We were told not to have breakfast.
It wasn't that the food on offer was sub-standard, but rather that there was a buffet planned for us at 1.15. We were going to the football. To Hillsborough to be exact, to see Sheffield Wednesday's League One encounter with Carlisle United.
All of Emma's family on her dad's side are Sheffield Wednesday fans except for her Uncle Ray. To his great credit, Ray tolerates football at an even lower level by supporting Rotherham United. He does so avidly, and whenever we meet his main topic of conversation is the Millers, although I never fail to be impressed by his knowledge of rugby league and in particular, the goings on at Saints. Ray's my kind of man.
But this was Sheffield Wednesday and so Ray was not in attendance. On arrival at the stadium there was a lengthy debate about car parking. The club had informed us that we would be able to park in the car park just outside the club shop, but had issued us with a pass for a completely different car park. We were informed of this by a slightly dozey and bog-eyed young chap who clearly felt that it was more than his job was worth to turn a blind eye to officialdom. He did at least allow us to unload the cars while the drivers moved on to the right car park.
We met back at the club shop. Emma was looking for something to buy her new niece or nephew who is expected to arrive into the world some time in October, but she clearly hadn't found what she wanted. As I rolled around I browsed only half-interestedly at the replica shirts, tee-shirts, socks, hats and so forth on display thinking that you would have to be a real fan to buy any of this. It's not like in a foreign country where you can buy merchandise from say Barcelona or the Tampa Bay Rays as a souvenir. Being English, you cannot be seen in the colours of any other English side, lest you be arrested and hanged for treason. Someone once told me that watching another team was like cheating on your wife.
I haven't got a wife, but then I'm not buying a Sheffield Wednesday shirt either.
Another striking thing about the Sheffield Wednesday club shop is that, this not being the most successful period in their history, there are not too many recent highlights playing on the numerous monitors dotted around. There's myriad clips of David Hirst, Benito Carbone, Paulo Di Canio and.....er.......Paul Warhurst in their pomps but not too much sign of Marcus Tudgay, Chris Sedgewick, Tommy Spur et al.
From the club shop we were led around the corner to a small door. An official and portly-looking man in a suit greeted us and led us into a window-less room with white walls. It had the feel of a prison cell, or at least my idea of a prison cell from watching Cell Block H and The Bill. This was not the kind of room you would want to be alone with Jack Bauer in. Not unless you find Jack Bauer attractive and are absolutely certain that you are not a mole behind a massive terrorist plot.
I'm not exactly sure what was on offer at the buffet but I stuck to garlic bread and potato balls. I was also still recovering my poise from the previous night's shenannigans and so decided to drink coke. There would be plenty of time for alcohol later. Soon after other families started to enter the room, all chomping on the buffet (I think it was chicken now I think hard enough) and downing a few pre-game lagers. Little did I know that you would need a stiff drink inside you if you were about to watch Sheffield Wednesday and the result could decide whether or not you had a nice week.
I should have known. At kick-off time Wednesday sat top of League One, but this was still Wednesday after all. This is a club which was in the top flight a decade ago but which has hung around in the lower reaches of the Championship for the last five years before finally succumbing to another relegation last season. Financial mismanagement has crippled them. It is only days since yet another threat of administration and of a winding up order has been staved off.
The view from our vantage point inside Hillsborough was first class. They have a ramp to ensure that wheelchair users are not left with a restrictive ground level view, and so from a position about half way between the half way line and the goal you can see most of the action clearly. Emma's only beef was that she was sat in a seat behind me as opposed to next to me. The row I was on had space only for wheelchair users, and initially she didn't seem happy. I remembered this happening at Castleford once and thinking the worst. My only other visit to Castleford resulted in my car window being smashed by youths who thought my car was that of referee Stuart Cummings so they are not happy memories.
Yet after a while we settled into the game which was, in all honesty, pretty average. Limited skill levels are more visible in the flesh than they had been on television during Wednesday's 1-0 defeat at Brentford a week earlier. At times it seemed like park football but with much better facilities and smarter kits. Carlisle had the better of it for the most part, with goalkeeper Nicky Weaver forced into two excellent one on one saves in the first half. Yet he could not stop Craig Curran from curling in from the left edge of the box as Wednesday players stopped to debate the thorny issue of whether or not to attempt a tackle.
Carlisle edged a similarly scrappy second half but could not add to their tally. There was a humorous moment when a Wednesday defender almost drove a screamer into his own net but apart from one close call at the end from a James O'Connor shot, Wedensday never quite looked like getting back into it. The majority of the entertainment came from the crowd, from the little boy sat next to me who constantly pleaded for the referee to give Wednesday a penalty regardless of where the alleged offence took place, to the man next to him telling Wednesday manager Alan Irvine to 'sowert it art!' at regular intervals, this was an unsettled crowd.
Wednesday's defeat saw them slip from top to sixth in the early snakes and ladders table. Despite their chants of 'We are top of the league' Carlisle's victory left them second, behind Peterborough on goal difference after the latter had enjoyed a thumping 5-0 win. For us it was back to the cell with Jack, for more tea and a post-mortem. Wednesday's former Wigan and Derby midfielder Gary Teale took most of the blame and it has to be said that his performance was one of perfect ineptitude. If Wednesday have serious designs on a quick return to the Championship, they need to show far more than what was on offer here.
And yet we are already making plans to go again. Despite the low quality of football, despite the white-walled, windowless cell and despite the car parking mix-up, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. For the first time in a while I could actually see a reason why thousands of fans turn out to watch teams like Wednesday (and Ray's Rotherham) every other week. Suffering is all part of it.
They go to Tranmere on Boxing Day. But I'm having my breakfast that day.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Sheffield - Part One
Orlando was exotic, York less so but still respectably grand, so where better to continue this downward spiral than Sheffield?
On the occasion of Emma's something-somethingth birthday we decided to spend the weekend in the city of her birth. She has family there, and if you are still not convinced about our reasoning then how about the fact that one member of said family works at one of the city's Holiday Inn hotels and can therefore get us cheap accommodation? As my mother's son, there is a part of me that would buy two Jim Davidsons if one were free.
None of which was necessary as the Holiday Inn turned out to be quite a decent place to stay. Disappointingly for this column there were no access issues, and so the only thing to moan about was the South Yorkshire weather and the fact that going away for the weekend means you're missing the cricket. Still, I had a coat and the current England v Pakistan one-day cricket series is as predictable as an episode of Lie To Me. There was no excuse.
We'd done our research and to tell you the truth Sheffield does not rival York for it's tourist attractions. The principle reason for leaving the hotel on Friday afternoon was to visit the Wheel Of Sheffield. Or, should I say, the Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield. Yes, just like everything else with even the remotest market value, the Wheel of Sheffield is sponsored. As a consequence of this, the in-ride commentary comes from one of Hallam FM's dullard disc jockeys.
Fortunately you don't really think about the commentary when you are up in the skies overlooking the city landscape. This is no London Eye (that's according to Emma whose been on, I would just be making an arbitrary estimate), but though it lacks the Tower of London and Westminster, it does have Cathedrals and the Crucible Theatre, home of the World Snooker Championship. The view remains exciting and interesting enough to keep your attention.
All of which is a bloody good thing, for if you were to listen to the Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield commentary brought to you by Hallam FM in association with Hallam FM, Wheels and Sheffield you would be immediately reminded of Mike Smash and Dave Nice. Not half, but not really a reassuring or even an informative voice when you are hundreds of feet in the air wondering why your pod appears to be rocking. That is not a sentence I expect to be writing again in the very near future, but it is accurate nonetheless.
The Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield is somewhat quicker than it's London counterpart. For your £6.50 you get to go around five times (though some debate this suggesting that they have been on when it has been only four), and takes about 15 minutes of your time. Emma tells me that the London Eye ride lasts for the best part of an hour. For our part we definitely went around five times, but the pod only stopped for any great length of time on the first cycle. It is this moment which makes the whole thing worthwhile. It's a bit scary, but the scenery from that kind of vantage point really is breathtaking.
The other item on the 'to do' list from our research was the Winter Garden. As we dizzily exited the Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield we stumbled towards an even dizzier information guide who assured us that the Winter Garden was just a 'couple of buildings further down' to the right. Despite being advised that we could not miss it, we missed it initially. It wasn't until we had been moving for around 15 minutes and past several hundred couples of buildings that we noticed a sign for the city museums. It had to be that way, surely?
It was. So what delights does the Winter Garden hold? Well, to be honest you might be a little underwhelmed. That is unless you are an enthusiast of someone called John Ruskin. Ruskin has an entire exhibition devoted to him here, the bumph on which explains that he wanted people to acknowledge the power and beauty of nature and to themselves use nature to be more creative. I find that Ruskin's own contribution to this honourable goal is a little lacking in substance. I still can't work out whether he was an artist or a scientist or both, but I do know that he must have talked a lot to inspire this kind of tribute.
The Gardens themselves contain exactly what you would expect, lots of indoor plants. This time the blurb explains that these particular plants (the name of which has already escaped me) were the main source of sustenance for dinosaurs. However, whereas the dinosaurs died out in the meteor blast, these plants survived and evolved. Yet the philistine in me will always point out that their longevity and startling evolutionary capabilities do not preclude them from being as dull as a house plant. Or even as a Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield commentator.
A friend of mine had told me to sample the cakes in one of the small eateries in the Gardens, but time constraints and Emma's diet rather put paid to the idea. They looked nice though, I will concede. As many people were sat sampling their delights as were strolling around the indestructable greenery.
Once Emma's family joined up with us we decided to head for an Italian restaurant called Antibos in the city centre. By now I had lurched from worrying about the cricket to having seizures about the rugby. Saints were playing their first play-off game at home to Warrington at about the same time I was tucking into my enormous pizza. I have to admit to checking the score on my phone a little more often than might normally be thought of as socially acceptable at the dinner table.
I overdid it on the food aswell, and felt shockingly sick by the time Emma and I got back to our room. I'd preceded the pizza with a piece of garlic bread as big as Kent, and followed it with something resembling chocolate fudge cake which I ordered through sheer bloody mindedness and a determination to keep up. With a big day ahead I needed rest and besides, it was all I could do not to regurgitate the whole lot by then.
On the plus side, Saints won........
On the occasion of Emma's something-somethingth birthday we decided to spend the weekend in the city of her birth. She has family there, and if you are still not convinced about our reasoning then how about the fact that one member of said family works at one of the city's Holiday Inn hotels and can therefore get us cheap accommodation? As my mother's son, there is a part of me that would buy two Jim Davidsons if one were free.
None of which was necessary as the Holiday Inn turned out to be quite a decent place to stay. Disappointingly for this column there were no access issues, and so the only thing to moan about was the South Yorkshire weather and the fact that going away for the weekend means you're missing the cricket. Still, I had a coat and the current England v Pakistan one-day cricket series is as predictable as an episode of Lie To Me. There was no excuse.
We'd done our research and to tell you the truth Sheffield does not rival York for it's tourist attractions. The principle reason for leaving the hotel on Friday afternoon was to visit the Wheel Of Sheffield. Or, should I say, the Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield. Yes, just like everything else with even the remotest market value, the Wheel of Sheffield is sponsored. As a consequence of this, the in-ride commentary comes from one of Hallam FM's dullard disc jockeys.
Fortunately you don't really think about the commentary when you are up in the skies overlooking the city landscape. This is no London Eye (that's according to Emma whose been on, I would just be making an arbitrary estimate), but though it lacks the Tower of London and Westminster, it does have Cathedrals and the Crucible Theatre, home of the World Snooker Championship. The view remains exciting and interesting enough to keep your attention.
All of which is a bloody good thing, for if you were to listen to the Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield commentary brought to you by Hallam FM in association with Hallam FM, Wheels and Sheffield you would be immediately reminded of Mike Smash and Dave Nice. Not half, but not really a reassuring or even an informative voice when you are hundreds of feet in the air wondering why your pod appears to be rocking. That is not a sentence I expect to be writing again in the very near future, but it is accurate nonetheless.
The Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield is somewhat quicker than it's London counterpart. For your £6.50 you get to go around five times (though some debate this suggesting that they have been on when it has been only four), and takes about 15 minutes of your time. Emma tells me that the London Eye ride lasts for the best part of an hour. For our part we definitely went around five times, but the pod only stopped for any great length of time on the first cycle. It is this moment which makes the whole thing worthwhile. It's a bit scary, but the scenery from that kind of vantage point really is breathtaking.
The other item on the 'to do' list from our research was the Winter Garden. As we dizzily exited the Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield we stumbled towards an even dizzier information guide who assured us that the Winter Garden was just a 'couple of buildings further down' to the right. Despite being advised that we could not miss it, we missed it initially. It wasn't until we had been moving for around 15 minutes and past several hundred couples of buildings that we noticed a sign for the city museums. It had to be that way, surely?
It was. So what delights does the Winter Garden hold? Well, to be honest you might be a little underwhelmed. That is unless you are an enthusiast of someone called John Ruskin. Ruskin has an entire exhibition devoted to him here, the bumph on which explains that he wanted people to acknowledge the power and beauty of nature and to themselves use nature to be more creative. I find that Ruskin's own contribution to this honourable goal is a little lacking in substance. I still can't work out whether he was an artist or a scientist or both, but I do know that he must have talked a lot to inspire this kind of tribute.
The Gardens themselves contain exactly what you would expect, lots of indoor plants. This time the blurb explains that these particular plants (the name of which has already escaped me) were the main source of sustenance for dinosaurs. However, whereas the dinosaurs died out in the meteor blast, these plants survived and evolved. Yet the philistine in me will always point out that their longevity and startling evolutionary capabilities do not preclude them from being as dull as a house plant. Or even as a Hallam FM Wheel Of Sheffield commentator.
A friend of mine had told me to sample the cakes in one of the small eateries in the Gardens, but time constraints and Emma's diet rather put paid to the idea. They looked nice though, I will concede. As many people were sat sampling their delights as were strolling around the indestructable greenery.
Once Emma's family joined up with us we decided to head for an Italian restaurant called Antibos in the city centre. By now I had lurched from worrying about the cricket to having seizures about the rugby. Saints were playing their first play-off game at home to Warrington at about the same time I was tucking into my enormous pizza. I have to admit to checking the score on my phone a little more often than might normally be thought of as socially acceptable at the dinner table.
I overdid it on the food aswell, and felt shockingly sick by the time Emma and I got back to our room. I'd preceded the pizza with a piece of garlic bread as big as Kent, and followed it with something resembling chocolate fudge cake which I ordered through sheer bloody mindedness and a determination to keep up. With a big day ahead I needed rest and besides, it was all I could do not to regurgitate the whole lot by then.
On the plus side, Saints won........
Friday, 3 September 2010
Hedgeblog
'There's cat shit on the floor in here' said Emma as she looked into what used to be our conservatory and is now a chaotic laundry room.
From my angle and with my 7.00am blurry eyed goggles on I couldn't see what she was talking about. I wasn't taking any chances though, and there followed a brief 'exchange' on the subject of who might have left the conservatory door open and who should therefore clean up the mess.
Thinking no more of this episode other than to resolve to remind Emma to shut the door next time, I went about my usual business. A full day's work, an evening meal, an hour-long soak in the bath, and a two-hour visit to my mum's house. It was Thursday, and my mum's house is the only real safe haven from Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy and Third Watch.
I got back late to find that Emma had already gone to bed. It was after 11.00 and so I put the television on with a view to having half an hour of the tennis and then retiring. James Blake's second round match against a man whose name I can't even recall now was never going to hold my attention for all that long, and so I headed towards the bedroom. As I did I could hear what I thought was something or someone shuffling around in the kitchen.
I called Emma's name. No answer. I tried again, no answer. Finally I approached the kitchen to investigate, and found that Emma was nowhere to be seen. Yet I could still hear something shuffling around. It sounded like it was coming from behind the washing machine or the fridge freezer but I couldn't be sure. And so I did the only thing that any rational man would do in this situation. I woke Emma to help me investigate further.
Emma's not at her best when she has just been involuntarily woken up, so it did not help my cause when she followed me into the kitchen to find that the shuffling had stopped. There was nothing. Deathly silence, and no sign of any living thing other than ourselves. We looked around hesitantly for five or ten minutes, decided there was nothing to see, and went to bed. It was well after 12 by now and we are not great at getting up for work at 7.00 at the best of times.
A short doze followed, but by around 1am I was awoken by what I thought sounded like the fluttering of wings. I now downgraded my initial assessment which had been that there must be a mouse or a rat on the loose, and decided instead that it might just be a moth at worst, and at best a butterfly with a seriously flawed sense of direction. Emma put the lights on. The noise stopped again. If he hadn't been dead for at least five years I'd have been waiting for Jeremy Beadle to pop his head round the bedroom door.
A moment later the shuffling noise returned, but it was much louder. We were still in the bedroom but we could hear it coming from the kitchen area. Emma shot out of the bed, opened the door and announced;
"Shit! There's a hedgehog in the house!"
It was pure Victor Meldrew from then on. I literally did not believe it.
When I got out of bed I found the proof. The hedgehog was there behind the sofa next to the telephone wires. We'd obviously startled it because it had decided that the only way out of this prickly predicament would be to curl up in a ball and do nothing. All of which meant that Emma had to physically roll it through the front door with some kind of cleaning implement. I sat guarding the living room in case it roused from it's stupor and made a run for the other sofa. Fortunately it did not and she managed to manouver it on to the ramp at the side of the house. We've found hedgehogs on the ramp before, but this was the first time one had managed to infiltrate the four walls of our home.
Before we returned to bed we contemplated the fact that, in all probability, the 'cat shit' from early that morning had in fact been hedgehog shit, and that therefore our spikey little intruder had spent the whole day somewhere in our house. The crafty little bleeder had managed to go 18 hours undetected. It is more than likely that he spent most of that time curled up and motionless, what with hedgehogs being mostly nocturnal creatures. They only wake up when Babestation comes on.
The whole affair is just incredible. We left the house this morning pleased to note that there was no more shit around, and that the hedgehog had left the ramp area. It must still be alive then, which was a relief to Emma who was mortified at the prospect of murdering an animal with a mop. A colleague of her's has warned us that hedgehogs are territorial creatures and so it may try to come back. He has advised us that if it does we should drive it at least one mile away and release it in a field or a park somewhere. Fine, just as long as it doesn't release any of it's waste in our house again any time soon.
I don't believe it.
From my angle and with my 7.00am blurry eyed goggles on I couldn't see what she was talking about. I wasn't taking any chances though, and there followed a brief 'exchange' on the subject of who might have left the conservatory door open and who should therefore clean up the mess.
Thinking no more of this episode other than to resolve to remind Emma to shut the door next time, I went about my usual business. A full day's work, an evening meal, an hour-long soak in the bath, and a two-hour visit to my mum's house. It was Thursday, and my mum's house is the only real safe haven from Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy and Third Watch.
I got back late to find that Emma had already gone to bed. It was after 11.00 and so I put the television on with a view to having half an hour of the tennis and then retiring. James Blake's second round match against a man whose name I can't even recall now was never going to hold my attention for all that long, and so I headed towards the bedroom. As I did I could hear what I thought was something or someone shuffling around in the kitchen.
I called Emma's name. No answer. I tried again, no answer. Finally I approached the kitchen to investigate, and found that Emma was nowhere to be seen. Yet I could still hear something shuffling around. It sounded like it was coming from behind the washing machine or the fridge freezer but I couldn't be sure. And so I did the only thing that any rational man would do in this situation. I woke Emma to help me investigate further.
Emma's not at her best when she has just been involuntarily woken up, so it did not help my cause when she followed me into the kitchen to find that the shuffling had stopped. There was nothing. Deathly silence, and no sign of any living thing other than ourselves. We looked around hesitantly for five or ten minutes, decided there was nothing to see, and went to bed. It was well after 12 by now and we are not great at getting up for work at 7.00 at the best of times.
A short doze followed, but by around 1am I was awoken by what I thought sounded like the fluttering of wings. I now downgraded my initial assessment which had been that there must be a mouse or a rat on the loose, and decided instead that it might just be a moth at worst, and at best a butterfly with a seriously flawed sense of direction. Emma put the lights on. The noise stopped again. If he hadn't been dead for at least five years I'd have been waiting for Jeremy Beadle to pop his head round the bedroom door.
A moment later the shuffling noise returned, but it was much louder. We were still in the bedroom but we could hear it coming from the kitchen area. Emma shot out of the bed, opened the door and announced;
"Shit! There's a hedgehog in the house!"
It was pure Victor Meldrew from then on. I literally did not believe it.
When I got out of bed I found the proof. The hedgehog was there behind the sofa next to the telephone wires. We'd obviously startled it because it had decided that the only way out of this prickly predicament would be to curl up in a ball and do nothing. All of which meant that Emma had to physically roll it through the front door with some kind of cleaning implement. I sat guarding the living room in case it roused from it's stupor and made a run for the other sofa. Fortunately it did not and she managed to manouver it on to the ramp at the side of the house. We've found hedgehogs on the ramp before, but this was the first time one had managed to infiltrate the four walls of our home.
Before we returned to bed we contemplated the fact that, in all probability, the 'cat shit' from early that morning had in fact been hedgehog shit, and that therefore our spikey little intruder had spent the whole day somewhere in our house. The crafty little bleeder had managed to go 18 hours undetected. It is more than likely that he spent most of that time curled up and motionless, what with hedgehogs being mostly nocturnal creatures. They only wake up when Babestation comes on.
The whole affair is just incredible. We left the house this morning pleased to note that there was no more shit around, and that the hedgehog had left the ramp area. It must still be alive then, which was a relief to Emma who was mortified at the prospect of murdering an animal with a mop. A colleague of her's has warned us that hedgehogs are territorial creatures and so it may try to come back. He has advised us that if it does we should drive it at least one mile away and release it in a field or a park somewhere. Fine, just as long as it doesn't release any of it's waste in our house again any time soon.
I don't believe it.
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
The Tony Blair Interview
For those of you who have been unable to tear yourself away from Ultimate Big Brother in recent times, I'm afraid I have to inform you that Tony Blair is about to release his memoirs.
You BB fans remember him, right? Great big toothy smile, softly spoken, never wrong about anything? He'd fit in well as a housemate were it not for the fact that his IQ is significantly higher than 30. Still sketchy? Ok, he used to be the Prime Minister. Got him now?
Ahead of the book release Mr Blair has given an hour-long interview to the BBC's Andrew Marr, screened earlier this evening (Wednesday) on BBC2. If I didn't know that all the book proceeds were going towards the British Legion to help those affected by the war that HE caused, I'd suggest that Mr Blair's interview is a shameless plug for the aforementioned tome. But I do know so we'll crack on. There's still plenty to complain about.
As I alluded to earlier Mr Blair is never wrong. Well, rarely by his own admission at any rate. This is a recurring theme in Marr's 60-minute examination of the man who held office for a decade. He was absolutely not wrong to stay on for a third term of office despite agreeing to hand on to Gordon Brown after two, absolutely not wrong to push ahead with plans for ID cards, tuition fees or foundation hospitals, and of course absolutely not wrong to authorise an illegal war in which the death toll continues to rise some eight years on. He's sorry about the latter, but he's not wrong.
The explanation of the decision to take military action in Iraq is somewhat confusing. Previous forays into Sierra Leone and Kosovo had brought about successful regime change. As such it came to pass that the removal of a despot was a good enough reason to start a war. All well and good so far. Perhaps Iraq and maybe even the world is a better place since the death of Saddam Hussein, but where's the consistency in that? Zimbabwe, anyone?
Mr Blair concedes that it would not be possible to go into Zimbabwe to remove Robert Mugabe and effect regime change, but doesn't explain the difference. This is where Marr misses a trick in not pushing for a more satisfactory answer. Perhaps both men think that the answer is obvious but, and you can call me thick if you like, I don't know the difference and I would have appreciated some elaboration on that. I'm plucking this from nowhere, but it might just be that Zimbabwe is a nation more capable of defending itself than Iraq, which has itself inflicted enough bloodshed on us. No PM wants to preside over a British version of Vietnam.
Mr Blair does express mild regret about fox hunting and freedom of information. He confesses that having looked futher into both he can now see that legislating on both was a bad idea. Suddenly fox hunting is not just 'a lot of toffs running around hunting foxes' but actually an essential method of pest control. Pity we didn't have someone around to control him when he was being a pest, which was almost always post 9/11.
He calls legislation on freedom of information a 'disaster', arguing that it became impossible for government to discuss issues frankly, lest they fall foul of the potential to offend the public. What he seemed to be saying, unless I needed to adjust my television set (which by the way will be digital whether I like it or not), is that politicians can only make informed decisions if there is no chance of anyone ever finding out what has been said in arriving at those decisions. Mr Blair would have you believe that the whole political process is in danger of falling down if some lilly-livered careerist suit is too afraid to say what he thinks, just in case the public find out about it later on.
It's only when Marr moves on to the latter days of Mr Blair's Premiership that you fully realise what has happened to the former PM. The wild-eyed (actually he's still wild-eyed), ambitious left of centre Labour man of the people of 1997 has morphed into a tyrannical, opportunistic egomaniac whose facial expressions throughout remind me of the demonic villains portrayed by Tim Curry in that Musketeer movie with Kiefer Sutherland. By his own admission Mr Blair has turned completely to the dark side, although the way he phrases it is that he is not a Conservative or even a conservative but a 'progressive' politician.
'You can't run the country in 2010 like you did in 1950' he pleads. He may be right, but I'm pretty sure you can keep the Labour Party sufficiently left wing to be both true to it's values and electable in the space of a decade. So far has Mr Blair travelled ideologically since Things Can Only Get Better And All That in 1997 that he couldn't even bring himself to launch an attack on the present and shambolic coalition government.
'I don't want to start attacking David Cameron' he said;
'Why not?' asked Marr, not unreasonably.
Maybe because they are not that different now and he recognises a lot of himself in Mr Cameron. Yes the current Prime Minister has gone a little cut-crazy in the face of the financial crisis, but essentially he's an extension of Mr Blair. All spin, monumentally self-satisfied despite his propensity to commit astonishing gaffes, and more than a little too concerned by legacy and his place in history.
The sad thing is that Mr Blair, unlike Mr Cameron perhaps, started from a much better place. His new memoirs could have been so, so different.......
You BB fans remember him, right? Great big toothy smile, softly spoken, never wrong about anything? He'd fit in well as a housemate were it not for the fact that his IQ is significantly higher than 30. Still sketchy? Ok, he used to be the Prime Minister. Got him now?
Ahead of the book release Mr Blair has given an hour-long interview to the BBC's Andrew Marr, screened earlier this evening (Wednesday) on BBC2. If I didn't know that all the book proceeds were going towards the British Legion to help those affected by the war that HE caused, I'd suggest that Mr Blair's interview is a shameless plug for the aforementioned tome. But I do know so we'll crack on. There's still plenty to complain about.
As I alluded to earlier Mr Blair is never wrong. Well, rarely by his own admission at any rate. This is a recurring theme in Marr's 60-minute examination of the man who held office for a decade. He was absolutely not wrong to stay on for a third term of office despite agreeing to hand on to Gordon Brown after two, absolutely not wrong to push ahead with plans for ID cards, tuition fees or foundation hospitals, and of course absolutely not wrong to authorise an illegal war in which the death toll continues to rise some eight years on. He's sorry about the latter, but he's not wrong.
The explanation of the decision to take military action in Iraq is somewhat confusing. Previous forays into Sierra Leone and Kosovo had brought about successful regime change. As such it came to pass that the removal of a despot was a good enough reason to start a war. All well and good so far. Perhaps Iraq and maybe even the world is a better place since the death of Saddam Hussein, but where's the consistency in that? Zimbabwe, anyone?
Mr Blair concedes that it would not be possible to go into Zimbabwe to remove Robert Mugabe and effect regime change, but doesn't explain the difference. This is where Marr misses a trick in not pushing for a more satisfactory answer. Perhaps both men think that the answer is obvious but, and you can call me thick if you like, I don't know the difference and I would have appreciated some elaboration on that. I'm plucking this from nowhere, but it might just be that Zimbabwe is a nation more capable of defending itself than Iraq, which has itself inflicted enough bloodshed on us. No PM wants to preside over a British version of Vietnam.
Mr Blair does express mild regret about fox hunting and freedom of information. He confesses that having looked futher into both he can now see that legislating on both was a bad idea. Suddenly fox hunting is not just 'a lot of toffs running around hunting foxes' but actually an essential method of pest control. Pity we didn't have someone around to control him when he was being a pest, which was almost always post 9/11.
He calls legislation on freedom of information a 'disaster', arguing that it became impossible for government to discuss issues frankly, lest they fall foul of the potential to offend the public. What he seemed to be saying, unless I needed to adjust my television set (which by the way will be digital whether I like it or not), is that politicians can only make informed decisions if there is no chance of anyone ever finding out what has been said in arriving at those decisions. Mr Blair would have you believe that the whole political process is in danger of falling down if some lilly-livered careerist suit is too afraid to say what he thinks, just in case the public find out about it later on.
It's only when Marr moves on to the latter days of Mr Blair's Premiership that you fully realise what has happened to the former PM. The wild-eyed (actually he's still wild-eyed), ambitious left of centre Labour man of the people of 1997 has morphed into a tyrannical, opportunistic egomaniac whose facial expressions throughout remind me of the demonic villains portrayed by Tim Curry in that Musketeer movie with Kiefer Sutherland. By his own admission Mr Blair has turned completely to the dark side, although the way he phrases it is that he is not a Conservative or even a conservative but a 'progressive' politician.
'You can't run the country in 2010 like you did in 1950' he pleads. He may be right, but I'm pretty sure you can keep the Labour Party sufficiently left wing to be both true to it's values and electable in the space of a decade. So far has Mr Blair travelled ideologically since Things Can Only Get Better And All That in 1997 that he couldn't even bring himself to launch an attack on the present and shambolic coalition government.
'I don't want to start attacking David Cameron' he said;
'Why not?' asked Marr, not unreasonably.
Maybe because they are not that different now and he recognises a lot of himself in Mr Cameron. Yes the current Prime Minister has gone a little cut-crazy in the face of the financial crisis, but essentially he's an extension of Mr Blair. All spin, monumentally self-satisfied despite his propensity to commit astonishing gaffes, and more than a little too concerned by legacy and his place in history.
The sad thing is that Mr Blair, unlike Mr Cameron perhaps, started from a much better place. His new memoirs could have been so, so different.......
Monday, 30 August 2010
Knowsley Safari Park
I've been to animal parks as far afield as Orlando and Tenerife, aswell as Whipsnade and Longleat. Surprising then that until today I have no real recollection of visiting Knowsley Safari Park.
I'm almost certain I have. I have vague memories of being carted around there some 25 years ago or more in a Variety Club Sunshine bus. We used to cruelly refer to it as the window-licking bus. I don't know if they still have them now. It's been just that long.
Whether I had or I hadn't been before, I was certainly due a visit. Well, what else are you going to do on a sport-less Bank Holiday Monday in August when cinema options extend to another God-awful Adam Sandler 'comedy' or a tit-drenched re-make of Piranha? Actually.............
It was a pretty reasonable £14 for both Emma and I to gain entrance into the park. For that you apparently get almost five miles worth of what they call 'Safari Drive', plus entry to pedestrianised displays such as a sea lion show, a falconry demonstration and a house full of disgusting bugs. More on which later on.
This being England, there is an access issue straight off the bat. Were I in possession of fully-functioning legs I would also have been able to take a stroll through the woodland trail area. Since I am not I was not able to do so, and so missed out on whatever weird wonders lurked therein. I have seen something similar in the Lake District and so can only imagine that it is mostly greenery, birds (and not the kind found in the Piranha movie), squirrels and foxes and maybe the odd badger. You may take the view that I am not missing out on very much, whereas I take the view that any opportunity to complain about inaccessiblity at tourist attractions should be seized upon instantly.
With woodland trails out of the equation we began our Safari Drive. Accompanying the drive is an audio guide. In other words, a CD containing commentary on all the species living in the park. Unlike it's Longleat counterpart which is far more generic and therefore helpful, this effort was recorded during an actual Safari Drive taken by a broadcaster and someone called Dave (obviously). Dave was one of the people responsible for the foundation of the park in 1971, and clearly knows his stuff. What he doesn't know about animals could only be gleaned by repeatedly torturing Terry Nutkins and Chris Packham. However, since he is speaking during an actual Safari Drive, he is making reference to sightings and events that are clearly not happening back in the real world;
"Yes and now we have an emu blocking the road, and we could be here for a while." he says philosophically, while we were actually sat in a queue of at least 10-15 cars, the drivers of which had stopped to watch a group of elephants. There wasn't an emu within 400 yards. He went on to describe visits to his vehicle from squirrels and of course the obligatory baboons, none of which were present in reality.
The park was not busy considering today is a Bank Holiday, but at one point around the elephant section all three lanes of the road were gridlocked. This is all very well if you like looking at elephants, but even so it can only keep your attention for a limited amount of time. My advice would be to pause the CD at this point, lest you find yourself listening to a description of lions and wildebeest when all you can see are elephants. And some Mondeos.
If all this sounds like a complaint it isn't. It's preferable for the drive to take up a significant amount of your time. There would be little point in racing around there in 10 minutes, regarding these magnificent beasts in the same way that you would a group of cows in a field by the M6. They deserve better and they are going to make damn sure you pay attention to them.
The best examples of this came in lion country. Many zoos might have two, maybe three lions living on their land, all of which are cooped up rather sadly in hardly adequate caging. Not so here, where a full pride of what must have been 10 or so lions had the run of the woodland. Acres of space, as sports commentators would have it. One lioness brazenly crossed the road metres from the front of the car. She didn't even stop to look at the gormless people who had come to gawp at her. Instead she merely plodded on and returned to the rest of the pride for what lions love best, a bit of a lie down. Seeing a lion roaming around from those sorts of close quarters was something special, even if it didn't have the social skills to acknowledge us. Lions these days............
Other roadblocks were provided by a stubborn and slightly aloof camel and several baboons. We'd chosen the car-friendly route to view the baboons. We've had enough trouble with our car this year without subjecting it to the bottoms of potentially 140 mischievous monkeys. Barely a week goes by without some kind of warning light coming on and some mechanic stroking his stubble, taking a sharp intake of breath and saying.......'it's gonna cost you'. I pride myself on my ability to waste money but the budget is not limitless, and anyway there is the principle of not giving your cash to cowboys isn't there?
Anyway, back to baboons. Despite taking the safe route we were still offered a fantastic view of the animals. You can see close up all of the gullible folk who don't mind losing the odd windscreen wiper driving along with five or six baboons on the roof. To be fair most of these cars seemed to contain very young children with delighted faces. Perhaps it is worth losing a windscreen wiper or two to see your child's face light up like that. I can only speculate. What I hadn't expected was the sight of several baboons blocking the passage of many of these cars by simply lying in the road. Today has been a reasonably warm day but you would think they could find somewhere safer to sunbathe.
Now, remember that bug house I was telling you about? It was a truly horrifying place. People have offered me the argument that snakes and spiders are 'cute' and are perfectly acceptable pets but of course this is arrant nonsense. Snakes are ugly, spiders even more so. Matching them in the ugly stakes are crocodile newts, leaf-cutter ants, salamanders, brightly coloured poisonous frogs and the utterly revolting legless lizard. He's not drunk, he literally has no legs. The major difference, apparently, between he and a snake is the presence of eyelids. Snakes don't have eyelids. They don't have personality either. There's also beetles, tarantulas and scorpions on view if you are so inclined.
Of far more appeal to me was the sea lion show we witnessed following our escape from the bug house. Reggie and Biffo (falling out of my chair laughing at this point, Biffo? Tell you what, you can call him Biffo but he walked better than I can) performed an array of fairly standard tricks ranging from clapping when directed to leaping out of the water to head a football. Of course there was the time-honoured balancing of said ball on the sea lions nose, although at only 14 months young Reggie clearly still has much to learn on this one. You get the impression that Biffo could keep the ball up there all day, while Reggie can manage only a few seconds at the moment. Apparently he's getting there, which is a feeling I'm sure many of us can identify with.
From there it was on to the falconry display. A handler, complete with Sam Allardyce-style audio headset, gave us the lowdown on Max the eagle, Nibbles the vulture and Pablo the hawk. Quite how anyone can bring themselves to name a bird of prey 'Nibbles' is beyond me. It's not very macho, is it? Nibbles didn't do much flying, preferring instead to walk around a lot. By contrast Pablo went to town with the whole flight thing. His party-piece was to fly just above the heads of the watching public, every man-Jack of whom ducked as he approached. Our guide assured us that his vision is such that he will never crash into anyone during flight, though I am sure I felt his wing brush against the side of my head towards the end of the display. Maybe I was imagining things. I've probably become sensitive to it after being violated by Stitch in Orlando (see earlier blog, we are not going there again you'll be happy to note).
Max was my personal favourite of the three. He flew at a sensible, safe height, and he didn't look at you in the vein hope that you might keel over and die and thus provide an easy meal in the way that Nibbles did. Strangely, Nibbles was not bald as we imagine vultures to be. Although it could have been a syrup.
There's barely enough cyberspace left to talk to you about the meerkats, otters, giraffe and all of the farm animals residing at Knowsley. The pigs were among the noisiest creatures I have ever encountered, although to be fair many of them were only a month old and were spending the entire afternoon chasing after their probably exhausted mother. No wonder all parties were a bit tetchy. Ponies and donkeys offer a quieter option for the kids to stroke, and if you really want to see something cutesy then there are lop-eared rabbits also. And sheep and goats, but nobody likes them, do they?
Like them or not, there is certainly enough I do like at Knowsley Safari Park to suggest that it will not be another 25 years before I visit again.
I'm almost certain I have. I have vague memories of being carted around there some 25 years ago or more in a Variety Club Sunshine bus. We used to cruelly refer to it as the window-licking bus. I don't know if they still have them now. It's been just that long.
Whether I had or I hadn't been before, I was certainly due a visit. Well, what else are you going to do on a sport-less Bank Holiday Monday in August when cinema options extend to another God-awful Adam Sandler 'comedy' or a tit-drenched re-make of Piranha? Actually.............
It was a pretty reasonable £14 for both Emma and I to gain entrance into the park. For that you apparently get almost five miles worth of what they call 'Safari Drive', plus entry to pedestrianised displays such as a sea lion show, a falconry demonstration and a house full of disgusting bugs. More on which later on.
This being England, there is an access issue straight off the bat. Were I in possession of fully-functioning legs I would also have been able to take a stroll through the woodland trail area. Since I am not I was not able to do so, and so missed out on whatever weird wonders lurked therein. I have seen something similar in the Lake District and so can only imagine that it is mostly greenery, birds (and not the kind found in the Piranha movie), squirrels and foxes and maybe the odd badger. You may take the view that I am not missing out on very much, whereas I take the view that any opportunity to complain about inaccessiblity at tourist attractions should be seized upon instantly.
With woodland trails out of the equation we began our Safari Drive. Accompanying the drive is an audio guide. In other words, a CD containing commentary on all the species living in the park. Unlike it's Longleat counterpart which is far more generic and therefore helpful, this effort was recorded during an actual Safari Drive taken by a broadcaster and someone called Dave (obviously). Dave was one of the people responsible for the foundation of the park in 1971, and clearly knows his stuff. What he doesn't know about animals could only be gleaned by repeatedly torturing Terry Nutkins and Chris Packham. However, since he is speaking during an actual Safari Drive, he is making reference to sightings and events that are clearly not happening back in the real world;
"Yes and now we have an emu blocking the road, and we could be here for a while." he says philosophically, while we were actually sat in a queue of at least 10-15 cars, the drivers of which had stopped to watch a group of elephants. There wasn't an emu within 400 yards. He went on to describe visits to his vehicle from squirrels and of course the obligatory baboons, none of which were present in reality.
The park was not busy considering today is a Bank Holiday, but at one point around the elephant section all three lanes of the road were gridlocked. This is all very well if you like looking at elephants, but even so it can only keep your attention for a limited amount of time. My advice would be to pause the CD at this point, lest you find yourself listening to a description of lions and wildebeest when all you can see are elephants. And some Mondeos.
If all this sounds like a complaint it isn't. It's preferable for the drive to take up a significant amount of your time. There would be little point in racing around there in 10 minutes, regarding these magnificent beasts in the same way that you would a group of cows in a field by the M6. They deserve better and they are going to make damn sure you pay attention to them.
The best examples of this came in lion country. Many zoos might have two, maybe three lions living on their land, all of which are cooped up rather sadly in hardly adequate caging. Not so here, where a full pride of what must have been 10 or so lions had the run of the woodland. Acres of space, as sports commentators would have it. One lioness brazenly crossed the road metres from the front of the car. She didn't even stop to look at the gormless people who had come to gawp at her. Instead she merely plodded on and returned to the rest of the pride for what lions love best, a bit of a lie down. Seeing a lion roaming around from those sorts of close quarters was something special, even if it didn't have the social skills to acknowledge us. Lions these days............
Other roadblocks were provided by a stubborn and slightly aloof camel and several baboons. We'd chosen the car-friendly route to view the baboons. We've had enough trouble with our car this year without subjecting it to the bottoms of potentially 140 mischievous monkeys. Barely a week goes by without some kind of warning light coming on and some mechanic stroking his stubble, taking a sharp intake of breath and saying.......'it's gonna cost you'. I pride myself on my ability to waste money but the budget is not limitless, and anyway there is the principle of not giving your cash to cowboys isn't there?
Anyway, back to baboons. Despite taking the safe route we were still offered a fantastic view of the animals. You can see close up all of the gullible folk who don't mind losing the odd windscreen wiper driving along with five or six baboons on the roof. To be fair most of these cars seemed to contain very young children with delighted faces. Perhaps it is worth losing a windscreen wiper or two to see your child's face light up like that. I can only speculate. What I hadn't expected was the sight of several baboons blocking the passage of many of these cars by simply lying in the road. Today has been a reasonably warm day but you would think they could find somewhere safer to sunbathe.
Now, remember that bug house I was telling you about? It was a truly horrifying place. People have offered me the argument that snakes and spiders are 'cute' and are perfectly acceptable pets but of course this is arrant nonsense. Snakes are ugly, spiders even more so. Matching them in the ugly stakes are crocodile newts, leaf-cutter ants, salamanders, brightly coloured poisonous frogs and the utterly revolting legless lizard. He's not drunk, he literally has no legs. The major difference, apparently, between he and a snake is the presence of eyelids. Snakes don't have eyelids. They don't have personality either. There's also beetles, tarantulas and scorpions on view if you are so inclined.
Of far more appeal to me was the sea lion show we witnessed following our escape from the bug house. Reggie and Biffo (falling out of my chair laughing at this point, Biffo? Tell you what, you can call him Biffo but he walked better than I can) performed an array of fairly standard tricks ranging from clapping when directed to leaping out of the water to head a football. Of course there was the time-honoured balancing of said ball on the sea lions nose, although at only 14 months young Reggie clearly still has much to learn on this one. You get the impression that Biffo could keep the ball up there all day, while Reggie can manage only a few seconds at the moment. Apparently he's getting there, which is a feeling I'm sure many of us can identify with.
From there it was on to the falconry display. A handler, complete with Sam Allardyce-style audio headset, gave us the lowdown on Max the eagle, Nibbles the vulture and Pablo the hawk. Quite how anyone can bring themselves to name a bird of prey 'Nibbles' is beyond me. It's not very macho, is it? Nibbles didn't do much flying, preferring instead to walk around a lot. By contrast Pablo went to town with the whole flight thing. His party-piece was to fly just above the heads of the watching public, every man-Jack of whom ducked as he approached. Our guide assured us that his vision is such that he will never crash into anyone during flight, though I am sure I felt his wing brush against the side of my head towards the end of the display. Maybe I was imagining things. I've probably become sensitive to it after being violated by Stitch in Orlando (see earlier blog, we are not going there again you'll be happy to note).
Max was my personal favourite of the three. He flew at a sensible, safe height, and he didn't look at you in the vein hope that you might keel over and die and thus provide an easy meal in the way that Nibbles did. Strangely, Nibbles was not bald as we imagine vultures to be. Although it could have been a syrup.
There's barely enough cyberspace left to talk to you about the meerkats, otters, giraffe and all of the farm animals residing at Knowsley. The pigs were among the noisiest creatures I have ever encountered, although to be fair many of them were only a month old and were spending the entire afternoon chasing after their probably exhausted mother. No wonder all parties were a bit tetchy. Ponies and donkeys offer a quieter option for the kids to stroke, and if you really want to see something cutesy then there are lop-eared rabbits also. And sheep and goats, but nobody likes them, do they?
Like them or not, there is certainly enough I do like at Knowsley Safari Park to suggest that it will not be another 25 years before I visit again.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Spotify
"You'll find loads of Joss Stone songs on there that you haven't heard." Emma told me the other night.
She was talking about Spotify, but I scoffed at the prospect. I refused to believe that the aforementioned Soul Angel had made a single sound since about 2004 that I had not picked up on. Well actually she probably has but I'd rather not go into that. I'm talking music now. Anyway, how wrong I was. Suddenly I was like the proverbial child in the sweet shop as I discovered dozens of what I thought were new tracks. It has probably been there years, but as with all other technological developments I have been a bit slow on the uptake where Spotify is concerned.
Mercifully for all you nay-sayers and philistines out there, this is not another pro-Joss propaganda article. The point is that Spotify is a brilliant little invention which, when you type in the name of an artist or a song, will list endless tracks associated with that artist or song title. The only down side to it is that after every three or four tracks chosen you are subjected to an advert (usually for Spotify or a related music product) whether you like it or not. But it is almost always only the one, so it is not long before the music world is once again at your filthy, disturbed fingertips. And unlike YouTube, you don't get tracks that sound like they have been recorded from inside a beer barrell, nor do they cut off before they have actually finished.
I tended to get a bit bamboozled by the choice, even within the limits of a list relating to a single artist. It reminded me of that Monty Python sketch about spam only instead of spam, spam, spam, spam and spam I was left to ponder over Joss with James Brown, Joss with Melissa Etheridge, Joss with Leanne Rhimes, Joss with Jeff Beck, even Joss with Robbie Williams. There's even a cover of the old Beach Boys classic 'God Only Knows'. By the way, in the interests of balance I should point out that Mr Williams has an extensive collection of Spotify tracks of his own. Be warned though, for every Morning Sun there is a Rock DJ, and for every No Regrets there is a Rudebox. Or something. Yet irrespective of which artist floats your boat you will find a veritable array of treats here. You can just skip over the garbage.
You can, if you are sad enough, lose hours on Spotify. I told myself repeatedly that I would just play one more song, but by the end of another 100 one more songs it was well after midnight and I was cursing Spotify for the exhaustion I knew lay ahead in the morning. For all the things that Spotify can do, it cannot get you out of going to work, nor getting up at 7.00 in the morning with the distinct feeling that you are three stones heavier than you were when you went to bed.
Give it a try. You'll find loads of tracks on there that you never knew existed. No, really. You will.
She was talking about Spotify, but I scoffed at the prospect. I refused to believe that the aforementioned Soul Angel had made a single sound since about 2004 that I had not picked up on. Well actually she probably has but I'd rather not go into that. I'm talking music now. Anyway, how wrong I was. Suddenly I was like the proverbial child in the sweet shop as I discovered dozens of what I thought were new tracks. It has probably been there years, but as with all other technological developments I have been a bit slow on the uptake where Spotify is concerned.
Mercifully for all you nay-sayers and philistines out there, this is not another pro-Joss propaganda article. The point is that Spotify is a brilliant little invention which, when you type in the name of an artist or a song, will list endless tracks associated with that artist or song title. The only down side to it is that after every three or four tracks chosen you are subjected to an advert (usually for Spotify or a related music product) whether you like it or not. But it is almost always only the one, so it is not long before the music world is once again at your filthy, disturbed fingertips. And unlike YouTube, you don't get tracks that sound like they have been recorded from inside a beer barrell, nor do they cut off before they have actually finished.
I tended to get a bit bamboozled by the choice, even within the limits of a list relating to a single artist. It reminded me of that Monty Python sketch about spam only instead of spam, spam, spam, spam and spam I was left to ponder over Joss with James Brown, Joss with Melissa Etheridge, Joss with Leanne Rhimes, Joss with Jeff Beck, even Joss with Robbie Williams. There's even a cover of the old Beach Boys classic 'God Only Knows'. By the way, in the interests of balance I should point out that Mr Williams has an extensive collection of Spotify tracks of his own. Be warned though, for every Morning Sun there is a Rock DJ, and for every No Regrets there is a Rudebox. Or something. Yet irrespective of which artist floats your boat you will find a veritable array of treats here. You can just skip over the garbage.
You can, if you are sad enough, lose hours on Spotify. I told myself repeatedly that I would just play one more song, but by the end of another 100 one more songs it was well after midnight and I was cursing Spotify for the exhaustion I knew lay ahead in the morning. For all the things that Spotify can do, it cannot get you out of going to work, nor getting up at 7.00 in the morning with the distinct feeling that you are three stones heavier than you were when you went to bed.
Give it a try. You'll find loads of tracks on there that you never knew existed. No, really. You will.
Friday, 20 August 2010
Chaophraya
I don't like Thai food. In fact I don't like any food except cheese. Not Thai, not Chinese, not Indian, not French, not Greek, not Spanish not anything. Strange then that I should take the decision to join my old work colleagues at Chaophraya, a Thai restaurant in Liverpool One.
Yet there is method in this madness. A couple of these people are leaving and so they were celebrating. Celebrating is absolutely the operative word here, but it takes someone to leave for everyone to get their sociable heads on. I worked there for a year and social outings were rare. Jennifer Anniston and Angelina Jolie get together socially more often than we did, and it is more than possible as people start leaving their jobs that we might never get together again.
My first problem was getting there. This being August it was of course hammering down with the kind of rain not seen since well.........since the day before yesterday. Undeterred I plodded on, but managed to get lost. I was rolling along quite absent mindedly with the MP3 player on when after about 10 minutes I found myself heading towards a pub. I would have called in for a drink had it not then dawned on me that firstly I was already on course to be very late, and secondly that the pub in question was at the bottom of the street where I work!
Having resolved to concentrate on what I was actually doing rather than trundling around in circles, I found Liverpool One with no more drama. Finding the restaurant was a different proposition. I'd been told it was near to the Hilton hotel, but what I didn't know is that you had to get into the lift from there and go up to the fifth floor. I found this useful titbit of information from the Tourist Information Centre, which I also found quite by accident.
By now around 20 minutes late I exited the lift to find a row of restaurants at the top of the ramp. Only Chaophraya wasn't one of them. It was on the other side of the complex, hidden away like Dr Evil's lair. It crossed my mind that Liverpool One could make good use of maps, but it's a place that seems to think it is too cool for that. You're slumming it if you offer people help in getting around. Liverpool One is only for pseudo-trendy people, and pseudo-trendy people don't need maps. Except perhaps to find their way up their own backsides to retrieve their heads.
As expected I couldn't eat much, yet I could still have done without one of our number asking the waiter if he could get me some chips. Chaophraya thinks it is up-market, and it is not the sort of place where one can sit there eating a split and fish while all around you are tucking into their Thai curries and their duck. I managed some chicken and some strange bread-based concoction smeared in sesame seeds, but that was about my lot. The chip request sparked something in the waiter, who spent much of the rest of the time dashing over to our table to offer me alternatives. Chicken nuggets? No thanks. Prawns? No thanks. Ice cream? No thanks. It was all a bit Mrs Doyle. Say you will. You will, you will, you will, you will, you will. You will. I won't.
I wouldn't even have a dessert. I could easily have shifted some chocolate cake but it didn't seem appropriate having declined everything else. Except beer. I had beer. Budweiser is Budweiser, irrespective of foreign cuisine. We moved on to a few pubs and I thankfully started to feel a little less like everyone was looking at me, willing me to eat a spring roll. It was still raining and I was still hungry, but I was still glad to have been there.
Yet there is method in this madness. A couple of these people are leaving and so they were celebrating. Celebrating is absolutely the operative word here, but it takes someone to leave for everyone to get their sociable heads on. I worked there for a year and social outings were rare. Jennifer Anniston and Angelina Jolie get together socially more often than we did, and it is more than possible as people start leaving their jobs that we might never get together again.
My first problem was getting there. This being August it was of course hammering down with the kind of rain not seen since well.........since the day before yesterday. Undeterred I plodded on, but managed to get lost. I was rolling along quite absent mindedly with the MP3 player on when after about 10 minutes I found myself heading towards a pub. I would have called in for a drink had it not then dawned on me that firstly I was already on course to be very late, and secondly that the pub in question was at the bottom of the street where I work!
Having resolved to concentrate on what I was actually doing rather than trundling around in circles, I found Liverpool One with no more drama. Finding the restaurant was a different proposition. I'd been told it was near to the Hilton hotel, but what I didn't know is that you had to get into the lift from there and go up to the fifth floor. I found this useful titbit of information from the Tourist Information Centre, which I also found quite by accident.
By now around 20 minutes late I exited the lift to find a row of restaurants at the top of the ramp. Only Chaophraya wasn't one of them. It was on the other side of the complex, hidden away like Dr Evil's lair. It crossed my mind that Liverpool One could make good use of maps, but it's a place that seems to think it is too cool for that. You're slumming it if you offer people help in getting around. Liverpool One is only for pseudo-trendy people, and pseudo-trendy people don't need maps. Except perhaps to find their way up their own backsides to retrieve their heads.
As expected I couldn't eat much, yet I could still have done without one of our number asking the waiter if he could get me some chips. Chaophraya thinks it is up-market, and it is not the sort of place where one can sit there eating a split and fish while all around you are tucking into their Thai curries and their duck. I managed some chicken and some strange bread-based concoction smeared in sesame seeds, but that was about my lot. The chip request sparked something in the waiter, who spent much of the rest of the time dashing over to our table to offer me alternatives. Chicken nuggets? No thanks. Prawns? No thanks. Ice cream? No thanks. It was all a bit Mrs Doyle. Say you will. You will, you will, you will, you will, you will. You will. I won't.
I wouldn't even have a dessert. I could easily have shifted some chocolate cake but it didn't seem appropriate having declined everything else. Except beer. I had beer. Budweiser is Budweiser, irrespective of foreign cuisine. We moved on to a few pubs and I thankfully started to feel a little less like everyone was looking at me, willing me to eat a spring roll. It was still raining and I was still hungry, but I was still glad to have been there.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
York - The Last Word
So where was I? Oh yes. In York.
Those of you still with me from part one will remember that I was initially turned away from the Jorvik Viking Centre due to fire regulations. I wasn't carrying any matches or fidgeting gormlessly with a cigarette lighter. They told me that they could not accommodate more than one wheelchair user at a time.
All of which disability inaccess led to our arriving on Friday morning for a second bite at the cherry. Clearly they had ran out of excuses to dismiss us, and they let us in without too much fuss. Via a small lift we made our way down to the visitors centre, the main feature of which is it's glass floor.
It may not sound all that exciting, but when you take into account the fact that the room is only lit by the glare of the television monitors dotted around it changes your perspective. It genuinely looks like there is no floor in the middle of the room, and the model of the old Viking Digs set a few feet below the glass only adds to the effect. Despite what your eyes tell you, it is quite safe to step (or wheel) on to the glass and have a look around. The Digs aren't much to look at however, and the main pleasure to be gained is a kind of Homer Simpson-esque delight at being able to skim across the top of a seemingly invisible floor and not fall face first into the rocks below.
The Jorvik Centre has it's own ride too. It's not The Hulk at Universal Studios, but it is very similar to some of the more gentler attractions that a place like Orlando has to offer. Another miracle of access (could this be the reason for their strict one at a time policy?) allowed me to board one of the carriages which takes you on a historical tour of all things Viking. The idea is to educate you on how the Vikings used to live, hunt, work and behave.
Undoubtedly though, the highlight is meeting the gentleman who gets caught short on his toilet. Upon being greeted by the ride's audio narrator the man lets out an embarrassed and muffled Scandinavian utterance before promptly 'dropping the kids off'. For authenticity the air suddenly becomes filled with a decidedly ploppy smell. I found all of this hugely amusing but I think Emma felt a little queasy once the smell escaped.
Excrement is a theme at the Jorvik Centre, as on display there you will also find what I can only describe to you as a lump of shite. There, in a glass case all of it's own, is a sample of human excrement accompanied by some scientific jibber-jabber about how much we can learn from the chemicals in shite or some such. To my mind it looked like something you might get out of an old fashioned joke shop at Blackpool but then I should remember that it fell out of it's human vehicle some 1200 years ago. It's bound to have let itself go.
Our final destination would be the Merchant Adventurer's House. The Merchant Adventurers were basically tradesmen who sailed the world trying to sell their goods and make a bit of wonga. It is perhaps best to think of them as an early version of a worker's union, and the house is a grand old place where they would hold their meetings and social events. Your tour of the house is accompanied by a free audio guide which on appearance looks like the Sky Digital remote handset. 'Press your red button now to watch Lord Poncemby sail to Bordeaux to buy wine live and exclusively in HD'. The trouble with this little gizmo is that it cannot be paused, so you find yourself struggling to keep up with the descriptions of the art work and other exhibits on display.
By the time you have sussed out how to get the right information at the time that you actually want it you have reached the chapel, and you get the feeling that you are just about done with religion and churches. For a little light relief, and to keep the house in touch with the technological revolution, there are touch-screen games which place you in the Merchant Adventurer's boat and challenge you to sail the world trading your products. I visited Bordeaux first obviously, but also took in Bilbao, Copenhagen, and somewhere in Belgium on my way to a glorious £8 profit. I was then informed that while my haul was a worthy one allowing for economic inflation, I still had to pay my crew and so would probably only have gone away with enough money for half a hogs head for the banquet.
But that's York. It's a wonderful city but it proves that you really can't have everything.
Those of you still with me from part one will remember that I was initially turned away from the Jorvik Viking Centre due to fire regulations. I wasn't carrying any matches or fidgeting gormlessly with a cigarette lighter. They told me that they could not accommodate more than one wheelchair user at a time.
All of which disability inaccess led to our arriving on Friday morning for a second bite at the cherry. Clearly they had ran out of excuses to dismiss us, and they let us in without too much fuss. Via a small lift we made our way down to the visitors centre, the main feature of which is it's glass floor.
It may not sound all that exciting, but when you take into account the fact that the room is only lit by the glare of the television monitors dotted around it changes your perspective. It genuinely looks like there is no floor in the middle of the room, and the model of the old Viking Digs set a few feet below the glass only adds to the effect. Despite what your eyes tell you, it is quite safe to step (or wheel) on to the glass and have a look around. The Digs aren't much to look at however, and the main pleasure to be gained is a kind of Homer Simpson-esque delight at being able to skim across the top of a seemingly invisible floor and not fall face first into the rocks below.
The Jorvik Centre has it's own ride too. It's not The Hulk at Universal Studios, but it is very similar to some of the more gentler attractions that a place like Orlando has to offer. Another miracle of access (could this be the reason for their strict one at a time policy?) allowed me to board one of the carriages which takes you on a historical tour of all things Viking. The idea is to educate you on how the Vikings used to live, hunt, work and behave.
Undoubtedly though, the highlight is meeting the gentleman who gets caught short on his toilet. Upon being greeted by the ride's audio narrator the man lets out an embarrassed and muffled Scandinavian utterance before promptly 'dropping the kids off'. For authenticity the air suddenly becomes filled with a decidedly ploppy smell. I found all of this hugely amusing but I think Emma felt a little queasy once the smell escaped.
Excrement is a theme at the Jorvik Centre, as on display there you will also find what I can only describe to you as a lump of shite. There, in a glass case all of it's own, is a sample of human excrement accompanied by some scientific jibber-jabber about how much we can learn from the chemicals in shite or some such. To my mind it looked like something you might get out of an old fashioned joke shop at Blackpool but then I should remember that it fell out of it's human vehicle some 1200 years ago. It's bound to have let itself go.
Our final destination would be the Merchant Adventurer's House. The Merchant Adventurers were basically tradesmen who sailed the world trying to sell their goods and make a bit of wonga. It is perhaps best to think of them as an early version of a worker's union, and the house is a grand old place where they would hold their meetings and social events. Your tour of the house is accompanied by a free audio guide which on appearance looks like the Sky Digital remote handset. 'Press your red button now to watch Lord Poncemby sail to Bordeaux to buy wine live and exclusively in HD'. The trouble with this little gizmo is that it cannot be paused, so you find yourself struggling to keep up with the descriptions of the art work and other exhibits on display.
By the time you have sussed out how to get the right information at the time that you actually want it you have reached the chapel, and you get the feeling that you are just about done with religion and churches. For a little light relief, and to keep the house in touch with the technological revolution, there are touch-screen games which place you in the Merchant Adventurer's boat and challenge you to sail the world trading your products. I visited Bordeaux first obviously, but also took in Bilbao, Copenhagen, and somewhere in Belgium on my way to a glorious £8 profit. I was then informed that while my haul was a worthy one allowing for economic inflation, I still had to pay my crew and so would probably only have gone away with enough money for half a hogs head for the banquet.
But that's York. It's a wonderful city but it proves that you really can't have everything.
Saturday, 7 August 2010
York - Day Two
The first bus left for the city centre tour at 9.55am. Of course, this being us, we were never going to be on it. Not when you consider my long-standing feud with public transport. Again it would be one of the themes of the day.
Four buses pulled in an and out of the first stop-off point without offering even the merest hint of wheelchair access. Nevertheless our patience held, only because the leaflet insisted that 'most' buses were accessible. One in five is not my idea of 'most', but it probably satisfies some half-arsed Disability Discrimination Act criteria laid out by politicans who are suspicously devoid of disability. Not of the physical variety, in any event.
What the leaflet doesn't tell you is that when you finally find yourself an accessible bus, you will have an innaccessible driver. Sporting the kind of ludicrous grey mullet normally reserved for Barnsley cab drivers, our man looked promising when he let us on to the bus without charging us. Sadly, he did so because he didn't actually know how much to charge us (that scary chair thing again) and had to pull up so that he could ask the guide on the upper deck. Turns out it was his first day on the job. You can imagine the conversation at Head Office beforehand;
"I'm not sure about Bob, he doesn't seem to know what he's really doing yet."
"Ah, just stick him on the accessible bus, he'll be fine. Nobody uses that thing anyway. I mean, accessible buses? Do me a favour."
What I can also tell you about York's City Tour Bus is that the stops on the map mean nothing. Stop 8 is Dick Turpin's grave, the only problem being that the bus can't actually stop there. It can stop 200 yards down the road, which would be slightly more helpful if the guide had explained that you can't actually see it anyway. Not since it appears to be on the inside of a locked church.
Stop 3 is the Richard III museum, though it remains unclear exactly where stop 3 is. It doesn't appear to be in York. Maybe it is innaccessible and they didn't have the heart to tell us. Or maybe 'Bob' just doesn't know and felt a bit silly asking so many questions on his first day.
By now we were a little weary of buses, and so made our way to the Castle Museum. Not the castle itself, you understand. That would be living the dream, located as it is up an absurd number of steps on top of a large hill. Even Emma would have had difficulty climbing that many steps, so we moved on to the museum down the road. Parts of which were, you guessed it, inaccessible.
And free. We were allowed in for nothing. The museum staff are obviously mortified by the fact that they cannot manage to make their building fully accessible and so do not have the audacity to charge a fee. Not helping their cause is that it is difficult to put many of the exhibits into any kind of context, such is the lack of information supplied. You can stare at a box full of watches, belts, buckles, tools and clothes for as long as you like, you never really get a sense of their relevance to York Castle. To make up for this, a life-size model of a horse and stagecoach is slapped straight in the middle of one of the cobbled streets containing said exhibits. This fascinates young children. There's also a fire engine.
It's not until you get to the prison that you start to get some idea of what life in and around York Castle might have been like hundreds of years ago. A selection of devilish and dastardly characters are brought to life by short films projected onto the walls of the cells they once occupied. This is where you find out the grizzly good stuff, with crimes ranging from high treason and armed robbery to stabbing one's spouse to death with a variety of sharp kitchen utensils. We finally located Dick Turpin, but he was unable to shed any light on the location of his grave, what with him being a professional actor beamed digitally onto a concrete wall.
As far as we could tell, nobody had ever been placed in York Castle's prison for whistling on a Tuesday, nor were there any executioners called Ploppy. We were understandably disappointed by this.
York is a city which loves a museum, so from there it was on to the National Rail Museum. That is after we had visited the model railway exhibition, the main attraction of which is the ability to press buttons and watch things move. And not just model trains, but windmills and cars and flashing lights and maybe even a few animals. If you want to be really childish (and I do) there is the Thomas The Tank Engine section too. I'm sure there was a time when kids would have been enthralled at the prospect of bringing all of the characters to life with the push of just a few buttons. Then somebody invented X-Box.
The National Rail Museum is actually a truly impressive place. You don't have to have any previous interest in trains or transport to walk into the Great Hall and be awed. I went on board a Japanese Bullet (well ok, it was never going to move) and can remember thinking that nothing as good as this would be leaving Thatto Heath for Lime Street on Monday morning. In a truly ironic twist, the NRM had managed to make their trains more accessible than those actually in use across England's railway stations. I headed on board a steam train too, not to mention another used by the Royal Mail. Any more excitement than this and I might just have wet myself.
Information relating to the history of rail travel is dotted around the NRM. My favourite snippet was the Duke of Wellington's (tea, man, tea!!!!!!!!) assertion that he was against rail travel because he feared it would allow too much movement from the 'lower order'. He wasn't talking about England's batting line-up from Graeme Swann downwards, but rather the lower classes of England at that time. It was a classic piece of outrageous bigotry, and I tried to imagine David Cameron coming out with such wisdom without having half a brick thrown at his perfectly coiffured, public schoolboy head!
I visited the city's art gallery alone. Emma wanted to re-visit the crypt at the Minster, and I wanted to feel as though I was at least half-way cultured. Normally I hate art. I find it offensive that a woman can write names on a tent and be lauded for her achievements, or that the same praise and reward can be lavished on a man who hasn't made his bed. My opinion hasn't really changed, despite the fact that there is some great art work on display. There's also too many photographs which I'm sure I could have taken, and paintings which didn't seem out of the ordinary either. However, it should be remembered that when it comes to art I don't really know what I'm looking for. I just know it isn't a tent with names on, an un-made bed or a photograph of a 13-year-old girl performing a martial arts manouvre.
In the evening we had energy only for a meal and a bottle of red, whereupon I discovered that I don't like egg on pizza. I like egg in every form imaginable, but I was eventually left feeling a little sickly after munching my way through a large Carnivora pizza. If you're wondering, it contains pepperoni, sliced ham, salami and the offending egg. It can, if you dare, be purchased for a reasonable price at the Tuscany Restaurant in the centre of York.
On the table next to us an obnoxious man with two American daughters complained to the manager because his pizza hadn't arrived within 27 seconds of his order. The manager chewed the waitresses ear off in full view of the diners. She returned to the obnoxious man's table and he was all hearts and flowers, apologising profusely and assuring her that he had not meant to get her in trouble. I was willing her to smash his wine bottle over his head but she let me down. I hope he had egg in his pizza and spent the whole night rolfing it down his hotel loo.
Thankfully, I'd stopped in time to save myself that fate.
Four buses pulled in an and out of the first stop-off point without offering even the merest hint of wheelchair access. Nevertheless our patience held, only because the leaflet insisted that 'most' buses were accessible. One in five is not my idea of 'most', but it probably satisfies some half-arsed Disability Discrimination Act criteria laid out by politicans who are suspicously devoid of disability. Not of the physical variety, in any event.
What the leaflet doesn't tell you is that when you finally find yourself an accessible bus, you will have an innaccessible driver. Sporting the kind of ludicrous grey mullet normally reserved for Barnsley cab drivers, our man looked promising when he let us on to the bus without charging us. Sadly, he did so because he didn't actually know how much to charge us (that scary chair thing again) and had to pull up so that he could ask the guide on the upper deck. Turns out it was his first day on the job. You can imagine the conversation at Head Office beforehand;
"I'm not sure about Bob, he doesn't seem to know what he's really doing yet."
"Ah, just stick him on the accessible bus, he'll be fine. Nobody uses that thing anyway. I mean, accessible buses? Do me a favour."
What I can also tell you about York's City Tour Bus is that the stops on the map mean nothing. Stop 8 is Dick Turpin's grave, the only problem being that the bus can't actually stop there. It can stop 200 yards down the road, which would be slightly more helpful if the guide had explained that you can't actually see it anyway. Not since it appears to be on the inside of a locked church.
Stop 3 is the Richard III museum, though it remains unclear exactly where stop 3 is. It doesn't appear to be in York. Maybe it is innaccessible and they didn't have the heart to tell us. Or maybe 'Bob' just doesn't know and felt a bit silly asking so many questions on his first day.
By now we were a little weary of buses, and so made our way to the Castle Museum. Not the castle itself, you understand. That would be living the dream, located as it is up an absurd number of steps on top of a large hill. Even Emma would have had difficulty climbing that many steps, so we moved on to the museum down the road. Parts of which were, you guessed it, inaccessible.
And free. We were allowed in for nothing. The museum staff are obviously mortified by the fact that they cannot manage to make their building fully accessible and so do not have the audacity to charge a fee. Not helping their cause is that it is difficult to put many of the exhibits into any kind of context, such is the lack of information supplied. You can stare at a box full of watches, belts, buckles, tools and clothes for as long as you like, you never really get a sense of their relevance to York Castle. To make up for this, a life-size model of a horse and stagecoach is slapped straight in the middle of one of the cobbled streets containing said exhibits. This fascinates young children. There's also a fire engine.
It's not until you get to the prison that you start to get some idea of what life in and around York Castle might have been like hundreds of years ago. A selection of devilish and dastardly characters are brought to life by short films projected onto the walls of the cells they once occupied. This is where you find out the grizzly good stuff, with crimes ranging from high treason and armed robbery to stabbing one's spouse to death with a variety of sharp kitchen utensils. We finally located Dick Turpin, but he was unable to shed any light on the location of his grave, what with him being a professional actor beamed digitally onto a concrete wall.
As far as we could tell, nobody had ever been placed in York Castle's prison for whistling on a Tuesday, nor were there any executioners called Ploppy. We were understandably disappointed by this.
York is a city which loves a museum, so from there it was on to the National Rail Museum. That is after we had visited the model railway exhibition, the main attraction of which is the ability to press buttons and watch things move. And not just model trains, but windmills and cars and flashing lights and maybe even a few animals. If you want to be really childish (and I do) there is the Thomas The Tank Engine section too. I'm sure there was a time when kids would have been enthralled at the prospect of bringing all of the characters to life with the push of just a few buttons. Then somebody invented X-Box.
The National Rail Museum is actually a truly impressive place. You don't have to have any previous interest in trains or transport to walk into the Great Hall and be awed. I went on board a Japanese Bullet (well ok, it was never going to move) and can remember thinking that nothing as good as this would be leaving Thatto Heath for Lime Street on Monday morning. In a truly ironic twist, the NRM had managed to make their trains more accessible than those actually in use across England's railway stations. I headed on board a steam train too, not to mention another used by the Royal Mail. Any more excitement than this and I might just have wet myself.
Information relating to the history of rail travel is dotted around the NRM. My favourite snippet was the Duke of Wellington's (tea, man, tea!!!!!!!!) assertion that he was against rail travel because he feared it would allow too much movement from the 'lower order'. He wasn't talking about England's batting line-up from Graeme Swann downwards, but rather the lower classes of England at that time. It was a classic piece of outrageous bigotry, and I tried to imagine David Cameron coming out with such wisdom without having half a brick thrown at his perfectly coiffured, public schoolboy head!
I visited the city's art gallery alone. Emma wanted to re-visit the crypt at the Minster, and I wanted to feel as though I was at least half-way cultured. Normally I hate art. I find it offensive that a woman can write names on a tent and be lauded for her achievements, or that the same praise and reward can be lavished on a man who hasn't made his bed. My opinion hasn't really changed, despite the fact that there is some great art work on display. There's also too many photographs which I'm sure I could have taken, and paintings which didn't seem out of the ordinary either. However, it should be remembered that when it comes to art I don't really know what I'm looking for. I just know it isn't a tent with names on, an un-made bed or a photograph of a 13-year-old girl performing a martial arts manouvre.
In the evening we had energy only for a meal and a bottle of red, whereupon I discovered that I don't like egg on pizza. I like egg in every form imaginable, but I was eventually left feeling a little sickly after munching my way through a large Carnivora pizza. If you're wondering, it contains pepperoni, sliced ham, salami and the offending egg. It can, if you dare, be purchased for a reasonable price at the Tuscany Restaurant in the centre of York.
On the table next to us an obnoxious man with two American daughters complained to the manager because his pizza hadn't arrived within 27 seconds of his order. The manager chewed the waitresses ear off in full view of the diners. She returned to the obnoxious man's table and he was all hearts and flowers, apologising profusely and assuring her that he had not meant to get her in trouble. I was willing her to smash his wine bottle over his head but she let me down. I hope he had egg in his pizza and spent the whole night rolfing it down his hotel loo.
Thankfully, I'd stopped in time to save myself that fate.
Monday, 2 August 2010
York - Day One
With a whole week off from work we decided that, rather than stay in and watch True Movies and old episodes of Monk, we would get away for a few days. We chose York just because it was somewhere we had never been together, and there seemed to be a lot of places of interest to visit. No doubt some or all of these places would be inaccessible.
On the journey there I was disturbed to learn that Emma is a Lady GaGa fan. She has a CD with THREE tracks on it which can be rightly attributed to the gobshite Madonna wannabe. That's Lady GaGa, not Emma. Keep up. I myself detest Lady GaGa in a way that is difficult to explain and so I will offer you only the following evidence;
'Rah-Rah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Roma-Roma-Mamaa-Ga-Ga-Ooh-La-La-Want Your Romance'
I think you get my point.
If you are thinking that a disability-related mix-up and subsequent farce is hurtling towards this story then you would be right. It's as predictable as one of Baldrick's cunning plans unfortunately. Two hours of the A1 behind us, we arrived at the Saxon Hotel just outside the city to find that not only was our room inaccessible, but so was the rest of the hotel. There were two steps at the front by the pavement and another in front of the doorway. Not to mention the three more that went down to the only bathroom on the ground floor.
Luckily Emma has experience of putting up with this kind of crap, and so she made a few phone calls. Laterooms, with whom we had made the booking, blamed the hotel for supplying incorrect information, while the hotel staff blamed Laterooms for not informing them that someone would be having the temerity to turn up using a wheelchair. They even took the credit for moving us to a much nicer hotel in the city centre. You get what you pay for though, so it cost a little more. They gave us the £20 car parking fee.
Finally settled into our thankfully accessible hotel we headed off into the city for a snoop around. We found large bridges built on slanted roads which made pushing even short distances feel like a road session with Tanni-Grey Thompson. By the end of my marathon we still had a few hours to kill before the Ghost Walk we had planned on joining in the evening. We tried to visit the Jorvik Viking Centre but made the staggering discovery that due to fire regulations they were unable to admit more than one wheelchair user at a time. I checked with Emma to make sure it really was 2010, before reluctantly agreeing to make a booking for the Friday morning.
And so instead we visited the famous York Minster. If it is not as famous as they like to think and you don't know what I'm talking about I should explain then that it is a cathedral. It has stunning architecture both inside and out, but then it ought to since they are charging you £8 for what is essentially entry into a church. Even that fecking priest from my nephew's Holy Communion service would balk at that. What I noticed most about the Minster was the amount of death in there. There are rows and rows of plaques dedicated to fallen soldiers, noblemen and other such luminaries, many of whom died in gruesome circumstances. A service was taking place which seemed to attract a lot of visitors but after my anti-religious rant I decided not to get too close. I'm not a hypocrite, but at the same time I think that such a historic piece of world class architecture is worth preserving, and visiting for that matter.
The Ghost Walk, or something similar to it, is something we had experienced before in Stratford. This particular York version (there are at least four in what is becoming a thriving tourist industry business) was a little funnier than that, if a little more embarrassing also. It started at the Shambles market, and did so with our Ghostly guide strolling down the road, coming to a stop for fully 10 seconds before scaring the bejesus out of an unfortunate lady with her back to him;
"ARE YOU.....................!" he bellowed;
"Ghost hunting, tonight?"
She daren't say no at that point. And so began a pleasant walk around the city, inter-mingled with spooky stories of York's ghostly history. Saddest of all was the tale of the young girl who is said to haunt one house after being abandoned there by her parents because she had developed black boils under her arms. Her parents believed it was the plague and left her there and then, locked in her room. To boot, they painted a big red cross on the front door to warn any passers by not to enter the house. Our guide claimed that she can still be heard and seen screeching for help and scratching her nails down the bedroom window in an effort to escape. This is the cynical bit. Bollocks she can.
If you are going to go on a Ghost Walk then you better hope you are not chosen by the guide as his comedy prop. The unfortunate Dave seemed to have been chosen only because of his height, but his ordeals included being given a broken horn to blow, and being told to stand in a corner while the rest of the crowd backed him into the wall;
"There's no going back now." the guide quipped.
For his finale he tried to humiliate everyone who had, after all, paid their £5 for the privelege. He walked the group to a position opposite an Italian restaurant and instructed them to wave in unison at the diners. More than one of the restaurant customers waved back stupidly, and far too enthusiastically. For an encore he led the group to the window and had them blow a great big raspberry at the customers. Thumbs pressed into cheeks and everything. The real deal. You can't help but laugh in a situation like this but you get the feeling that if you didn't you'd cry.
It might have been a cheap laugh, but it was a good deal more creative than;
'Rah-Rah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Roma-Roma-Mamaa-Ga-Ga-Ooh-La-La-Want Your Romance'
On the journey there I was disturbed to learn that Emma is a Lady GaGa fan. She has a CD with THREE tracks on it which can be rightly attributed to the gobshite Madonna wannabe. That's Lady GaGa, not Emma. Keep up. I myself detest Lady GaGa in a way that is difficult to explain and so I will offer you only the following evidence;
'Rah-Rah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Roma-Roma-Mamaa-Ga-Ga-Ooh-La-La-Want Your Romance'
I think you get my point.
If you are thinking that a disability-related mix-up and subsequent farce is hurtling towards this story then you would be right. It's as predictable as one of Baldrick's cunning plans unfortunately. Two hours of the A1 behind us, we arrived at the Saxon Hotel just outside the city to find that not only was our room inaccessible, but so was the rest of the hotel. There were two steps at the front by the pavement and another in front of the doorway. Not to mention the three more that went down to the only bathroom on the ground floor.
Luckily Emma has experience of putting up with this kind of crap, and so she made a few phone calls. Laterooms, with whom we had made the booking, blamed the hotel for supplying incorrect information, while the hotel staff blamed Laterooms for not informing them that someone would be having the temerity to turn up using a wheelchair. They even took the credit for moving us to a much nicer hotel in the city centre. You get what you pay for though, so it cost a little more. They gave us the £20 car parking fee.
Finally settled into our thankfully accessible hotel we headed off into the city for a snoop around. We found large bridges built on slanted roads which made pushing even short distances feel like a road session with Tanni-Grey Thompson. By the end of my marathon we still had a few hours to kill before the Ghost Walk we had planned on joining in the evening. We tried to visit the Jorvik Viking Centre but made the staggering discovery that due to fire regulations they were unable to admit more than one wheelchair user at a time. I checked with Emma to make sure it really was 2010, before reluctantly agreeing to make a booking for the Friday morning.
And so instead we visited the famous York Minster. If it is not as famous as they like to think and you don't know what I'm talking about I should explain then that it is a cathedral. It has stunning architecture both inside and out, but then it ought to since they are charging you £8 for what is essentially entry into a church. Even that fecking priest from my nephew's Holy Communion service would balk at that. What I noticed most about the Minster was the amount of death in there. There are rows and rows of plaques dedicated to fallen soldiers, noblemen and other such luminaries, many of whom died in gruesome circumstances. A service was taking place which seemed to attract a lot of visitors but after my anti-religious rant I decided not to get too close. I'm not a hypocrite, but at the same time I think that such a historic piece of world class architecture is worth preserving, and visiting for that matter.
The Ghost Walk, or something similar to it, is something we had experienced before in Stratford. This particular York version (there are at least four in what is becoming a thriving tourist industry business) was a little funnier than that, if a little more embarrassing also. It started at the Shambles market, and did so with our Ghostly guide strolling down the road, coming to a stop for fully 10 seconds before scaring the bejesus out of an unfortunate lady with her back to him;
"ARE YOU.....................!" he bellowed;
"Ghost hunting, tonight?"
She daren't say no at that point. And so began a pleasant walk around the city, inter-mingled with spooky stories of York's ghostly history. Saddest of all was the tale of the young girl who is said to haunt one house after being abandoned there by her parents because she had developed black boils under her arms. Her parents believed it was the plague and left her there and then, locked in her room. To boot, they painted a big red cross on the front door to warn any passers by not to enter the house. Our guide claimed that she can still be heard and seen screeching for help and scratching her nails down the bedroom window in an effort to escape. This is the cynical bit. Bollocks she can.
If you are going to go on a Ghost Walk then you better hope you are not chosen by the guide as his comedy prop. The unfortunate Dave seemed to have been chosen only because of his height, but his ordeals included being given a broken horn to blow, and being told to stand in a corner while the rest of the crowd backed him into the wall;
"There's no going back now." the guide quipped.
For his finale he tried to humiliate everyone who had, after all, paid their £5 for the privelege. He walked the group to a position opposite an Italian restaurant and instructed them to wave in unison at the diners. More than one of the restaurant customers waved back stupidly, and far too enthusiastically. For an encore he led the group to the window and had them blow a great big raspberry at the customers. Thumbs pressed into cheeks and everything. The real deal. You can't help but laugh in a situation like this but you get the feeling that if you didn't you'd cry.
It might have been a cheap laugh, but it was a good deal more creative than;
'Rah-Rah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Roma-Roma-Mamaa-Ga-Ga-Ooh-La-La-Want Your Romance'
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Kennedy Space Center
Yes, I know that Center is an incorrect spelling, but that's what it's called so that is how you spell it.
Regardless of correct spellings, there's a story to tell. Before I went on my anti-religion rant, and before I got all steamed up about being called 'Steve', I was telling you about my recent trip to Florida. Sadly for you I hadn't quite finished. Humour me.
The first thing to say is that Kennedy Space Center is not as easy to get to as the theme parks. It's almost two hours drive away from where we were staying and it is spread across three sites, none of which are within walking distance of each other. To get the full experience you have to take the bus tour, upon which you will be shown space travel-related DVD's and spoon-fed information about the USA's space programme by knowledgeable but worryingly distracted bus drivers. Our man somehow took a wrong turn by some important-looking launch-pads, and then spent the time it took to get back on track delighting in his mistake.
First port of call on the bus tour is the Apollo/Saturn V Center. Here's where you will find out more information than you can possibly digest about the numerous Apollo missions of the 1960's and 70's. Of course this includes the historical moon landings by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and that other bloke (Michael Collins), but it also covers the doomed Apollo 13 mission documented in the film with Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise. Interestingly, the background information on Apollo 13 is tucked away behind a dining area which makes it incredibly difficult to get to, as if it's failure is something that NASA would rather you didn't go into. I made a point of squeezing through the crowds to read the information anyway. All in the interests of balance, you understand.
Impressively, the enormous rocket used in one of those early missions is the centre-piece of the display. It stretches across the entire room and is an awe-inspiring, slightly intimidating presence.
Positivity is very important at KSC. As is paranoia. Listen to their tour guides and you will find out that the US space travel programme is all about exploration, discovery and the progression of the human race. By contrast, the Russian expeditions are the result of a sinister plan to attack from above. It still irks the Americans to note that the former Soviet Union managed to put a man into space before they did. To emphasise the point we were in a bar on International Drive a couple of days later, and were talking about our visit to the singer. He expressed his concern about what the Russians 'were doing up there', before lamenting President Obama's plan to get rid of Space Shuttles because of the expense.
Maybe even Barack doesn't believe that Armstrong ever walked on the moon.
Nevertheless, the moon landings are celebrated richly here, with an impressive video and stage presentation about the mission. I never realised that the crew came so close to being fried alive, but then I recall an episode of The Simpsons in which one scene was accompanied by the caption 'Dramatisation - May Not Have Happened'. I don't suppose we'll ever know, but your writer is a natural sceptic.
The International Space Station is truly underwhelming, so we will head back to the Visitors Centre at this point. We saw an excellent 3-D IMAX presentation about space travel and walking on the moon (narrated by the ubiquitous Hanks. It was very entertaining, and I only regret that we didn't have time to see the other film in which the Hanks role goes to Leonardo Di Caprio. I don't know what happened to Sinise, though I'm sure I heard his voice at Mission: Space at Epcot. Emma's mum and dad visited the launch simulator at KSC but their view was that it was nothing like as good as the aforementioned Sinise vehicle at Epcot, which I can assure you makes you feel quite ill and turns your brain to mush. By all means experience it, just don't eat before you do.
We were fortunate enough to visit on a day when a rocket launch was planned. Twice it was postponed because there was half a cloud in an otherwise brilliant blue sky, but eventually we witnessed the launching of an actual space rocket. There was nobody in it, but watching it shoot skywards and disappear out of the atmosphere was still quite an experience. Our singer friend grumpily informed us that the rocket is part of a series of tests to see if those rockets can be manned, and thus replace the pricey shuttles. Those darn Russians............
There was just time for a quick look around a shuttle, which from the outside looked magnificent but from the inside was a bit of a disappointment. There's a platform inside so the viewing area is around the size of my front drive. To distract you from this they have exhibited a model of an astronaut complete with authentic space-suit and shuttle control pad.
Before we left the coach for the final time the driver gave me what he claimed was an exclusive, commemorative NASA coin. I don't mean to be ungrateful, but it looked like one of those chocolate coins my mum used to put on the Christmas tree with the chocolate Santas. I'm afraid I have no idea where it is but if I find it I'll have to remember not to try to eat it.
Strictly speaking KSC is a two-dayer at least. There are numerous simulators and exhibitions we didn't get to see because of time contstraints. The tour itself takes three and a half hours, and that is before you factor in rocket launches and chocolate money. Yet I'd recommend a visit to anyone, if only so you can see for yourself just how paranoid NASA and the American public can be.
Regardless of correct spellings, there's a story to tell. Before I went on my anti-religion rant, and before I got all steamed up about being called 'Steve', I was telling you about my recent trip to Florida. Sadly for you I hadn't quite finished. Humour me.
The first thing to say is that Kennedy Space Center is not as easy to get to as the theme parks. It's almost two hours drive away from where we were staying and it is spread across three sites, none of which are within walking distance of each other. To get the full experience you have to take the bus tour, upon which you will be shown space travel-related DVD's and spoon-fed information about the USA's space programme by knowledgeable but worryingly distracted bus drivers. Our man somehow took a wrong turn by some important-looking launch-pads, and then spent the time it took to get back on track delighting in his mistake.
First port of call on the bus tour is the Apollo/Saturn V Center. Here's where you will find out more information than you can possibly digest about the numerous Apollo missions of the 1960's and 70's. Of course this includes the historical moon landings by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and that other bloke (Michael Collins), but it also covers the doomed Apollo 13 mission documented in the film with Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise. Interestingly, the background information on Apollo 13 is tucked away behind a dining area which makes it incredibly difficult to get to, as if it's failure is something that NASA would rather you didn't go into. I made a point of squeezing through the crowds to read the information anyway. All in the interests of balance, you understand.
Impressively, the enormous rocket used in one of those early missions is the centre-piece of the display. It stretches across the entire room and is an awe-inspiring, slightly intimidating presence.
Positivity is very important at KSC. As is paranoia. Listen to their tour guides and you will find out that the US space travel programme is all about exploration, discovery and the progression of the human race. By contrast, the Russian expeditions are the result of a sinister plan to attack from above. It still irks the Americans to note that the former Soviet Union managed to put a man into space before they did. To emphasise the point we were in a bar on International Drive a couple of days later, and were talking about our visit to the singer. He expressed his concern about what the Russians 'were doing up there', before lamenting President Obama's plan to get rid of Space Shuttles because of the expense.
Maybe even Barack doesn't believe that Armstrong ever walked on the moon.
Nevertheless, the moon landings are celebrated richly here, with an impressive video and stage presentation about the mission. I never realised that the crew came so close to being fried alive, but then I recall an episode of The Simpsons in which one scene was accompanied by the caption 'Dramatisation - May Not Have Happened'. I don't suppose we'll ever know, but your writer is a natural sceptic.
The International Space Station is truly underwhelming, so we will head back to the Visitors Centre at this point. We saw an excellent 3-D IMAX presentation about space travel and walking on the moon (narrated by the ubiquitous Hanks. It was very entertaining, and I only regret that we didn't have time to see the other film in which the Hanks role goes to Leonardo Di Caprio. I don't know what happened to Sinise, though I'm sure I heard his voice at Mission: Space at Epcot. Emma's mum and dad visited the launch simulator at KSC but their view was that it was nothing like as good as the aforementioned Sinise vehicle at Epcot, which I can assure you makes you feel quite ill and turns your brain to mush. By all means experience it, just don't eat before you do.
We were fortunate enough to visit on a day when a rocket launch was planned. Twice it was postponed because there was half a cloud in an otherwise brilliant blue sky, but eventually we witnessed the launching of an actual space rocket. There was nobody in it, but watching it shoot skywards and disappear out of the atmosphere was still quite an experience. Our singer friend grumpily informed us that the rocket is part of a series of tests to see if those rockets can be manned, and thus replace the pricey shuttles. Those darn Russians............
There was just time for a quick look around a shuttle, which from the outside looked magnificent but from the inside was a bit of a disappointment. There's a platform inside so the viewing area is around the size of my front drive. To distract you from this they have exhibited a model of an astronaut complete with authentic space-suit and shuttle control pad.
Before we left the coach for the final time the driver gave me what he claimed was an exclusive, commemorative NASA coin. I don't mean to be ungrateful, but it looked like one of those chocolate coins my mum used to put on the Christmas tree with the chocolate Santas. I'm afraid I have no idea where it is but if I find it I'll have to remember not to try to eat it.
Strictly speaking KSC is a two-dayer at least. There are numerous simulators and exhibitions we didn't get to see because of time contstraints. The tour itself takes three and a half hours, and that is before you factor in rocket launches and chocolate money. Yet I'd recommend a visit to anyone, if only so you can see for yourself just how paranoid NASA and the American public can be.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Holy Crap
Religion............ Shit it!
I've stolen those words, I confess. They were Stephen Fry's response when asked about religion in a television interview. They also happen to express my own views on religion almost precisely. I was reminded of how much I detest religion only yesterday (Sunday, naturally) when I attended the first Holy Communion Service of my youngest nephew Patrick.
I'm wincing when I imagine what Patrick and his family have been through. It is not just a simple case of turn up on the day and walk off with the spoils. Oh no. If you want to be accepted into Catholicism (actually they don't but they have to, more on which later), you have to prove your worth. For about as long as I can remember now my brother-in-law has terrified me with tales of rehearsals, weekend church engagements and, worst of all, having to be nice to a priest!
And not just any old priest. I fear a lawsuit should I mention his name. You never know, there could be more than two of you reading this. However, what I can tell you is that whoever I have spoken to, regardless of their religious views or denominations, they have universally condemned this man. His faults seem to range from a staggeringly misplaced arrogance, to a religious fascism and an unnverving presence around small children. And he sings badly too. Jeez, does he sing badly. And he's one of those priests who, the worse he sounds, the louder he sings in blissful ignorance. Tell me Catholics, are your priests all like that?
So back to the plot. Why do I object to religion so much? Where to start? I'm mindful that some (one or maybe even both) of my readers may have religious sensibilities so I may have to tone this down a little. In a nutshell my problem with your God is that he never shows up, except perhaps to start a war. I can't weave my tender brain around the notion that he lets bad things happen as some kind of test. That strikes me as being a bit like me coming round to your house with a few gallons of petrol and setting you alight to test the strength of our friendship. I'm unlikely to be invited back. At the very least you wouldn't be buying that brand of tea that you know I like again.
My natural cynicism can't help but remind me of the bad things that your God has done. Where was your God when my best friend died at the age of 26? Did he do that? Did he have a hand in the death shortly after of another of my friends aged just 30? No, make that two aged 30. I prefer to think not. Science did these things, because only science and nature could be so cruel. Naturally then it follows that if God is not responsible for the horrific things I have seen happen, nor can he take the credit for the happiness and joy I have experienced. He did not send me Emma. He did not get me a job in the funniest barn yard in Britain. He did not keep my family fit and well for so long. Fate did all of these things.
What makes me especially queasy about religion is it's desperate attempts to hold on to power and influence in society. It's awful beyond my comprehension that Patrick and the other children in his class have to go through this brainwashing facade so that their parents can get them into the school of their choice. The government play a role in this of course, but in forcing children to belt out 'Our God Reigns' in a tuneless manner until they are old enough to know better, the church is desperately clinging on to it's relevance. It's like a mad gunman taking hostages until it gets what it wants. Except nobody dies. Well, at least not until God decides to test their faith in him. Tea anyone?
Eye-bulgingly, God even goes begging. Blow me if a woman didn't come around with a velvet bag intended for the reception of our coins. At one point I thought it was the FA Cup Third Round draw. Number 52........Southend United..........will play number 13..............Tranmere Rovers. Emma actually put money in. Ok, so it was only 45p, but honestly I would rather donate my hard earned (ok earned) money to the IRA. Amusingly, my Dad seperated all his copper coins from his golden nuggets and big silvers, only to drop the wrong pile into the bag. The priest's flight to Las Vegas leaves just after last mass next Sunday.
In trying to find the root of all of this anti-religious hatred (for I hate God every bit as much as he loves me but don't worry, he's already forgiven me) I think it might hark back to a trip to Lourdes I took as a child. Just because all of my mates had been I wanted in. My abiding memory of the trip is of noticing not a single person emerge from the font of alleged miracles in possession of a miracle. Not only that, but the statue of Mary steadfsastly refused to weep. Recently, my Mum has been telling the story of how I told her that Sue, the person responsible for my care during the trip, kept coming back to the room drunk at 3 in the morning. I have no idea whether this is true or whether it is just something that a nine-year-old might say just for the attention. If it is not true, may I take this opportunity to apologise to Sue but if you are going to take me to France bothering non-existent Gods then there are going to be consequences!
Religion................Shit it!
I've stolen those words, I confess. They were Stephen Fry's response when asked about religion in a television interview. They also happen to express my own views on religion almost precisely. I was reminded of how much I detest religion only yesterday (Sunday, naturally) when I attended the first Holy Communion Service of my youngest nephew Patrick.
I'm wincing when I imagine what Patrick and his family have been through. It is not just a simple case of turn up on the day and walk off with the spoils. Oh no. If you want to be accepted into Catholicism (actually they don't but they have to, more on which later), you have to prove your worth. For about as long as I can remember now my brother-in-law has terrified me with tales of rehearsals, weekend church engagements and, worst of all, having to be nice to a priest!
And not just any old priest. I fear a lawsuit should I mention his name. You never know, there could be more than two of you reading this. However, what I can tell you is that whoever I have spoken to, regardless of their religious views or denominations, they have universally condemned this man. His faults seem to range from a staggeringly misplaced arrogance, to a religious fascism and an unnverving presence around small children. And he sings badly too. Jeez, does he sing badly. And he's one of those priests who, the worse he sounds, the louder he sings in blissful ignorance. Tell me Catholics, are your priests all like that?
So back to the plot. Why do I object to religion so much? Where to start? I'm mindful that some (one or maybe even both) of my readers may have religious sensibilities so I may have to tone this down a little. In a nutshell my problem with your God is that he never shows up, except perhaps to start a war. I can't weave my tender brain around the notion that he lets bad things happen as some kind of test. That strikes me as being a bit like me coming round to your house with a few gallons of petrol and setting you alight to test the strength of our friendship. I'm unlikely to be invited back. At the very least you wouldn't be buying that brand of tea that you know I like again.
My natural cynicism can't help but remind me of the bad things that your God has done. Where was your God when my best friend died at the age of 26? Did he do that? Did he have a hand in the death shortly after of another of my friends aged just 30? No, make that two aged 30. I prefer to think not. Science did these things, because only science and nature could be so cruel. Naturally then it follows that if God is not responsible for the horrific things I have seen happen, nor can he take the credit for the happiness and joy I have experienced. He did not send me Emma. He did not get me a job in the funniest barn yard in Britain. He did not keep my family fit and well for so long. Fate did all of these things.
What makes me especially queasy about religion is it's desperate attempts to hold on to power and influence in society. It's awful beyond my comprehension that Patrick and the other children in his class have to go through this brainwashing facade so that their parents can get them into the school of their choice. The government play a role in this of course, but in forcing children to belt out 'Our God Reigns' in a tuneless manner until they are old enough to know better, the church is desperately clinging on to it's relevance. It's like a mad gunman taking hostages until it gets what it wants. Except nobody dies. Well, at least not until God decides to test their faith in him. Tea anyone?
Eye-bulgingly, God even goes begging. Blow me if a woman didn't come around with a velvet bag intended for the reception of our coins. At one point I thought it was the FA Cup Third Round draw. Number 52........Southend United..........will play number 13..............Tranmere Rovers. Emma actually put money in. Ok, so it was only 45p, but honestly I would rather donate my hard earned (ok earned) money to the IRA. Amusingly, my Dad seperated all his copper coins from his golden nuggets and big silvers, only to drop the wrong pile into the bag. The priest's flight to Las Vegas leaves just after last mass next Sunday.
In trying to find the root of all of this anti-religious hatred (for I hate God every bit as much as he loves me but don't worry, he's already forgiven me) I think it might hark back to a trip to Lourdes I took as a child. Just because all of my mates had been I wanted in. My abiding memory of the trip is of noticing not a single person emerge from the font of alleged miracles in possession of a miracle. Not only that, but the statue of Mary steadfsastly refused to weep. Recently, my Mum has been telling the story of how I told her that Sue, the person responsible for my care during the trip, kept coming back to the room drunk at 3 in the morning. I have no idea whether this is true or whether it is just something that a nine-year-old might say just for the attention. If it is not true, may I take this opportunity to apologise to Sue but if you are going to take me to France bothering non-existent Gods then there are going to be consequences!
Religion................Shit it!
Monday, 5 July 2010
My Name Is Not Steve
I've always considered myself the sort of person who would never worry about his name. I'm the son of a man called Donald after all, so who cares what people call me, right?
Well yes, but I can't help but get irritated by the use of the name 'Steve'. Maybe it is because I'm getting older and therefore grumpier about such a trivial matter, but I truly do detest it. I rarely pull anybody up for referring to me by this repugnant version of my name, but that is mostly because I can't be arsed and not, as you might think, because I think being called Steve is cool.
Coolness is not high on my list of life's priorities, but then there is no need to make such an uncool person even less cool by calling him Steve. I can't think of a single cool person called Steve. Go on, name me a cool person called Steve. Coogan? One great character and an array of embarrassing attempts to match it. The Richard Ashcroft of comedy, if you will.
Or how about Steve McClaren? The former England manager is hardly the epitome of cool. It doesn't matter how many titles he wins in Holland, Germany or any other league in which they spit in each other's mullets, for the English McClaren will be forever remembered as the man who failed to take us to Euro 2008. The enduring image of McClaren is of the Wally with the Brolly, standing there non-plussed in the rain while his England team were denied a ticket to Austria and Switzerland by a combination of the kind of ineptitude we have just seen from the class of 2010 in South Africa and the goalkeeping skills of Scott Carson.
I might be alone in this but Steve Carrell doesn't shout 'cool' at me either. In stark contrast to Coogan, Carrell has had a number of similarly successful comedy roles, but none reside in the same stratosphere as the genius of Partridge. Carrell's comic creations are mildly rib-tickling, causing the kind of laughter you might force out if someone you really fancied made a reasonably glib remark. You can apply all of that to Steve Martin too. Martin's comic career is such that the last time I saw him on television he was playing banjo with his hill-billy friends on Later With Jools Holland. Jools is a much cooler name all around.
Steve Davis, Steve Guttenburg, Steve O, The Adonis Steve Beaton, Steve Naive, Steve Strange, Steve (insert your own adjective that clearly is not a surname here). None of these people are to be admired or copied. For every world title won by Davis there is an insurance advert, just as for every scene in Police Academy 29 that made you laugh there is one which caused you to hide behind the sofa in fear of the bloody slaughter of comedy. Steve is not cool, ok, so bloody well stop calling it me this instant!
There aren't many Stes outside St.Helens, so consider instead the relative coolness of people called Stephen. Stephen Fry is perhaps the greatest living Englishman, able to act, write, present, run away from a job and dance the fandango with the best of them. Stephen Hawking is widely renowned for his brilliant scientific mind, proof indeed that you do not have to be able to feed yourself to be able to make a lasting contribution to mankind. Stephen King is among the best selling novelists in the world, while Stephen Hendry's prowess on the snooker table makes even that of Davis look modest. Steven Gerrard (ok, so we're haggling over spelling now) is a prat, but an immensely talented prat. A prat talented enough to be able to drag a bunch of relative pub players up to the level of European champions in 2005, and then to score two superhuman goals in the FA Cup final a year later, one of which came deep into injury time when he was walking at about the same pace as I do.
God forbid also that we forget Steven Spielberg, without who we wouldn't have Jaws, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future or middle aged men who think beards look good.
As I reach the end of my breathless ranting I have finally thought of one man called Steve who deserves all our respect and admiration. Steve Prescott MBE is without question one of the most inspirational figures around today, especially for folk like myself living in rugby league areas where his influence and astounding courage are most prominent. Yet without name dropping I have met him on several occasions, and can't help but get the feeling that it was the sports media who christened him Steve. His name is Ste. Or Precky, but unlike me he is far too classy an individual to rant and rave about being called Steve.
Too cool, for sure.
Well yes, but I can't help but get irritated by the use of the name 'Steve'. Maybe it is because I'm getting older and therefore grumpier about such a trivial matter, but I truly do detest it. I rarely pull anybody up for referring to me by this repugnant version of my name, but that is mostly because I can't be arsed and not, as you might think, because I think being called Steve is cool.
Coolness is not high on my list of life's priorities, but then there is no need to make such an uncool person even less cool by calling him Steve. I can't think of a single cool person called Steve. Go on, name me a cool person called Steve. Coogan? One great character and an array of embarrassing attempts to match it. The Richard Ashcroft of comedy, if you will.
Or how about Steve McClaren? The former England manager is hardly the epitome of cool. It doesn't matter how many titles he wins in Holland, Germany or any other league in which they spit in each other's mullets, for the English McClaren will be forever remembered as the man who failed to take us to Euro 2008. The enduring image of McClaren is of the Wally with the Brolly, standing there non-plussed in the rain while his England team were denied a ticket to Austria and Switzerland by a combination of the kind of ineptitude we have just seen from the class of 2010 in South Africa and the goalkeeping skills of Scott Carson.
I might be alone in this but Steve Carrell doesn't shout 'cool' at me either. In stark contrast to Coogan, Carrell has had a number of similarly successful comedy roles, but none reside in the same stratosphere as the genius of Partridge. Carrell's comic creations are mildly rib-tickling, causing the kind of laughter you might force out if someone you really fancied made a reasonably glib remark. You can apply all of that to Steve Martin too. Martin's comic career is such that the last time I saw him on television he was playing banjo with his hill-billy friends on Later With Jools Holland. Jools is a much cooler name all around.
Steve Davis, Steve Guttenburg, Steve O, The Adonis Steve Beaton, Steve Naive, Steve Strange, Steve (insert your own adjective that clearly is not a surname here). None of these people are to be admired or copied. For every world title won by Davis there is an insurance advert, just as for every scene in Police Academy 29 that made you laugh there is one which caused you to hide behind the sofa in fear of the bloody slaughter of comedy. Steve is not cool, ok, so bloody well stop calling it me this instant!
There aren't many Stes outside St.Helens, so consider instead the relative coolness of people called Stephen. Stephen Fry is perhaps the greatest living Englishman, able to act, write, present, run away from a job and dance the fandango with the best of them. Stephen Hawking is widely renowned for his brilliant scientific mind, proof indeed that you do not have to be able to feed yourself to be able to make a lasting contribution to mankind. Stephen King is among the best selling novelists in the world, while Stephen Hendry's prowess on the snooker table makes even that of Davis look modest. Steven Gerrard (ok, so we're haggling over spelling now) is a prat, but an immensely talented prat. A prat talented enough to be able to drag a bunch of relative pub players up to the level of European champions in 2005, and then to score two superhuman goals in the FA Cup final a year later, one of which came deep into injury time when he was walking at about the same pace as I do.
God forbid also that we forget Steven Spielberg, without who we wouldn't have Jaws, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future or middle aged men who think beards look good.
As I reach the end of my breathless ranting I have finally thought of one man called Steve who deserves all our respect and admiration. Steve Prescott MBE is without question one of the most inspirational figures around today, especially for folk like myself living in rugby league areas where his influence and astounding courage are most prominent. Yet without name dropping I have met him on several occasions, and can't help but get the feeling that it was the sports media who christened him Steve. His name is Ste. Or Precky, but unlike me he is far too classy an individual to rant and rave about being called Steve.
Too cool, for sure.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
The Baseball
Along with peanut butter and jelly, buttermilk pancakes and driving on the wrong side of the road, baseball is just something that you have to try while you are in America.
It's unlikley to ever be popular in the UK, but what I can say about it is that it is a good deal more accessible than Premier League football. And I'm not talking about wheelchairs here. A ticket for a game at Tropicana Field, St.Petersburg, home of the Tampa Bay Rays costs around $18 dollars. This is roughly £12, a quarter of the price you would have to stump up to see messrs Gerrard, Rooney and Drogba in league action.
And you can't say you are not getting your money's worth. A game of baseball takes around three hours to complete and, unlike other sports this has nothing to do with time-outs. While NBA basketball is hopelessly peppered with stoppages for tactical discussions, baseball has a rhythm more similar to T20 cricket. Nine innings, three outs per inning, and at the end of the ninth (or the bottom of the ninth as the locals would have it) the team with the most runs wins. It's rounders with razzamatazz, but what's so wrong with that?
Happily we visited Tropicana Field at a time when the Rays were going well. They have been pegged back a little since, but at the time of our visit to see them take on the Chicago White Sox they led their division and had the best win/loss record in MLB. They didn't let us down here either, winning 8-5 against an average looking White Sox outfit. Ok, so maybe the result should come at the end of the piece, but this is baseball. The result is not really the point.
Food on the other hand, is. One in three Rays fans seemed to turn up late, and carried with them a turkey leg the size of a baseball bat. Anyone with decent hand-eye co-ordination could easily have carried their turkey leg down to the plate and swished the White Sox pitcher out of the park. Well, they could on the kind of form he was in. I declined the turkey, but instead bought an infeasibly large tray of nachos, smothered with cheese aswell as the traditional baseball diet, a hot dog. The cheese was the thickest I have ever seen or tasted, and was more like sauce. You needed a spade to get to the nachos, but the hot dog went down every bit as well as I had expected.
Hot dogs have other uses at Tropicana Field. Between innings a man would walk around the stadium shooting free t-shirts out of a huge hot-dog shaped gun. What is it with Americans and guns? And hot dogs? And T-shirts. The crowd lapped it up anyway, but alas I have to report that the wheelchair area is too high above the field for any free merchandise to have headed my way. On the plus side, this meant that I was safe from the stray baseballs which regularly find their way into the crowd. Nobody in the history of baseball has ever hit a ball far enough to have been able to hit me on the head that night.
Not even Evan Longoria. The Rays third-base man is no relation to the similarly named actress apparently, but has a sufficiently amusing moniker to entertain the hecklers when he strikes out. On this night he was in terrific form, hitting the ball at least.........ooohhhh, four times, though he did misfield on 'defence' once or twice. Other Rays players who endure persistent name calling are BJ Upton and Reid Brignac. I'll leave the kind of abuse afforded to Upton to your own imagination.
Following the game was the alleged bonus of some live music. Unfortunately, it was provided by Hall and Oates, they of 'Maneater' and 'I Can't Go For That' infamy. Emma's dad, who is a man at the right sort of age to be enthused at this prospect, was the first among us to wilt under the strain of Darryl and John's incessant whailing. He needed to get out, which pretty much meant the rest of us did also. All of which meant leaving behind half a can of industrial strength Budweiser (why is it so much stronger over there?) and heading back towards Orlando. I fell asleep, possibly due to the Budweiser, and can only remember waking up outside the gates of the villa and wondering why it had only taken five minutes to drive 120 miles.
It's unlikley to ever be popular in the UK, but what I can say about it is that it is a good deal more accessible than Premier League football. And I'm not talking about wheelchairs here. A ticket for a game at Tropicana Field, St.Petersburg, home of the Tampa Bay Rays costs around $18 dollars. This is roughly £12, a quarter of the price you would have to stump up to see messrs Gerrard, Rooney and Drogba in league action.
And you can't say you are not getting your money's worth. A game of baseball takes around three hours to complete and, unlike other sports this has nothing to do with time-outs. While NBA basketball is hopelessly peppered with stoppages for tactical discussions, baseball has a rhythm more similar to T20 cricket. Nine innings, three outs per inning, and at the end of the ninth (or the bottom of the ninth as the locals would have it) the team with the most runs wins. It's rounders with razzamatazz, but what's so wrong with that?
Happily we visited Tropicana Field at a time when the Rays were going well. They have been pegged back a little since, but at the time of our visit to see them take on the Chicago White Sox they led their division and had the best win/loss record in MLB. They didn't let us down here either, winning 8-5 against an average looking White Sox outfit. Ok, so maybe the result should come at the end of the piece, but this is baseball. The result is not really the point.
Food on the other hand, is. One in three Rays fans seemed to turn up late, and carried with them a turkey leg the size of a baseball bat. Anyone with decent hand-eye co-ordination could easily have carried their turkey leg down to the plate and swished the White Sox pitcher out of the park. Well, they could on the kind of form he was in. I declined the turkey, but instead bought an infeasibly large tray of nachos, smothered with cheese aswell as the traditional baseball diet, a hot dog. The cheese was the thickest I have ever seen or tasted, and was more like sauce. You needed a spade to get to the nachos, but the hot dog went down every bit as well as I had expected.
Hot dogs have other uses at Tropicana Field. Between innings a man would walk around the stadium shooting free t-shirts out of a huge hot-dog shaped gun. What is it with Americans and guns? And hot dogs? And T-shirts. The crowd lapped it up anyway, but alas I have to report that the wheelchair area is too high above the field for any free merchandise to have headed my way. On the plus side, this meant that I was safe from the stray baseballs which regularly find their way into the crowd. Nobody in the history of baseball has ever hit a ball far enough to have been able to hit me on the head that night.
Not even Evan Longoria. The Rays third-base man is no relation to the similarly named actress apparently, but has a sufficiently amusing moniker to entertain the hecklers when he strikes out. On this night he was in terrific form, hitting the ball at least.........ooohhhh, four times, though he did misfield on 'defence' once or twice. Other Rays players who endure persistent name calling are BJ Upton and Reid Brignac. I'll leave the kind of abuse afforded to Upton to your own imagination.
Following the game was the alleged bonus of some live music. Unfortunately, it was provided by Hall and Oates, they of 'Maneater' and 'I Can't Go For That' infamy. Emma's dad, who is a man at the right sort of age to be enthused at this prospect, was the first among us to wilt under the strain of Darryl and John's incessant whailing. He needed to get out, which pretty much meant the rest of us did also. All of which meant leaving behind half a can of industrial strength Budweiser (why is it so much stronger over there?) and heading back towards Orlando. I fell asleep, possibly due to the Budweiser, and can only remember waking up outside the gates of the villa and wondering why it had only taken five minutes to drive 120 miles.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Universal
You'd expect we'd be parked out by the time we rocked up at Universal Studios, some five days into our holiday. You'd be wrong.
On balance Universal is perhaps the best of the parks in the Disney area, though it is itself not a part of the Disney group. All of which means you get less Mickey Mouse and more of The Simpsons.
The latter is the closest I got to a roller-coaster for the entire fortnight. Even then it took me two attempts. The first time around I couldn't help but notice that the winding queue was travelling ever upwards, and by around the half-way point I was convinced that this could not be anything other than a roller-coaster. My mind even began to play tricks on me as I looked up and felt certain that I saw the vehicle, parked up on what looked like a very narrow, but very high track.
Unashamedly, I rolled back down to the bottom to ask the docile attendant about the exact nature of the ride. I have biff issues to think about at this point, and was not about to risk being thrust upside down at 743 miles per hour. The explanation I received was hardly informative, but fortunately I had Emma as a guinea pig. She remained in the queue and took the ride, returning some 40 minutes later (Orlando has a lot of theme parks, but even more queues) to inform me that it was just a simulator.
We trailed back up, killing another 40 minutes stone dead in the process. I have to say it was worth it though. It feels for all the world like you are travelling on the world's most dangerous, most inept roller-coaster, complete with it's broken track and the presence of Sideshow Bob trying to damage your health at every turn. You find yourself hanging on all the same, while there is a generous smattering of Simpson's humour featuring Homer, Bart and all of the regular favourites.
Men In Black was not so impressive. Indeed, the most impressive thing about this ride is the lengths they go to to make it accessible for wheelchair users. The portable platform they use is a ride in itself, as it is slowly transported towards the vehicle. Unfortunately the rest of the experience is something of a let down, as an attempt to emulate the shooting formula of Toy Story's Midway Mania fails to deliver. Maybe my gun was broken. It happens.
If it's a show you're after then move on to Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue or The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad. This has nothing to do with that rotund fellow from Brookside who can shortly be seen prancing around The Empire Theatre in a dress, but more in connection with the sailor and all around adventurer of the same name. Princesses and evil sorceresses abound, accompanied naturally by the usual blend of fireworks, unneccesary splashing of water and a posse of shell-shocked and shocking extras.
Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue is not quite what you might expect, and not half as annoying as Michael Keaton's film. In essence it is a short musical, with tracks ranging from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack to the Black Eyed Peas. If you can deal with the notion of a man dressed as a werewolf belting out ballads then this might be for you. If not, you can always just watch the scarily but nevertheless scantily clad women dance. What?
For reasons too laborious to go into here it was not until our second visit to Universal Studios that we ventured over to the nearby Islands Of Adventure. What else does Orlando need more than another theme park? This one contains the much vaunted Spiderman ride, which is one of the more impressive of it's kind in Orlando. It's a simulator not dissimilar to The Simpsons, but it also has the added advantage of a 3-D element. All of which drags you face to face with Doc Oc and his fiendishly evil friends, aswell as having our hero Spidey jump on to your vehicle at regular intervals to instruct you on what is required of you in the next part of the adventure. It's all a good deal better than this column makes it sound.
Surely the only place to dine at Universal or Islands Of Adventure is the NBA restaurant. It's walls are adorned with the expected decor. NBA greats such as Magic, Larry, Rodman, Dr J and Kareem peer down at you from above as you tuck into your chicken (for Orlando serves little else it seems). Interestingly there is no sign of Michael Jordan, not even on the numerous screens that surround the dining area playing a mixture of classic highlights and recent clashes. It's probably contractual.
After your meal there is the by now mandatory gift shop to visit, though a replica NBA vest would, if you were so inclined as to wear such an item during an English summer, set you back some $140. I didn't have that kind of cash to splash on looking that bad, so I settled instead for the tried and trusted Chicago Bulls mug. On leaving the restaurant we were met by some of Orlando's wildlife, as three tiny lizards wanderered around on the paths outside. For some reason Emma was not totally enamoured by them when I pointed them out, although it has to be said that one of them was indulging in some slightly unnerving throat movement and colour changing shennanigans.
We survived long enough to make it back to the car, though bags were checked for miniature reptiles more than once...........
On balance Universal is perhaps the best of the parks in the Disney area, though it is itself not a part of the Disney group. All of which means you get less Mickey Mouse and more of The Simpsons.
The latter is the closest I got to a roller-coaster for the entire fortnight. Even then it took me two attempts. The first time around I couldn't help but notice that the winding queue was travelling ever upwards, and by around the half-way point I was convinced that this could not be anything other than a roller-coaster. My mind even began to play tricks on me as I looked up and felt certain that I saw the vehicle, parked up on what looked like a very narrow, but very high track.
Unashamedly, I rolled back down to the bottom to ask the docile attendant about the exact nature of the ride. I have biff issues to think about at this point, and was not about to risk being thrust upside down at 743 miles per hour. The explanation I received was hardly informative, but fortunately I had Emma as a guinea pig. She remained in the queue and took the ride, returning some 40 minutes later (Orlando has a lot of theme parks, but even more queues) to inform me that it was just a simulator.
We trailed back up, killing another 40 minutes stone dead in the process. I have to say it was worth it though. It feels for all the world like you are travelling on the world's most dangerous, most inept roller-coaster, complete with it's broken track and the presence of Sideshow Bob trying to damage your health at every turn. You find yourself hanging on all the same, while there is a generous smattering of Simpson's humour featuring Homer, Bart and all of the regular favourites.
Men In Black was not so impressive. Indeed, the most impressive thing about this ride is the lengths they go to to make it accessible for wheelchair users. The portable platform they use is a ride in itself, as it is slowly transported towards the vehicle. Unfortunately the rest of the experience is something of a let down, as an attempt to emulate the shooting formula of Toy Story's Midway Mania fails to deliver. Maybe my gun was broken. It happens.
If it's a show you're after then move on to Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue or The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad. This has nothing to do with that rotund fellow from Brookside who can shortly be seen prancing around The Empire Theatre in a dress, but more in connection with the sailor and all around adventurer of the same name. Princesses and evil sorceresses abound, accompanied naturally by the usual blend of fireworks, unneccesary splashing of water and a posse of shell-shocked and shocking extras.
Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue is not quite what you might expect, and not half as annoying as Michael Keaton's film. In essence it is a short musical, with tracks ranging from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack to the Black Eyed Peas. If you can deal with the notion of a man dressed as a werewolf belting out ballads then this might be for you. If not, you can always just watch the scarily but nevertheless scantily clad women dance. What?
For reasons too laborious to go into here it was not until our second visit to Universal Studios that we ventured over to the nearby Islands Of Adventure. What else does Orlando need more than another theme park? This one contains the much vaunted Spiderman ride, which is one of the more impressive of it's kind in Orlando. It's a simulator not dissimilar to The Simpsons, but it also has the added advantage of a 3-D element. All of which drags you face to face with Doc Oc and his fiendishly evil friends, aswell as having our hero Spidey jump on to your vehicle at regular intervals to instruct you on what is required of you in the next part of the adventure. It's all a good deal better than this column makes it sound.
Surely the only place to dine at Universal or Islands Of Adventure is the NBA restaurant. It's walls are adorned with the expected decor. NBA greats such as Magic, Larry, Rodman, Dr J and Kareem peer down at you from above as you tuck into your chicken (for Orlando serves little else it seems). Interestingly there is no sign of Michael Jordan, not even on the numerous screens that surround the dining area playing a mixture of classic highlights and recent clashes. It's probably contractual.
After your meal there is the by now mandatory gift shop to visit, though a replica NBA vest would, if you were so inclined as to wear such an item during an English summer, set you back some $140. I didn't have that kind of cash to splash on looking that bad, so I settled instead for the tried and trusted Chicago Bulls mug. On leaving the restaurant we were met by some of Orlando's wildlife, as three tiny lizards wanderered around on the paths outside. For some reason Emma was not totally enamoured by them when I pointed them out, although it has to be said that one of them was indulging in some slightly unnerving throat movement and colour changing shennanigans.
We survived long enough to make it back to the car, though bags were checked for miniature reptiles more than once...........
Monday, 21 June 2010
Orlando - Episode V
Hollywood Studios
One thing you can't avoid in Orlando is theme parks, and so we were unsurprised to find ourselves at Hollywood Studios just a day after visiting the Magic Kingdom.
No boats or monorails to the entrance this time, just straight down to business. First up was the Star Wars experience, Jedi Knight training for the under-12's. Inexplicably since I don't like Science Fiction, I have been a huge Star Wars fan since Harrison Ford had his own hips. So much so that I was prepared, keen even, to sit and watch a dozen or so youngsters pit their wits against a highly repetetive Darth Vader;
"Join me!" he said, more than once, and;
"This will be a day long remembered.". Unfortunately, he left out;
"Apology accepted, Admiral." and of course the classic;
"I am your father........"
Probably for the best. A lot of 21st century kids are very unsure about who their father is and so we wouldn't want to confuse anyone.
The stormtroopers were a nice touch with their slapstick comedy routine, but the impossibly named Jedi Master (Pak Doo Ik, or something) seemed to me to be a little old for this. However, to give him his due he managed to teach this unruly mob enough about how to wield a fake lightsaber (what did you expect? he asked upon revealing the training weaponry) to avoid any serious injury.
Staying on the Star Wars theme, next door is the flight simulator. Off we went on our flight to Endor, with only a small buckle between us and potential.........well...........not much really. This is a simulator don't forget. Nevertheless it is a convincing one and well worth a ride should you happen to find yourself in the vicinity. Just don't expect to see the Dark Lord of Sith. He's busy shaking his fist at children in various stages between bewilderment and mild fear.
It would be cynical and desperate to use George Lucas as some kind of tenuous link here, but from Endor and Imperial Fighters we moved on to George's other classic, Indiana Jones. Harrison's hips are, it turns out, protected by a stunt double. Who'd have thought it? His name escapes me temporarily, but stunt Indy was adept at running away from large rolling stones, ducking under slowly lowering doors, and making off with the treasure. Here is where you see how it is all done, with the help of some rather embarrassed and frankly embarrassing extras. And yes, there is a scene in which one extra engages in some lengthy sword-twirling before Indy calmly shoots him dead. Don't worry kids, he's not really dead.
By now far too much time has passed since we saw a decent 3-D show, so thank Heavens for the Muppets. or Muppetvision, as their film spectacular prefers to be known. My own personal favourites among Muppet characters have to be Statler and Waldorf, who greet the audience at the outset with their inimitable and glorious grumpiness. By the end one of them (who knows which is which?) is describing the show as 'moving', to which the other replies;
"Yeah, I wish they would move it to Pittsburgh."
The most memorable thing about The Great Movie Ride is the sudden appearance of Bugsy Malone. I'm just at the right age to remember the old kiddies musical in which custard pies abound, and so it was interesting to see the cast try to pull off an even hammier take on the old gangster tale. Bugsy takes command of the vehicle, fighting off the hapless and intentionally geeky tour guide who starts the ride. His purpose for doing so is somewhat lost in the blast of more bogus ammunition, but what I can remember vividly is the alien from the Sigourney Weaver film of the same name thrusting it's less than attractive cranium in the direction of our vehicle at very short notice.
Toy Story Mania is what Hollywood Studios should be all about. Yes you have to queue interminably, and yes it is essentially something which you might have enjoyed more in your youth, but you can't help but get swept along with it all the same. At first glance it has the appearance of a run of the mill waltzer, but when you throw in the 3-D shooting element you have all you need to engage your brain for the three or so minutes it takes to complete your ride. Emma managed to shoot more targets than me among the Buzz Lightyears and the Woodys, but I can take that kind of defeat with good grace. I'm only sorry that the queuing meant that there wasn't time for a rematch.
To save time I wish we had avoided Prince Caspian's Journey Into Narnia. If you absent mindedly wandered from your wardrobe into this kind of Narnia you would be peeved in the extreme. This Narnia extends only to a large dark room full of screens, on which they play clips from what was a modestly successful, largely pointless film. At the end of this you are led into a room where some of the film's props and costumes are exhibited, but I was thrown out by a Japanese usher before I'd had chance to fully take in what was on display.
Journey into Narnia vies only with Twister at the Magic Kingdom for the title of Disney's lamest attraction. We returned to the Magic Kingdom for reasons too tortuous to explain here, so you'll find out later exactly why you should avoid the alleged 'ride' based on the Tornado chasing exploits of Helen Hunt and someone called Bill.
Paxton, I think.
One thing you can't avoid in Orlando is theme parks, and so we were unsurprised to find ourselves at Hollywood Studios just a day after visiting the Magic Kingdom.
No boats or monorails to the entrance this time, just straight down to business. First up was the Star Wars experience, Jedi Knight training for the under-12's. Inexplicably since I don't like Science Fiction, I have been a huge Star Wars fan since Harrison Ford had his own hips. So much so that I was prepared, keen even, to sit and watch a dozen or so youngsters pit their wits against a highly repetetive Darth Vader;
"Join me!" he said, more than once, and;
"This will be a day long remembered.". Unfortunately, he left out;
"Apology accepted, Admiral." and of course the classic;
"I am your father........"
Probably for the best. A lot of 21st century kids are very unsure about who their father is and so we wouldn't want to confuse anyone.
The stormtroopers were a nice touch with their slapstick comedy routine, but the impossibly named Jedi Master (Pak Doo Ik, or something) seemed to me to be a little old for this. However, to give him his due he managed to teach this unruly mob enough about how to wield a fake lightsaber (what did you expect? he asked upon revealing the training weaponry) to avoid any serious injury.
Staying on the Star Wars theme, next door is the flight simulator. Off we went on our flight to Endor, with only a small buckle between us and potential.........well...........not much really. This is a simulator don't forget. Nevertheless it is a convincing one and well worth a ride should you happen to find yourself in the vicinity. Just don't expect to see the Dark Lord of Sith. He's busy shaking his fist at children in various stages between bewilderment and mild fear.
It would be cynical and desperate to use George Lucas as some kind of tenuous link here, but from Endor and Imperial Fighters we moved on to George's other classic, Indiana Jones. Harrison's hips are, it turns out, protected by a stunt double. Who'd have thought it? His name escapes me temporarily, but stunt Indy was adept at running away from large rolling stones, ducking under slowly lowering doors, and making off with the treasure. Here is where you see how it is all done, with the help of some rather embarrassed and frankly embarrassing extras. And yes, there is a scene in which one extra engages in some lengthy sword-twirling before Indy calmly shoots him dead. Don't worry kids, he's not really dead.
By now far too much time has passed since we saw a decent 3-D show, so thank Heavens for the Muppets. or Muppetvision, as their film spectacular prefers to be known. My own personal favourites among Muppet characters have to be Statler and Waldorf, who greet the audience at the outset with their inimitable and glorious grumpiness. By the end one of them (who knows which is which?) is describing the show as 'moving', to which the other replies;
"Yeah, I wish they would move it to Pittsburgh."
The most memorable thing about The Great Movie Ride is the sudden appearance of Bugsy Malone. I'm just at the right age to remember the old kiddies musical in which custard pies abound, and so it was interesting to see the cast try to pull off an even hammier take on the old gangster tale. Bugsy takes command of the vehicle, fighting off the hapless and intentionally geeky tour guide who starts the ride. His purpose for doing so is somewhat lost in the blast of more bogus ammunition, but what I can remember vividly is the alien from the Sigourney Weaver film of the same name thrusting it's less than attractive cranium in the direction of our vehicle at very short notice.
Toy Story Mania is what Hollywood Studios should be all about. Yes you have to queue interminably, and yes it is essentially something which you might have enjoyed more in your youth, but you can't help but get swept along with it all the same. At first glance it has the appearance of a run of the mill waltzer, but when you throw in the 3-D shooting element you have all you need to engage your brain for the three or so minutes it takes to complete your ride. Emma managed to shoot more targets than me among the Buzz Lightyears and the Woodys, but I can take that kind of defeat with good grace. I'm only sorry that the queuing meant that there wasn't time for a rematch.
To save time I wish we had avoided Prince Caspian's Journey Into Narnia. If you absent mindedly wandered from your wardrobe into this kind of Narnia you would be peeved in the extreme. This Narnia extends only to a large dark room full of screens, on which they play clips from what was a modestly successful, largely pointless film. At the end of this you are led into a room where some of the film's props and costumes are exhibited, but I was thrown out by a Japanese usher before I'd had chance to fully take in what was on display.
Journey into Narnia vies only with Twister at the Magic Kingdom for the title of Disney's lamest attraction. We returned to the Magic Kingdom for reasons too tortuous to explain here, so you'll find out later exactly why you should avoid the alleged 'ride' based on the Tornado chasing exploits of Helen Hunt and someone called Bill.
Paxton, I think.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Orlando Magic (Kingdom)
From one Kingdom to another, and Disney's optimistically named Magic Kingdom.
Every effort is made at the Magic Kingdom to make visitors feel like they have left Florida, and with it Planet Earth. As soon as you leave your vehicle at the 'handicapped parking lot' you can forget about highways, Denny's and 7-Elevens. Please leave all sense of reality at the door.
First to negotiate is the choice of how to get to the park itself. You didn't think you were there quite yet just because you had parked your car, did you? This is the Magic Kingdom after all. Your first option is the Monorail, or if you have been traumatised by a certain episode of The Simpsons, there's the boat. We chose the Monorail, probably only because you have to go past it anyway to get to the dock.
Unfortunately, almost every visitor to the park that day had the same thought. All of which led to a long queue on an excessively steep ramp leading up to the platform. It was harder work to keep from going backwards and thus downhill than it would likely have been to push the extra distance to the dock. No matter, we were in the queue now.
The monorail itself was one of the first demonstrations of how much better the Americans are at access. They might all be capitalist greed merchants who eat too many burgers and call football 'sakker', but they know how to accommodate those of us with the termerity to turn up without the ability to walk. And get this, people of Northern Rail, all you need is a wider gate and a vehicle that is roughly the same height as the platform. As an extra little diversion, part of the route takes you through the Disney resort itself, where you get an elevated view of their customers eating their eggs over easy. Or something. Cynics might suggest that the route planners are trying to distract you from the fact that you still haven't reached the park yet.
It might share part of the name, but the Magic Kingdom bears little resemblance to the Animal Kingdom. Gone are the paths and slopes flanked by endless greenery, replaced by mocked up streets with shops that may or may not be real depending on which street you happen to be on. As you enter you are on Main Street, which is supposed to resemble a typical American town centre street. There are roads but no cars, except for the large, showy vehicles used to give everyone a decent view of the parades.
We ran straight into one as we got through the entrance. The streets are roped off, and you are asked to move aside to the pavements as the music is cranked up. Before you know it, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Snow White are moving past you, dancingly frenetically on top of their mobile perches. Accompanying them on the ground is an array of dancing, baton twirling types who my Dad might refer to as glorified Red Coats. He never saw Nick and whassisname at Prestatyn, obviously. To my mind they were a little better than that, although there is an uneasy feeling in watching some of the endless smiling and gesturing that these people are about to do whatever it takes to be the next Britney Spears. If there are casualties along the way, so be it.
So, parade over, what's to see at the Magic Kingdom? For starters there's a bizarre animatronics bird show which made at least four children scream in terror. For my part I was just bewildered, but I can see how it might have been scary to a child. The famed Pirates of the Caribbean ride which is said to have inspired the excellent first Johnny Depp film aswell as it's farcical sequels was one of the few things we found inaccessible. Looking from the outside, I found it somewhat underwhelming. It's hard to believe that it inspired the films, rather than the other way around.
For something a little more relaxed there's the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. Why not spend 20 minutes waiting to see if you are going to be picked on, and thus publicly ridiculed by a small green monster with one eye who sounds a lot like Billy Crystal? You can enjoy watching others squirm while you wait, and who knows like us you might just get lucky and escape the degradation. Across the street from there you can help Stitch as in 'Lilo And' to capture aliens. It's another 3-D experience, which Emma says included the illusion that Stitch was sitting on her shoulders flapping his wings. Or whatever they are. There was not an option to transfer from my wheelchair, so I felt nothing of the sort, though I did endure the rancid aroma of Stitch's verbal wind.
Transferring is a must for wheelchair users at something called Mickey's PhilharMagic 3-D show. Prepare again to get wet and feel potentially unpleasant winds in your face as Walt's famous mouse takes you through a whole host of Disney classic moments, variously pelting and leaping out at you along the way. Donald Duck finds all of this particularly pleasing, though he remains as difficult to understand as Sir Alex Ferguson talking to Muhammad Ali. Later he invites you on his boat, and there's the grander Liberty Square Riverboat Cruise also.
Yet before this piece starts to read too much like an advert for it's subject, I should just share with you an exchange between me and a fellow customer at the end of the PhilharMagic show. At the end of the row reserved for wheelchair users I passed a young man sitting in an electric wheelchair. I have no idea why he was not leaving, given that the show had finished and we were being ushered outside in the usual hurried fashion. However, he tapped my shoulder as I went past and said;
'Haven't you got an electric chair?'
'Er.....no.' I replied.......
'..........I need the exercise.' I continued.
Undeterred, he glared at me rather too intensely and asked.....
'.........would you like one?'
There is nowhere in America where you are safe from the perils of someone trying to sell you something. Nor is there any limit to the poor taste to which they will stoop to sell it. He probably didn't need the electric chair he was sitting in. Clearly, this was a man on commission and in a hurry to shift chairs.
I couldn't afford to buy one even if I was lazy enough to consider it.
We left for our evening meal, where Emma's mum had arranged a suitably embarrassing surprise. She had booked a table at the Crystal Palace Restaurant (much to the discomfort of the rest of Emma's Sheffield Wednesday supporting family) where during our meal we were offered several photo opportunities with Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet. I don't know where Roo Boy was but it seemed to matter little. The waitress was unfathomably helpful, although the pizza and chips from the buffet was among the worst I have ever tasted. It was straight out of Pizza Hut's scandalous £4 pizza meal promotion.
By sundown the rain had started to lash down. Emma and her family were not prevented from watching the impressive firework and lights show above the park's centrepiece Cinderella's Castle, but I looked on grumpily from the shelter of a shop doorway. Everywhere I looked there was a Disney Poncho protecting someone from the rain.
It was time to go. We would be back, after all...............
Twice!
Every effort is made at the Magic Kingdom to make visitors feel like they have left Florida, and with it Planet Earth. As soon as you leave your vehicle at the 'handicapped parking lot' you can forget about highways, Denny's and 7-Elevens. Please leave all sense of reality at the door.
First to negotiate is the choice of how to get to the park itself. You didn't think you were there quite yet just because you had parked your car, did you? This is the Magic Kingdom after all. Your first option is the Monorail, or if you have been traumatised by a certain episode of The Simpsons, there's the boat. We chose the Monorail, probably only because you have to go past it anyway to get to the dock.
Unfortunately, almost every visitor to the park that day had the same thought. All of which led to a long queue on an excessively steep ramp leading up to the platform. It was harder work to keep from going backwards and thus downhill than it would likely have been to push the extra distance to the dock. No matter, we were in the queue now.
The monorail itself was one of the first demonstrations of how much better the Americans are at access. They might all be capitalist greed merchants who eat too many burgers and call football 'sakker', but they know how to accommodate those of us with the termerity to turn up without the ability to walk. And get this, people of Northern Rail, all you need is a wider gate and a vehicle that is roughly the same height as the platform. As an extra little diversion, part of the route takes you through the Disney resort itself, where you get an elevated view of their customers eating their eggs over easy. Or something. Cynics might suggest that the route planners are trying to distract you from the fact that you still haven't reached the park yet.
It might share part of the name, but the Magic Kingdom bears little resemblance to the Animal Kingdom. Gone are the paths and slopes flanked by endless greenery, replaced by mocked up streets with shops that may or may not be real depending on which street you happen to be on. As you enter you are on Main Street, which is supposed to resemble a typical American town centre street. There are roads but no cars, except for the large, showy vehicles used to give everyone a decent view of the parades.
We ran straight into one as we got through the entrance. The streets are roped off, and you are asked to move aside to the pavements as the music is cranked up. Before you know it, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Snow White are moving past you, dancingly frenetically on top of their mobile perches. Accompanying them on the ground is an array of dancing, baton twirling types who my Dad might refer to as glorified Red Coats. He never saw Nick and whassisname at Prestatyn, obviously. To my mind they were a little better than that, although there is an uneasy feeling in watching some of the endless smiling and gesturing that these people are about to do whatever it takes to be the next Britney Spears. If there are casualties along the way, so be it.
So, parade over, what's to see at the Magic Kingdom? For starters there's a bizarre animatronics bird show which made at least four children scream in terror. For my part I was just bewildered, but I can see how it might have been scary to a child. The famed Pirates of the Caribbean ride which is said to have inspired the excellent first Johnny Depp film aswell as it's farcical sequels was one of the few things we found inaccessible. Looking from the outside, I found it somewhat underwhelming. It's hard to believe that it inspired the films, rather than the other way around.
For something a little more relaxed there's the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. Why not spend 20 minutes waiting to see if you are going to be picked on, and thus publicly ridiculed by a small green monster with one eye who sounds a lot like Billy Crystal? You can enjoy watching others squirm while you wait, and who knows like us you might just get lucky and escape the degradation. Across the street from there you can help Stitch as in 'Lilo And' to capture aliens. It's another 3-D experience, which Emma says included the illusion that Stitch was sitting on her shoulders flapping his wings. Or whatever they are. There was not an option to transfer from my wheelchair, so I felt nothing of the sort, though I did endure the rancid aroma of Stitch's verbal wind.
Transferring is a must for wheelchair users at something called Mickey's PhilharMagic 3-D show. Prepare again to get wet and feel potentially unpleasant winds in your face as Walt's famous mouse takes you through a whole host of Disney classic moments, variously pelting and leaping out at you along the way. Donald Duck finds all of this particularly pleasing, though he remains as difficult to understand as Sir Alex Ferguson talking to Muhammad Ali. Later he invites you on his boat, and there's the grander Liberty Square Riverboat Cruise also.
Yet before this piece starts to read too much like an advert for it's subject, I should just share with you an exchange between me and a fellow customer at the end of the PhilharMagic show. At the end of the row reserved for wheelchair users I passed a young man sitting in an electric wheelchair. I have no idea why he was not leaving, given that the show had finished and we were being ushered outside in the usual hurried fashion. However, he tapped my shoulder as I went past and said;
'Haven't you got an electric chair?'
'Er.....no.' I replied.......
'..........I need the exercise.' I continued.
Undeterred, he glared at me rather too intensely and asked.....
'.........would you like one?'
There is nowhere in America where you are safe from the perils of someone trying to sell you something. Nor is there any limit to the poor taste to which they will stoop to sell it. He probably didn't need the electric chair he was sitting in. Clearly, this was a man on commission and in a hurry to shift chairs.
I couldn't afford to buy one even if I was lazy enough to consider it.
We left for our evening meal, where Emma's mum had arranged a suitably embarrassing surprise. She had booked a table at the Crystal Palace Restaurant (much to the discomfort of the rest of Emma's Sheffield Wednesday supporting family) where during our meal we were offered several photo opportunities with Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet. I don't know where Roo Boy was but it seemed to matter little. The waitress was unfathomably helpful, although the pizza and chips from the buffet was among the worst I have ever tasted. It was straight out of Pizza Hut's scandalous £4 pizza meal promotion.
By sundown the rain had started to lash down. Emma and her family were not prevented from watching the impressive firework and lights show above the park's centrepiece Cinderella's Castle, but I looked on grumpily from the shelter of a shop doorway. Everywhere I looked there was a Disney Poncho protecting someone from the rain.
It was time to go. We would be back, after all...............
Twice!
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Disney's Animal Kingdom
What else are you going to do the day after you have been to see a collection of sea creatures but go and see more animals?
Disney's Animal Kingdom was next on the agenda. It's becoming sketchy if I'm honest. I knew I should have taken a notepad with me, but then I draw enough attention to myself already without being that geeky. What I do remember is that the first thing we did at Animal Kingdom was get on the safari vehicle.
In the process of doing so I learned something that would be valuable to me for the rest of the trip. How to queue without throwing things. Queues had been few and far between at Sea World. Maybe they'd all gone to Ellesmere Port, I don't know. They were out in force at Animal Kingdom though, with a sign outside advising us that it would be 20 minutes before we would actually get on to the safari. Well, we had all day.
It's not just the queues, but the way one queues that is significant here. Rather than have one long line stretching all the way back to Japan (which I'm sure was just over by the Rhinos, but I might be getting confused), they cunningly get you to line up around snake-like railings. This creates the illusion that you are making progress when in fact you are merely moving through a series of rooms or corridors. Credit to them, they try to distract you from your impatience with interesting decor and perhaps the odd DVD, but they're making you wait nonetheless.
Finally on board the jeep I quickly noticed that all staff in the safari area where called Dan, Danny, Daniel or any other denominations of that name you can think of;
"Danny!" shouted Dan,
"Tell Daniel to take my name off the board!"
I don't know what this means exactly, but I'll be surprised if it made a difference for the board to lose any of it's Dans, Dannys or Daniels. Danny nodded anyway.
Anyway, Dan was our driver. He showed us all the things we had come to see, and quite a few we had not expected. In among the elephants, giraffe, lions, rhinos and bongos (there's always bongos at zoos and safari parks, don't you find?) were some rather less authentic creatures. Dan had been advised through his radio system that there were poachers in the area, and they were after the elephants. Apparently, ivory is worth a few bob. To prove this they had mocked up an entire poachers camp, and a mechanically controlled baby elephant hiding in a small jeep. Not to mention the voice of our informant, who also had us wait five minutes to allow time for an ostrich to move out of the road. I caught sight of it a while later, hurtling towards our jeep lest we make a play for it's eggs. Emma didn't think the eggs were real though.
Anybody who hasn't seen A Bugs Life might not be able to relate to what we did next. We visited a 3-D show based on the animated film, and I learned something else. If you use a wheelchair, get out of it at 3-D shows if you possibly can. I made the mistake of seeing this show from my own chair, and missed out on the simulation of being swatted at by a bug hell-bent on revenge for the loss of it's kin to the human race in this way. A huge waft of air came through the back of Emma's chair as the swatter swished narrowly by, and it was only when we left the theatre that I noticed that the seats all had small, strategically placed holes in their backs.
However, I am happy to report that I did witness Hopper (a giant grasshopper voiced by Kevin Spacey when he's not talking about the Old Vic) zoom into my face, pointing furiously at me for decimating the bug population with a rolled up Sunday Times. Or something. This may have been an attempt to educate serial bug squashers, but I don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that the insect death toll will fall as a result. I was also fortunate enough to be able to feel the blast of wind in my face when the enormous, fat purple bug let one go, so to speak, and to get just as wet as everyone else when a spider exploded or soiled itself. Lovely.
After that it was on to another theatre for a stage version of Finding Nemo. It was all very entertaining, yet I can't help but feel that the highlight was at the end when the seagulls famous for crying 'mine, mine, mine' in the film, changed the call to 'bye, bye, bye' when they wanted to boot you out of your seat at the end. Actually there is some very clever puppetry in the performance, along with some lung-busting singing. Just don't expect the same level of humour. They've only got half an hour to tell the story. A similar principle allows me to describe a day out which lasted around 10 hours to you in just one blog.
And the rest...........? Well, it's a zoo. You've all been to Chester. Just imagine that with searingly hot weather. And rollercoasters. Difficult, I know.
Disney's Animal Kingdom was next on the agenda. It's becoming sketchy if I'm honest. I knew I should have taken a notepad with me, but then I draw enough attention to myself already without being that geeky. What I do remember is that the first thing we did at Animal Kingdom was get on the safari vehicle.
In the process of doing so I learned something that would be valuable to me for the rest of the trip. How to queue without throwing things. Queues had been few and far between at Sea World. Maybe they'd all gone to Ellesmere Port, I don't know. They were out in force at Animal Kingdom though, with a sign outside advising us that it would be 20 minutes before we would actually get on to the safari. Well, we had all day.
It's not just the queues, but the way one queues that is significant here. Rather than have one long line stretching all the way back to Japan (which I'm sure was just over by the Rhinos, but I might be getting confused), they cunningly get you to line up around snake-like railings. This creates the illusion that you are making progress when in fact you are merely moving through a series of rooms or corridors. Credit to them, they try to distract you from your impatience with interesting decor and perhaps the odd DVD, but they're making you wait nonetheless.
Finally on board the jeep I quickly noticed that all staff in the safari area where called Dan, Danny, Daniel or any other denominations of that name you can think of;
"Danny!" shouted Dan,
"Tell Daniel to take my name off the board!"
I don't know what this means exactly, but I'll be surprised if it made a difference for the board to lose any of it's Dans, Dannys or Daniels. Danny nodded anyway.
Anyway, Dan was our driver. He showed us all the things we had come to see, and quite a few we had not expected. In among the elephants, giraffe, lions, rhinos and bongos (there's always bongos at zoos and safari parks, don't you find?) were some rather less authentic creatures. Dan had been advised through his radio system that there were poachers in the area, and they were after the elephants. Apparently, ivory is worth a few bob. To prove this they had mocked up an entire poachers camp, and a mechanically controlled baby elephant hiding in a small jeep. Not to mention the voice of our informant, who also had us wait five minutes to allow time for an ostrich to move out of the road. I caught sight of it a while later, hurtling towards our jeep lest we make a play for it's eggs. Emma didn't think the eggs were real though.
Anybody who hasn't seen A Bugs Life might not be able to relate to what we did next. We visited a 3-D show based on the animated film, and I learned something else. If you use a wheelchair, get out of it at 3-D shows if you possibly can. I made the mistake of seeing this show from my own chair, and missed out on the simulation of being swatted at by a bug hell-bent on revenge for the loss of it's kin to the human race in this way. A huge waft of air came through the back of Emma's chair as the swatter swished narrowly by, and it was only when we left the theatre that I noticed that the seats all had small, strategically placed holes in their backs.
However, I am happy to report that I did witness Hopper (a giant grasshopper voiced by Kevin Spacey when he's not talking about the Old Vic) zoom into my face, pointing furiously at me for decimating the bug population with a rolled up Sunday Times. Or something. This may have been an attempt to educate serial bug squashers, but I don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that the insect death toll will fall as a result. I was also fortunate enough to be able to feel the blast of wind in my face when the enormous, fat purple bug let one go, so to speak, and to get just as wet as everyone else when a spider exploded or soiled itself. Lovely.
After that it was on to another theatre for a stage version of Finding Nemo. It was all very entertaining, yet I can't help but feel that the highlight was at the end when the seagulls famous for crying 'mine, mine, mine' in the film, changed the call to 'bye, bye, bye' when they wanted to boot you out of your seat at the end. Actually there is some very clever puppetry in the performance, along with some lung-busting singing. Just don't expect the same level of humour. They've only got half an hour to tell the story. A similar principle allows me to describe a day out which lasted around 10 hours to you in just one blog.
And the rest...........? Well, it's a zoo. You've all been to Chester. Just imagine that with searingly hot weather. And rollercoasters. Difficult, I know.
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