Breakdowns come and breakdowns go

(so what are you going to do about it, that’s what I’d like to know…)

“I only crave this stuff when I’m pregnant,” declared AJ, as she swigs on another bottle of (my) root beer. On my first visit to Wholefoods, shortly after my arrival here, I decided to buy a 4-pack of Virgil’s to see what all the fuss was about. Wiseman was always going on about the stuff (he does go on about things sometimes), to the point where I reckon he might have considered moving to the US just to have it on tap. However, he wouldn’t want to be moving in with Alyn and AJ, for several reasons I suspect, but principally because every time he came home he would find the refrigerator ransacked and his supply of rather fine root beer decimated.

Well, purely speculatively, that’s what I suggest might happen. Fortunately this week at the School has been entitled “Healing Life’s Hurts” and I’m here to tell you it couldn’t have come at a better time. Alyn & AJ have not only been teaching this at the School, but helping me work it out in practice, bless them.

This morning was spent back at the DMV, taking my driving theory test. Being of a certain age, I never had to take a theory test in the UK, and so this was a new, and largely unwelcome experience. Although some of the questions did at least provide some humour, like 

Continuous hard braking on snow and ice often:

(a) helps you stop sooner
(b) heats up your brake pads and stops them freezing

I forget what (c) was now but I went for it. Anyway, the theory successfully negotiated, I booked myself a road test for tomorrow. My wheels for this auspicious occasion have been loaned to me by the very kind Charlene, who is able to lend me her car since she is currently driving a car belonging to a rock’n’roll friend who is currently away on tour. Ah, Nashville. Now, Charlene, I mean no disrespect, and I am enormously grateful for the generous loan, but it does rattle a bit, this car. I’m not entirely sure that the shock absorbers are currently absorbing anything. Had I been driving it in and out of pot-holes in Edinburgh, as one is wont to do there, I would have booked myself into the dentist by now. But apart from that it’s a fine car, if you don’t mind the deer-shaped void where the front grille used to be, and the cable tie keeping an undefined part of the engine attached to the chassis. 

And lo, did her car not break down this very afternoon, even while I was in Starbucks (I knew that judgement was coming). Shifting the stick into Reverse or Drive was simply not enough to persuade the transmission to engage. 

The nice Tow Truck Guy that appeared after a short wait drawled that there was nothing with the transmission (buddy), and with a reckless disregard for the consequences, detached the cable tie from the engine part and attached it to another engine part. Having checked that the transmission now engaged successfully, he drove off and left me shortly before the car broke down again. Distance travelled: 12 feet. A quick phone call to Charlene saved the day and helped me open the hood/bonnet (not as straightforward as you might think), whereupon I reattached the thing back to the thing, minus the cable tie, which had fallen off, and hoped I would not be repeating the process every 12 feet for the 3 mile trip to the garage.

Tomorrow’s test will now be taken in Alyn & AJ’s minivan. Maximum credibility awaits.

John Mayer and Costa Coffee

As previously confessed, I’m a big fan of John Mayer. So when a friend said he’d been on Jonathan Ross’ Radio 2 show a few Saturday mornings ago, I fired up the iPlayer with a certain amount of anticipation/apprehension. Meeting your heroes, it’s said, can be a disappointing experience. I find that even listening to your heroes on the radio, or seeing them in concert, has a certain amount of risk attached to it – how can you fail to be disappointed? Your expectations are so high. When I saw JM in Hyde Park a few years back, I was disappointed, because he didn’t set anything alight (I mean metaphorically. Although it’s true to say that he didn’t physically set anything alight either, this didn’t disappoint me). I consoled myself in the knowledge that he only had a 45 minute set, which didn’t allow him to express himself fully. And this was vindicated by his Hammersmith Apollo gig a few weeks ago, when he torched the place. Metaphorically, of course.
Anyway, back to the radio show. I’ve never found Jonathan Ross compelling listening, not because he’s not funny, because he usually is (IMHO), and not because he gets paid ridiculous amounts of money, because I don’t hold that against him. I find his show irritating in the extreme because there’s this bloke who sits in with him every time (possibly his producer) and laughs at everything he says. Everything. In a nauseating, sycophantic kind of way. Drives me crazy. Or at least it would, if I listened more.
I steeled myself for the sycophant, and tuned in. However, it was Ross himself who wound me up early on by first of all introducing the guitarist JM brought along to play live (Robbie McIntosh) as “his (Mayer’s) dad”, and then proceeding to either forget, or pretend to forget his name, and make up new ones for him every time he referred to him. Serious lack of respect for a fine musician. He then confessed that he knew of Mayer only through his appearances in gossip mags and the like, and expressed surprise when it transpired that he really could play guitar. Which is, quite frankly, lazy. Any small amount of research would have revealed that Mayer has played guitar with Buddy Guy, BB King, and Herbie Hancock. Oh, and Eric Clapton. And that he’s done stand-up, and writes well too. And he features heavily on my iPod. But I still don’t like his new album. Only two songs of any worth, I reckon. Neither of which he played at the Apollo, naturally.
I created an ‘evening’ playlist a few years back, containing songs of a more, um, reflective nature. Melancholy, some might say, and I wouldn’t contradict them. It’s my favourite playlist, by some distance. Wiseman’s response to my musical taste is usually a despairing kind of snort when yet another miserable track comes on the car stereo. On one occasion, I was driving Nasty Jen somewhere, and as Bill Withers wailed “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone,” I realised I was listening to the melancholy stuff. Jen is a teeny-bopper really, and should know better at her age, but I thought I would humour her and switch to my ‘pop’ playlist, which contains songs of a generally more upbeat nature. After a few seconds delay while the iPod found the new playlist, the opening track kicked in.
“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone…” lamented Bill, again. I resolved to get some happier music on my iPod.
On a more recent occasion, Wiseman and I found ourselves listening to some tunes from the 70s on the car radio. Wiseman took great delight in identifying, usually incorrectly, the year of each track from these, his formative years. Sometimes he has even been heard to sing along to seventies tunes. It’s quite a sonic experience.
The car radio has been employed more often of late, since I neglected to remove my iPod from the seat pocket in front on arrival in Geneva last month. The airline was Jet2, and to anyone flying with Jet2 in the future, I would strongly encourage you to follow their advice and take all your personal belongings with you, as contact with said airline afterwards can prove a touch elusive. All “post-flight communication must be in writing” (that’s letters, rather than emails) and so far they have failed to acknowledge either of mine. Which rather stymies my as yet unborn insurance claim, unfortunately.
After lunch today I made the trip to Arbroath to see a client. Having plugged the postcodes into Google maps, China’s least favourite internet company advised me it would take 1hr 50 mins. For some reason I read this as 1hr 30 mins. Tapping the details into my sat nav as I prepared to leave, 90 minutes before the appointment, I was somewhat startled to note that it was predicting a journey time of 2 hrs 13 mins. I made haste for the M90. Once over the bridge, I encountered another problem. My body sometimes thinks it’s somewhere in the south of France, or Spain, and takes an involuntary siesta shortly after lunch. I was falling asleep at the wheel. This is never a good thing, I find, and so I have a couple of strategies to combat it. One is to pull over and close my eyes for forty winks (I find five minutes almost invariably does the trick); the second is to stop for a coffee, or any sort of break. I had time for neither, but having pondered the pros and cons extensively in the past, I have arrived at what I believe is a rather sensible conclusion. No matter how late you end up being for your appointment, and possibly all your appointments for the rest of the day, and whatever you were planning to do in the evening, annoying and stressful though this can be, it’s still better than killing people, possibly including yourself.
So I stopped at the Kinross services, and ordered a double espresso at the Costa outlet. Now, Costa. They’re not quite Starbucks, and their coffee certainly tastes better to me. But I don’t really like them either. They’re “Italian about coffee”, or so they claim. Now, I’ve been to Italy, once. I stayed in Milan for a week with my good friend Slid. It was June, it was hot, and humid. I remember sitting in a park with Slid watching some locals play football. Had it not been so hot, we might well have taken them on and shown them a thing or two. But it was very hot. They were playing in a classically slow, Italian style. It struck me that in these temperatures and humidity, there was no other way to play. And I immediately made a connection between the climate and the style of play: Italy and Spain – slow and languid so as not to get hot and tired too quickly, Scotland – fast and frenetic so as not to get cold by standing around in Baltic temperatures. It all made, possibly perfect sense. In that sense, Costa are very Italian. They are chuffin’ slow. Far too slow when you’re running late for an appointment in Arbroath. I lost eight minutes in the service station, although admittedly I had to take a pee as well.
Apart from the speed of service, I find nothing about Costa remotely Italian. Every time I had a coffee in Italy it was outstanding, and it wasn’t supplied by a chain, in an enormous bowl of a cup whose diameter is so great that the coffee sometimes dribbles down the sides of your chin. But perhaps that’s just me.
I was late for my appointment. And the next one. And my evening ‘appointment’ back in Edinburgh. But nobody seemed to mind too much. And what’s more, I’m still alive!

Edinburgh, Sat 27 October

Vindication. Didn’t have a collapsed lung, but Gilly heard the mouse just after going to bed. Exited her room pronto and slept on the landing instead. I feel my reputation has been restored.

Left the cottage about 9.30am. Gilly left us in Letterkenny to head home for a break with her folks. Shazza led us all a merry dance across Co Derry and Antrim to the boat at Larne.

Managed to bully Wiseman, Shazza and Broon into a game of Scrabble on the boat. They got hockeyed.

Never ones to make the same mistake twice where good food is involved, we stopped at the Kilmarnock Little Chef this time en route back to Edinburgh. Spotted several New Hollands, a vintage Massey Ferguson and some other tractors on the road in Ayrshire. Even one Shazza and Broon weren’t familiar with. No John Deeres though.

And so it ends. A week’s holiday which met or exceeded all our expectations. Back to the daily grind… but only 2 months ’til Val d’Isère 2008…

Donegal, Weds 24 October

Up early again. This time I reckon I could’ve slept in a bit more, but a combination of hunger and a need to pee forced me up.

Pulled back the curtains to discover a pinkish glow framing the mountains across the water. Sun was an orange ball just above the horizon.

Going to be the best day weather-wise, so far.

Spent the morning on the beach again, playing frisbee and jumping over waves. Gillian arrived and we headed back for some lunch (chilli. It’ll be chilli for the next few days), before embarking on an afternoon road trip, as is our wont. I was getting low on fuel, so I headed south to Kerrykeel to get some diesel. The petrol station in Kerrykeel is actually a Seat dealership with a couple of pumps. The pumps are fairly effectively blockaded by new cars for sale, so I had to manoeuvre carefully to get the nozzle within spitting distance of the car. Wandered in to pay for it, and they asked me how much I’d put in. Nice to be able to run a business on trust like that.

Mark cut his navigational teeth with me in Toronto. Navigating there was a cinch, looking back. The Canadian compass only has 4 points. Here in Donegal the compass doesn’t have any predefined points, and over to my left the map was being twisted this way and that, as we left the thick yellow roads and joined the thin yellow ones. The thin yellow roads in reality resembled someone’s driveway, and looked like they’d last been surfaced long before the Partition in 1921.

This evening we made our way back up to the head of the peninsula to Fanad Lodge, for a hearty Irish dinner. Mark ordered a T-bone steak.

“How would you like the steak done?”

“Blue, please.”

The waitress almost passed out. “Bl-bl-blue?”

Then she scurried off to find out if the steak could be cooked ‘blue’.

“Aye, sure that’ll be no problem” came the reply.

She came back grinning nervously. The steak, when it arrived, was almost bigger than the plate. I haven’t seen Wiseman smile as much since he consumed a large bottle of Tiger beer on Saturday night.

Actually, he’s been smiling a lot this week, everyone has. It’s been a belter of a holiday.

Donegal, Tues 23 October

Got a good night’s sleep last night, slept soundly. Still woke at 6.30 though. Sounded windy and wild outside, but when I surfaced at 8.45 all was calm. Might even see the sun today.We heard a weather forecast on the radio yesterday, in Irish Gaelic. Broon was confident the girl was saying it would be a nice day today. Perhaps her grasp of Gaelic is better than I thought…
Since we’re on holiday, we’re all trying to do things differently from how we might at home.

I, for example, am drinking tea with no sugar, which admittedly only happened initially because Broon was detailed to bring the sugar and she didn’t arrive until Sunday night. But have persisted, more or less.

It’s bizarre how we’re all waking early. Broon wakened at 5.15 this morning and felt ready to get up. No-one has so far been able to sleep much beyond 9. This is in stark contrast to my normal experience in Ireland. When I returned home to my parents during my university days, after a day or two I could happily sleep until midday no trouble. I put it down to the country air. However, the air doesn’t get more country than it is here, and it’s not working…

This morning the sun duly shone and we all trooped down to the beach for a game of cricket. Wiseman found a good bit of swing from the Golf Course End, and induced an edge from Broon, but she refused to walk. Outrageous. The game ended once Wiseman started taking a liking to my bowling and despatched me into the soft sand at deep extra cover, twice. Off came the shoes and socks, and we braved the arctic water temperature for a paddle. Once numbness had set in we dumped Broon in the sea, accidentally, although this appeared to be cold comfort for her, and came back for some lunch.

Driving in Donegal can be a challenging experience. To begin with, there are the aforementioned road surfaces. On leaving a village, a sign will optimistically inform you that you can now drive at 80km/h. Not if you value your shock absorbers, you won’t.

Then there are the road junctions, which appear out of nowhere frequently without any form of road markings to indicate whether or not you have the right of way. You have to work out if your road is wider than their road and behave accordingly. If you are on the narrow road, then plough on, and those on the really narrow road will just have to wait.

The signs at junctions are just hilarious. Frequently they will be pointing in a direction which neatly bisects the two roads they may be referring to. As a result, often you have to drive past the junction before you can read the sign you’re interested in. Also, certain regions of Donegal are An Gaeltacht – that is, Gaelic is officially recognised as being the first language there.

When this is the case the signs switch from being in English with an Irish translation, to just simply Irish. None of us are particularly fluent in Irish, Broon’s weather forecasting notwithstanding.

This afternoon we went on a road trip. At least Shazza, Broon and I did. Wiseman stayed back at the cottage to “write”. He’s “a writer” you see.

Shazza and Broon, being farmers’ daughters, have been largely unimpressed with the tractors we have come across on the holiday thus far. There’s been a lot of quantity, but not much quality, apparently. Plenty of Massey Fergusons (“wouldn’t pull the hat off your head”). We saw a couple of John Deeres today, which got them a whole lot more excited.

We took in the Atlantic Drive, which took us through Downings, where I spent a great weekend in the company of a schoolfriend and his family, near enough 20 years ago. Then headed along the coast stopping off at various points en route to the Bloody Foreland. Stopped in Dunfanaghy to buy Broon a shillelagh, since she didn’t know what a shillelagh was. Oh, the shame. Now she still doesn’t know what it is, but at least she knows what it looks like.

We came home to find that Wiseman had been busy in the kitchen, and had rustled up a pot of chilli big enough for a platoon of Mexican soldiers.

After dinner we played 3 games of Articulate, boys v girls. They got hockeyed.

Adventures in the mountains

The Trossachs were shrouded in thick black cloud and reeked of menace this morning as I headed up the M9. (Bear with me, I’m warming up for my Australian travel writing). Was on my way to see a customer who lives just outside Callander, in a truly remote location high up in the hills. Realistically, it’s not truly remote, as it is really only a few miles from Callander, but it feels genuinely remote. After leaving the A84, I drove for a couple of miles on single track roads/farm track, and through somebody else’s farmyard, before reaching his house. Halfway up I encountered a flock of sheep guarding the upper reaches, one of which remained quite stubbornly in the middle of the track. Things could’ve got tricky here, but I mentioned that I knew Doug Smith well, and was immediately accorded the VIP treatment. Doug is a friend of mine with well-established links among the sheep community. I’d better say no more.

I made better time on the road up to Callander than I’d expected, and was considering a visit to a local coffee shop. In fact I have to confess I not only considered it but attempted to act upon it (I can hear the tuts of disapproval from all you Standard Life employees with your strong work ethic) by making a sortie into Doune. Given Doune’s location and size and everything you would really expect it to have at least one legendary coffee shop, but alas the only thing I could find was a stand on the street advertising a deli (I mean, come on, a DELI in Doune?) which professed to sell tea and coffee. Unfortunately I couldn’t locate the actual deli, just the stand advertising its presence. So I beat a hasty retreat from Doune, shook the dust off my feet as I left, etc etc. A cup of tea to perk me up would’ve been just the ticket, as sleep has been a little elusive of late. Last night this could be put down to the fact that my neighbours in the flat above me appeared to be trying to drill through my ceiling. Disturbed by the racket, I wandered out of my bedroom into my hallway at some late hour of the night, half expecting to find said neighbours parachuting down through a gaping hole above. However, they never materialised, which is a mercy, as I was in no state to receive visitors, and I managed to crawl back into bed and get some sleep.

So, the timer on my desktop informs me that it’s just over 42 days until the Ashes. Gosh it’s exciting. I do hope you’ve been keeping up to date with all the hype. More here. The other timer on my desktop is counting down the days to my holiday…

Anyway, time to seek some more of that elusive sleep.

Alternative ending for those with a passing interest in cricket:

Michael Vaughan has been making noises in the press recently about perhaps being fit to play in the 4th and 5th Tests at Melbourne and Sydney. These are, as it happens, the ones I’m going to. While it would be great to see Vaughan back in action, I would wonder at the wisdom of reintroducing him to what will hopefully be a settled team at what may be a crucial juncture in the series. Unless Australia have won the first three Tests (or indeed, England have) then the series and the Ashes will still be up for grabs come Melbourne. In addition, Vaughan, prior to his injury, has been out of nick with the bat for quite some time. His principal contribution (and it was a weighty one) to the Ashes win last year was as captain, apart from one solitary century at Old Trafford (which was laced with a fair bit of good fortune). I can’t see them bringing him back as captain for the last two Tests, unless Freddie has made a right meal of it and lost the first three disastrously.

Of more significance, in my mind, would be the return to the team of Simon Jones. I watched some of the Ashes 2005 DVD the other day, and was reminded of just how often he chipped in with crucial wickets. I would dearly love to watch him steaming in at the MCG and SCG in a few months’ time, but sadly I think those matches will come too soon for his recovery from injury. Pity.

From the Aussie point of view, it will be interesting to see how Michael Hussey performs – he’s been getting rave reviews, but then so did Michael Clarke in his initial Tests before hitting something of a slump in form. Hussey, by all accounts, is the real deal, and sounds like he might cause England a few headaches this winter.

Anyway, time to seek some more of that elusive sleep.