I Won't Send Roses

Am I up to it, do you think?

For someone who claims to be so busy, to start blogging again in the run-up to Christmas – one of the busiest times of my year – seems to be hoping for a little much. But then, I was surfing past entries this afternoon, reliving past glories and thinking how much of it you forget unless you write it down; those inter-neuronal links atrophy if they’re not fired once in a while.

Today at work continued the recent trend of me being uninspired and struggling to focus. Stuff happened; nothing exciting. Came home early as we had tickets to see Mack & Mabel at the Broadway Theatre this evening.

The show was up to the usual high standards of The Broadway, although with a somewhat sub-par band; good cast though, excellent production, excellent singing and choreography. I’m sorry we saw it so close to the end of its run as I’d probably have seen it again for the cost of the tickets.

Tomorrow is John W & Rich C’s Civil Partnership, so we’re spending the day in Bexley. Judging by the pre-event literature I think the event has been planned to the n^th degree. If it goes according to plan it will be a fantastic day. I just hope the grooms are chilled enough to brush off anything going wrong!

Anyway, I’ve been roped-in to video the ceremony for them. I’m assured they’re not expecting professional output, just a record of events, which is good, since I’ll be working with a single camera and almost no chance to case the joint before the ceremony starts. (John described it as a conveyor belt at the registry office.) After the ceremony though I’m reverting to my preferred medium and just carrying my Nikon around.

Then Sunday all the old Chorus hacks have been invited around to Trevor G’s place for a winter party. Trevor always hosts a good party – although I’m not so sure the hot tub will be so popular at this time of year!

On the whole it should be a good weekend. Long may it last!

Chris' 40th and Batman

It’s been a sticky weekend. The flat seems to be a heat trap. It will be a bonus in the winter when it’s cold, but now it just means the house is stiflingly hot all day long.

Yesterday we slept late and did house stuff; still trying to organise all the square-pegs into round holes. In the evening we had been invited to Chris P’s 40^th birthday party, so we went in to the City early to catch some dinner at Smiths of Smithfield. We ate in their top floor restaurant and had an excellent meal. I had probably the tenderest steak I’ve ever eaten; truly delicious. The bill was a stupendous £150 for the two of us though, so it’s not something we’ll do too often – although we rationalised it a bit because we hadn’t done nearly as much top table dining in Spain as we have in previous years at Sitges.

Chris’ bash was very pleasant as we spent the evening outdoors. Admittedly it was mostly chatting with people with whom we’d spent last week, but there were also a few faces we hadn’t seen in a while; Stuart B, Marc D & Roddy, Russell E, Paul L & Martin K were all there too which added to the enjoyment.

Today I spent sorting out the photographs from the Spain trip; putting the last tranche on Facebook and uploading the lot of them to a collection on Flickr. This evening we went into Beckenham for (unremarkable) Tex-Mex at Dos Amigos before going to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

The cinema was stifling hot; no air conditioning and pretty much no ventilation. It was like watching a movie in a sauna. The movie was too long and had too many villains in it; the Joker would have been big enough and kept the movie to time. Adding Two-Face just dragged it out when really it didn’t need it. I have to say also that some of the stunts/plot devices the Joker pulled were just too implausible for me. [Spoilers follow!] Wiring a hospital for complete demolition in the space of sixty minutes whilst avoiding notice with a face like that? Yeah, right! And the business with the ferries at the end; all those barrels and detonators – and nobody noticed? And such an immaculate moral dilemma to go with it! If you haven’t seen it, wait for the DVD.

Art and Work

Well, it was a short week at work, but it was certainly eventful.

The course I had been on for the first half of the week finished around 4pm on Wednesday and I had a couple of hours to kill before the company’s Summer Party so I took myself off to the nearby Tate Modern to see what was new in art. I must be getting old because pretty much everything I saw was dreadful (in my humble opinion, at least.) And they didn’t even have any big installations to marvel at in the turbine hall!

The company party itself was quite pleasant; free drink in quantity, free food of reasonable quality and a chance for lots of informal chatting with people I don’t see so often around the office. I left early though (which was probably no bad thing given how much I’d drunk) because we had tickets to see the ‘Shitty Deal Puppet Theatre’ show at the Battersea Arts Centre Comedy Festival. In the end, the name turned out not to be ironic and the show was totally unremarkable. Maybe, as with modern art, I’m not in the avant garde, so I wish them well at the Fringe.

Thursday was my first day back at work and was inevitably busy with ten days worth of mail and other catching up to do. One of my team handed in his resignation which, while not wholly unexpected, felt a little surreal in the moment and added to the business of the day.

Today was consequently also a busy day. I needed to get the recruiting cycle underway but also think this may be a good opportunity to re-jig the team slightly, so needed to consult with various people to make sure that (1) I had my head screwed on right and, (2) that the powers-that-be would buy-in. My concentration wasn’t helped by a failure of our external telephone lines in the London Office in the early afternoon (a major BT outage, apparently affecting roughly ten-thousand of their customers in the SE London area!) which classed as a potential major incident for us and so needed managing. In the end though I got the first draft of a Job Specification written and off for review. Hopefully we can advertise on Monday.

Tonight we had a lazy night. Brett cooked lamb (yum!) and I discovered a mini-mart on the way home from the station that does a big selection of Greek desserts (more yum!!)

And so to the weekend…

Naked in the Leaves

The Thursday night in La Garriga will stay with me for a long time. It’s a small provincial town with some lovely architecture and a small, neat auditorium where the chorus sang with a local male-voice choir who I swear did not have a member younger than 50. They were more tuneful than the ladies had been the previous night, despite clearly lacking any true top tenors. The memorable thing about the night though was just how lovely the people were.

They gave us a tremendous standing ovation, bought all the CDs we had on sale (even our stock of Christmas ones!) and then hosted us to a delicious open-air buffet of local pastries and sangria. As the post-show party got underway, the choirs came together to sing the Catalonian favourite Les Flors de Maig, then they sang us a welcoming song in Catalonian and we returned the favour with a stirring a cappella rendition of Jerusalem. The atmosphere was warm and convivial and my heart really caught in my throat as I listened to them sing; this is what we are about.

The Friday concert was a successful night, although less so, and also very late – a three-hour trip to and from the venue meant we didn’t get to bed until 3am! Even so, on Saturday after packing and checking out, we felt we had to do something other than sit around the hotel, so we spent a few hours in the nearby Blanes; a seaside resort which had the good sense not to run a railway line between the hotels and the beach.

When we finally left for home a chaotic check-in process left me in a grump for the evening but a couple of tunes kept running through my head and tempered my bad mood somewhat; one was the climax of the duet Naked in the Leaves; where the chorus comes almost out of nowhere to a great crescendo in a sequence of beautiful chords, “Impassioned lovers, unafraid, lying naked in the leaves…” The other tune was the trill that seems to have stuck in everyone’s head from Les Flors. All the locals recognised it and, despite the song being a real trial for the boys to learn, they kept bursting into the “Tra la la’s” – even as a group of them were disembarking at Heathrow.

So anyway, I’m almost back to normality (on a course for three days rather than straight back into the office) but am suffering somewhat from the post-holiday blues; missing the camaraderie and the music of the tour.

On the upside we went up to Angel tonight to hear Far From Kansas do the show they are taking up to the Edinburgh Fringe; There’s No Place Like Homo. It was both funny and well sung and, while I do have a few notes to offer to the performers, I shall do it in private having learned from the storm that developed the last time I reviewed an FFK show!

More Laziness, Less Drinking

Wednesday was another slow starting day. Nothing noteworthy until we got to our evening venue, Castellar del Vallés. There we were met by representatives of the ladies choir with whom we were sharing the show; a lovely bunch of ladies wearing shocking pink blouses which perfectly matched the pink polo shirts worn by a portion of our boys. A photo-frenzy developed once this was noticed.

The venue was an open air stage outside the local town hall. It was a bit worrying when we arrived to see only about forty chairs laid out, but in the typically relaxed Catalonian fashion that I rather like, as the audience strolled in they each went and took another of the folding chairs from the pile by the wall and found themselves a space. I reckon we had over a hundred by the time we started to sing.

The Catalan ladies, lovely though they were, needed a bit of work on their tuning. They also had some interesting accents while they sang Edelweiss and O Happy Day, but I can’t be too disparaging about their pronunciation without wondering what they made of our Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.

The audience was very appreciative though and our set was roundly applauded: Even the numbers that felt a bit more risqué, for what I suspect was a fairly conservative, older audience. The grand finale (My Way) went down a storm and brought a tear to a few eyes. The encore (the Piaf) brought the same sigh of appreciation from the audience as in Barcelona when we started, but I think failed to build to a proper climax and left me, at least, feeling underwhelmed.

After the show Simon was presented with another souvenir of our trip (we really ought to have something to give in return on these occasions!) and then there were nibbles and drinks with the ladies choir. The merchandising guys took €250 in CD and t-shirt sales, which was very good (and probably better than we did on those lines at Cadogan Hall!)

The trip back to the hotel was marked by lots of singing on the coach; for the most part the front of the bus seemed to be trying to outdo the back of the bus, although at times there were probably as many as five different songs being sung at once…

Caroline (our fly-on-the-wall documentary maker) took advantage of the ride to do some interviews, although I suspect the noise eventually forced her to give it up.

Back at the hotel we made the best of the ‘cold dinner’ that the hotel had laid out for us again before retiring to the terrace for a couple of beers before bed.

Laziness and Drinking

Monday and Tuesday were ‘free’ days; there was nothing scheduled as a group so people did their own thing. Brett and I had a long lie-in on the Monday morning, and then he sunbathed by the pool while I uploaded the previous day’s photographs to Facebook.

Late afternoon we took a walk along the promenade towards town with a few of the other Chorus guys. We were trying to find an old town for a bit of authentic Spanish culture but there wasn’t one. What the locals call the old town all looks to be twentieth century construction. In the end we had a few beers at a community centre/park and discussed Chorus stuff – most of our companions being relative newcomers, it was interesting to hear there perspectives on how we treat newbies and how they think the Chorus could do its stuff better.

Back to the hotel for another dismal dinner and then out onto the terrace by the pool for drinks. It was a very pleasant evening; pretty much everyone was there at some point and returners from Barcelona would join us as they got off the train (which stops across the road from the hotel.)

The bar staff at the hotel seem to resent the fact that we drink so much. The impression I get is that they normally have a much quieter time of it; most of the other guests drift off after the evening entertainment finishes, with just a few die-hards staying later. So by about 11pm they can start clearing up and slowing down. With a gay men’s chorus in residence though, the drinking continues in quantity until the small hours, which means the staff have to work through until closing time. Anyway, after the bar shut twenty or so of us made our way up to one of the hotel rooms where a few bottles of spirits and cartons of sangria had been collected and we carried the party on there.

I had been drinking Spanish brandy all evening which has a lovely flavour and didn’t seem that terribly strong. As a result I’d had five or six of them (continental ‘measures’!) by the time the bar shut but wasn’t feeling much the worse for wear. After we retired upstairs though there was only gin, vodka and sangria to choose from. I had a gin and tonic (in about a 50:50 ratio, it turned out!) and I think my second was a mix of gin and sangria. Within half an hour I was pretty smashed, but still having a good time. Much fun was had by all I think as the atmosphere was very convivial.

Brett and I left the party around 2:45 (but I hear it continued until they got closed down by Hotel Security at 3:30ish). My head was still swimming though when I tried to sleep which always makes me nauseous, so I ended up throwing up a couple of times before I could doze off. It seems to have been for the best though because I woke up clear-headed, if a little sluggish, on Tuesday morning.

It was a late awakening though, so we had breakfast at the café on the promenade. Shortly after getting back to our room Theo and Dennis called by to see if we were still up for a trip to Barcelona. We decided we were and headed out to the train with them.

We had an enjoyable, if tiring, day which can pretty much be summed up as; lunch, Sagrada Familia, bus tour of city, a bit of shopping and then home again. We were up for the bus tour as it had come recommended and we hadn’t done it before. For €20 it turned out to be reasonable value – although most of the things that I would have liked to have photographed were hidden by trees – it gave us a good idea of where we would want to explore more the next time we are back.

When we got back to the hotel Brett, who had been feeling increasingly like he was catching a cold, went up to bed while I went out for a late dinner with Theo D, Dennis M, Martin B & Nicola L. Ended up in a place just being vacated by another Chorus crowd who recommended the tapas and arroz negra. We took their advice and had a lovely meal.

Show in Barcelona

This morning was a welcome meeting for the group followed by a couple of rehearsals for the singers. I attended the welcome meeting to pick up my information pack, but ducked-out of the rehearsal; I was happy to wait until they performed it on stage to hear the Festival Anthem. Having some time on my hands also allowed me to upload yesterday’s blog entry and photos. After the rehearsal we went in for a late lunch of standard resort-hotel buffet cuisine and an hour or so later met up to board our buses into Barcelona.

When our guide on the coach told us some of the superlatives that had been used about the venue for the show, the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, I was rather sceptical. When we got into the auditorium though, I changed my mind. I don’t know if I have the architectural background to describe it properly, but my impression was of a fusion of Catalan/Basque, Gaudi and Classical styling. There were ceramic fragment mosaics everywhere, the ceiling had a huge stained glass skylight which came down to a pendant central sun motif, there were full-size, full-relief winged horses flying out of the pillars on the upper balcony and the proscenium arch, such as it was, formed the meeting of sculpted riders and soldiers(?) on one side and a forest filled with the flowers of May on the other.

The stage itself was decorated with part-painted and part-relief sculptures of musicians looking down on the performers; all surmounted by a large organ and curtained galleries.

As there were four other choirs with numbers to rehearse, plus the combined choruses to rehearse the Anthem, ‘Les Flors de Maig’, stage-time was strictly limited and almost as soon as the rehearsal was over, we had to clear to let the public in.

The show went fairly well. Personally I think a couple of the earlier choirs were a little samey; a couple of long programs of similar music. The Bulgarian Boys Choir though had a fairly short repertoire which they performed beautifully – with a vocal precision that should make us weep! Our own slot went off fairly well; the audience seemed to like both the classical numbers and the more modern ones; they started applauding as soon as we started singing ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’! They were a bit bemused by ‘I Feel Pretty’ though (probably not a song with which they are that familiar) and given that the choreography for the number was so ragged, I would rate it the low-point of the set.

After the show, it was a fairly swift turnaround; we were out of the Palau in short order and after a bit of socialising in the forecourt we snaked our way back towards the coach, pausing only to rush into a small shop on the way and buy them out of cheap (and nasty!) baguettes for the journey home. Applause and congratulations from audience stragglers as we walked away from the venue!

Most of the chorus (those who hadn’t bought baguettes) hurried down to the dining room as soon as we hit the hotel as we had been promised a cold dinner. Having seen that ilk before I wasn’t surprised when it turned out to be plates of cold luncheon meat and processed cheese (turning a slightly funny colour for having been left out so long.) I supplemented my gin-and-tonic with a quarter of one of the sliced melons they had laid out for dessert. Afterwards there was a bit of a gathering around the pool as beer and cocktails were consumed by all.

It was all fairly tame stuff until Soon N arrived in the bar. Soon likes costumes; every week at rehearsal he comes as a different character, typically a uniform of some sort. This evening he was in full Leather Master drag. I didn’t see his entrance into the bar myself, but I know there were plenty of non-chorus guests left over from the earlier flamenco show. I am told that the expressions on some of their faces were priceless.

The show didn’t stop there though; he had brought a studded leather dog collar and lead which he attached to Stephen B (one of our newer Baritones) for a while. Due to a defunct battery though, I was on my way up to our room to pick up my other camera when the evening’s highlight took place. After letting Stephen off the lead, he then took Alisdair L, our illustrious Vice-Chair, for a walk around the hotel pool on all fours! It seems everyone in the hotel – except me – got photos of that…

After that things petered out; people hung around a while but after they closed the bar around 1am the remainder drifted off to bed.

The Journey

Holiday mode kicked-in as we were sitting on the car park courtesy bus. We’d arrived exactly on schedule and as we waited to be bussed to our terminal, my body finally gave in, started manufacturing endorphins again and I relaxed.

From there on in the trip was a breeze; we met up with the guys, checked-in (securing exit seats with lots of legroom), had an enjoyable flight (lots of chatting, some singing (uh-oh!)) and got to the hotel in good time. Our room is as expected and as far as I can tell is away from noise (bars, roads, service-areas) so it’s good. The hotel even has free wi-fi – although the signal doesn’t quite reach our room, so I’m going to have to lurk in the lobby to upload this post.

I’m taking lots of photos and, while it has it’s drawbacks, the little Canon point-and-shoot I brought is still able to take some good candid shots of the boys at play.

Highlight of the day: Sitting on the plane, sipping my second gin-and-tonic, resisting the urge to read, blog, listen to music, etc. in favour of just sitting there and enjoying having nothing to do and so, doing nothing.

Waiting

The waiting is always the worst of most things.

I woke up this morning not feeling terribly well rested and somewhat irritable and negative, which made the usual packing hassles even more of a trial for both of us. Now that we are packed and ready to go, there’s nothing really to do until the appointed hour, which I’m finding frustrating too.

Hopefully this is not prophetic of how the rest of the week will go; I am not sure I will be good company for anyone if it is. With any luck though, I will click into Holiday Mode when we meet up with the guys at the airport and none of us will look back.

Musings

I had a fairly therapeutic day at work today; things were quiet enough that I spent most of the day organising and managed to spend pretty much the whole afternoon clearing and tidying my desk. I feel I’ve left everything in order and under control and hopefully won’t have any nasty surprises waiting for me when I get back. It’s a good feeling to be going away on!

I ran into Damian F this afternoon; he got back from the Antipodes last night and had snuck in to organise his own desk in advance of his official return on Monday. We chatted a while but he had a fixed smile on his face throughout, and I had visions of him greeting an endless line of well-wishers that he really didn’t want to face, so I left him alone shortly, feeling like I’d intruded.

This evening was getting ourselves sorted for Spain; we leave for Barcelona tomorrow and are spending a week on the Catalan coast. Actually, so far we’re just doing a bit of ironing; we’re not due at LHR until 4pm tomorrow, so most of the actual packing is being put off…

I am really looking forward to it. Chorus trips are usually great social events. As well as the four shows the boys are singing for, we have two whole days and various half-days at leisure to do what we want. I’m going to photograph stuff – some of which will be the Chorus at work and play, but some of which will be for me: It’s a while since I’ve indulged my muse.

I Made It Through the Rain

Tolerable day at work. The learning curve of some aspects remains steep.

Brett called me up late afternoon though; he was going to a marketing meeting for Various Voices and wondered if I wanted to come along and have a dinner out with him afterwards. I wasn’t feeling muchly sociable, but the meeting was in a pub so I figured I could sit quietly and read during the meeting and then head out with my man afterwards.

After leaving work roughly on time I walked up through Soho to find the place. The weather has been poor these last few days, with sunshine and showers alternating every few minutes, but today was just unresolved grey wetness. The air is pregnant with moisture and a fine mist blows on the wind, so it’s hard to tell sometimes whether carrying your umbrella is helping keep you dry at all.

I had trouble finding the bar where the meeting was being held and, given my already fairly tired and grumpy mindset, was pretty miserable by the time I got there. It was quieter than I’d hoped, so there wasn’t really any hope of me sitting inconspicuously in a corner and reading. Instead I was introduced to the lady leading the meeting (the only other people there when I arrived were Brett and German Martin B from the Chorus, although others arrived about an hour later) and I sat down and started quaffing the proffered red wine.

Actually the red wine was a bad idea; I had had an early lunch and no dinner and, despite snacking on some humus and pitta bread, the wine settled into my bones so I was feeble and sleepy throughout the rest of the evening and spent a fair portion of it dozing against Brett (which the other attendees claimed to find adorable…)

A curious coincidence though; a little way into the evening John Mc turned up at the bar with his friend Richard for dinner. It’s a small gay world.

Unpalatable Issues

An unsatisfying day at work. Didn’t really have that much to do, but having time on my hands underlined my natural tendency to shy away from issues which I know need addressing but which I don’t feel confident in handling. A long coffee break with Rob S, while partly very pleasant and sociable, also covered some of those issues and reminded me of my own inadequacies.

Work worries of a different sort too; Damian F came to mind again this afternoon when I had cause to deal with his project (one of our company’s largest). He was abruptly called home to New Zealand two weeks ago when his mother died of a sudden heart attack. Following the advice of the good Zinnia Cyclamen, I avoided the typical British response of saying nothing when you don’t know quite what to say and also exchanged emails with him last week. But email is a soulless medium and it is difficult to judge the worth of your words at such a distance, knowing virtually nothing of the situation at the far end. He is a good guy though and I hope he is coping with his loss, for he surely doesn’t deserve suffering.

On the (personal) up-side, while taking another break and enjoying a coffee outside our local branch of Eat, who should walk by but Him J from the Chorus. He sat with me and we chatted a while, which was pleasant and helped distract me from work worries. I think I knew he was a student, but hadn’t realised he was based so close by.

I am also beginning to really look forward to the Chorus’ trip to Spain which begins this coming weekend. As I am not singing this season I think I get the best of both worlds; I get the social enjoyment of a chorus tour without having to put in the work to rehearse and sing. I am not going as a total hanger-on though; having volunteered to be the ‘official’ chorus photographer I have some duties to perform, but as photography is really a hobby I don’t mind it so much.

I wonder though if I am looking forward to the trip so much because I am genuinely weary and need a break, or because it means I can avoid facing those unpalatable issues a little longer…

View Across the Void

Okay, so it’s exactly five months since last I posted an entry here.

Shit happens.

Life has been busy; lots happening and various minor stresses. That seems to be lifting, or at least I seem to be coming back into a blogging frame of mind; I’ve been catching up on my various Bloglines subscriptions – even commenting on a couple.

No promises offered about continuity of service at this address yet though.

Let’s do a one-post catch-up on the life since February, shall we?

At work, February and March were very busy with work; I was managing the project to replace the telephone systems in our UK offices, which had all kinds of ancillary network requirements that needed to be met. I did some prodigious amount of travelling up and down the country and in the end it all came together quite nicely. Now that that’s over though, I need to get my teeth properly into being ‘A Manager.’ It’s a quite a steep learning curve for me; my people skills have never been the best, so that’s what I’m focussing on right now. It certainly isn’t easy, but I keep telling myself that nothing worth doing ever is and if I can reach a passable level of competence it will be a real feather in the cap of my CV.

Owen got a new job at one of our competitors. Luckily we’re both in support roles (he’s finally doing the Knowledge Management he loves) so there doesn’t look like there’ll too many conflicts of interest in us bitching about work over lunch!

Socially, I went to see the Little Women musical at RADA in February which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected. I shall have to keep up with their performance schedules in future.

In February we did some serious planning for our wedding, picking up catalogues and visiting a spot or two. It quickly became apparent that we could spend a lot of money very quickly and we scaled back our ideas somewhat.

In the end though the wedding got put on hold by force majeure; at Easter, our landlord wrote to advise that he wouldn’t be renewing our lease when the current one ran out at the end of May (it turns out he was selling the property.) We had to decide fairly quickly whether we wanted to go for another cheap rental property for six-to-twelve months to keep on building up our deposit, or to take a risk and stretch ourselves financially to buy now. In the end we decided to try to buy; the cost and hassle of moving to another rental for another short period of time were not attractive.

So Brett extended his contract in Stratford-upon-Avon to make sure we had a good cash-flow over the moving period and I dropped out of the Chorus’ show to have more time to spend organising. On the whole everything went smoothly and, in early June, we moved into a lovely first-floor flat in Catford. As I write we are all unpacked, but still in need of a few square pegs fitted into round holes and some general organising of stuff. Very happy with the place though and so glad to be owning our own at last.

The weekend after we moved in we had an invite to a wedding down in Canterbury. Paul C and Sue G, both former colleagues from my Folkestone days, were finally getting married and had invited me along to their reception afterwards. Paul, for all that he puts himself across as a clown, actually has one of the most sensible heads on his shoulders of anyone I’ve ever met. I have a lot of time for Paul and Sue both, so I was quite touched to be invited to their wedding. They also made a bit of a fuss of us for coming down to see them, which was sweet. We had a fine evening listening to the brief, but funny, speeches and then me drinking good cognac and Brett trying to work out the strange dancing customs of British weddings.

In other news, our friends Mark G & Chris Mc have moved to Sri Lanka; Mark works for the Foreign Office and it was time for his next overseas posting. It sounds like they’ve found themselves a lovely spot though and their friends (including us!) are queuing up to take advantage of their hospitality as a base to explore the tropical paradise. Before they went though, they had a leaving party which started respectably enough in a wine bar on Trafalgar Square but then went on to a Karaoke venue in Leicester Square. I had initially balked at the idea of karaoke but in the end thoroughly enjoyed myself – not sure that I convinced anyone that I am Britain’s next pop-sensation, but no-one seemed to mind my singing and everyone had a thoroughly good time.

Actually the general trend amongst my friends does seem to be ‘moving away’ at the moment! Mark & Chris have gone ex-pat-for-pay, Joe R has gone into tax-exile in Eastern Europe, Ping is spending more time in Malaysia and John Mc has gone on sabbatical from his job (so I’ve lost him as an occasional lunchtime companion.) It seems to be all change. That said, we are now living closer to Rod & Jess in Forest Hill, and we hope to see more of them… before they sell-up and move down to Wimbledon.

Ah, well, such is life. I’ll have to make a few new friends to spend time with.

On the plus side, Chris C has been down a couple of times and we have found an agreeable routine of margaritas and Brazilian food at a South Bank restaurant to do our catching up. The last I heard, he was interviewing for an interesting-sounding new job which would have meant him spending more time in London.

Curtis also dropped me a line to say he was hoping to organise a trip to London in October; a couple of the great bands of his teenage years are doing gigs here over the same weekend and it sounds like an opportunity just too good to pass up.

After a fairly hectic few months, we are going to be spending a few weeks in Austria come September. My parents have rented a chalet there near Salzburg and Brett and I will be using one of their spare bedrooms as a base for a bit of rest and recuperation and then some serious sight-seeing.

Before that though we’re going to be spending a week in Catalonia with the Chorus. As I’m not singing, I’m going to spend my time documenting the trip photographically. (Partly because Michael C who is the Chorus’ usual photographer isn’t on the trip and partly because it’s so long since I did any serious photography myself!)

The parents came to visit last weekend to see the new flat and we had a pleasant time around Catford and the West End, caught a couple of shows (That Face & Avenue Q) and generally ate well.

Coming back to the present; last night was the second of the two concerts the Chorus are doing on the theme of Innocence & Experience, mostly based around William Black. Friday night was an okay show, but last night was really quite impressive – and fortunately was being recorded for the archive. Again, I wasn’t singing, so I volunteered to help with the front-of-house merchandising and spent a pleasant couple of evenings chatting to Geoff F, one of our latest new intake who couldn’t sing this concert and so, like me, made himself useful selling programmes and CDs.

So that’s the quick update. Let’s see what happens next.

Fact and Fiction

Is it just me or is truth mirroring fiction over in the States at the moment? The Republicans have a veteran, time-served senator whose views are out of step with a lot of the party base. The Democrats had almost anointed their establishment candidate, someone with previous time in the White House, but were surprised by the emergent campaign of a young Senator from an ethnic minority. Even Super Tuesday didn’t conclude the fight. With both candidates seemingly equally popular this contest could carry on all the way to the nominating convention…

All we need now is an aide in a chicken suit and a disaster in the Republican’s home state which reflects on some of his previous lobbying and we’d have West Wing, season seven, all over again!

A Weekend of Song

After a long week I wasn’t really looking forward to a weekend packed with Chorus activity, particularly as the last couple of days of the week I had been plagued by some minor ailment that left me with a headache and feeling weary all day, so I rather fancied a weekend to indulge myself. In the end though – as I should recognise is almost inevitably the case – the singing was a tonic for me; whatever lassitude remained was banished and, despite the time and effort involved, I felt thoroughly perked up by the recording sessions.

The weekend started on Friday night with a 5:30pm call to the Barbican where we were being employed to do a couple of half-hour sets in the gallery hosting the ‘Final Seduction’ exhibition.

The music all went well enough but the exhibition itself was the remarkable aspect of the evening; all about the Art of sex, it rather left me with the impression that, at least of late, there wasn’t any (art, that is.) Some of the classical work counted as art; there were some lovely oriental miniatures, baroque oil paintings and ancient statues but, of the more modern contributions, there were very few that I’d consider hanging on my own wall.

Some of it was just plain bad; there were some highly ‘impressionist’ pen-and-ink scrawls, an installation piece which was basically a slide show of a series of couples living their intimate lives and, in another area, a wall-filling silent movie close-up of a woman pleasuring herself while Fauré’s Requiem filled the room. The gallery in which we sang had only three pieces on the wall; large explicit photographs which could easily have been stills from the porn movie of your choice. Erotica? Maybe. Art? Not in my view.

Anyway, after our second set was finished, I headed straight home and slept.

Saturday was an early start to be at the Henry Wood Hall by 10am. The Chorus is recording most of the repertoire from our recent Palladium concert, Accentuate The Positive, as a CD. Last time we did a recording we had trouble getting people to turn up, but this time was much more enthusiastic and we had almost the full choir there. Everyone also seemed to adjust easily to the differing requirements of a recording studio rather than a live venue; the Chorus does have a tendency to bellow when asked to sing loudly, but with sensitive microphones surrounding us we seemed to overcome the urge for once and mostly produced controlled performances. Things inevitably ran late though…

In any case I ducked out early as I needed to cross town and get on a train to Newbury with Ping. Brett had long ago organised us tickets to a production of Merrily We Roll Along at the Watermill Theatre. It was produced by the same guy who did the Company revival in New York that we so loved last year and the production style here was very similar. That said, this show didn’t grab me nearly as much as Company had; it was a professional production though, so well done in that sense.

The theatre on the other hand really did grab me; apparently an old converted mill-house with a hugely picturesque mill pond overhung by weeping willows. In fact it was all so perfectly beautiful that I wondered if it might not be partly artifice. Either way, it’s somewhere I’d like to go back to on a sunny Sunday afternoon to spend some time relaxing. The pre-dinner buffet in front of the open log fire was quite decent too!

The three of us then drove home again, which took a while longer than I expected. I hadn’t realised quite how far out Newbury was!

Today it was back to the CD recording – although only for an afternoon start which meant a bit of quality time with my man in the morning. Today it was the big showtunes; Being Alive, What I Did For Love, One Night Only, Seasons of Love as well as the beautiful Parting Glass and a re-take of Je Ne Regrette Rien, which had had technical difficulties yesterday. It was a second long day, but I still came away feeling buoyed. I am really looking forward to getting a copy of the finished CD now!

The Joy of Song

Strange day today; felt washed-out and fucked-off through most of it, left work early to have a leisurely dinner and spend some time reading before the compulsory Chorus rehearsal tonight. In the end though the singing did me the world of good, it was the final rehearsal for the CD recording which we’re doing this weekend and also for the small gig at the Barbican tomorrow night. I hadn’t originally signed-up to do that one, but I had so much fun singing tonight I thought I’d go along and pitch in; there’s a much nicer feeling to singing in a group of fifty than in a group of one-hundred and eighty!

The One About The Chorus Party

After Italy, the rest of the week was mundane at work.

The only other event of note happened on the Thursday evening; I had a long standing engagement with Ping to go see the Photographic Portrait Prize Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. He had spent a lot of the day with his uncle and things overran a little, so I had dinner in the office and just met him at the gallery.

The finalists this time didn’t impress me as much as last year’s collection had and I was hard pressed to pick one that I’d want to hang on my own wall. Maybe it was just the fatigue dulling my senses or maybe their artistic vision extended along a dimension which I just couldn’t recognise. Perhaps next year…

Saturday was a lazy, non-productive day; my sole achievement being to send an email to friends telling them about a poker game I’m organising.

Saturday evening we went to the Chorus’ Annual Party (We typically hold it in January because we’re so busy performing around Christmas!) but it was all a bit formulaic; held in the long, dark downstairs bar of The Black Cap in Clapham, cheap food laid-on, a short chorus talent show followed by the Annual Awards (mostly light-hearted with a few serious.) We caught up with the people we know but didn’t stay very late.

Today I did some more shirt shopping, having not yet got enough decent ones to see me through a week, and also started looking at wedding venues again: At last night’s party we’d been chatting to John & Nick who got married just before Christmas and John & Rich who are planning theirs for next December and it got us thinking more about what we’d like to do. Watch this space; it may yet achieve critical mass!

A Day in Bologna

This post would really be more correctly titled ‘A Long Day, a Different Office & a Hotel’ but that wouldn’t scan so well.

Since we got back from the States, things have been busy but good. A big project that was being planned through the second half of last year is now underway and I’m trying to manage my time well enough to keep on top of that as well as my regular management duties. One of those duties needed me at our Bologna Office and yesterday was the appointed day.

Given that I’m now into my second very early start in a row, it all seems a bit of a dreamlike fugue. The earliest train, being worried about making the connection at London Bridge, Gatwick being a seamless transition to an almost empty plane, the taxi ride to the office with the driver spending most of the time with mobile phone pressed to his ear… In the end I needn’t have worried about the connection; I only had to cross from one side of the platform to the other to make it and, at the other end, I survived the drive unscathed.

Our office in Bologna is spacious and new looking; although based in one of the imposing old buildings that line the colonnaded streets towards the centre of town, it’s salons of old have been turned into high-ceilinged office space. I was there mostly to help with the transition after losing a member of staff who had been very involved in their IT and office administration. It involved a couple of meetings with the senior staff and lunch with the Operations Manager, all of which was pleasant and productive.

Once the working day was over I hopped into a taxi to my hotel near the airport; I was overnighting at the Bologna Sheraton before catching an early flight back to London. The hotel was an interesting experience; a combination of an international brand with some stereotypical Mediterranean mañana attitude. It is a modern conference centre amid derelict lots on the outskirts of the airport; the foyer is clad in acres of marble and above your head floating bridges link one sinuous wing to the other. The rooms are spacious and nicely furnished and have all the modern conveniences – although the free Internet didn’t work and the only free channel on the television was the one that told you how to pay for the rest (and since they were all in Italian anyway there was no chance of that!)

Dinner in the restaurant was pleasant, although my tasty portion of taglioline with smoked salmon and asparagus was a little on the ‘nouveau’ side for the price. I ordered a cake for dessert to help fill me up but I suspect something was lost in the menu translation as what I was served was closer to a thick biscuit; again, a little bit smaller than I’d have hoped, but impeccably presented. The waiting staff had laid knife, fork and spoon for me when I ordered, clearly not wanting to be accused of limiting my options for how to eat the thing. The spoon seemed an unlikely choice – I had visions of dessert flying tiddlywink-like off the flatware and into the soup of the glamorous lady at the next table – so I set-to with the knife and fork. This wasn’t really practical either but at least I managed to divide up the ‘cake’ into bite-size chunks without any projectile incidents. From there I proceeded with my fingers, which seemed more sensible than trying to scoop up the fragments with either fork or spoon. Dignity is all in the mind and today I was a positive thinker.

I got as early a night as my body-clock would allow and, once asleep, slept well.

That body-clock of mine is a strange thing though; on a regular weekday my alarm goes off at 06:30 and it is a struggle to stay awake long enough to get up. Both days of this trip my alarm has been set for 04:30 – which today was effectively 03:30 – and yet both days I have snapped awake a few minutes before the alarm was due to go off and had no trouble immediately getting out of bed: The human mind once again displaying its peculiar flexibility I think.

This has got to be the only hotel I have ever encountered where breakfast service begins at 04:45. I suppose it makes sense for an airport hotel though and it suited me fine as I needed to eat around 05:15. The lights were still dimmed when I came down, the few guests in evidence moved like silent grey ghosts, accompanied only by the hum of the wheels on their carry-on bags and occasional, subdued conversation at Reception.

I mused as I sat in the foyer awaiting the courtesy bus about the attempt at oriental styling that I hadn’t noticed the previous evening. It only amounted to a few large bonsai and some bamboo furniture and I wondered if perhaps it was part of the Sheraton brand that the Italians just couldn’t be bothered with; it seemed too half-hearted an effort to have been a real intention of the hotel’s interior designer.

Although the airport shops were all closed (so no pannetone gifts for the team or my sister) the airport was a breeze; In the past I’ve not done much travelling in the mode of jet-setting businessman but between printing your own boarding pass at the office and travelling with just a carry-on, it’s all fairly painless. (On Tuesday I had even managed to find a branch of Boots which stocked travel-size toiletries, so I came equipped with the full range of bathroom paraphernalia in sub-100ml containers; far nicer than making do with the cheap hotel-provided bodywash and shampoo.)

The flight was uneventful and being chased by the dawn gave it a certain beauty; all textured horizons and cloud peaks tipped with peachy-pink morning sunlight.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

We went to the Dome today to see Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. Rosie, Brett and I met up with Ping and Rod & Jess and had lunch at a branch of Zizzi before going on into the exhibition.

I have to say I was somewhat disappointed by it; there were some pretty impressive artefacts, including statues and a gilded coffin, but throughout the exhibition there was a general sense of building up to the Tut artefacts; the penultimate gallery contained a group of really beautiful things either used by the pharaoh or wrapped with his mummy; pectorals, a flail and crook, a diadem he wore. Then you move through into the final gallery… for a presentation of x-ray and CAT-scan images of the mummy. It was a bit of an anticlimax; I’d expected not to see the Death Mask but had expected one or more of the other major items from the tomb to be on show. Should have done my homework I suppose…

Maybe we should schedule that Egyptian holiday ahead of a tour the Pacific northwest.

Journey Home

Wednesday was all about the journey home; early start to pick up the suits, brunch with those of the family who could make it, then the trip out to DFW, the pre-flight hassle (which wasn’t actually bad at all) and then the flight itself. I didn’t manage to sleep much but kept occupied throughout.

Disembarked early into a mild morning at Gatwick. Still got a few days of the holiday left though!

New Year's Day

Alarm at 4:30am, to be packed, checked out and at the next-door hotel by 6am for a pick up and transfer to the airport for our 7am helicopter tour of the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, The Grand Canyon and the Las Vegas Strip.

Plenty of good photo-opportunities from the air – although a lot of them spoiled by reflections of me in the glass. Probably better to check out the pictures though… We stopped for breakfast at a ranch at the half-way point and spent a while looking up at Spirit Mountain, drinking coffee and enjoying the warmth of the wood-burning stove. The morning was clear but cold; there was ice over the streams and the horses’ water troughs and the place had a serene feel to it – albeit somewhat diluted by one of the ranch hands running a bulldozer back and forward over the yard for some reason… It may be a ‘dude ranch’ but they still have some genuine work to do.

As well as the tour stop-offs, they also do overnight trips where you come for dinner, sit round a campfire and sleep in a log cabin. It may sound cheesy, but I wouldn’t mind doing it; I enjoy camping when someone else is doing all of the chores!

Brett and I were talking later about our future holiday plans and we both agreed we enjoy the natural phenomena more than the manmade sights like Las Vegas - not that we haven’t enjoyed Vegas and we may yet return for a second trip, but it’s not refreshing especially; it’s a big city just like London except some of the attractions are different. We are thinking of doing some kind of a road-trip, like the one I did back in 2002. We made an abortive attempt at planning an itinerary down the west coast of the USA last year, but it proved too difficult to get everything into one trip, so I think there may be a few trips covering less ground being planned in the coming years.

Anyway, the helicopter trip back to the city was smooth and direct. The courtesy coach’s first stop was at our hotel, so we had enough time to take in the King Tut museum at the Luxor before heading to the airport. We are visiting the real Tutankhamen exhibition at the Dome on Friday anyway and a Las Vegas’ Casino recreation had lots of potential to be bad, but it was advertised as showing recreations of many of the major artefacts found in the tomb, as well as a reconstruction of the tomb itself that I was sure wouldn’t be part of the exhibit of the originals. In the end it was worth the $10; the descriptions of the items were sometime comical in their poor grammar, but the recreations of the thrones, chariots, necklaces, shabti and tomb furniture were impressive to see up close; particularly the golden sarcophagus. I wasn’t awed in the way I expect to be in the presence of the real thing, but now I can better imagine what Carter saw when he opened the tomb.

After the museum, we were both beginning to feel the strain; they’ve been pretty much non-stop days in Vegas, so we decided just to head to the airport, see if we could get an earlier flight and, if not, doze at the gate until we were called.

All the flights that day were already overbooked (including ours) so we had to wait for our booked slot. We had lunch and then took advantage of McCarran’s free Internet to check mail, upload blogs and so forth. We were travelling with only carry-on baggage and the can of deodorant that I’d unwittingly ‘smuggled’ through security at DFW got flagged and confiscated by security. Such is life. At least I’d thought to leave my Leatherman in Dallas!

The flight back to Dallas was no less cramped or temperate than the flight out had been and I was glad when it was over and I could uncoil from my seat. We got a fairly early night once back at the house; it had been a very long day.

New Year in Las Vegas

After breakfast we napped a while, then I caught up on writing my blog while Brett went out in search of a shirt to wear tonight. He didn’t manage to bring back a shirt, but did pick up a couple of tickets to the Cirque du Soleil show, Zumanity. We did the roller-coaster outside New York – New York before lunch (surprisingly it was less thrilling than the previous night’s ride at the Sahara!) – then did some more napping in the late afternoon to make sure we were up for reaching midnight then got up and headed back along to New York – New York for the show.

Las Vegas Boulevard is closed to traffic for New Year’s Eve and crowds were already beginning to gather along its length and at the massive eight-lane intersections. Revelry had started early in the afternoon as people started drinking. There were hawkers all along The Strip offering silly hats, air-horns, sparkly necklaces, etc. and Budweiser had set up trailers at intervals along the roadside which appeared to be nothing more than big beer kegs. They were serving into what looked like two- or three-pint plastic mugs with handles that looked a bit like the measuring jugs back home and pretty much everyone under the age of thirty seemed to be carrying one. For all the drinking going on though, everything was good-natured.

The show Zumanity is a somewhat naughty, somewhat erotic cabaret stage-show of humour, song, gymnastics and dance; all very enjoyable, and it provided us with free feather-boas which later proved a big hit on The Strip.

The crowd had thickened by the time we’d finished the show and had a quick bite to eat. It wasn’t oppressive though and throughout remained very well-behaved, if a little loud at times – but that was all part of the celebration. At (roughly) a minute before midnight all of the big display screens outside the major casinos put up the same countdown – which were amusingly out of synch with each other – and we joined in the chant as midnight approached and the fireworks began.

Having seen New Year’s Eve firework shows in London and Edinburgh, I have to say I was rather disappointed with Las Vegas. We were worried to begin with that, being stuck at the end of The Strip, we might not get the full effect. In the end though we needn’t have worried as the display was identical from the top of each of the hotels participating. There wasn’t any choreography or synchronisation to music, it was just the sequential letting-off of a vast number of fireworks; really nothing I couldn’t have organised myself with the right budget down at Fireworks R Us! Still it was an impressive sound and light show and rounded-off the evening nicely.

The fireworks were done before a quarter-past the hour and the crowd began to disperse. I tried calling home, suspecting my parents would already be up by 8am GMT, but the network couldn’t connect the call – predictably, I suppose. Back at the hotel we were straight to bed as we had an early start planned for our last day.

More Vegas

Today seems to be the day of the mobile phone. It’s been pretty much silent through the trip so far but this morning at 3:40am I got a call from Ryan C, a guy I worked with at Saga, to tell me he was at a loose end in London and did I fancy a coffee. At 4am I got a text message from Jeremy F inviting us to birthday drinks later in the week. Around 9am Chris C called from home to wish me a happy New Year and advise me on the best place to see the New Year fireworks in Vegas. Since then there’s been a steady stream of text messages from people wishing us Happy New Year.

We had actually planned a 5am start this morning to catch the sunrise that we missed yesterday, so on the whole the messages weren’t a problem. As we were dressing, the TV news told us that New Zealand had already celebrated the New Year (at 3am local time) and briefly contemplated the huge Earth spinning on its stately axis; I thought of one of my work colleagues who is down there with his family. They were already in 2008 while we had another 19 hours to go!

We drove out to a viewpoint outside the city as dawn was beginning to break and I think I got some good pictures of that, although I’ll probably need to carefully process the shots of the first sunlight hitting the hills beyond, as the morning was hazy again. There was a distinct layer of grey/green smog hanging over the valley this morning. Not pretty!

After that early morning outing we came back to the hotel, napped a while then went down to the buffet for a second (more substantial) breakfast. It was busier this morning than it had been at dinner the first night and we had to queue for a while to get in (another parallel with Disney; endless queue-management in front of each attraction…)

Then we took a stroll through the connecting shopping mall to the Mandalay Bay hotel next door; a much nicer joint than the somewhat down-at-heel Luxor! Whenever I come back to complete my exploration of Vegas, that’s where I want to stay.

Viva Las Vegas

Sunday started early; Las Vegas is two hours behind Dallas and I had been having trouble adjusting my sleep pattern anyway, so at 5am I was wide awake. I coaxed Brett out of bed to come with me to do some early morning photography in the hills surrounding the city.

We paused in the hotel food court for McBreakfast. The place was deserted apart from a few folks who looked like extras from Jerry Springer, The Opera; one was clearly a Working Girl finishing her ‘shift’ and then there was the couple who looked like the very definition of trailer-trash… hollow eyes, grey skin, long greasy-looking hair, wearing shellsuits. Actually, they seem to make up about half of the denizens of the casino; very few of the folks playing all those slot machines look like they can afford it. There is a certain horrible pathos about the look of them and the looks on their faces; glazed concentration, tinged with a vain, slightly desperate hope. If Dante were alive today, he’d include endless rows of slot machines as one of his circles of Hell.

Anyway, by the time we got into the desert the sun was already well up and a haze was beginning to form so I didn’t get the early-morning-sunlight-on-the-hills shots that I was hoping for. However just being in the desert in the morning was worthwhile in itself. It is pure and silent and beautiful – quite the refreshing contrast to the clutter and noise of the city.

After a couple of hours driving a circuit through the desert west of the city, we headed southeast with a view to visiting the Hoover Dam which isn’t far away. We stopped briefly in Boulder City for a coffee and to visit a cash machine and I was impressed by the township; it was almost chocolate-box pretty, very well kept and the people we encountered in the Starbucks gave it a real small-community feel.

From Boulder the road was clear (and in very good condition compared to Texas!) until a couple of miles from the dam, when it slowed to a stop-start queue for the rest of the way. There was a security checkpoint a mile or so before the dam itself where the police were randomly pulling cars aside to search (because terrorists would never plan for that!) but the congestion seemed to be caused simply by the weight of traffic on a narrow mountain highway leading to a tourist attraction.

The dam is located very picturesquely and we decided that, having come all this way, we should take the full tour which, as well as visiting the turbine rooms, involved a trip into the heart of the dam itself. I was surprised by their policy on photography though – they were happy for us to take as many as we liked. A far cry from the camera Nazis you find in some places! I think my personal highlights were standing in one of the bypass tunnels and looking at the enormous 30-foot wide pipe which delivers water to the generators and later looking out of a ventilation duct in the face of the dam and thinking of the huge mass of water behind me. Seeing one of the actual turbines in pieces for an upgrade was pretty impressive too!

Back at the hotel we got cleaned up for the evening and tried to plan our remaining time in Las Vegas. Having only come here for a few days, expecting it to get old fairly quickly, I’m surprised by how much I want to do while I’m here; it really is a grown-up Disneyworld! We’ve booked ourselves onto a helicopter and trail-wagon tour of the Grand Canyon for early New Year’s day before our flight and are planning to do the Star Trek Experience tomorrow, as well as some day time photography along The Strip.

We took the monorail from the MGM Grand all the way along to Sahara Station and walked from there to the Stratosphere with a view to having dinner there either tonight or tomorrow. They were fully booked for tonight but weren’t sure about New Years Eve (!?) and we should contact their reservation line to check… In the end we ate at the Nascar Café in the Sahara before riding the little rollercoaster they have and taking the monorail back south.

The journey on the monorail is accompanied by two recorded voices; one is the overly solicitous lady trying to make sure no-one sues anyone by warning you to hold on to the handrail every time the car accelerates or decelerates and lets you know that the doors are about to close and what the next stop is… the other voice is the cheesiest talk-show-host kind of inane drivel and terrible jokes. It would be so much better if they just played you some elevator music while you look out of the windows, as the monorail gives you scenic views of most of the big hotels on both the old and new parts of the Strip.

On the way back to the Luxor, we got off a stop early and went to see the Bellagio Fountain show.

Transfer Day

Dinner with Kevin & Chris was delicious; we went to a rather smart steakhouse and had some very tasty beef. The only complaint was that the desserts were too big; seriously, they were obscenely large even with two people sharing!

On Saturday morning, after overnighting with K&C, we headed back to the parents’ for some brief packing and then on to the airport. The flight to Las Vegas was cramped and too warm but otherwise uneventful. On arrival we could see our hotel (The Luxor) as we disembarked from the plane but, to pick up our hire car, we had to go and find the Car Rental Centre (a courtesy bus ride away) and then find out which of the rental companies was the agent for Auto-Europe (the company Opodo named, without further instructions, as our car provider.)

Eventually in possession of a maroon retro-design Chevrolet we navigated a congested Las Vegas Boulevard to the hotel, only to find we had further major navigation to do to find the check-in through the casino!

The hotel is a pyramid, but it’s only a shell. The hotel rooms are contained in the shell – meaning the lifts move diagonally; a very strange feeling the first time you use them. In the void within the pyramid is a lower floor containing the casino, restaurants and bars and an upper floor containing the other attractions (more retail, a wedding chapel, a museum and a theatre.) There’s also a further level below the ground floor whose only public area seems to be a large buffet restaurant.

We ate and then set out to explore The Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard.) We didn’t really get very far, just completing a circuit between the four casinos near our intersection; the Excalibur, the Tropicana, New York – New York and the MGM Grand. It took a while, even with the overhead walkways connecting the buildings, especially as I kept wanting to take pictures of everything. We were pretty tired though and got a relatively early night, not long after 9pm local time.

More Shopping

More shopping today; Brett got the suitcase he’s been after and I got a couple of pairs of trainers and a pair of formal shoes to wear with my suits. We headed out around White Rock Lake, where I got some good photos last year, but alas nothing looked good this time around, the season being most definitely Winter rather than Fall.

After lunch by the lake we headed back to Susan’s to pick up her, Jesse and Steve and go to watch I Am Legend, the new Will Smith movie. It turned out to be very good; excellent creation of an abandoned Manhattan (can’t wait to see The Making Of… to find out just how they did that!) and a great performance by Will Smith, who is the only person we see for most of the movie. I’d definitely recommend you go see it – but go see it with a friend you can hold on to during the scarier bits!

Off out for dinner and drinks with Kevin & Chris tonight and then Vegas tomorrow!

A Day in a Paragraph

Bit of a so-so day; did more shopping and bought good cheap stuff. Was suffering from a possibly-migraine headache through most of the day though so was pretty slothful. Shops in the morning, lunch at the family restaurant (including minor family tiff), a bit more shopping after lunch, coffee with Kevin again (more conversation today though) and then home. We were supposed to be having dinner with an old friend of Brett’s today but I wasn’t feeling up to going out and Brett felt that he could do with a quiet night as well, so we rearranged.

Boxing Day

Brett’s mum did us a cooked breakfast this morning. I ducked out of the gravy (really a savoury white sauce) and had jam on my biscuits (actually light, scone-like cakes) instead, which seemed to satisfy honour all round. (Brett has given me lots of grief previously about not appreciating the American tradition that is Biscuits & Gravy for breakfast…)

We (Brett, Donna and me) headed out to a nearby opticians mid-morning to get Brett some new glasses made, as his prescription has changed recently. From there we headed on to Northpark Mall for what ended up being a not-very-satisfying shopping trip. Everything was more crowded than it had been on Christmas Eve and neither Brett nor I managed to find much of what we were after. After we’d given up on the shopping we met up with Kevin and Carter for a coffee at the nearby Barnes & Noble bookshop. I also picked up a book I’ve looked at a few times but always resisted buying; 1,000 Places To See Before You Die.

Dinner had been planned for a Tex-Mex place called Chilli Gordo’s. I recall we ate there last time we were here and the food was good. Sarah & Andy and family were there, along with Susan & Ali’s crew. We headed back to their place for dessert and coffee afterwards and had a few games of Spades. After the game though, I fear I wasn’t much company as I managed to doze off again. Don’t know what’s the matter with me; I’m normally much better at getting over jetlag than this.

Headed home afterwards and straight to bed.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was another early awakening, followed by reading until the house stirred. Nothing much happened in the morning. We went over to Sarah and Andy’s place for lunch, along with Jim & Donna and Susan & Ali and their family and had a pleasant few hours. I’d forgotten that Andy keeps tropical fish and lizards.

In the afternoon we took in a couple of movies; firstly, The Golden Compass with Ali which I wasn’t too impressed with. The storyline seemed too hurried and wasn’t particularly well written. After a brief trip back home, we went on to see Sweeny Todd with Kevin. This was a much better movie; from what I recall a fairly faithful rendering of the Sondheim story. It looks very much like you would expect Tim Burton movie to look but then, given the story, how could it look better? They don’t stint the gore, though; each slashed throat is seen in excruciating close-up.

Christmas Eve

In the end we were an hour and a half late getting away from Gatwick and I think that time tipped the flight into the interminable range. The gap between onboard meals didn’t help either. After eight hours of fasting, a small chicken roll and a 3cm square of fruitcake isn’t enough to satisfy me.

Unusually the standard US welcoming formalities (standing in line for an hour to be photographed and fingerprinted by Immigration) didn’t piss me off and once I had been processed by the bureaucracy, we were straight through to pick the luggage and out to meet Ali and his son Jesse, who had come to collect us.

The moon had only just risen as we drove across Dallas and it was massive in the sky. I wished I had taken my camera as carry-on baggage, rather than leaving it buried in my suitcase where it would have been a real hassle to get out.

Back at the ranch Donna was cooking up spaghetti and not long after we arrived, most of the rest of the family showed up to welcome us. After dinner we played board games until people were ready to head home. I think the napping on the plane helped me avoid dozing off too early in the evening and in the end we lasted until around 10pm before turning in for the night.

Christmas Eve started early for me; jetlag had me awake around 4am so I lazed and read a while until we headed out for breakfast with Brett’s dad to the nearby Waffle House. Jim likes the venue and since it’s open (I think) 24-hours a day, it’s the ideal spot for us to get breakfast when we’re up really early.

Brett and I took the festive turkey over to Susan’s house late morning and then went on to some of the nearby malls to do some shopping. We were surprised by how un-busy it was for Christmas Eve but weren’t going to complain. In the end I bought a couple of new suits, shirts and ties, a couple of pairs of jeans (I mean, at £12 for a pair of Levi 501’s, how could I not?? They’re £40-60 in the UK!) and some new chinos. Brett was looking for stuff too but didn’t find what he was after.

Around 6pm we headed back to Susan’s house for the Christmas dinner and present opening. The whole family was there and a substantial amount of food was laid on. After eating, the family gathered in the den to open the Christmas presents arrayed before the tree. There followed the inevitable chaos as the younger nephews and nieces set to. Carter and Joey both received Transformers toys which can be changed from being a rifle which shoots foam darts into either a plane or a truck. The two of them spent the rest of the evening constantly changing them back and forth; there was no game-play with the toys in either configuration (apart from occasional shooting of darts at people) the joy of the toy seemed to be in changing it from one configuration into the other. And this they did, with gusto.

My recollection of the end of the evening is vague; I think I began to nod-off before 10pm.

The Christmas Trip Begins

Well, once again the Magical Packing Fairies failed to show up and I was left to organise my own suitcase. Turns out I was better organised than Brett though as he still had packing to do after the alarm went off (at 5am!) this morning.

London is blanketted under a heavy fog this morning but the traffic was lighter than I'd feared. A bit of congestion on the approach to the terminal is all. For once BAA had everything working and the 'security' process was rapid.

We boarded on time but are now being de-iced while awaiting a slot from Air Traffic Control. The Captain reckons it could be an hour...

A Perfect Moment

Today felt like a holiday; a really nice holiday.

I was only in work for a couple of hours. I arrived straight into a good meeting, proof-read and sent a report I’d written yesterday, did an interview over video conference with a potential new recruit in Bologna and then got on a train to Oxford. It’s the company Christmas party tonight but I’m skipping that this year to hear the BBC Singers sing music from the Tudor period in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford.

I arrived at the hotel around 3pm. Brett had booked us a room at the Malmaison which is a converted gaol. It’s all very nicely done and I especially loved the heated slate bathroom floor! As Brett wasn’t due until early evening I had a wander around the town centre. I think I probably have been here before, but likely on a very brief city tour with a group as I don’t recognise it particularly. Some of the town reminds me of Edinburgh – grand architecture in white stone – but not much of it is Georgian and the architectural styles vary quite a bit.

Brett arrived a little after five, a bit worried about whether we’d make the concert on time (it was due to start at 6pm.) In the end we had no difficulty as the College was only a ten-minute walk from the hotel. The chapel was everything you would expect from an Oxbridge College; candlelight, carved stone and wood, stained glass, stalls and pews lining the walls. It was also quite cold, which tempered the enjoyment somewhat. The music was lovely, although I don’t think the acoustic was sufficiently good to really let you hear all forty parts of Spem In Alium. I’m looking forward to downloading the MP3 when the performance is broadcast tomorrow night, in the hope that the positioning of the microphones will make the recording clearer.

The College itself looked well worth a visit too and we both agreed we’d like to come back to Oxford to explore it more closely. Looks like a weekend break in the Spring is in the offing!

Afterwards we strolled back to the hotel and had dinner in the brasserie before retiring for an early night in our beautifully appointed cell.

Beowulf et al

A good day today; got the telecom terms and conditions agreed, got the SAN and the Scottish ISP change signed-off, got the outstanding IT Policy written, got my monthly report drafted and cleared my inbox.
To finish the day off nicely had a leisurely dinner with Ping at 'Canteen' under the Festival Hall then went to see Beowulf in 3D at the Waterloo IMAX. Really enjoyed the movie; a good, (truly!) classic plot with lots of human grit and ambiguity. The CGI was excellent; photorealistic in places! The 3D was used to good effect throughout. Only fly in the ointment was the almost comical, Austin Powers-esque modesty protection of the naked hero. Apart from that it didn't feel like a Hollywood movie at all. Would watch it again.
Home to pack now; off to Oxford tomorrow for a concert at Merton College and a night in a smart hotel with Brett.