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.

smoked tea

I smell of wood smoke at the moment. One of the fireplaces in my local pub has some venting issues, and so my jumpers smell like bonfires. It could be worse. James at work tells me I reek of a mixture of lapsang souchong and pepperoni.

I remember losing my last remaining respect for a particular wine writer when she was asked what wine went with kedgeree and responded ‘lapsang souchong’; that’s about a poor a wine recommendation as you can get.

I like lapsang souchong. It’s good for the mornings you want to be drinking Laphroaig or Ardbeg but still need to function beyond breakfast.  

The snow was supposed to start at eleven but actually started about quarter to nine. It was small flakes to begin with, no more than an icy dusting. It got thicker as I walked to work. I paused at the entrance to Chiswick House; the entrance with the obelisk. The icy dust lay unbroken, like the thin frosting on a cake. I wanted to turn in and wander the empty snow-covered grounds but instead I stayed my course. The growl of revving engines and shriek of slamming brakes reminded me that snow in Britain brings out the worst in drivers. I was happy to walk.

 

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.

 "...we die, my Friend, 

Nor we alone, but that which each man loved 

And prized in his peculiar nook of earth 

Dies with him or is changed, and very soon 

Even of the good is no memorial left."

- Willam Wordsworth, The Ruined Cottage

It's hard to start the new year with a loss. We all do from time to time, I suppose. I've not the words, so I'm using Wordsworth's. I'm more of a Coleridge fan usually, but there you go. This is a somber moment of reflection before revelry and the embracing of friends in a rocky little village in Cornwall. The knowledge there's one less in the world will make those embraces a little longer, and a little warmer.

and to all a good night...

My whisky glass wants not for a top up, and Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl serenade me for the first time this year. On a chair behind me sleeps the cat. Aside from the two of us, the house is empty. I decided against a tree in the end. My presents sit in a pile behind the chair the cat sleeps on. There are four, and I know what three of them are. I still leave them unopened. They're there for the morning. 

It's quite a shift going from The Pogues and 'Fairytale…' to The American Boy Choir singing 'Once in Royal David's City', but it seems right. The organ kicking in in the latter lifts in much the same way as the rapid duet in the former. 

It's a strange Christmas this year, but that's ok. I don't quite know what I expected. I don't really know if I expected anything. 

That's a lie. When you don't really expect anything, you expect everything and are just curious as to which eventuality pops up.

Happy Christmas, folks. hope it's a good one.

some sunday notes (undecked edition)

I'm writing this because writing is preferable to shopping, and no, I've not really done any Christmas shopping yet. I bought a present in desperation, having browsed for an hour and not seen anything that clicked. I like getting presents, usually. Or I used to. Buying the perfect gift for someone is an admirable skill. My sister, Suzanna, possesses it. And I used to. But now I stumble from shop-to-shop and stare at bits and bobs and wait for something to leap out and grab me. To shout out "OH MY GOD, BUY ME, I'M PERFECT FOR X,Y or Z".

There's no leaping or grabbing this year. I did have one spectacular idea for someone, but the problem with great gift ideas is that the particular gift has to actually exist. Sadly, it does not. I could attempt to make it, I suppose, but I'm neither a cartographer, book-binder, or 19th century printer. Were I those things, I know what everyone would be getting from me this fucking Christmas. 

My Christmas tune this year has been AC/DC's "Mistress for Christmas". It may be my Christmas tune every year from now on, you never know. I've got the house to myself this season and as I'm going to Christmas dinner at a friend's there's been internal debate as to whether I'll bother with a tree. The not bothering side is winning for a couple of reasons, the primary one being general laziness. I might put a wreath on the door. I don't mind privately being a grumpy shit, but it's my folks' house, and the neighbours shouldn't think they're being unseasonal. I may change my mind; I could see myself rushing up to the high road tomorrow, desperate to get the last tree and decorate it before midnight; who knows? But for now my halls remain undecked. 

Friday night I cooked for the first time in ages, rediscovering my love for prepping my mis en place. I used to hate it; loathe it, in fact. I'd farm out prep to any unwitting sucker who dared ask if I needed help in the kitchen. On Friday evening I put "Four Days In October" on my iPad and chopped away at shallots, onions, mushrooms and potatoes and the stress of a week of wine-merchant-ing in the lead up to Christmas just disappeared. 

Dinner was good, though somehow I managed to lose a bag of scallops between the high road and home. We opened bottle after bottle of wine and stayed up until the wee hours. It was the perfect sort of revelry to kick off a holiday with, capped off with swigging Madeira from the bottle and better than average misbehaviour. Old friends, new friends and friends not seen in far too long all seemed to get along just great. 

It meant yesterday, however, was a write off. I spent all of three hours out of my pyjamas, and two of those were at the pub, bathing in the quiet and nursing a restorative pint or three. The bar staff wore Santa hats and sympathised kindly with my state.

That's enough for now. Time to gird my loins and get some shopping done. 

 

Buy My Book. Please.

morning tumble

I find it easier to get out of bed at 530 than at 715. I'm not sure why, but at 530 there's no flailing for the snooze button and crawling back under the duvet, curling back into the bit still warm. I tumble out and rub my eyes. The cat looks at me funny, if he's there. Sometimes he's gone for an early breakfast, and is returning up the stairs, surprised to find me stumbling down in the other direction. My legs take awhile to work in the mornings, due to a condition called 'getting older' and getting down the stairs is precarious to say the least. At 715, I know I can get away with a minute here or there. An extra 9 in bed can be made up by skipping a shave or espresso. In fact, my espresso machine is on the fritz at the moment. Verging on calamity, that.

At 530, though, there isn't time to mess about. If I've set my alarm for so ungodly an hour, it's because I have something to do. Make wine; catch a plane; make a train. Something that just won't wait is afoot, and somewhere along my staggered road to being a grown-up, I've managed a degree of diligence in such things. I don't like it. I like waking up at 930.

930 is early enough that you can have breakfast without it reducing the appetite for lunch, while still giving you the satisfaction of not waking up at 530, 630, 730 or 830.

In any case, I made my train with ten minutes to spare. The tube was quiet, and the train nearly empty. Heading north as the bleak turns to dreich. It's a random trip, this. I'm not sure what on earth I'm doing, but hopefully I'll work it out by the time I head back tomorrow.

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every bit as crowded

The tube home at about midnight was every bit as crowded as the one heading into town at about six, though there were a fair few more drunks. 

The plan was BBQ, but the BBQ place had a 2 hour wait, so we traversed Soho and hit the Mexican instead. There wasn't a quiet restaurant to be seen, but the Mexican had only a half hour wait and a tequila bar downstairs. So downstairs we headed to get margaritas and quickly the girls accompanying me became fixated with our bartender as danced with the cocktail shaker.

The drinks were good. I was hungover, so the sweet and sour and salty citrus acted as a sort of rejuvenating ambrosia. By the time they were finished, our table was ready. More margaritas an another beer. The chat turned towards veganism, as we were to be joined by a vegan. We all agreed it was probably best not to talk about it at all once she arrived. So we howled with incredulity that anyone could be a vegan and then the vegan arrived and shortly after that, the food came. Bright, technicolour dishes laden with veg and spice and meat and cheese and sour cream. 

We ate and talked and I felt somewhat bemused at being the bloke at a table of 4 women but there you go. Full and shocked at our gluttony, we stumbled out the door and headed towards a cocktail bar that's something out of the 20s. Dark and moody, with pristinely prepared drinks we sat and sipped and soon the conversation slipped me by. They talked about boys and men and sex and laughed at jokes told in some sort of code. I sipped my drink and nibbled on the odd spiced nut or olive. 

I faded fast; we all did. Out into the cold London air we poured and went our separate ways. I went Westbound Piccadilly, where the tube home was every bit as crowded as the one I took into town, though there were a fair few more drunks.

crawlers

Yesterday was a quiet Sunday. I wrote and baked bread and stole away for a pint at my local while the bread cooled. I sat at the end of the bar and made some scribbles in a notebook, outlining a chapter with some details, happy with the flow of it. There were arrows and bullet points and even something verging on a diagram. It's the 'history' chapter of the book. Since it isn't a fiction, I feel more comfortable doing all this laying out of things. It wouldn't do for me to put the Battle of Dunkirk (very different from the evacuation) before the Albigensian Crusades in a fit of writing fervour, as the former took place nearly 400 years after the latter. 

While scribbling notes and sipping a pint, an army of neck-tied student pub-crawlers invaded the quiet confines of the local. I think it was a rowing team, but if so there were too many coxes. They were loud and drank Fosters and every time I thought that must be all of them, more arrived. Soon the bar was packed, and they just seemed to get louder. One or two gave a couple of locals a bit of lip, and for a split second it looked like it would get a bit messy at the other end of the bar. I just kept scribbling.

They left faster than they arrived, off to annoy some other folks enjoying a quiet Sunday pint. The echo of the door shutting behind them was followed by a loud 'What a bunch of cocks' from on of the guys at the other end of the bar. I shut my notebook and nursed the very end of my pint, remembering that it wasn't all that long ago that I was like that. Bursting into bars, thinking I owned the place. Possessing no volume control and the firm belief that everything I uttered was important.

I always drank better beer, of course, but still. 

And now I'm the quiet, grumpy one at the bar, trying to ignore them, cursing their invasion of my little corner of the world. And they don't give a shit.

Which is fine. When I was their age, I didn't give a shit either.

 

ikea desks and bad bookshelves

There's no rain to wait for today, but still I sit here with a coffee and ponder awhile before heading out for my run. I wrote around things yesterday rather than through them, but it cleared enough of the to-do list to give me some breathing room.

I'm sat at my dad's desk instead of my own. Mine's in my room and I find it somewhat tough to work when I know my bed is behind me. My father's retired and so his desk goes much unused. It's become a storage shelf for the mountains of paperwork having a pension generates. There's also an unused MacBook Air, one of the "Fenway Bricks" with his name inscribed along with the years that he was a batboy for the Red Sox. It's not his proper old desk, sadly. That's in storage. This thing came from Ikea. I helped my mom build it some years ago. On the wall to my left is a large, Victorian print of Boston from the air. It's only just occurred to me that it must have been sketched from a hot-air balloon. On the wall in front of me is my dad' degree from The Naval Academy, the odd commendation and a beautifully calligraphed print of The Prayer of a Midshipman. Next to these is a window that looks out onto the back garden, where the leaves seem greener than they should at this time of year. The other half of the room is the library, though it represents so small a percentage of the family's books that it seems a bit of a misnomer. The rest are in storage. Next to the horrid black bookshelves are tall stacks of volumes for which there is no room. There's a tv in here as well, but you'd barely notice it if it wasn't on. 

We moved in here in a rush, in 2006. Our old house sold and we had nowhere to go. I found this place for my folks as kind of a stop-gap, as somewhere nearby to set up home until something better came along. We didn't want to sell the old place, but shit happens.

I don't feel quite at home here, which is fine, I won't be here for long. I'm used to a sense of displacement. 

But nor do my parents, which is a shame as it is their home, or what's passing for it at the moment.