Thursday, June 14, 2007

That's a hell of a catch, that Catch-22

Strange old thing, the sun. Whenever the clouds have cleared, the sunsets across the Black Isle are just as good as those over Ningaloo. Quietly, when no-one is looking, the sky turns red, and it is still a little light at midnight. But we're on the cusp of the solstice which means halfway to Christmas, I suppose. I always get bittersweet at this time of year, the mezzanine moment when the nights start to get longer.

Jobhunting is not going well. I spent all of last week in a dedicated trawl of both specialised and general recruitment sites, sent away a grand total of two applications and came to realise that I don't actually want to work most of the things I'm looking for. I don't even know what I'm looking for. I met up with Jon Todman and his cronies for the Phoenix pubquiz. It's a good, hard quiz. We fell down a little on music and general knowledge but swept the board on A-Z and the Famous Scientist Anagrams. We came fourth in the end - with two points seperating the top four teams. After the quiz we wandered over to Hootananny's in time to catch a London band called Scanners. It was a short set, maybe only half an hour, but they were excellent. Two guys and two girls in the full-blown Shoreditch fashionista regalia knocking out searing rock'n'roll. They had that same intensity as Sleater-Kinney, fragile, electric. Check 'em out at http://www.myspace.com/scanners - especially LOWLIFE. After the gig Jon and I sat in his house drinking whisky and listening to music. I staggered home in the rain in his borrowed coat at half-past four and woke up at six-thirty in the living room, sitting upright in a chair with the fully-hooded coat still making blinkers and the tv plays static. It's light. Bed...

... and up to the Heathmount the next night, catching up with folk bound for Rock Ness - James, Anna, Baker, Nicky, Sanjay, Martyn, Andy, Barbara, Clare, Ruaridh. I was drinking orange squash in an effort to dilute my hangover. Andy and I had a hour-long debate about the role of public-funded radio which was a lot more interesting than it might sound.

That cricket net in London has wound me up in all sorts of trouble. One of the guys from Dad's am-dram group plays for the local Northern Counties Second XI. On his invitation I went along to a net, and wound up with games on both Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday game was for the First XI away to Huntly, who are one of the best teams in the league. Thanks to Rock Ness, our team was depleted to three First team regulars, two players from the seconds, me, four of the Juniors and Sandra, one of the juniors' mums. And we still nearly beat them... valiant defeat, soup, midges, haar. Sunday was less glorious but a similar story - playing in the cup for the Seconds, and seven Juniors to replace the desaparecidos. We lost. Miserable weather.


Since then I've been taking the dog for the odd walk (he nearly caught a duckling the other day - as if he'd actually know what to do with it), reading an Ian Rankin Rebus novel every day and listening to the new Modest Mouse record: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank is even better than the excellent Good News For People Who Love Bad News. I drink coffee and work at the computer so I can listen to the Triple J request show with Rosie Beaton. I type up my notes from travelling. Late night I stay up to watch A History Of Violence, Serenity, Rosemary's Baby, Catch-22, Inside Man. We went to the movies to see At World's End, which is not nearly as execrable as Tim made out. It is hopelessly convoluted and riddled with pointless special effects but it also has Johnny Depp arguing with himself about peanuts.

Botswana! Iceland, Patagonia! Ivory Coast, New Orleans, Mexico... the Day Of The Dead festival.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You should encourage the dog to catch the ducks... they're evil.

5:42 PM  

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