Progressive Supper

Last night, Moonface and I took part in a Progressive Supper. (Should that be capitalised?)

We've been meaning to get on the supper circuit for years, but somehow it never happened. The idea is interesting in principle and stimulating in practice: a number of people eat one course at one house then each couple goes on to another house to eat the next, then the next. So for each course, one is sharing a table with different people, then for coffee all the participants meet up at one designated house. In theory, it means that you only have to prepare one course and supply one course's worth of wine.

We had a good evening, meeting new people with whom we could get on from the immediate neighbourhood and having a decent natter with old friends who we didn't talk to properly at our party last week because we were too busy. The food was good, the wine was plentiful and the conversation flowed freely, too. We hope to do it again next year.

:o)

Bodies

Looking back at the photographs of myself in my 20's and 30's, I didn't have a bad figure. It was quite good, in fact. I'm aware of how times have changed, and an evening in the bouldering hall at the climbing centre certainly rubbed it in.

It was a woman's wet dream: the young men were stripped to the waist, some still wearing crotch-enhancing harnesses, and with musculature to die for. Not obviously body-built, but with broad shoulders and a wiriness to their arms and legs that was obviously functional rather than just developed for effect. Because of their youth most were more-or-less hairless (or they shaved) which accentuated their shapes. Bastards!

There weren't many women there worth ogling, this evening. Shame.

:o/

Googled

I idly Googled someone's name today, the friend of a friend. I was thoroughly told off for doing so, as it was none of my business, I didn't personally know the person whose name I searched upon, and I foolishly let my own chum know that I done so. It was amazingly easy to find some basic information in a minute or so, however. Sorry, D, but he had admitted lying.

Chastened, I Googled myself for the first time in a year of so, and was quite shocked. I'm there on the internet, with a hundred or so real results and half my professional life visible. I seem to have written a fair number of comments to (mainly technical) blogs and a few letters to newspapers; this all on top of my holding website, my current employer and the presentation I made in France last year. There are no videos, however, which is just as well.

So much for anonymity.
Still, with any luck it may help me find a new job more easily. (If in fact one is needed)

:o/

3:30 am.

It's half past three in the morning, and the last guests left about twenty minutes ago.
I've finished the first round of tidying up, clearing the bottles and cleaning the tables. Bed, now.

It was a good party with lots of conversation and plenty of people.

:o)

No cobras, though.

:o(

Anticipation

The few hours before hosting a party are always the same, a mixture of nerves and hope.

Have we bought enough food and drink? Will everything go OK? And most worryingly, will anyone turn up? If so, will there be five people or fifty, and will they enjoy themselves?

Every time, I worry. Every time, I head for the shops at the last minute and buy too much so that we spend the next few days living on a diet of leftover french bread and dips, and drinking the dregs of half-finished bottles of cheap wine. And of course every time I am tempted to have that pre-party drink that ensures that by the time that guests arrive, I no longer care.

:o)

It's been a good eighteen months since we last gave a bash, and I'm looking forwards to this evening. This time the weather has been so poor that we haven't wanted to go out for the day, and Moonface has actually managed to do some work in the late afternoon.

:o)

Getting Physical

It's three days since my second climbing lesson, on which we spent about two hours on the actual climbing floor, as opposed to about an hour the previous week. My forearms and shoulders are still aching, the palms of my hands are sore and I can feel that the tendons of my groin are stretched. It feels great.

There's a great physical contrast between cycling and climbing as sports. Climbing seems to take place in exhausting five-minute bursts whereas cycling can be hours of steady effort. On a push-bike the range of movements is constrained; even on a singlespeed where I stand on the pedals and heave on the bars a lot, there's still not a great range of movement. Climbing has lots of stretching, a great range of movement and is absolute hell on the fingers and forearms. Road cycling in particular allows my arms to atrophy to nothingness which is why I enjoy being in the woods on the singlespeed, heaving away and making my shoulders work as well as my legs.

So it looks as if I need to do both to regain the svelte figure of my youth and stay relatively fit for an oldie. Besides which, I will have the chance to acquire yet another collection of boys' toys sports equipment. Hooray.

:o)

Heroes

I've never really had any heroes, people to whom I look up, people that I'd like to be.
I never wanted to be the astronaut or the rock star and was content to run in my own shallow groove in my own direction. I've met plenty of people who are richer and more successful than myself and not felt envious as they all seem to have empty areas in their lives, and in most respects I consider myself as well off as they are in the areas that matter.

For some reason, I've recently been feeling dissatisfied with my life and a little aspirational. Perhaps it's the recurring job insecurity that I suffer from, the feeling that time to DO stuff is running out. It is, of course, but not as fast as I worry about at night.

So I was surprised at my reaction at the Alabama 3 gig a couple of weeks ago. I was watching the lead singer, Rob / Larry on stage: slender, greying, smart suit, shades, just looking cool in front of a crowd of hundreds. And I just thought, I would like to be that man. It helps that he has a rich deep growl of a voice, too.

Then at my first climbing lesson I watched as another grey-haired man, a few years younger than me but skinny and wiry, swung himself up some improbable section of "rock" face, his legs splayed widely apart in a way that mine could never manage and his fingers gripping a hold that my stubby digits would have peeled off immediately. I thought, I want to be able to do that.
I know that it's unlikely I will ever be that good, but I could at least learn something, and it would help if I lost the 8kg I've put on since my illness of 2003 , but that is something that I can aim for and aspire to. There's not much chance of my being a rock star, though.

:0/

Climbing

When I was a boy I climbed trees, walked along fences and generally had a three-dimensional view of the world. I still enjoy scrambling, getting a few feet up walls and walking on heights, but I have never really tried climbing. Many of my most vivid childhood memories involve height, whether scrambling up ropes in the school gym, tree-houses or sitting on the edge of cliffs.

Several years ago, when the kids were small, they and Moonface bought me a taster course at the local climbing centre but the gift certificate languished lost and unloved in the back of a drawer for many years. Then a few months ago we found it and after a fair bit of prevarification the climbing centre agreed to honour the voucher. [It wasn't an easy process. They needed to see the piece of paper before they would agree that it was real]

And so last Wednesday evening I went for the first evening of the course. There were many preliminaries: instructions about safety, how to tie knots, how to ensure that ones harness was properly fastened. I really enjoyed the lesson. I'm no good at it, as I'm neither as limber nor as strong as I used to be and I weigh so much more than I once did - but it was fun. And it was exhausting. In spite of only having a few short scrambles up the beginners' walls in the converted church I really felt the effects. It was also scary, as although I was roped from above I was not truly confident in my partner's ability to brake my fall. The hand-and-footholds were not really big enough for mental security, but at least I reached the top on each climb.

I'm going again this evening, and I'm excited!

:o)