DerrenWilson.net

I’ve been getting used to snow in the last few weeks. Having been starved of snow for 27 years in Australia, and then getting poor, thin London snow, the proper snow up North is a revelation.

I like the crisp, powdery crunch of it underfoot on a cold morning, the concentration needed to avoid the treacherous smooth glazed thawing snow, and the beauty of the rolling hills of the High Peak covered in the stuff.

So I have made my first snowman ever, in my entire pitiful snow-free life, as an offering to the snow God, to send me some more:

Yes, those are my glasses.

Dear Mr Wilson,

Yes, the rumours are true. I am in possession of two tickets to travel 10,575 miles (one-way) from Manchester, UK to Melbourne, Australia, in June 2004. It is very exciting, as there have been several house moves, children, and other assorted life-changing events happening to my relatives in Australia in the seven years (1997–1998) since I last went back.

It will be winter then, but from what I can remember, that’s not so fierce (pauses to look out the window at the snow on the hills around Hayfield).

It is exciting, tempered with that ‘will anyone remember me?’ feeling. And the possibility of having to watch the two Grand Prix that are being run while we’re in Australia in the middle of the night: being able to watch GPs on Sunday afternoon is the only reason I moved over here, of course.

A beta version of the new Sandwich Project site is up and running. It’s using exactly the same database as the old one, so any voting, etc you do will be added to the records for perpetuity.

Please have a look around and let me know if it behaves for you. There are a few little things, like the background and other graphics that still need work, but the scripting seems happy enough.

I feel almost sad to be saying goodbye to those lovely Javascript pop-up windows (so 2001).

Today I went to the doctor for the first time in seven years (and I went back then to get my ears syringed).

Last night, after a short snowfall, I took one of the big logs in the ‘utility room’ and dropped it on the concrete floor outside the back door. I aimed the axe so it would hit the edge of the log (it seems to split easier that way) and swung.

I felt a thud in my back. My back started to hurt. I tried to straighten up, and knew I’d just been welcomed to the bad back club. From the small of my back, a pulsing red knot of pain made it impossible to walk, sit properly or mover from one position to another.

I shuffled inside and lay flat on my back, trying to watch ER. The pain didn’t go away. At 2am yesterday morning the pain was still there. At 7am this morning, trying to shower ready for work, the knot in my back was still tying up my body.

So I went to the doctor. He tested my movement and checked my back. When I’d sent the axe down onto the wood, the shock of the axe hitting wood hitting concrete had sent some of my muscles into spasm. I was prescribed painkillers and muscle relaxant.

He also said I shouldn’t lie down and wait for the pain to go away, but to keep active, so I’ve been pottering around the house, doing the washing, the dishwasher, and watching the snow fall. The drugs do seem to work in this case – I’m starting to be able to go from sitting down to standing up in less than three minutes (without any huffing and puffing).

So I suppose this is another sign I’m getting old. Either that, or I should be asking for an Aeron chair at work and an Eames Lounger at home. I think I like the sound of the second option more.

…and there’s no continental favoritism here, oh no. You get one from Australia, America and the UK:

• Spit Polish by Tim Rogers
  The second solo record from Mr You Am I. The first was a bit patchy, but not too indulgent. Out in April, apparently.
• A ghost is born by Wilco
  Oooh, the weight of post-YHF anticipation. I have confidence in the Wilco, though. We have to wait until June 8th, unless the band are dropped by their record company again. (Did anyone else start listening to Wilco because they sounded like the common abbreviation for Wilkinson’s?)
• Definitive Collection by the Durutti Column.
  As usual, there’s not a lot of info out there (I saw it in the Observer’s music magazine), but it’s been compiled by the ‘band’, so it should be good. If I can find a copy.

Further along the road, it would also be nice if someone would release in CD form the Brian Wilson Smile shows he’s playing in London at the moment. Unless he makes it to Buxton Opera House before then.

Melissa Tkautz. The Teen Queens. Boom Crash Opera. Anyone off Neighbours.

Who?

These are some of the rubbish pop acts that were ‘big in Australia’ late last century. Until a few weeks ago, you could have happily put the greasy Peter Andre in that list. Not now, thanks to his UK television exposure in I’m a celebrity, get me out of here.

People of Australia – you don’t know how bad this is. Mysterious Girl (wo oh woa oha wo) is being re-released. He was on Top of the Pops last night, bopping and jiggling away as if he’d been in cryogenic storage for the last five (?) years.

Help me.

Please.

I’ve booked some time off, so I’ve not been posting as often as I usually do. That’s not to say I’ve stayed away from computers, oh no: there’s some new bits and pieces for the site in the pipeline (quite a few drop shadows in there – it’s the new black). I’d post some of them now but I don’t think it’s wise with the rather limited testing facilities I’ve got at home (iMac running OS9, IE and Mozilla).

Thought I’ve been able to sit around, poor Ms Laura – having chosen a new career path in floristry – is stuck at work pandering to the people who still think Valentine’s day is a good idea. If you’re wondering how those expensive roses got to you, this is what I’ve learned about the process in the last few days:

• Most cut flowers in Europe are grown in the Netherlands (it’s flat and there’s lots of water)
• They arrive at Aalsmeer Flower Market, in the suburbs of Amsterdam (just next to Schipol airport, funnily enough) and are sold by auction. This is no ordinary auction: the price starts high and gradually lowers until the flowers are sold. Saves time, apparently. As you can imagine, leading up to February 14th, the price of roses, etc starts higher…
• Flowers for the UK are loaded into a refrigerated lorry (separate section for tropicals that don’t like the cold) and the lorry gets on the ferry for England
• For the next few days, the lorry drivers make deliveries at florists all over the country, stopping for about half an hour for each delivery. They deliver through the night – they have keys for each florist on their route
• Repeat ad infinitum.

(I hope I’ve not given away any trade secrets there)

I find it surprisingly interesting to learn about all these processes and deliveries that go on behind the scenes, in the middle of the night…

A few days ago my new ‘photocard’ driving licence arrived. Yes, it’s taken a year since we moved to update our address details with the DVLA (it’s our fault).

Having paid £3.50 for a passport photograph, and £4.00 to have my passport ‘checked’ instead of sending it all the way to Swansea and back (‘Checked’ means the lady at the post office picked it up, wrote down the passport number, and then gave it back to me – woo, high tech…), what arrived through the post is a good indication of how English bureaucracy works.

There is a flimsy card, made out of cardboard, rather than sturdier plastic. On top of the card is a scanned picture of myself (two, actually, one smaller than the other), some details, a scan of my signature (at about 30dpi) and some nifty holographic covering. But – and this is the bit that inspired this blog entry – the card itself is not my driving licence. There’s still a bit of paper (like the old licence) that I need to a) keep in a safe place b) remember where the stoopid thing is and c) take with the card if I want to hire a car or otherwise prove I can legally drive (here’s the policy of EasyCar, that states ‘photo card license must be accompanied by the paper counterpart’).

And there’s more. The information page on the DVLA website says that if you have your old, bit-of-paper-only licence, you can keep it as long as the details are current – so, if you keep the same address and name, you can have it for a lifetime. Now that I’ve got this new-fangled photocard licence, it needs to be renewed every ten years. I assume that means a new photograph, more money at the post office to have my identity checked, etc etc etc (unless it’s all on-line by 2014: given the dubious abilities of the English government to implement IT projects, anybody want to make a bet?)

I shouldn’t get so upset. I’m sure by 2014 we’ll all be riding bicycles to a brand-new, clean, modern train station to catch a quiet, fuel-efficient, regular train service…

This page is one of those ‘fill in the boxes and we’ll tell you where you’ve been on a map’ things that’s been doing the rounds lately. At the moment no-one’s made an equivalent just for Australia, which is probably a good thing, as what might look like this by state boundaries:

is actually this, if I think about it:

That’s Adelaide, some of South Australia, some of Victoria, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. Doesn’t seem like much of the country, does it? But look at where I’ve been in Britain at the same scale (thanks to the website linked above):

When you’re looking out the car window for three hours at 110km/h between Bordertown, South Australia, and Horsham, Victoria (geography might be slightly incorrect here), seeing nothing but fields, it’s a wide open road in Australia, oh yes it is.

e.s.t. – Esbjorn Svensson Trio
Andy Sheppard & John Parricelli

Buxton, while it’s just down the road from where we live, is the kind of place we like to drive through, quickly, but I’d always been intrigued to see what the opera house looked like. It turned out to be a lovely bit of Edwardian gilt edged rococo. Nice.

A few minutes to appreciate the original brass fire-fighting equipment (‘not to be used in an emergency’) and then the duo of Andy Sheppard (sax) and John Parricelli (guitar) shuffled on. They played a pastoral kind of music, Parricelli often building up layers of sound with a delay pedal for Sheppard to solo over. It was pleasant enough, but to me it seemed that the two instruments seemed to be playing over each other, with no bass or rhythm to anchor it.

Interval. I went to the stalls bar to get ‘two diet cokes’. The combined age of the ladies behind the bar must have been about 300. Laura kept a lookout for ‘cool people’ while I waited at the bar; the only one she spotted turned out to be e.s.t.’s bass player. She does have a very good radar for these things…

The trio are Esbjorn Svensson on piano, Dan Berglund on bass, and Magnus Ostrom on drums. If you haven’t heard e.s.t., they kind of sound like (to these cloth ears), a mix of the Dave Brubeck quartet and the weirder songs on Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. At least they did on the first song they played. For the second they played a proper jazz intricate shifting atonal staccato thing. Some people tried to spot and applaud where they thought the bass player’s solo stopped, but the trio ploughed on together – no grandstanding here.

Svensson acted as MC (no vocals) in a laconic fashion announcing the songs every so often. A lot them came from their last record Seven Days Of Falling, a few from earlier CDs (From Gagarin’s Point Of View), and one just kind of got made on stage, picked out of the ether, which gives you an idea of how in tune the three of them are – Ostrom had his eyes tightly shut for most of the performance.

Piano, bass, drums were all treated at times, either electronically, or for the piano, in the lo-tech fashion with stuff stuck in the strings. Berglund alternated between bowing and plucking the bass – in the last song before the encore, we watched in awe as he managed to follow Svensson’s fast left hand on the piano with his bass for minutes. The man must have strong hands.

There was one encore – their allotted hour or so went very quickly – but to just about everyone in the theatre, it wasn’t enough (tip to the people in front of us: it might look like they’ve walked off, but it’s just a pause before the encore; wait until the house lights go up before you leave).

It was a very, very good concert – just to make sure the band had brought their own sound engineer and lighting designer with them, all the way to Buxton, to make sure our experience was the best it could possibly be. I’m already looking forward to their next CD. If you live in any of these cities, you must go see them.