42

Today marks my 'Douglas Adams' birthday - 42. This, of course, means I now am perfectly at one with The Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything. Mind you, as anyone who knows where their towel is can probably guess, I still don't understand the bloody Great Question, rendering it all pretty pointless (an apt metaphor for life, really - puzzling, frustrating, disappointing and pointless). At least I know my Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster from my Old Janx Spirit. I'm not really sure how I come to find myself at this age. On the one hand it seems like just the other year I was a happy mid 20s student drinking my way through college and quite happy, other days it feels like a lifetime ago. I suppose it was. Can't say I especially feel like celebrating; truth be told I don't really give a damn about my birthday, its on such an awkward day its a bit of an afterthought so it hasn't really meant much to me in my adult years, different when you are a kid. And these days it doesn't feel like there's much reason to celebrate.

Stormy weather

Down to Portobello this afternoon with my mate and his dog to let him have a run around off the leash on the beach (the dog, not my friend), only to find what was a cold wind in the city centre of Edinburgh was a howling gale coming right off the North Sea at Porty, whipping the waves up into big foaming gray peaks and slamming right into the sea wall so hard they splashed right up the side, across the Esplanade and hit the wall of the structure on the other side. That was when we decided to walk around the block at the worst bit :-) Pictures are a bit fuzzy, the wind was so high my camera lens, glasses and my face were all getting whipped by flying sand granules and salt spray, had to clean them repeatedly but within minutes they just got covered with a film of it again.

Christmas greetings from Scotland

After finishing work for the year I walked up a very snowy Royal Mile to the Castle gates. For the first time ever I had it all to myself, not another soul there for ten minutes, just me standing in snow that came over the toes of my boots, that soft scrunching sound that reminds you instantly of childhood playtimes in the snow. Just me and the cold and the snow and the Castle glowing in the night above the city, dusted with snow like icing on a historical cake. Below and around me views across the whole of Edinburgh, right out to the Pentland Hills. Freezing but incomparably beautiful. Merry Christmas from a snowy Scotland!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

... and all through the night not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... I've loved Tom'n'Jerry since I was a very small boy and have wonderfully warm memories of sitting there watching them with my dad. Truth be told even as an adult if a T&J came on when I was home dad and I would sit down to watch it, hee-hawing with laughter as we did so, my mum shaking her head and wondering when either of us would grow up. With crisp snow lying all around us this Christmas Eve it seems like a perfect evening to sit by a roaring fire and watch the classic Night Before Christmas film from the Oscar winning T&J:







Oh to be five years old again and watching this on Christmas Eve at home with dad while mum was making baking and cooking magic in the kitchen and all seemed right with the world and there was no problem in the world so big that your mum and dad couldn't sort it out and you felt wrapped up in that warmth and love. Looking back now I think that childhood was the most wonderful present I've ever received and at the time, of course, I didn't even know it. Little wonder as the world seems darker and colder that I warm myself by those memories of times that never come again.

Snowy Edinburgh

On the way home this evening after the last book group of the year and a nice drink, passing Princes Street Gardens, the Christmas lights, snow, Edinburgh Castle... This is my view on the way home and one of the reasons I love living here in one of the most beautiful cities on the planet.

Haggis crisps!

Yes, now you can get Haggis flavoured crisps! I saw these in the supermarket and had to pick up a bag of them, not actually tried them yet. I didn't even know Mackies were making crisps, they are better known for the extremely yummy Scottish ice cream. I hope they used free range haggis, battery farmed haggis are kept in such dreadful conditions. Hmmm, you know, if I can't be bothered cooking come Burns Night in January I could have an alternative Burns Supper of Haggis crisps and a bottle of beer.

Star Trek meets Mythbusters

Great, two of my favourite geek things in the world, Star Trek and Mythbusters, are coming together - the Mythbusters team are going to test out a classic scene from the original 60s Star Trek, where Captain Kirk is kidnapped and placed on a desert planet to battle the captain of the Gorn ship and told there are materials scattered around that can be fashioned into weapons. Finding some sulphur and other material he takes a large bamboo like hollow cane and imrpovises a primitive cannon, with some diamonds shoved in the barrel as ammunition. Its a now classic Trek scene (with the rocky desert setting now a cliche for the show, endlessly lampooned). But if you improvised such a device in real life would it work or just blow up in your face? That's what the Mythbusters are going to test - sounds like a Trek themed follow up of sorts to the medieval wood cannon they did a couple of years back.

Gift ideas

'Tis the season when every second bloody advert is from celebs from A to Z list hawking their wares: perfumes, endless comedy DVDs and books which are instantly sold at half price in the chain bookstores and supermarkets. I'm so utterly disgusted by the crass, obvious commercialism of all of this that I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and endorse my own scent, Eau de Joe. Why buy a perfume that allegedly makes you smell like some Hollywood slapper when you could have Eau de Joe, with its peaty, single malt mixed with hints of 80% coco chocolate, must books and cat fur aroma.

And for that other perfect gift for Christmas why not select my new special Joe Stands Up comedy DVD. Its an hour long of me standing up in different poses, from bolt upright to nonchalantly leaning against the fireplace in my smoking jacket as I tap out my pipe. Order now and get the bonus extra disc Joe Also Sits Down. Truly something for everyone.

Okay, I'll admit, these are shoddy, inferior goods designed simply to be bought by folks desperate for gift ideas for relatives whose tastes they don't really know that well, just like every other shameless celebrity endorsed bag of crap, but at least I'm honest about it. And my comedy DVD would still be funnier than bloody Peter Kaye or Gavin and bloody Stacey. Hmm, maybe I should think on a range of action figures for next year...

Happy birthday, mum

Today should be my mum's birthday. I should be hearing her delight at the flowers I always get her for her birthday, instead on a cold, misty winter day dad and I are taking flowers to her grave. I still don't understand why she isn't here, I don't understand how someone you love so much can be ripped away from you just like that. Why is her name on a bloody cold stone?? The world without her I don't care for; it feels like nothing has really gone well since we lost her, just seems to be one thing after another, more strain, more bad things, even someone who was so important to me letting me down very badly and always just under the surface the raw hurt of having her taken from us. There are honestly some days when if it weren't for dad and taking care of the mogs I really wouldn't care if I went to sleep and never woke up again. I don't see anything in the future to inspire me or encourage me and it feels like just waiting for the next bad thing to happen all the time and that really isn't much reason to keep going on, makes you wonder why bother.

Fog in Channel

Quite a while back I was asked by Tom and Simon Sykes if I'd like to contribute to a book they were putting together on British attitudes to Europe; its taken some time to get to print but its now finally been released (I just received my complimentary copy). It was quite nice to be asked (they had come across the Woolamaloo after the infamous 'Bastardstone's' incident and liked my writing style) and it was unusual for me to be asked to write on something other than my regular subjects of books, comics or films (much as I do enjoy writing and talking about those). I'm also rather chuffed to think I'm in there with company such as Bill Deedes, Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell and Tony Benn (my late uncle, a solid socialist to the day he died, would have been delighted to see his nephew in a book alongside Benn). The guys wanted to have a spread of people and so a variety of thoughts and opinion and not just the 'usual suspects', hence why I was also approached; I drew on my own experience of an earlier Union to describe my feeling towards European Union, looking at the notion of being Scottish and British against the idea of being British but also European. Fog in Channel (the title inspired by the old weather report on the radio) is published now by Shoehorn Publishing.