Almax

In the six or so years I've been blogging, I've "met" some interesting characters.

It was incredibly saddening to hear today that my favourite blogger - indeed, one of my favourite writers in any medium - known to many as Almax, and to readers of seminal football fanzine The Absolute Game by his real name of Alastair McSporran (which he memorably described as having been invented by a Sunday Post sub-editor), died on Tuesday after a long illness.

Alastair's knowledge of music, conveyed through his blog, was an entry point for me into a whole world of previously unexplored music. Through him I discovered The Incredible String Band, Bunny Wailer, Ornette Coleman, Poco and many, many more.

I also enjoyed the debates he led on football, particularly the fortunes or otherwise of the Old Firm. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of 35 private members of the blog when public access was revoked a few years back, and the community that Alastair created felt at all times like the world's best, most selective, private members club. No topic was off limits, and it became a safe haven of sorts to engage in occasionally heated discussion.

No words I write here can possibly do Alastair's talent justice. If a professional writer had left behind a body of work so varied, so forthright, so honest and so tear-inducingly hilarious, they would be feted for decades. That his blog was the work of a supposed amateur makes it all the more impressive.

While the main blog that bears his name remains behind closed doors, I recommend everyone visit this collection of Alastair's The Absolute Game writings for some of the best analysis of Scottish football you'll ever read.

Farewell Alastair - I'm listening to Blood On The Tracks in your honour.

Gone But Never Forgotten

Mrs Wife's uncle died today after a lengthy illness.

Although I'd only known him a few years, I'll miss him greatly. He was one of the kindest, most generous, friendliest and funniest people I've ever met.

Every minute spent in his company, even the hungover ones, is one that I'll treasure, and the world is a considerably poorer place today than yesterday.

Gone but never forgotten.

Running Man

A colleague and friend of mine has done what I consider to be a very brave, and very foolish, thing - he's signed up for next year's Edinburgh marathon.

I know for a fact that I couldn't run a marathon - my knees are agony after an hour of football, never mind four or more hours of running on concrete.

And there's no way I could be bothered to train for a marathon - I'm just too damned lazy.

Please head across to Kevin's blog and show your support for his madness....

Home, Home On The Range

Mrs Wife and I have just returned from a hectic few days in London. We had originally booked the trip to see Michael Jackson at the O2, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, but as we'd bought and paid for flights and hotel, we decided to have the holiday anyway.

And, in the space of five days in the capital, we:

• Went to the Comedy Store's improv night, where we were entertained by the hilarious talents of Josie Lawrence, Andy Smart, Lee Simpson, Suki Webster, Richard Vranch and Stephen Frost.
• Dined at the Hard Rock Cafe with Baby Brother and his girlfriend (who had been due to see Jacko's concert with us).
• Visited the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, the London Tombs, St Paul's Cathedral, Covent Garden and Camden Market.
• Took a cruise along the Thames from Westminster to Greenwich.
• Saw Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart (or Gandalf and Jean Luc Picard or Magneto and Professor Xavier depending on your own personal geek persuasion) in Waiting For Godot at the Theatre Royal.
• Attended, at Mrs Wife's request, We Will Rock You, which wasn't as bad as I had thought it might be.
• Avoided a Biblical downpour by spending £27(!) on cinema tickets for Transformers 2. Which seemed almost identical to the first one, but with more gratuitous shots of Megan Fox's cleavage - ie it was pretty darn good.
• Met up with Mrs Wife's cousin and a friend of mine from my university days that I haven't seen in more than seven years for a boozy afternoon in Theatreland.

All in all, a pretty productive, if tiring, five days.

Meeting Of Minds

As well as having the misfortune of watching Montrose lose their first league match of the season on Saturday, I also enjoyed the company of two of my fellow Scottish bloggers, The Tomahawk Kid and Big Rab of The Ben Lomond Free Press.

Both Rab and TK are Sons of the Rock, and both had made the pilgrimage to Montrose to see Dumbarton continue their push for promotion to Division Two. I worked with The Tomahawk Kid for a year or so when we were both employed by A Major Engineering Company, but Saturday was the first time I'd seen him in a few months.

TK and Rab have known each other since they were just wee boys, but it was the first time I'd had the opportunity to meet Rab.

So, an hour before kick-off, we met in the British Legion adjacent to Links Park for a mini blogmeet.

I believe a good time was had by all, although Rab and TK were more pleased with the result than I was. Oh, and Rab did voice displeasure at cups of Bovril that were described as espresso-sized.

And I thought it was us east coasters who were supposed to be grippit.

Big Rab, Groanin' Jock and The Tomahawk Kid in the Legion before Saturday's match.

Photo courtesy of Tomahawk Kid Junior.

With Friends Like These...

...who need enemies?

Chee-ree-oh, We're Off To China

The next time you hear from me, I'll either be in China or back from China.

Be nice to the guest posters.

If anyone needs us, we'll be with Paul Langmead.

Of Hiccups, Monster Bobs and Visas

The dust is finally settling on a fairly hectic weekend and I'm almost able to keep my eyes open long enough to post, so I'll try to collect my thoughts.

Friday's working day culminated in a leaving night for a fellow employee, and the drink was flowing freely at the start of the evening. My recollections of events are hazy, but I'm told that my Elvis impersonation kept my colleagues amused.

Thankfully, I had the sense to bail out before things got too messy, and instead subjected the passengers on the Aberdeen to Montrose train to a spectacular bout of hiccups that lasted for the duration of the journey. These hiccups were more like sonic booms, and were so loud that I could hear them above Definitely Maybe cranked up full blast on the Magic Tune Box.

Having arrived in Montrose, I decided that food was required, and treated myself to a pizza. The first bite removed removed several layers off the interior lining of my mouth, and in shock I managed to spill molten cheese on both my hands. All in all, a fairly eventful post-pub meal.

After staggering from the pizza shop to Dungroanin', I managed to scare Pepper, Mrs Wife's rabbit, half to death, then retreated to bed.

Unfortunately, Saturday dawned for me at the early hour of 7.30am. Unable to get back to sleep, I settled on the couch, wrapped in a fake fur throw, and allowed my hangover to build up a head of steam.

What I found out later in the day was that a combination of hail, snow, horizontal rain and howling winds, mixed with the standard of football offered up in an end-of-season Angus derby, is enough to shift even the most stubborn of hangovers.

Though the match wasn't dire, the standard of refereeing, in a league renowned for atrocious officials, was honking, and the man in black's performance was enough in itself to deny Montrose a confirmed play-off spot. For a week at least.

And so Saturday night started with me shivering, attempting to restore my core body temperature to something above freezing and preparing for a second consecutive night on the lash.

I believe a good time was had by all, with most of the assembled crowd enjoying their first visit to Roo's Leap. This vast amount of food was washed down with a few civilised drinks....

....Which doesn't really explain how I ended up finally going to bed at 6am, having woken the whole house with an impromptu didgeridoo solo.

My body clock must still be on British Winter Time, because I awoke at 8.30am, unable to do anything but doze fitfully until my lift to Dundee arrived. Why Dundee? To take in the Dundee United v Rangers SPL match, one of the more entertaining games I've been to this season, albeit one in which the final result left a lot to be desired. But no team can expect to go behind three times and still win a match.

A long day at work on Monday was followed by a trip north to Ellon, where Mrs Wife acquired her second rabbit, a bouncing boy now known as Dylan (in tribute to Robert Zimmerman, not The Magic Roundabout).

Introducing Dylan and Pepper has been a high-tension affair. Pepper is no longer in possession of her womanly organs, but Dylan still has a full set of boy bits, and he's eager to use them. So far, as Pepper has investigated this newcomer, she's smacked him around the nose a few times and attempted to give him a warning nibble on the nose. But Dylan seems to take this as foreplay, so there may be testing times ahead.

Yesterday, the 28th anniversary of my arrival on this planet, saw Mrs Wife and I venture south to Edinburgh, with the intention of collecting our Chinese visas. Unfortunately, the Chinese Consulate is an awkward beast, and no amount of discussion or offers of cash would tempt them to process the application in a single day. Which means that I'll have to make a return journey next week.

So, a busy weekend means I'm pretty shattered and looking forward to a few evenings of realxing on the sofa to recuperate.

I must be getting old.

Soundtrack of My Life

Each month, Mojo magazine interviews three celebrities or musicians for its All Back To My Place page, asking the same questions each month. I figured I'd prepare my answers just in case they ask me for the next issue.

What music are you currently grooving to?
I don't know if it can be classed as "grooving", but I'm listening to The Enemy's debut album We'll Live and Die In These Towns a lot. It reminds me of The Jam, in a kind of vitriolic, call-to-arms, sound of the suburbs sort of way. Nowadays, I listen to music most when I'm driving to and from work, but I have a car share, so I tend not to subject her to anything too outrageous or loud. I'm also waiting for my copy of Hard Fi's Once Upon A Time In The West to be delivered.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album?
The Stone Roses' debut album has been my favourite album since I was about 18. I can't really put into words what it is that makes it so important: the whole package transcends the individual songs and the individual players. But the opening rumble of I Wanna Be Adored, the psychedelic punk of Made of Stone and the epic closer I Am The Resurrection are enough in themselves to make it the greatest record of all time.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
It was the soundtrack to the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on cassette from John Menzies in Dundee (now replaced by a Tesco Metro) in 1990 or 1991. I'm always surprised when rock stars are interviewed and asked what their first record was, and they say The Jam, or The Beatles, or The Sex Pistols. I went through a long phase of liking shite pop music, a phase I call "being a kid". Kids don't buy Sex Pistols records - they buy novelty records, movie soundtracks and pop. Anyway, the soundtrack to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles included the awesome T-U-R-T-L-E Power by Partners In Kryme, This Is What We Do by MC Hammer and 9.95 by Spunkadelic, all of which I have recently downloaded from the internet. I think I might still have the original tape hidden away in either Mither's or Faither's loft.

Which musician have you ever wanted to be?
Anyone who can play an instrument. I envy people who can pick up an acoustic guitar and rattle off five or six songs faultlessly to entertain a roomful of people. I'd love to be able to play drums like Dave Grohl, bass like Flea or guitar like John Squire.

What do you sing in the shower?
I always used to sing in the shower, but nowadays I get up at 6.15am, which means that I tend not to, for two reasons:
a) 6.15am is not a "singing in the shower" time of day
b) The bathroom at Dungroanin' is en suite, and Mrs Wife would probably not care too much for being woken up at 6.15am by me running through a medley of Super Furry Animals songs.
On the occasions when I do sing, I find that Elvis songs sound great in the shower, as the cubicle makes my voice, which is quite deep (especially when I'm tired), echo. So I'm quite partial to belting out Devil In Disguise and Suspicious Minds. I also like singing Reef's Naked, for someone reason that I haven't been able to fathom, but which may well be Freudian.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?
If it's one record that I'll put on before going out, it's The Stone Roses' debut album, cranked right up so that the bass rattles the windows. I have to listen to the whole thing, finishing with the instrumental at the end of I Am The Resurrection. However, in this age of CD burners and MP3 players, it's all too easy to make up a playlist especially for Saturday nights. When I was at university, my flatmate and I made a going out CD that included Primal Scream's Kill All Hippies, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, The White Room by Cream and White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, amongst others. No-one else liked it, but we thought it was ace.

And your Sunday morning record?
I tend not to listen to music on Sunday mornings, but when I do, it can be almost anything. A bit of Motown can start the day nicely, as can The Beatles. Probably not Metallica, Motorhead or Probot though.


I know many of you can't stand memes, but if you want to play along, feel free. I'd be especially interested to hear how The Tomahawk Kid and Erica would answer.

Socks Appeal

Dublin is a strange city. The city centre, with its Georgian townhouses and the landscaped beauty of St Stephen's Green, seems fairly affluent, albeit not in an overly ostentatious way. But the bus ride into the city from the airport takes you through suburbs as run down as any I've seen in western Europe. I suppose that all the EU money that the Republic of Ireland has pulled in over the past decade or so only stretches so far.

Mrs Wife and I were in Dublin this weekend to attend a party celebrating the marriage of a good friend of mine from my university days. Having decided to wed on a beach in Thailand, they then invited their family and friends to a low-key soiree in Dublin.

It was the third time I'd visited the Irish capital - the first was with the friend whose wedding party we were attending, way back in the days before I knew Mrs Wife and he knew his new bride. Six of us spent a week touring Ireland, a tour which involved spending more time in licensed premises than in tourist attractions.

My second visit was in 2003, when I took the then Miss Girlfriend to Dublin to see Justin Timberlake touring his debut album. At some point in the future, I may write about that trip, but for now, I will concentrate on this weekend.

Although I'd visited Dublin twice previously, this was the first time I'd flown into its airport, having arrived by train from Belfast on my previous trips. This trip was also different in that we knew that our sight-seeing time was to be limited, as we were partying on both the Saturday night and the Sunday night, the main event taking place on the Sunday.

When we were first invited to the party, I tried to book a hotel as close to the venue as possible. Mrs Wife and I have decided that, on reflection, selecting a hotel that "boasts" a nightclub which remains open until 3am was probably not a great idea. It would seem that the hotel in question makes most of its money from the nigthclub. Our room was easily the worst we have stayed in whilst travelling in Europe, and was worse than most of those we endured during three months in South East Asia.

Two enjoyable nights on the town aside, and discounting the grottiness of our room, the defining factor of our trip was my wardrobe. Deciding to exude a little Scottish class, I took my kilt across the Irish Sea. As I was awaiting our bags at the carousel in Dublin airport, it suddenly dawned on me that I had neglected to pack a shirt to go with the kilt. Whilst an inconvenience, this wasn't an insurmountable problem - I would simply buy a plain white shirt, which would be a passable replacement for the real thing.

Having found a suitable stand-in shirt, I was hanging up my outfit in the hotel and checking that I had all of the other constituent parts of the kilt. Sporran - check. Shoes - check. Bow tie - check. Socks. Socks. Socks? SOCKS?

Damn. I'd forgotten the socks. This may not sound like a big deal - socks are socks. Except when the outfit in question is a kilt. Because the kilt extends to knee length, and the shoes lace up around the calf and shin, the socks are vital to the overall look.

Mrs Wife was, of course, suitably impressed with this revelation. As Dublin's shops had closed for the evening, it meant that Sunday, the day of the party, was spent roaming the city's streets in search of socks for an outfit from a foreign country.

We tried many different outlets, including one chain that rents kilts out, but in vain - Dublin is not the best place in the world to buy kilt socks. Finally, with our hangovers reaching the "fatally dehydrated" stage, our patience wearing thin and our feet aching, we were directed to a store called House of Ireland.

They didn't stock kilt socks. But they did have thick, knee-length, woollen socks, which would stand as passable replacements for one evening. I almost baulked at the pricetag - ELEVEN POUNDS for a pair of socks (I am a man who normally buys underwear in packs of three and always for less than five pounds - eleven pounds for a pair of socks is a bit steep).

And the moral of the tale? Listen to your mother's advice - ALWAYS pack clean underwear.

(As a post script to this strangely lengthy tale of socks, most of the other guests at the party were wearing jeans and casual shirts. But hey, a man in a kilt in a roomful of Irish people wearing jeans is ALWAYS going to stand out.)

Back To School

Until very recently, I believed that I was still too young to be invited to a school reunion. After all, it's only been nine years since I left secondary school, and only five since I graduated from university.

But despite still being a metaphorical spring chicken, I was recently invited to attend a reunion of all those fortunate past pupils of Tarfside Primary School who are still alive.

So, despite both suffering from chronic hangovers, Baby Brother and I headed back to the school for the first time in many years on Saturday.

Actually, that's a lie. Mither dropped us off at the school on Saturday. Which is pretty lame - a combined age of 50 and we're still getting driven to school by our mum.

It was an unusual gathering. Though many had travelled considerable distances to attend the event, many hadn't made it for one reason or another. So we were left with a strange spectrum of ages, ranging from the school's current pupils, all aged between five and twelve years, up to a handful of alumni now within grasping distance of their 80th birthdays.

(What is the correct collective name for a group of elderly folk? A wrinkle? A moan? A zimmer?)

The present, but soon to be retired, teacher at the school has retained self-made yearbooks for each of her years at the helm of the school, and it was equally intriguing and mortifying to flick through the pages chronicling my brief period as a pupil.

Parents in the early 1990s must have cruel, colourblind or both. Amongst the natty costumes I was sporting in the photos were a faded Rangers shellsuit, the jacket bleached a pastel shade closer to lilac than to the more proper Royal Blue; a Rangers strip (notice a trend here?) which I wore in its entirety, the shorts hiked up to somewhere around my armpits; and a pair of Bermuda-patterned Speedo swimming trunks, which at least provided some distraction from my lurid white pigeon chest.

Thankfully, this catalogue of what not to wear was shared equally amongst those of us who attended school around the same time, so the burden of shame wasn't mine to bear alone.

Even more toe-curling were the videos of school plays showing on a constant loop in a back room, showcasing to full effect the incendiary thespian skills of Scottish primary school children, starring yours truly affecting some god-awful English accent for recurring roles as a butler.

All in all, it was a great weekend, offering the opportunity to catch up with old friends who have been strangers for too long, drink to excess in the unique surroundings of Tarfside Masonic Hall and spend Sunday eating freshly barbecued hamburgers whilst playing football on the school playing field for the first time in nigh-on 15 years.

Needless to say, I had lost none of the magic.....