My desert island discs

I am unlikely to appear on Desert Island Discs but that doesn’t stop me thinking about what I would pick if I were on there. Here’s my current list of the eight pieces of music. The luxury would have to be a football I think. Not sure about the book. Maybe The Catcher in the Rye.

Stay Beautiful – Manic Street Preachers

An American Trilogy – Elvis Presley

This is a Low – Blur

Heart-Shaped Box – Nirvana

Fire in My Heart – Super Furry Animals

Over and Over – Hot Chip

Fujitive Motel – Elbow

Sex on Fire – Kings of Leon

 

Got Blur tickets

Woo-hoo!

 

Kings of Leon at The Orpheum, Boston

In the 12 years that I have been travelling the world on business I have never managed to be in a city the night one of my favourite bands is playing. The day after, plenty of times.

The day before, numerous occassions. So it was with great excitement that I foud that the Kings of Leon would be playing in Boston on the last night of my trip there to attend our client conference.

There were plenty of English and Irish fans in attendance which made for a great atmosphere despite the restrictions of having to stand in place in an all-seater venue. KoL were as awesome as I hoped they would be – one of the best live bands I’ve seen.

Here’s a shockingly bad picture of the band in action.

 

You know you’re a geek when…

you laugh at science jokes. I swear I didn’t start off being a geek, but when you spend more than a decade writing about computers it brings out your geeky side. Anyway. I just laughed out loud at this:

And then blogged about it. Which proves that I am beyond all hope.

 

Nike Youth Rally: London

I took part in Nike’s Human Race event at the weekend. I’m not sure I’ll bother with whatever Nike come up with to follow it up with though.

For someone who prefers running to be a solitary experience the gathering of thousands of Nike-endorsed runners was certainly a bizarre experience. The weather certainly didn’t help matters as it started chucking it down just before the second wave of runners started and continued until about 10 minutes before I finished.

I don’t mind running in the rain but these were the worst conditions I’ve ever run in, although that was beyond Nike’s control of course.

I’m sure starting the London event at Wembley Stadium seemed like a good idea at the time (and it certainly did as I handed over my admission fee) but it turns out there are nicer places in London than the back streets of Wembley to run around in the dark in the pouring rain (even if the stadium itself did make for a spectacular backdrop).

There were also far too many people considering the course was very narrow in many places and the dark, the rain, the location and the sheer number of people combined to make for treacherous conditions. I would be very surprised if someone hadn’t seriously injured themselves (particularly the bloke I saw run testicles-first into a metal barrier).

The conditions, combined with the fact that I hadn’t trained as much as I could have done, meant that my sub-46min target pretty much went out of the window after the first stop-start kilometer, and in the circumstances I was pretty pleased with personal best 47.49 including a negative split (my first in any race, I think).

Wembley stadium is pretty cool though. It was nice to be able to stand roughly where the centre circle would be and imagine it full. The concert before was okay as well. Pendulum were entertaining and a good choice. Moby was a bit mental. Ten points to the first person to locate him in this low quality photo:

 

The worst film ever

I haven’t seen this film in a while but it is so bad I wanted to make sure that the phrases “the worst film ever” and “Match Point” are forever connected on the Interweb. I am referring to Woody Allen’s 2005 romantic drama. It really is a steaming stinking turd of a film.

The script is awful, the acting is wooden, the plot is tenuous at best, the story is dull, the characterization is hackneyed and and the twist, such as it is, is totally contrived. Jonathan Rhys Meyers in particular stinks up the screen like a month-old soiled nappy soaked in rancid milk.

Apparently Woody Allen couldn’t agree to financing to make this in the US, so relocated to London. I can only assume the UK backers and actors were too busy falling over themselves to work with Allen to consider what a bilgefest it would be.

There is only one good reason to watch this film and it begins with S and ends with carlett Johansson.

 

The best goal ever

I was thinking about this goal today for some reason and I have a few minutes to spare so I decided to blog about it. It’s not exactly an unusual choice as it regularly tops ‘best goal’ or ‘best World Cup goal’ polls but sometimes there is wisdom in them there crowds.

It is: Carlos Alberto for Brazil versus Italy, Word Cup Final 1970 (4-1).

There’s a few things about his goal that make it special for me:

1. The contrast between the poetic intricacy of the build up play and the savage thuggery of the finish shows the best of both sides of “the beautiful game”.

2. The fact that Carlos Alberto appears from off-camera suggests that the Brazilians have ascended to a higher footballing plane and are playing via telepathy . The effect is even better from this angle.

3. He absolutely ruddy twats it. Why pass it in to the corner when you can tear a hole in the net? That’s my philosophy.

4. What a way to cap off winning the World Cup final.

So there it is, the greatest goal ever. You may disagree but you are wrong. And now I’m off to 5-a-side to attempt to recreate it.

 

Important safety advice when using this floor sander

Do: Read the instructions.

Do not: stand on the sander while in the vicinity of a baby.

Unfortunately it didn’t come with any instructions, which is partly why it took two replacement sanders, a lot of swearing and 36 hours to go from this:

to this:

And what a pleasant weekend it was.

 

2008 Edinburgh Marathon

I had a feeling it would be harder than it looked. The short version is as follows: I ran the full distance in a time of 4 hours, 2 minutes and 24 seconds, and it was bloody hard work. Never again.

The longer version (with pictures!):

(Approaching the start)

With the first couple of miles being run downhill the advice was to avoid going off too fast. I took this a bit too literally and, having missed the first mile marker, found myself a full minute behind schedule at the 2-mile marker.

After a couple of quick miles I got myself more or less back on schedule and managed to maintain an even pace as we ran along the coast through Portobello and Musselburgh and into Cockenzie and Port Seton.

(Heading towards Portobello, I think)

Just past the halfway point I had to stop to re-tie a shoelace, putting about a minute behind schedule as we made our way through Longniddry and up the hill into the grounds of Gosford House.

(Quick turn at Longniddry)

It was all going well up until about the 19-mile mark, but as we left Gosford House and began to head back towards the finish at Musselburgh race course things started to go awry. Between here and 25 miles my legs pretty much seized up and I slowed to what could best be described as a shuffle as I rapidly went from 3, to 5 to 8 to 10 to 13 minutes behind schedule.

At 25 miles I realized I was in danger of not making it under 4 hours and decided to push for the finish. For the first time in about 6 miles I was actually doing something resembling running, but it only lasted about 100 yards before my left hamstring went into spasm and I had to stop completely before I could stand on it again before slowly getting up and running.

From there it was a gentle jog to the finish, coming in at 4.02.24 and 2,948th place (which was ahead of my predicted finishing position – and race number of 3636, despite being 20 minutes behind schedule. I got a medal, a sense of genuine achievement, and a ridiculous T-shirt tan. Never again, but it was worth it.

 

Pa pa, pa-pa-pa-pa, pa-pa, pa pa!

Some time ago I mentioned that I would be using this blog to document my training as I prepared to take part in the Edinburgh Marathon. Things didn’t quite work out that way. I’ve been training all along but I never quite got around to writing about it on here. The event is this weekend and it’s too late to back out now.

There’s not much point going over the training I’ve done to date, but I will say this: it’s much more difficult than it looks on TV. I’m sure most people’s impressions of the marathon in the UK is of smiling fun-runners waving at the camera as they pass a London landmark accompanied to the theme from The Trap.

It turns out it’s not that simple. Apart from anything else the theme from The Trap is only 3 minutes 20 seconds long, so I calculate I’ll have to listen to it 66.8 times before I reach the finish line. I suspect I may get a bit bored of it by then.

I’ll be back online at some point next week with a (potentially photographical) update on how the race went. In the meantime, in the highly unlikely event that anyone is a) reading this and b) hasn’t already done so, you can sponsor me over here.