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Welcome to the year of the dog..

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Alan

Thanks to pre-marriage rituals for a friend and the generosity of Santa I’ll be taking in Krakow twice in 2013!

Whilst an excellent Yule was had by us all, it’s definitely been the season of congestion and coughs in our household.  Both Cat and I have basically been ill between Christmas and now.  Ordinarily it might sound smug to point out I’m not back at work ’til next week – but it doesn’t feel too smug as I’ve lost a week of time away from the office to basically sitting around feeling ill or sleeping.

In more positive news word from the garage on New Years Eve gave an ETA of today (well, it’s just today – but 2nd Jan) for the return of my car, so that’s potentially very positive news, it’s apparently very nearly repaired – including a scratch down the other side so it should come back to me in better shape than when I last had it.  Not that I’ve been using the courtesy car much due to aforementioned bastard cold.

The police turned up a couple of days ago enquiring after our next door neighbour.  In true modern-world style we barely know our neighbours (although are on speaking terms with ’em all), I’ve only spoken to next door dude a couple of times though, once over a wheelie-bin mix up and once when he’d kindly taken a parcel in for us – there’s still no sign of him as far as I can tell, he rarely has any visitors – I hope he’s okay.

Of course Forest have been busy since I last posted – and if on Christmas Eve I was feeling increasingly detached from football, the last few days hasn’t helped one bit.  Despite my pensive feelings around football in general, I was actually sold on what I believed the direction Forest were taking in sustainably building a club from the bottom up – it turns out I was a gullible fool and our owners are just another set of impetuous and impatient hatchet men.  Meh.

Finally I decided that I’d copy Rich’s idea of capturing each day (or at least an aspect of each day) of 2013 with a photograph.  I don’t think I’ll spam the blog with these pictures, but use Facebook as the medium for them, and maybe some kind of monthly summary on here… not sure.. I’ll probably forget / lose interest within a few weeks, if that – but it’s a nice idea, one I saw my mate Jonny do before.

For the record, here is today’s picture – my last week or so has been summed up by assorted cough and cold medication, which I suppose at least bodes well for my employer if nothing else, judging by assorted germ-related Facebook statuses I’ve been seeing!

IMG_4550

And so it’s a big welcome to 2013.  Much of 2012 has been brilliant, but when I reflect on some areas of life I’m certainly glad to see the back of it and am hoping that the opportunity to psychologically refocus and consolidate will bear positive fruit.  Despite that slight caveat there’s much to look forward to already in the calendar, so optimism is most definitely the way forward for now.  Once this bastard cold fucks off, anyway!

 

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I kept them with me, babe. I put them with my own.

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Alan
December photo

Where’s Wally (aka Alan?)

I’m not quite sure how 2012 has gone through quite so quickly – it’s bloody Christmas Eve already (well, it’s five minutes old).  Christmas Eve isn’t my favourite day of the year these days, so it’s perhaps apt that I’ll be off to work later ostensibly for a normal day’s slog.  It should be quiet, which is good as it’ll give me a chance to get stuff finished off.

So as 2012 draws to a close without the world ending, it seems a natural point for pausing and reflecting a bit.  I ended the year in style on the musical front, as well as lots of Ferocious Dog gigs there’s also been Levellers, Wonder Stuff and New Model Army at the back end of this year, not to mention The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and The Moulettes.  Some damn fine awesomeness upon the stage, and indeed, I made it backstage for the Levs!

On the football pitch Forest have undergone rather a few changes in this last year too, and well, probably need to undergo a few more to kick on to try to claw their way back to the top flight.  I must admit that whilst I have many excellent friends thanks to football, I’ve found the experience of going less motivating this last year.  I’m not quite sure why, but it quite often doesn’t quite live up to the exuberance you get from live music – maybe that shift in emphasis has given me an obvious basis for comparison.

Maybe it’s also that increased exposure to music that seems to have awoken that stark regret I’ve always harboured that I never picked up any musical ability at all, aside from my half-arsed didge-playing ability.  Our school had some really talented musicians in it, right from primary school and through secondary school and I either never really showed much interest, or perhaps somehow missed out opportunities to learn.  I’m not sure.  Knowing me it was probably my own doing, though!

I do remember embryonic guitar lessons courtesy of an enthusiastic primary school teacher and an acoustic guitar borrowed from my Grandad, but I don’t think the club lasted very long owing to a few genuinely talented players who perhaps understandably drew the focus of the teacher with the remedials being left very much behind!  I’m really tempted to buy a guitar and see if I can learn to play it a bit though – not to live performance standards, but for my own indulgence more than anything.

We shall see.  If there’s anything I’m very good at then it’s procrastinating!  I am watching a guitar on eBay though, and can be quite an impulsive so and so when I want to be.

Speaking of indulgences it was over the middle of 2012 that saw me drop from a 16.5 stone behemoth to a snake-hipped 12.5 stone dude.  It’s true a few Christmas pounds have already snuck back on but that’s something I’m not too fussed about, once 2013 is underway I can get back on to being sensible and shedding any results of over-indulgence.  The trick isn’t total denial, it’s not letting things slide quite as badly as they did last time!

Work too has changed at the back end of this year too, so there’s some adaptation and consideration to put in to there.  Sufficed to say I’m pleased to be preparing for a healthy slug of time away from the place to relax a bit, and eventually to start to think about some degree of future planning for my career.  I’m not very good at that, so I really do need to work out how to go about doing that.  It’s tricky when work itself has been so busy.

Still, one more day of that to get through then ’tis officially the season of good will for me.  Once Cat and I have shifted our confounded colds then it should be ace.  Rich and Em are hosting Christmas this year, so for me it will be the first ever time I’ve not been at a parental-hosted Christmas Day, having said that, the family will all be present – I’m really looking forward to some quality time with them before Forest inevitably bring me back down to Earth on Boxing Day!

But to be positive, there’s two Ferocious Dog gigs in the bank for next year already (including one they’ve kindly agreed to play on my birthday in the Rescue Rooms (for those wanting to ‘come dogging’ for my birthday, then tickets can be acquired here!)), and we’re off to Krakow at the end of February for Paul’s stag do which will be awesome.  So a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to anyone bored enough to have read to the end of this introspection.

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We can share our endorphins..

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Alan

It’s probably not escaped the attentions of many that I’ve been a bit of a grump of late – changes at work have been troublesome, and I succumbed to illness which I’m probably still coming out the back end of in terms of recovery.  That said, there’s been a plenty of good things too – live music aplenty, meeting the Levellers and other such things.

But something else that passed me by a little bit was that I haven’t been playing football for some time – I’d been carrying a thigh strain for a while, which was – despite my best denials – getting worse.  It had started out as something that might ‘go’ at the end of a game, developing to something that ended up with me not being able to kick the ball properly from the start of the game right through to hurting when I walked.

Having admitted I needed to rest it fate conspired to force the issue – I was ill, then the Nottingham branch of Powerleague where we play flooded and combined with a clash of diaries (which involved using going to see Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds at the Arena on Tuesday – which was AMAZING) it’s forced my hand into not playing ’til today.

Running around – admittedly in the freezing cold – felt good, and as I took my first tentative ‘substantial’ kick at the ball it was great to not feel that frustrating pang of pain in my right thigh – it was fine.  Indeed, despite warning the chap that picks the teams that I was a few weeks out so not fully fit, I didn’t struggle as much as I feared in keeping up and we managed to snag the win in a close fought game.

I’ve read before that your wellbeing (not just physical, but mental) can be enhanced through exercise – and I think I’ve been missing my football more than I’d realised.  So it was good to get a game under the belt, a few goals and a good win.  With Christmas party season upon us there’ll be a few more games that I’ll miss out on – but at least that’s for positive reasons rather than negative ones like injury, illness or floods!

Tomorrow I’m off to Derby to see Simon Friend’s Seismic Survey (Simon’s one of the Levellers) with some friends and staying over (so decadent, Derby ain’t exactly the other end of the country) and Saturday sees a trip to the City Ground, a Christmas dinner with my Forest friends and a trip up to Warsop to see Ferocious Dog finish off Dogfest, which is already a rather splendid sounding weekend before we factor in Masterchef finalist Michelle Burge coming round to consult us on food she’s going to cook for us a week tomorrow!

In an unusual move I’ve actually elected to organise a birthday party next year too – okay, when I say organise, that’s over-egging it – Ferocious Dog are playing the Rescue Rooms so I’ve just invited all my friends to grab a ticket and celebrate with me in the finest style I can envisage!  Rock and roll!

Whilst I’m focusing on the positive it’s good to not have a bloody ridiculous moustache any more!  Below is a half-arsed montage of Movember 2012 from my point of view!

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Levelling the band..

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Alan

I like the opportunity to combined my interests, and last night was a chance to combine my under-stated obsession with the Levellers and the BBC Children in Need charity.  Cambridge 105 ran a charity auction for some Levs related swag which I won – and rather than post the stuff to me tour-manager Phil clocked I was in Nottingham, as were the band, in the next few days.

So through the lovely Claire at Cambridge 105 an aftershow pass had been arranged at Rock City for me to collect the goodies straight after the gig.  Still feeling a bit under the weather I had the interesting experience of watching the Levellers barnstorming set completely sober – it certainly didn’t spoil it.  They’re on as good form as I’ve ever seen them at the moment, blending a nice mix of old and new, well known and more obscure – it was a great selection of songs performed awesomely.

It was also great to see some familiar faces join them on stage to play über-catchy ‘The Recruiting Sergeant” at the end.  I had thought I was recording it for posterity but well, a technical glitch means I either deleted it or never recorded it in the first place – grr.  Post-gig I found tour manager Phil who led be back stage where he handed me a bag of stuff including a signed drum skin lovingly artified by Jeremy, a customised satchel, a Truth Is vinyl and some cufflinks.

Being a bit of a merchandise whore for Levs stuff there’s some duplication, but that’s okay!  It felt a bit strange accosting people who are frankly heroes of mine for photos when they’ve literally just finished an intensive set of performing – but they were lovely and very gracious.  Of course all I could think of to talk about was the kind of banal crap they must hear after every show, thankfully that probably consigns me to a non-specific memory bank of gormless fans for them!

Which means in one fell swoop I’ve completed my collection of ‘pictures of me with Levellers’ which had been standing at 3 over a few year period.  Big thanks to Claire and Phil for organising the opportunity and of course to Simon, Matt, Charlie, Jeremy, Jon and Mark for indulging me when they probably wanted to get down the pub (and to Chris for the lift home).  I think perhaps I might have been better off getting leathered beforehand!

Back on to a dog-tastic weekend of Ferocious Dog action this weekend – it was great to see lots of fellow doggers in the crowd (not least Dan who was on stage for the last song).  We’re off to see them play in Beeston on Saturday night and then in Derby on Sunday night.

For now, I can admire my bag of swag – and think what I can do with my awesome (used) drum skin!  I must be one of a select group of people who now owns two pairs of Levellers cufflinks too!!

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I have a bike, you can ride it if you like..

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Alan

Dah-na dah-na dah-na dah-na dah-na… BAT BIKE!

… actually, I don’t.  Yet.

A few months ago at work I put my name down for a locker – at Boots there’s a waiting list that folk wisdom suggested lasted a year or more.  The catalyst for this was being in a bit of a mood (!) about the impending Workplace Parking Levy about to be passed on to us in order to pay for Nottingham City Council’s ill-conceived desire to cover our city with electronic modes of transport.

The idea reminded me of when I went to Digger World with Rich and Em – because, ironically, the solution to this could be, wait for it, an electric mode of transport.  As bizarrely an offshoot of Digger World was a company who produced electric bikes.  Basically a normal bike that is assisted by a battery-powered motor.  Which might sound a bit lazy, well, I suppose it is.

So yeah, I thought a year of waiting to be granted a locker would give me some procrastination time – and then maybe I could get myself a Bat-Bike and take advantage of an easy ride in to work, a quick change, a day’s work and then work a bit harder on getting home – which would fit nicely into project fatty too, giving me more exercise.

It would enable me to unsubscribe from the Workplace Parking Levy if I cycled in 80% of the time or more, and of course could feasibly save me an awful lot of money on petrol too.  Food for thought, for sure – more pressing than I’d thought it would be.  Not that I can afford to splash out on a bike right now!

As for other stuff in the world of me.. we’ve had a restructure at work which has been somewhat frustrating, Ferocious Dog have been busy in the studio for their forthcoming EP which I can’t wait to hear – and at the weekend as well as Forest we’ve got the excitement of going to see Carl Froch in his latest bid to retain his world title.

After that there’s the Levellers in Rock City and then Ferocious Dog in Beeston, then Derby.  All in all, lots of music-based excitement with a good smattering of sport.

Before all that of course we have Children in Need and in the midst of it all Movember.  I’m really looking forward to Friday where our team have a day of fundraising planned with a human fruit machine (again) and help from the lovely folks at Alea Casino who’re bringing a roulette wheel in for us to use as a game, then on to the evening where I’ll be taking calls from the lovely folks of the UK until the early hours (and missing seeing the Levellers in Lincoln in so doing, I might add!)

Busy old time.  I’m glad I’ve done all my Christmas shopping! </smugface>

As a final aside – as a throwback to previous posts relating to randomly remembering old school hymns, for reasons best known to my subconscious mind I seem to have had ‘when a knight won his spurs’ stuck in my head – of course, back in the day we would sing it as ‘when Forest beat Spurs’ – which almost certainly are in the stories of old these days!

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I will fly a yellow paper sun in your sky..

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Alan

If I said ‘The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’ to people my age they’d probably shout I am the god of hell fire! at me in response – they probably only found that song through the Prodigy sampling that particular part of it.  Certainly I was in that camp.

I only really opted to go see his performance because the excellent Moulettes were supporting and Cat and I really enjoyed them when they played before the Levellers acoustic gig up in Buxton.  So missing the very start of their set, and it only being 30 minutes long, was a bit of a pity in many ways (but still very enjoyable, of course!).  Here’s their final song of the night, Requiem:

We both treated Arthur Brown with some degree of caution – I’ve since discovered he’s seventy years old and these days looking rather like a psychedelic Terry Nutkins, but still pretty spritely as he cavorts around the stage for a good hour or so.  Some of it went a bit too ‘far out’ but for the most part it was awesome… culminating obviously with Fire. Below he is performing my personal highlight of the night, ‘Kites’:

The song leapt out because I recognised it as a song from Sasha and Digweed’s Northern Exposure album.  I never knew it was a cover, to be honest, so it was a bit bemusing for a while.  It turns out the original song was by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound.  I also hadn’t realised quite how long Arthur Brown has been performing for – so I do feel oddly privileged to have been able to say I’ve seen him in action.

Whilst the Rescue Rooms was by no means full there was a healthy crowd of people mostly older than me (which makes a nice change!).  He mentioned he’s recording a new album early next year which he’ll be touring so if you happen to spot a date near you (or not near you) in 2013 then it’s well worth a gander.  A top night’s entertainment.

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Whacha gonna do? And other Hogan Slogans..

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Alan

I’ve long since stopped worrying too heartily about ‘project fatty’ too much – but I have maintained the routine of tracking what I eat using MyFitnessPal.  It’s quite good for generally ill-disciplined minds such as mine I’ve found.

Just on a whim I stepped on the scales for the first time in weeks to realise I’d hit the four stone lost landmark since I started.  I’m now hovering at around the weight I think I ought to be.  I’m wearing trousers I could’ve worn when I was seventeen, and they’re a bit on the loose side if anything.  Freaky when you think about it.

Now attentions turn to Movember.  In truth, I wasn’t too fussed about doing it this year but have caved in to peer pressure.  Having done two ‘conventional’ Movembers before last year I did the ‘grow a moustache that has curlable ends’ challenge, and succeeded.  This year I’ve also given myself a head start too.

To make it more interesting this year if I manage to get my sponsorship up to £200 then I’ll bleach what will be a handsome horse-shoe shaped moustache to give me the Hulk Hogan look.  I agreed to this before I realised said wrestler was subject of a sex-tape scandal at the moment.  Dear me.  So despite my ambivalence about hitting this particular target, I suppose I am duty bound to share the link to my Movember profile regardless.

There’s still a way to go yet, so I feel reasonably comfortable.  Should you wish to reduce my levels of comfort then my page is here: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1202308

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And the devil sends the hell hounds for me..

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Alan

I know I mention Ferocious Dog quite a lot, but watch the video below, then go and check out their tour dates – and go and see them.  It’s awesome that Nottingham has an artist at the top of the album charts this week, but there’s more to local music than just Jake Bugg – we should embrace it, support it and propel our talented musicians into the prominence they deserve.

Also recommended is their debut album and forthcoming EP – because they’re as good recorded as they are live (but you can’t quite beat them live, in my opinion!).  Get yourself some awesome local music now from this link!

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Karma police..

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Alan

November tends to be the month of charitable overload – Movember, a charity I’m quite fond of as I’m not a fan of shaving, and Children in Need, something I’ve adopted since working for Boots.  It’s also typically when the Levellers do a UK tour.

I excitedly booked a ticket and hotel room in Lincoln for the 16th November months ago giving little thought to it, only to find it was the day that Children in Need will fall.  Whilst it might seem like a strange move I’ve managed to sell the ticket and hotel booking (for face value too) so that I can take part in both the charity shenanigans during the day in the office, and in the evening take phone calls.

Big thanks are owed to my friend Lynn who knew somebody who hadn’t firmed up their plans but planned on attending – indeed, through this move they saved a bit of cash too, so everyone really was a winner!  Perhaps there really are karma police watching over us!

This is not me setting myself up as being some sort of social martyr though – as well as obviously raising money for the charity through fundraising and taking people’s pledges via the telephone, it’s a great deal of fun as well – and this year will mark my tenth consecutive year of supporting the charity – something I really didn’t want to miss out on.

As well as the fun factor, it’s a really nice annual reminder of how wonderfully generous, kind and caring the people of the UK are as a whole.  The modern world, particularly in tough economic times, gives us too many reminders of people being shits to one another, so I take a great deal of healing from speaking to hundreds of people at their very best – donating money to a fantastic cause.  Nearly always apologising that they can’t pledge more, bless them.

So I am sad to not be having my trip to Lincoln to see the Levs and catch up with friends also going to that gig – but I can, of course, take solace in the fact that I’ve only lost out on a booking fee and postage to send the ticket on, and of course I will be seeing the Levellers the week after in my home town anyway, so it’s really not the end of the world…

Should you wish to support Children in Need then give the hotline a call on the night, you’ll have around a 1/3000 ish (I think) chance of getting through to me!  Should you want to help fund my magnificent Movember growth then you can do so here!

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In the land that calls my name, can’t you see we’re all to blame?

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Alan

It’s testament to what went before that watching Forest limp to a disappointing defeat to Derby on our own ground couldn’t really do anything other than put an unsavoury finish to an awesome weekend.

I plan on keeping this brief, this was my Friday night:

And this was my Saturday night:

So Sunday’s disappointment and a slightly underwhelming impulse trip to the Speedwell Cavern near Castleton can be merrily consigned to the memory dustbin leaving a weekend replete with musical splendidness courtesy of The Levellers and Ferocious Dog.

I’ve even managed to add Oscar and Rich to the ranks of fans of Ferocious Dog along with Chris – so we’re already availed ourselves of tickets for their next gig in Southwell in a few weeks!

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