Adventures in hirsutism

My friend Neal recently grew a fine beard, seemingly for the amusement of his friends. As you can see, the experiment ended this week: he's giving the luxuriant Edwardian moustache a couple of days' grace, then it's all coming off before he heads to foreign climes to recover from a few months of honest toil.

To me, there's something of the outré Edwardian scandalmonger about this: D. H. Lawrence perhaps, E. M. Forster, or George Bernard Shaw.

See the rest here: click these examples to enlarge.

Eureka!

Flashman about to be cashiered from the service

'Utter one more word about this damned 'evolution', Sir, and I shall have you horsewhipped!'

This one reminds me of the great Irish-Australian pugilist, Paddy Slavin:

or even better:

Kitsch me if you can

The final pictures of Macclesfield as the sun went down. Rest here.

Click on these for larger versions.

Yuck

Neal makes a break for it.

We opted for the pub instead of Evensong

No doubt a salubrious emporium.

Guess who's back…

Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back.

Now this looks like a job for me 

So everybody, just follow me 

Cause we need a little, controversy 

Cause it feels so empty, without me 

I said this looks like a job for me 

So everybody, just follow me 

Cause we need a little, controversy 

Cause it feels so empty, without me

Well, it's me. Not Slim Shady at all, though I like to think I possess the same street smarts as Mr. Mathers. Though I may be wrong.

I'm back for a massive load of marking and preparation for a huge amount of new teaching, which is going to be a real struggle this time. Oh for a job with sensible workloads, timetables and managers. Maybe in the next life.

Anyway, I thought you might like to see my Christmas present from Neal, who's a very creative man. He's got it into his head that Michael Gove (the education minister who thinks he's intelligent) looks like a fish, so he produced a bottle of artisan Govefish Oil. I literally laughed until all my stomach muscles hurt.

Rear view of the pourer

The other side of the pourer

Govefish sauce

Made in the Faeroes, Bottled in Stoke

Meet the producer

Action Neal

Have you met Neal, originator of the Melanie Philips Newspaper Rack©?

This is him in action on Cannock Chase yesterday. What a figure of a man. He's into swinging.

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.

Intriguing

Neal's homemade present to me involves an (empty) tube from a popular brand of fake crisps. My mind boggles. Any ideas?

A taste of Wolverhampton

This was one of several 'party buses' which cruise the West Midlands, saving revellers the bother of having to wait for a drink until they get to the pub. These are from Hallowee'n

This is Neal, washing off the blood after another successful murder.

And this is how Neal and Emma ended the night:

  

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.

Kookery Korner

Before swanning off to glamorous Birmingham yesterday, Neal and I went for a fried breakfast, bought kitchenware, then spent the afternoon making lovely soups with the huge pile of veg which had built up over the weeks (I have a weekly deliver of locally grown organic veg, which will annoy Cynical Ben no end, I suspect, because it's so bourgeois).

The soups we made were Green and Orange. Green consisted of 8 leeks, cabbage, garlic, bay leaves and potato to thicken. Orange was carrots, smoked chilli, roasted peppers, garlic and various seasonings.

Both were sensational - wintery, complex, satisfying. Perfect consumed with brown buttered toast and spilled over several sections of a big Saturday newspaper, perused at leisure.

What a long and strange week it's been

Happy Friday, cybermates. How I am looking forward to a foaming jug of ale after the day ends (one workshop on Greek love poetry and a 5 p.m. project tutorial), then tomorrow the Map Twats are walking the Cloud, near Congleton before an evening watching Ireland trounce les françaises at soccer.

After all my frenzied preparation this week, the Othello lecture went fine. I thought I had a mere 25 minutes of Olivier's overacting to struggle through before confronting the Big Issues, but actually the old ham strung out Act 5 for an hour. It didn't take long for students to actually and openly laugh at his terrible performance, and I can't say I blame them.

After that, it was off to New Cross with a student taken ill (I'm an effective lecturer, but the effects aren't always positive), which was less dramatic and more pleasant than you might think - we talked about music and books for a few hours while the madness of A+E went on around us.

Imagine my joy when I returned to find that Neal had prepared a delicious broccoli and Stilton soup for me. How I'll miss him when he leaves the West Midlands. Perhaps I'll have to hobble him, as in Misery.

Monstrous Monday

Hello all. Survived the trick or treaters? I live in an apartment block, so didn't get any (slightly disappointing - I could have abused them via videophone. Anyway, Iustin and Laura, Emma, Neal and I all toddled off to Howard's haunted house in the woods, which he'd customised: body parts, werewolves and electrical devices all over the place. The less said about the sex doll in the driver's seat of Howard's matt black '69 Cutlass, the better…

I was dressed as the priest from The Omen, complete with cross (constructed by Neal), and my massive, brass-bound 19th-century Bible. In Welsh. It's still there - someone snaffled it, but I trust Howard to find it. We drank rough wine, chatted to lots of students and colleagues for as long as we could stand, danced a little, and like good old people in our 30s, were sound asleep by 3 o'clock. Well, Neal and Emma were snoring away in my armchairs, very uncomfortably, while I watched The Thick of It before retiring. All hail Howard!

I didn't take photos, as I left my camera at work, but Emma did take some, which I've posted here. Don't be scared!

Sunday was therefore a bit of a washout. I fed the animals, we all sat round reading The Observer and The Irish Times, then I went to bed, having completely lost my voice. This is still the case - I'm at work, slaving away, but won't be starring in Tosca (or any lectures) for a while yet…

Manchester Blog Awards - the prelude

Weirdly disconnected from the web for blog-related purposes, Neal and I set out for Manchester with high hopes for Cynical Ben.

My good wishes were somewhat leavened with bitterness after he suggested we meet in Vinyl Exchange, knowing very well that this is like scattering coke around in a Betty Ford clinic. By the time he turned up, I'd hoovered up two Kris Drever LPs and one of Cajun dance tunes. Don't worry, I can give up any time. £250 for a Meic Stevens LP? You must be joking. Rare in England perhaps, but they litter Welsh charity shops!

After a brief interlude while Neal bought trousers (yes, we lead a glamorous life), Ben took us to Oklahoma, a cool little backstreet bohemian coffee bar, then off we went to meet Mrs Cynical. Gradually acquiring more friends: the recently engaged Alison of this parish (romantic post not weakened at all by her revelation that this declaration of love was produced by a shambling drunk at three in the morning, clothed only in his boxers - it's the blogger's way), and Caroline, who invites you all to buy her house in Salford.

We dined, flatulently, in the Armenian Taverna near Manchester Town Hall. If you like flavoursome salads and meat as far as your intestines will stretch, it's definitely the place for you. It certainly pleased me mightily.

Yo! Bumrush the show!

Good morning, children. I can almost see light at the end of this week's tunnel, and what a week it's been. The latest on the redundancy front is that the uni has threatened to advance the compulsory redundancy phase if we keep saying nasty things about the vice-chancellor (such as calling on her to resign). Oooh, scary!

Neal turned up last night, tired, hungry and beardy after spending a week with the hippies at CAT, eating lentils and building his test walls (he's doing an MSc. in sustainable building). I fed him meat, made him use a cup and saucer as part of my drive to live in a civilised fashion, and he's probably still asleep. I wish I'd spent the week in Wales with hippies!

Rather shamingly, I found the passport I'd lost 5 or 6 years ago. Having blamed my former landlord for accidentally chucking it out, it turned up as a bookmark in a biography of Samuel Beckett…

Tonight, a little more culture: The Revenger's Tragedy at the Arena theatre in Wolverhampton, followed by curry with my sophisticated and suave colleagues Ben, Frank and Hilary. It's by Thomas Middleton (it used to be attributed to Tourneur), was first performed in 1606 and is still considered shocking, dark and violent. Highly recommended.

Then tomorrow it's off to Bangor University, for its 125th anniversary: there's a discussion between novelists James Hawes and Philip Pullman which I might not arrive in time for, then Super Furry Animals performing in the main hall. My friends Aimée and Vicky are also attending, so we'll have a good gossip as we haven't got together in a very long time.

At last, it's Monday

Good morning, and a happy Monday to you all. Saint Monday, by the way, was the icon invoked for people wanting to take Monday off. I'm taking the morning off - sort of. Going for a swim.

The weekend was full - building more bookcases with Neal on Friday, not getting my washing machine fixed (gits), going for a Thai meal with Neal in gratitude, an Open Day (farcical) and playing on Laura's Wii Fit and eating chocolate while I used her washing machine. Iustin very unkindly filmed me doing very badly on various balance games… I reclaimed my Moulton bike from my old house thanks to Gerry and Mark, then I spent the rest of Sunday finding new places to hide books, drinking from proper cups and saucers, and eating guinea fowl (delicious, by the way).

What did you get up to?

Our house, in the middle of our street

Welcome to another week in the fun factory.

It's been a momentous and hugely expensive weekend for me. £3000 later, I've moved house for the first time in 9 years and 10 months, from the cramped room in which I wrote my PhD (occasionally) to a city-centre apartment. It's now piled high with boxes of books and my beloved vinyl records - I'll post some photos tomorrow, but I've cleared a space on the bed at least.

I'm now persuaded that going to the pub, then to a nightclub and dancing until three a.m. is not the ideal way to prepare for a weekend of heavy manual labour. Still, it was fun.

Taking down the old room was weird. Mostly joyful, but very hard work, and I kept finding things which touched off odd memories. My madeleine moment was finding photographs, and a load of band t-shirts from the mid-nineties, when I was rake thin: they were mostly skinny-fit and cool: Velocette, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Silver Sun, Super Furry Animals, Catatonia, the Belle and Sebastian 'Study at Stow' shirt from 1995, my 1970s Adidas v-neck shirt, a C+W embroidered shirt, alongside my old biker jacket, which will definitely appear in public again. The t-shirts, despite forming a significant role in my cultural development, will be awarded to the girls I know who can squeeze into them. Despite all the swimming, I won't be seeing a 28" waist again unless I develop some horrendous disease. Anyone know of a good one?

Anyway, I need to say a massive public thankyou to: James (who used the excuse of driving the big white van to air his most reactionary views: the Daily Star on the dashboard was the piéce de resistance); Gerry, Mark, Dan, Neal, Anita and Howard. They all overcame their various disabilities to shift massive, heavy things for almost 12 hours. Nothing was broken nor lost, and nobody complained, despite the intense provocation afforded by my half-arsed organisation. I'm not, it's fair to say, going to have a second career in logistics.

I also saw Cynical Ben on Friday. Having explored the delights of Walsall and Willenhall for the day (he's a local lad) he texted to cancel going out for a drink with the words 'Fuck the Midlands, I'm off. The idea of spending another 3 hours here is giving me the fear. Sorry'.

He relented, and sat in my first-year poetry lecture, and had the good grace to not openly mock or heckle, so thanks to him too! He even met Zoot Horn, which was all a bit postmodern.

Cash back!

Neal has passed on this TED lecture on why bonuses don't work.

Executive here get Performance Related Pay (£11 million, in the last year for which figures are available). I wonder how a multimillion pound shortfall, 250 redundancies, reduced courses and bigger classes are calculated… they'll probably get a bonus for their genius (ahem) solutions to the problems they've caused.

Of cardboard and paper

I'm definitely moving house to a decent enough flat in the town centre, getting the keys a week on Friday. Now I'm overwhelmed with thoughts of the packing, the shelving required (70-80 metres for the books and records) and the cold hard cash… frightening. Next week will be spent alternately teaching and packing! Obviously I should cut down on things which need moving, but I called into the bookshop to order the poetry course textbook and ended up buying four more books: Andrew Brown's examination of Sweden, Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared, a new translation of Y Mabinogion (my fourth), Michel Faber's satirical The Fire Gospel, and some bracing polemic, Slavoj Zizek's Violence.

Neal, Emma and I went to the Hogs last night - watched Manchester United grind out a dull win and lost in the pool competition - me in the first game, Neal in the second.

Sit back and relax, with the sounds of the seventies

Well, Monday again and I'm back in my otherwise deserted office, listening to the oddest song I've heard in a long time. Mark has an obsession with The Odd Couple, the 70s sitcom. Now he's discovered Tony Randall and Jack Klugman's cover of 'You're So Vain'. It uncomfortably reminds me of life with Neal!

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Until Monday, Farewell!

Further to The Culture, Cheese and Pineapple, Neal's cooking a Mussaman curry for Emma, Mark and I tonight. Then tomorrow it's Ho! for the British Fencing AGM. I couldn't face dinner with the buffers, but I'll turn up for the business and the mini-conference, hand over my UKSG welfare report and go home, hopefully unentangled by the politics. Ho ho ho.

Have a good weekend.

Looks like we got ourselves…

This phrase has been used in my presence frequently - now Neal's sent me the source: