Jose Mousetrap

Day 6 Azenha do Mar and Odeceixe

2009-09-19T18:19:00.002+01:00

Last day! A pity. Today's ride is a loop northwest to Azenha do Mar then south to Odeceixe and back. I have a lie in and set off about 11, slightly worried that I will be cycling in the full glare of the noonday sun, but I feel much stronger and fitter compared to yesterday and eat up the kilometres.

The route goes back through the local village then turns left through large industrial-looking farms growing lettuce and berries under plastic awnings. It doesn't take long to get to Azenha do Mar, a small fishing port. A steep hill leads down to the harbour and I foolishly go down on the bike instead of leaving it at the top then have to wrestle it back up on foot.

The next 10K or so is a flat stroll past more farms on a near deserted road, a pleasant breeze and the shade of roadside eucalyptus making for an attractive ride. When the route reaches the main road again there is a long downhill of about 2.5k to Odeceixe, great fun albeit with the nagging worry that I'm going to have go back up it at some point.

I park the bike for a walk round the narrow cobbled streets of Odeceixe, which seems to be asleep. Perched on a hillside with an old windmill at the top and plenty of flowers around the whitewashed houses, it is an attractive spot.

I go on to the beach, which lies a couple of kilometres away, most of it uphill unfortunately. Again, the chain pops off in low gear, but I just about manage to unclip and not fall. It'll be good to get on my own bikes next week, which don't have this problem.

Flogging it uphill I arrive at the beach. The village is apparently popular with German, French and Portuguese tourists in high season but now there are barely a hundred people enjoying the sun. Perhaps 20 surfers are doing their best, but the waves are pretty small.

I start to go down to the beach for a swim but then consider the likely discomfort of being damp and sandy for the trip back and decide against it. Also, my bib shorts have a certain 'mankini' look about them which would probably not be appreciated. Instead I go back to the clifftop and eat the sandwiches I made earlier, watching the handful of surfers and their camper vans.

There is a one-way system on the road here presumably to reduce summer traffic. Annoyingly for me, it means a good climb then a roll downhill just to get back to where I was. The largely downhill ride from the sea along the river Seixe (it marks the border between Algarve and Alentejo) is another enjoyable section before I go through the village to tackle the 2.5km climb. It's a long slog, but a constant incline rather than a short sharp shock and I get back to the Azenha do Mar junction with little fuss, tired but energised at the top.

There is supposed to be a back road to the guesthouse, but what I assume is it looks like little more than a sheep track, so I just go back the way I came, adding a few k to an enjoyable wind-down route.

Tomorrow, it's the train from Funcheira to Faro and the plane back home. I have greatly enjoyed the week and will certainly be back to the region. Thanks again to Headwater Travel who organised it.

Day 5 Hotel Tres Marias to Cerro dos Fontinhas

2009-09-18T22:32:00.003+01:00

Today's route takes us to the last accommodation of the trip. Ricardo from Alentejo Adventures picks us up in the morning and takes us to Almograve, a town with a splendid beach attached. The beaches along this coast seem superb, unspoilt and almost untouched by tourism. You get the feeling this is perhaps an area where some Portuguese come on holiday, but few others.

The route goes through Almograve past green fields of crops, the irrigation machines like the skeletons of iron dinosaurs. The road is flat and straight and I enjoy getting on to the big ring and building up a head of speed.

At Cabo Sardao there is an unusual lighthouse. Excuse the quality of the picture, I took it while riding the bike. I say unusual in that it is quite far removed from the sea and any rocks, which I rather would have thought was the point.

Next to it is this football pitch, which is even more bizarre. One strong shot wide of the far goal, or a misplaced pass on a gusty day, would have the ball in the Atlantic.

There is a track here of sand and rock that hugs the coastline, dipping and winding round bays and promontories, the smell and sight and sound of the Atlantic never far. It is hugely enjoyable, both for the setting and for the cycling, the undulating, bumpy rock-strewn track forcing you to keep your wits about you even as you try to take in the view. The route notes promise storks nesting on the cliffs below, but I never see any. Perhaps wrong season.

Meanwhile, a commenter on a previous entry from the Alentejo claims that the reason for the blue paint on the houses is that flies won't cross the blue. He admits himself this may be an old wives' tale. Ricardo, earlier, told us the council mandates the colours: whitewash and blue trim, or perhaps the dark yellow you see less frequently.

Anyway, the track leaves the coast to join the main road and a conveniently located restaurant. Some locals who are surely farm hands or labourers are having lunch. They have some crabs to start then a huge platter of presumably different crabs for a main. One man has four or five teeth. I should go for some crabs or shellfish but don't, because it is priced by weight and I have a stupid aversion to buying things priced by weight which I should overcome. Instead I have fried fish and chips and read the paper. Reports of the main football teams, Sporting and Benfica, in the Europa League are the cover story and 2nd and 3rd spreads in this paper, which I find amusing.

After lunch I feel heavy and slow. The route goes steeply down to a beach then up, and I falter on the uphill because my bike won't go into the bottom ring and I am trying to drag it up in middle gear. Eventually I give up and push, exhausted.

A few K further, the exact same situation: steep downhill, attractive little beach, steep uphill on road made of figure-eight shaped blocks that trap sand and are a nuisance to ride on. Again, I give up the climb two-thirds of the way up.

Onwards, I flog away, head down, before realising I have surely gone too far. I read and re-read the route notes and am sure I've gone too far. I decide to go on until the end of a stretch of trees, then finally admit I've gone too far and turn back. It doesn't help that the road is a rutted mess of sand and rocks. Eventually I get on the right route and the last 10K or so to Cerro dos Fontinhas is a slog. For some reason I am exhausted today, a combination of a couple of steep ascents and the sun perhaps.

Miguel runs this place, self-catering cottages that were a ruined farm (of course) when he bought it in 1999. He is Portuguese, went travelling for 15 years as a younger man then returned here and fixed up the ruin. The cottages are the converted farmhouse and auxiliary buildings, made of earth in traditional style. Some of Miguel's furniture features in some of the rooms. He has a small lake -- I would say pond -- which he refills in summer by pumping millions of litres of water from a neighbour's farm, ultimately from the local dam. This doesn't seem environmentally sound to me, but I say nothing.

Miguel's wife is a potter and she works on the grounds making attractive pieces. Miguel has a new restaurant in the village (Brejao) which he offers to drive us to later. When we get there, the table is not ready, so why not go across the road to his wife's pottery shop to have a look round? Why not indeed. The two women buy small pieces. Her work is genuinely good, to be fair, and I might have bought some were it not for Ryanair's ridiculous baggage policies. The meal -- salty big pork cutlets -- is also good, and it is a relief to be able to avoid the multiple courses curse that has left me feeling bloated the last few nights.

Tomorrow, a loop round the Odexeice region, then home

Day 4 Porto Covos

2009-09-17T19:22:00.003+01:00

Today's ride goes north to the little fishing town of Porto Covos. The sand track that leads from Hotel Tres Marias is a seriously enervating way to start and finish the day and it doesn't get much better when I'm on the main road. Apart from the traffic whizzing by about a foot away, my chain pops off the cogs at the back going up a steep hill and I don't unclip my foot from the pedals in time to avoid falling over. No harm done except to my pride. I spend the next five minutes cursing at the bike and getting my hands covered in oil while cars honk at me. Pushing the bike up to the brow of the hill, a Danish couple who were staying at the house last night drive by and shout 'Have fun' or something. Now they think I wasn't fit enough to make it up the hill.

Back in action, I soon get to Forte Ilha, a 15th-century fort overlooking an island called Ilha des Pesseguieros and an attractive beach. I can't be bothered stopping and the fort doesn't sound too exciting, so press on to Porto Covos.

The track is another annoyingly sandy affair along the coastline and I nearly fall off again in a drift but manage to unclip in time. On a couple of occasions it's too sandy to move and I have to get off and push. The descent to the village is major steep and rutted, with big rocks and pot holes. The trip notes recommend getting off and walking but I say screw that until it gets really steep and I remember what a piece of shit the bike is and lose my nerve. So push down the hill, pass this attractive harbour, then up an equally steep hill to the village. It strikes me that I've spent almost as much time pushing the bike as riding it today.

I must try and discover what the reason for the uniform blue and white colour scheme of the villages is.

I order choco frito in Porto Covos for lunch thinking it is something I have had before. Turns out it is cuttlefish/squid, which I don't mind - just perhaps not a whole one. Onwards, I get chased by a mean-looking dog; looking forward, there is a sharp downhill to a junction with the main road and I start weighing up the pros and cons of being savaged by a dog or hit by a car. Fortunately, he stops when I leave 'his' territory.

I pass through wheat fields and quiet roads and decide not to go straight back to Tres Marias but head further south to the Praia Malhao beach. It is wide and beautiful, but also quite far below the cliff edge, so I settle for looking at it from above rather than climb up and down, quite tired now after about 35km.

Later at dinner - another excellent meal - I learn more about Balt. He is Swiss born to a Portuguese mother and Swiss father. He was an electrician in Basle, with 15 men working for him. When that became too stressful, about 12 years ago, he moved to this region of Portugal. First he ran an ostrich-breeding farm - he expounds at length about 'imprinting' and how a baby ostrich will take as its 'mother' the first form it sees, whether that be human or bird-shaped, and how that affects fertility rates. He also expounds at length about wine and the excellent Alentejo wines, which are hardly exported, and insists on his guests trying many samples, which is no great hardship.

A keen astronomer, I get a glimpse of Jupiter through his telescope but it is a cloudy night and not ideal viewing. After bird flu hit the news, demand for ostrich meat slumped and he turned his farm into a restaurant and now his guest house. Business seems to be going well. His mother, he tells me, was/is from an important wine family in the north, which perhaps explains his passion for grapes.

Tomorrow, it is on to the Odeseixe region.

Day 3 Hotel Verdemar to Hotel Tres Marias

2009-09-16T17:42:00.002+01:00

Today's trip is the 37km journey to the second hotel. The start goes back up the finish of yesterday's route, past the Barragem de Campilhas dam and Salazar's cock-shaped monument to himself. It's quite steep and in bottom gear I roll past the other couple who are on the trip pushing their bikes up. Again, it's not much of a boast since they're both about 60 and not exactly svelte.

The land here seems more fertile, or at least there seems to be more of a variety of crops. Presumably the irrigation from the dams helps. The road is entirely deserted, I am passed by a handful of cars all day, and the only sound is bird cheeps, mournful cowbell, and the clicking of my bike's dodgy chainset.

The Cerros da Cercal hills are visible to the south; if I were doing one of these trips with my own money I might look for one that took in a bit more adventurous terrain. But these trips seem designed for the retiree market, so flat roads are a must. Ian and Julie, the couple who I overtook earlier, seem to have been on a cycling trip to almost every country in Europe. Every day they take a bottle of wine in their pannier bags to have with their picnic.

I pass gigantic wind turbines, which make for an incongruous sight next to crumbling farm buildings. For some reason, I always thought they would make noise, but these ones at least are silent.

In front of the village of Sonega some gypsies are camped. They appear still to be using horse-drawn carriages and have three large plastic tents erected in a field. I want to take a photo but am vaguely fearful of offending them, which is probably racist of me, so don't.

In the village I park the bike at the first cafe, say bom dia to the barman, farmer and widow who are inside and have a beer and some crisps at a pavement table. The village simpleton greets me and signals that I am cycling, to which I agree. It seems he can't talk. After we agree that I came from down there and will be going over there, he proceeds happily on his way.

Nearly all the houses I've passed over the last three days share the same colour scheme: ochre roof tiles, bright whitewashed walls and rich blue highlights around door and window frames. It does look good but I wonder why nobody tries anything different?

Further along I spy the perfect spot for a picnic, a giant cork oak that stands alone in its field. I try to climb up, but my cycling shoes are no use and I can't be bothered taking them off. Nothing passes on the road for the 30 minutes or so I spend eating my sandwiches.

The track to Hotel Tres Marias is sandy and annoying, the bike sticking and skidding. When I arrive at the hotel I take my eyes off the ground and steer straight into a large clump of sand, bringing my bike to an immediate halt; since I'm clipped to the pedals, I fall over almost in slow motion. Luckily, only a couple of donkeys are there to witness it, but unaccountably miss the perfect opportunity to let loose a loud 'Hee-haw'.

Hotel Tres Marias is run by a guy called Balt who comes along later to introduce himself. I'll get the full story later on, but apparently it used to be an ostrich farm, presumably before Balt realised that was madness. The rooms are modern and quite stylish in a simple way, floors and walls made of poured concrete. And even better, you get a phone signal here, which allows me to post this.

Day 2 Casas Novas northern circuit

2009-09-16T17:40:00.002+01:00

Today's route is the longest of the trip at 46km, a wide loop north of the hotel through rice paddy fields, more farms, abandoned and not, and past a couple of dams.

The cycling is easy going, on tarmac roads almost free of traffic. For the second day in a row I overtake another couple who are on the trip, Sandra and Michael, despite them having set off half an hour before. I might feel good about this if they weren't pensioners.

Black, acorn-fed pigs line the start of the route. Their reaction to my approach is universal: look up from snuffling for acorns, examine the strange creature suspiciously for a few seconds, then decide it is dangerous, snort and runaway.

The colours are quite different to yesterday's dry brown grass and earth. The paddies are a vibrant yellow-green, not flooded at this time of year. Rice was an import from the Moors, when they ruled Al-Andalus (Andulucia) and Al-Garb Al-Andalus (West of Al-Andalus, the Algarve).

The occasional stork's nest sits precariously atop a telegraph pole, but there is no sign of the birds. Have they migrated already? Do they migrate? If I had a decent internet connection I would check.

I pass the first of two dams. Portugal, like Spain, has some serious issues with water shortages. Droughts have only got worse in recent years, presumably because of global warming. Unfortunately for Portugal, their three main rivers have their origin in Spain and, though they have agreements and treaties in place over water sharing, this has been the cause of tension. You could imagine a sci-fi style war over water in the not-too-distant future.

After a pitstop at the dam I cycle happily on, wondering why an oncoming car is in my lane before realising that I have started off in the left-hand lane on autopilot. Luckily he's not going fast.

In the village square of Sao Domingos I rest under a narrow ivy-clad trellis which shades eight benches where a couple of elderly gentlemen enjoy their siesta. Outside a cafe opposite 20 or so people are gathered, kissing and hugging a protracted farewell, perhaps an extended family out for lunch. The only child, a girl of about five, is spoilt by the ladies, and occasionally shouted at as she runs heedlessly back and forth across the square, rightly thinking to herself that the traffic-free streets are perfectly safe.

The group's farewell is almost comically long -- after about 20 minutes they have moved 10 metres down from the cafe, and only a handful have actually separated from the group and headed back to their homes or cars.

I go into the cafe for a cake and a strong coffee and when I ask how much in my execrable attempt at Portuguese (slightly slurred Spanish), don't quite comprehend when he replies '1.25'. It's easy to forget how overpriced coffee and cake is at home.

At the second dam there is a large cylindrical monument to Salazar. It is too annoying to walk around and around the cylinder to read the inscription but the gist is about how the dictator's great achievements will transform the country. But the water behind this one is reduced to a trickle and a muddy flood plain.

I get into bottom gear for a couple of decent climbs which lead past two hamlets and back down to the hotel. The descent down a rocky track to Verdemar is fun and has me wishing again for a proper mountain bike. A beautiful day leaves my arms with crisp lines between shoulders and elbows marking where the sun was able to reach and what was covered by unflattering lycra.

Portugal cycling diary

2009-09-16T15:55:00.003+01:00

I'm in the Alentejo region of Portugal for a week-long cycling trip courtesy of Headwater Travel. I've been unable to get a phone signal to get online for the first few days but finally have today. No pics until I get a better connection.

After flying into Faro in the Algarve I get the train north to Funcheira. Ricardo, my guide from Alentejo Adventures, has no trouble spotting the confused tourist and soon we're rattling over country roads in his van talking about football. The dark, the speed and Ricardo's polite insistence on maintaining eye contact while talking make for a fun ride.

For the first three nights I'm at Casa Verdemar. Agro-tourism is only just beginning to catch on in Portugal but Christine and Nuno have been running their farmhouse-guesthouse for about 20 years. Nuno, an ebullient man, met Christine in Amsterdam after fleeing conscription under the Salazar regime to study art. Christine, a Dutchwoman, was originally a cabinet maker and furniture designer and their paintings and furniture dictate the look of the five or six self-contained rooms.

Their hotel used to be a village farm and taverna. One year on holiday, the owner suggested Nuno buy it, and he did. Over the next few years they renovated it over the summers, putting up friends and cooking for them in exchange for some manual labour, then returned to Amsterdam in the winters to make money.

"Then we had kids," says Christine -- they have two sons -- ''and had to decide where to settle, Amsterdam or Portugal. One of our friends called to say, 'Are you open at Christmas,' I want to bring 20 people to stay,' -- so we were open.''

Nuno worked in Portuguese restaurants in Amsterdam and does the cooking, all the guests sharing a long table in an attractive conservatory. Christine handles dessert, including a superb peach cobbler made with the fruit from their own garden.

Day 1
Casas Novas to Cercal

The first day's ride is a circle of about 30km to a village to the southwest and back. After replacing the crappy plastic pedals of my clunker of a bike with some clipless ones I brought with me and impressing Christine with my head-to-toe lycra outfit, I'm ready to go.

I'm none too impressed with the bike Alentejo Adventures have provided, although it does have Grip Shift, a gimmicky motorcycle-style way of changing gears that I always wanted on my bike as a 10-year-old. It doesn't take long to find out why Grip Shift never caught on beyond schoolboys.

While the bike disappoints, the directions I've been given are idiot-proof, as verified by this navigationally-challenged idiot. I only went the wrong way once, flying past a turn-off while enjoying a rare bit of downhill speed.

The route passes along bumpy tracks through farmland, much of it seemingly empty. This is one of the poorest regions in Portugal and you can sense that it's a tough place to earn a living. Even in September the dryness of the land is apparent and it must be arid in summer.

Olive trees, eucalyptus and cork oak trees line the fields. The last is one of the staple products of the region, providing, er, cork. The trees are shaved of their bark to harvest the cork then left to let another layer grow. They have numbers painted on which I assume is the number of years to go until they can be harvested again -- you have to wait nine years to avoid killing the tree.

The only noise is the distant clonging of bells worn by goats and cows and the occasional bark of dogs that surely rarely see bikes. I have to put on the acceleration at one point to escape a couple of particulary yappy little ones, their owner futilely shouting 'ven aca' behind me.

Dona Maria's cheese shop came highly recommended, making local sheep cheeses for three generations. Unfortunately, Dona Maria appears to be on siesta.

I stop for a coke at a roadside cafe that is little more than an elderly woman's kitchen open to the public before heading on to Cercal, a bigger village with its very own roundabout. It's another 10km or so through rolling light-brown fields and past abandoned farmhouses to Casas Novas. And just in time too, because a thunderstorm immediately rolls in.

How to repair / restore iPod firmware on linux

2009-08-25T16:18:00.003+01:00

I have recently moved to linux and been pleased with the results. So pleased in fact that I decided to port my iPod over to an open-source OS, Rockbox.

The Rockbox OS has a lot of admirers but I found it fiddly, buggy and counter-intuitive. The simple matter that you can't simply select a 'shuffle' equivalent put paid to it for me.

But after uninstalling, I found my iPod buggy. There were clearly some remnants left of the Rockbox OS. I tried deleting everything I could find on the disk to no avail, so took the nuclear option of deleting the drive's partitions, figuring it would be easy to restore the original iPod firmware later. Nope.

Apple, helpfully, no longer supply individual firmware files: you must install iTunes. So I tried installing it in Wine. Nope.

A quick Google should provide the solution right? Nope. Nearly all the posts I found simply said, 'You're screwed, use a friend's Windows machine'.

That wasn't good enough. Eventually, after about two days' trying, I finally figured out what to do and was so pleased I decided to post about it to hopefully help other people.

First, go to this old but useful guide to see how to set up partitions on iPod. Ignore the stuff about HFS unless your iPod was originally formatted under Mac.

These are the relevant commands:

% fdisk /dev/sd*
n   [make new partition]
p   [primary]
1   [first partition]
[just press enter -- default first sector is 1]
5S  [5 sectors -- big enough to hold 32MB]
  [on 20GB models, Corrin Lakeland suggests using "+33MB" instead of 5S]

n   [make new partition]
p   [primary]
2   [second partition]
[just press enter -- default first sector is 6]
[just press enter -- default size uses all remaining space]

t   [modify type]
1   [first partition]
0   [first partition has no filesystem; ignore warning]

t   [modify type]
2   [second partition]
b   [second partition is FAT32]

p   [show partition map]

Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sd*1          1         5     40131    0  Empty
/dev/sd*2          6      3647  29254365    b  Win95 FAT32

w   [commit changes to disk]

* You need to know what the device name of your iPod is. Find out by 'sudo fdisk -l' without it attached then with it attached and note what was added. It will probably be sda, sdb, etc.

This creates two partitions on your iPod, sd*1 for the firmware and sd*2 for storage.

Then download the right firmware for your iPod from this site. Extract it somewhere convenient. Note the name of the firmware file.

To install the firmware type this command 'sudo dd if=FIRMWAREFILENAME of=/dev/sd*1.

BE 100% CERTAIN YOU TYPE THE RIGHT SD*1 NAME! For example, don't do what I did and try to install iPod firmware on your computer hard disk by accidentally typing 'sda1' instead of 'sdb1'. Unless you like reinstalling your operating system.

To format the storage partition type this command: 'mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n "ipod" /dev/sd*2.' This creates a vfat partition of F32 type named "ipod".

Unplug your iPod. Reboot if necessary. You should see a picture on the screen telling you to plug it back in. Do so - hopefully all should be fixed, it will automatically mount and Rhythmbox or whatever iTunes equivalent you use will recognise it. Then you can select 'initialise iPod' to create the directory structure.

Appendix - this site is also useful for editing fstab if your iPod does not automount.

She's dead, honest

2007-11-13T13:43:00.000Z

MY favourite story of misbehaving sportsmen so far this season is that of Stephen Ireland, the Manchester City player who invented not one but two dead grannies to get out of playing for his country. His blatant lies met with nothing stronger than ridicule, which is why we found the Minnesota Viking's behaviour toward their player Troy Williamson more than a bit harsh.

The NFL team docked their wide receiver one game cheque for missing last week's match against San Diego to attend the funeral of his grandmother the following day. She was actually dead.

Williamson was particularly close to his grandmother, who helped raise him. "I don't care if they would have [taken] my pay for the rest of the year, I was going home," he said.

Reports estimated the Vikings' dedication to what they called “business principles” would have cost Williamson over $25,000. In a surprise change of heart, they opted at the weekend to give him his pay cheque after all. Nothing to do with the storm of negative publicity they faced, of course.

STENHOUSEMUIR'S new third choice strip has been designed by a 15-year-old schoolboy from Denmark. The strip is sponsored by “humourous” interweb site Fan Banta, who ran a design competition. Club chairman David Reid explained: “We got lots of very interesting designs from all over including a number of very good ones from America. They went from the wild and the wacky to the comical and to the colourful.
"When we got them all in we decided to go to those who know - our supporters. We gave a number of them free reign to decide from all the designs, combined the votes and got a winner.”

We haven't seen the winning entry, but given that it was designed by a 15-year-old internet geek, we imagine some sort of collage of breasts features prominently.

CHRISTMAS is coming, which means only one thing: execrable records trying to get “the coveted Christmas No.1 spot”.

Aberdeen fan Gordon McPherson is first to enter the fray, with A Sea of Red and White.

"I know I'm up against stiff competition [for the coveted Christmas No.1 spot] but those artists are all supported by giant record companies,” said the 43-year-old. “I think people will favour the little guy who is donating all the proceeds from his song to charity."

Mm-hmm. William Hill are offering 1000-1 that they won't.

The song's chorus is: "Aberdeen, Aberdeen such a fine old football team, and you know the dandy Dons will serve us well. Aberdeen, Aberdeen, such a fine old football team and you know that they will see us on our way." Take that, Take That!

The song has been played at some of the Aberdeen's recent games. A spokesman said: “It has got a mixed reaction from the crowd.”

Anyway, Sea of Red and White does have two advantages over a rival Scottish charity football song bidding for the coveted Christmas No.1 spot, Loch Lomond: it features neither Runrig nor the Tartan Army.

This article first appeared in The Herald

Rafa who?

2007-10-22T21:33:00.000+01:00

ANDY and Jamie Murray will be televising their sibling rivalry in A Question Of Sport this Sunday. The pair will become the first brothers to appear on the show in its 37-year history after being persuaded by tennis marm host Sue Barker.

“They hate losing at anything and it will be a treat for viewers to see them go head-to-head to test how good their sporting knowledge is,” a random BBC PR goon gushed. We’re very interested in the boys’ sporting knowledge . . . although this quote from Andy doesn’t exactly fill us with optimism: “I got most of my questions right, except one about Rafael Nadal,” he said. “It was a bad mistake.”

THE fallout from Georgia continues, with confirmation that the maroon strip was solely to blame, and not the fact that Scotland played like witless eejits. Further proof arrived this week as the Sports Diary spoke to a leading colour psychologist. Yes, colour psychologist.

Angela Wright, author of The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology, explains: “I’m not surprised at the defeat. That muddy red would have had a negative effect on players.

“It is cold and heavy and is not associated with confidence, which the yellow away kit had in droves. The blue reflects authority and would psych the players up. The white kit isn’t bad, but its baby blue is quite weak.”

Fascinating stuff Angela, thanks ver – “Most people don’t know that colour affects people physically as well as mentally,” Er, that’s great, we really must – “It is made of light, which is incredibly powerful, it’s more powerful than microwaves.”

BOY, that English media obsession with the rugby World Cup final was really enjoyable. Such a shame Jonny’s brave boys couldn’t reward the nation. We particulary liked a heartwarming exchange of text messages we saw posted on BBC Sport website’s interactive section:

“Just hope you print this on this special day. I want to ask my darling girlfriend Emma J to marry me. Love Pinky. Go England.”

Twenty minutes later: “This is Emma replying to Pinky. Just to say yes I will marry you. I can’t wait. This is the best day of my life! ... God bless England! x”

A fan called Toby (really): “Congratulations Pinky and Emma! It’s a sign – I predict England to win 15-12, the Boks will bottle it!” Delightful stuff. Meanwhile, in other SMS-related news: “There were about 30 text messages on my phone. I think 29 out of the 30 had ‘robbed’ in the text,” said Mark Cueto, whose ‘try’ was correctly ruled out.

Not like England to moan about a controversial line call in a world cup final, is it?

From The Herald

2007-10-11T00:59:00.000+01:00

Antipodeans are often seen as arrogant by their former colonial masters. (Probably something to do with the fact that they are generally tall, handsome and good at sport.) So it's time to relish the hubris.

When news reached Cardiff of England's win over Australia, one Kiwi journalist said in the press box: "That's us just got a bye through to the final." His comments a couple of hours later, after France had knocked the All Blacks out, went unrecorded.

Anton Oliver had more to say. It seems he has been reading All Quiet on the Western Front, about World War I. "They describe how no man's land is quiet," he said afterwards. "That's what it feels like - quiet - in the changing room, and in the players' hearts and minds.

"In no man's land, there's a putrid smell, death . . . that's a bit dramatic [surely not], but you know what I mean. No man's land is a place where nothing exists."

A similar sense of perspective was kept back home. One caller to a talk-sport show said he was phoning from the top of a tree, from which he was about to hang himself. And that there was a queue below.

New Zealand's foreign minister did the diplomatic bit by lambasting England's Wayne Barnes, who missed a forward pass for France's winning try. "It's 80 minutes long, it's a very short time, you get an incompetent referee and that's the result," blasted Winston Peters.

He has cause for concern. New Zealand's loss to France in the semis of the 1999 World Cup was seen as a key factor in that year's general election, when the ruling National government was defeated by Labour. Labour face a general election next year and trailed the National Party by five percentage points in polls, even before Cardiff.

In Paris, the party reached monumental proportions, although it almost got ugly on the Champ de Mars, where a 12-metre-high rugby ball has been built to showcase the next World Cup . . . guess where? The giant ball, which says "100% Pure New Zealand" on it, was soon surrounded by French fans. Kiwi staff inside it, probably fearing they were about to be rolled into the Seine, hastily got to work crafting a sign congratulating France.

Hamilton Academical are rightly lauded for their commitment to their community and it was good to see on Saturday that they try to instil good habits from an early age. A list of finable offences for youth team players is pinned up in a prominent position in one of the locker rooms, ranging from 50p for "dirty boots" to a massive £2 for "failing to attend training without informing Frankie".

Admirably, some of the worst fines are for aggressive and unsporting behaviour, bad language and mouthing off to referees.

On Saturday's evidence, this dedication to not swearing at officials is yet to be embraced by the fans; in mitigation, the referee was Dougie McDonald.

Passage

2007-09-21T11:22:00.000+01:00

FUNNY, depressing, optimistic, bleak, fantastic, mundane: John David Morley’s remarkable new novel is all of these, often in the space of a single paragraph.

A dying man makes his last confession to a priest. It’s a long confession as he is more than 500 years old. The protagonist – Pablito, Pablo, White Water Bird, Paul Zarrate, Paul Straight and the World’s Greatest Living Wonder in the various stages of his life – recounts his story over five nights, from his arrival in the New World as a press-ganged teenager on a conquistador’s caravel to his arrival on the priest’s doorstep as a mummified husk living in a glass case.

Each night’s confession recounts roughly a century of Pablo’s history, which is also the brutal blood-red history of the Americas. He is adopted into the tribe of the Pig Indians after getting lost in the jungle; contracts the timewarp sickness that is the cause of his longevity; witnesses the fall of an Incan kingdom; is employed as a tutor in the big house of a Brazilian slave plantation; falls in love with the planter’s daughter, a nun; spends decades lying in bed in an opium haze; smuggles goods in New Orleans; spends the American Civil War living in a paddle steamer dumped miles from water by a flood; opens a house for street children in Chicago; makes a fortune in wheat; loses a fortune in wheat; becomes a freakshow exhibit; helps devise the first successful moving picture serial; and regularly discusses history with a reclusive billionaire. Morley’s themes of time, memory, sleep, death, religion, myth and longevity evoke Borges and Marquez and their mixture of magic and mundane. At its best, the book bears comparison with those masters. Pablo’s 500 years of solitude are recounted in short, almost stand-alone tales, so that the novel is more a collection of myths, an anthology of the folklore of the Americas. Pablo’s life features many of the themes and tropes of myth: wicked women, “kings” with prodigious progeny, lusty sexual encounters, generations doomed to repeat mistakes of the past, incest (accidental and otherwise), hideously extreme punishments, spirits and ghosts, floods and plagues, and, of course, the curse of immortality.

The burden of time and man’s futile attempts to attain eternal life – from the knotwork quipu of the Incas through amassing wealth, or photography and film-making, to mummification – are contrasted with Pablo’s horror and pain at the sins he has seen and the families he has outlived. Morley’s evocation of hugely varied times and places is impressive. Supporting the mythic and magical is a structure firmly based on research and historical detail. And there is much humour in the book, most of it of the blackest kind.

Often the amusing and the appalling are combined, not least in the horrific absurdities of slavery logic: “I forbade the use of the word [octoroon] to describe his daughters. There was] a total of four female octoroons, or half a Negro woman in [the family], three-quarters if one included the mother, so that as a household we were not so much moving away from as sliding back towards eligibility for indentured labour on the plantations.”

The last night’s history, set in the nascent Hollywood and Las Vegas, those ultimate purveyors of the modern American myth, is weaker than the rest, perhaps because of its greater proximity to our time, and once or twice Morley’s big ideas get in the way of the tales. But this passage is a remarkable trip, a vivid exhibit of a wonderful imagination.

This article first appeared in The Herald

2007-07-30T22:53:00.000+01:00

THIS Saturday, a baying crowd of more than four thousand will gather in a sports arena just outside Glasgow, to watch grown men punch and kick each other into submission. But enough about St Mirren’s first game of the season: cage fighting is also coming to Scotland.

Whether you call it a sport or legitimised barbarity, “mixed martial arts” is undoubtedly a phenomenon. With every call for it to be banned, its popularity soars still further. Massive in the United States and Japan, Saturday’s event at Braehead Arena is part of ongoing attempts by promoters to grab a piece of the British market.

Mixed martial arts, or cage fighting, does exactly what it says on the lurid, sensational advertising poster. Competitors fight each other using any combination of martial arts: kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, karate, wrestling, etc. The object is to knock out your opponent or force him to submit, usually by administering a choke hold, or bending a limb to the point of fracture.

Opponents liken it to human cock-fighting, and claim it demeans competitors and audience. Supporters say it is as disciplined and athletic as any combat sport, and claim it is safer than boxing.

This is questionable: mixed martial arts has not been around long enough for data to be comparable. Organisers’ insistence that the sport is all about physical and mental discipline, and the intricate techniques of different fighting styles, ring a little hollow when you consider their marketing tactics, clearly designed to whet bloodlust.

A part of the audience on Saturday will be there to see a fellow human get hurt, in as bloody a fashion possible. Most will be disappointed. The sport is violent, of course, but most bouts are won on the ground, fighters wrapping their legs and arms around each other in an attempt to get an inch of leverage; submission rather than KO is the usual mode of victory.

And there are rules. Thirtyone, to be precise, including no biting, no eye-gouging, no groin strikes, no rabbit punches and so on.

The sport’s opponents, it often seems, don’t know what it is they are demanding be banned. Witness these quotes earlier this month as the “Cage Wars” event was announced: “I do not claim to have a clear understanding of what is involved . . .” Det Ch Sup John Carnochan, Strathclyde Police.

“From what I know about cage fighting . . .” Morag Mylne, Church of Scotland.

“This is going back to the days of gladiators . . .” Glasgow MSP Sandra White.

Those who condemned the event did more than organisers could have to publicise it.

There is also a hypocrisy about arguments against the sport. Boxing, with its Marquess of Queensbury rules, and wrestling, with its roots in the ancient world, are acceptable for gentlemen to watch and take part in. Mixed martial arts is a bit common.

Nobody forces fighters to take part. Nobody forces people to watch. Meanwhile, we feel better about ourselves watching a news report condemning the plebs’ latest diversion . . . then change channels to The Sopranos or put on a DVD of the latest Scorsese or Tarantino.

Anyway, the sport has been here before. When the Ultimate Fighting Championship launched in the early 90s, it was genuinely noholds-barred. Initial popularity evaporated as political pressure forced sponsors and television to abandon it.

Relaunched and rebranded as “mixed martial arts”, with the aforementioned rulebook, weight divisions, drug tests and medical supervision, UFC has exploded. It has broken all records for payper-view sales in the United States, generating hundreds of millions of dollars, easily outstripping boxing and wrestling shows.

Saturday’s event sees UK promoters jostling for position: at Braehead the organisers are Cage Wars; a Cage Rage promotion attracted 14,000, including Wayne Rooney, in Manchester recently, while the UFC brand had its own sellout show at Wembley Arena.

The fight for dominance in the UK market could be far more bloody than anything in the cage. With the amount of money at stake, like it or loathe it, mixed martial arts seems here to stay.

This article first appeared in The Herald

Herald and Times strike

2007-07-24T10:01:00.000+01:00

THE Herald, the oldest English language newspaper in the world, and its sister paper The Evening Times, went on strike last Friday in protest against management trying to enforce compulsory redundancies as part of a wider programme of cost-cutting to support American parent company Gannett Corporation's share price in the face of declining advertising revenues.

Some background information:

Scotsman
Press Gazette
A superb article at The Independent
A second strike is planned for tomorrow

And some videos, including the amusing sight of a 13-year-old policeman trying to act like Judge Dredd.

NUJ Glasgow
Sign the e-petition

Hoopla

2007-07-17T11:26:00.000+01:00

THE Simpsons Movie is less than two weeks away. Bring it on. The publicity stunts include this huge drawing of a pagan god called Homer on a hillside in Dorset. Local crusties are reported to be angry. Good.

Hats off to the marketing people. The Simpsons movie website is a brilliant example of web 2.0 promotion, with the opportunity to create your own Simpsons avatar, myspace links, easily embeddable content etc etc.

Meanwhile, if you want to get annoyed by a ridiculous argument that Apu is racist, look no further.

The Pop Cop

2007-07-13T12:24:00.000+01:00

MY friend Jason has an awesome music blog, The Pop Cop. Not much hip-hop or electronic shit there, but that's cool.

But don't do what I did and transpose the s and p in blogspot while typing the URL. Unless you really, really like Jesus. Which I don't.

Also, don't do what I then did and type "popcop" rather than "thepopcop". Unless you really, really, like pornography. Which I do.

Why Poker is a sport

2007-07-09T12:39:00.000+01:00

WIMBLEDON finals, British Grand Prix, the Tour de France . . . what a great weekend of sport. To that list should be added another global event that started on Saturday, pitting thousands of hopefuls against each other in a gruelling test of stamina and nerve, live on tv with millions of dollars at stake.

Yes, the World Series of Poker has begun, appropriately on 7/7/7, that combination of numbers the Vegas slots player waits her whole life to see. The biggest poker tournament in the world culminates with the Texas Hold' Em No-Limit main event. Entry numbers are down since the US banned online poker - Americans are no longer able to qualify on the web - but still thousands are taking part. The competition is open to anyone, or at least anyone with a spare $10,000. Last year, the winner got $12m.

I've lost you. Poker is clearly not a sport.

Why not? The dictionary in my work (the cover and pages up to "Alabama" have fallen off due to overuse, so forgive me for not being able to tell the edition) defines "sport" as "an individual or group activity pursued for exercise or pleasure, often taking a competitive form". Poker fits.

Other definitions might require a "sport" to involve physical exertion, which some would claim rules poker out. On the contrary, there are few sports that require the stamina, physically and mentally, necessary to beat 8000 poker players.

Contenders play for 12 hours a day for 11 days straight. The brain is working overtime, considering odds, trying to read body language, planning 10 steps ahead. Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic, say, is quitting because of a blister, and moaning mightily to anyone who'll listen about his workload. Diddums.

If we say physical exertion is the key feature of a sport, where does that leave snooker, with its pasty-faced, semi-alcoholic champions? Golf, where Colin Montgomerie's lithe figure is regarded enviously by his rivals? Darts . . . don't even get me started on darts. There are plenty of others, many of which we take great pride in bagging Olympic medals for: shooting and archery (sit on ground, pull string/trigger); sailing (sit on boat, point boat at wind); motorsport (sit in car, press brake/accelerator); all varieties of bobsled/luge/etc (sit on teatray, pray not to die).

Then there are the other "sports" where somebody just decides who's best: figure-skating; artistic gymnastics; synchronised swimming; etc. How can we call these sports when the matter of who wins or loses is an entirely subjective affair? In poker, the winner is clear: it's the man (or woman, as there are a surprisingly high number of women competitors) struggling to wheel $12m-worth of chips to the cashier's window.

Some will object to poker as a sport on the grounds that luck decides the winner. That is not true. Luck plays a major part, but in what great sport does it not? How often have you cursed those jammy bastards that knocked your team out of the cup?

Just as Roger Federer will nearly always beat Tim Henman, no matter how many points the plucky Brit flukes off the net cord, a good poker player will nearly always beat a bad poker player (as I regularly rediscover to my cost).

Some will object on moral grounds, that gambling is just plain wrong, but the money is just a way to keep score. And if we took that moral argument to its logical conclusion, what sports would be left?

Football, one of the most perfidious businesses on earth is gone. Bye bye cycling, athletics, baseball and all other pharmacological pursuits. Carry on down the list and even the likes of figure skating would be scrapped (anyone remember Tonya Harding?)

The New York Times includes poker in its sports section. Sports Illustrated are fans. ESPN expect to make a fortune from live pay-per-view coverage of the final table at the World Series.

Anyway, the real definition of a sport is how much you can use it to bore your friends with stories of your exploits. Only golf or possibly fishing beats poker in this regard.

This article first appeared in The Herald

Ban non-energy-saving lightbulbs

2007-07-09T12:36:00.000+01:00

I LIKE Greenpeace's new harassment campaign, Take Action. It's got simple ways to help reduce climate change. Like bugging leading supermarkets to stop selling old-school lightbulbs.

I'm a Tiger - raaah!

2007-07-03T01:10:00.000+01:00

NEW dad Tiger Woods is in this month's American edition of totally-hetero-despite-the-number-of-naked-muscly-men-we-feature magazine Men's Fitness.

The insight into the world No.1's training regime is intriguing. "Pound for pound, I put him with any athlete in the world," trainer Keith Kleven says.

The workout is built around stretching for 40 minutes before each session, core exercises, endurance runs of seven miles and speed runs of three miles, plus weights.

Woods opts for high repetitions and smaller weights, although Kleven says he is "off the charts" with how much he can lift.

Tiger features on the cover and is pictured inside doing various squats and thrusts. I look forward to seeing Monty in an upcoming issue.

On second thoughts ...

Review: The Daughters of Juarez

2007-06-30T07:51:00.000+01:00

Teresa Rodriguez, Diana Montane with Lisa Pulitzer

THE United States has taken advantage of its poor neighbour Mexico for much of recent history; if corporations have been exploiting the supply of cheap human capital, perhaps a serial killer has too.

That is one of the grim theories postulated by Teresa Rodriguez, an anchorwoman for US Spanish-language television station Univision, to explain a staggering statistic: over 400 women have been murdered in the border town of Juarez since 1993.

Ciudad Juarez forms a kind of twin city with El Paso in Texas, divided by the Rio Grande; since the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement it has become one of Mexico's biggest cities. The pact has been a boon for American corporations, who import raw materials to factories in Mexico where labour is one-sixth the price, then export finished products back. Hence the explosion in Juarez of huge maquiladoras.

The city's population has grown faster than its infrastructure, with hundreds of thousands of dirt-poor economic migrants heading to the border each year. The assembly lines need staff talented at intricate, repetitive work and have found that young women are generally best suited; critics insist women are also preferred because they accept poorer wages and are more easily intimidated than men. Many lie about their age to get jobs, with families saving to buy their 12- or 13-year-old daughters fake IDs.

This flood of young women has attracted a predator, or predators. The introduction of NAFTA coincided with the start of hundreds of brutal murders, the victims raped and mutilated before being killed and dumped in the desert to feed coyotes. Rodriguez' book tells the stories of some of these women, and the incredible incompetence and/or corruption of investigators charged with finding their killer.

The murders are horrifying: victims are repeatedly raped; often the killer cuts off one of their breasts; they are generally strangled, sometimes with their own shoelaces.

Almost as shocking is the behaviour of police, many of whom are lazy, stupid, corrupt or in the pay of the drug cartels who also have enjoyed the Juarez boom. For years, the murders are literally laughed off, with frantic mothers told their missing daughters must have run away with their boyfriends, or perhaps have become prostitutes.

Eventually the storm of protest becomes such that police have to act, or at least appear to act. Even in Mexico's macho culture, whose attitudes to women we would deem backward, the murders prompt the foundation of women's rights groups, support centres and activism.

A convenient scapegoat is found but unfortunately, the murders continue after he is jailed. After just five years, a special investigator is appointed; one of her first acts is to promise that crime scenes will be cordoned off - this is the level of basic incompetence. She finds another couple of scapegoats, one of whose lawyers is shot to death by police in one of the more blatant acts of corruption.

In this real-life Silence of the Lambs, FBI experts from Clarence Starling's unit are called in, without success. One claims the murders are the work of two or three serial killers, others that they are not linked. Other theories claim drug dealers celebrate big deliveries to the US with rape and murder; that organ-traffickers are to blame; that sons of the elite do it for kicks; that the victims are killed in satanic rituals.

The book is a worthy, if depressing, piece of journalism, not without flaws: Rodriguez initially wrote it with a colleague as a first-person account of her own investigations, then rewrote it as a work of fiction. Now Lisa Pulitzer has redrafted it again as a third-person true crime narrative. Though generally clearly written, the patchwork nature of the text sometimes comes through and in its efforts to record every fact the book gets bogged down in minutiae, or wanders into irrelevance. Also, there are no sources given.

But the biggest flaw is not the authors' fault: unlike its fictional counterparts, this tale of serial murder has no happy ending. A Mexican prisoner in an American jail claims to have committed the crimes, but his confession is inconsistent at best. The murder rate in Chihuahua state continues to increase.

This article first appeared in The Herald

Magnificent

2007-06-25T01:16:00.000+01:00

As seen on b3ta from the splendid ashens site

Turbo Tennis - why?

2007-06-25T00:57:00.000+01:00

ANOTHER day, another marketing brainwave from a company cashing in on sport. The latest great idea is Betfair Turbo Tennis, a top innovation coming soon to the O2 Arena; get your tickets now from Ticketmaster.

The Murray brothers, Tim Henman, Pat Cash, Goran Ivanisevic, and (somewhat randomly) American world No.9 James Blake will "compete" in matches lasting just 30 minutes; whoever is in the lead when a hooter blows goes on to the next round.

Every player has to wear compulsory coloured kit, because this will make things even more exciting.
advertisement

For the privilege of watching 150 minutes of pointless tennis, featuring a couple of world-class players, one decent doubles player and three has-beens, you will be expected to stump up between £20 and £60 per ticket. Organisers hope to sell 15,000 tickets at the O2 Arena. No wonder the winner gets £50,000 (on top of their appearance fee).

Organisers Quintus Group, owned by sports and media management behemoth IMG, are in discussion with other "leading brands" in an effort to get more corporate sponsors signed up by the time the event takes place in September.

"I think it's fantastic that we are doing something to broaden the appeal of tennis as a sport and form of entertainment," said Henman with a straight face. "We want to get the message out there that tennis is fun, accessible and all-inclusive and turbo tennis can help us do that."

Sure. I can see all the excluded inner-city youngsters who have no access to normal tennis suddenly getting swept up in rackets fever. (Assuming they find 60 quid lying on the street to buy a ticket, of course.) These kind of pseudo-sporting events have become ever more common, and ever more cynical. While hundreds of thousands of pounds are being taken from punters by these companies, families whose children have a genuine talent for tennis are having to sell their houses to fund training, as Doug Gillon revealed in The Herald on Saturday.

Organisers insist Turbo Tennis will appeal to "a wider cross-section of the population, ie non-traditional tennis fans". It's only a bit of fun, supporters will argue. It gives people the chance to see their heroes in the flesh. Look at Twenty20 cricket, what a success it has been. And so on.

If it's only a bit of fun, then give the proceeds to a sporting charity, or better yet build some of the courts this country has been crying out for for, ooh, a hundred years or so. Quintus say they are "in discussions" with the Lawn Tennis Association "as to how Turbo Tennis can maximise the benefits to the grassroots of the sport and associated charities", but it appears that is as far as it goes just now.

If people want to see their heroes in the flesh, then get along to one of the many tennis tournaments: Queen's, Nottingham, the Davis Cup, various exhibition matches and, of course, Wimbledon. The only place you'll have to queue is Wimbledon and you'll see some proper tennis, probably at half the price.

The most expensive tickets for Britain's last Davis Cup tie were £15 and £30, half again for under-16s. That's a bit more "accessible and inclusive".

And yes, Twenty20 cricket is an entertaining novelty. But then again, normal cricket is a slow, complicated game that is tedious for the non-aficionado. Normal tennis is fast, immediately comprehensible and tremendously exciting.

How does making matches shorter make them better?

It's apt that the O2 Arena should host this sporting white elephant: the venue, in case like me you've forgotten, used to be known as the Millennium Dome.

This article first appeared in The Herald

Dance phenomenon

2007-06-21T11:22:00.001+01:00

MY friend pointed me to this video, a single that does an Ali G for Glasgow's ned "culture" (for the uninitiated, neds are a morlock type sub-species that breed below Glasgow's still poverty line. Think chavs but more violent).

There is an interview with the wee man here, where he betrays his middle-class roots, not least by mentioning one of my favourite Bowie songs.

Helvetica

2007-06-19T22:12:00.000+01:00

OKAY, another film I'm looking forward to (although not with breathless anticipation, more in interest-slightly-piqued) is Helvetica.

It's a documentary about the font Helvetica. Aye, a documentary about a font. Look, it'll be good alright.

It is a hard sell. I had a potato thrown at me in work for talking about it. That's cool. Not many people are ready for a film about "typography, graphic design and global visual culture . . . [that looks] at the proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives".

There is a good review on aintitcool. And here is the trailer (it's not quite as exciting as The Transformers one).

I'm sure you'll agree that what it may lack in exploding robots, it makes up for in techno music and shots demonstrating the ubiquity of Helvetica.

So, who's coming with me? Huh? Huh?

More top Helvetica action here.

2007-06-18T18:52:00.000+01:00

THE current state of The Herald is upsetting many in Scotland. Not least myself, giving the ever-increasing risk of joblessness.

Murray Ritchie, former political editor of the paper and author of this book, has a very interesting article about the history of the paper's ownership in the 20th and 21st centuries here.

Whether you agree with his opinion or not, this potted history makes for a mini case study of capitalism becoming globalisation.

2007-06-18T18:50:00.000+01:00

HAVING become obsessed, like most people, with Facebook, I enjoyed this article in The Guardian.

Now, off to Stalkbook Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

Giz a job!

Only in Glasgow . . . or possibly Belfast

2007-06-16T13:57:00.000+01:00

SEVEN pints of Guinness.

Five gin and tonics.

A bottle of cheap Champagne.

Woken up at nine am by a fucking Orange walk.

Cunts.

No Country For Old Men

2007-06-15T10:34:00.000+01:00

I HAVEN'T been to the cinema for months, a combination of torrent addiction and the complete lack of any decent films.

And there doesn't look like there's going to be much to tempt me back. Simpsons, sure. Transformers, maybe. That's about it.

Except for one film, which I am looking forward to more than any for a long time: The Coen Brothers vs Cormac McCarthy - No Country For Old Men.

Variety magazine has the trailer up today and it looks suitably edgy and blackly comic.

Update I think they've taken the embedded content link down. Here's a direct link.

Sopranos 6.21

2007-06-12T10:18:00.000+01:00

Warning: spoilers

THE final episode. Damn. Everybody, of course, is talking about that ending: I wonder how many cable companies were phoned on Sunday night by furious customers demanding to know why their box had cut out?

I certainly thought the torrent I downloaded was corrupted until the credits rolled. Frustrating? Not as frustrating as the season ending. It is classic David Chase as well to leave things unresolved. One of the recurring themes of the series is that life is not a TV show. Loose ends stay loose.

Part of the reason why the final scene was frustrating is because there was no release of tension. With each member of the family arriving one by one, Tony clearly on edge, shadowy looking customers in the diner, portentous looks, you felt, like Tony, that something was bound to happen.

Like Tony, you looked up every time the bell on the door rang. For us, there is the escape of the screen going blank. For Tony, this is his life until one day the bell on the door rings and it is the expected assassin. He is trapped in hell.

Meanwhile over at NJ.com, top Sopranos critic Alan Sepinwall has the first interview with Chase. "I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," he says of the final scene.

There's a surprise

Review: 12:23 Paris. 31st August 1997.

2007-06-12T09:38:00.000+01:00

Eoin McNamee
Faber and Faber

A MURDER mystery about Princess Diana, published on the 10th anniversary of her death? If nothing else, The Daily Express review should be interesting.

Eoin McNamee, who specialises in “novelising” real-life events, has won acclaim for books set during The Troubles and now points his forensic focus on one of the 21st century's few remaining taboos. We know the story: the title is the time of the crash, treated here as a conspiracy-theory thriller involving quasi-government agencies, freelance spies and secret societies. What sounds tacky is actually a gripping, artful - and respectful - fictionalisation of questionable facts.

The citizens of Paris have left for August holidays, but a collection of characters who “have a capacity to absorb spook texture”, converge on the city. We are co-conspirators, not introduced to them so much as set on surveillance, establishing their stories as they do their targets', through “gritty accretion” of details.

Some of these are or were real people: the German who sells intelligence; the ex-Special Branch cop; the alcoholic spinster; the South African trained in torture; the woman with the “air of political instability”; the paparazzo whose subjects have a habit of dying in suspicious circumstances; the Paris spy chief; and Henri Paul, head of security at the Ritz Hotel.

All are involved with the figure whose fate will be decided at 12.23am: trying to harm her, protect her, or just figure out why there is a “shudder in the Intel fabric . . . intuition awakening in the infosphere”. We follow them following each other, floating in acronym miasma: DGSE, SADF, MI6, GCHQ, CIA, NATO . . . HRH. The arcs of the characters describe circles that overlap and constrict around one woman.

We know her as Her Royal Highness; Lady Di; the Princess of Wales; or latterly Diana-colon, as in the newspaper headlines - Diana: New inquest fiasco; Diana: Driver was on drugs; Diana: insult to her memory. In the novel she is Spencer, so that when first mentioned you log the introduction of another shady character before realising your mistake.

There are plenty of reasons why she might be harmed: she is pregnant, set to marry a Muslim, declare support for Palestine, or all of the above. One character is appalled by her lack of security. She won't employ bodyguards because she thinks they spy on her - or has she been “sanitised”, intentionally left unprotected?

There are allusions to Day of the Jackal, Bond, and in the rare, brief sections featuring “Spencer”, excerpts from her namesake's Faerie Queene. But as we progress, more abstruse texts are evoked: she is a devotee of astrologers; the car hits the 13th pillar, “the arcane number”. A cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, is involved. It could become Da Vinci Code territory, but McNamee pulls back. Intelligence agencies know how to use cults. The spy's gift is to divine from “signs and portents”, they don't call them spooks for nothing. The theme is the occult, but in the sense of the hidden, not the mystical.

Once or twice there is a clunk as dialogue is turned to the services of exposition, but McNamee's handling of complex topics is assured, his prose generally taut, although with his characters trained to observe, there are opportunities for the telling detail: “Bennett was like something exhumed by lamplight”; the crash on the 24-hour news ticker alongside bond and share prices like some other “mournful commodity”. There is a twist at the end like all good whodunnits and though we never find out who, or why, McNamee makes the detective work worthwhile.

Some will argue the subject should not be touched, but Diana is treated with respect. The crash occurs inter-chapter. She appears a handful of times, the author observing her from a distance, as through a telephoto lens, rather than occupying her thoughts. Those who buy the book seeking something lurid will put it down in confusion. Those who avoid it for fear of same will miss out.

McNamee is aware of the danger. In a review of his fellow “faction” writer David Peace's GB84 he admitted: “There are dangers. A suggestion that there is something almost immoral about the enterprise . . . [But] all that matters is that the work is good.”

And his is that. Perhaps even The Daily Express will approve.

This article originally appeared in The Herald

1001 albums you must hear before you die

2007-06-09T14:22:00.000+01:00

I'VE been working my way through this weighty tome. From the fifties to the present day, it does exactly what it says on the cover. Excellent bog-time reading. I'm up to about 1967 by now: a top, top year. Artists I might not otherwise have got into: Sinatra, Bert Jansch, Fred Neill, Charles Mingus.

Over at 1001 albums, Francisco Silva is listening to every single one and posting a review. At the time of writing, he's on No.285: Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (1973). I like his style and his taste, just wish I thought of the idea first. He's also started similar blogs based on 1001 books and 1001 movies which should keep him busy for the next 10 years or so. Good to have a hobby.

Update I've just noticed on Amazon that the publishers, fast running out of ideas for new lists, have just brought out 1001 paintings. Maybe if I get my order in fast I can gazump Francisco. Think I'll give 1001 golf holes a miss, even though there are umpteen copies of it gathering dust in my office.

Fan mail

2007-06-08T12:41:00.000+01:00

MY suggestion that motorsport be banned drew an intriguing response from petrolheads, some even semi-literate. Here is a selection of the highlights:

Niklas says I am "worse than FoxNews", and how I got a "job in editorial journalism is beyond me". Then concludes:

I could give .2 pence about the fact that I am destroying the enviroment by driving around in my 10-cylinder gas guzzling sports car. I pay the price for the gas, I paid the price for the car, and I pay the price for cable so I can watch my favorite F1 and LeMans drivers "destroy the planet and kill eachother (sic)." I, for one, am happy people like you are a minor nuissance (sic) to the otherwise rational populace, and I'm glad, for those people's sake, that motorsports isn't going anywhere.

And somehow the planet is dying?

This email was sent via a low electricity, super low conducting CPU, through determined low residue sub-net pathways. No internet was harmed.
Jeremy Annable.

That's actually quite funny.

P.S as James has the same surname is (sic) well known Australian “socialite” (slapper who married a rich man who later died) Rose Porteous I’ll assume that he’s a money hungry gold digger even though it has no relevance to this email whatsoever? Perhaps James should get a job with Wikipedia as his brand [of] pettiness is encouraged on their pages......
Daniel van Niekirk.

WTF? I had never heard of her, but I shall forward this to my father to aid his genealogical research.

to write an article stating that motorsport is totally dull, a complete waste and therefor (sic) should be banned is irretrievably STUPID you total MORON.
@*&$ you.
Tim.

@*&$ you? Why not just write fuck?

If you think that with banning motor racing you'll help human being (sic) you're wrong. The lonely (sic) thing that would give us the chance to breath a cleanner (sic) air would be cutting down all big industry plants
Gerard Farre (Spain)

I see. Thanks for that incisive analysis Gerard. I will refrain from ripping the piss out of your English because it is still (slightly) better than my Spanish.

That article about banning MotorSport is a load of rubbish. Go back to Journalism school.
Robert Davies

You my friend are a muppet.
Doug Harris

Cheers Doug. Your email sig shows that you work for revotechnik an engine tuning and management company, which suggests you might not be the most impartial.

Matt rants on in magnificent stream-of-conscious style, before closing: "Your sheer ignorance and lack of scale-based logic is appalling." As is your lack of punctuation, Mark. Oh I just noticed the subject of his email says "reply requested". Better put that on my to-do list.

Oh my God Sopranos is nearly over

2007-06-06T23:17:00.000+01:00

HBO have set up a countdown to the finale bulletin board with daily polls on your favourite moments. Gloria Trillo: mmm ... crazy

The latest poll is "which Adrianna ensemble was the best?". Sexy tennis ... good times, good times

If you have never seen The Sopranos, you are a disgrace to humanity. Here is a recap:

Sopranos Episode 6.20

2007-06-04T21:34:00.000+01:00

Warning: spoilers

WHOA! Just the other day I was saying to a friend, I don't think there'll be a big bloody climax, the whole series is about the everyday mundanity of life and life in the mob. Now there's one hour to go and New Jersey has gone to the mattresses.

I need to watch this episode again to take it all in. Baccala dead. Sil dying. Two down, one to go: it may have opened with Sil garroting someone we've never seen before, one of many classic Sopranos ambiguities in this episode, but by the end the noose had well and truly tightened around Tony's neck.

Speaking of those ambiguous scenes, did anyone else think Tony was going to stick that shotgun in his mouth in the last scene? Another one was when T told Sil to get on to Italy and get some assassins over. "Who do want to handle it?" was the question . . . for a moment I felt (hoped) "FURIO" would be the answer.

My Monday ritual is to watch Sopranos, lighten up with a bit of Entourage, then read Alan Sepinwall's analysis. The TV critic for the New Jersey Star Ledger, the paper dressing-gown-clad Tony regularly picks up from his driveway (note Sil's victim did the same here), Sepinwall seems to have a good relationship with David Chase and his critiques are always interesting. This season he's blogged up and the feedback from other viewers adds to the melting pot.

Sepinwall points out that in most of the other seasons the carnage took place in the penultimate episode. Can Chase amp it up for ep21?

Also: "Flatbush Bikini Waxing" must be one of the best sight gags in the series. Although Nobush might have been more appropriate.

Motorsport should be banned ... discuss

2007-06-04T01:58:00.000+01:00

THERE is a sport more dangerous than any other, that kills far more people than boxing and yet there are no calls for it to be banned.

Not rugby. Not equestrianism. Not even Ultimate Fighting. No, it's time to ban motorsport: not to save the drivers, who are probably at less risk of injury than footballers, but the rest of us.

Unless you're George Bush or another Halliburton henchman, you probably admit by now that the world is in severe danger. It's not a threat to our great-great-grandkids, something distant that will happen to someone else, but a real and present danger.

A couple of degrees more global warming will trigger catastrophe. We need to cut carbon emissions by 90% in the next 20 years or so. Cars that do 3.5 miles to the gallon are not unacceptable.

Motorsport is the most wasteful, harmful pointless leisure pursuit on the planet. One F1 team has one-use-only wheel bolts that cost £600 each. They use about 1000 a season: this is the level of the eagerness to burn money and resources in the sport.

F1 cars (and I don't mean to pick on one branch of motorsport, but figures are more readily available) emit around 1500g of carbon dioxide per kilometre, almost nine times more than the average new road vehicle. Add in the hundreds of flights every team uses between testing and races and one recent estimate put each driver's carbon emissions for the eight-month season at 54 tonnes: more than 10 times as much as the average Briton emits in a year. That's not even counting other factors, such as the teams that have two wind tunnels running 24/7.

The faster the car, the faster it destroys the Earth - simple. Winning races and saving the planet are not compatible.

The industry is beginning to realise that their behaviour is unacceptable. NASCAR, the biggest sport in the USA, made sweeping changes to their fuel policy this season: they switched to unleaded. Seriously. The American Le Mans Series is switching to E10, a blend that is 10% corn-based ethanol (so that's just the 90% gasoline, then). The Indy Racing League is a bit better, with a fuel 98% ethanol. Over here, Lanarkshire Team Clyde Valley Racing, the only Scottish-owned professional team in the British Touring Car Championship, are on E85.

But biodiesel creates more problems than it solves. The price of food goes up greatly as land is used to grow crops for fuel rather than food. In some parts of Mexico the price of corn has increased 50% because of demand from biofuel producers. And the vast amounts of land necessary encourages the felling of tropical forests.

At the start of this season, Honda unveiled their new F1 car. Instead of the usual advertising and sponsor logos it has a picture of the Earth on it. Wow . . . it still does four miles to the gallon, right?

"Climate change is probably the single biggest issue facing our planet and F1 is not immune from it," trumpeted a statement from the team CEO. Ya think?

The response from one environmental group's spokesman was perfect: "We're not sure what painting an F1 car green will do for the planet, but it sounds rather like the definition of greenwash."

This practise of putting a positive spin on environmentally unsound behaviour is widespread. The oil companies spend hundreds of millions of pounds (a minuscule fraction of their profits) on adverts explaining how much they care about the planet while, er, not actually doing anything much. Motorsport is now catching up, pardon the pun.

Max Mosley, the president of the FIA (and son of British Fascist leader Sir Oswald, but that has nothing to do with this subject . . . probably) gave an interview last week on formula1.com, admitting that his sport must change.

"Formula One does not happen on another planet, so we have to adapt to reality," he said. "Cars that need 75 litres [of fuel] per 100 kilometres are no longer cool.< "The new FIA programme will lead Formula One into a new era. It's a matter of do or die!" (Their exclamation mark. For this and other awesome quotes click the link). His plans - there were no details, just general waffle about CO2 - will, if accepted by the teams, come into effect by 2011. Hopefully, his tracks aren't covered by melted ice caps by then. this article first appeared in The Herald

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But mine is the only one worth a fuck

2007-06-03T15:18:00.001+01:00

I WAS looking for second opinions on American Youth, which I thought was mediocre. But many people thought it superb. The book is getting big hype in the States, LaMarche is billed as the new Cormac McCarthy and his website has a cool graphic of Uncle Sam throwing a Molotov cocktail and plenty of links to glowing reviews.

The glowingest of which was in The LA Times:

One of the most savagely beautiful, emotionally devastating and accurate readings of what it means to grow up in our soul-starved homeland that I've ever read

Amusingly, this reviewer Jerry Stahl, highlights one of the book's most trite, awkward images as pure gold:

"The boy nearly jumped when Bobby moved. His hand came up and brushed at the small bloody spot on his chest like it was an itch or some crumbs. Then his arm stopped and lay still again. The spot on Bobby's chest was close to his left nipple. With his hand over it, he looked ready for the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance."

A dead kid who looks like he was pledging allegiance … genius! I can't think of a writer alive — or dead — who wouldn't get down on his or her knees and thank the Lit Gods for granting an image like that.

Er, well this writer wouldn't for a start. And if the Lit Gods have such questionable taste then take me now, Lit Satan. Stahl, whose review I highly recommend reading for the sheer hyperbolic wonder of it, concludes that the book is a "masterpiece".

Sherryl Connelly at the NY Daily News agrees, though she doesn't tell us why. Magdalena Ball at compulsivereader agrees, though she doesn't tell us why. I hate reviews that just summarise the plot

Dan Cryer in the San Francisco Chronicle reckons the book has "emotional depth charges strategically placed", a good thing seemingly.

The cries of "masterpiece" come almost totally from American reviewers, with readers in Australia and the UK more ambivalent or worse. (Except the Guardian). Maybe this tells us something about Liberal Americans and their love of having the obvious problems in their country pointed out to them, again. Gee, guns are bad . . .

PS: almost every review highlights LaMarche's description of the protagonist as "the boy" as a major annoyance. Why?

PPS: reading these reviews I realise I mistakenly described the fatal .22 as a pistol and not a rifle. Goes to show the contemptible lack of firearms knowledge here.

Book review: American Youth by Phil La Marche. Hodder & Stoughton

2007-05-31T22:44:00.002+01:00

SEVENTEEN pages into this debut novel about guns and Troubled Teens in small-town America, the first Troubled Teen is shot. This is as exciting as it gets: author Phil La Marche intends an examination of gun culture among American high-schoolers but delivers the type of bland morality tale read by American high-schoolers. And Judy Blume has better sex scenes.

Ted is 14 with encyclopaedic firearms knowledge. This is admirable: the author's message, broadcast with the unceasing subtlety of an M16 on auto-fire, is that guns made America great; all ills are caused by disliking guns, a poor economy and the absence of fathers.

One day Ted is showing off his pistol and leaves it for an instant with his nongun-owning (ie subnormal) friends. Chalk off a chum. Ted's mother makes him lie to the police and he becomes a Troubled Teen. Symptoms: smoking pot and burning himself with a lighter.

Some other Troubled Teens, who call themselves American Youth and wear a golf-influenced uniform - a Plus-Fours Mafia - latch on to Ted in his new high school because of his dedication to firearm-based manslaughter.

They like petty vandalism and naive politics; they hate "bleeding hearts" and homosexuals; they abhor alcohol, drugs, sex . . . anything teenagers enjoy.

You feel La Marche is not hugely opposed to this worldview: that he would rather them than the town's newcomers who think (God forbid) "owning a gun should be a crime".

Ted rebels against them, smokes pot, drinks whiskey and loses his virginity with the leader's girlfriend. Things look bad. On his first day at school, a prominent bell tower attracted Ted's attention - will it come in handy? Or, given his fondness for self-harm, described at the close of most chapters, could he copy his great-uncle and blow his brains out?

Post-Columbine, the plot is credible, but not La Marche's imagining of teenage life. Nowadays kids give up pot as passe by the time they're in high school and any selfrespecting bullies would have battered American Youth into sensible clothes.

Similar themes have been explored with more wit, insight and artistry by novelist DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little), filmmaker Gus van Sant (Elephant) and even Marilyn Manson, who wrote an album defending himself after being accused of inspiring Columbine. Although La Marche has attended creative writing programmes in three countries, the "Show Don't Tell" mantra has passed him by.

He tells us why Ted takes drugs ("He couldn't complain. He couldn't bitch. But he could get stoned"); why he self-harms ("His body pleaded to be burned and scalded and dashed to pieces. It longed for relief"); why he can't express himself with Dad ("A great fondness for the man welled up in the boy . . . followed by a tremendous ache - his father was so, so far from him").

And when La Marche gets flashy, his symbolism clangs: "The [bullethole] was close to his left nipple. With his hand over it he looked ready for the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance".

When Ted is being hunted by the Youth, he helps an uncle slaughter a deer. La Marche soon tells us Ted "felt like an animal" and that it is "open season".

The conflation of fatherhood and firearms is disturbing: intent on mischief with his dad's shotgun, Ted feels "guilty for implicating the firearm in such an egregious act . . . tainting all the good memories." The final image sums up a discomfiting novel: Ted gazing lovingly at the fatal .22, looking forward to giving it "to some child of his at an appropriate moment".

this article previously appeared in The Herald.

Where are you from?

2007-05-31T22:44:00.001+01:00

DE donde eres? In Spain, like most countries, it's a simple question: 'Where are you from?' It doesn't mean 'What do you believe in?', like it often does here.

Or at least most of the time it doesn't. I am, after all, in Basqueland, a place even more troubled by issues of identity and nationality than Scotland is.

The man in the San Sebastian bar nods when I tell him 'Escocia' - but what part? 'Glasgow'? Ah! Instant recognition. And then he regales me with his outsiders' understanding of the hatred and fear that rules my city. 'Rangers or Celtic - what team are you?' I give him the same answer I would give his counterpart in a Scottish pub.

Of course he's never heard of Partick Thistle. But he understands immediately when I explain the concept of a third way through the hatred. His whole conception of Glasgow, and by extension Scotland, is of a nation riven in blue and green halves, sticking each other like pigs whenever the war fever takes them.

I didn't think much of it at the time. The Champions League semi-final between Chelsea and Liverpool was on. A fellow football fan was being polite to a tourist. But after last week's scenes at the UEFA Cup final, the conversation came back to me.

Recently, Glasgow and Scotland had the opportunity to send a different message to those who know nothing about our country other than what they read in their sports reports: that it is a place where two tribes go to war with regular bloody consequences. Even the most bitter cynic would say we took our chance with aplomb.

Glasgow was party central for two days. Okay, it rained throughout Wednesday, the day of the UEFA Cup final between Espanyol and Sevilla. But the Spanish media accepted that, like the fans did, as just the norm in Scotland.

Like fearsome violence between two opposing sets of religiously-divided supporters, constant rain is a cultural model of Scotland they are familiar with and readily assimilate; never mind the facts that Tuesday was warm and sunny, or that great efforts are being made on all sides to rid Scotland of its centuries-old hatreds.

Spain's press had nothing but praise for the way Glasgow and Scotland welcomed the 40,000 or so fans, whom we were practically obliged to call an armada. We put on a great fiesta and they recognised that.

Hampden, having shown itself as a place where history is made from Puskas and Di Stefano in 1960 to when Zizou's splendid volley flew into the net in 2002, amplified its reputation after a two-hour, four-goal final that was eventually settled in the most dramatic, cruellest way possible. Oh, and not a single arrest before or after.

Yes, before the joyless point it out, we might as well mention that had it been Espanyol-Barcelona, or Sevilla-Real Betis in the final, the atmosphere, and the stress on the police, might have been different. Sevilla's coach Juande Ramos was knocked unconscious by a bottle thrown from the crowd in the last Seville derby . . . but then again, why impose our own expectations of hatred on a great couple of days? Scotland and Glasgow are about much more than petty rivalries and last week showed that to the world.

Hopefully "Where are you from"won't be such a loaded question in future. And when abroad, the answer "Glasgow" will soon evoke positive connotations in our interlocutors rather than negative.

this article previously appeared in The Herald.

Scousers - do they ever stop moaning?

2007-05-31T22:43:00.001+01:00

DOES William Gaillard know what he's let himself in for? The last person to criticise the proud people of Liverpool, Boris Johnson, was almost strung up.

Luckily, UEFA's director of communications did not go quite as far as to suggest the city "wallowed in its victim status" the crime that led the floppy-haired MP to become persona non grata, la. But he didn't spare his critics after coming under fire following the Champions League final.

Many fans with tickets weren't allowed in. "We need an urgent explanation, " blasted sports minister Richard Caborn. Sniffing Scouse votes, Caborn's Tory counterpart Hugh Robertson waded in: "It is an absolute disgrace." Sentiments also expressed by another Liverpool hero, Michael Howard (Con: Folkestone and Hythe). The friend of the dockers said "it was a mercy" that there wasn't another Hillsborough.

The stadium wasn't fit to host an illustrious event, they moaned. Never mind that it has hosted the Olympics. The ticketing arrangements and security were a joke. Never mind the fact that Liverpool FC kept 6000 of their 17,000 ticket allocation for corporate fatties instead of genuine fans. Or, the crux of the matter, that many ticketless Liverpool fans conned their way in with forgeries or blunt force, or even beat up and robbed 'fellow fans'.

No wonder M. Gaillard was not best pleased. "What's a disgrace is the behaviour of some Liverpool fans, " he frothed, pointing out that there were no problems with the Milan fans and again praising UEFA's pets Celtic.

The statements from the politicians "encourage such behaviour" he added, "when they should be condemning it."

But Gaillard saved his best jibe for Howard: "[This] coming from the man that invented the poll tax."

Good points well made, Willie. But our advice: don't visit the next European City of Culture any time soon.

LIKE The Sopranos, whose final episode is two weeks away, the Floyd Landis trial was a drama you didn't want to end.

Nine days of testimony to decide whether the 2006 Tour de France champion was guilty of doping; usually all you hear about in these cases is lengthy descriptions of urine, all right if that's your bag but not exactly riveting.

But in the Landis case we had Greg LeMond, three-time Tour winner, revealing he was sexually abused as a child and following that with the revelation that Landis' manager, Will Geoghegan, threatened to reveal the secret if he testified.

Then it got surreal, with attorneys questioning Landis at length as to why he wore all black for LeMond's appearance in court after choosing a yellow tie on other days.

Geoghegan was later fired after admitting making the threatening phone call to LeMond and ended up in rehab. LeMond had to put out a news release saying that his abuser was not his uncle as Geoghegan claimed.

But we have to wait for the soap opera's denouement: arbitrators will deliberate for a month or more before passing sentence. Never mind, season two - or Tour de France 2007 as some people call it - starts in just six weeks.

SOL BAMBA was on the losing side in the Scottish Cup final after Dunfermline lost a goal in the last five minutes. The FrenchAfrican defender finds Scottish food equally hard to digest. "It is terrible, " he revealed in a hard-hitting interview with L'Equipe.

"We used to avoid eating lunch with the Scottish players, but now our manager wants us all to eat together. I have had the experience of eating stuffed sheep's belly. Never again. They gave it to us on purpose. They know French people would not like it, so they give it to us deliberately."

Er . . . horses, snails, frogs' legs, anyone?

MEANWHILE, back at the cycling . . . news reaches us from our Rome correspondent of a lothario who decided taking his mistress to the beach would be a pleasant preamble to some extramarital action.

Unfortunately, a stage of the Giro d'Italia was taking place nearby, and the Italian stallion made the mistake of waving to a helicopter filming the race, ending up on live television.

His wife's brother, watching the race at home, was not best pleased . . .

this article previously appeared in The Herald.

FIRST!!

2007-05-31T12:15:00.000+01:00

Hi welcome to my blog. I'm going to post reviews, essays and random rants on an irregular basis about sport, books, movies and the media