worth the pain....

Justgiving sent me an email the other day saying that they were closing down my site for donations.  I know the little widget showing showing the total we raised has been on the right hand side of this page for at least six months, but before I clear it all down and move on, I thought it was worth taking a moment to pause and reflect on what we've achieved:

On September 11th last year, LB, C and I ran the Robin Hood Half Marathon to raise money for the MS Society.  I won't lie to you, it was a bit of a slog.... but between us, thanks to the generous donations of people like you, we raised (including gift aid) the amazing total of.....

[drum roll]

£3,417.50

That's a lot of money.

More money, in fact, than we raised than running the same race in 2009.  Given the imminent collapse of the global economy and the way that most people are feeling the financial squeeze in one form or another, I want to thank everyone who made a donation from the bottom of my heart.

This is obviously a cause that is very close to me, and it makes me feel so proud that together we were able to make such a big contribution.  This money will help to fund the research to find the cause and cure for this devastating condition and to support and inform those whose lives are touched by it.

Thank you.  You guys rock.

I'm struggling to run much more than about 4 miles at the moment for various reasons (including basic laziness), but I'm toying with the idea of a triathlon at some point in the not-too-distant future (you remember the suits, right? both of 'em?), and have a mind to work my way up to the Olympic distance (1500m open water swim, 40km cycle, 10km run).  The first symptoms of what was eventually diagnosed as multiple sclerosis forced me to withdraw from the 2005 London Triathlon with all the training done and about a week to go before the off.  My name is quite literally on the damn event t-shirt.  It feels like unfinished business....

2013, maybe?

Who's with me?

Anyone?  Bueller?

smell my beard....

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I appear to be growing a beard.

My last proper shave was (I think) on the morning of Wednesday 22nd December. The inevitable consequence of this is that, over the course of the last 20 days, I’ve now got an honest-to-goodness beard.

(when Peter Jackson filmed Lord of the Rings, he needed to give Ian McKellan a false nose to make sure that his face didn't disappear into his Gandalf beard.... not a problem I think he'd have with me.)

It started out of laziness, of course. I don’t particularly enjoy shaving, and when I have a few days off work, I tend to let my stubble grow. Like lots of blokes, I reckon I look better with a hint of stubble… maybe two or three days worth. After that, it starts getting a bit itchy and/or I have to go back to work, so I have a shave. This time, I had a clear ten days off work and I just didn’t bother shaving at all. By the time I was due to go back to work on 3rd January, I had enough of a beard that I was prepared to run the inevitable gauntlet of banter and give it another couple of weeks. We’re going skiing towards the end of January, I thought, so why not go with a beard? Every time we go skiing, I come back with what looks like an identical set of photos of us wearing the same skiing gear standing with the same friends on a snowy mountain somewhere. Why not shake that up a bit by going with a beard?

Alright. It’s not much of a reason, I grant you, but there you go.

So I went to work with a beard.

Apparently, bearded men tend to get passed over for promotion more frequently than the clean-shaven. Well, that’s hardly likely to make much of a difference to the glacial rate of progression of my brilliant career, is it? Plus I decided that I simply didn’t care what people thought.

As it turned out, I received nothing but positive comments – almost to the extent that I began to wonder what was wrong with my face before. I’d sort of assumed that a beard would be a guy thing and that most ladies would be generally disapproving. As it turns out, I’ve had a surprising number of compliments from my female colleagues. Most are concerned that I keep it trimmed and don’t allow it to become a free-range, ZZ Top-style affair, but otherwise they seem to like it. Even my wife – who hated my 2008 Movember moustache – seems to have surprised herself by how much she likes it. Well, tolerates it.

I keep surprising myself too; I keep walking past mirrors, catching sight of myself, and thinking “Ooooh! You’ve got a beard!” as though this was a remarkable thing for a man of my age to be able to do. In my own head, I’m still about 16 years old, like most men, and the ability to grow hair on my face still seems an astonishing thing to be able to do. Tina asked me here over the weekend if I’d been out running on Trent Bridge at about noon on Sunday as she’d seen a tall, bearded man jogging as she drove into town. It was me, of course, but it still took a few seconds for the novelty of being described as a “bearded man” to sink in.

Ridiculous. I’m 37 years old. Why should my ability to grow a beard be remarkable to anyone, myself included?

And then, just when I thought I’d done all the hard bits of growing a beard, a colleague of mine returned from holiday today and paused for a moment as he tried to remember who he thought I now looked like.

“Oh. I know…” said the Weapon of the Zombie Apocalypse after some consideration, “…you look like Sir Clive Sinclair”.

Reader, I nearly shaved on the spot… but then another colleague (separately, but also today) came up and told me that, with a trim and a black polo-neck, I’d be a dead-ringer for Steve Jobs. Now that’s a bit more like it. An improvement, anyway. Unless he meant Steve Jobs now…

To be honest, I was really going for a Leonidas…..maybe the beard just needs a little more time and then - what with my physique and all - everyone will be making that comparison.

I think I’ll keep it until we’re back from Austria on 28th January, but after that I reckon it will go. Still, it’s something every guy should do at least once in their lives, eh? If for no other reason than because we can.

It’s a man thing.

Obviously.

Besides, as Kristen Wiig shows here with Zach Galifianiakis, beards are sexy.....

[GJ thinks I look like this guy.  I'm not having it.  I think I'd rather look like Sir Clive Sinclair]

I know my way is hard and steep....

Earworms of the Week

Shall we?  Oh, go on then.

“Close to You” – The Carpenters

Much though I love Burt Bacharach, I have to say that this one isn’t one of my favourites. I find it saccharine, but you can’t argue with how naggingly bloody catchy it is, can you? It’s certainly a song that has endured, anyway. I’ve no idea why this popped into my head, as I can’t remember consciously hearing the song, but isn’t that always the way with a good earworm?

“Mr Brightside” – The Killers

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: the Killers apparently wrote this in their first fifteen minutes together as a band, but no matter how long their career is, I doubt they’ll write many songs as good as this one. “When You Were Young” is the only other one of theirs that comes even close…. And that’s not a criticism of their subsequent career as much as commenting how damn good this song is. Welcome in my head anytime.

“Wake Up And Make Love With Me” – Ian Dury and the Blockheads

This popped up on shuffle when I was out running the other day. It’s not an obvious running song, but sometimes the strangest songs give you a little spring in your step. This was definitely one of them. I can’t think of another song that sounds quite so affectionately smutty, either.

“Mountains” – Biffy Clyro

Still in my head after a solid couple of months of residence. It’s a great tune, this and I love to listen to it LOUD on the drive into work in the morning. I have almost no awareness of any other song the band might have done, but I can’t get enough of this one.

“You Only Live Twice” – Bjork

Another one that popped up randomly on shuffle. The start of this is almost exactly the same as the original, but as soon as Bjork starts to sing, it simply couldn’t be anybody else. It’s a very faithful cover, but yet also very much a Bjork song (with a few added David Arnold trills and warbles). Tribute to both the quality of the original and to Bjork’s voice.

“Danger! High Voltage!” – Electric Six

Silly, silly band. Great tune. One of Jack White’s finest vocal performances?

“Graceland” – Paul Simon

Timeless. I was reading a big interview with Art Garfunkel the other day, and he talked quite a lot about what a genius songwriter Simon is, but how he also put in a lot of work with the vocals (so the high bit in “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was all his idea). Fair enough, and you can’t beat a bit of S&G, can you? But then you listen to a song like this and the brilliance of his songwriting shines out loud and clear. The tune rumbles along nicely, but those lyrics are just superb, right from the very first sentence:

“The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar
I am following the river
Down the highway
Through the cradle of the civil war”

You don’t quite get that from N-Dubz, do you?

“This Ain’t New Jersey” – Smith & Burrows

My new favourite seasonal album (it’s wintery rather than just Christmassy), and this is my favourite song from it. I’ve rabbited on about this already, but those lyrics are just fantastic.

“Blitzkrieg Bop” – The Ramones
“Wayfaring Stranger” – Johnny Cash

So, I finally pulled my finger out over the Christmas break and bought myself the ukulele that I’ve been toying about taking up for a little while now. I’ve never really played the guitar or anything like that, so I’ve very much been starting from scratch. Thanks to a great website (http://ukulelehunt.com/) and the book that the site creator has written “Ukelele for Dummies”, I’ve quickly been able to learn a few chords and quickly get to playing some songs. “Five Years Time” by Noah and the Whale is three simple chords and a doddle, but I was absolutely made up to discover that learning the mournful sounding minor chords enabled me to get my teeth into Johnny Cash (whose version of this song, if you needed telling, is infinitely superior to the pish offered by Ed Sheeran). Bliss. I’m currently working on the Ramones, but I’m still pretty ropey as – belying their image as purveyors of simple, three-chord songs – some of the fingering required for “Blitzkrieg Bop” is taking a bit of practice to get the hang of. It’s absolutely great to be learning to play songs that I know, though…. I doubt I’ll be tearing up any trees or performing on a stage any time soon, but I’m having a blast (although the cat seems to have taken a dislike to E minor in particular…)

That’s your lot. Have a good weekend, y’all.

cry me a river...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but I cried in the cinema when I went to go and watch “Cool Runnings”. I’m not especially ashamed of this fact, but I do have an explanation: it was the end of a long run of heart-wrenching films that I went to see at the cinema over a number of weeks. Schindler’s List, Philadelphia, The Remains of the Day, Shadowlands…. By the end of that lot, I think I would have cried at pretty much anything. I used to cry at the drop of a hat as a child - real tears too, not the crocodile sort - but somewhere along the line, my emotions dried up. Nothing to do with being sent to attend largely single-sex boarding schools between the ages of seven and eighteen, I’m sure…..

Perhaps it’s because I’m older, but I seem to be turning into something of a sap and my eyes seem to fill with tears pretty much at the drop of a hat, no matter how obviously my emotions are being manipulated. This is easy enough to conceal in the dark of the matinee, and I think I got away with it at the end of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” the other night, but harder when it’s broad daylight and we’re watching the telly.

The most recent culprit was when the Keira Knightley version of “Pride and Prejudice” was on the telly before New Year. Now, I’ve not been much of a fan of Matthew Macfadyen since his days on Spooks, a show that I loathed, but I found myself quite affected by his performance as Darcy and the way that he and Elizabeth slowly come to terms with the way they feel about each other. I can take or leave Austen, in the main, and find her relentlessly over-analysed by people trying to project readings onto her work that I just don’t think they can support, but you can’t argue with P&P (and Keira Knightley made a much better, far less smug and knowing Elizabeth than Jennifer Ehle in the celebrated BBC adaptation too).

Getting a bit of a lump in my throat watching Macfayden as Darcy was bad enough, but what really had me wiping my eyes was Donald Sutherland’s Mr. Bennett. I firmly believe that Austen’s Mr. Bennett is one of the greatest creations in literature, and Sutherland played him beautifully, particularly at the end when he realises that his Lizzy really does love that man that she apparently professed to dislike. He says at one point, with his eyes filling with tears, “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him”, and that was it, I was in pieces.

This emergence of a soft, sentimental old fool is somewhat at odds with the image I like to portray of myself as a cold, logical iceman.

[ahem].

Another reason to never watch ET, anyway.

and I've got the feelin' someone's gonna be cuttin' the thread....

Over the last couple of years, I seem to have found my online presence – both here and on twitter – increasingly categorised. I’m not just talking about the way that google seems to be sending me a disproportionate number of people from Romania, but rather the way that I am being more often included in groups/lists. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’m being categorised by some people as an MS blogger.

In some ways this is, of course, flattering. Who doesn’t like being included on lists? But on the other hand, I’m a little uncomfortable being defined by my illness. I know that I write about it here, but I also write about all kinds of other shit too. Nobody’s calling me the Piss In The Sink blogger, after all, and I wrote about that once too.

(they’re not, right? Please tell me they’re not.)

There’s a really well-organised web-ring called “The Carnival of MS Bloggers”. On it, you will find a pretty extensive catalogue of people who blog about multiple sclerosis, together with a little widget that provides links to the most recently updated blogs from that catalogue. When I first started experiencing the symptoms that would eventually be diagnosed as MS, I found reading about the experiences of other people really helpful; normal people who are just getting on with their lives. The possibility that you have MS is really pretty frightening, but ignorance only makes that fear worse. It’s not always a comfortable experience reading about someone else’s experience of MS, because they may be far more affected than I ever will be, but I think it’s important to know your enemy as much as you can. Mind you, I did stop subscribing to the official magazine of the UK MS Society because I found the advertising for mobility aids and wheelchairs a little hard to stomach. I realise that I may need these in the future, but it’s not something that I care to dwell on in the present.

Reading some of the other blogs on the Carnival of MS Bloggers can be a pretty depressing experience. It’s not so much that there is such a wide-ranging experience of the condition, and some people are far more affected than others, it’s just that the lists seem to be packed full of people who ONLY blog about their MS and their treatment.  Just look at the blog titles: they pretty much all make reference to MS*. Each to their own, but I really, really hope that there is more to these people’s lives than multiple sclerosis. I realise that I’m lucky and I’m pretty lightly affected so far, so it’s probably much easier for me to bore you all with stories about my job, my earworms and my exercise schedule. A time may come when I can’t work and I can’t exercise, but even so, I honestly hope that as long as I’m able to type / dictate my thoughts, I’ll be able to talk about something else as well.

Can I not be a blogger with MS rather than an MS blogger? (I’m inappropriately reminded here about Stewart Lee’s routine castigating Richard Littlejohn for criticising the police description of murdered young woman in Ipswich as “women working as prostitutes” and not just calling them prostitutes. No, they were women; human beings; why belittle them further by defining them only by their job?  With that in mind, I suppose I’m a guy who blogs and who has MS. Neither of those two things defines me). Goodness. Other people are quick enough to put us into a box, so let’s try not to put ourselves into one too.

I sometimes wonder if the people who follow the link on the Carnival of MS bloggers to my blog are ever disappointed when they find that my latest post finds me droning on about my job and not about my MS? If any of them get this far down the post, perhaps they could let me know!

* just to be clear, there are plenty of really interesting bloggers on those lists, with lots of interesting things to say on lots of different topics. I’m generalising, I know. Besides, for some people, blogging about how they feel about their MS is as good as therapy, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that either. It’s good to know you’re not alone, and it's good to be listed alongside them.  As Mary says in her comment below, "...m.s. is something we all have in common, be it small or large, in this size does not matter."

running around like a clown on purpose...

The first day back at work after the Christmas and New Year break is famously one of the most depressing days of the year.   Given that I usually work the bit between the two bank holidays, but decided to take the time off for once, frankly I was expecting the worst.

The weather didn't help: it's been blowing a gale and lashing it down for most of the day.  With those kind of 'stay at home' signals coming from mother nature, I can't say that I exactly jumped out of bed when my alarm went off.

Still, get up I did, and wound my weary way into the office.

And you know what?  It wasn't actually that bad.

I'd forgotten my system password over the last ten days -- surely a sign I've had a nice relaxing time -- and my email and Office applications were crudded out for most of the day, but it was fine.  I didn't have too many meetings and the day ticked along quite nicely.  It was even quite nice to slip back into the routine of having nothing more complicated than a couple of rolls, some carrots, celery and cherry tomatoes for my lunch.  Much needed vitamins, I should think.

I didn't even get much abuse about the beard I've accidentally grown over the holidays (and decided not to shave off) either.  In fact, I even got a few compliments.

Fancy that.

To top my day off nicely, I went for a swim.  I feared that the gym might be appallingly cludged up with people on a New Year, New You health kick, but I seemed to time it perfectly: nearly empty when I got there, and just filling up as I left.

I even managed to inject myself without hitting either a nerve or a vein.

All in all, it's been an unexpectedly painless day.

And it's pizza for tea.

We're golden.

Mind you, not to be too glass-half-empty about it, but the day's not over yet.

Happy New Year to you all.

those same old songs every single year....

Earworms of the Week

Look, I realise it may be a little late to be recommending Christmas music to you, but I've made a couple of very pleasing discoveries over the last couple of weeks and I thought I'd share.  I'm a big fan of Christmas music, as you probably know, but I try and look a little further afield than the Pogues, Wham and Slade.  Not that there's anything wrong with them, per se, it's just that they're played to death every bloody year and there's loads of other good stuff out there if you just go and look for it.

I made a playlist for Christmas 2007 that was made up of loads of songs of the c.2000 XFM Christmas album (eels, Belle & Sebastian, Grandaddy etc) as well as seasonal classics by the likes of Joseph Spence, Peter Broggs, James Brown, Sufjan Stevens and so on.  Since then, I've more or less played the same set of songs to death and been just as guilty as everyone else of not looking a little further afield for some newer stuff.

This year, I tried a bit harder.  As well as turfing up old reliables like Dean Martin and Doris Day duetting on "Baby, It's Cold Outside", I also downloaded some a clutch of new releases.

A Very She & Him Christmas.

I think I first heard Zooey Deschanel singing a Christmas song as I watched Elf one year.  She's got a lovely voice, and her duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Will Ferrell was great fun (she was in the shower, to boot).  It's not on the soundtrack for some reason, sadly, so I stumbled on this instead.  When I saw that this album was coming out and that they had included that song on the tracklisting, I was keen to have a listen.  Actually, it's probably the weakest thing on the album: they've reversed the genders of the lyrics, but apart from that they seem to have taken out most of the playfulness that makes the song really interesting in the first place (albeit those lyrics are a bit dubious, no matter how charmingly Deano sings them).  I still bought the album though, and I'm really glad that I did.

Deschanel has released a couple of albums with singer/songwriter M. Ward in the past, and although they're apparently pretty good, neither has crossed my radar.  This album sees them apparently playing a lot straighter than those other records, and contains covers of seasonal classics like "Sleigh Ride", "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", "Silver Bells", "Little Saint Nick" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".

It's probably not everyone's cup of tea (she has a particular way of singing that will no doubt grate with some, and some fools don't even like the ukulele....), and they're hardly treading new ground here, but I like this album.  It presents mostly familiar classics in a slightly different way, without being so different as to make them unpalatable.  I played this a lot at the in-laws over Christmas.  Unless you really, really hate her voice, then it won't upset anyone.  That sounds like faint praise, but I like it.

This Is Christmas - Emmy The Great and Tim Wheeler.

Apparently inspired when the real-life-couple were snowed in last Christmas, this is an album of mostly original Christmas songs.  As you might hope and expect from these two, you get a slightly alternative approach to the season.  For starters, the one cover on the album, "Marshmallow World" from the Phil Spector album, is presented with guitars ablazing to cut through the sugary-sweetness of the lyrics themselves.  It's a great version and it rocks along nicely.  We also get "Christmas Day (I Wish I Was Surfing)", "Zombie Christmas", where the pair imagine a desperate fight for survival against the undead over the holidays and "(Don't Call Me) Mrs. Christmas", a lament by Mrs Christmas about how she can't take being alone at Christmas again.  There's some seasonal sugar on here too, with songs like "Home For the Holidays" and "Snowflakes", and the whole thing does sound a little bit like it was recorded on Garage Band, but I like it.

There are power chords!

Definitely worth a listen, anyway.

And to think that they so nearly called themselves "Sleigher", which would have unquestionably been the best band name ever....

Funny Looking Angels - Smith & Burrows.

So the singer from Editors and the drummer from Razorlight got together and made a seasonal record.

No wait!  Come back!

Actually, in spite of those unpromising ingredients, this is my favourite album of the lot: I'm a sucker for a mournful baritone voice like Tom Smith's, but Andy Burrows' falsetto is a revelation (certainly coming from a drummer, nevermind the Razorlight drummer).  The song selection is eclectic: the album opens with a stark version of "In The Bleak Midwinter", and amongst the original songs we have covers of Black's "Wonderful Life" (which suits Smith's voice) and Yazoo's "Only You", neither of which disgrace themselves by any means. 

It's two of the original song's that stay with me, though: "When the Thames Froze" sees Smith pause in singing wistfully about skating on the Thames with his son to lament:

"God damn, this government
Will they ever tell me, where the money went
Protesters march out on the street
As young nerds sleep amongst the feet"

Not conventionally Christmassy, sure, but a record doesn't have to be dripping sleigh bells to make it seasonal or topical, does it?  It's a lovely record.

Even better is "This Ain't New Jersey", which has quickly become one of my favourite songs of the year.  It's a wistful, bittersweet view of Christmas and of a relationship.  Seemingly out of nowhere comes a song -- and an album -- that completely bowls me over.  I had no idea they were recording it, and if I had I would probably have sneered, which just goes to show what I know about music.

Do yourself a favour and check it out.

"We drink, we sing, what a state we're in.
Here's to another year".

Lovely.

Happy New Year to you all.  You can always play them next year, right?

---

Oh, and by the way, the Auditorium Top 10 album of the year countdown is in full flight.... do go and check it out, if only to marvel at how three people (me, LB and bedshaped) can come up with so many different albums in a single year: barely any overlap at all this year.  Long may it continue.   Wouldn't it be boring if we all liked the same thing?

for weak and for strong....

I've been boring people all day about the Winter Solstice.  It's like this, you see:  the winter solstice falls on the 21st of December, the day on which the sun is at the furthest point from the North Pole and is the Northern Hemisphere's shortest day.

Except that isn't quite true.

You see, it takes the Earth 365.25 days to orbit the sun.   That's why we have a leap year every fourth year, to bring the calendar back into sync.  This means that, on the December before the leap year, the Solstice is actually about 6 hours later, pushing it into the 22nd December.

Fascinating, no?  Best read the article in the Guardian where I learned that in the first place, eh?

Speaking of the Winter Solstice, I've been seeing massive posters around Nottingham featuring a picture of people all dressed up for a party.  The caption?  "No matter how you dress it up, Christ comes first at Christmas".  I've seen similar things on the billboards outside churches too.

I suppose it's not all that surprising really, but why do these people feel so threatened by Christmas meaning different things to different people?  It's not as though the idea of having a festival at this time of year is a Christian invention, is it?  The Romans celebrated Saturnalia around the 17th December with feasting and gift-giving and the Winter Solstice itself has been observed and celebrated since neolithic times as a period representing rebirth and renewal.  Christianity just tagged onto an existing party, trees and all.  You think that Jesus was really born on 25th December?  Good grief.  Wake up! Shepherds don't watch their flocks by night in midwinter, even in the Middle East.  They just moved the damn date of their party so it matched everyone else's, so let's not get too precious about how people choose to mark the midwinter now, eh?

Christians claiming squatting rights over this time of year is about as ridiculous as a soft drinks manufacturer claiming that a set of adverts produced since the 1930s somehow gives them a right to say that the red and white imagery of Santa Claus is down to them.  The cartoons of Thomas Nast from 1863 depicting a bearded, plump Santa in red and white furs have no relevance, obviously, not to mention the red episcopal robes of the original Saint Nick: Nikolaos, the bishop of Myra in the Fourth Century.  Nah.  It's all about Coca Cola.  Holidays are coming.

Why argue about it at all?  Isn't the best thing about this time of year the fact that people are a bit nicer to each other?  Can't we at least all do that, whether we attend midnight mass or not?

With that in mind, and given that I'm off to France tomorrow for the festivities - my mother-in-law is an excellent cook convinced that I'm not eating properly, and my father-in-law keeps an excellent cellar... it'll be hell - here's my traditional gesture to thank you all for sticking with me over the last twelve months.

Hard on the heels of the news that the average life-expectancy of people living on the streets is 30 years shorter than the average, on behalf of everyone here, I've made a £50 donation to Shelter, the homeless charity.  It's quite mild at the moment, but I'd still rather be snoozing on the sofa in front of a fire than out on the streets, that's for sure.

Season's Greetings to you all.  Here's to 2012.  War is over if you want it.

See you on the other side.

feels like home....

I'm just back from spending a couple of days working in our York store.  The store was fine: the work was hard as always, but this time I went with a couple of my colleagues and we had a pretty good time together, I think.

It's good to go out and help the stores when they're at their busiest, but I had an ulterior motive, of course: I did my Masters degree at the King's Manor (part of the University of York), and I lived in the city for a year or so after that as I worked at HMV and looked for a 'proper' job.  Nottingham is a great city to live in, no question, but I don't think that anyone has ever accused it of being as stunningly beautiful a city to look at as York.  Nottingham's medieval town centre was bombed or bulldozed in the last century, and is now the site of a spectularly ugly ring road; Nottingham castle is a not-very-impressive manor house on a hill; the old lace markets are nice enough, I suppose, and there is some other decent Georgian or Edwardian architecture, but Nottingham does not have much to look at that really soothes the soul.  York, on the other hand.... the Minster, the city walls, the old gatehouses, the 'lesser' churches, the pubs..... I could go on, but above all else, I love the feel of being in an ancient city, with old, timber-framed buildings and ramshackle, narrow little streets.

It wasn't an entirely brilliant place to live, I must admit, as at least 50% of the shops in the town centre are really there to service tourists and not locals - something that still looks to be the case - but there is no doubt that York is a beautiful city.  We were in a hotel right on the banks of the River Ouse, and it was great to just spend some time wandering around the old streets, popping into pubs and generally checking out somewhere I spent a very formative part of my life.

Best of all was a visit to the Hole in the Wall pub on High Petergate, a very short stroll from the Minster and right by Bootham Bar.  This was the pub where I spent many happy hours when I was a student at the King's Manor, just outside the city Gates and about 50m from the pub.  It was my local.  It even gets a mention in the acknowledgements to my Masters dissertation.  The last time I was here, I was horrified to see that it had been given a makeover that featured vast amounts of neon and that the character of the old pub had been entirely ruined.  You know what, someone has converted it back.

This makes me very happy.

That said, it is nice to be home.  Home home, I mean.

they're putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace...

Earworms of the Week

“Santa Claus is Coming to Town” – Joseph Spence

A bit of a mixed bag this week, but to be honest, it's mostly coming down to Christmas songs.  As you might remember, I really like Christmas songs.  I always have.  I was a chorister when I was a kid, and although I am atheist, I still have a real passion for beautiful songs like "Adam Lay Ybounden".  I also really loved a Christmas CD that we had that contained Slade, Shakey and all the other timeless classics.  As I've got older, I have to confess that I've got more than a little bit bored of the same old songs that get wheeled out year after year after year.  LB always says that there is a list of about 100 songs that radio stations use to represent the 80s, and that ultimately -- although they may all be great records -- this is pretty limiting.  There are lots of really great Christmas songs that we never hear.  The problem is that, when one of these songs gets added to the mainstream list, as "Fairytale of New York" has been in the last few years, I have to admit that it quickly gets ruined for me.  You can't win, eh?  Still, I discovered this version of a famous old song played by a Bahamian blues legend, about 5 years ago now, and it just doesn't get boring.  He sounds like a drunken muppet who doesn't know the words and clings to the chorus like a lifebelt.  It's brilliant.  It's not Christmas in this house without a bit of Sandy Claw.

"Stop the Cavalry" - Jona Lewie

Jona Lewie must praise the day when he decided - in passing - to mention Christmas and add a seasonal bell or two.  An afterthought, for sure, but one that made sure he's been on every Christmas compilation for the last 20 years with a song about war and not about Christmas at all.  To be fair, it was only kept off the top of the charts in 1980 by two John Lennon songs re-released in the wake of Lennon's death, and I actually still really like this.  Catchy as hell, which is a pretty good start.  Buba-daba-dum-dum etc.

“Waterloo” – ABBA

HATE Abba.  Still, I do like this song.  CURSE THEM.

“Friday Night, Saturday Morning” – The Specials

This song was my Abba antidote all week.  I can't remember why it popped into my head, but it's a brilliant record, isn't it?  Beautifully downbeat, but insanely catchy at the same time.  I quite like the Nouvelle Vague cover of this, but it's still not a patch on the original.

“Rosanna” - Toto

Not even the best Toto song (AFRICA!), but still pretty damn good.  MOR FTW!

“Feliz Navidad” – El Vez

Back to Christmas then.  I've been helping a colleague of mine put together the annual Christmas quiz that she does for her family on Christmas Day.  Once I started thinking about it, ideas for rounds just kept popping into my head.  A picture round of famous people photoshopped behind santa beards! A round where you have to name as many famous people as you can called Noel! Identify "Happy Christmas" in a bunch of different languages!  That's where this one comes in, of course.  Feliz navidad prospero ano y felicidad!  Yeah!

"A Great Big Sled" - The Killers

Apparently they do a Christmas single every year.  I like this one, from 2006.  I find them a bit hit and miss as a band, but I do like this one.  Brandon sounds so impassioned, bless him.

“Sleigh Ride” – The Ronettes

Love love love that Phil Spector record, and this is the best thing on it.  Ding a ling a ling a ding dong ding.

"River" - Joni Mitchell

One of my colleagues has been asking me all week to name my favourite Christmas record, and I've been annoying the hell out of her by not naming something like Slade or Wizzard, and instead preferring to mention people like Belle & Sebastian or the Eels.  Actually, on reflection, I think that this is my favourite seasonal record.  It's not obvious, by any means, but I love it because it is a beautiful, moving song with that haunting echo of Jingle Bells.

Last earworms before Christmas (we're off to France on Friday morning),  so it figures that there are going to be some seasonal classics, eh?  Love these songs.  Bored of Wham! and the Pogues?  Look further afield,  I dare you.

Have a good weekend, y'all.