Out of catastrophic IT failures....

occasionally beautiful abstract images can develop........

See that tattie collapse in a wheezing heap....

The last time I trained for a 10K the build up to the race seemed to last for an eternity, and even though I was late starting to actually train, I still seemed to spend hours and miles pounding my way round the park in preparation. By the time of the race I felt fit and confident and ready.

This time, in contrast, is farcical. I'm averaging approximately 1.2 runs a week at the moment, never for more than about 15 minutes, or 3 km. The race is on the 6th of July, which to my mental arithmetic makes it around 5-6 weeks away. I'm screwed. What makes it more frustrating is that I've known I was doing this since about March, and was absolutely adamant that this time I was going to train properly and give it my best shot. Bah.

Looks like intensive measures are called for - I might even give up the cigs this time. My bank balance would certainly appreciate it at the moment.

Shite.

Messing about with lucy's mirror

Summer in the city

This is the beasty that greeted me on the way to the bathroom the other night. Almost as big as borys

It took me a while....

but I think I'm starting to feel comfortable on my bike again

Back from my holidays

I love May. I think it's the two bank holidays book ending the month and the added daylight and chance of sunshine. That and the fact it's normally the first time I have off work since the dark days of Christmas. This time last year I took J home to see where I grew up, this year I went all Italian.

I've never once, ever, wanted to go to Italy.

Just never interested me. It's full of Italians for a start, and it's on the Mediterranean - I mean, how very 1980s package holiday. Nope, it was another continent or nothing for me.

Funny how your opinion can change within a nano-second of arriving somewhere, isn't it? To be fair, I had been getting progressively more excited about the trip as the time drew nearer, and endured the usual squeaky bum time on the journey to the airport that something would go horribly wrong (i.e. me falling into an alcohol-induced slumber) that would prevent me catching my flight.

But arrive in the land of Mafioso and pizza I did, and it blew me away. Naples is an absolutely intoxicating city - a living, breathing Italian cliche. It's just as I imagined it: perched on a series of terraces over-looking the Bay of Naples; grand, colourful, crumbling, flaky, tenements crowding over narrow streets; the beautiful, not-so-beautiful, young and old whizzing about on scooters; noise, dirt, heat and smell. Feckin amazing.

I'd read a few things prior to going that it was dangerous and not very tourist friendly - but to me that was almost the best thing. Yeah, people speak English, but they let you try pidgin-Italian first before replying in it. At no point did I feel like a tourist on holiday. I was, of course, but there are so few of the buggers about (save for Pompeii, Vesuvius etc of course) that I felt like we were just living for a couple of days in another city. We stayed in Mergellina, a suburb of the city round the bay from the main centre of Piazza Garibaldi, and were surrounded by normal everyday city life going on around us. It was utterly amazing.

I have a few photos - a mixture of camera phone and proper camera - which are on Flickr here

Pompei and Vesuvius were fantastic too - the view from Vesuvius was breath-taking over Napoli to the North and, err, somewhere else to the South.... There's something a bit strange about staring into the crater of an active volcano as steam rises out of the ground a few feet away. The best thing about it was - being chilled and Mediterranean, we were rewarded with a glass of wine at the top. Made the climb that little bit more satisfying. Following the volcano with a trip to Pompeii added a certain eerie edge to proceedings, not helped by the fact we arrived at 5.30pm - 2 hours before it closed but after the majority of the tourist hordes had left for the evening. It was a beautifully sunny day but walking round the city in near silence, with Vesuvius looming in the distance, really brought home what had happened there. The volcano looks pretty far away and I can totally understand why they thought they were safe from it's power. Trying to imagine what it must have been like on the day still sends shiver down my spine. To think that there are cities and towns that are now standing as monuments to the eruption of 2000 years ago, which are nowadays like any other town but for almost 2 millenia were buried under the ground. Doesn't bear thinking about. It's like wandering around a giant theme park or reconstruction. Until you realise it's real.

Now i am become life, creator of plants...

...to misquote Robert Oppenheimer

Play Up Pompey

Pompey play up!

Rocket man

Finally....

after several months of thinking about it and definitely honestly almost getting round to it, I finally sowed my first seeds tonight. Whether they grow or not is another matter - there were instructions on the compost but I couldn't really follow them, so have gone for the "compost, seeds, water" method - just bung em in a pot and see what happens. The Rocket should take 7-10 days to grow, the Parsley will take around a month. Can't remember which is planted in which pot, but I'm sure I'll work it out. If this goes well I'll move onto the spring onions and lettuce.

I can almost taste the excitement.

Parking, Neapolitan style

Ciao

Ah, another all nighter as I wait and count down to my red eye flight to Naples... One day, I won't be seduced by the £20 saving and will book flights at a reasonable time of the day. As it is, I take off from Stansted at 7am tomorrow morning, meaning a most unfriendly 3am start from home. I'm booked on the 4.20am coach from Victoria, ordinarily not over an hour away but thanks to the inconsistencies and general scarcity of night buses round these parts I need to give myself more than enough time to get there... So, it's leave at 2.57, get to Brixton at around 3.07, then hope that an N2 appears some time between then and 3.40 to whisk me the four or five miles further up the road. I love hanging out, sober, in Brixton at 3am on my own.

It'll all be worth it though when I get there - got a text from J (who went over this morning) to say she was sitting on our hostel's roof terrace, drinking a Peroni and looking out at the view over Vesuvius and the city. Sounds rather appealing.

I'm really enjoying the fact that I don't have to go to work tomorrow - the bank holiday was good fun, with our BBQ going off relatively hitch free. Place looked like a bloody bomb site when I got up on Sunday morning but J and I got stuck in and managed to get it cleaner than it had been previously within a couple of hours. Everyone seems to have had a good time, and the weather was brilliant - well, apart from the couple of short lived thunderstorms, obviously. Drunkenness and singing along to Queen ensued - becoming an all too regular occasion now that the majority of us are over 30. It can only be a matter of time before we start protesting that we used to be "cool" and "with it" to younger, trendier kids - before having it pointed out to us that our very use of those words completely defeats our argument.

Anyway, off for another caffeine fix - have gorged on cheap pizza and tesco own brand coffee in preparation for my visit to the home (literal/spiritual) of the stuff.

Have a nice week folks - will be back with some stories and ten thousand photos before your working week is through

yeeeaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

any chance of getting a few more days off in two weeks boss?

I'm currently trying to distract myself from the UEFA Cup semi

as I type we're nearing the end of the first period of extra time.... and I have a pain in my left arm such is the tense nature of proceedings....

For years I have put up with the stigma of being a Rangers fan, in a sea of green and white sympathisers. Like all fans, I didn't choose them as my team - they chose me. I rebelled for years as I tried to fit in and distance myself from the less savoury elements (i.e. 95%) of the fan base.

But tonight, I have proven to myself that I care. I can't even watch. Come on boys!!!!