Camper Dan Beethoven

Have you ever seen a man so camp? (More pics here, or click these ones to engorge).

Cheshire County Council's footpath markings and stiles are brilliant. But this one was confusing…

I knew him, Horatio…

Mmm… gander. Sauce…

Like the saturation and vignetting? One day I'll start talking about bokeh. Then you'll be sorry.

I love rust. And barbed wire.

Blogfriends

Firstly, a massive happy birthday to Cynical Ben. He's a git, but he's my git. It's also Zoot Horn's birthday - the coolest man in the Black Country.

Secondly, huge thanks to Ewar and Dan. They ran a sweepstake on the World Cup, and I won - despite not supporting Spain. They just called in with my prize, and I must say that they've done themselves proud. Everything a gentleman-about-town might want is in the box - a shoe box decorated with Panini World Cup stickers -  (or, everything Ewar and Dan didn't want). Plus an England flag.

(They apparently have a great new 'project' in the pipeline, so look out for it).

So:
The Loon, by Tapes n Tapes
The Dead 60s by The Dead 60s
The Killers' Sam's Town
About What You Know by Little Man Tate
The Best of the Secret Policeman's Ball Part 2 (from The Guardian)
A Stereophonics sampler from The Sun, packaged in a West Midlands Police recruitment box.
A Daily Mail cover-mounted DVD of Relative Values, a notoriously bad film.
DVDs of John Motson's Greatest Ever Matches of Football and Mark and Lard's Football Nightmares
Graham Betts' Greatest Moments of Football book ('22 of the Classic Moments of FOOTBALL')
A. M. Homes's This Book Will Save Your Life
Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth
H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds
Naked Camera 3 DVD
Paddy McGuinness Live DVD ('Free Ringtone worth £3 - SEE INSIDE FOR DETAILS')
Gary Lineker's Favourite Football Stories (perhaps my favourite)
and a packet of table tennis balls. Of course.

Ben is going to be sooooo jealous. I'm a fortunate man.

Home again, home again

Hello readers. How've you spent the weekend?

Emma, from her ever so slightly smug texts, has been surfing, rafting, lolling in a hammock and generally doing things unavailable to Wulfrunians in winter. She's in New Zealand, visiting her sister. She promises to update her blog from Down There.

I was in a posh boarding school in Somerset (within sight of Glastonbury Tor, hippies), managing the West Midlands team for the Cadet Winton fencing tournament. It was very, very cold (hurrah for Icebreaker woolly gear) and quite stressful, but we did well. Last year we were 9th: this year we came 4th, so thank you to all the fencers, particularly the women's epée team, who were undefeated the whole weekend. They all behaved, too…

In my absence, Neal and Dan entertained Cynical Ben and his long-suffering wife Jo, at my flat. Actually, while I slept in preparation for getting up at 5.00 a.m., they entertained Mark to drunken pizza the night before. I didn't hear a thing. Ben's Christmas present to me was a huge box of the most depressing literature you'll ever see, plus a Jeeves and Wooster compendium, a Gary Rhodes cookbook, a cheese-making book, and Stephen Fry's guide to classical music, inscribed with the words 'This book is shit, love Ben'. And guess what: he's right!

Ben has this to say about me over on his blog:

In a year when I gave up on the Guardian where can I turn when I want a left-leaning stance on world events? The answer is provided by the Vole who I agree with almost everything in general terms and almost nothing in the particular. His prolific blogging takes in the personal, the private, the political and the pant-wetting indie. I read his blog every time I am online and there is always something worth reading. He is a word machine. He also has an especial good humour and is wonderfully patient with my often incredibly rude and argumentative comments

The last comment is the accurate one. His visit to my flat was his first. I wasn't there. Ben's considered judgement was apparently 'it's not as bad as I expected', which is a beautifully weighted insult. However, he'll no doubt have a completely different opinion by next week. He always does, on every subject. Other than Muriel Spark, that is. He loves Muriel Spark.

Ewar: I have a beautifully wrapped parcel of books for you, courtesy of old Cynical. Call in for them next term.

Dan presented me with a Roy Hattersley book on the period in which I specialise, and a compilation CD, which starts with LFO and presumably gets weirder. Our own Christmas album will be available for your delectation very soon. Be afraid, be very, very afraid.

The weekend which kept on giving

Concerts and curries weren't the end of my weekend.

Most of Sunday was spent lounging in bed, wearing my very best smoking jacket, marking student essays - a harrowing experience this time, though recourse to this week's The Thick of It was a fine restorative: possible the finest episode so far. If I started quoting the rococo cursing and cynical politics, I'd never stop. It's a perfect exposé of the tired and self-serving final days of Labour, and of the Conservatives' spoiled, arrogant, vacuous policy-free triangulating - and we've a lot of that to look forward to after May's election.

Then Dan turned up with a bulging sack, alongside Neal, covered in mud. Three hours of swearing followed as Dan struggled to set up his magnificent musical equipment so we could start to record our magnum opus, a Christmas album. I didn't realise, until yesterday, that the creative process involved watching a man click keys and say 'fook' a lot. Still, without spoiling the surprise, we made a first track that wouldn't sound out of place on Psychoville's Christmas Special. Yes, that freakish and disturbing.

After that - off to a colleague's 50th birthday party, which was like an alcohol and curry-fuelled staff meeting. We danced to everything from Van Halen to Bollywood hits. Dan shouted himself hoarse discussing poststructuralism, and a good time was had by all.

Dan - a portrait

I'm not normally very impressed with my creative skills, but I took a photograph of Dan yesterday of which I'm really quite proud. It is, of course, down to his chiselled good looks and my sneakiness - long lens, 20 feet away while his consciousness was otherwise engaged - but it cried out for monochrome, and it's really worked well. Click in it for a larger one.

I also took this one on my way home from the station, solely for its slightly mournful attempt to import a bit of 50s LA into backstreet Wolverhampton. Wish I'd had my tripod with me.

Some gulls for Dan

Dan loves gulls - he's even doing a PhD on them (and other urban wildlife). Even the sealife's friendlier in Norway.

The locals were somewhat shocked at where we stayed - near the train station. It was clean, calm and quiet. We were offered drugs and 'a good time' (really, I doubt it), but more politely than the average British waiter offered a large tip… we declined. We're clean-living and we were already having a good time at huge expense.

Halcyon days of summer

Morning everybody. It's a good day. I've done 56 lengths again, it's a little gloomy, and the rain's beating on the window like a locked-out girlfriend. I'm expecting Daniel for a day's work under my watchful eye, and I'm planning to settle down with a copy of Almanac, the yearbook of the Association for Welsh Writing in English. Other than that, I've a couple of meetings with management as I'm on duty for the union this week and an early manuscript of my colleague Steve's manuscript on Hinduism to look through. Today's soundtrack is Slint (to whom I introduced Neal yesterday) and perhaps some Thomas Tallis.

All in all, it's going to be a perfect day.

The Map Whats?

Lou asked in a comment why we're called the Map Twats and whether the second word has acquired a new meaning.

Er… it has for us, denoting four idiots in the countryside rather than a crude term for pudenda. I wasn't present for the inaugural meeting, but the name springs from a discussion between Neal, Cynical Ben and Dan about an imaginary TV show in which some thirty-something fools get lost in the country but always find a pub. The soundtrack was to be (and this is Neal's fault), Cliff Richard's Way Out In The Country, which apparently features the lines 'You're going to find me/way out in the country'.

My contribution to celebrity culture is a porn mag for monarchists, featuring cadet members of the royal family: Barely Regal.

Still available for weddings, barmitzvahs and children's parties…

Look who preys on porky lecturers

Our art department is housed in a 1970s block which was probably very fashionable, but is now a rotting heap of concrete. However, kestrels like to breed in the deep shelves between its exoskeleton and skin. I don't go past that block very often, but Dan and I wandered along the ring road today and heard the cry of the kestrel, and took a closer look. (Normally in Wolverhampton, Kestrel denotes an extra-strong lager favoured by those who prefer to quaff al fresco).

So anyway, I tried out my new zoom lens on these birds today. There are three fledglings, and their parents must have been off hunting. I took these photos from my building, about 250 feet away, through windows on each stairwell. The light wasn't brilliant, but it's not a bad first go.

They're circling…

Management aren't the only things preying on us: kestrels are breeding on the art department building. I'll take some photos sometime this week. Three chicks are completely visible. Not quite the 'Urban Ospreys' of which The Nightingales sang, but still pretty good.

Meanwhile, once I can get my head around iMovie, I'll treat you to footage of Dan shaking his booty most undecorously. I must confess that strong drink had been taken at this point.

The last word on social media

Thanks to Dan, who spotted these miserable bastards and thought I'd have something in common with them. They do, however, understand new media perfectly:

It's Christmas!

Despite my habitual whinging, this institution can be the source of great bounty: Neal and I have just acquired professional quality tripods (sadly, not Tripods), and a great extra birthday gift for Dan.

Now I'm off to 'discuss' with Registry where the missing essays are…

Happy Birthday, Deep Pan Dan

It's Dan's birthday, so everybody wish him well. Thanks to breaking a window with his football, Dan's spending his birthday cutting Mr Radford Sallow's lawn with nail scissors. Boys like candy!

Meanwhile, don't forget to participate in Cynical Ben's 'first line challenge'. I got 8.

Yet another birthday

I'm off now. To sunny Stafford for Dan's partner's 40th. Then my Germanic chum (like that, Deer Friend) Felix is coming for the weekend to drink while I mark essays. What are you lot doing for the bank holiday? Wish I was going walking…

Oh yes - to drown out the New Labour screaming, I just received Tristram Hunt's new biography of Engels, and a new edition of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England (short answer - less than idyllic). Plus ça change…

Tricksy postmodernist git

Cynical Ben has spent most of the last week setting up a variety of blogs under pseudonyms. It now appears that they are all part of a new genre of writing - a novel of sorts consisting of characters' telling their parts of the story on their own blogs. He's provided a central site from which you can access the various facets.

I'm seriously impressed - the concept is fascinating, the characterisation's good, and it makes use of the possibilities of the technology. What do you think? Leave your comments on his site(s).

Despite being Least Worst Best Man at his wedding (alongside Neal and Mr Radford Sallow's young friend Daniel), I'm increasingly convinced that Cynical Ben is simply a sock-puppet for legal eagle Jo Judge.

Update - according to Loose Ends on Radio 4, the overlap between a book and a blog is a 'blook'. Revolting.

Orion? At this time of year?

Dan got quite shirty with me a few months ago when I misidentified a constellation. Now, serendipitously, xkcd has immortalised the exchange:

Hermit wanted

Manchester Museum is looking for an environmental hermit to live in a garret and think green thoughts for 8 weeks (we're all going to perish in an environmental cataclysm of our own making - doesn't take that long): Map Twat Dan needs some money and time to write up his thesis on pigeons - job done!

Awa' the lad and lassie

Thanks to Dan and Georgie for their hospitality last night: top quality haggis, creamy cranachan and deep, dark fondue and entertainment! No murders, either.

Introducing the Map Twats

Two of them, anyway.