Many, many moons ago, I watched a little movie that captured my soul a bit. It was low-budget, it featured few names that anyone would recognise, it had nothing in the way of special effects, and it didn’t have the pay-off at the end that we’ve been trained to expect by larger studio efforts. But it had character, it had songs which drove straight into me, and it was believable. That film was Once, and I was far from alone in being a fan of it. It won an Oscar, and some attention from Broadway types, who decided to adapt it for their nefarious money making purposes.

I was extremely sceptical of this; I was sure at the time that they’d kill the soul of the show by insisting on making it big and/or brash, or that they’d add the traditional USian syrup to it. I thought that it’d end up being a sickly sweet, showy effort that had the songs of the original (and maybe even the same words), but none of the character that made the film great.

Happily, I was wrong. TLW & I, along with other family members and the rest of a birthday party, saw the show yesterday. It wasn’t quite as good as the original, but it had the soul and the heart of it down pat. The changes necessary for the stage worked, and the changes to characters worked, and the feel of it worked. They didn’t put on a big show of it and didn’t make it brash. They just acted the parts, sang the beautiful songs and pulled at your heartstrings just like the film did.

Some little tweaks were excellent; the fact that the set (a bar) doubled as the main bar for the theatre meant that the audience could walk about in it before and after the show. And instead of the show having a clear start, the musicians just appeared in the middle of the set as people ordered drinks around them and started having a little jamming session – I imagine that if someone charged for drinks in the corner of Nelly‘s sitting room it would feel the same on a random evening.

In short: go and see it. It is a thing of great beauty, and it will make your soul happy.

The ancient and over used saying A change is as good as a rest ignores a simple truth: sometimes what the body needs and craves is not one or t’other. It is both.

It was with that in mind that TLW & I decided that we should do something that we’ve not done since December 2010: taking a decent amount of time and going on a damn holiday¹.

And so it was that we hazarded the BA website, booked a couple of weeks off, and fucked off to Africa.

But first, to Terminal 5, where I got to test FlightRadar’s recent updates. They work, and it’s quite cool being able to watch planes on the ground with their technical details on a screen in front of you. I have to admit that I was quite impressed with T5; it’s big enough and spread out enough that it’s easy to mistake it for a civilized place.

Then on one of BA’s ancient yet serviceable 747s to sunny Cape Town, on a nice night flight. During which we got to marvel at a most excellent electrical storm over the coast of Nigeria and a stunning sunrise over the deserts of Namibia.

While there, we ate well (too well – crocodile, ostrich and a variety of things ending in -bok were tasted). We saw penguins, whales, seals and the Cape of Good Hope. We tasted very fine wines and played with monkeys, and got pictures with some random birds of prey as well.

Don’t shit down my shirt, don’t shit down my shirt….

Disturbingly, we also discovered that tortoises have a sex face:

For the record, the noise is even worse than the image.

It wasn’t all light-hearted japes, of course. There were visits to District 6 and the obligatory Robben Island tour, led by a former inmate who’d learned his tradecraft in the DDR and USSR.

All in all, it was a most enjoyable holiday, both a bit of a change and a lot of a rest. And for the first time in my recent memory, certainly going back to before the millennium, I went a week without checking anything (bar confirming flights on the last day) on t’internet or email.

I recommend the destination. And I also recommend dropping t’internet for a day or seven.

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¹ – Yes, I know that there have been a great many trips: Italy, Belgium, the Lake District, the Peak District. But they were all weekends or extended weekends, and we felt the need for more.

Those that know me will probably know that I like flying; I like the who experience aside from the security theater and the waiting about.

That said, I’m also a sucker for the Eurostar. I like the simplicity of their check in, I like their security that’s probably as effective as airport stuff but nowhere near as unpleasant. I like that you can rock up half an hour before and there’ll be no difficulty getting on the train. And I like the fact that I can make one small change to my commute and instead of spending Friday night at home, I can spend it in a nice hotel…

… next to a pretty little canal …

… where there is a vast selection of beer …

… to enjoy.

As I say, I like that I could get to Brugge with only one extra change of train. And with no limit to the amount of beer I could come back with other than how comfortably I could get it home. And that on the weekend that we were there, the entire damn town started singing.

In short: TLW & I had a lovely weekend in Flanders. And I’ve got dozens of interesting beers to work my way through. Hurrah!

You wait actual decades for Ireland to appear in the European championships again; nearly a decade since any decent level of International competition; and what happens? They get royally mullered.

Two games thus far, and beaten comprehensively in both. Granted, it was definitely a group of death but I’d hoped for more, given the strength of the qualifying campaign.

Bad luck, lads. Now here’s hoping that (a) we get to the next competition and (b) we do better in it…

It was this day last year that TLW and I met Roxy, our lovable little mongrel dog.

It’s been an interesting year.

We’ve had her attending puppy classes, and be the star pupil. But then she’ll forget how to behave because she’s so easily distracted.

She means that I leave the house every morning before 6.30am, and that I have to head home most lunchtimes. She’s eaten furniture and has made the garden into a minefield of surprises. She’s made me speak to my neighbours (yes, apologising is speaking). She’s eating us out of house and home.

But just look at her… Could you stay mad?

I’m surprised that we lasted a year, sometimes. But now that we have, I can’t imagine not lasting another few yet.

One: go for a nice meal at Chez Gerard. Lots of lardy food and a nice whisky sour. Get involved.

Two: wander up the road to see Matilda the Musical. The excellent work of Roald Dahl with a smattering of input from Tim Minchin and many other extremely talented people who produce an outstanding couple of hours of musical theatre.

That second item clearly provided a more entertaining time of it, and I heartily recommend it to anyone that has the opportunity. There are a great many things that work well in it; the cast (especially the kids, but special mention must go to Miss Trunchbull), the adaptations to the book (which work well; they’re in the spirit of the book rather than true to each word), the set design (I particularly liked the desks, and the way they introduce the alphabet), and the little tricks.

Get thee there. Now. Richard Wilson did, and he managed to sit a few rows in front of us. Good celebrity spot, I though.

Belfast, for all its little virtues, never really did it for me as a culinary city. There were a few nice restaurants, to be sure, but none that really set my soul alight. So I often preferred eating in pubs and getting by on their simple fare, rather than attempting to be wowed and leaving underwhelmed.

London, on t’other hand, is fully stocked with fine dining places. We’ve only sampled a few, but I doubt that Belfast has anywhere to rival a branch of Gaucho, and I know that it has nowhere that can compare with the Ritz. And when I lived there, there was nowhere that excited my group of friends as much as Mother Mash has.

The idea of the place is simple: you choose which type of mashed potato you want, what kind of meat goes with it, and was gravy goes over it. They then provide you with it, and remove less than a tenner from you. Simple, yet delicious.

Where I think our table went wrong was on desserts. Some of us, me and TLW included, did this properly; we had things like sticky toffee pudding and chocolate cake. Others were so enamoured of the mash that their dessert was, in fact, more mash and gravy.

This is wrong on so many levels. And the restaurant didn’t even try to make it right by putting a flake in said mash, to make it look like a dessert. Their only flaw…

A few weeks ago, I got this blog up and running again. But in a half-hearted way; I used to be very particular about posting something every day, no matter how inane or pointless it may be. Not so much any more; I tend to post a couple of times a week.

I’m trying to cut down on the inane, but looking at what I’ve posted recently, that’s not happening. Nor am I really posting the things that are going on with me. For example, a week or three ago, I published this post, saying that I like to occasionally get away from the rat race.

The reason I posted it then was because myself and TLW had just returned from a nice weekend in a little cottage in the hills of Tuscany; no internet or newspapers, no television. Just us, a rented Fiat, a beautiful 400 year old house and some sights to see.

It was, for the time we were there, bliss. We slept like babies, we saw Florence¹ and Lucca², and Pisa.

All these places were definitely worth seeing, and the time away provided some well needed rest. Aside from the stress caused by meeting Italian drivers on tiny Italian roads up steep hills and at speed, of course.

It being Pisa, we of course had to resist the urge to do the least original tourist thing ever:

We tried to avoid it. We really did.

Fail. Oh well.

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¹ – Noted for being the scene of a couple of the Assassin’s Creed games, and for being a place where poor TLW was bored to death of me constantly pointing a ancient and beautiful buildings and saying “I’ve climbed that in a computer game, you know, and I once shot someone from that building with a crossbow.” How she puts up with me, I don’t know.

² – Noted for having featured in a Top Gear episode where the protagonists get lost in the old, tiny streets. I can see why.

I have discovered that there is a version of Worms for android phones.

I suspect that this may mean that some very strange noises eminate from my office during breaks. My co-workers may not know what the noise of a suicide sheep bomb sounds like, and this may well confuse them.

This doesn’t bode well for my desire to return to work after a break.

(Also, as it happens, perhaps a four inch touchscreen isn’t the best way to display this particular game. But sure, it’s just a laugh.)

Over the years, I’ve not spent much time off the grid. In Malaysia we spent a fair bit of time checking up on the next stages of our trip, which meant that we were checking emails and the like. In Marrakesh we had a communal laptop in the courtyard of the riad which we checked in on. In fact, I can’t remember when I didn’t check emails for more than a day or two.

Until this past weekend. When TLW & I met up with a few old friends and headed to a part of the world without phone reception and where the internet isn’t a known thing.

Yes, we headed to Derbyshire.

Several days were then spent walking up and down hills, drinking heavily, watching sport (Boooooooo! all round on that front) and sleeping like logs.

I like.

Item 26 in a very long list: leaving known presents unopened.

If, for example, it was to be my birthday in a month, yet a present had already arrived, I’d usually be OK to leave it unopened. Unless I knew what was in the present, in which case I’d find it very difficult not to open it and have a play. I don’t know why known presents are more of a temptation than unknown ones, but they are.

Such uselessness on my part may go some way to explaining why there is an open Amazon box on my desk and a shiny new Kindle on the shelf, courtesy of TLW.

It will surprise few, I think, to discover that I’ve wanted a Kindle for some time; in fact I’m pretty pleased that we’ve managed to avoid buying one for six whole months since we really went looking. But now I have one, and I’ve access to this list, there’s nothing really stopping me. All those classics that I’ve never gotten round to reading should start being ticked off any day now…

Hurrah! And also many thanks to the TLW for the early birthday present!

You can bank from your home, you can get food delivered, you can bookshop from your bed.

Or, you can get a personalised Dog Whispering service straight to your own TV.

Yes, if you ask nicely, Cesar Millan will communicate directly with your pooch. And said pooch will hang off their every word.

Or, alternatively, you might turn on the Dog Whisperer and then wait ten minutes for the appropriate shot of your confused doggie trying to figure out why all the barking doesn’t produce the expected smells. One or the other…

On Sunday, TLW & I went out for a birthday lunch for an old friend from uni. Being that sort of person, we arrived first (i.e., on time) and had a little sit down to peruse the menu while we waited for everyone else to turn up. During this little perusal I basically decided upon what to have, out of a very extensive menu. My reasoning for having this was that I’d not had either of the choices before; they were quite unusual options, especially for a cheap Sunday lunch.

When the birthday girl arrived, however, one of the first things that she said to me was “They have [my choice] here! I thought you’d like it!”. Oh dear. It seems that my decision, some years ago, to not let random food slip by has been noticed, and that unpredictably odd choices are now entirely predictable.

And I’m OK with that.

I’m glad to say that my choices panned out, and that I’d heartedly recommend both the quail starter and the goat with lemongrass main at Mien Tay.