Life Less Literary

Well well well… what a football trip that turned out to be.

I came down to London on Friday, mainly so that I could watch the England-Argentina match with Mark, but I also managed to engineer a slew of secondary reasons. Our accountants, Elman Wall, had invited us to Corks bar to soak up some match atmosphere. Kick off was at 12.30pm, I caught the 8.30am train which should get me into London about 11, with time to find the bar and get a drink in first.

Not long after I boarded the train at Sheffield, two middle-aged chaps came strolling down the aisle towards me. One plonked himself on the other side of the table from me, and his friend just across the carriage. They carried on chatting for the rest of the journey. I was busy wrestling with a Perl script behind my laptop, and so wasn’t exactly listening in, but I couldn’t help hearing the odd snippet of conversation… stuff about agents and comedians and appearances, it seemed obvious that they were in some ways connected with showbusiness.

Then I heard the guy opposite me say ’so I called her up and I said “it’s Emlyn Hughes here”…’. My mind started churning…. Emlyn Hughes, not the Emlyn Hughes, surely? It was a name that meant a lot to me. Despite the fact that I was on a football-related journey, I’m not really very interested in football (I just like watching the odd match), and I cann’t name you very many footballing names. When I was 7 it was a very different matter… (in fact, only 6 posts ago I was getting all nostalgic about 1970s football). From the years of about 1976 to 1979 I was a Liverpool fanatic (I think most kids were - Liverpool were to us what Man Utd are to so many people now, the undisputed champions of everything). Of course, there was only one player and one number that we were interested in those days… the number 7 of Kevin Keegan (and later Kenny Dalglish), but if you’d asked me to name one other player from that era then I would only be able to name Emlyn Hughes (in fact… looking through the records now… yup, Ray Clemence I remember, Graham Souness too… but Alan Hansen! Jesus, I don’t remember him playing for them!)

Anyway, I digress. Turns out it was that Emlyn Hughes (crikey! I never realised he was England captain!). And, try as I might to write my Perl script, I couldn’t help thinking back to my 1978 Panini world cup sticker album, and other football-related memories. I also remembered that Hannah, my sister, is a big Liverpool fan (she lives in Aigburth) and her husband Jon bumped into John Barnes on a train and got her his autograph. Well, it would be a laugh to get Emlyn’s autograph so she could really kick-start a collection of famous Liverpool players from days gone by. So I asked and he gave it to me.

So, the football excitement had started before I even got there. The game itself was… well, if you don’t already know what happened then no point me telling you as you obviously aren’t interested. Suffice it to say that the atmosphere in the bar was great, and after the match it got greater - I managed to down about 6 bottles of Stella during the match, so this may have helped. Jonathan was walking around with a mini-football, so Mark and I grabbed it and had a kick-about in a reasonably empty area of the bar - various people joined and left, but for most of the time it was just the two of us being silly and kicking and blocking and tackling ineffectively. It all came to an untimely end when I decided to chip a shot past Mark - ’twas a glorious shot, and so close to being a goal, but as so often happens even to world-class players, I hit the crossbar. Quite literally. That is, I hit the shelf that goes across the bar, the one where they stack all the glasses. There was a loud crash as about 20 wine glasses came tumbling to the floor. I rushed over and offered to help with the cleaning, but no need - respect to the bar staff at Corks for being so friendly and helpful.

My football-related incident did little to dampen my spirits for kicking things about. We got the tube to Liverpool street and then headed towards Ed’s studio, and on the way every tin can, cigarette packet, or ball of paper became a legitimate football for Mark and I to knock about. Highly embarassing in normal circumstances, no doubt, but to two very drunk people on a day when England had just beaten Argentina this was nothing to worry about.

OK, now the day starts to get distinctly fuzzy. We met Ed at his flat, bought a bottle of wine (wine + beer - ouch! Oh, + Jack Daniels too. Ouch ouch!) and went to the studio. Mark and Ed talked business (arranging a fashion event for The Invisibles) while I took silly photos. Mark and I adjourned to the Watermark Club for a while (more Jack Daniels) before Mark went home and I headed back to Ed’s. Oh yeah, we went to a gig as well, but we didn’t stay long enough to see any bands. And we met Jan too.

At Ed’s things just went from good to worse. I have so little memory of events that it’s almost pointless writing about it, not that that’s likely to stop me. Jim was there - it was great to see him, as it’s been about 10 years since we last met. Apparently he’s getting over alcoholism, and is being helped greatly in doing so by some drugs which basically will kill him if he touches a drop of the stuff. Nice. I also met Kirsten from Project Dark, who’s running the Meltdown festival, and it looks like she’s gonna be getting us in to see the Legendary Stardust Cowboy next week - YAY!

Things got even fuzzier after that, and so I started taking photos. Beautiful, little, macro-photos. Small things and very small things and jumbles of stuff from wierd angles. Somehow I ended up with 300 of them when I checked my hard disk the next morning. Even more amazing, they looked quite good. And some of them didn’t even need contrast masking. Now I’ve just gotta find a few spare hours (days?) to put them online. They look quite a bit like this lot, only I like them better.

I finally crashed out around 3 or 4am, I guess, on the floor of Ed’s studio. I listened to Medeski, Martin & Wood on the laptop as I was drifted off, and snatches of music, and snatches of conversation between Jim and Ed, brought picture-perfect photo compositions into my head. It’s really wierd and hard to explain, but suddenly I felt like I could compose images, like this artistic talent that I always knew had, but had never been able to dig deep enough to find, had suddenly sprung to the forefront of my mind, and become quite effortless. I spent about 30 minutes on the edge of sleep taking photos in my head, and loving it.

Woke up about 9 with a back ache, spent the day with Simon trying to set up Bartech’s Internet connection, and had a mellow train journey back (no celebrities, lots of newspaper reading) at about 5pm.

Back to London next week to catch the Stardust Cowboy! Can’t wait!

Jeez… a usability analysis of toilet-roll holders by Don Norman. What’s even sadder that this is (a) the fact that I performed my own toilet usability analysis a while back, or (b) the fact that when recently confronted with a similar double toilet-roll holder to the one described, I went through all the analysis described in Norman’s essay before choosing the toilet roll (seriously!) and ended up feeling guilty for taking it from the bigger roll (which was easier than taking from the little roll and having it snag on the big roll) because I knew that sooner or later some poor sod was going to end up with a double toilet-roll holder but no toilet roll left. Ah well, perhaps there’s hope for me as a usability expert after all. And if not, I can always get a job in the lavatory trade.

Crikey! I’m going all into Doom nostalgia mode again. About 8 years ago I made two new levels for Doom, but as I lost my copy of the game not long after that it’s ages and ages since I played them. Well, I am about to receive a new Doom copy, so am eagerly looking forward to revisiting them again - you know how certain “places” on the computer can take on a real physical aspect in your mind, well these levels certainly did that for me. Without being too immodest, I think they were among the best non-ID levels I ever played for the game (better than some of the ID ones too), although that’s a bit hard for me to assess as I knew my way around them inside-out, but I got most of my fun from watching over other peoples’ shoulder as they navigated the many puzzles and tried to deal with the monsters. The only real problem with the levels is that they were a little big for the machines of the time, and hence sometimes ran a bit slowly, but that shouldn’t be an issue now. The other thing I wasn’t quite happy about was that the first puzzle of the level is a little corny, but I can let that pass. I also had a great time putting psychedelic 1970s textile designs on the wall of the maze, which you didn’t notice until you found the lightswitch, and replacing the default sky with one from Hieronymous Bosch’s hell.

If anyone out there is still playing the original Doom, here is the WAD file. For the rest of you, here is the accompanying text file, which is mildly amusing (I like to think).

Had a strange trip down to London. A bit wasted but… fun nonetheless.

The idea was that I went to one or two of the Sonic Mook Experiment gigs at the ICA, so that I could take photos of some of the bands playing, to use as a fashion shoot for FAD. I met up with JC at Charing Cross on Monday night… nearly got separated, by the police who were busy erecting barriers everywhere. Then I remembered that the Queen was having her jubilee gig thingy that night. We skipped along the Strand and across Trafalgar Square. There was a real festival atmosphere - people wandering everywhere, families heading back from the fun, no traffic, it was lovely. We struggled against the mass of people under Admiralty Arch and into the Mall - stopped for a moment to watch Meera Syal and Nina Wadhia on the big screen, then headed into the ICA. Unfortunately Sean had messed up on the guest list, and try as I might I couldn’t get him to answer his mobile. No problem, JC wanted to go to The End anyway, and there was always tomorrow for the ICA. We didn’t exactly stop to catch Dame Edna or Rod Stewart on the screen, cut across town to Holborn.

The queue at The End was huge… right around the block… I was tempted to go home straight away, but thought “what the fuck… I’ve come for a night out in London”. An hour later we were nearly to the front of the queue. Another hour-and-a-half after that we finally got in (it was one-out one-in on the queue). I stayed for about 40 minutes then went home (it wasn’t that inspiring… not a bad night, but a bit crowded and… I was bleedin’ knackered). Fortunately, because of the Jubilee the tubes were running all night (now _there’s_ a novelty). Unfortunately, the Richmond tube I caught changed into an Ealing Broadway tube when it hit Earls Court. So I changed at Hammersmith, picked up the Piccadilly line to Hounslow, got a vastly overpriced cab back to Teddington (and then, when my incomprensible Indian cab driver called another cab service as we were driving along and, after a brief conversation, screamed “I NO WANT YOUR CAB. TOO SPENSIVE! TOO SPENSIVE!” I realised that I should have haggled). I didn’t get back to my Mum and Dad’s until 4am. And then Lola woke me at 8. <YAWN>

And then today… we were expecting the gig to start at 1pm. My mum and dad were going to babysit Lola, but I had to be back by 5. It was going to be a squeeze, trying to get several photoshoots done and enjoy a bit of the gigs and still get back across London in time. Then Mark rang and said it didn’t start until 3pm. Bummer. So I came back to Sheffield. Still, it was nice seeing mum and dad, and nice to know that they could cope with Lola until 4am with no major traumas.

Oooooh, I want one, I want one!

(prompted by another drive down to London and back).

Of course, they also make a sports car (a sports car? The sports car, more like) now… but then, who needs to drive at 200mph?

I had a wonderful day in town with Lola on Saturday - somehow it felt like the 1970s, heat of 1976, Jubilee celebrations of 1977, and World Cup fever of 1978 (I think I was the only person in town not wearing an England top). Ahhh…. Argentina 1978. That was the world cup. Even though England weren’t there, Scotland would do just as good (especially as they had Kenny Dalglish playing, who’d replaced Kevin Keegan when he treacherously abandoned Liverpool the previous year for some German club). Yes, you see, I was into football in those days (I was 9 at the time) but I soon lost all interest, and only got excited by it again in 1990, when I spent the first half of the World Cup mocking my friends who watched all the matches religiously, and the second half of it surpassing their religious zeal.