Omitting much and in no particular order ...
The Guardian Developer Drop-In, particularly meeting Emma Mulqueeny. She's fab. Harry and I tandeming our first 100km Audax. Tandeming our second 100km - our third year at the Welland Wonder - flapjacks from Mike, riding with Clive again, having to wait for the end of the over before riding through a cricket ground. Releasing the CycleStreets Android app. Going to a wrestling show at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall and briefly speaking to Takeshi Morishima. He's a massive man, with a very gentle handshake. The Sherlock Holmes adaptations by Edginton and Culbard. Taking my brother to see the tremendous Dragon Gate UK wrestling show in Nottingham. Cycling from Fishguard across the Preseli Hills and back. Heading back to Wolverhampton with my chums Mike and Simon to see Lou Reed play. Collecting the last of the Virgin Pendolinos. Twice. Cycling around London. Portal 2. Adventure Time. 2000AD - it really is a fantastic comic. Did a two year catch up in during February and came away properly suffering from Thrill-Power Overload.
Mercy, I'm so out of touch with pro-wres nowadays. Is that "Dragon Gate" as in what-done-used-to-be-"Toryumon"? Do they regularly put on cards over here nowadays, or was this a one-off?
And Morishima from Morishima/Rikio, blimey. I'm pleased to hear that he's still going, although I couldn't easily tell you precisely why I am.
by Russ L on 18th Jan 2012
The very same Dragon Gate that spun out when Ultimo Dragon folded up Toryumon, yes. They've been over the last three years, doing a couple of shows each time and they've been really brilliant. The wrestlers work their socks off, the crowd has a ball, and the whole thing is just fantastic.
Morishima's only young by Japanese standards - thirty three, I think. I was sitting in my seat at the end of the show, just waiting for the crowd to clear. Someone start working their way down the row of seats, and I stood up to let them past and it was Takeshi Morishima in the massive flesh. The internet tells me we're the same height, but I felt like a tiny child next to him. Trying not to mark out too much, I mumbled "arigato" and shook his hand. He bowed. Then I got out of his enormous way.
Something of a surprise late entry this one, if I'm honest. Not a surprise I didn't enjoy it, obviously, surprise that it happened at all. It's certainly not something you find on people's bucket list.
On the end-of-term Friday before Christmas, our house was broken into. Nothing was stolen, but I was beaten by two men - one of whom punched me on the lefthand side of my head while his colleague very deliberately hit me with a crowbar half a dozen times or more on the righthand side of my head. Given the option, I would very strongly recommend against because it's really very painful and you end up looking like this the morning after.
I have a longer thing written, but I'm sitting on it until the police investigation concludes. Right now, I think we're still waiting on forensic evidence. Real life forensics moves much more slowly than on the telly, especially over Christmas and New Year.
Like many people we have a routine of a Sunday morning. You might have a long lie in followed by a big fry-up, perhaps, or take a stroll to your hip local cafe for a fancy coffee and a read of the papers. We have a pile of pancakes and then go to hockey practice for two hours. Have done for years. Or at least Daniel and Harry have. I make the pancakes and then get to hang around on the side of the astroturf for two hours watching the hockey practice. In fact so good am I at hanging round on the side of the astroturf that I'm well into my second year as Chair of the club, the junior section of Kings Heath Pickwick.
Every month or so, we ship a team out to Droitwich to play a few games. Because of the age my children, I've been heading out to watch the U11s for the past four years and will be doing so for probably another four. In the time, I've watched our little band go from a bunch of 7 year olds who lost every match for a year solid to a skillful and confident team that won pretty much every game for two years straight. This season nearly all those kids have moved up into our U13s team, where they've continued their winning ways and we have new young U11s team.
At our club, we pick teams not by ability but by availability. If someone wants to play, they can. If they don't or can't that's fine, and we'll just ask them again next time. It's been a real pleasure to watch those kids, and see them start to form themselves into a proper team. You'll see a kid who a bit shy or timid suddenly find their confidence - they make a tackle, or slot a good pass - and they just bloom. Some times the team string a good sequence together, maybe score, maybe not, but they know they've done well, and they exchange smiles. It's great.
Like most junior hockey clubs, we have kids from about five or six years old through to 16, both girls and boys. Most of our training is grouped by age and/or ability, but for the last half an hour we play "the Big Match" with all the kids together. I know that sounds like it could be a disaster, but the older ones take real care to include the younger ones and younger ones delight in taking on the older kids. Maybe we're just lucky we get nice kids at the club, but I'm sure the big match is part of what makes the club what it is.
As children's team sports go, hockey seems to be one of the most pleasant. As a parent, you hear all kinds of horror stories, particularly about football clubs - kids swearings at referees, parental fisticuffs on the sidelines, all kinds of nonsense. That just doesn't seem to exist in hockey, at least not that I've encountered. We've never had any bother with any one at our club, or from any other team we've played. If you've got children that need to run off a bit of energy at the weekend, you might want to think about it.
The Big Society - David Cameron's catch-all term for things the Government doesn't, can't or no longer wishes to do - is supposed to lead us all into a brighter, more involved, more inclusive, more community-oriented future. The Government seems keen to claim virtually any kind volunteer organisation as part of the Big Society, pointing a paternal finger and saying "well done you".
As a family, we're involved in a three different sports clubs, all of which are apparently part of a move to reduce crime, increase community cohesion, and improve academic achievement. Oh yea, and do some sport.
One of the central tenets of the Big Society vision seems to be that we all know what's good, we all know how to achieve that, and we're all working selflessly towards it. Does that strike you as some kind of utopian socialist vision, or what? Usually though, we just kind of muddle through and it generally works out. Occasionally someone with extraordinary passion, commitment or talent comes along and really drives the thing forward for everyone. They're the kind of people who get MBEs for services to the community. We've always had them and always recognised them, even before the Big Society was invented. (Iain Duncan-Smith, speaking on Any Questions earlier this year, essentially claimed that before the current government took office that there was no voluntary sector at all- everything was provided by the state or by private companies. Fool.)
Sometimes, and this is thankfully rare, it goes the other way, where someone takes centre stage and proceed to twist everything around so it all becomes about them. No, I'm not about to take another poke at David Cameron. One of our clubs has recently come through several really unpleasant months where the bluffly charming head coach was gradually revealed to be a serial liar. He would cheerfully say one thing to one person then turn around and say the precise opposite to another. When caught out, he would blankly deny any wrongdoing, even in the face of damning evidence and at the risk of being reported the sports governing body. Given second chance after second chance to reform and, basically, start acting like a grown-up, he threw those chances back in everyone's faces.
In the end he resigned, while telling everyone he'd been sacked. It then turned out he'd secured a coaching position at another club before leaving. Since then he's told lie after lie in order to take as many parents, kids, and other coaches with him to the new club. Some have gone and will, I'm sure and sorry to say, be let down.
It's been horrible. The club's been really damaged, and lots of people have been made very unhappy. In fact it continues to be pretty horrible, although things are improving. One of the things I'm looking forward to next year is putting all this shit behind us and getting with the actual business of sport. The crime reduction and what-not can take care of itself.
I'm not suggesting that sports clubs should all nationalised and run by the council. In the end, this is just a little local difficulty at one club, and even if the club did go down the tubes no real harm has been done. There are other clubs, and other sports. People will find another. Perhaps though, we should go steady on the notion that happy armies of willing volunteers can link arms and provide services that people rely on. Nobody dies if a sports club folds. If a dressing doesn't get changed, if meals-on-wheels don't deliver, if the post-natal visit doesn't happen, people really might.
The longer the novel, the more wary one should be of it. Reading a novel takes time. The longer a novel, the more time it demands. One would hope the longer novel would then provide a greater payoff - a more emotionally rich experience, a more satisfying plot, a sounder resolution - but this is rarely the case. I would therefore usually hesitate to unequivocally recommend a long novel, let alone a really, really long novel but that's what I'm about to do.
I've spent a fair chunk of this year reading the first two thirds of Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. A science-fictiony counter-historical story set in the latter half of the early modern period (for those of you whose spouses aren't historians that's around 1660 to the 1800s), combining swash-buckling pirate adventuring, the foundations of modern science, and a pretty detailed examination of the birth of market capitalism. Stephenson draws many subtle parallels with the modern world - the fragility of the markets, the dangers of a credit bubble, the birth of the information age - while weaving the story through historical events and real people without ever seeming forced or clever-clever, or even just sluggish. On the contrary, it whips and bucks along, and all you can do is be carried with it. The scope of the whole thing is pretty breathtaking, and I found it absolutely gripping.
I'll be starting on the final volume, The System Of The World, tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it.