Alasdair Watson

I’m in the process of a re-vamp for Black Ink.  It’s about a day or so from being finished.  It’s still in very stark greys, and I want to warm it up a bit, as well as adding a few bits and pieces back in, and make it a bit clearer what’s what on the page with some header graphics, but despite all that it’s gone live anyway.  Why?  Because while I was attempting to make the fucking thing work with the new design, Nucleus (my old blogging tool) up and shat itself, and destroyed my old archive, taking with it several years worth of my on-line wittering.  I’d been planning on taking it away anyhow, but I’d quite have liked a chance to take a copy first.

I saw The Pogues last time they played Brixton, a couple of years ago. I’ve just dug out my old review, to see what I said last time, and it turns out that I said about three words, which is a bit shit, really. Still, at least I don’t have to worry about repeating myself. (I saw them on Monday – this is a bit delayed.)

In short: that was very bloody good indeed.

In long:

I was going to do one of those year in review things. And then I realised that they almost all either come out sounding broadly like “I’ve had a worse year than everyone else, pity me” or “My year rocked, envy me”.

Being me, though, I want to have my cake and eat it, too.

[Tedious smugness ahead, please, ignore. I’m only doing this to be conformist.]

My year sucked, envy me.

After an entertaining moment when we discovered that we were in moving traffic in a car with no brake fluid, and an amusing hike across bits of Gatwick airport that I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have been in, I’m home.  I can only hope the rest of my family manage the same sometime before dawn.

Since my family in Belfast have acquired broadband, I *think* I managed to reply to all the mail I needed to this morning, but the webmail I’m using seems a little tempermental, so if you’re expecting a response from me and haven’t had one, speak up.

Like all tube-travelling Londoners, I hate those little wheely suitcases with the pull-out handles, and dismiss those who use them on the underground as arseholes. That said, watching my Mum accidentally broadside a small child with hers at the airport this afternoon has almost turned me round on them. The kid was wearing a massively inappropriate amount of hot pink for a three year old, and sailed a satisfying distance when Mum caught her. Mum was, of course, mortified. I managed not to laugh out loud in front of the parents. Takes all sorts.

I’m in Belfast now, having suffered the comedy spanish train driver on the Gatwick Express (imagine a train driven by Manuel from Fawlty Towers – you’re not quite there, but you’re within spitting distance), and the mad bastard pilot who talked about about ninety-four miles per hour, and seemed to have made a concerted effort to aim for every bit of turbulence en route. How we laughed.

Back Sunday night.

Well, I’ve had a flatteringly positive reponse to the photos I’ve put on-line over the last few days, and the combination of Flickr and Livejournal really does make photoblogging a complete and utter doddle.  So I’m going to take a stab at doing it on a reasonably regular basis.

So, rather than cluttering everyone’s friends pages with stuff they don’t want, I’ve set up a new journal at electricana to hold my photos, so that those who’re interested can opt-in to seeing them.  Feel free to friend away – I’ll probably get round to friending back at some point, but it won’t ever have any friends-locked content, so I won’t make it a priority to check that sort of thing, in case anyone’s the type to get offended at the lack of reciprocity.

Due warning: I don’t intend to LJ cut the shots, and I expect they’ll all be about the size of the ones that’re there at the moment, so you may wish to keep it off any filter you use to skim read with.  On the other hand, I won’t post more than one pic in an entry, and if I’ve got a bunch of pics to show off at once, I’ll probably choose maybe one or two favourites to put on LJ, and then just link through to my flickr pages, so it shouldn’t be a terrible burden on anyone’s friends page.

I found a few old shots I still like in my archives, so they’ll probably go up in the next few days.

A quick photo, taken as I was walking home, and caught the reflection in the bus stop. I’m a sucker for neon lighting in a photo.

This year, I am mostly becoming fucked off with the number of people slagging Christmas off.

It occurs to mention this tonight, having just begun the process of wishing people a Merry Christmas proper, as I left another marvellously pleasant evening with zoo_music_girl and childeric, as the first of my chums that I was sure I wasn’t going to see again before the holidays themselves.  There are undoubtedly many of you that I’m not going to see before then, and of course I send you all the very best of wishes for the season, but this is the first time this year I’ve been out with someone and had that “Oh, no, won’t be seeing you before then, so Merry Christmas” sort of feeling.

And it’s nice.

But god knows there are a number of my friends who’ve taken to whining on about Christmas.  How it’s shit because it’s part of a religion (on in cases of extreme cranial/rectal interface because it’s the christians “stealing” the celebration off older religions), or because of having to do horrible commercial things, or because they don’t like the people they’re forced to spend it with.

The last, I have a small amount of sympathy for.  But only a very small amount.  Most of my friends are adults, and it is presumably within their gift to say (possibly a little more tactfully) “No, I won’t be spending Christmas with you – I’d rather do something I’d like, instead.”  There are a few for whom this does not apply, but only a few, and they have my every sympathy.

As for the rest of you, though: this is a season to enjoy the company of your friends and loved ones.  And I’d bloody hope you can do it all year round, and yes, I suppose I have said similar things about Valentines Day and relationships, but I cannot see any reason to say that a holiday mandated on the theoretical basis that people should have a bit of time to celebrate with those dear to them is a shit thing.  To go on about how you don’t like the season, or how crap you think it is tedious in the extreme.

If you’re complaining about having to shop, or about the people you’re spending it with, then that’s you own bloody fault for having bought into some of the extraneous and superficial hype.  It’s not about commercial nonsense.  If you’re about to tell me that the people you’re spending it with think it is, and thus you’ve got to do something in line with that, then I would suggest that you’re either spending it with the wrong people, or that you consider making them happy worth doing, and so going along with it is in the very best spirit of the season, but not simply for reasons of commerce.

Either way: I hope you all have a marvellous festive season, whether you choose to be festive or not.

[Note: if you don’t like the season, but haven’t been griping about it unsolicited in public, then this is not directed at you, so you don’t need to defend your views.  Thank you.]

[Edit: I should note that I completely respect the idea of not celebrating at all at this time of year, and I’m not out to force it on anyone (except davebushe, as he’s clearly just some kind of freak), it’s the people who piss and moan about the season that annoy me, not those who just quietly ignore it, and leave others to their fun.]

Well, I’m listening to the a bunch of excellent new music thanks to zoo_music_girl.  I’m knocking back mulled wine, because it’ll only go off, won’t it?  The room is lit badly enough that I can forget that I live in a tip.  It’s been a good weekend.  Cinema (Blade 3 – utter, utter shit, but entertaining.  The best bad movie I’ve see all year, in that regard.)  Clubbing, gaming, and then a lot of walking in the fresh air which is, I assume, why I’m so bloody tired tonight.

And I got a fair amount of use out of my new camera today.  You can see the results here, if you’re interested.

I will get to them all in the end, honest…

—

The pilot gunned the engine of the seaplane a little nervously.  If he was caught here, he was in big trouble – the area was off limits to all non-governmental traffic.  His passenger has sworn that they’d bribed all the right people in the interior ministry, but she was already an hour late returning, and his confidence was fading fast.

He’d just made up his mind to leave anyway when miss_soap came sprinting out of the jungle at the edge of the beach, and dived into the sea.  The shouts and angry yells of the local tribesmen follwed her, as she struck out toward the the plane.  A few spears splashed down in the water near her as the savages broke through the treeline themselves.

“Go, Go!” she yelled, grabbing onto a pontoon, and beginning to haul herself up, one hand holding her wide brimmed hat in place.

A few arrows bounced off the side of the plane, and more fell uselessly behind them as the they took to the air.

“Did you get what you came for?” he asked, turning round briefly to look at his passenger.

miss_soap grinned in reply, pulling a small pouch from where it’d been tied to her belt, and tipping the contents out.  It gleamed brilliant gold as it caught the sun.  “The Lost Idol of Huehueteotl.  Stolen by the Spanish in the 15th century, stolen back by the remains of an Aztec cult in the 18th century.  The museum is going to love this…”