Looking Out To Sea

We are on our way to a Burns supper in Morningside this evening, though I feel unsure about the whole proceedings. 

Last year we went straight from a Sunday night roda to the Burns supper and generally felt great. Through some freak event I was the only fellow to wear a kilt and so was “volunteered” to give the toast to the lassies.

This year I feel much worse. I am not sure if this is medical problems, the effects of being back on a full dose of medication, work stress, the weather and travel, Helen’s studies or a grand mixtur of them all, but I will not be wearing a kilt this evening.

Out of the three capoeira classes since the beginning of the year I have missed two from injury. I need to feel more alive.

One day pouring rain, the next day snow. At least I’m not worried I shouldn’t have got waterproof panniers.

What the fancy panniers don’t do is make it any easier to ride face first into the snow — that was exciting! — or salve my extremely sore bum from my ice slip this morning.

I think I just need to make it a rule that I don’t ride straight out of the station in the morning until the weather improves. That short stretch of road isn’t well used, is twisty, sits on a hill and is in the shadow of the rising sun. A recipe for pain which I would do well to remember.

This is one of those traditional “I’m going to start blogging again, I promise” posts. Essentially I’ve installed the WordPress app on my phone so I’ll try to use it from the train and so on. Which also means you’ll have to excuse the typos.

As if to start, this evening I went to a Glasgow TechMeetup. There are Edinburgh equivalents that I never attended so I don’t know how they compare. The format was:

• beer and pizza at 6.30. Next time I must remember a bottle opener!
• a welcome about 7pm including an introduction from everyone in the room. There must have been about fifty people in the room so it took about half an hour!
• a few minutes to chat amongst ourselves, particularly with anyone who sounded interesting or employable.
• a talk about web design
• a talk about http caching

The first talk was pretty dull and I was ready to call it a day at that point. Thankfully I didn’t cos the second talk was well worth the entry fee, even if it was free. If you bump into serialseb he gives a great talk - funny and informative.

There’s a book list that does the rounds on the internet, whose provenance I forget now (BBC viewers? Guardian readers?) — either way I’ve been working my way through it for a couple of years. Not with any great conviction, but if I’m not sure where to turn next for a book I’m open to selecting something from the list.

I thought I’d list my currently completed for now, to provide some kind of status update. I’m currently working on Wuthering Heights, which is proving much more enjoyable than I thought it might. Frankenstein on the other hand, which isn’t actually on the list anyway, was really boring and I gave up.

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte — Really great, and now The Eyre Affair (Jasper Fforde) makes more sense
4. Harry Potter series, JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee — Not as good as I thought it might be
6. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
7. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
8. Catch-22, Joseph Heller — Fantastic and endlessly fertile source of cultural references
9. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien — Looking forward to the film!
10. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
11. Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis
12. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, CS Lewis — Yeah, I don’t know who compiled this list. This is cheating!
13. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières
14. Animal Farm, George Orwell
15. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown — I’m ashamed; but it was awful
16. Lord of the Flies, William Golding — Forced to hate it at school? Yes
17. Atonement, Ian McEwan — Brilliant, and the film’s not bad either
18. Life of Pi, Yann Martel — Don’t bother
19. Dune, Frank Herbert — Weird. For some reason I even read one of the sequels, though I didn’t even particularly enjoy the first book.
20. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
21. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
22. Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas — A huge, creeping inexorable powerhouse of a book.
23. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
24. Dracula, Bram Stoker — Great fun and surprisingly creepy at times.
25. Notes From A Small Island, Bill Bryson
26. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
27. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro — Quiet, reserved, evocative and restrained. Emotionally draining too.
28. Charlotte’s Web, EB White
29. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
30. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
31. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas — More whimsical than Monte Cristo, and a good sight shorter too!
32. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl