I must be 'owling mad

This particular Monday is more painful than most: I celebrated my 38th birthday yesterday by pretending I was still young and fit enough to don four layers of protective clothing (one of them made of metal) and go toe-to-toe in the relentless searing heat with a succession of lean, hungry youngsters eager for glory in the Much Wenlock Olympian Games fencing event. The Games have been running since 1850, and were one of the inspirations for the upstart international event: Pierre de Coubertin visited Wenlock Games to see what was possible. It's a brilliant mix of serious events (triathlon, fencing) and fun ones: bean-bag throwing and the Vintage Bicycle Race, spread over the beautiful Shropshire countryside.

I've tried to compete in the fencing every year, though last year's London Olympics and a succession of weddings on this weekend have sometimes interrupted my attendance. I turn up the day before and help set up the event, stay with friends and drink cold beers (essential to any champion's training regime), then lose badly the next day. This time I stayed with my coaches' neighbour in her rambling, comfortable, lovely country house. Books of the kind I work with everywhere, and decor/furnishing from the age before disposable fashion. It was like the country house in The Box of Delights or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: quirky, unpredictable, surprising and loved. And so quiet: woken by the humming of bees.

This time wasn't too bad. A mediocre showing in the poles (not helped by some refereeing slips) placed me 17th, then I miraculously beat a higher-ranked fencer in the knock-out stages, largely by bullying him rather than through pure skill. My reward was meeting the No. 1 seed, a humourless but talented young man. He beat me - handsomely - but I made him work seriously hard for it, which for me is a very satisfying result. After that, I refereed the kids' team matches (so young, so energetic, so much more ability than I'll every have) and went home exhausted, aching everywhere, and bearing an Olympian Games jug and a bottle of wine. Oh, and a birthday card from all my fencing chums.

The best thing was that my friend Matthew, who has a terminal cancer, came up for the weekend to spend it amongst all his oldest friends in the fencing world - sharing a convivial dinner, getting stuck in to the habitual gossip and (most characteristically of all) wittily abusing my fencing, win or lose.

A couple of days before, I actually took an afternoon off (the power kept going down at work so I didn't miss much). My mother and I visited the Saddest Zoo In The World, then went for a random drive and a pub dinner. The perfect day. The Zoo is really an animal sanctuary which takes in abandoned and unsuitable pets: there's a wolf, some lemurs, raccoons, wild cats and loads of owls and other birds of prey.

Here are a few of my favourite shots (click to enlarge): the rest are here.

Harrier hawk?

I feel like this when I'm hunting plagiarists

The academic spots the crumb of funding, just out of reach

Self-portrait in an owl's eye

Stress stress stress

Morning everybody. This week seems to be one of those in which I have hundreds of things to do, and yet it feels like I haven't achieved much at all. Most of them are fun things - like refreshing our English Renaissance course - but time to sit and think has been limited. I've been marking re-sit essays: maximum respect to the young lady who plagiarised two essays on ethics and thereby demonstrates a highly sophisticated grasp of irony. I think. I've had a session with my work-mandated psychologist (or 'educational consultant' as it was put to us by management), seen friends, been to meetings and there's more to come.

No reason for this, I'm just rather pleased with it. I took it the first day I used my 50mm f1.8 lens. Click to enlarge.

Tonight I'm going fencing and then giving a fencing demonstration and photoshoot to the massed ranks of the international press. They're coming for the 126th Wenlock Olympian Games, the forerunner and determinedly non-corporate event which inspired that dubious aristo Pierre de Coubertin (hence one of the Olympic mascots being named Wenlock). As the international Olympics are in London this year, there's a huge amount of press interest, so I've to give them all a lesson, then put on a demonstration (sabre, as it's closest to the media's idea of sword-fighting) and pose for dramatic photos ('give me cynical, baby'). Not my favourite activity but all the people who look sporting are at work on Thursday mornings because they have proper jobs.

Then it's rushing back for a meeting with a very promising postgrad who wants to do a dissertation on the Mitfords, and at some point I need to get a haircut and sort out my clothes for a wedding in Winchester on Sunday. I'm reading a John Donne poem - one of the more family-friendly ones rather than anything saucy.

Friday's big event is another pleasant little encounter with Paul Uppal MP, who's making a cameo appearance in the constituency. I'm joining my allies at 38 Degrees to present him with a petition against the government's proposed new Snooping Bill. I thought Labour's security state was oppressive and authoritarian. Lots of Tories campaigned against it and promised a new era of freedom and civil liberties. Now they're proposing to eavesdrop on every tweet, email, phone call and - for all I know - pigeon post you send. Everyone's invited: join us at the fountain in Queen's Square at 2 p.m.

And in the gaps, I'll try to do a little work. Perhaps.

Gladiators, Ready!

This weekend sees the Much Wenlock Olympian Games in that beautiful village in deepest Shropshire. The Games were the inspiration for Baron Coubertin's refoundation of the international Olympics, though the village event was dreamed up in 1850 by a local doctor who thought the peasantry was growing porky. The closer to the London Olympics we get, the more attention the Wenlock games attract (hence one of the 2012 mascots being called Wenlock) - it's contesting one of the athletics events on Sunday.

It's a charming mix of fun events (vintage bicycle racing, bean-bag throwing) and serious sport - triathlon, archery and fencing, amongst others, are proper events.

For my sins, I'll be contesting the fencing event, despite not having fenced properly for over a year. They're going to destroy me.

If you're at a loose end, come on down. Fencing's on Sunday. Come and laugh at the fat man.

Cup a load of this…

Hello. What you all do over the weekend? The other Map Twats got drunk and abused me, and my indie icons, in foul terms.

I was at the Much Wenlock Olympian Games. It's a funny mix of comedy sports, children's events, and high-level fixtures, as my fencing match was. Outside was the Vintage Bicycle Race, inside was a decent event attracting quite a few international-level fencers! It's just a shame that the Women's Pig-Chasing event was phased out a few decades back. Surely, that should be an Olympic sport again? The Games were set up by the local doctor, who also founded schools, organised clean water, got the railway line extended to the village, and generally did everything he could to turn what was a slum into a model village (and now an incredibly expensive place to live). There is something hugely inspiring about seeing hundreds of people joining in, competing, working, or just visiting, an event that could so easily have died or been spoiled by commercialisation. The sun shone, we all worked hard, and there was a general sense of perfection. Then I went back to Wolverhampton and to feuds, litterers and atomised selfishness.

So anyway, I spent Saturday helping to set it up, was in the hall at the crack of dawn working again, and finally got to do some fencing some hours later. Thanks to some pure dumb luck, I managed to narrowly beat a couple of really good fencers, including a Cadet (youth) GBR lad and got a decent seeding of 6th. My first direct elimination fight was against the coach I sacked from my university squad a few years back, so there was a little tension. He's a recent veteran Sabre world champion, so he's pretty good, but I again scraped past him 15-14, having been 6-2 up at one point. Pure luck: his last hit missed and I timed my riposte well.

Then my luck ran out - in the quarter-finals I lost to an Army guy, Max Weedon, who had brilliant timing and telescopic arms. My awkward tricks got me a few points, but it was utterly one-sided. There were a couple of consolations though - he won the event, and he's a very nice guy, so it's impossible to be bitter. I came 5th overall and won this trophy (third time) for the best Shropshire fencer - then got on with taking the competition down, which with all the aches and pains, was far less pleasant than setting everything up.

One of these photos is from Wolverhampton. You decide which…

Those who are about to die salute you!

Well, it's five o'clock and time to go home. Instead of going to Helen's party tomorrow, I'm off to help set up the Much Wenlock Olympian Games fencing. There are loads of events this weekend, and it's one of Britain's cutest villages, so get yourselves down there. Good pubs, a good book shop, lots of sports (some more serious than others) and beautiful countryside. The fencing is on Sunday at William Brookes School if you want to cheer me on. I'm in charge of the entries, so I already know my name won't be on that trophy…

Displacement activity

Things to do today: read some incredibly boring papers on Threshold Concepts. Sort the entries for the Much Wenlock Olympian Games (helped inspire Baron de Coubertin to refound the international version - places still available) and do some proper work. But it's too hot…

Meanwhile, here's a lovely bit of melancholic Australian chamber-pop from one of my favourites: The Paradise Motel.

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Of Cheese and Indie

I won't go on about politics today - it's too hot, which is something I don't deal with very well. I will just mention that the Daily Mail, of all rightwing racist papers, is going after David Cameron for his mortgage dealings - and a good thing too. I presume that they've decided that they need to keep their bitter, jealous Poujadist readers even if that means turning against their natural leaders.

I've had an action-packed weekend. Well, not exactly active, but varied. For Dan's birthday, we planned a walk along the Severn around Bridgnorth, and then to Birmingham for some fine lo-fi. So we all met at 11.45 to get the bus, except for Phil, who turned up an hour early, then wandered the streets of Wolverhampton in his disreputable shorts and beer-logo t-shirt. We sort of missed that bus - Dan's train was delayed, but it was filled to capacity anyway. So we wandered, and some of us decided to buy tickets for Mark Steel tonight. (Dan seemed to like his presents: I gave him a bottle of excellent Islay single malt and 7 CDs themed around birds and walking, Neal made him a bee nesting box which impressed us all mightily, and we presented him with a vintage mixing desk acquired perfectly legally).

Off to lovely Bridgnorth, where I had hopes of storming Bill Cash's mansion in Upton Cressett, but instead, Christine and her bloke bravely invited us for 'bread and cheese', even though Christine only knew Mark and I, and her husband had never heard of us. 'Bread and cheese' turned out to be Stinking Bishop, brilliant stilton, salads and jugs of Pimms, served in their beautiful English cottage garden overlooking the Severn valley. Needless to say, we couldn't tear ourselves away from fine company and gourmet food: the walk was cancelled. I'll stick some photographs up when I get into the office on Tuesday (no, I'm not having Monday off - I'm going to a conference on how to turn my job into a career. It's the New Deal for academics).

Later on, we took advantage of subsidised fares to get 4 train tickets to Brum for £4 and hit the coolest bars - we may not have enhanced this coolness. The Sunflower Lounge loses points for having one screen showing Celebrity Mr and Mrs Starring Morten Harket (is that right?), and wins some back for presenting Repo Man - in French. From there, off to the Victoria, where some of our party unsubtly admired the human form, chatted to Mark's ex's brother, drank fine ales, met another Bangor graduate, Mary, who has the required robust humour to cope with us, and then headed off to The Island, which was most stylish. I temporarily switched to margaritas because I don't think that it demeans my undoubted masculinity at all. No doubt the student I met there and in the next place we went will post the photo in Facebook to my enduring shame… Should have worn my Melt Banana shirt.

From there, we went to Snobs, the legendary Birmingham indie club. I went about 9 years ago and had a wonderful time. This time, it's fair to say, we didn't. Despite dosing ourselves regularly with gin and tonic, we couldn't help noticing that the music was rubbish - an incredibly uninventive dependence on mainstream sixties soul worn out by over-repetition. It was, frankly, reminiscent of 'Sound of Summer' CDs given out by middle market tabloids, leavened only by the most obvious Smiths or Stone Roses track: no inventiveness, no innovation, just deeply conservative choices.

I love a lot of 60s music - Velvet Underground, Ligeti, Reich, Northern Soul - but dancing for hours to music by dead people is a form of cultural suicide. It betrays a total lack of confidence in one's own generation, whether it's the musicians or the revellers you insult with assumptions about their unadventurousness. Dropping the occasional Curtis Mayfield track into a finely crafted set is one thing: serving up constant Stones songs with sporadic chunks of Paul Weller and (ugh) Ocean Colour Scene is the equivalent of going to a UKIP rally, the pop version of Classic FM (exclusively playing Classical Music From The Adverts).

What would I play? Northern Soul, Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, Sons and Daughters, Magnetic Fields, G0-Betweens, Hydroplane, The Paradise Motel, Stereolab, Super Furries, Kraftwerk, Beulah, Tindersticks, Gil Scott Heron - lots of upbeat, interesting, danceable stuff which surprises and delights. Music for the brain and music for the groin. Music for the indie kids who carry library cards and make their own style.

So that was Saturday night. We returned by taxi, taking in every godforsaken urban sprawl between the Bullring and Beatties, arguing about whether dawn was breaking or just light pollution - both, I suspect. I got to sleep on my floor, thanks to my kind nature, and woke too early, feeling less than human. Lunch at the Newhampton Inn, reading newspapers under the fruit trees, then an ice cream in West Park restored my balance and here I am. Marking done, comedy to attend later, ironing not calling me for a change. I like ironing. There's a Zen-like calm which comes with achieving the perfect crease.

(Looking at the Bridgnorth tourism pages, reminds me to plug the Much Wenlock Olympian Games (10th-13th July) - I help run the fencing event, and compete too, and the Shropshire Biggest Liar Competition. Neal suggests that Bill Cash be given a clear run at this year's event).

So - you may not hear from me tomorrow - I'll be 'networking' (even typing the word makes me nauseous). Have a good day or so.