him if you ever get the opportunity.

Anyhoo, armed with buckets of Scottish Climbing Psyche® off I toddled to the pub for this weeks tales of one-arm pull ups over dodgy pegs and debates about arctic weather systems. Not only did I sort out some badass climbing fun for the weekend, but a total stranger, overhearing that I'd had no dinner, gave me a bag of crisps. And I spent most of the night talking to pretty girls too.

So now I've come home, full of the joys of human kindness to a steaming hot bowl of cock-a-leekie soup (it's nutristious, tasty AND hilariously named - result!), a spendid bit of Delrico Bandito, some Godspeed YBE! and the buzz of anticipation for the adventures of the next few days. Imagine Christmas Eve when you were eight and you get the idea.

So now it's off to catch some sleep before the mundanity of work where I will dream, as I always do at these times, of strapping myself to a bit of frosty rock in the name of fun. See you on the other side.

Fwour

I should really try to pretend to hate these things, but I started this blog because I love to talk about MEMEMEMEME so big thanks to Del for tagging me.

Four jobs I've had
Giant Dancing Gnome, The Metrocentre, Gateshead
Washing Powder Scientist, Procter & Gamble, Newcastle
Child Care Worker, Sunrise Mountain Childcare Centre, Connecticut, USA
Policy Assistant, Crofting Branch, The Scottish Executive, Edinburgh
(I could do about twenty of these, by the way)

Four movies I can watch over and over
High Fidelity - More or less for Stevie Wonder playing out over the credits
Fight Club - Similarly for the Pixies
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - I am in love with Clementine
Forrest Gump - Makes me blub like a baby

Four places I have lived
Birtley, County Durham
Washington, Tyne & Wear
Various bits of Bristol
Marchmont, Edinburgh (my favourite neighbourhood of any city I've ever been to)

Four TV shows I like to watch
Peep Show
The Simpsons (Obviously)
ER
120 Minutes on MTV2

Four foods that I like
Ice Cream
Olives
The Mighty Bacon & Cherry Tomato Sandwich
Roast things (meats, vegetables, whatever)

Four websites I visit daily
EUMC Chatpage
UK Climbing
Dilbert
Mountain Weather Information System

Four things I want to do before I die
About a squillion different climbing things.
Have someone tell me that they want to be with me for the rest of their life.
Find the thing I'm really good at.
See a total solar eclipse properly (ie, not some clouds going dark)

Four places I would rather be right now
Lofoten, Norway
The arms of a beautiful woman
A highland Bothy, watching the snow fall as I sit by the fire
A really good gig

Four people I'm tagging
Big Sis
Jimmy
Jazy Lames
Toby

Opposition

So it turns out that I didn't know how to ski. Finding that out whilst gently sliding down a snowy alpine vally is probably not too bad, but the discovery came to me whilst carreering down a busy dry-ski slope just outside of Edinburgh. Nothing too damaged apart from my ego. Oh, and my thumb.

So the rest of the evening passed, and I learned how to control the foot-planks a bit more. Lessons were learned. Although obviously not the right ones, as the next day I found - to my surprise - that I had gone climbing.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this wan't good for my thumb, and resulted in it ballooning up to quite a size and going 'Burple' (a cross between blue and purple according to Pimp My Ride). This has resulted in much hilarity this week. Basically, I can't hold a pen properly, or indeed use my right hand for much at all. Yes, even that is off the cards just now.

But if I have learned anything from al of this it's how lucky we humand are to have opposable thumbs. I bet camels have an awful time doing up a button fly, and I defy any walrus to open a bottle of Irn Bru. I would mock the inferior species, but I'm down to their level right now anyway. Have you ever seen a man trying to fix a punctured bike tyre with one hand? It's probably the least graceful thing you'll ever see this side of a manatee trying to tapdance.

Anyway, I ask not for your sympathy, but merely post this as a message for you all - look after your thumbs, kids. You might miss them when they're gone.

Musical thoughts...

I've finally got round to doing some of the mix CDs I've been threatening to do, which has given me some thinking time whilst my feeble computer wheezes away at the concept of encoding the odd MP3. I have come to the following conclusions:

Arctic Monkeys: Poor sods. Their singles are brilliant, and their album's a quality peice of work - any band would be rightly proud of capturing a generation so well. Is it the dawning of a new era of rock music? I hope not, because the peurile, ficticious 'scenes' that sprout up around any decent success story are all precisely 95.3% shite and are a pox on all that is good about music (except britpop, which was 99.7% shite). It'll mean that their next album is a load of bumwater and 400 utterly useless identikit troupes of automatons will pile through the CD:UK doors and into our eyes and ears like Sarin nerve gas. To be honest, the monkeys aren't even that great either. Just very, very good. Still it does mean that Domino Records will have another million-selling artist on their roster and be able to afford to bankroll more spectacular music from more challenging artists.

"Cheese" Music: When someone says "I just like listening to cheese" it makes me want to sellotape them to the floor and inject them with insulin until they pass out. Have I got a problem with "cheese" music per se? No. The average pop music club will play approximately 60% music that I like, actually. but to describe something as cheesy is basically saying it's predictable, soulless guff with no merit. Like Bon Jovi for example. But any good pop music that makes it into such nightclubs gets dubbed as cheese too, which is criminal. A good pop record (say, S Club's 'Don't Stop Moving' for example) is a thing of unrivalled beauty and should not be tarred in the same pap way as Chesney Hawkes. Maybe I just lack the requisite self-conscious irony to appreciate shite music.


Why Hip-Hop Sucks in '06: It's the money.

Goodnight fair folk.