CD reviews

I know you’ve all been desperate to hear my thoughts on the Ulrich Schnauss CDs. I’ve received… ooh, more than minus one emails about it.

Well, they tried to get delivered this week, and I went to the post office this morning to pick them up.

Goodbye is definitely up to Schnauss’s usual standards, but it has its differences. Some tracks use voices, others are more complex, verging on the slightly chaotic. But all have the trademark soft, chilled beats that make it a perfect album to relax to.

The Quicksand Memory EP is very good too. One new track, one from Goodbye, and two remixes of previous album tracks, and overall it’s a nice wee collection.

If you like your music soothing and chilled but still interesting and chirpy, I can heartily recommend these. I’m looking forward to getting more of a feel for both of them.

Return of the Shed

The Shed was round for dinner tonight, the first time I’ve seen him since his return from the USA, and amazingly only the third time I’ve met him ever.  Much fun was had and it was great to hear all the news behind the blog.

He gave me a baseball as a souvenir.  I had no ideas baseballs were so tough.  Another reason not to be sporty.

Going to Inverness twice

Besides the Canada trip in August, I’m also going back to Inverness for a couple of weekends next month.

One will be a whistle-stop tour of various parts of the highlands for a friend’s wedding and various family stuff. The second will be for the annual joinees‘ gathering in Inverness.

So last night I bought train tickets for the latter, and (because of the packed and complicated itinerary) hired a car for the for the former.

I’m a bit apprehensive, actually - I don’t own a car and haven’t driven since the last time I hired one for my previous job. That’s nearly eighteen months ago. I doubt my driving skills will be all that hot after such a long break from behind the wheel, so I’ll have to take things carefully. But to be on the safe side, please avoid the A82 and and A87 that weekend.

So that’s my trips to Inverness.

For now…

Going to Canada

I booked flights to Canada today.

With the world tour postponed by a year, I was still keen to do some sort of mullet tour this year, to keep my hand in and my enthusiasm up. And so Canada it is.

The two Canadian mullets, one near Toronto and the other near Montreal, are not too far away from each other, and I can only spare about a week for this leg of the adventure. So unfortunately I won’t really see that much of the land that brought us mounties, lumberjacks, neverendums and people who say “aboot”.

No doubt the mullet-hunting will keep me busy, and there’s a handful of friends and family to visit too. But if anyone has any other suggestions for things to see in that neck of Canada, I’d be grateful to hear.

I survived!

The deathmarchers’ weekend away was quite a trip, and I am shattered at the end of it all.

Our journey - on the beautiful West Highland line - got off to an ominous start due to floods in Glasgow and we arrived at Corrour three hours late.

The next day, we split into three groups to take on the hills. I was in a group that went along the glen in which Loch Ossian lies and up the imposing Ben Alder, then back again.

It took us eleven hours, and apparently was eighteen miles. And we were the “intermediary” group, would you believe.

It was probably the longest I’ve ever walked at once, and needless to say I was exhausted at the end of it. Quite why I agreed to follow this up with a six mile walk the next day, I have no idea.

Masochism, probably. Though I am not in as much pain today as I thought I would be.

Anyway, as promised, there’s a few pictures - nothing spectacular as the weather wasn’t fantastic.

A nice evening

Last night, I discovered a new pub, the Pot Still, which after just one visit has instantly become one of my favourites. It’s quiet, comfortable, relaxed, and packed from floor to ceiling with an amazing array of whiskies. It’s in the city centre, but I’ll not hold that against it.

I was meeting Alex, the blogger known as m0ok, for a couple of drinks, who along with Mrs m0ok have been coming along to St Silas recently and I have very much enjoyed meeting them and reading their blogs. I’d only met Alex once, though, and so it was nice to properly catch up.

Transport nearly conspired against us at the start of the evening - Alex texted to say that his train was running late, and I replied, reporting that there were also delays on the subway. Perhaps something serious was wrong.

“Maybe the rapture happened“, Alex texted, once I had come out of the underground. “Bugger. I guess we weren’t proper Christians after all“

I arrived at the pub, settled down with a nice pint of 80/-, and tapped out a response:

“We’re sorry, Simon can’t reply. He’s with Us now.”

But Alex arrived just as I was about to send. Damn.

We had a grand old chat about all sorts, but I’ve just realised there wasn’t a single mention of pants.

Loch Ossian

On Friday the St Silas hillwalkers will be deathmarching their way north to Loch Ossian for a whole weekend of Munro-based masochism.

We’ll be staying in a youth hostel that is only accessible by rail. It describes itself as a “rustic-style eco hostel” (that means a complete hole with no basic facilities). It’s ten miles from the nearest road, so there will be no escape for two whole days.

Wish me luck.

On the plus side, it is home to a unique part of Scottish cinema history - it was at Loch Ossian that the famous “it’s shite being Scottish!” speech in Trainspotting was filmed.

No doubt I’ll take the occasional photo or two.

It’s a small world 2

As I’ve said before, it’s a small world.

Just tonight, I got an email from friends from St Silas who moved last year to New Zealand, coincidentally around the same time that friends from Hilton did exactly the same thing.

Can you see where this is going? Yes, they recently met at church in Wellington.

Cool, eh?

On the sidelines

Many people have spirit-filled, theologically deep, and very moving reasons for becoming a member of a church. I, however, joined the church for political reasons: when I was fifteen I wanted to join the SNP but my parents wouldn’t let me until I first joined the church.

And in the thirteen years since then, I’ve never made it to the AGM of a church I’ve been a member of, and it was only tonight, in a church I am not (yet?) a member of, that I finally did so. And not only just because the rest of the Monday night pub quiz team cancelled on me.

St Silas’s Annual Business Meeting was surprisingly interesting, and it was good that non-members like me were allowed to sit in and watch the proceedings. Many of the presentations and reports - such as on the plans for the new hall - were engaging and useful, and helped me to further appreciate that this is a ambitious and talented church with a very good idea of where it’s going. And the financial report was presented in a most entertaining, almost Dave Gorman-style, way (there’s a rare gift if ever there was one).

Another item on the agenda was the confirmation of the “sidespeople”, and it was only when I heard my name among those read out that I realised that “sidespeople” just means “Welcome Team”.  Someone explained to me that it’s all part of the Pisky tradition of giving anyone with an important job or who handles money a suitably austere and anachronistic name, presumably in an attempt to scare off anyone who’s interested in doing it. Thankfully we just call them “Welcome Team”.

There was even a couple of votes throughout the evening. And there was me thinking that Presbyterians were the only democrats in the Christian church.

You learn something new every day.

Onomatopoeia

Yesterday was a long and busy day thanks to the “open church” thing St Silas did as part of the West End Festival, Glasgow’s annual attempt to demonstrate that its culture extends to something more than Buckfast and Orange marches. It was a fun afternoon and a great testament to the great creativity that exists among the congregation.

During the afternoon, and apropos of nothing, I got talking to another St Silasite about onomatopoeia, and I wondered out loud why the word “onomatopoeia” isn’t onomatopoeic.

It is, we agreed, one of life’s many unexplainable features. For example, why (as Screaming Lord Sutch famously demanded) is there only one Monopolies and Mergers Commission? Why is the word “stutter” so hard to say if you have a stutter, and “lisp” so hard to say if you have a lisp? Why is “big” such a small word, and “abbrevation” such a long one?

We reached few firm conclusions on any of the above, but never let it be said that we don’t at least try to tackle the world’s important issues in St Silas.