August 12, 2014

O Captain! My Captain! – Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
  But O heart! heart! heart!
   O the bleeding drops of red,
    Where on the deck my Captain lies,
     Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
  Here Captain! dear father!
   The arm beneath your head!
    It is some dream that on the deck,
     You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
  Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
   But I with mournful tread,
    Walk the deck my Captain lies,
     Fallen cold and dead.

Karen
August 11, 2014

Age-appropriate content

It will probably come as no surprise to you that Karen and I like to watch TV programmes with a bit of an edge to them. We have no objection to shows that contain gratuitous nudity, foul language, drugs, violence, baking, and so on and so forth.

Last week, Karen’s mum was staying with us, and we did a masterful job of accidentally watching the kinds of programmes that one would not normally watch with one’s mother-in-law.

On Monday evening, while I was out at a band rehearsal, the two of them decided to watch Black Swan. Since I wasn’t there, I’ll let Karen tell this part of the story:

Well the most remarkable thing about our viewing of Black Swan was that the keyboard kept trying to save me from embarrassment by taking it upon itself to fast forward at random. I replaced the batteries and returned to the end of the scene before the masturbation scene, and then we watched that through. The keyboard glitched again shortly before the lesbian sex scene but mum pointed out that we had got the gist and did not need to rewatch it. Karen out.

On Tuesday evening we decided to watch some nice light sitcoms. First up, an episode of Taxi that hasn’t aged well. Maybe in 1980 it was funny to watch Louis de Palma sexually blackmailing Elaine Nardo in exchange for adequate working conditions for the rest of the staff, but in 2014 it’s knee-deep awkwardness from start to finish. We followed that up with an episode of Cybill, in which Cybill and Marianne write a porn movie, and Cybill also discovers that Zoe lost her virginity in Europe and they have a nice little chat about that. I hasten to add that I didn’t select these episodes specifically for maximum discomfort, these just happened to be the next ones on the unwatched pile.

By Wednesday evening I had learned my lesson, and was playing it much more safe – we watched the first in the new series of Great British Bake Off, and then I saw that Raiders Of The Lost Ark was on BBC3 so we watched the first 80 minutes or so of that. Thursday evening we got our kindles out and and read instead. While I know it would make a far more exciting blog post if we watched Wolf Of Wall Street (which we actually watched with my dad), or The Inbetweeners (which we watched with my mum), or Total Recall (which I once watched with my granddad (Mmmm baby, you make me wish I had three hands!)), we didn’t.

Pete
  • Comments: 5
  • I have nightmares about listening to Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the red hot chili peppers in... - swisslet
  • yeah - Harrison Ford films of about that era are probably perfect. Except maybe Witness. ... - swisslet
  • Certainly in this situation, it was exactly the sort of family-friendly lighthearted actio... - Pete
  • Is it possible to see Raiders in the schedule and not watch it? No matter how many times ... - swisslet
  • I was actually praying to some sort of deity that mum would make no remark on the virginit... - Karen
August 8, 2014

Bar’s Open

This will be the final cocktail hour of the hummer solidays, as the Uborka Clan is heading off to France next Friday. This afternoon we are celebrating the work of the Reverend Spooner, known for getting his turds in a wangle. Woo your durst.

Karen
  • Comments: 7
  • Well I opened a bottle of Shunky Moulder last night, so I guess a wee dram of that would b... - Pete
  • I'm the dick lover. Oh, wait, that was last week. Umm, I'll have a Racardi and Bum, please... - mike
  • I have had three sours of heep. True STory: Reading the hourly news there was an item ab... - asta
  • I was yinking of thou when I pote this roast. - Karen
  • I was always fond of a spud goonerism. - Pockless
August 7, 2014

Where are you now? Karen, August

2014-08-02 14.10.21

After dropping Bernard off for a weekend with his aunt, Pete and I stopped for lunch at a greasy spoon cafe on a busy road junction in Rickmansworth. It looked like a dive but the all day breakfasts were delectable. Pete got one with two black puddings, and I got one with two hash browns, and we traded. We enjoyed this meal more than the £85 dinner with wine, much later that evening.

Karen
August 6, 2014

Uborka! Magic Mile

Congratulations to Team Uborka! members who ran the Marathon Talk Magic Mile; here are our times:

Me: 09:42 (usual mile is about 11:30; this nearly killed me)
Swisslet: 07:04 (aiming for under 7 minutes next time)
Stroppycow: 10:50 (too hot & sore, with Runkeeper playing up)
Gordon: 09:46 (mostly uphill)

Great work!

I have hardly been running at all, summer holidays are just impossible. Loads and loads of walking, though, because Bernard can do that with me. What are your plans for the rest of the summer?

Karen
  • Comments: 4
  • Uborka is so excited about your marathon place. - Karen
  • As it happens, my running club did a magic mile this evening as part of our interval train... - swisslet
  • well, I got confirmation yesterday that I am the proud holder of a gold bond charity place... - swisslet
  • Well done all. Still planning on attempting one - maybe tonight. Sure I can find a reasona... - Tom
  • Comments: 4
  • Great post Bernard. I did not know about these cable cars, and now I want to ride in one. - asta
  • cool hat and you're definitely working it. Good post too. Looking forward to the next on... - swisslet
  • Bernard - can you run the bar on Friday? - graybo
  • Welcome to blogging, Bernard! I think the white dome must be the O2 Arena, which used to b... - mike
August 4, 2014

Geocaching

I first heard about geocaching many years ago. I mentally filed it away under “sounds moderately interesting, charmingly geeky, mostly pointless” and didn’t really think much more of it.

Last week Karen decided we should give it a try. She installed an app on her phone and this weekend we discovered our first two caches.

Trinkets

Trinkets

In a nutshell, geocaching is like a big crowdsourced, GPS-powered treasure hunt. You go to the specified coordinates and then look for the cache, which is usually well-hidden in a weatherproof container of some sort. It might be as little as a logbook to which you add your name, or as much as a plastic lunchbox containing various trinkets.

Crouching lunchbox, hidden loom band

Crouching lunchbox, hidden loom band

Some trinkets are extra special. One of the caches we found at the weekend contained a travel bug – an item with an attached dog tag containing a unique ID. Using this ID, we could see that this red fox bottle opener has hopped from cache to cache from Australia to Vietnam and then to England. We’ve taken it into our care, and will find it a new temporary home in France when we’re there in a few weeks.

So yes, it is charmingly geeky, and mostly pointless. But treasure hunts are fun, and I think you shouldn’t forget that.

Pete
  • Comments: 7
  • Two more finds today, and have converted granny as well. - Karen
  • That is such a cool thing to do. - swisslet
  • Can we join you? - Karen
  • Superb! I've just checked the website and there are loads of caches in the woods right by ... - Gammidgy
  • We love caching too. Although we're often hugely rubbish at it, it's still fun. - Clair
August 1, 2014

Old Skool Rulez

The one thing old school bloggers like to do more than navel-gazing and writing in-depth music reviews, is to nostalge. That’s a verb, right? Or if not, I’m allowed to verb it, right?

This afternoon’s cocktail hour is, of course, a London blogmeet. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, then a) you don’t belong here, and b) you can read a very typical report of one here. To that end, it’s February 2003, and we are in a bar somewhere near Euston. The room is full of people claiming to read each other’s blogs, and in some instances, this is true, in which case we tell each other that we feel like celebrities, familiar with some pretty intimate details of each others’ lives, but never having met before.

Taking the weight off her feet, Pigwotflies claims not to have changed one bit. Despite this, she is sipping ice shavings and having a hot flush. Wethinks something might have changed.

At one of the tables, Pixeldiva is still Queen of Blogland, and has proved it so by hitting so many nails on so many heads in her comment below, featuring her lunch, the London Underground, and metablogging. This whisky old fashioned is much deserved. We’re glad you like Uborka, we like it too, and we like that it’s not about anything. It really isn’t. Should she run out, Gert is always on the verge of going to the bar, and knows exactly what everyone drinks. This is a useful, if creepy skill.

Another one who can be counted on to ply you with wine is Our Lad Pete, who has aged but handsomely so. Just beware if he fixes you with those pool-blue eyes and says “Hi, I’m Pete… Petedotnu.” This is an irresistible formula.

None of us can remember when Clair first appeared on the scene, least of all herself, but it’s as if she’s always been there, with her knitting and a glass of champagne. Meanwhile we’ve allowed Asta to join us because despite never having actually had a blog, she is almost literally part of the furniture. Just don’t sit on her, as she has a sore back.

Graybo, of course, doesn’t need to come to blogmeets because he has all those imaginary friends to blog about. And they’re great because they go for drinks with him all the time. He doesn’t need us.

Cosmopolitan as ever, Mike was one of the first bloggers I slept with, in the sense that we both stayed at Mr Hydragenic’s house that weekend, not in the Belle de Jour sense, obvs. I would argue that there aren’t enough words in that comment for it truly to be a reflection of his early years. I think we should raise a glass to absent friends.

Back in ’03 we still thought digital cameras were a pretty neat idea; now our phones are cameras and selfies are the thing, so everyone stand in this corner and we’ll find the person with the longest arms to try and get the whole crowd in. Yay! Me too!

Karen
  • Comments: 2
  • Yay, me too. - Karen
  • Gosh, that TD blogmeet post from 2003 brought it all back. A seminal moment. - mike