Important Update

I’m not dead. Just realised that I haven’t created a new blog posting in months… a sign of busy times, not of my early demise! Be back soon, promise!

Brilliant Old Spice Advert – Oh how I laughed!!

Snowboarding in NZ

Snowboarding in New Zealand

Mountains can get a bit metaphorical sometimes can’t they? ‘We’ve a mountain to climb!’ & ‘The mountain must come to Mohammed’ and frequently ‘don’t make a mountain out of a Mole hill!’ – at what point does a mountain become a hill and a hill become a mountain? I think the answer lies in what you’re using your precious oxygen for, when you climb a hill you use it to huff and puff and when you use it to swear and curse its a mountain… I live on the nearest thing Lancaster city centre has to a mountain – especially when trying to carry home two bags of shopping from Sainsburys!

This one time I was up a mountain. Not a metaphorical one, one of the proper ones they have in New Zealand, the Southern Alps – I could see the summit of Mnt Cook a few miles away and everything… breath taking view, breath taking incline, breath taking cold. The general idea was snowboarding, strap a plank to your pins and enjoy an exhilarating loss of friction. My shiny new Cannon film SLR joined me and together we made beautiful photographs – until I fell on the Pommer and smashed the command dial to bits. I started at the top, camera in bag, bag on back, me on board…whiz! Finished board in the air, me underneath, on top of bag…crushing camera…crunch! I cursed the mountain and have forsaken what may otherwise have been a dazzling career as an international snowboarding champion.

I fell down...alot

Poco Besos Debut

Montserrat

It must have cost every penny I earned in the whole cruise (god knows how I paid the bar bill) and yet like all of the spotanious spends I’ve made in my days, I can’t remember for the life of me what it cost.  A helicopter flight from Antigua over the bright clean Caribbean sea over to Montserrat, a small green island tipped with puffy white clouds.

On closer inspection its as much grey and brown as it is green, and those clouds froth and boil out of the active volcano as it grumbles away to itself.  Back in 1995 it woke up with a shout and proceeded over a few years to blast the island with ash and lava and pyroclastic flows and great wreaking clouds of noxious gas.  The captial Plymouth was virtually buried alive by ash before the pyroclastic activity burnt what was left to cinders.  Like all natural disasters there are odd little patches that seem to have almost escaped damage entirely – but for the majority, the buildings are either skeletons, burnt or buried.  Amid one large grey flat expance of seeming nothingness the is a single feature, the spire of the parish church poking up a few feet above the ground. Fortunately the island has a large natural ridge that divides it in two and shelters the inhabitants from the worst of the mountain’s ill tempers.  A small village is now the centre of government.

It was a smooth flight, the pilot was an entertaining guide (who I’m conviced would have broken the rules and landed for us if we’d have had enough green between us for a bribe) and from a human point of view – good and humbling.  It wasn’t so much seeing sulphur bubble out of the rock face, nor even really the leveling of the city that did it for me, it was when the pilot explained that we were flying over a few square kilometers of Montserrat that had been open water a couple of years before.  The island is a fair bit larger than it used to be back in the 90′s, and the idea of solid ground materialising where none existed before put me right in my place.

Worth every penny!

The Dance of the Molecules

Click the image above to check out the video on Youtube.

Its funny the things that become important to you as time goes by. When I was working onboard the P&O Cruise ship Artemis as a photographer we spent a lot of time in the Mediterranean… there was plenty to see in the ports, but bugger all on the TV. It seems an odd complaint doesn’t it. However the first thing you do when return to your cabin is switch on the tele – mainly because you don’t have a window and need SOMETHING to look at!

The TV normally only showed local channels, a bit of FOX news and the BBC world service – and in the med the endless torture of a German music channel. It seemed they played only 2 songs, one with a band of young men stumbling through a rundown house with some trumpets – and another with a white backdrop and the contents of a ball-pond being thrown about the place. It was maddening, the songs were euro-pop, gutteral and annoyingly catchy – you’d walk past someone it a corridor and they’d be half humming, half coughing the same tune.

I hated this track, loathed it, would have paid good money to erase it from history. And now, I just spent 45mins googling and ‘tubing’ not knowing the artist or the track title, with such dangerous searches as ‘german balls song’ being recklessly employed. And there it was Tanz der Molekule, Dance of the Molecule.

Funny thing, I really like it, its…jolly. A little on the German side of pop music to make it onto the ipod, but I’m glad I know where to find it when I’m in the mood. I guess its the association with fond memories that drives this new found appreciation. Or maybe I’m just a bit fickle.

My iPhone that I love!!

I was chained into a contract with a phone that had a smashed screen and a few minor personality issues, I suffered months and months of longing to be free. Finally the last month rolls around and I receive the call “Ah, Mr. Gibbs, we see your contract is coming up for renewal…you WILL remain with us…and maybe replace your handset.”

But I was ready for ‘em!! I ran screaming for the nearest O2 shop and signed a mammoth 24 month contract, in what felt like blood. BUT despite the ugly commitment issue, I have gained one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever owned. It just does stuff. Its clever and intuitive and sexy and it has a kind of touch-screen-digital-ergonomic-virtual-magic-ness that makes everything flow and shift and react perfectly. And the Apps are the cherry on the cake… I’ve already spent a blind fortune on apps. I’d like to pretend that its all currency converters and remote access to my laptop, but the truth is that its just as much childish and geeky stuff. To my great shame this list includes the arcade game wormz, a light-saber simulator (vvvvrrrrrrrrom …. kkzzzzz!!!!) and perhaps worst of all … a talking phrase book…in Klingon. These are guilty little indulgences.

I hope to have a long and happy life with my iphone that I love!!