Sunday 29 January 2006

Last night was my flat-cooling party.

I’d been a bit nervous about it beforehand, to be honest. Partly because the packing and tidying was going so slowly, but also because I was not sure how all folk from the different spheres of my life would get on with each other - would the church folk and joinees end up arguing about cults, and would the Inverness and Aberdeen contingents get on? When I was last in Aberdeen, I asked a couple of friends whether the party should have a theme. Mark suggested pogo sticks, and Justin was reliably depraved in coming up with the fancy dress idea of famous child murder victims, which would have at least done less damage to the lino than the pogo sticks.

As it was, I just went with good old “bring a bottle and enjoy yourself” instruction, and it was a great party, with everyone getting on very well and having a good laugh. A major spurt of efficiency during the afternoon had meant that I’d left the place spick and span too.

Besides the chat with loads of people I’ve known from over the years, which made me feel very grateful that I have so many wonderful friends, the major success of the party was that I’ve ended up with more alcohol in the flat than I started with.

Now that’s a good party.

It’s my last day of work tomorrow, then I move down through the week. I’ll spare you the sentimental drivel about Inverness and the last three and a half years of my life, and get on with my packing.

I suspect my next blog will be from Glasgow, bottle of buckfast in hand.

Thursday 26 January 2006

The Last Junket.

As you’ll maybe know, I’ve spent the last three and a half years travelling across the highlands and islands, and beyond, for my work. Travel has been a great part of the job and I’ve seen a huge amount and had wonderful experiences, but there have been times when the stupidly early starts, freezing trains and bland airports have come close to outweighing the fun, anecdotes and inspiration the trips have given me. Back to back day trips with 6am starts do get a bit gruelling, and keeping an overnight bag in the flat that’s always semi-packed and ready to go has sometimes made me feel more like a war correspondent than a students’ union administrator.

I guess that’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to move to Glasgow and to a job with less travel. Not to say that I am ready for the pipe and slippers just yet, but I’d hate to become jaded and not enjoy travelling any more. So it’s possible that the journey I’ve just finished this evening will be my last flight until the autumn, when I am planning to go to Canada.

I’ve been in Sheffield since Monday for a course, and after a bus and two trains to Manchester airport then a very long walk between terminals, I was waiting at the gate when the woman at the desk called the flight on the tannoy:

“Ladies and gentlemen, Eastern Airways are pleased to announce the departure of flight 801 to…” She paused with a sigh.

“Inverness!” chipped in a chorus of half a dozen or so of my fellow passengers.

“…yes, Inverness. Please come forward with your boarding passes ready.”

We all laughed, and as we approached the desk she apologised profusely: “I’ve done seven flights today, I’m beginning to lose track!”

I know how she felt.

Sunday 22 January 2006

I took a quick break from my slow-going packing to do a radio interview this afternoon. My friend Angus, who lives round the corner from me and who goes to Hilton, is doing a traineeship at Moray Firth Radio and there is a pilot of a magazine show that he and his fellow trainees are working on. He decided to do his fifteen minute slot on mullets, including some vox pops on the street about what people think about mullets, plus an interview with a fishmonger and a hairdresser.

Angus has just been interviewing me about my mullet mission, as you’d guess. Luckily I was well-practised after all my radio appearances in Australia, so I think it went quite well. If the pilot goes to broadcast, I’ll let you know.

Sunday 15 January 2006

In church this morning, a friend gave me the web address of the church she went to when she lived in Glasgow. I had a browse a moment ago, and that led me on a search for the websites of all the churches in Glasgow that people have been good enough to recommend to me over the past few weeks. They include both traditional and lively Churches of Scotland, an independent baptist church, a Pentecostal church, and an Episcopal church.

My googling led me to stumble on the homepage of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, an extremist denomination consisting of two and a half grumpy Lewismen who oppose everything, including and especially Fun. In a stroke of inadvertant comedy genius their website is closed on Sundays. I remember reading a few years ago of the internal debate within the Free Ps about whether to actually establish a website or not - opponents of the idea claimed that any site on the internet was “only five clicks away from pornography”. Quite how they knew this, I have no idea.

I can’t quite see why even the most traditional of doctrine should dictate that a website about the Christian faith should be closed on a Sunday - perhaps they think that web-surfing is just a step away from dancing, and of course we all know that dancing is just a step away from sex. However, what with giving women only second-class status and compulsory hat orders; refusing to do anything except constantly repent for the crushing sinfulness of mankind and offer brutal judgementalism to the rest of us infidels; their oppressive Sabbatarianism; and adhering to the letter of the Old Testament to an extreme degree that would put the Amish to shame, I reckon closing their website on a Sunday is not really all that surprising. With guys like the FPs around, there’s really no need for satire - I wouldn’t swap them for anything!

Anyway, back to all these different churches I’ve been recommended - they all seem lively and appealing in their own ways, and I think it might be worth broadening my horizons beyond my own blinkered centre ground. Me going to a baptist, charismatic or Episcopal church? Stranger things have happened. I can’t think of any, but I am sure they have…

With so many places to try out when I move south, I think I could have a lot of fun “mystery shopping” them all.

Friday 13 January 2006

I’m not sure what it is about joinees, but many of us have so-called “stupid boy projects” that we like to pursue. My mullet project, for example. Maybe we’re all easily bored or perhaps the idea of a pointless but fun mission appeals to the sort of folk who would willingly join a random stranger. It’s not creative genius, that’s for sure - certainly not on my part.

Anyway, two joinees I know from Luton, Ben and Paul, have decided to try and find one person in every country in the world - they’re calling their project One Big Friendly World. They roped me in as their first country, Scotland, and they’re now at over 20, with places including the USA, Estonia and Tanzania so far recruited.

Ben and Paul have set up a blog and there’s apparently a forum to come, but I’m still not entirely sure what it’s all about, so it was a mixture of trust, boredom and the joinee instinct for the unknown that made me sign up. “Our aims are simple”, they tell me: “to gather people from each country of the world and become friends, creating One Big Friendly World”. Well, that all sounds innocent enough.

I hope.

Tuesday 10 January 2006

To Do Lists are great. Often vast long checklists of things that have to be done, they are a great way of not only being organised, but also of making it look like you're being organised. I often waste entire hours constructing To Do Lists at work simply so that I can satisfy myself I am doing something useful - I even once made a To Do List which began "1. write to do list".

I've spent most of this evening doing a "Move to Glasgow" To Do List, and I am now realising just how much there is to do. Everything from sorting my remortgaging to writing an inventory. There's loads of boring computery things I need to do too, such as put all my music on my laptop so I don't need to take loads of CDs south me, and make sure that I can still edit my website from my new location.

I'm very lucky that it's all gone smoothly for me so far, though. It's just that with a week out of the office for an inconveniently-timed training course in Sheffield, I've only really got until next Friday to get the place packed and sorted. So it will be an immensely busy time and my evenings and weekends will have to be spent working hard to get it all done, with no time for slacking.

So, time for a drink and a browse of BBC News…

Saturday 7 January 2006

Gareth Saunders drew my attention a few moments ago to his latest blog, which talks about the resignation of Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Kennedy “came out” the other day as having had a battle against alcohol, something there have been rumours about for months now and which he has previously publicly denied. It seems he’s come under increasing pressure from colleagues and the press to “go public” about it, and now that he has done his fellow LibDem MPs have forced him to resign the leadership.

As Gareth rightly observes in his blog, Charles Kennedy wasn’t lying - as an alcoholic, he would have been in denial and so genuinely would have believed that he was right in telling the media that had had no drink problem. That’s what alcoholics do.

For his parliamentary colleagues to force him out of the job like this, after he has so bravely gone public about his problem, is a disgraceful and ignorant thing to do. Have they no respect for his honesty? It seems they’ve forced him to quit simply because he has admitted that he is a human being with human flaws. What hypocrites. And I don’t normally like calling people “hypocrites” because nobody is perfect and we’re all therefore hypocrites in a small way.

I used to be very political, especially when I was at university, but have become increasingly disillusioned with the whole malarky because of the backstabbing, bitterness, selfishness and often pure evil that pervades the political process. A couple of years ago I read The Political Animal by Jeremy Paxman, which explores the motivation people have to become Members of Parliament. He paints a very dark, cynical picture of the terribly underhand, egotistical and nasty things that people do to advance their own political careers, and the book helped me realise that politics, particularly party politics, is an ugly game often very far removed from the public interest everyone clamours to claim they serve.

Why do politicians have to put so much energy into doing each other down? Why did Charles Kennedy have to resign simply because he admitted to battling a terrible sickness like alcohol? Why can’t politicians let each other be human? Surely that’s what we want from them.

My respect for the LibDems and the political process generally has taken a big dent today.

Wednesday 4 January 2006

In case you're interested, which I am sure you're not, here are my top albums from 2005, in more or less descending order.

1. The Campfire Headphase by Boards of Canada - the beautiful latest album from this Scottish electronic duo is both livelier and softer than their last album and includes gentle beats, soft guitars and simply sublime melodies. A couple of songs, Peacock Tail and Dayvan Cowboy, I have barely stopped listening to lately.

2. Takk… by Sigur Ros - Takk… is beautiful, energetic, and much what you'd expect from the Icelandic band. The usual mix of crashing guitars, thumping drums and orchestral strings.

3. The Understanding by Royksopp - this album took me ages to get into, perhaps because it is so different from their last one. This one is mellower, deeper and slightly less poppy, and has a couple of wonderful songs in, such as Alpha Male.

4. Du & Jag Doden by Kent - continuing the Nordic theme, Kent are a funny band. Their soothing rock ballads aren't what I normally listen to, and many of their heavier songs are just a gear short of what the Smashing Pumpkins used to come up with, but something makes me really, really like this Swedish band. Maybe it's the gorgeous lyrics, the catchy riffs or just the kudos I feel I deserve for being into a band rarely heard outside Scandinavia!

5. Everything Ecstatic by Four Tet - this one got a bit of a slagging in reviews, but I really like it, and think it is the best since the earlier album Rounds, and perhaps even as good. It's lively, quirky, catchy, and very beautiful electronic music from an Irishman who has worked with Badly Drawn Boy in the past. Smile Around The Face is an infectiously happy song without being irritating.

In my next blog, my five favourite London gallery exhibitions.

Not really.

Tuesday 3 January 2006

So, the new year.

2005 has been a great year with loads happening, and highlights include:

1. Really coming to feel at home in Hilton Church. Bummer that I am now leaving it.
2. Australia (1) - finding five mullets Down Under.
3. Australia (2) - numerous interviews about the mullet quest, including with Fran Kelly on Radio National’s breakfast show.
4. Seeing Sigur Ros live for the third time.
5. Getting a new job.
6. Er…
7. …that’s all I can think of for now.

2006 should be exciting, with a move to Glasgow for the new job, and hopefully a mullet expedition to eastern Canada later in the year. Plus, no doubt, a few surprises along the way.

Sorry, this is such a rubbish first blog of the year, isn’t it?