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[250] Arsenal vs. Juventus March 28th, 2006 – 10:48pm Posted in Events 4 comments

The game I have just watched restored my faith in football.

Despite being dominated entirely by one team, it was fun to watch. It started out as a midfield ruckus – more players per square foot than a Stringfellows VIP room but still pacy and fast of foot. Before half time it had turned into an exbition of the classic Arsenal team of a couple of years ago that put shame to Chelsea’s current team.

The second half followed suit – more of the quick one, two threes that only Arsenal can pull off. Juventus lost their heads towards the end which provided a farcical end to a wonderful game. It’s games like these that make football worth watching – worth tuning in to random games on Tuesday nights, worth sitting in a pub through a meaningless world cup qualifier – because you never know when a great game like this is …read more.

[249] Rock family trees March 24th, 2006 – 12:34am Posted in Daft No comments

I’m just putting this up as a reminder to get round to writing the Rock Family Trees episode for SoulFade. Terrence: if you read this and have a spare moment, give it some time. I reckon it’s got all the potental for a classic SoulFade piece.

[248] Change March 23rd, 2006 – 11:52am Posted in Bad Things, Events No comments

I’ve been with Lois for as long as I can really remember now. Certainly, it’s been most of the time I can remember feeling better about myself and my life, and that’s no coincidence. But she’s moving home today because things have been a struggle for her and us here in Manchester over the past seven or eight months. And you know what? I’m pretty terrified of the change. I’m scared to death that I might end up having to go back to the single life if this new gap between us proves too much.

I do think it will work out, don’t get me wrong. Her moving back home solves a lot of the problems – of being unhappy living in Manchester, of the inherent conflicts with living with my mates, of uni being out of the way, of having friends and family back home and then of us not …read more.

[247] Back from Latvia March 22nd, 2006 – 1:35pm Posted in Events No comments

Latvia was:

Cold.
Full of cheap beer.
Confusing when you’ve lost your glasses.

Firstly, the cold. Not quite as cold as we’d been led to believe, but still pretty unpleasant. The variation from icy wind outdoors to stifling heat indoors was the hardest part of all as it gave you hot and cold flushes and I lost count of the number of times I put on or took off my jacket. The only truly painfully cold part of the weekend, though, was the time we took an elevator to the top of a church in Riga; the wind speed up there was genuinely terrifying as the top of the spire shook around and all you could see for miles was a bleak, grey Latvian winter.

Latvian beer, on the other hand, is quite nice. It seems to be around £1.50 everywhere you go, which given the amount we got through was pretty handy. The …read more.

[245] If I thought Morecambe beach was cold… March 16th, 2006 – 7:30pm Posted in Events No comments

…wait ’til I get to Latvia in a couple of days. It’s predicted to be -18°C at night; I don’t think even my beer jacket will get me through that kind of temperature.

The prospect of proper snow, though, is more than enough to make me forget about that. I can’t remember the last time I saw proper snow – the sort of snow you got when you were a kid. These days, the motorways are shut if an old lady slips on a sliver of frozen cat piss. Baltic snow, on the other hand, is snow worthy of closing buildings for, for shutting down major traffic routes and causing mass panic among all over-60s.

Riga itself is an unknown quantity. I’ve heard all the stories of 30p pints and £5 prostitutes, but I’m not sure how much of that we’ll get …read more.

[243] Office Space March 16th, 2006 – 2:58pm Posted in Daft No comments

Five out of every seven days of my life, this is what I see.

If you can, take a picture of what you see every day and post it somewhere; I’m quite curious to see what all my friends do each day.

[242] Friends & Family March 14th, 2006 – 4:59pm Posted in Thoughts No comments

Throughout my life, I’ve noticed many times how my behaviour changes from moment to moment depending on who I’m in the company of. When I first noticed this, I believed it was something I could change now that I knew about it; each time I recognised I’d changed as I began to speak to someone new, I could train myself to switch back to the real me.

Over time, I found that this just wasn’t possible. My reaction to people is instantaneous, with no time for thought or consideration before I begin to express myself. These days I don’t even try to alter my reactions, because doing so only muddles my mind while I’m speaking to this person. As far as I can tell, there is no set “me” – I’m someone different to everybody I know.

I began to think about the person I am to all of the people around …read more.

[241] I, Keano vs. SoulFade March 13th, 2006 – 9:21pm Posted in Events 3 comments

Continuing my new-found flirtation with culture, this Saturday just gone I went along to The Lowry with Terrence to see I, Keano – a play based on Roy Keane’s exit from the Irish squad back at the 2002 World Cup.

Football humour – or, more accurately, football fan’s humour – has never really been my thing. It’s always struck me as pretty basic at best and very often drifting into loud-mouthed, cheap sarcasm. A Question of Sport sums it up for me – comedy for people with safe senses of humour. Nice, but dim.

I, Keano very much fell into this category. It was billed as a comedy, but petered out to be a confusing mixture of drama and musical with a very sparse littering of jokes thrown in every fifteen minutes or so. Edited from its original version in Dublin a year ago, perhaps it lost something overboard …read more.

[240] Subscriptions March 12th, 2006 – 11:08am Posted in Events No comments

I’ve just finished adding a little feature to the site which might save a little time for those of you who visit the site fairly regularly. You can now choose to receive e-mail notifications when new posts are added. I rarely update this more than once every three or four days, so you needn’t worry about a billion e-mails dropping into your inbox. Visit the Subscribe page to add your address to the list (if you haven’t registered with this site) or configure your options (if you have registered).

[231] Much Ado About Nothing March 9th, 2006 – 6:26pm Posted in Events 3 comments

I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall recently bemoaning how little I’d got round to doing since moving to Manchester. I live a five minute walk from The Lowry, a fifteen minute journey from Cornerhouse and not much farther from everything else the city has to offer. But I’ve never really got myself round to actually doing anything here, until last night. I went along to the Manchester Library Theatre with Lois to see Much Ado About Nothing.

I was, and still am, a complete Shakespeare virgin. I have never read anything by him and have never seen a play, not only by Shakespeare but any playwright on the planet. I went along last night with a nearly blank canvas in my head, trying to forget all the preconceptions and stories I’d heard in the past.

My first impressions left me uneasy. As the audience crowded in …read more.

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