Getting my leave requests in now for various events in the second half of the year. Lots of excellent things are on the cards...
Have got a day off to get down for the Hyde Park concert next weekend (a Rach Bishop Bristolian bbq event and then on to London) which should be great if it stops raining by then...
And then that's it for jollies until August as I have the kids every weekend in July. Hopefully I'll be able to get away with them too - maybe to my sister's in Guernsey. Otherwise it's a month of weekend day tripping events. We shall see.
In August so far there's one outing up to Scotland with 'my' Rach booked in for which the plan is to do some hills and a day at the Edinburgh festival. Rach is stopping up there for the whole second festival week. Maybe we'll hook up with Katy or Rich Eatough who will both be up there. Katy, obviously coz she lives there, and Rich is up for the festival.
September sees the mountain bike World Cup come to Fort William. I did that a couple of years ago when it was just the downhill and it was a fabulous weekend. This time they have the XC event too: the whole World Cup, so it is a really big event. It's around my birthday again too, so it will be great to get away for that one and we can hopefully get some of the Nevis range hills done while we are there when Rach gets bored of whatching cycling...
Also in September The Tragically Hip have announced some more Euro dates. London again (The Astoria for a change) and this time I am making the trip to Amsterdam for the two shows at the Paradiso (have been meaning to do this for a while now). Cheap midweek flights from Leeds/Bradford (99p flights tots up to about £150 for both of us return) means a 4 day city break and two Hip shows is quite affordable. Not quite sure how Rach will manage two Hip shows on the bounce, but hopefully she will cope.
I am actually feeling guilty about flying though what with the shit that these jets cough out into our fragile atmos. But I don't do it often, and maybe I can plant a tree to offset it.
Err, Jet2 are doing good business out of me this year as there's the other flights - to Spain in October. Off to somewhere near Malaga for a week of mountain biking in the Sierra Nevada with the FreerideSpain people, and the Reading bike crew (RichE, RichC and Annie). Have had rave reports of these trips so looking forward to and it will be a good late getaway as the winter sets in again. Of course I will need a new bike for that... and therein lies a story for another time.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
The God Delusion
It's now out in paperback and it's an important book.
Richard Dawkins simply tells it how it is.
Buy, it, borrow it, blag it... read it.
Richard Dawkins simply tells it how it is.
Buy, it, borrow it, blag it... read it.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Bloody weather
Global warming? Global cooling more like. It was effing freezing last weekend: almost liderally, mates. And now it's warm and sunny again. What's going on? I liked it back when it was predictable: when it was nice and cold in the winter with snow and stuff, and you had your parka on a lot; and then hot all summer when the plastic sandals came out and we went and swam in the Mersey off Harrison Drive.
Plastic sandals cannot have been good for your feet though. I'm surprised there's not a complete generation of folk these daus suffering from with paediatric deformities and chronic walking problems. I do notice however that there's now a new generation of 'plastic' footware which are considered trendy by grown ups which I find myself hankering after for no apparent reason and against all logic. This is a legacy of being a child of the seventies.
The swims in the Mersey I guess would have been even more dangerous to one's health back then than the endemic footware. Nowadays Liverpool's famous waterway is really rather clean and the area is noted for its beautiful sandy beaches. No - honest, it is.
Looking over the promenade wall at Wallasey these days you are no longer faced with a vista of endless (and stinking) mud flats at low tide. Now it's just miles and miles of clean sand. The council chalets have gone (see below), as has the Derby Pool. Due to the huge popularity of that area (in particular New Brighton) from the 50s onwards there there were two art deco open air swimming pools in Wallasey within a couple of miles of each other. The New Brighton baths was the biggest and had some seriously high diving boards into a 15 feet deep end. I loved them both, but with the decline of the area in the 80s they shut down, and it was a quite a shocker to go back there one year and find them demolished. The new promenade and sea defences which have gone up over the past 20 years or so do look great, and obviously work a treat holding all that sand. New Brighton these days, while not quite being the resort it once was, is looking pretty good now after an almost total facelift, and has emerged as a rather smart residential area with the obvious attraction of it's views of the Liverpool sea front across the river.
The water itself has changed colour too. Well, it must have. To be honest I cannot remember what colour it was, or maybe I've just blanked it out. Families, relatives and half our street (or so it seemed) would hire a beach chalet on Harrison Drive for what felt like all the summer holidays. Inside there was enough room for some deck chair and wind break storage, plus a gas cooker and grill which always produced stripey toast. Us kids would spend the summer on the beach. At low tide it was a case of making huge competition 'dams' against the prom steps to 'stop' the incoming tide. Then come high tide we'd be leaping from the promenade wall into the waves and end up splashing about in a mix of whatever was being pumped out into the river all along the Manchester Ship Canal. Oil, sewage, dead marine life, other floating, err, phenomena, and christ knows what else we would gulp down while attempting to regain a hold on the Harrison drive slipway wall to get back on for another jump. I can still remember gulping down water while fighting in the swell against the sea wall where there were bits of rope to climb back up. It's a real wonder we never went down with any stomach issues, not to mention tetanus from the endless scratches you'd end up with on your knees doing this.
Then there was the wandering off out to the sea, which was a long way off shore at low tide, and the race to get back and not to get cut off when it started coming in. Where were my parents when all this was going on? Sunbathing and drinking no doubt. It was bordering on neglect if you ask me.
Anyway, where was I? The weather's a bit changeable isn't it. Maybe t'was ever thus...
Plastic sandals cannot have been good for your feet though. I'm surprised there's not a complete generation of folk these daus suffering from with paediatric deformities and chronic walking problems. I do notice however that there's now a new generation of 'plastic' footware which are considered trendy by grown ups which I find myself hankering after for no apparent reason and against all logic. This is a legacy of being a child of the seventies.
The swims in the Mersey I guess would have been even more dangerous to one's health back then than the endemic footware. Nowadays Liverpool's famous waterway is really rather clean and the area is noted for its beautiful sandy beaches. No - honest, it is.
Looking over the promenade wall at Wallasey these days you are no longer faced with a vista of endless (and stinking) mud flats at low tide. Now it's just miles and miles of clean sand. The council chalets have gone (see below), as has the Derby Pool. Due to the huge popularity of that area (in particular New Brighton) from the 50s onwards there there were two art deco open air swimming pools in Wallasey within a couple of miles of each other. The New Brighton baths was the biggest and had some seriously high diving boards into a 15 feet deep end. I loved them both, but with the decline of the area in the 80s they shut down, and it was a quite a shocker to go back there one year and find them demolished. The new promenade and sea defences which have gone up over the past 20 years or so do look great, and obviously work a treat holding all that sand. New Brighton these days, while not quite being the resort it once was, is looking pretty good now after an almost total facelift, and has emerged as a rather smart residential area with the obvious attraction of it's views of the Liverpool sea front across the river.
The water itself has changed colour too. Well, it must have. To be honest I cannot remember what colour it was, or maybe I've just blanked it out. Families, relatives and half our street (or so it seemed) would hire a beach chalet on Harrison Drive for what felt like all the summer holidays. Inside there was enough room for some deck chair and wind break storage, plus a gas cooker and grill which always produced stripey toast. Us kids would spend the summer on the beach. At low tide it was a case of making huge competition 'dams' against the prom steps to 'stop' the incoming tide. Then come high tide we'd be leaping from the promenade wall into the waves and end up splashing about in a mix of whatever was being pumped out into the river all along the Manchester Ship Canal. Oil, sewage, dead marine life, other floating, err, phenomena, and christ knows what else we would gulp down while attempting to regain a hold on the Harrison drive slipway wall to get back on for another jump. I can still remember gulping down water while fighting in the swell against the sea wall where there were bits of rope to climb back up. It's a real wonder we never went down with any stomach issues, not to mention tetanus from the endless scratches you'd end up with on your knees doing this.
Then there was the wandering off out to the sea, which was a long way off shore at low tide, and the race to get back and not to get cut off when it started coming in. Where were my parents when all this was going on? Sunbathing and drinking no doubt. It was bordering on neglect if you ask me.
Anyway, where was I? The weather's a bit changeable isn't it. Maybe t'was ever thus...
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