Oh this made me chuckle; which is perhaps a little macabre, since the urban mythology surrounding the clip suggests that the oik in question ended up with an amputation. However, rarely has 14 seconds of grainy footage so beautifully illustrated the wonderful moments when one is punished instantly for one’s actions; and indeed, that the only laws that certain burberry-loving sectors of society should disregard at their peril is the law of gravity!
For context, the received wisdom of this scene is that the wall in question is basically a prefabricated garage block made from slotting gravel-boards into posts. So as well as destroying somebody’s property, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to conclude that it is likely that, upon a more successful means of gaining entry to the garage, theft or further damage would have ensued.
It was an interesting weekend of randomness for me and Rich, which started early in the morning with him picking me up in order to head down to London. Unfortunately the SatNav decided it didn’t want to work in Mum’s car, so we ended up opting to drive to Hendon and get the Tube into the capital rather than driving straight to our destination as had been our original plan, and thus encountering the dreaded phrase “rail replacement bus service” as part of the Northern line was closed for maintenance.
The first port of call we had was the Aboriginal Arts studio in Stratford, East London – due to the travel issues we were a little later than planned, but our genial host Colin was completely non-phased by this. We headed down into his basement studio for me to have a didgeridoo lesson – which was a present Rich bought me for Christmas! Rich cunningly managed to get a few goes on the didges as well, and proved to be pretty much a natural when it came to getting a good drone going!
Colin is an excellent teacher, patient and assuring as I struggled my way through playing – it was great to get a chance to play some of his excellent and authentic instruments, all of his didgeridoos are sourced via fair trade and made using the traditional methods of the Australian Aboriginal people – ie, they find a tree that has been hollowed by termites and use this as the base of their instrument, rather than a mass produced one. So in a way, it as a mixed blessing that my own didge (a teak mass-produced one) had to stay in the car rather than come with us on the Tube, as we got to have a go on plenty of probably the best quality instruments available in the UK.
Reassuringly the basics I’d taught myself were okay, but Colin wasted no time in teaching both Rich and I a few rhymic tricks as well as using our voices to create all manner of peculiar sounds – some of which were quite pleasing! So that’s made me decide to put some time in to practice some more now, and also to try to master circular breathing – which I can actually do, but seem to have a mental block when it comes to doing it whilst actually playing the didge – this is just a case of practicing to force your mind into realising it’s possible – as it defies logic in many ways. Circular breathing enables you to play constantly rather than just whilst you have breath!
So yes, watch this space – if I can make some decent progress then I may well opt to revisit Colin for a bit more guidance and potentially get myself a new didge – as the spectacular array of instruments he let us play were so much easier compared to mine, and the sound quality of them was something else – but I don’t want to go splurging money on something without knowing if it’s something I’m going to be able to get much better at. Hopefully that should be the case!
Whilst there we both also picked up a jaw harp each, which is a traditional Vietnamese instrument and makes some great sounds – and rather pleasingly is made from an old gun cartridge which has good karma – the reconstruction of a mechanism of destruction into something that can be used to create great sounds is something that feels quite a nice thing, I think!
After the didge lesson, and a fantastic breakfast at nearby Cafe Mondo, we hotfooted it back onto the Tube to head over to Dagenham where the Daggers were taking on Peterborough – two form teams in League Two – it promised to be a good game, and it was a ground neither Rich or I had been to before. So after a beer in the members club attached to the ground, we opted for the open away end with the Peterborough fans and looked forward to an entertaining game, which wasn’t forthcoming! The most exciting moment of the first half was the till-roll assault the Posh fans chucked onto the pitch, and the Peterborough players then clearing it up!
There was a mental queue for the tiny tea bar at half time, but I was rewarded with a tasty burger with bacon and cheese, and a cup of Bovril, whilst Rich had a pot noodle and some decent chips with curry sauce! After the Posh had snagged a couple of goals we decided to leave early, as it was frankly a dull match and it made us less scathing about the dull football we watch at Forest – it transpires we missed three more goals! I’m not sorry, though!
I’ve had a didge practice today, I still can’t work out how to ‘toot’ on my didge at all – but some of the other rhythmic and voice things are going quite well. Colin has very helpfully recorded a number of tutorials he’s uploaded to YouTube, so when I get a chance to spend a bit of time I shall be going through those and trying to develop my skills a bit more, and pick up ideas from some of the footage he has also added of numerous notable didge players practicing their art.
Rich has uploaded some photos here. In the meantime, Forest limped to a disappointing draw away at Crewe, which all but destroys our fragile-as-they-were aspirations of automatic promotion.
Rich writes much more eloquently than I could about our revisitation of Soccer AM. I’ve not gotten around to watching/encoding most of the show, but here’s the bit where we’re introduced near the start of the show. Before it gets removed from YouTube, anyway!
And that’s why if you type “pompey shorts” into Google (with the quotes) the number one result is a discussion thread on the Nottingham Evening Post website about us by some semi-literate Forest fans!
He has loads of toys, which he enjoys, yet bizarrely, Digby seems more entertained by an empty bottle! Obviously not a trick for him to be performing unsupervised by humans, but a strangely entertaining one!
There are also photos of this outrageously cute little fellow here.
Can you spot the theme developing here? Fear not, ’tis the last one – the cheeky monkeys who collated the highlights for Boots managed to sneak the bit where I ‘bunny-eared’ Des Coleman from the DVD they sent to us though, the little minxes!
… spotted this on Ray‘s blog, which made me chuckle mightily, so thought I’d pinch the idea and post it here, with the actual video, since I can! 🙂
Can’t believe how quick time’s going – it’s less than 13 weeks ’til Christmas, you know – what a terrifying prospect! Although given that I spent time in store last week helping put the Christmas stock out it shouldn’t be so much of a shock, I suppose.
I’m feeling quite smug at the moment, as I’ve had three games of football this week – and won all of them, contributing a diminishing but significant number of goals, four in the first game, three in the second and two tonight! I think stepping up to playing regularly three times a week has really benefited my overall fitness so I’m able to keep up the pace a bit longer.
The garden’s all done and planted with assorted shrubs (which I suppose will get added to over time – but that’s Cat’s territory!). One glaring “thing to do” though is to sort out our fence panels, which get battered by footballs during the summer (God bless the rain this year!), but fell outside of the budget for the work we had done. I’ve found some wooden gravel boards at Wickes which I reckon I can form into some sturdy and not unattractive fence panels though.
So that’s the plan for tomorrow – to pick up enough to make a ‘test panel’ – to see if it doesn’t look too hideous, and does indeed prove to be sturdy… maybe I’ll need to take a football over onto the field adjacent to us and spanner a football at it once I’ve finished or something! Hmm, maybe not!
For those of you, like me, who have been hankering after re-living the pinch-faced wee Scouse scally and his mate discussing the merits of milk-drinking – with particular reference to Ian Rush and Accrington Stanley, then hanker no longer – for thanks to Rich it is below!
It’s still a genius advert, certainly it retains a fondness because when it was televised I was too young to realise that Liverpool FC were part of the axis of evil, so perhaps I can forgive myself my indulgence just this once!
On a more ‘blog’ note, my feet absolutely kill from a couple of games in the new boots. Cat has very kindly acquired me some ‘Compeed’ today, which apparently is like an uber-plaster that you stick over blisters and basically wait for it to fall off/disintegrate/rot/whatever it is they do, by which point the blisters should be gone – huzzah! So hopefully I’ll be more comfortable soon.
Won on thursday, played quite well – lost on friday, played quite badly owing to only being able to run in a manner that made me look like I really needed a poo. Still, them’s the breaks! Last night was Ruth’s 30th drinking session, and I got fairly trollied yet seemed to be able to get up this morning quite easily (odd!), it was a good night, though!
I’ve had a drive-tastic week or so really. Last week of course Cat and I headed up to sometimes-sunny Yorkshire for our falconry experience, as well as a bit of touring featuring a gorge, a falconry centre (as if we’d not seen enough!) and a big long cave, and of course driving home again.
Upon arrival at home it transpired Phoebe had lost a suspicious number of long wing feathers – meaning she can’t fly. We initially suspected Frankie had attacked her – so headed straight to the emergency vet, who wasn’t an avian specialist, so she just gave us some painkillers and antibiotics, by the time we got her to the vet today (more extra driving!), it transpired she’d had a particularly heavy molt, exacerbated by a bit of over-zealous preening.
Still, we’ve got her settled in a separate cage now -she has a couple of blood feathers coming through that are less protected than they’d otherwise be, so we need to watch out for that – and just keep an eye on her to make sure she’s alright getting around the room without the power of flying!
And that leads me on to this week – on wednesday Rich and I are taking Uncle Ken down to Wembley to watch England play Germany in a friendly. To be honest, watching Steve McClaren’s hapless reign as England manager isn’t massively motivating for me, but I’ll be excited to see the new stadium, and given the less-than-likely chance of me getting to see Forest there, as I did at the old Wembley, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers!
Oh aye, and Tom showed me the genius video clip below – featuring some lions attempting to catch a young buffalo type thing, you’ve probably seen it already as it’s had about 14million hits on YouTube as I type, but it has a couple of twists in the tale – it’s called ‘Battle at Kruger’ – enjoy!
Since looking at my weblogs, it seems I end up with loads of hits from back when I uploaded an MPEG of the old Kia-Ora advert from days of yore. I remember having to remove it as it was linked on a number of forums and made my mate’s server nearly melt! So for those of you arriving for that happy video – it’s below. And try YouTube if you want stuff like this!
Skydiving is awesome – it’s definitely something I’d like to do again. As you can see from the video when I did it, the weather was somewhat overcast – I’d love to do it again on a clear day – so perhaps I will.
I’ve had a drive-tastic week or so really. Last week of course Cat and I headed up to sometimes-sunny Yorkshire for our falconry experience, as well as a bit of touring featuring a gorge, a falconry centre (as if we’d not seen enough!) and a big long cave, and of course driving home again.
Goddammit 
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