Finally couldn’t wait any longer. Am actually quite suprised at just how much I ended up missing playing.. I don’t really think of myself as a proper guitarist anymore – just a thirty-something dude who rocks out in his bedroom. Not really sporty enough to own a tennis racket, so had to plumb for the real thing.

I think I’ve probably mentioned before, but I really do credit Guitar Hero with getting me back into playing. It was the instant gratification element of it – basically not having to do much and feeling like you’re holding the song together. I’ve got a friend who’s learning guitar at the moment and, as much as he loves practising and making his guitar actually make all those cool sounds, I know he plays a lot of ‘Hero too and I’ll bet there’s many times when being able to play favourite tracks perfectly without having to worry about string muting or feedback makes the easy option too easy to ignore…

I don’t doubt he’ll get there, though

Anyway – here’s the puppy. It’s a Tanglewood Tomcat. I’d originally wanted to get a Jackson – Mark Morton signature model. It’s a beast of a guitar and has a fixed bridge too (which I’ve always been quite partial to) and, most importantly, twin humbuckers. The reason I don’t have one now is that Jackson – the bastards – don’t make cocking lefties.. and a custom build would’ve set me back somewhere on the bad side of £3k! Fuck that!

So this is where I’ve settled for the minute. It’s in need of a good setup (intonation’s pretty good, but the action’s waay too high and got a couple of buzzy frets here and there) but so far it’s playing well the setup should turn it into a pretty sweet player. Just need to get a new pedal now to replace my stolen Boss Metal Zone and we’ll be fucking off the neighbours in style!

Just gave money to a random man in the coffee shop at the station. Know it was a good thing to do, but feel kinda weird about it now.

The train had come and I had my coffee – priorities taken care of.. He wanted a sandwich but only had about 80p and his credit card and they wouldn’t take a payment for under £2. They also didn’t agree to his suggestion of over charging him for the sandwich to meet the minimum credit card spend – all this while the train was coming into the station.

Feel weird because the guy could obviously afford to lose a couple of pounds (in a monetary sense ), but when it comes to homeless people of big issue salepeople, my pockets are wired shut. Maybe it’s just I could relate to his needs better. Maybe I wasn’t trying to help him financially, more just empathising with his being caught in a crap situation that I’ve experienced in the past and trying to help him out – maybe even alleviate some of that Monday morning stress
Maybe I only did it cos I want someone to do that for me and prove this world isn’t as crap and mercenary as it seems – strike something of a balance to all the miserable commuter shit I see people doing every day to each other..

Probably shouldn’t analyse it too much eh.. Hopefully taken some of the shit outta someone’s Monday morning. Still got all of mine

Love the way that sometimes three or four people are converging on a point and, through only slight changes in each persons walking speed and direction, they move smoothly past each other without any visible break in their gait.
The whole effect looks planned, the people following predetermined, invisibly marked paths, sometimes missing each other by the smallest gap.

Suppose it’s an example of strangers subconsciously acting together as a unit – no conscious decision, just an awareness on each persons part of the others’ movements.

For years now I’ve been carting a large collection of cassettes (largely unlabeled) around with me when ever I move house.. They take up space and generally sit there, unplayed, containing unfathomable favourite bands of my youth.

I’m generally been in favour of all things digital really, my movie and music collections are now exclusively digital – no bookshelves of DVDs and space-hogging CD racks looming around my place! So I was long past due a sort through of these damned tapes and to rip any gems they may contain. I’d just ordered a reasonably cheap cassette to USB player off eBay, so I wrote off the rest of the day and got started

Remember poking rizlas or bog roll into the holes in the top of cassettes in order to tape over them? Bit of a trip down memory lane to look through all of these – three ripped copies of Blood Sugar Sex Magic, some horrifically bad death metal, half a Helmet album and a whole shit-load of rubbish jungle and drum and bass that some git had taped off some pirate radio station. God only knows what classics had been lost forever there

The way the tape case fits in your hand just kinda felt natural and well sized – I remember picking up a CD for the first time and thinking how thin and insubstantial it felt compared to a nice fat, chunky cassette. That must’ve been my first ever CD, Mr Bungle, that I’d bought even before I even owned a CD player – a kind of audio cart-horse situation, I suppose.

Anyway, I got through them – I’d say about 30 tapes all told. Some good finds – songs from my old band and even ones of me just recording riffs I’d written (mostly crap ones ) – all nicely ripped to MP3 and backed up on my hard drive.

Tapes meet bin. Bin.. tapes.

Digital being such a versatile format, I can’t see me having to go through this rigmarole again thank fuck!

Photos: flickr/tripleaxis/sets/barcelona

Have just got back from my short trip to Barcelona. Not been there before – in fact it’s actually the first time I’ve ever been to Spain. Crazy, I know, for someone living so close, but you never explore your own back door, eh..

Had heard lots of good things about Barcelona. Everyone I met who’d been there had recommended and raved about the place; great for skating, great art and design all over the city and an overall lack of stress and frenzied city life.

Well the skating claim is so true – half the place looked like it had been designed with skaters in mind. Smooth transitioned banks and slopes, steps and grindable blocks. There was even a few seemingly dedicated wide rails setup.
Art in the city? Spot on – you can’t walk more than a minute without noticing either a striking piece of sculpture or just an everyday object that had uniquely and refreshingly designed to be either more functional, aesthetic or tactile. Just great!
Pace of life. I wouldn’t mind experiencing a working life out there actually. Just to see if living and working in the city was really as unpressured as the impression I got. I suppose it will always depend on what work you do there, but I definitely got the feeling that the amount of overtime hours worked there were kept to a minimum and the onus was definitely on working to live rather than the other way round..

Last night of the trip ended up being the blow-out night, starting with a couple of easy beers, followed swiftly by my fave, Southern Comfort and then shots of Absinthe …at which point the night started a steady decline into chaos, ultimately peaking with me dancing to shitty music in a shitty club somewhere, then wandering off to mash a completely unnecessary filth burger into my face hole.
Feel dirty just from typing it.. dancing.. yuk

The next day we were kicked out of our hotel rooms (which were fantastic, btw) at noon. I felt like absolute dog-shit and we crawled into the nearest KFC for some alcohol absorbing, fried chicken goodness! We headed up to the Park Güell and just simply laid on the grass for a good hour or so, recuperating which, I have to say, worked an absolute treat . With most of the time I’d been there having been soaked or at least drizzly and miserable, we ended up getting more done on that last day than the rest of the trip.

Ultimately, I had a great time. Hanging with Steve was really cool and just being able to amble along with no real agenda was fantastic for a few days – oh, and we completely pwned the casino by spanking them out of almost 10Euros! Take it, bitches!

I always seem to end up doing this – booking multiple events within days of each other.
I generally maintain a bit of a low profile, but as soon as the old wallet creaks open, I find its contents spill out in every direction almost uncontrollably. Once a semblance of control is regained, all that’s left is to count the receipts and grimly look forward to the upcoming adventures that I know I’ll be secretly very pleased I had

This time what started off as a simple plan to piggyback a friend’s work assignment in Barcelona into a long weekend in the sun has now expanded into 2 gigs, 4 days in Barcelona, 5 days in New York, a first time meeting with someone I’ve been chatting with online for almost 2 years and catching up with the Lebowski Fest – Speed Of Sound Tour

All, I should probably mention, within the same two weeks! Still, couple of firsts in there, the chance to catch up with some old friends and see a couple of seriously badass bands play!

What on earth am I complaining about?! Shut the fuck up, Donnie!

Have used wordpress for years now and have always been more than happy with it – and the few quirks it may have had (like not supporting flash out of the box) I have found workarounds for. However, after upgrading to 2.8 I’ve found that I can’t submit posts that are over a certain character length and this is really crippling when it comes to writing posts.

I find I’m trimming and re-wording like trying to get a text/twitter message below the character limit – not really the ideal scenario for really expressing one’s thoughts to the fullest

I have trawled both the wordpress site and the web at large for answers, but to no avail.. surely I can’t be the only one experiencing this issue??

Had a couple of days of recently – have forgotten how great it is to have time off on weekdays. You can just chill out and get stuff done at your own pace – no huge weekend crowds or that whole rushing about business

Anyway – it’s time I caught up on some project posts. Realised it’s been over a bloody year since I posted on this site – I’m paying for hosting, so may as well use it!!

Finally dragged myself into gear and updated to the latest version of wordpress. Have also changed the url to a subdomain, but i’m kinda figuring that’ll go under the radar for the most part Left a nice 404 message, so that should help the 2 people who’ll be looking for my blog over the next year or so

Lots of news and lots to ramble on about – just lacking the motivation… but trying to do something about that…

Photos: flickr/tripleaxis/sets/kilimanjaro

There has always been one thing that has been right at the top of my to-do list. Kilimanjaro. I think the first time I heard about climbing Kili was in around 1998. I was working as a temporary office assistant for Philips, based in West Croydon. I remember that one of the office managers commented on my watch – a soft-strap Animal watch – and said he’d owned a similar, chunky-type watch when he was younger and had climbed Kilimanjaro whilst traveling.
I forget what had grabbed me about it – maybe I saw a documentary or read something further on the subject, but every since, when pressed for my all-time top ten life experiences, Kili was always there at #1.

With that in mind, I’ve always mentioned it to people whenever I attain the requisite amount of alcohol in my system – floating the idea out there in the hope that the idea will be shared and I’d find a Kili buddy. As luck would have it, I mentioned it to a co-worker, Steve and that’s just about where the fun bit of this story starts

..cut to three very tired people after a long-ass flight to Nairobi and a short, light aircraft flight right past the snow-crowned beast itself, into Kilimanjaro International Airport.

Day 1 camp

Tents already setup and a whole lot more people than expected milling around. Only about 3 or so hours walk, do not too tired – tomorrow will be a biggie though.
There’s a few other groups camping here tonight and around 50 people milling around – maybe more.
Lots and lots of porters. We were passed many times by them belting up the hill with horrifically large and heavy looking objects on both backs and heads. We, on the other hand, maintained a reasonably slow paced trudge – the renowned ‘poley-poley’.
Dinner was served in a dedicated tent -the table laid an tea/coffee organised before while we’d trekked up a little way extra to help with acclimatisation. Three courses – soup, fish and chips and then fruit salad to finish – considering the circumstances, quite an accomplishment by the cooks.
No real cloud cover, so the temperature dropped with the sun and I’m wiggling my cold toes in my sleeping bag while my breath is visible outside the tent and almost inside. If this is the bottom, then the top is going to be a hell of a lot colder than we’d imagined.
After the briefing last night I hired an extra sleeping mat (loads more comfy than mine would’ve been) and some thermal under trousers. Was playing it safe but I think I’m gonna be very glad I got them!

Day 2 camp

Today was a long day – around 7-8 hrs walking. After a freezing cold night and broken sleep amounting to about 5 hours tops, we were woken up with a coffee, had breakfast and got going.
Slightly steep in the morning, poles came out and I didn’t feel too much of a twat as everyone had them
(except the guides and porters obviously). Looking up the line of hikers, we must seem like some awkward, newborn quadrapeds – not quite in control of their limbs.
The going wasn’t too bad at all and, stopping for lunch with a view stretching out above the clouds, it really felt as though we were finally here and climbing Kilimanjaro.
After lunch the going was less steep – a more undulating progress, picking our way up, down, over and between rocks and, finally making camp after about 8hrs climbing, a very welcome bowl of hot water nursed my feet and made a good end to the day.
Having sworn to decode the secrets of non-freezing sleeping bag slumber, I zipped up all the way, drew the hood to a peep hole in front of my mouth and cocooned myself into a toasty night with only minor interruptions.

Day 3 camp

Supposedly a shorter, easier day, we walked for around 4-5 hours up a steep slope, heading directly away from kilimanjaro itself and towards another behemoth, Mt Mawenzi. On reaching the camp, we did a short, acclimatisation hike up to Mawenzi ridge – the equivalent in height of the Kibo base camp – our next day’s destination and starting point for the summit climb. The climb itself wasn’t too terrible, gaining around 500m, but only half way up, my head started pounding and by the time I returned to camp, I felt almost fluey – flushed neck and face and banging headache.

Heading bedways after as much dinner as I could manage – which was sparse, I cracked open the super strength panadol and cocooned myself again in hopes of frying the awful feelings out of me.

Day 4 camp

We reached kibo base camp at around 1pm and crashed. Yet again a totally underestimated day’s walk, we hiked across from Mt Mawenzi to the base of Kilimanjaro itself. The mountain grew as we walked, first a picture postcard, but ending up a monolith, filling the horizon.
Steep climbs and long hours took their toll and by the time we reached camp, I was ready to flop down on my sleeping mat, but we needed to organise our gear for the climb that would start that night.
The full immensity of what we were about to attempt was focused in all our minds and there were many confessions of actual fear in the group – not excluding myself!
Another headache and I trusted in the panadol as sleep came, but it was broken, checking to see if the sun was still up everytime I woke.
11pm came and we all got up and went to dinner. My headache was gone, but appetite got whisked away with it, so i had only tea, gripped for heat.

Day 5 – Summit

Standing around, waiting for the whistle, everyone wore a mask of determination over their aprehension. We set off at only a slight incline, the small circle of head torch light illuminating nothing but the person in front’s boots.
The slight incline quickly became a steep one and looking up to see the short strings of torchlights became a bad idea by either disheartening or unbalancing you. Initial glances showed an almost conveyor belt of hiking tourists, being chaperoned towards the summit, but as the night progressed, we passed more and more casualties – either too weary or suffering from altitude sickness – sitting or collapsed on the trail and like rocks in a stream, the flow of hikers simply passed round them.
Trudging upwards, there was nothing behind and nothing to either side. There was no real thought, nor was there a sense of passing time or distance – simply the base need to move your feet, to constantly mimic the ones in front.
The summit climb is split into 4 sections and at the end of the first, our lead guide split our group into two sections, myself and two others in the first with everyone following.
On this second section, the path snaked back and forth across the mountain due to the increase in incline and this was a godsend as it provided a break from the monotony and before long the summit was no longer the main objective, more just reaching the next turn.
With large problems, the best solution is to break it down to its constituent parts and tackle each one of those individually – simply attacking it in its entirety would be too much to take on at once.

Similarly, this climb begged to be broken into sections and my goal soon became simply to make it to the next section. Even if I made it no further, I refused to stop mid-way between two sections.
And so it continued, making it from turn to turn, stopping only for what seemed like the shortest time at pre-designated resting areas. The guide, Ricardo, pushed us to keep going, presumably knowing that we shouldn’t linger too long else our muscles would cool, making it difficult to get going again and we pushed on, the energy sapping steadily out of us.
Camelbaks froze and appetites evaporated, leaving fluids and energy levels to steadily empty without replacement. Guides’ regular reminders to eat bars and drink fell on cold, deaf ears and before long we were all running on empty.
At the end of day 3, at Mawenzi Tarn, our lead guide, Nayman, had pointed out the summit route on the side of the mountain. Since then we had been fearing the final section of that route. Even from a distance, it was plain to see the route, how it started shallow, began snaking as the incline grew steep and finally devolved in the final quarter into an messy scramble to the lip of the crater rim. We all knew that that was going to be the tough section, coming as a final, demoralizing hurdle right when you’re digging into your last reserves.
Last reserves were almost gone and I was still only on the second section and my ultimate goal gradually shifted from Uhuru to Gilmans Point and then to simply making it to the beginning of the last section. If I wasn’t going to make it, then I at least wanted to see what had got the best of me. The snaking had continued, but where there has been loose dust and scree, we were now taking large steps up onto boulders, some perilously easy to loose footing on. No real breaks here and I must’ve looked pretty similar to how I felt as our guide told me ‘not to give up now’.
A few more corners and I would’ve dropped where I was, but stepping up onto a ledge of some sort, I turned to my right to see a weatherbeaten and downright confusing sign; Gilmans Point.

Bewilderment and exhaustion. Sitting down, something kicked into gear and my stomach rejected onto the rocks next to me. I still don’t know if it was exhaustion or altitude sickness, but the guide looked me over, pronounced me good to go and then magically produced a thermos of water and some mugs for us. Hot is absorbed more quickly by the body, so camelbak frozen, this was a godsend and, complimented by the rest and now realisation that we’d made the first summit, I felt buoyed and ready for the last push.

Back in the UK, I remember that Steve had described what he’d heard your footsteps would be like at the summit. He inched forwards, dragging each leg forwards in turn as if it were weighed down… I thought he was over estimating the altitude and fatigue…

From Gilmans Point to Uhuru is a fraction of what we’d hiked so far. Still dark, we set off towards the true summit, stopping every hundred meters or so so catch our breath (mainly my breath to be honest ). Any incline whatsoever reduced our footsteps to exactly those of Steve’s demonstration – every last bit of energy simply gone.
Poles that I had once considered unnecessary and wimpy were a life-saver – taking some of the load of my legs and providing a perfect support upon which to slump and gasp for breath.

Standing under the sign is quite a thing. The sun had already risen by that point – a long, long 7 hours after we’d started.. Man tears brimmed and I mentally drew a large tick and a whole load of list items moved up one notch.