More books

I'm in the middle of reading We Need To Talk About Kevin, and I'm wondering if it shouldn't be classed as horror for prospective parents. Either that or a perfect cure for anyone (like me) getting occasional pangs of broodiness from all my friends' new children.

It's a great book, but I keep finding myself almost mentioning it to heavily pregnant acquaintances of mine, and then realising that's probably not too good for their psyches.

I know there's a twist of some sort, and I'm in that wierd state where part of me wants to flick to the end to find out how awful it gets, and the rest of me is shying away and trying to elongate the experience.

The trouble with that, of course, is that you start trying to second guess what the ending will be. As with any epistolary novel where you only have one side's letters, various questions are provoked.

Is the narrator's ex-husband responding to these letters, or even still alive? Is the narrator herself much more unreliable than we expect - is there going to be some terrible reveal later on: hardly expect her to be the one passing her son his rifle, but who knows?

And there's also a slight dissonance when she recounts their moving in to their new house, or other shared events - how much of this is needed, versus how much is explication for the reader?

Then again, many diaries are written with at least one eye on publication, so it's not fatal to the illusion.

Besides, at times it's very funny: her account of her hypothetical sitar-playing occasional Buddhist lover, constructed out of cliches that feel freshly minted, the narrator's opinion of Montessori schools, and the discussion of the hierarchy of school killers are all very coolly done, but with fantastic barbs.

Occasionally it feels intentionally hard to read, but it's made me give up on Chatter and Tim Harford this week.

Ran 6 miles in 49 minutes, 20 seconds today. 16 tomorrow, and then it's tapering down for Tromso. Strangely quite nervous about the Midnight Sun Marathon this year, and I'm not sure if this is more so than last year or not; in a way, it's much harder than at this point last year, or before Vancouver, because in both cases I hadn't run a marathon six weeks previously. Since I seem to be pushing quite hard on pace at the moment, I don't know if I'm ready for burn-out or not. Let's make it clear now: I have to get round in under four hours, I'll be disappointed if I don't get close to 3:30, and I'll be livid if I fail to beat my time from last year. But heaven knows, these may be unrealistic goals. Should I think of Vancouver being a triumph for the year and be happy with that? Somehow I can't yet: I think at the back of my mind Tromso feels tougher to me, just because it's so much more something that you have to reach into yourself for: even when the whole town comes out to cheer you on, it's not like the crowds in Vancouver.

Also, there's going to be nobody to meet me at the finish line. I think that could be really hard. Sponsorship details going up next week - debating between lupus (claimed one aunt, got a friend who's had it bad for the last six years or so), cancer, or ME - read a really affecting account at u-can-help-me.com the other day, by the wife of a guy I used to know back when I was doing long distance enduro races in 2001 and 2002.

Books

Sunny weekend, not much to do, so I went out shopping on Sunday and bought thirty-odd pounds of books. Finished the first one, and here's what I have to say:
Tour De Force, by Mr Coyle.
This is pretty good stuff actually; although I like It's Not About The Bike, it's maybe a bit dry sometimes. Well, that's probably the wrong adjective; both these books make it clear that dear old Lance is not the Nicest Man Ever To Have Lived, but there's no real sense from the latter of the innate silliness of the Tour.
Coyle, on the other hand, does a good job of relating some of the barminess back to those of us who are not involved, from superstitions about leg shaving/chocolate mousse eating/lift button pressing, through to the priceless image of the Phonak team bus, adorned with an antiquated champ brandishing a Swiss hearing aid (have a picture in my mind's eye of a gleaming 21st century ear trumpet), and to the Belgian huff-puffery, which I'm going to employ in my own office as soon as I'm physically capable.
Things tail off a bit near the end; the trouble is that we're reading now something that was being written whilst Armstrong was working his way to his fifth, so in the knowledge of the next year's triumphs there's no dramatic twist. But then there doesn't need to be, and there's plenty much that I hadn't known about elsewhere, both with Postal and the other teams, to keep the interest up to the end. Nice set of notes summarising the world of cycling for those outside of the peloton too, and lots of footnotes. I'm a sucker for that, having read lots of Terry Pratchett in my youth.
Next on the list - We Need To Talk About Kevin. Oh, and Chatter and The Undercover Economist, which has so far been like an inflated version of Tim Harford's column in the FT. Oh, but then that's what it is, right? Waiting for a display of brilliance to convince me it was worth getting in hardback, but it's running out of time. Given how cross Freakonomics got me (and no, not because I was offended by the abortion=reduction in crime argument or anything like that - it was the cumulative look-at-me-mummy-I'm-so-awfully-clever tone that got my back up) maybe I shouldn't be too hopeful.

Snow snow snow

I hate working between Christmas and New Year. There's nothing to really justify your presence in the office, after all. (Except for me there is, because half the database I'm working with at the moment seems to be breaking, and since my illusion of incompetence can only be maintained by fixing things very fast before anyone notices, my presence at this point is actually quite helpful for continued employment).

But it's crap. It's cold, and there's snow outside, and it's between Christmas and New Year and I'm shattered from working too hard before Christmas, and all I want to do is be in bed. Things are made worse by my mother seeing the dread tidings on the news, that it's snowing and therefore all of Kent is impassable to vehicles. And if you go outside, You Will Die.

As it turns out, this isn't strictly true. OK, so they didn't grit the steep road up to the village where I live, and yes, I did have fun skidding uphill on the way home on the 27th, but by and large the roads are quite safe. Although having spoken to somebody in charge of gritting, who listed all the things wrong with the gritters (eg broken ploughs, oil spilling over the road everywhere, etc...).

So I'm quite demotivated, and therefore found it a real struggle to get to work. (And I'd got Burnout 4 to play on the Xbox, which wasn't half as much fun as I'd hoped, but still required half the night 'testing' it).

Ran home though. That's about 8 miles, through deep snow, including one comedy part in the woods where I got lost. Over the Christmas break, a few trees have fallen over and that makes navigation at night, when all you have is a tiny LED head torch, a little difficult. Took the long route home (slightly less up and down - well, more just up, rather than up and down and then up again) and made it back in 90 minutes (1035 calories). Only to find that the local Lidl was now shut, and the only food in the house was chocolate money. Went round to a friend's, had four pints of beer, went back to bed.

Now, the car was at work, so that meant once I'd summed up the requisite motivation, I then had to run back to work again. Snow's not quite as beautiful in the day. Actually, scratch that, it is beautiful, but in a different way. At night, it looks like it's glowing either red or blue; in the daytime it's just standard white. What was odd was to run along and retrace my footsteps - it hasn't snowed, but nobody else seemed to have been out in the intervening 14 hours.

And the further you get from Hawkinge, the more likely people are say 'morning' as you run past. Unsociable sods in Folkestone, I guess. Although did have one dog chase me as I ran through Saltwood this morning. Shouldn't have worn that face mask...

Not doing my bit for gender relations

Well, the Hot To Cock server is down at the moment, but hopefully it'll be up again soon. Will be ringing somebody up to wreak havoc otherwise...

Haven't posted for a bit because I've had nothing interesting to say, but here's something I needed to clear off the hard drive to make space:

An Incomplete List of Wholly Unsuitable Films To Take Prospective Dates On

If you're a gentleman trying to do things to a lady:
Closer - a bit of an obvious one, which will make it clear that you're quite boring. However, if she likes people swearing, you're probably well in there (must point out that I haven't seen this one just yet)
Roger Dodger - it will be clear what your tactics are
In The Company Of Men sorry this is only NTSC - it will be abundantly clear what your tactics and purpose are

If you're a lady trying to do things to a gentleman:

Awaiting advice from a lady on this. Anything gladly received.

Hot to Cock

The Cushties have been busy. For Emma Pastille's birthday, Mark Cushtie concocted this slice of hot filth from a year's worth of Delia Smith's cookery programmes. Enjoy the majesty of Delia Smith - Hot To Cock...

This is what you get...

Back now. Here's how it went:

After all I'd heard and seen about Tromso being two wooden huts and a runway in the snow, it turned out to be a fair sized town clinging to a well-forested rock, in the middle of a fjord. And it was sunny - so much for the coats, thermal tights and gloves that I'd packed. Luckily I bought some expensive sunglasses out there, guaranteeing that it would be overcast on race day / night.

24 hour sun is very odd indeed. After a few days we got used to it being perpetually half-four in the afternoon, but it was hard to sleep - mainly because we were in a room above the noisiest street in tromso - I think it was the test track for the local bikers - and if we shut the window, we broiled in an atmosphere redolent of sweaty feet and athletic clothing. But never mind.

The actual race was great - the whole town seemed to come out and cheer us on, and the landscape was awesome - great views across the fjord to the snowy mountains, and no rain or wind. For the first half I just trotted along at a steady 7.5 mph, thinking I could carry on at this rate forever. Organisers had other plans. For the second half, we ran back into the town of Tromso, then down to the southernmost tip of the island and back up round the coast to the airport. It was about the time that I rounded the bottom of the island and realised quite how much further I still had to go that I started to bonk.

Plus, they'd cruelly scheduled the half marathon over the second half of the course, and let them off two hours after we went. Thus all of a sudden, having spent the first half overtaking at least one person a kilometre, all these Norweigan freaks in lycra were storming past me. My mind started to go - by about 10k from the end I was feeling like I was going to burst in tears or jump in the lake at any moment, a feeling unimproved when my friend Nick stormed past on his half marathon. Finally, though, it got to one kilometre from the end and a lanky bloke I'd overtaken 14 k before tried to go past me. One last surge of ego and adrenalin and I sprinted past him down to the line. 3:44:48, and 11th in my age category. And no, I don't know how many people were in the category.

Chafed: yup. Better not talk about that. Couldn't walk downstairs without looking like an OAP for two days afterwards. And think I might have sprained my wrist carrying a bag full of cold weather gear back through Heathrow on Tuesday. Otherwise feeling not so bad - it's strange having time in the evenings to do things apart from training...

Sponsor me!

http://www.justgiving.com/conradstjohn

OK, if I'm going to run a marathon, the least the rest of you can do is sponsor me. It's for Cancer Research, a deserving cause.

I've got more to say about motivation and why I'm running this a bit later, but for the moment just put your money down, people. Cheers.

Plodding away

OK, so it's been a while without posting. What have I done in the meantime?

• Failed to do anything for Stopadoodledoo - running aground on a reef of laziness at the moment


• Taken a day off and spent most of it tidying the living room and doing laundry. On the sunniest day of the year. Since then it's been grey and damp. In June, for Pete's sake


• Extracted my bass guitars from the various houses they've been in for the last ten years or so, and started playing with Matt the Rockstar down in Hythe. Like a very inept Squarepusher, I think


• Started to think about the novel I'm going to write.


• And run. Run an awful long way. 197 miles separate 21 April from the 2nd of June. And much less than that separates me from the finishing line in Tromso.

More so, I couldn't say that I feel that much more healthy at the moment, or indeed that much faster. I've lost enough fat that my abdominals are starting to be visible in the mirror, but to balance that my ankles and knees are sore from the pounding they're getting, and my last 20 mile run on Saturday turned into a painful nightmare, hunting for an unvandalised, unlocked public toilet. (Clue: there aren't any between Bickley and Beckenham). On that showing, I'd limp home in a marathon in 4 hours 40, which is just a teeny bit more than I would have wanted...

Anyway, I'm hungry right now, so I'm off to get some lunch. More detail later...

Baking

Made a load of gingerbread last night, and also some cookies, despite a few problems:

1. What's corn syrup? Or rather, what's the British equivalent? (Drat these US based online recipes).
2. Used self-raising rather than plain flour on the cookies. Doesn't seem to have been disastrous.

Conducting testing on people at work, but if it all went well, will post recipe (bodged the recipe I got into something slightly different) and a picture of the results up here later.

Also, started a bit of work on Stopadoodledoo 6. This really should have got going earlier...

More running...

5 miles today. That puts me 0.4 miles behind schedule at the moment, which isn't so much to worry about. Having a good week of it so far, which is a little perplexing, given that this is a hard week - 4 miles/8 miles/4 miles/rest/8 miles/17 miles - and that I felt so rough last week, which was an easy week. Then again, perhaps last week I was suffering the effects of the previous hard week, and now I'm benefitting from the rest. Whatever. Nice, sunny run in the middle of the day. Felt fine for the first 3 fifths, ankles a bit sore for the rest of it. But at least I got out the office and moved around a bit.

Last week, went to the Oval on Friday night. This turned out to be a wonderful case of syncronicity. I'd had the day off and I'd stayed far away from computers, instead assiduously following the List and cleaning the house. Drove back to the parents' and then SMSed everyone asking if they fancied the Oval that night. Which, when I got there, they all did. It was only Monday when I got back to checking emails again that I discovered everyone else had been wondering what to do all day, and had hit on the Oval as the best possible option about half an hour before I texted them. What larks.

Anyway, had to do 12 miles last Saturday, so I couldn't drink a lot. Made the mistake of staying in the Oval all night, but not drinking, so instead I matched Jason pint for pint. Except he was drinking Carling and could go home and sleep it off, whereas I was drinking Coke and thus got home about midnight and spent the next two hours lying in bed thinking my head was going to explode, heart racing and brain thumping away. So it is true: beer is good for you.

Got up at 6am, got dressed, ran for 12 miles. Got home and was stretching just in time for my mother to surface and ask if I was going running any time soon (thanks for that). Then as an act of utter injustice, instead of going back to bed for the rest of the day, got haircut, cleaned car, bought birthday presents, drove back to Kent and didn't get any sleep until I got back from Fran's birthday party at 2am on Sunday. Goths and hen nights do not mix. But on the plus side, the Rock Star and Dale both seem keen on playing with Dirty Burger. First songs: S**t in my mouth, You're Not My Daddy, The German Porn Song, and ... er... a power ballad. Yes, that would be nice.

Why is my heart broken?

I think it's President Bush's daughter's fault.

What do you think?

Women and other misadventure

OK, so I'm injured at the moment and thus might be out of commission for a while, but a boy can hope, right?

1. Toby's put forward a candidate for my affections on the basis that:
a) she talks too much and nobody can understand her
b) she's available
Most likely this has such implications that I should become righteously offended, but I'm sure it's in a good spirit. Personally I'm keen to see what happens, even if it does just flame out in spectacular fashion (and let's face it, that's all grist to the mill for when I get Novel 4 underway / when I finish my Sexual Perversion work).
Points against:
c) She leaves the county soon (probably)
d) Asked the Rockstar his opinion and he was negative, on the basis that "she's mad".

2. I try it on with all my remaining female friends from university who aren't married/with child, and see where that gets me.
Potential for destruction of good self - probably quite high

3. I start leveraging intra-company resources more fully. Or rather, I go and try and pull somebody in the call centre.
a) There's lots of young, nubile female things
b) ... but since I'm the Unholy Dark Lord of the Database, and nothing to do with any of them, I have scant opportunity to meet, greet, and ingratiate myself with them.

So, will attempt each of 1, 2 and 3 in sequential fashion (have tried concurrent, and it turned out a bit of a mess, as well as the expected lowered success rate concomitant with dilution of effort, and the potential moral worries (cf Gyge's Ring, which I must witter on about at some point...). Then report back.

Oh, the pain

Set my alarm for 6.30 this morning. Dragged my sorry body out of bed about then, ate some breakfast and then drove down to work. Started running at 7.30 am.

Felt awful from the start - joints were sore, wasn't getting decent strides in, felt no strength anywhere. The first half of the run (up from Newingreen to Hawkinge) was interminable - lots more very dull flat bits that I don't remember ever running the other way, and the whole thing a collosal grind. Only good bit was a detour in Saltwood from the bridleway, where I found the fabled Devils' Nips, and also a nice little tabletop that somebody's built, hidden in all sides in a little valley beside the main path.

Second half felt better - by then the sun was out, and the second half is always better because you're on the way back. However, took 2 and a half hours to do 14 miles - well outside of pace, which isn't at all good. Plus, the particular shorts I wore had chafed things quite badly. Well, one thing in particular, but seeing as it doesn't get much use at the moment, perhaps little cause for complaint. But you don't want to see that oozing blood when you are getting out of your clothes and into the shower, do you?

Anyway, got back to the folks' about 11.30, had a spot of food with them and then went up town to see Rachel. Spent an eternity getting served in a restaurant, didn't climb at Westway because Rachel failed the registration (something to do with belaying and caribiniers yada yada yada) so then off to the Notting Hill Coronet to watch Maria Full Of Grace - very fun - and now I'm back at the parents and ready to go to bed, because in addition to running 22 miles in the last 39 hours, I've only had 7 hours sleep, and I'd like a bit more, please, before I go to Wales.

Sexual perversion

Considering this as the topic of my master's thesis. For the moment, trying to find out if there's a word for people who have sex with furniture. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Why would I need such a word? Well, the theory I want to posit is that only certain things can constitute sexual perversion, and they're implicitly defined by the current paradigm.

Let's unpick that last clause. Depending on whether you inhabit ancient Greece or late 1990s United Kingdom, if you were the stereotypical inhabitant of that era, you'd have different views on whether pederasty, bestiality and necrophilia were bad things or not. It's unlikely, I feel, that many of the men on the Clapham omnibus/Athens chariot would have a view as to whether sex with furniture was wrong, and less so that they'd even have a view on its possibility. That is, perversion (generally derogated by society at large) is only comprehensible within certain bounds. These bounds move around from time to time, so some things get to count as sexual behaviour in certain societies and not at all in others.

What I'm concerned about is that
a) I'll sound like a relativist, when I'm not sure that's what I am
b) that the above example might suggest I condone such behaviours (and that therefore somebody will be round to break my windows)

{Need to say something about what constitutes acceptable perversion / deviation from the norm - probably best to do with reference to Scandinavians/lesbians/female twin incest/sodomy and the various views presented in FHM... more later}

Early to bed, early to rise...

Ran in. Had to be at meeting for 8am, which required getting my sorry corpse out of bed at 6am, burning a bagel and then setting out at 6.34, into the mists, feeling deathly. Time: well, not sure, because my mother's HRM took a while to fire up, but a bit over 1.08 - let's say 1.10.

Very painful, very slow, but still more than 15 minutes faster than I used to be - so there's a real improvement. If it's actually 9 miles to work, then I'm ahead of pace. If not, I'm not. (Any ideas? I think it's about 8, but the second half is off-road - should that count for 25% more or not?)

Yesterday, cleaned. This took about 2 hours. Everything on the list, except the toilet, which I'm saving for Scott...

One of those mysteries

I need this cleared up for me. Why is it that if you listen to Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues, on the Folsom Prison live album, he can clearly be heard to shout 'SUET!' between the second and third verses?

Or am I going deaf?

More culture - I drank 16 beers and started up a fight

It was sunny on Monday, so of course I went over to Islington to play pool with my cadaverous friend, Dead Looking Hugh. Stopped at the music shop over the road and bought some Johnny Cash, and while I was there a strange album called Nouvelle Vague. Roughly speaking, it's two clever Frenchies and a bunch of chanteuses covering punk and Goth songs in a bossa nova style. My first thought was how hilarious Too Drunk To Fuck is when sung by a French woman in a calm kind of way, but it transcends the joke status it could so easily have and becomes something of beauty instead. Everybody now, sing along...

Today, another stressful day at work. After failing to get up on time, had to make up by running 7 hard miles in the rain and the fog. (From house to Frogholt and back - now I know that I can run fast up big hills too, no matter how painful a discovery that might be). Then sat back with a bowl of salad (I know how to live, me) and watched Mystery Men, a forgotten gem with that large-foreheaded beauty, Janeane Garofalo...

Milk is not good for you

Feeling pretty ropey, but knew I had to do 7 miles today, so I drank a pint of milk and went to bed early. For a laugh, Scott then put the washing machine on at about 11 pm, and then started watching City of God as loud as humanly possible. So after sleeping the sleep of the dead for an hour, I woke up at half-midnight to the sound of human screams and a washing machine on the final spin cycle.
Lay there grumping for half an hour, then dragged myself downstairs and turned the washing machine off. Then back to bed, to lie awake for another hour and a half. Woke up today, felt like death, didn't run in. I'll pay for this lassitude later...

The internet is useful after all

About three years ago, I discovered a book called He Died With A Felafel In His Hand. It's a beautiful eulogy to the joys of communal living / an account of the nightmare of living with Goths / a chaotic attempt to crash a party.
Whatever it is, it's wonderful. I wrote my address in the front cover, then passed it on to a friend. I figured the deal was thus: you'd read it, inscribe your name in it, and then pass it on. Oh, and you'd send a postcard to the last address to have been written into it.
Not sure if my pyramid scheme worked, but it meant that a while later I got a postcard from Thailand from a guy called Gary that I'd never met.
Then today, walking in the park with Rachel, I found out there's a film of it. Unfortunately, a short perusal of the internet shows that it never got released in the UK.
Never mind that. Region 4 discs are easy to purchase from DVDorchard.com.au. If you feel like buying some, please mention james@stopadoodledoo.com when you sign up, and then I'll get 5 AUD to spend on more region 4 goodies.
Will report back in a while when the disc arrives as to whether it matches the majesty of the book or not...

Putting your back into it

Went for an XC ride with a difference on Sunday. Difference was that my bike weighed twice as much as it should have done:-
Had to be in Dorking for 11.30, so I popped round to Jason's at ten to borrow a wrench to force apart the pistons on the Hayes on the front of my Missile.
Unfortunately, the pistons were seized, or the brake needed bleeding, and we had no Hayes bleed kit, and Evans in Croydon doesn't open on a Sunday until 11.
No matter: I had an old C2 we could put on, and borrow a 185mm rotor from Jason's singlespeed. Except the bleed nipple was rusted stuck on the C2 and there wasn't enough fluid in there to get the pads to touch the disc, even with the lever to the bar.
No matter: we could take the Mini off Jason's brother's bike.
Except that had a Boxxer mount and thus wouldn't fit on my Psylos.
And then we had a good idea: why bother pulling brakes and wheels off other bikes, when I could just borrow Jason's brother's bike.
Jason's brother's Big Hit, that is.
So I ended up riding a Big Hit up Leith Hill, down Summer Lightning, then down High Ashes, up Holmbury Hill and down Barry Knows Best to Peaslake, and then riding the damn thing all the way back again (with one bit of wimping out riding up to the Tower, and one bit on High Ashes).
Luckily there were only 7 out of the 9 gears working, so I got a proper workout.
This punishment, all four hours of it, proved a few things.
1. XC trails are very boring if you've got 9 inches of travel.
2. You can still ride up a hill on a proper bike, if you really have to.
3. Big Hits are great in straight lines, but you really don't want to have to straightline through ramblers and then try to get up to speed again.
OK, so I couldn't really walk afterwards, but this was a valuable lesson. And somehow I don't think all this idiocy would have been possible without the extra fitness this running has conferred. So something is going right.
And more so: perhaps we could do a 24 hour race on DH rigs, and then see how many XC people we could beat. Worth a shot...