I can't find the version of this that allows you to link to your own (as I got it off exliontamer's LJ there is obviously one) but the page is http://www.last.fm/tools/charts/basicrt10?subtab=&page=1 .

Tags: music
Current Location: home

I've just been to the Norbiton Fine Cheese Co. shop, and bought some Lincolnshire Poacher, some Stinking Bishop and some crusty bread. That's lunch sorted! There was also some proper Gouda but I didn't have any. The shop is another example of the Norbiton area trying to go upmarket, which isn't helped by the recession, but also includes the Lime Leaves restaurant and Jarvis Fish! going restaurant as well. Not that my experiences of Lime Leaves were very good. It is a long way from East Dulwich levels of upmarketiness though.

Earlier, out into the garden which was full of bird noises. Something large and heron-like - but not a heron - flapped slowly south. Possibly one of the larger species of gull.

A very good reception for the latest piece presented at class - 'the best thing you've ever done here' was one comment. But I think it's a bit derivative, in the John Wyndham / John Christopher / Chris Priest / Keith Roberts sort of style. Frozen landscapes, tribes with names that seem oddly familiar, a man on a barge, a mysterious woman who visits him. That kind of stuff. I've never really tried post-disaster fiction but maybe it's time to expand that one. Not too derivatively. At the back of it was something about the winter of 1963 having put an end to the canal culture because the barge-dwellers couldn't make a living for several months. So they really were living in a post-disaster landscape.

The husband of my French landlady once said to me, "pour les anglais, tout ce qui est bateau est bon" - "for the english, any boat is a good boat."?

But I'd 'lost' the name of Keith Roberts for some time. Kites, I thought. Kites. Couldn't remember his name.

Tuesday, Bright Club ('a cross between QI, standup, and music') whose subject was Metal. The substance and the musical style. Went with arryabsinthe and euphoricstimuli - well, hadn't arranged to meet them, but they were there. The Wilmington Arms is a nice pub and does Pieminister pies which are tasty.

Work is good at the mo because I am doing plenty of design work, but it has felt like a long week. First four days were frantic because of an event we were running last night, but it seems like it went fine.

Current Mood: relieved it's the weekend

First day back at work, started with a stomach ache which thankfully cleared up in time for 8.15 am, and continued with the lodging of a tiny fish bone - well, where? Between mouth and nose. The medical term is palatal fistula. Annoying. Added to the crack on the head I got on the bus on Saturday, it isn't starting well.
Work however was not too bad, got page changes made on the intranet, discovered I've scheduled a course (for me) against a divisional meeting so have to find someone else to take the course instead.

Last night there was much noise of foxes out back, and one was barking again recently.

Based on the scores I've given them in the pub list, these are my top pubs that I visited for the first time in 2009. A special distinction has to be given to the Royal Oak, SE1, which I revisited in the summer and which is now the only pub I've given 10/10 to.

And the list is:

9/10
Earl Ferrers, 20 Ellora Road, Streatham SW16

all the 8/10s:
Prince Edward, 73 Princes Square, Bayswater W2
Stubbing Wharf, King Street, Hebden Bridge HX7
Top Brink Inn, Top Brink, Lumbutts, Todmorden OL14
Anglesea Arms, 15 Selwood Terrace SW7
First in Last Out, 50 High Street, Hastings TN34
Sunrunner, 24 Bancroft, Hitchin SG5
Fly in the Loaf, 35 Hardman Street L1
Barley Mow, 82 Duke Street W1
Brewery Tap, 68-69 High Street, Wimbledon SW19

which is conveniently 10 pubs.

Tags: pubs
Current Location: home

Last week I -
was off work, using up annual leave. This year I am going to divide the year up into thirds and use a third of it in each period. Have already booked a long weekend in the Cotswolds for February, self catering.

saw 'Avatar'. ( cut for brief spoilers ).

watched 'Life on Mars USA' - good so far, 'Doctor Who' - hm again, and an ep of 'The Champions,' a supernatural/spy thriller series from the late '60s that I'd never heard of.

went to the Fairfield on New Year's Eve and had copious pints of Badger (plus one of H&W's winter beer, 'Pickled Partridge').

went to Hammersmith riverside yesterday and was all nostalgic for a while.

Monday morning werk beckons - I've just renewed my season ticket on the way to an almost-deserted gym.

Current Location: home

Spent a day and a half in Brum, mostly in Rubery and Kings Heath actually. Coffee and biscuits in the house of one of M's friends this morning. I am suddenly hit by the realisation that her house, built in the 1930s, has exactly the same layout as the house I grew up in (in southwest London). She is also a Trot and is a pal of Les (LJ) Hurst and so I have now had blasts from the past in a few minutes. M. and I head off for the park to carry on walking the dog, which needs a lot of walking. Yesterday, photographic exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which is worth seeing if you're in the area.

Home on a nice fast train which takes an hour and half New Street to Euston, only enlivened by someone being out of his tree in the 'shop' (ie. place that sells tea and coffee) and is later seen being searched on the platform. Overreaction are us?

M. and I said we wanted to get more exercise but for me, a quick fix: not to go out late on a Saturday night so I can be up in time for walks or bike rides on Sundays. Some of the time I just want to climb things but given my reaction to a lift up to the 24th floor of a hotel recently I wonder if I have the head for it.

'Not the 9 o'clock News' gets mentioned - described at the time as 'comedy by w-----s' but wasn't it an early example of 'nerd comedy' in that case?

Yesterday trying to get some exercise I headed for Wimbledon Common, on foot. It isn't really that far - took an hour and forty minutes to get from home to the Fox and Grapes on the Common, which is a CAMRA Regional Inventory pub and does Harveys Sussex among other beers. I didn't stay that long in there though, continued to Wimbledon Village (the posh end of Wimbledon) and found a pub called the Brewery Tap.

Some hours later ... I'd had a long conversation mostly with one person but also with another, he who had come up to me at the Nine Black Alps / Narration gig last July and said, "You don't like this band much do you?" and it turned out he was the organiser of the event in question. But it wasn't that I didn't like the band, just that they and their fans seemed all very young and it was like being at your kid's school disco. This was neither Narration nor 9BA I should point out but the opening act.

I took some pictures on the Common. The camera's battery ran out while I was there however - it's a failing of the Ixus that it only tells you when the battery has run out, there is no power gauge generally so you can't see if you have, say, a few hours left. Even so I wouldn't have got a picture of the spectacular wheelspin demonstrated by a vehicle that was trying to turn round on an icy road.

"List the towns or cities where you spent at least a night away from home during 2009. Mark with an asterisk if you had multiple non-consecutive stays."

Chiswick, London
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire*
Barcelona, Spain
Arnside, Lancs.
Birmingham, W Midlands
Athens, Greece
Atsitsa, Skyros, Greece
Billingshurst, Sussex
Hindringham, Norfolk
Hanwell, London
Rubery, Birmingham, W Midlands


That really doesn't look very many. Not even any cons!
(edit: how could I forget Hindringham? In a year where East Anglia has figured larger than usual I had to have at least one stay in the region).

Tags: memes

I've just been to the farmers market in Surbiton, and true to my old Hammersmith self went there by bike (first of all I used to go to the Notting Hill one - coming back downhill with a fully loaded pannier on the front of the Brompton was fun, although the B. actually handles better with some weight over the front wheel - then later I used to go to the Chiswick one as it's a pleasant ride along the river path). But whether you can count it as a farmers market when some of the produce is French I am not sure. Farmers' markets supposedly sell only what has been produced locally and the maximum acceptable range is 100 miles. 100 miles from southwest London doesn't quite get you to Calais.

; nor were there many vegetables, mostly pies and sausages and expensive bread. It is only monthly also, and presumably supplants the veg produce market in Kingston's Market Place. Then I had a much-needed coffee and a bacon-and-egg sarnie in a cafe just off Surbiton's main drag. Sat there for a while warming up.

A phone call from a friend in Sussex who is horrified that I was out on the bike 'in these conditions' - apparently Billingshurst is snowy and icy. Kingston/Surbiton isn't. The thermometer was showing 1 deg C this morning but there is no snow apart from a bit of residual on some turned earth in the garden (I put down some paving slabs last weekend and haven't entirely cleared up yet).
Last night, to the Fairfield. One of the regulars told me he'd seen something in the headlights of his car that put him in mind of Alien Big Cats - he couldn't identify it but it was something. But ordinary sized creatures can seem larger if they move suddenly, like the fox that crossed my garden and leapt up the fence and suddenly seemed the size of an Alsatian dog.

Current Location: living room
Current Mood: relaxed