Month: May 2005

After the second rehearsal with Edd & Mitra, I’m amazed at how quickly the whole bass-playing thing has come back to me. Granted, the old fingers aren’t as nimble, but that’s just practice – they’ll loosen up soon enough. It’s coming along nicely, and my walking bass lines are improving (*very* slowly!) – I’ll be a jazz supremo in no time!

I’d just like to take time out now, ladies and gentlemen, to give a big shout out to Benjy in the northern suburbs of Sydney, sunny Australia. From nowhere he calls me the other day, full of the joys of Aussie life and happily ensconced with his lovely lady Brooke – and potentially coming back for a flying visit in July. We live in hope – I’ve got the wine cellar stocked and waiting, mate!

Just a quick update on the hypno course: got my feedback from the supervisor who was monitoring the session, and it’s pretty good! One or two areas for improvement, which I was expecting anyway, but the overall impression was “Great session Alan” – cool…

The epic road trip to Ireland is a giant leap closer to becoming a reality, since the RF600 left my possession last weekend (all together now: aaaaaaah!) – a thoroughly nice chap came around with his girlfriend, two crash helmets and a wad of cash, so I gave him the keys. And this weekend I pick up my RF900 – yay!

And of course, there’s no point in having a nice shiny powerful sexy bike without showing it off to everyone who knows me – hence the hardening of my resolve to book a ferry and introduce it to my family and friends back in the homeland. And I’m sure I’ll be catching up with old friends the length and breadth of Merrie Englande, till I’ve no-one else to show it off to. And then it’ll be my friends on the continent…

I know – I’m full of it. But it’s fun to think about! 🙂

Final word: coming up rapidly is the deadline to get my booking form in for the MS BIGFoot 50-mile sponsored walk, so I’ve got to get to my GP and get her to rubber-stamp my application, and then I’m in. Unless of course she takes one look at me and says “you have GOT to be kidding me!” Keep your eyes peeled for the sponsorship link to the left – it’ll be appearing real soon now…

Seems a tad cool for summer, but I suppose it’ll warm up soon enough. Ireland has had its heatwave predictions already – and I’m planning to head over there for a two-wheeled road trip in July! Timing truly is everything… Knowing my luck, I’ll travel over there in torrential rain, then have blistering sunshine to lull me out of my waterproofs, then torrential rain again – just to surprise me. Pessimism – or realism? 🙂

Been preoccupied of late with work and study, and fun and games, and haven’t really kept you posted on what’s happenin’, have I? Well, here’s my chance to make good all my bloglessness. A few bits & pieces to tell you about, but I’ll be keeping this one brief as I’m not in the peak of health just now (flaky nerves, fatigue, crap like that)…

First off, my hypno assessment/exam or whatever you want to call it went pretty well. I think. Well, considering… Anyway, my session seemed to work on my colleague who was experiencing confidence issues – she perked up after we were finished, and certainly seemed to possess a bit more ‘pep’. I’ll take that as a success, pending the official feedback. The weekend of the 7th and 8th of June, of course, is our first session with *LIVE* clients – real volunteer guinea pigs from the general public! Oh lordy…

Oh, and the most recent update from the Emerald Isle is that my sister is *still* smoke-free – rock on! 🙂

I was wittering on about the election in my last rant, wasn’t I? Well, that was a bit of a non-event! Tony got bitch-slapped and didn’t even flinch – I have to admit to grudging admiration of his capacity to recognise no wrong whatsoever in anything that he does. Imagine how simple life would be if you were *never* wrong….

First session with Edd & Mitra last weekend was great fun, if a little challenging to my extremely rusty bass-playing skills. After a few false starts, we were rocking the joint towards the end – until my hands seized up. It’s called getting old, dear! Well, that and not playing the bass for about the past ten years… 🙂

Whisper it: a trade-up in the bike stakes could be on the horizon. I’m toying with the idea of an RF900, in decent nick, at the right price. And what this means is that my RF600 is up for sale – check it out on eBay, and put a bid on it, please! The reserve price is £1200, so there’s no fear of you buying it unless you go above that.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. It would be cool to have the 900 for my road trip in July. Tune in next week to see what happens!

Been too busy with other stuff to keep the old blog up to date, so apologies to anyone who missed my musings! 🙂 The fact is, I’ve been so busy with work and travels, and organising work and travels, et ceteraaah, it just slipped my mind…

Where was I? Well, I had myself a fine time in Ireland, once I’d gotten over a couple of issues. First off, the PC I brought over as a birthday present for my sister turned out to be DOA – undoubtedly down to rough handling at either end of the airline bit of the trip. And then my laptop expired, which meant I couldn’t do any work. Bummer! So I ended up having myself a most relaxing time – unprecedented in recent years!

The high point of the trip has to be that I got my sister off the fags, with a little hypnotic help. At the time of writing, she’s still smoke-free – and *loving* it. The occasional twinge here and there, but nothing life-threatening. You go, sis! I have to say that anything else I do on this course will pale into insignificance compared to the sense of achievement I have from that.

Oh, on that note – I’m back into the hypno study fray this weekend in Brighton, and on Sunday we have our first exam/assessment/whatever. We’ll be divided up into groups, and we’ll be paired off to work on a fellow student’s issues, whatever they may be. We’ve been asked not to pick anything *too* hairy to be worked on, so that excludes pretty much all of my bugs! Oh, I’ll think of something. Am I nervous? Brickin’ it, mate! 🙁

So I’m off to vote in the seemingly pointless general election, to make my tiny contribution to this great democracy of ours. But the decision is still so tough – the Conservatives are horrible, and Michael Howard particularly so; Labour have proven to be very good at “tax and spend”, and Tony Blair is a lying toad; and the Liberal Democrats – well, I’m not sure where they’re at, really. So where does that leave me? Especially given that I live in a staunchly Conservative borough. Who’s the Monster Raving Loony candidate for Beckenham, anyone?

It may sound trite to say that all the parties are the same, but at least for the two main parties it’s as close to true as makes no odds at this point. Ah well, four more years of Labour, then. And they’ll be in power for the next stock/price crash, he he…

Riding my (decidedly anti-social) motorbike in the weather we’ve been having recently has really reminded me of why it is that I always loved bikes – to the extent that my mate John said “Mate – you belong on two wheels!”. And Matt said that too. An odd consensus, but I’m feeling it too. I don’t even mind the odd rain shower too much, because soon enough the sun comes out and dries it up again. The only downside is that I tend not to wear my armoured waterproof gear, in case I expire from heat and dehydration! Someone needs to dream up bike clothing that isn’t like a furnace in July…

And finally, musical things are starting to move with mates Edd & Mitra – we’ve got our initial jam session next weekend. Which is slightly unnerving, as it seems that everyone in the band is hideously talented – except me! I’m just a bass-playing monkey – I don’t know about any of that music stuff! Well, I’ll just pretend – it worked for me in Autumn Stone, after all…

Right – with that, I’d better hit the hay and dream of bigger and faster motorbikes, biking holidays in Ireland (provisionally slated for July), biking bikey bike stuff and biker babes. Wherever they hang out – I think Beckenham is too genteel for them! But I live in hope. 😀

Keep yer chains oiled and yer helmets on!