pale light

Limping from bed this morning. My calves hurt because I ran yesterday; for the first time since the last time I wrote about running. I woke up early enough to do it again today, but the ache has caused pause. I'll take a day off. 

The day's pale light starts a littler earlier. Not early enough be useful, not yet. It doesn't hang around too much longer. It will still be dark when I walk home from work. 

Two weekends in a row of old friends, good food and too much drink. I discovered that the Red Socks Carignan 2010 that I made is a perfect match for haggis one week and that Fuller's ESB goes great with guinea fowl pie the next. At one point there was a great jukebox and a pub in Essex rang with the tunes of our university days. It had the curious effect of making the beer slip down faster and in perhaps greater quantities than normal.

I'll shake the rust off and get ready to face the week. Should be a good one.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

no hot water

I was sound asleep when February started in Western(ish) Europe, but not for very long. I was in a strange hotel in the town of Vienne, just south of Lyons. It looked, from the outside, like a grand townhouse. On the inside it was more of the student hall of residence circa 1978 sort of decor. It had an odd odour and I saw not a single female guest in my brief stay. I tried to shower at 4am (early flight) and there was no hot water.

Finishing January and beginning February on a whirlwind wine tasting/buying trip of Southern France and the Rhône seems to be as good a sample of the year so far. Moving quickly, a lot to do, not much time to pause, but fun while it's happening. There were bad wines and good wines; wineries seemingly at the end of civilisation and the odd revelation. I wrote only tasting notes and read only descriptions of cuvées and wineries and regions and yields and grams per litre of residual sugar and not much else. 

So I've drunk beer today. And a small sip of wine someone forced upon me, but mostly beer. I'm writing this and other things. I'm going to watch a cheesy movie and eat curry. I'm going to think of things not wine for the rest of the night.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

getting over the firsts

I'm not sure how we're already halfway through January, but we are. A 24th of 2013 is complete. It's disconcerting in that I've got quite a lot to do and instead of doing it, I'm sat marvelling at how slow the days go and how quickly the weeks pass by. 

I've only noted two firsts of the year - my first curry of the year and my first run of the year. Neither killed me. The former was something of a disappointment. There are dozens of good curry restaurants within delivering distance and yet I've found none that I like as much as the ones I left behind in Scotland. 

The latter felt great, and were there more light in the day I would be out there first thing, dodging the swampy puddles on the pathway by the river on the south bank. It's not the mud or the wet but the cold. The involuntary sucking in of air when that icy water charges through the thin webbing of my running shoes throws off my breathing something rotten. 

Cornwall sits relegated to memory now, though it was only a couple of weeks ago I was there to bring in the new year. It was a good trip, with a lot of laughs, good company and a sense of coziness that seemed taken straight out of a hollywood ideal. It seems now like stolen time; a brief week without worry, heading from cove to cove in search of pirates, antique shops and decent pubs (of which there were several). 

I'm off to France next, though that's for work. I would say it's my first trip of the year, but I started the year on a trip.

I'm not sure why there's a tendency to mark the first - it's not as though I'll be counting afterwards.

poor lager and cocktail sausages

I'm waiting for the rain to stop, so that I can go for a run without drowning. The cat is feeling mischievous and lingers just around the corner, or peeking out from under a chair, somewhere he feels unobserved, where he can watch and plot. As soon as he realises I've seen him, he bolts, disappearing up the stairs. Or he just starts nonchalantly licking a forepaw, as though he was never really interested anyway. 

Last night I brought a few wines to my local, wines that I'd made, as they'd asked to try them. The owner and the manager liked them. I liked them. It was that nice time in a pub just before it gets busy on a Friday. Everyone walking through the door genuinely happy to be there, to be finished with the week. We sat and we chatted and tasted and folks arrived and drank their beer while we sipped wine in the corner. A spittoon made a brief appearance but was put away because it was a Friday evening, and there's little point spitting on a Friday evening.

After the pub and wine I went to a friend's office for beer and nibbles. Friends and strangers milled about and when the good beer ran out, the bad beer was drunk. It was late when I left and the walk home seemed particularly long. I was full of poor lager and cocktail sausages. It wasn't raining, but the streets sounded damp and wet. 

The rain's just got harder. I ate some eggs and bacon so have to wait a bit longer if I want to run. By then it will be dark and the mud along the river thick. The cat's not hiding anymore. He's napping on a chair behind my desk. 

It seems the perfect sort of day for ignoring everything I have to do.

fleeting

Once again the weekend went too quickly, and I find myself having crossed out nothing from my rather long to-do list. In fact, quite a few things got added to it. Big things, important things. The road isn't so much forking as it is dividing exponentially. As a recovered comic book reader, it's as though I'm staring at a multiverse of futures, with the only constants being irksome, inescapable truths. 

And so I wake up on a Monday with a clenched chest and play decision-tennis in my head while I sip my espresso, munch on toast and catch up on Twitter. And then I look at the clock and see these brief moments to myself have taken too long, the decision-tennis rally is on-going, like those old Sampras/Agassi Nike adverts. 

So I write something, anything, to break the rally. To be doing instead of pondering and worrying. 

And so I'm late.

in storage

I pulled in with the van just before ten on Tuesday and unpacked it into my parent's garage by myself. It took awhile, but nowhere near as long as loading it did. I put the heavy boxes on the bottom and the few light ones on top. While I dread moving again, and want a bit of a break, I hope they're not in there too long. 

The small amount I did bring into the house is still packed. That's a job for a rainy Sunday.

Last night I walked to the pub before going home. It was quiet and candlelit and both the fireplaces crackled in the dim light. The staff were a touch too chatty, but it didn't matter. I found a small corner and wrote and thought. From where I sat, the pub could have been empty, which is just what I wanted. I was going to go home after two pints, but a good song came on so I stayed for a third.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

grey sunday

Just a wee blog to waste some time before getting stretched and going for a run. 

The sky's low at the moment, but higher than it's been for much of the week. Between March and June, we've had maybe two weeks of acceptable weather. I've been thinking a lot of the South of France, and making wine in the bright sun. 

The new book is coming along. It's hard to describe at the moment, as it's all still a bit of a secret, but it's great to be writing again and doing all the things that come along with it, like scribbling notes out of context because something has popped into your head while waiting to get served in the pub. The more you pound the words out, the more lightbulbs pop when you're not, and you've got to be ready. I'm keeping a notebook and pen next to my bed again. 

When not working on the book, I've been writing about India. It's been four years and it was a short trip, but for some reason it's never far from my mind or the end of my pen.

When not working on the book or writing about India, I've been applying for jobs. If anyone knows of anything for an insufferable wine dork with great research skills and a mild baseball obsession, let me know. Will travel.

It's not been a weekend for Boston sports. Hoping the Red Sox can pull out a win, avoid the sweep and get back to .500 today. Very sad to see the Celtics knocked out by the Heat in Game 7. What a team. Seemed always just one or two less injuries and you have three rings instead of one for those guys. 

There's a lot unfinished on my plate right now. Things that need some waiting on before talking or writing about them. I'm thinking of doing crosswords in the meantime.

Not nippy.

The cold bites. It's not nippy.

It doesn't nip.

It bites - with fangs.

Usually at this time of year I'd make some unsubstantiated prediction about the winter.

'It'll be a cold one' or 'I reckon there'll be a lot of snow this year' or some such rubbish.

It's very old-man-ish. There's no logic behind the predictions. I just spout them out because it seems like something to say when a new season's upon you.

This year I have no idea. It's cold now - I know that. Fashion is an issue of layers at the moment, and I have several. My army of jumpers is being put to good use after a summer of hibernation.

Today is a fuzzy day - several beers and a rare couple of herbal refreshments last night have left me feeling a tad... behind...

paper storms and needless nerves

I'm bad at paperwork. The thing with being bad at paperwork is that there's always evidence. Piles of it - stuffed into drawers and cupboards - demands, reminders, requests, citations - all sorts really. It builds and builds. Sometimes it catches you.

I was meant to be in court yesterday. Unpaid road tax fines or some such disaster. What with moving twice in the last 6 months and a true cowardice when it comes to officially postmarked letters, I'd just let things slip. I panicked. A sense of despair and doom lingered for awhile. Beer didn't taste as good as it should. I wondered what I was going to do.

The court notice had a number to phone - a direct line. It daunted me. It was just a phone number. I could phone and claim my total ineptitude. I had images of someone on the other end of the line, bored and vindictive, listening to me squirm, throwing my pride away and begging for a stay of execution, waiting for my last gasp of an apology before telling me I could turn myself into Fife Constabulary immediately. Do not pass GO. Do not collect £200.

I phoned with trepidation, after running out of excuses not to. No one bored or vindictive answered. A nice lady let me pay over the phone and the crisis was averted. No court appearance and no warrants for my arrest.

I've got two jobs at the moment, and they're overlapping a bit more often than I'd like. 9-5 followed by 6-12 doesn't leave much room for anything else. Once again I'm living on espressos and wondering what I felt like going a whole day without caffeine. It's a mystery. It's also a bit weird - when you work that much, you forget you get paid for it because you don't have any time to spend what you've earned. It's a nice surprise to find money in the bank (or wallet) at the end of it all.

Until the paperwork rears its ugly head and spends it all.

On the plus side, there are strong signs that both jobs are to fall to the wayside in favour of something better. Right - time for caffeine.