Christmas Time, Whiskey and Rhymes
Despite my previous fears about not having seen any pied wagtails, my tree-acquiring shenanigans caused me to almost run one of the tiny clockwork creatures over. I’m now seeing them as a precursor of Christmas cheer. It surprises some friends and acquaintances that I’m so enthused about the season. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the myths of Jesus, and far more to do with rather liking the dark wintry weather and having an excuse to batten the hatches and avoid almost all human contact for a fortnight. We will see some family folkses, but Christmas is about personal space, peace and freedom for me these days. And opening presents. Oh, and giving some too.
The whole of last week turned into a blur of activity, or late nights, or drinking – or something that stopped me getting anything done. I’ve finally reclaimed Monday evenings now that the MissImp Level 1 course is over, though I’m rather missing my Parky time. Instead I figured I’d get stuff done… nope.
Film: Free Birds
On Tuesday I “allowed” myself to be dragged to the cinema for Free Birds – a film which should have been awful but instead beat our expectations to a pulp and had us laughing all the way through. Good work potential-disaster-flick. It’s basically a remake of the excellent Chicken Run, but with time travel – and turkeys. I’m pleased to say I now finally know what American Thanksgiving is about. There’s a particularly good run of psychological assessment gags from the President’s daughter and I found the muscular buttock rivalry between the two big tough turkeys to be very entertaining. I am easily pleased.
On The Flipside
Wednesday evening took me and Martin out for David’s birthday – a trip to the Flipside brewery for a tour and some drinks. They make truly excellent beer and I can’t believe they’re only three years old! Drinks like Dusty Penny will always beat the other beers at the bar if available. It’s a great shame more pubs don’t stock ’em. The tour was fun and highly informative and very open to a wide range of questions from those about tax and the genetic variance of their proprietary yeast to who gets to test out the beers. We had a good time. Much of the tour reminded me of Dad’s cellar and the endless hours spent filling bottles and stamping the caps on before I was even able to drink the stuff. I’ve previously acquired one of their amazing mini-casks (8.8 pints) of ale and may seek to do so again…
Knickerbocker Glorious
I delight in compering this event – sure, I have to get up as if I were going to work but go to Derby instead and spent from 10-3 in the cold outdoors, but the people are ace and I’m allowed to say pretty much whatever I feel like. It’s very freeing turning up and doing the bits between the musical and spoken word acts. Plus it’s nearly Christmas and there are hundreds of weird things to point at like the zimmer frames on the ice rink and the terrifying Dark Crystal people (it must have a name – the folk in costumes where it looks like they’re about half the height of a human with their real face hidden in the massive pack on the back. These ones had monkey faces and curly leather shoes).
I got to enjoy The Tremeloux’s (Scott Thomas & Carl North), 1/3 of Karl & The Marx Brothers (Matt & Adam), Harriet and highly animated punk-poet Dwane Reads. We had a bit of extra time, so Dwane and I had several bouts of improvised beat poetry – grabbing a word from the audience and word-duking it out. We also told some stories, and I spun a nice tale about a man who used a leprechaun to plug a hole in his boat, then stole the little fellow’s gold. It was another brilliant day in Derby. I talked about super-exciting future activity with Matt and went off with my head in a spin.
Both The Tremeloux’s and Karl and The Marx Brothers have tracks on Furthest From The Sea‘s compilation album:
https://soundcloud.com/furthestfromthesearecords/sets/acoustic-nights-at-the
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/121021846″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120450690″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
And Dwane’s got a poetry book out at the mo’ The Annoying Megaphone Pigeon – you may need to contact him to get a copy though:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVwUJOhANc&w=560&h=315]
Harriet’s got a whole bunch of great songs on Souncloud and horrifyingly is about half my age:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/60862120″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
♥ Last Week’s Scribbles
It’s Getting Damned Christmassy In Here – the power of tree.
Events and Excitement
Thursday 12th December 2013
Gorilla Burger: improv comedy carnage
Jam show – a chance for anyone to get on stage, plus the MissImp annual awards ceremony.
The Corner
8 Stoney Street
(off Broad Street)
Nottingham
7.30pm – £4
https://www.facebook.com/events/163535893857233/
Saturday 21st December 2013
![Knickerbocker Glorious]()
Knickerbocker Glorious
A sweet layered stack of free live Entertainment, an abundance of Acoustic Music, a generous measure of Performing Arts. Topped off with a liberal sprinkling of family friendly Comedy. I’m compering!
The Fountain
Derby Market Square
Cathedral Quarter
Derby
11am-3pm – FREE
0 thoughts on “We Have A Problem With Books”
I’m with you on all counts.
This is an amazing post and one that I feel I could have written, minus the humor, readability, and references to A levels. Interestingly, we also have very similar reading tastes and opinions. While I haven’t read everything that you have, I agree with all you said about those I did read. The only place we diverge is that I live in an apartment and had I not decided long ago to get rid of some books when the sheer volume of them reached a critical mass I would surely be dead, crushed under a huge pile of heavy tomes. Although I do miss certain editions I once had, overall it has worked out pretty well for me.
A couple of notes. The Doctor Who book was likely Planet of the Spiders (a less inspired title I can not imagine) and while you’re right about the later Hitchhiker books, the sequence at Milliways in the 2nd book is my favorite part of the “trilogy.”
And lastly, I also still have my copy of the Hardy Boys Survival manual and once tried to make a survival kit like they describe in the book. However, I much prefer an earlier Hardy Boys spinoff, The Hardy Boys Detective Manual, in hardcover, which came out a few years earlier, and had so many great detecting tips. all sadly useless now in the internet era.
We clearly are the finest of people! I have recently declined the opportunity to take all the books I left at my Dad’s house when I left home. It was difficult, but partly from not having seen them for years I managed to get it down from 400 or so to a mere hundredish. I don’t know where I’m going to put them…
Ah yes, that sounds exactly as terrifying a title as I recall. I seem to remember that the cover of Planet of The Spiders was too horrible for me to even want to touch. You make a good point about Milliways. It’s possible I’m conflating several of the THGGTTG books into one.
Ah! I had no idea they did more manuals. I don’t know where I got the Survival Manual, but I suspect it was a marvellous second hand bookshop in Burton on Trent that had a charming Dachshund named Carl who would bark until stroked.