(more pics - by karenm)
(more pics - by johns)
A couple folks who were at my 40th-birthday-in-a-castle-with-a-James-Bond-theme have sent some photos which I have duly posted. The picture above is of Jaws, Felix Leiter, and an unknown bond villainess whom I shall now dub "Brigitta Wundermounds"
I miss my castle.
(more pics - of Barcelona)
(more pics - of Sitges)
(more pics - of Tarragona)
After partying in the castle for a weekend it just seemed too much of a shock to go directly home so I flew off to Barcelona with my mother and my dear friend Derrick. The expedition was partially prompted by Derrick's obsession with visiting every country in the world. He's at 52 countries now. My mother's new husband is at 53. However, he is seven years older than Derrick so the contest is pretty close.
Actually, Derrick had already been to Spain, but Barca had the best connections when we looked at our return flights from Belfast and my mother had never been there. We stayed in the town of Sitges, about half an hour south of Barcelona. It's a bustling gay resort during the summer. In March, it was pretty quiet. Our hotel was La Villa Santa Maria which a friend had recommended. It is a nice little place right on the beach. We watched surfers from our own little balcony and befriended the waiters in the hotel restaurant.
We only spent one day in Barcelona itself, and most of that day was taken up running up and down the spiral stairs of the Sagrada Familia. Damn, that place is cool. I was glad we were there in low season though. I think it would be hell to be jammed up in those tiny staircases with throngs of sweaty tourists in the summer Spanish heat.
On my actual birthday we went south to the town of Tarragona and wandered around some Roman ruins. I was a bit braindead that day. I've known Derrick since we were thirteen and we meet up every couple of years. My mother took one room in the Santa Maria and Derrick and I shared another. A side effect of this arrangement was that Derrick and I stayed up late every night chatting in the dark.
I'd just like to say what a fan I am of Mediterranean shutters. They're great. They block out the sun when they're closed. They let the sun in when they're open. They make a satisfying clunking sound when you close them. They let you sleep in in the mornings. Shutters rule!
Anyway, we'd stayed up too late the night before and I'd had too much Cava and so I spent my birthday staggering around Roman ruins ruminating on how they were just not designed to have many comfortable napping places. Actually, when you think about it, ruins aren't really designed much at all. They just happen.
Much like turning 40 -- it just happens. I just happen to be 40 now. I don't mind that much. I'd like to have my twenty year old knees back. But that's about my only complaint.
For about a year, maybe more, my darling sweet little bunnykins, Dr. Vicki, has been asking me what I wanted to do for my 40th birthday. I had always answered, "I want to rent a castle for a week. I want everyone I've ever known to come. There needs to be a moat and tennis courts and beautiful women in revealing outfits and we need to have a big ass party!"
I never actually meant it, however. I assumed it would be far too expensive and ridiculous. But then one Sunday morning, I was laying in bed, reading the paper, and she asked me once again and I replied with my stock answer. Except this time, in the paper I was reading there was an article about Belle Isle Castle in Northern Ireland and so I showed the article (which was quite glowing) to her and said, "Here! I want to go here and we'll invite everybody and it will be really cool! Look it's on an island; that's as good as being surrounded by a moat. And it's got a tennis court. And it's perfect!"
She threw up her hands as always and said, "Right. What do you really want to do". I ignored her because I had now reached the end of the article and found that you could rent the entire castle which sleeps 14 people for about £1200 for a weekend. "Holy shit! I said, this is actually kind of affordable! It's less than £100 per person!"
And so we started working towards the castle plan. We looked at a few other castles and chateaux hither and yon but eventually came back to Belle Isle because it sounded like the best deal and wasn't too hard to get to from London.
Rather than a week, we cut it down to just a long weekend. The estate had some more accommodation near the castle so we looked into hiring a bit more of that and started inviting people. There wasn't room for everyone and so my apologies to all those that I didn't invite. To those that I did invite and who turned me down, you are all a pack of fools! What the heck were you thinking? That you'll just go to the next castle party you get invited to?
In the end there were 24 of us, almost all from England. My mother came from Canada and my friend Derrick came from... wherever the hell it is he calls home at the moment. He's kind of an international man of mystery so, although originally he's from Canada, he actually flew in from Geneva and has a Saipan address. A couple more friends came from Lancaster, but everyone else was a Londoner.
My charming spouse, Dr. Vicki, wanted to get me into a tux for the party on Saturday night so after a bit of hemming and hawing we decided on a Jame Bond theme. I was hoping this would prod the women into going a bit sexy and, My God, but it worked beautifully! And I mean, "beautifully"! Damn! But I've got some good-looking friends.
In order to keep costs down, Dr. Vicki volunteered to cook Friday and Sunday nights and we just told everyone to fend for themselves for breakfasts and lunches. (Mark did stellar breakfast duty for all on the Sunday morning.) Saturday night was catered so Vicki could relax a bit. We hired a coach from a Lakeland Tours in Enniskillen to get everyone to and from the airport and rented a car for the weekend to pick up groceries and booze.
The castle and rest of the accommodation was absolutely beautiful, far nicer than I expected. Most people chipped in to help with the cooking and cleaning and I think everyone had a grand time. There was poker. And cigars. And a piano and people who could actually play it. And tennis, and an expedition to the local pub, and boats that I don't think anyone used, and dancing, and booze, and board games, and Bond Girls and Bond Villains, and fun, and romance, and sun, and rain, and fun. Did I mention the fun?
Anyway, I'm definitely going to do it again in another 40 years. Thanks to everyone for coming out.
One of the main activities for me on the Castle Weekend was Scrabble. I love Scrabble but haven´t played it much lately. I managed to work myself up into such a stressed out tizzy that I didn´t actually do much during the weekened except stand in a corner and vibrate. Scrabble was one of the few activities I took part in. A couple of the people I was playing with had never played before, so I thought I should pass on this useful Scrabble link which I just ran across.
Back when I when I was a serious young Scrabble addict I tried to memorise the official list of 2 letter scrabble words. This site contains the next level up in stuff you should memorise, including letters you can add to the two letter words to make three letter words and words containing the letter Q but not the letter U.
I suspect if one were to learn these babies, lexical ass-kicking would naturally follow. Enjoy.
Uh-oh, internet café is about to close...
I´m turning 40 tomorrow and am at a Beach resort South of Barcelona with my friend Dhariqo and my lovely and hyper-wise mother. We just fled Northern Ireland where I had an absolutely fabulous party (if I do say so myself) at Belle Isle Castle with 23 friends. We were there for the whole weekend, but Saturday night was the party night proper and had a James Bond theme.
The place was far better than I imagined. My charming spousal unit, Dr. Vicki made some fantastic food and everyone looked fabulous.
But I´m being kicked out now, so more updates (and pics) to follow...
Ciao...
My mother’s visiting from Canada. A couple of nights ago we went to see the Tbilisi Marionette Theatre at the Barbican. It’s not your typical Punch and Judy type puppet show. It’s a bit more along the lines of the puppets in “Being John Malkovich”. Except, coming from Georgia, a little more convoluted, a little more Soviet. Think Chekhov on drugs. Or maybe what Chekhov dreams about when he’s on drugs. Or maybe beat poetry written about the dreams of a totally stoned lovechild of Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Catherine the Great’s horse.
The puppets were cool and beautifully made and the puppetry itself was masterfully done and the actors reading the dialogue were excellent. But the narrative was too obtuse for my rapidly aging brain.
I just didn’t really have a clue what the Hell was going on. I think it was about a horse who was in love with another horse, except that maybe he wasn’t a horse but a soldier in the Russian army and the soldier just happened to look like a horse. The play was called “The Battle of Stalingrad” and it took place in Kiev and Berlin and various other locations some of which might have been Stalingrad or maybe Bury St. Edmonds. I couldn’t really tell. At one point the horse died and was brought back to life by a fairy. And there was an ant that seemed to have a fairly pivotal role. And there were various soldiers and artists and other folk hanging out in cafés talking about historical events which I am too ill-educated to remember. Or maybe they were fictional events. Dunno.
It was cool and all and intellectually stimulating, but mainly because I had to use my entire intellect to follow what was happening. My mother, on the other hand, being jet-lagged, just fell asleep.
The day before yesterday, we went a bit more traditionally touristy and saw “Anything Goes” which is a big West End musical with tunes by Cole Porter and story at least partially written by P.G. Wodehouse, amongst others. It was far more accessible and infinitely more difficult to sleep through. Cheesy and loud and fun -- just the thing to make us forget the day’s early embarrassments.
Early in the day, you see, I took my mother to Harvey Nick’s. We managed to make fools of ourselves four times in two hours. It started with lunch in Harvey’s posh dining room. It’s a lovely place and the tables all have very thick tablecloths which are very handy for sopping up water. This turned out to be very handy.
The way I happened to be sitting, my foot was exerting subtle pressure against the base of the table. This pressure built up as we ate lunch. Eventually, the pressure exceeded some kind of threshold and the table shot away from me across the floor. Not far, probably only about three feet, but enough to spill everything on the table. It must have looked a bit like it had been yanked away from us by an invisible bungee cord.
Everyone stared of course. It was definitely a stareable event. It was by far the loudest thing that had happened in the restaurant in some time, the taste of the diners running more to muted pinks and beige. The staff wasn’t fazed though. The waiter very kindly and smilingly cleaned everything up and pushed the table back into place.
Half an hour later exactly the same thing happened again. I think it was at this point that they marked us down as being not exactly the Harvey Nick’s sort.
After lunch we did a bit of shopping. We found some lovely hats in the designer Men’s section. There were a bit pricey though: £275 - £330 each. Since we couldn’t afford to buy them we decided we should take a picture of ourselves wearing them. This greatly distressed the department manager and he told us to stop. This, in turn, greatly flustered my mother and so she left her shopping behind. The shopping now, of course, became a suspect package to be treated with great caution.
Fortunately, one of the manager’s assistants spotted us a short while later and asked us to come identify the bag my mother had left behind. Once again, we felt grossly embarrassed and ran away into the “casual” department and then out through a trendy noodle bar onto the street.
Next time she comes I think we’ll try Marks and Spencer.
The missus and I went to the christening of Vicky's and Nicky's boy Ben in Liverpool on the weekend. It was lovely to be around a big extended family event. Neither of us have family here in the UK so such occasions are rare enough to be a treat.
For me, the highlight of the trip had to be the shower in the Hollins Hey Hotel though. Not because it was particularly enjoyable - quite the opposite. But it was such a challenge it went beyond being an annoyance to being an experience to marvel at.
To begin with, the shower was one of those handheld thingies in a bathtub with half of a glass shield instead of a shower curtain. A sticker on the side of the glass shield warned not to stand beneath the shower when turning it on. It was therefore a good thing that you could remove the shower sprayer whatsit from the support thingamabob as otherwise there would be no way to turn the shower on without having most of your body directly under the spray.
The sticker warned about water temperature and scalding but the real danger was enormous, fire-hydrant-like water pressure and the fact that this enormous torrent was focused through a rather cheap plastic shower nozzle. In keeping with our modern age, the taps were digital. As far as water pressure went, they had two values: 0 and 1 billion.
Vicki showered first and came back into the room laughing. "Look out for the shower" was all she said.
And so I took it very carefully. I turned each of the taps the smallest increment I could, literally a degree at a time. At first there was nothing, but then, one degree more, and water burst out of them as if I'd removed a little Dutch boy from a dike.
The temperature seemed all right though. So I stepped into the shower, grasped the hand held shower thingmabobinchab (I think I'm just going to call it a "wand" from now on) and clicked the little lever that redirected the waterflow.
The wand immediately flew out of my hand and started writhing around the bottom of the tub and up against the wall. I scrabbled around on all fours trying to trap it and received several nasty blows to the head and other important bits of the body. The whole while the wand blasted water all over the bathroom and myself. In a panic, I hit the lever again and the wand fell dormant to the bottom of the tub.
I now tried putting it in the support whatchacallit. I flicked the lever and the same thing happened. The wand took on a life of its own and had to be subdued by killing its source of evil power.
You may assume that I was irritated and angry at this point but you would be wrong. I was simply amazed and a bit amused. And now it was a challenge. Other people must have mastered this shower and so would I.
I grasped the wand tightly in both hands, then leaned forward and carefully nudged the shower lever with my knee. The wand immediately tried to leap free but I managed to control it. Now that it knew who was the more powerful, more sentient being, the wand was tamer. I was able to direct it with only one hand and soap up my nasty bits with the other.
I continued to soak the rest of the room, however, because the pressure was so great it shot out of the back end of the wand as well as through the nozzle. I tried covering up this back spray with my hand but I almost dropped it again so soon gave up.
A short while later the job was done and I turned off all the taps and switches and spent the next ten minutes drying as much of the room as I could with the towels that we had.
In fairness, I should point out that the rest of our hotel room held no surprises and was, in fact, quite lovely with a big four poster bed and if I'd just taken a bath instead of a shower I would have nothing bad to say about the place.
And the christening was lovely. The Canon from Cantrememberwhere did the service and he was an entertaining old git who sat down at the piano and played an impromptu song partway through the ceremony. Afterwards there was tea and beer and nibbles at one of the grandmothers' house and it was all very pleasant. And I suppose, in a way, my experience in the shower was just God's way of making sure I was properly baptised myself before I went to the ceremony.
Of all the things to lose! Of all the cruel tricks that fate could play!
I think somehow I lost my ability to appreciate music.
I went to a gig a few days ago with my Crazy Landlord. "The best gig of the year so far!" according to him. Admittedly, it's still February but he seemed convinced it wouldn't be surpassed in the near future.
Objectively, I knew it was a good gig. The venue was La Scala which is a lovely rambling place with multiple rooms and bars and not entirely obvious traffic routes between them. I'd been there a couple of times before and we managed to find our way to this little balcony thing right above the stage. It's a great vantage point to watch a gig from.
The warmup band, Ella Guru, seemed to have an affection for funny-sounding instruments. Their eight piece band included a ukulele, a vibraphone, and a flugelhorn. And it all sounded pretty good.
Even before this the night had begun in a promising fashion. When we arrived there was a huge queue so we went to have a pint and wait for it to dwindle a bit. We popped into a bar called Sahara Nights. It was pretty much decorated as you would expect a bar called Sahara Nights to be decorated -- lots of dark corners and tassels and red velvet draperies and multiple levels and overstuffed cushions and just plain magic. Eight women were taking part in a belly-dancing class on the dance floor. Above their heads was a huge plasma screen television showing a football match. The goalkeeper had just been kneed in the face and the TV showed a close up of blood literally pouring from his forehead. Oblivious to this gruesome scene, the women below continued to writhe to Arabian pop. It was a wonderfully surreal sight. And they had good crisps.
The headliners, the band we had gone to La Scala to hear, were "The Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band". The band was formed by one of the founders of "Godspeed, You Black Emperor". They played some really beautiful music. At least, objectively, from somewhere high above myself, I judged that it was really excellent stuff. Original, haunting, with a dash of rock and roll feedback to keep you awake. It should have inspired me. John certainly seemed to eat it up. But me, I wasn't inspired. I was mainly hot and thirsty and uncomfortable and a little bored. They were even a Canadian band. I should have pretended to be crazy about them for patriotic reasons if nothing else, but I just couldn't. Fortunately, John was dying for a drink as well and so we slithered our way through the crowd and went to the top level bar and got some water.
There are a number of booths in the top level bar at La Scala and we ensconced ourselves in one of them. Only one of the other booths was occupied - by the ukulele flugelhorn warmup band. Everyone else was crowded around the railing tying to get a glimpse of A Silver Mount Zion. You couldn't see anything from the booths, but, damn, they were comfy and there was a table to put your drink on and it was comparatively cool and you stretch out and, anyway, you could hear the music as well as you could fifteen feet away at the railing. So why not sit in the booth?
Well, because you're obviously not a real fan if you sit in the booth! You have to strain like a constipated lemming to get as close to the source as possible! That's what you do if you appreciate music.
And so that's why I'm worried. I mean I enjoyed the gig (at least once I was safely inside the booth, I enjoyed it). But obviously something has happened to me over the years. I've lost a little bit of my passion. Maybe it's down the back of the couch. Or maybe the cat ate it. But it's gone and I may never get it back.
Thank God I still care about vodka and chocolate chip cookies.
