Last week I watched a .wmv of Frankie Martinez, New York salsa’s shining star. I found it very inspiring on two counts: 1) seeing his movements gave me a sense of the potential of this style of salsa and 2) his views on the way modern salsa dancers are too hung up on moves and technique and forget to have fun perfectly align with where my mind is at the moment with salsa. Last friday I was absolutely burning up the dance floor, channeling that inspiration into more energy and creativity in moves and styling.
Last night was different. I was rubbish. Same amount of trying, but without the same levels of “being any good”. My experiments, instead of coming up with exciting new moves or styling, ended up simply as mis-leads and cockups.
Still, my turning’s improving. I’m well on the way to a free-standing triple turn.
Yesterday was rather a good one. Steve, Steve and I went for a walk in Wetherby with Kate, who we decided should be called Steve too. She preferred “Stevie” but we kept slipping up and calling her Kate so the issue never came to blows. After discovering that the “official” pub on the walk wasn’t doing grub, we asked a local where they could recommend for food. Ignoring their recommendation, we went to the Three Legs or something. I think it was called the Three Legs because the staff were about as much use as a horse so endowed. We had the Sunday Lunch special, it being Sunday lunchtime, and they had to run out to Costcutters to buy bread to go with the soups. The waiter asked whose was the mushroom soup, and put down the chicken, then vice-versa… I couldn’t tell what I had because it tasted of salt and MSG. Turned out we had the wrong soups. The main course was good apart from the raw broccoli and cauliflower, and we spent a contented while in the beer garden playing a cutthroat game of i-spy for the 20p change.
That evening was Steve’s party and it was good. The punch started off a little dodgy, with a distinct coconutty tone, but as the evening progressed the mixture matured with the addition of peach schnapps and god alone knows what else later in the evening. Met a bunch of folk from salsa and actually had conversations with them, which is a treat for a guy on the salsa scene since we tend to be in demand for dancing. It was interesting observnig the room as the punch bucket emptied. It was uncannily close to the physics experiment we did as kids where you melt ice then boil it. There was a first stage where the conversation started to flow and people started seamlessly involving strangers in their conversations, then later there was a point where the mixture started to boil: first by fractional distillation objects such as pringles lids and bottle corks started to escape and bounce around the room, then other impurities like juggling balls, and finally people. Fortunately the removal of the impurities seemed to allow the mixture to settle.
The DVLA are not a problem as I straightened them out when the car was involved in a crash and they wanted me to provide my insurance details.
What I object to is that the police can authorise work that the keeper has to pay for - note this is not a fine, it’s a fee. Really it’s a stealth fine with none of the safeguards that (adequately or otherwise) apply to fines.
A friend of mine once had his car stolen and recovered less than a km from his house. Nobody told him it had been found, they just had it recovered and charged him over £100 for the pleasure. In that case he was entirely the victim of the crime, and of a simple oversight by the police. Nobody should be able to commit you to a contract with a third party without your knowledge, not even the police.
Had they simply told him “Your car has been recovered at XYZ” it would have involved a 15-minute walk, the sweeping-up of some broken glass, and a drive home. As it was, it involved a bill, impounding of his car, complaints, recriminations, and a really nasty sergeant at York station.
Besides the fact I haven’t owned this car for over a year, this is WRONG on so many levels.
Acting as authorised agent for and on behalf of the local police authority, we recovered the above vehicle: FORD ESCORT G374CEJ Which had been stolen / abandoned / road traffic accident or was used in contravention of road traffic regulations. We have been informed that you are the last registered keeper.
The recovery charge for the vehicle is £105.00 and the storage charge whilst stored there is £12.00 per day.
TAKE NOTICE: that you may collect the vehicle at any time on payment of the sum due to us. Upon failure to collect the vehicle with in 7 days we are empowered by the above regulations to sell the vehicle and defray our costs from the debt through the court.
Arse. After typing all that I can’t be bothered to rant about it.
Oo I nearly missed that I’d been tagged
Never having been very good at kiss chase, let’s hope I get this right.
Number of fillums I own on DVD and video: about 1
Last fillum I bought: Taxi 2, which I lent to Ewan and haven’t seen since.
Last fillum watched: A New Hope, which seems to have shamelessly plagiarised Star Wars but was not quite as good.
Five fillums I watch a lot: The three by Jackie Chan. You know, the one set in Modern-day Hong Kong, the one set in Ancient China, and the one where he’s a globe-trotting adventurer. Oh that covers all of them. Oh, plus jackie chan’s hollywood fillums except for rumble in the bronx. Time Bandits.
Tag five people to put this info in their journal: - No, I shalln’t.
I don’t feel very well today, which is surprising when you know that I ate more fruit yesterday than usual. Less surprising when you find that meant 2 portions of fruit, some olives, 5 lots of cheese, 2 types of dried sausage, 3 types of pastry/bread, chocolate, and a milkshake.
I have a feeling today’s diet should really involve broccoli or cabbage, or some such.
Everybody who writes a bunch of decimal numbers down for adding up writes them with the units column as a, well, column. This is called aligning by decimal point.
Microsoft Excel came to market dominance in 1993. Why is it then that 12 years later there is still no option to align cells’ values by their decimal point? You still need a relatively complex workaround.
I was beginning to worry that I was no longer capable of having a proper hangover, but a birthday involving two types of wine, scotch, corona and dancing seems to have put paid to THAT concern. Got an alien that you plant in water and it MAGICALLY grows from bro and Sarah, and a clock that runs off fuel cells from mum - I didn’t read the instructions and hence it’s not been really keeping time, but it’s impressive that its digits are displayed powered simply by some water poured in the back. Nearly as cool as The Spud Server. The alien has grown bigger than its containing cup, so I’m going to have fun watching parts of it shrink at the same time as other parts of it grow - muhahahah…
It’s a mark of being old that one of the highlights of the day was getting up to speed with the housework in the morning…
Just got back from a week off work and 4 days in Groesbeek, Holland. Wow, I needed that. Sam and I went in the wee car, which almost didn’t break down at all, and we had many experiences including:
- ferry restaurant (great)
- ferry cabaret (scary/terrible)
- being absolutely rat-arsed on a boat (good way to get your sea-legs)
- dutch roads and drivers (impatient but courteous)
- dutch park-and-ride (WAAAAY cheaper than in England at 2 euros per car, up to 5 passengers)
- pannenkoeken
- trying to buy lead-replacement petrol in Dutch when the pump says “lood vervangen” but the attendant doesn’t seem to think you want “lood vervangen” then discovering that there is in fact no “lood vervangen” petrol left anyway.
- water in the float chambers on the carbs
- Playing Ricochet Robots on the new style board and being rubbish at it
- Teaching Lorri how to play Go and finding out how scarily formidable her mind is
- loads of really good samba-based easy listening on vinyl in the beer tent
- how to pick your way through a muddy field wearing only gay trainers
- Some really great acts in the show
- a dutch transport Caff
- getting fairly ratted on a ferry and juggling to a room deserted by all but a stag party at the end of its life
- brit yobs getting arrested and holding up the disembarkation
- a crash within minutes of starting to drive in britain
- land-sickness (whydoes the cafe floor seem to be moving, when I happen to know it’s not?)