At Home with John and Debbie

I was in  Solihull yesterday, having a followup checkup for my laser eye surgery. (You may think the laser eye surgery would be a more interesting story — but it’s really not. I had my eyes lasered, it hurt a bit that night, then it didn’t hurt and I can see without glasses. End of.

There I chanced upon a shop called “Tiger”, which is a Danish shop full of Danish things, piled high and priced to sell. It’s sort of like Ikea’s marketplace, only Danish and with a less furniture oriented angle.

Near the front, at £2 a piece, were these LP cover frames. This is absolutely brilliant. I’m sure lots of people have a cache of terrific images that they don’t see often enough. With these frames you can hang them on your wall, and when you get bored of them it’s easy to switch in a different LP cover.

As you can see, proper albums fit perfectly, while the simpler 12″ single sleeves leave a bit of spare space around the side.

Both of these are bona fide classics, by the way. The 12″ remix of “Rage Hard” - with its “tour of the 12 inch” narration is always a treat. The Paul Simon album, is the highlight of his career in my opinion. And both have great covers.

Barry Cryer (”The man who first showed Lord Reith where the photocopier was”) made an appearance on Radio 4’s The Now Show on Friday. After being funny for a few minutes, he recited a poem, with ‘Chariots of Fire’ (or a pastiche thereof) playing in the background:

Speed onward bright Olympic torch
Your flames may flicker but they scorch
your progress and illuminate
the cause we truly celebrate.

The people’s voice they loudly sing
a message: can you hear, Beijing?
We doubt you hear or even care.
The echoes from Tianemen Square
ring out. These are the real Olympic rings
you hear as each proud city sings.

So Gordon Brown stop pondering, posing.
There are two options: opening, closing.
Go to neither. A simple task.
Is this in truth too much to ask?
And so evade our withering scorn
Or were you to the manner, dithering, born?

Come join us on our chariot of fire.
Care of The Now Show; Barry Cryer

Although apparently it’s not too late to get a Glastonbury ticket, by making it through Sunday without trying to buy one, I suppose I made a final commitment not to go. So I won’t be having a riot of a time in June, like this cheery young man, in what for me is the standout GCam photo from last year.
I am however going to Bestival on the Isle of Wight in September. Join me please!

We got up early (for us, for a Sunday) on Sunday morning, to find a couple of inches of snow on the ground. Nevertheless, the Regency 10km was going ahead, and we walked up to the park in time for the start.

My aim was to beat an hour. My final chip time was 0:55:15, which I’m pretty pleased with. I think I could have done it quite a bit faster - I started a fair way back in the pack and the first half of the race was on rather narrow roads, leading to congestion that was hard to get through. Also, not being at all experienced, I didn’t know how to pace myself, and erred on the side of caution. After all, finishing was the most important part!

Debbie did 1:04:37, which was a big improvement on her time the previous year.

Results are here.

You can still donate sponsorship money.

Things to look forward to, in the order they should happen:

1. Get a proper melodeon - Saturday if all goes to plan. W00T!
2. Regency Run - Sunday
3. Laser eye surgery consultation
4. Debbie runs the Stratford Half Marathon. I suppose I have to go and support her. Sounds like 3 hours of standing around to me.
5. Eurovision - and associated party
6. Two Castles Run - do I have to?
7. Canada and Alaska - bumper Summer holiday!

Often, we visit my parents over Easter weekend. Since we were in Egypt this time, we went the following weekend instead.

It was very pleasant, but over all too quickly.

Friday: arrived late, presented them with an Aladdin lamp, ate, went to bed

Saturday: sat out the nasty rainy morning, then after lunch went to Aberystwyth for a walk along the prom. The sea was wild — I’m sure the Red Sea never gets that way. Unfortunately the tide wasn’t quite high enough for spectacular wave splashes onto the prom, to play at avoiding. We completed a round trip by going through the castle, down Great Darkgate St. (pausing in Monsoon for the ladies: grr), we had a quick poke in the museum, then went home.

Sunday: a short walk around what used to be my playground — the fields around Bow Street — and onwards to Llandre and back. It was warm and dry (except underfoot), and the views were very nice. We got to the remains of Castell Gwallter (900 years ago, a motte and bailey castle), then admired the 2,000 year old yew in Llandre churchyard. I took some photos, and may be putting them on Yewtube… If I knew about this tree as a child, I’d forgotten about it.

After Sunday lunch, it was time to head home. As I said: all too short.

Gosh, haven’t I been lax about blogging?

Last week, or is it the week before, we went to Egypt. More specifically, Dahab on the East coast of the Sinai peninsula, where you can Saudi Arabia over the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aquaba on a clear day. Most days are, of course, pretty clear. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a reminder: I’m running the 10km Regency Run in Leamington this Sunday, and you - yes you - may have a chortle about that, and then pay me for the laugh I gave you by donating to charity.

It would really make me feel better about the foolish choice I’ve made.

Debbie is also running the race. She hasn’t set up a donation page, so you could use mine instead if you like. Mind you, Debbie runs 10km on her rest days in between proper training; she’ll hardly break into a sweat.

(If these scripts don’t come out on your browser — sorry!)

For some reason this morning, I noticed a claim that Wikipedia has “over 9m articles in 250 languages”. Nine million is a big number, but I was more drawn by the 250 languages. What does that say about the sheer scale of the world, and how much of it you could possible experience or understand in a lifetime? Behind each of those languages will be endless depths of culture: stories, music, idioms, literature, moral codes, attitudes.

… and that reminded me of the day I got distracted and went looking for non-Roman scripts.

I’m pretty good with Japanese katakana (e.g. “アメリカ”) and hiragana (e.g. “ã?„ã‚?ã?¯ã?«ã?»ã?¸ã?¨”) now. Like all but the most dedicated gaijin student of Japanese, kanji (e.g. “漢音” is too much for me — although at least I know enough to be able to look up kanji (slowly).

I’m taking Russian classes at the moment, and the Cyrillic alphabet isn’t that difficult. It changes the way you perceive familiar Russian words such as “glasnost” — “ГлаÌ?Ñ?ноÑ?Ñ‚ÑŒ” — that last character is a ’soft sign’, meaning the final T gets swallowed up a bit.

On to languages I don’t know. Korea’s Hangul writing system is, as far as I understand, awesome:
모타는사�미
This looks great in blocky typefaces such as those found on signs and road markings. Like Japanese kana (but not kanji) each character represents a syllable — but unlike kana, components within each block tell you what the syllable sounds like.

Arabic is a writing system many Britons see every day, yet I think very few of us know the first thing about deciphering it. I certainly don’t:
اللغة العربية الÙ?صحى

We probably also see a fair amount of Sanskrit, (Sanskrit tangent: here) without even knowing it, in a wide variety of related scripts. This one is called Devangari:
संस�कृता वाक�

… and India will have many more scripts I’m sure.

(Apparently Siva blesses those who take delight in the language of the gods, so if you’ve got this far, well done.)

I think I’ve saved the best until last:

Georgian: ქ�რთული დ�მწერლ�ბ�

Armenian: Õ°Õ¡ÕµÕ¥Ö€Õ¥Õ¶ Õ¬Õ¥Õ¦Õ¸Ö‚

Both of these look to me like the sort of thing seen above sinister looking entrances in Indiana Jones films, behind which Lovecraftian horrors await. Yet 5.2 million people speak Georgian today, and 6.3 million speak Armenian — putting Welsh to shame with its lowly 750,000 speakers and Roman alphabet.

Any more good ones I’ve missed?

… I don’t see how anyone’s going to undercut them either.

For the best belly laugh, go to the official web page of the Isles of Scilly Football League, and click on “League table”.

Then read more there, or where I found it, on Brakes fan Wyn Grant’s page.