A Frightful Affair.

I'm bored of waffling on about being 30 now. That is so last week. And it turns out, nobody gives a shit. I say 'turns out', I can't really complain that fact has taken me by surprise can I, not when I've built a large portion of my personality based on the assumption that nobody gives a shit. But y'know, this was about me, you'd have thought people would have made an exception.

So what's happened? As usual, everything and nothing. My clock ticket forward a number and the one on the wall clicked back a number, so we all spent an extra hour in bed and thought about the beds we'd rather be in. Then had a shower, tidied the flat and ate a lot of crap till bedtime again. As it was written, so it shall pass.

The big news is, I got a new iPod. Aside from all the disgusting lavish connotations that the phrase 'new iPod' comes with, this is a brilliant piece of news. First, it was bought by my friends (i have friends, sod off), who had it inscribed, thus making it a significant historical artefact and warming my cockles. Secondly it is big enough to hold my entire music collection, or at least everything I have digitised, which is both mesmerising and liberating. Although it does provide me with a little too much choice, and we all know how I feel about choice and it's life complicating properties. But that's ok because.. thirdly.. it includes the iTunes Genius function (look it up you lazy shit) which means only have to make one choice a day.. choose one song and one only, and that does the rest for me. I cannot tell you how much this will enhance my life. Now all I need to do is find someone or something that will perform the roll of Life Genius for me, and contentment is but a stones throw away.

In other news, last night was incredible. Our Halloween party, which has evolved over the past 3 years into one of the most impressive things I've ever been involved in, and what makes it impressive is not its size or scale. It's the commitment that is put into it from all sides. A night where everybody involved makes the extra effort for the common good. Something happens to the atmosphere in a place where everybody has put themselves out to dress in theme, or act in theme, or just to join in. Sure Halloween is becoming as commercial as Christmas and more so every year, but if that's the price we have to pay for the feeling of community you get when everybody is united in the same goal for a short time. I reckon that's ok.

Fuck me I'm becoming a hippy, a capitalist hippy of course, but a dirty stinking hippy none-the-less. Who wants to come to Mothercare and push some toddlers over?

Of Course

I'm still foolish enough to stay up writing nonsense till 4am when I know I have a long, busy day tomorrow. So I guess I shouldn't be too worried about growing up quite yet.

It Had to Happen Some Day

So, we've come to this point then. In 24 hours my age will be two digits and begin with a 3. Even Babbage's Difference Engine couldn't make that maths cool. Nope. 

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that when I was 15 this isn't how I pictured my life would be by the time my age had doubled. Im pretty sure that's just standard procedure. I'm not even sure I ever imagined myself turning 30 at all, it was just too far in the future. I knew for a fact that once I'd finished my schooling, including Degree, Masters and whatever professional qualification I needed to be a Q.C. Barrister or top flight Journalist, or whatever I chose, that within a a few years I'd be settled with a big house in the city, maybe one in the country too, and all the trappings that came with that, including the stunning girl of my dreams, and maybe even a rug-rat or two to complete the scene. I figured it would be likely I'd have my own chat show or something too, because people would obviously want to get as much of me as they could. 

I knew these things would happen of course because I was without doubt the smartest person in at least the county, apart from Jenny Cochrane of course. And despite possessing a personality that somehow managed to combine arrogance with crippling shyness and an almost complete lack of social skills, and a face that, well, wasn't gonna win £10 in Monopoly any time soon, I knew for a fact it was only a matter of time before I became irresistible to girls, all of them. How could I possibly fail to achieve all my dreams at an impressively young age?

Kids are stupid aren't they. Especially when they're me.

Even if in my more humble moments I could have admitted some of these certainties were a little far fetched, I don't think I would ever have said that, on my 30th birthday, I'd be a single man earning his money playing records to 18 year olds, living in a rented flat and spending much of his days sitting around in his pants watching Top Gear repeats. Even less so that I'd be quite happy with that.

I'm not a success. Not in any of the ways the younger me would have defined success. I don't have my own house and a large nest egg, there's no better half, not even on the horizon, I'm in absolutely no danger of being surprised by the Big Red Book anytime soon, I haven't changed the world in any significant way, I don't have an Olympic Medal or a Man of Steel trophy gathering dust, and if I was to pop my clogs tomorrow nobody would declare a national holiday, all they'd do is redirect my credit card bills to my mum.

But despite an excessive amount of time on the sofa, I've done some stuff. I've found a way to make a living doing something I enjoy and giving me all the free time I could need, for now anyway. I did things instead of talking about them, I created something and built it into a locally recognised thing, I got involved in a community and, for a short while at least, made a difference to it. Whether what I did was positive or negative I can't say, but at least I did it, and I tried to do things as right as I could understand. I was in a band, a decent band, and by being in that band I got to do things that not everyone gets to do, things that my nephew will probably be impressed by once he's old enough to understand what they were, and other things he'll find far from impressive but that will stay with me for as long as I'm young enough to remember what they were. I've been in a relationships, or whatever you call them, with some amazing girls (and I saw them naked!), a couple of them even claimed to love me for a moment. I've had close friends, and kept them. I've been to some incredible places in the world, and taken part in adrenaline soaked activities such as skiing, parachuting, and having my hair cut. And, it's only a small thing, and something everybody does now and again, but on occasions, I've made people laugh, I'm not sure there's anything better a person can do that that.

Of course it is worth noting how most, if not all, of the last paragraph is in the past tense. If I were the reader, I'd probably read into that, that's what readers do you see, saves the writer pointing it out. Lazy bloody writers.

It's all good though. 30 isn't an ending, it's a beginning, Disney provide our children with a totally realistic view of the world, and we're all invited to the Father Christmas & Easter Bunny wedding next week. 

Mmm... Nachos.

(This somewhat soppy blog was brough to you be the Numbers 3 & 0, and the Letter I.)

How do you top a Geyser? (Iceland Part 2)

Geysers are pretty impressive things. The first impressive thing about them is that you're stood outside and the temperature is at zero, it says so on the flashy read out things that are everywhere you look (mostly the bus), yet you're looking at a pool of water bubbling away in front of you. It's not connected to any wires, it's just sat there in a hole in the ground going "Look at me, I'm at boiling point and you're freezing, how impressive am I?" and the only answer is "Quite". This could be an optical illusion of course, so it is important to stick your hand in it, then to quickly remove your hand before you fingers fall off from the rapid temperature change. The danger is worth it though, proof positive that the water is hot.

Then, without warning, it explodes. A jet of water and steam shoots 15 feet into the air and the crowd, understandably, gasps. 

In the hope of warning future geyser witnesses against repeating my mistakes I think it is important to say that, standing downwind of the geyser as it went off, was not my smartest move of the day. Spending the rest of the afternoon feeling my clothes turn to ice around me wasn't the most pleasant experience I've ever, well, experienced. 

So in short, geysers are impressive, very impressive in fact. So it seemed odd to me that they would be the first thing we saw on our two part trip, and that they were to be followed by, wait for it, a waterfall. I'm not saying waterfalls aren't impressive, we've all seen them on the tele, if not in person, and they are dramatic and mighty things indeed. But they are not magical like the temperature defying exploding water holes. They are, no matter how tall or wide, simply water falling down a cliff. I didn't hold up much hope for the second part of the trip. Even less so when they kicked us off the bus, pointed, said "Waterfall down there, meet back here in 30mins". But what did I know, eh.

There was a viewing point of the waterfall at one side, where you got covered in freezing spray, had a gander, and found it quirky that the mists had coated even individual blades of grass in a shell of ice. Even the rope around the edge of the cliff was encased in a thick layer of the cold see-through stuff. But this is no more than expected really, so everyone heads down the slope towards the bit right at the edge of the fall where you can get a really good look.

Tum tee tum tee tum.

It is a mite concerning at this point that the only thing between your path to the waterfall, and the actual canyon the water falls into, is a slack frozen rope about three feet high, but no matter, it's all very safe and touristy.

Then... bang! The floor is suddenly more ice than path and I'm on my arse sliding quickly towards said rope and the watery death beyond. Shit.

It's ok, of course, I come to a halt before I get to the rope and look around to see how much of my dignity is intact, the laughing pair of girl shaped tourists above me suggest that it's not much. So I regain my feet and edge down, regretting my decision to take this trek in a pair of worn out Adidas Gazelles, and no gloves.

A few metres ahead a bunch of us realise that we are in a bit of a predicament. The floor is ice and we can barely stand on it, the rope is slack, wobbly, and again, coated in ice. Moving downwards towards the fall is difficult. Moving back the way we came, up hill, is pretty much unthinkable. We're not sure if there is another way up and back to the bus from the bottom of the path.

After much deliberation, and offering up our last prayers, we hope against hope that there is another way to safety and head, slowly and carefully, and in my case, often on my arse, to the bottom of the hill.

It goes without saying that there was no way up the other side. Or at least no man made way.

Obviously nobody died or I wouldn't be writing this in such a jovial manner, so I'll save any further indulgent description. But needless to say that finding myself stood on basically an ice sheet above a gorge that freezing water was pummelling into at a rate of knots, kept 'safe' by only a rope that was too cold to hold and too high to stop a sliding body, with the only marked way to safety being essentially a hill made of ice, and electing to instead climb the rock face to return to the bus, well, I haven't felt a buzz like that in a long time. Living in a country with health and safety rules created by compensation claims may keep you alive longer, but it does have its drawbacks if you want an adrenaline rush every so often. And as for the group of happy faced school kids I saw heading towards the waterfall as we departed, well, lets just say I've been checking the news.

Oh yeah, and all this happened against the back drop of a glacier which began on the horizon.

The journey home taught us a couple of things. Icelanders are too lazy to pick and sell their plentiful supplies of blueberries and mushrooms., sheep are illiterate, so can't read 'no sheep allowed' signs, and as such are ruining the lush green countryside. We also saw the place where two continental plates are colliding, forcing one high into the air and causing 'hundreds' of earthquakes a day. Not bad for a bus trip home really.

So home, warm, a few more drinks, a final band and it's time to get our heads down ready for the long trip home the next day. Via the Blue Lagoon.

The Blue Lagoon is basically a big naturally heating swimming pool, next to a geo-thermal power station, with all the usual spa type facilities built around it for you to enjoy. Very relaxing, pretty impressive, but not particularly exciting, except of course, for its location.

Now, the map says it's in Iceland, just a little south of Keflavik. But I don't believe that. Despite us heading there in a minibus, and it taking the time to travel that the maps suggested it would, there is nothing that will convince me that the Blue Lagoon is anywhere else but on The Moon. The landscape (lava field) is just unbelievable, and that a perfectly blue naturally heated pool can be situated in the middle of such a baron and alien wasteland just doesn't make sense to a boy who's grown up just outside Manchester. Then to find yourself swimming, outdoors, quite happily, while snow falls on your face. You don't get that in Avenham.

Hvar er Damon? (Iceland Part 1)

By the time we'd checked in at the hotel it was 2am, it was dark, and all the nearby streets seemed deserted. So the only sensible thing to do was get our shoes on and head in search of the party. Fortunately 2.30am in Reykjavik is a perfectly reasonable time to walk into pretty much any pub or bar, and in the 3 hours that followed we found ourselves most welcome in several places, even managed to see a band and got caught up while a disco formed in what should really have been a cafe. Everything wound up just in time to catch breakfast back at the hotel and get the energies up for a stroll down the sea-front in the fresh sunlight and grab a cuppa back in town with full intentions of getting day two off to a rolling start. Of course it shortly after this we had to admit to being a little over optimistic and submit to an hour or two shut-eye to punctuate the days. But regardless of this, we had arrived.

The best way I can think of to describe Reykjavik is by asking you to take picturesque English waterside town, say Windermere or even St. Ives, then imagine that is the capital city of the country, with all the facilities for entertainment and out lying industrial and commercial districts that would bring, but with the essence of the downtown area only really being changed by filling it with the ultra-fashionable youth of the land, and keeping it all open later. Quaint and cool seem to sit hand in hand as if they were childhood sweet-hearts. It's a nice place to be, and clearly a place it's nice to be seen.

As confessed Blur fans, with Alex James' book offering much of the initial inspiration for visiting Iceland, the first stop of the day had to be the Kaffibarinn, famously 'part-owned' by Damon Albarn and his director mate Baltasar Kormakur (101 Reykjavik) it seems to be the 'coolest' cafe/bar in town with impenetrable queues outside all Friday and Saturday night. Getting in there around dinner time though, it's just staff, who are quite happy to chat as you sit by the bar. Tell you about the places to go, deny the Damon myth ("he was involved for a bit, but just about 1%, all publicity, now the owners are the creators of the Airwaves festival you've come here for"), and feed you plenty of peanuts. 

But we couldn't sit around playing Britpop tourists all day and the pink bands on our wrists kept reminding us we'd come for a music festival and this was the last day of it. So a wander round, bands playing in store gigs, artists taking over empty shops to plug their wares and sell the most impressive t-shirt ever seen (to be displayed soon on a Russ near you), and all the fun of the musical fair. Culminating in 4 hours spent being incredibly impressed by the temporary, but perfect, venue set up in the Reykjavik Art Museum and enjoying Dikte, Boys in a Band, CSS and Vampire Weekend, and just how much effort people had put into their clothes, even if they didn't put anywhere near as much effort into not barging into you as they walked past, before calling it a night, tired, so very tired, but fulfilled.

And that was just the first 24 hours...

B.M.I.

"Here's a booklet on healthy eating. Not for you weight, that's fine, just for your health."

Just for you health? Just your health. You don't really need to worry Sir, your weight, the real concern, is fine, just that niggling detail of your health. 

Surely the only reason my weight should even be a concern is BECAUSE it effects my health. Actually being heavy isn't really a problem to me at all, unless I'm planning on jumping really high, or walking on thin ice. If anything, heavy is an advantage, I'm less likely to be knocked over, or to float away, and in a flood situation, I'll be an asset to those around me. This eating thing should always be about my health rather than my weight, surely?

It's a bit of a worry that weight in itself has been demonised so much in our world that even trained medical professionals will make slips of the brain like that. No wonder teenage girls (and boys) are, well... being quite silly to say the least.

In other sad news, it seems a shame that newspaper promo shorthand has lead to phrases such as 'mum of four' causing the heart to sink immediately.