in dorset? yes, I certainly do

Next weekend sees us head off in Andy's Land Rover for the annual Swanage trip, a fixture in my social calendar for, ooh, ten years now. Or is it eleven? Or twelve? One of the problems with remembering the history of this sort of thing is that recollections tend to be hazy, for obvious reasons.

For instance: it was the generally received wisdom that the first year we did a "proper" Swanage trip was 2003, when we actually did two, in May and November, to coincide with the release of the second and third Matrix movies. However, evidence (i.e. some photos) recently unearthed from the depths of Andy's laptop reveals that in fact we (Andy, me, Robin and Harry) did a trip in October 2002. This is simultaneously fascinating, because we all look about twelve in the photos, and troubling, because it means that our proclaiming of the 2012 trip as Swanage X was incorrect, as it was actually Swanage XI. I suppose we can just do a bit of Stalinist revision of history and say that the 2012 trip marked the tenth anniversary of the first trip, and that therefore it was, in a very real sense, Swanage X. Whatever, I'm not going and changing all the photo captions now.

So it seemed like a good idea to capture some historical info before our descent into senility and incontinence is complete, probably any day now. The first thing I've done is to upload all the historical photos I've got, all the way back to 2002. Click on the year in the table below to go to the relevant photo gallery.

The Saturday pub crawl has evolved slightly over the years, so this list from 2007 is now slightly out of date. The canonical town centre pub list now reads as follows:

• East (formerly The Peverill)
• Bar Seven
• The White Horse
• The Purbeck (until 2009, now closed, but still the venue for a salutatory slug from the hip-flask)
• The Ship
• The White Swan
• The Anchor
• The Red Lion
• The Black Swan

Rather than list all those every time I've just noted where the crawl differed from that list in a way that any of us can remember, or if we visited any other notable pubs on our Sunday walk. The columns are hopefully self-explanatory; some of the cryptic notes in the "General Notes" column can be illuminated by clicking on the links (usually to a relevant photo), some are probably best left slightly mysterious. I've included the 2005 trip to Llangennith as a sort of honorary Swanage as it filled the same slot in the calendar and followed pretty much the same format.

As for attendees, Andy, Robin and I have a perfect 100% attendance record so far, Phil made his solitary appearance in May 2003, Richard joined us for the Llangennith trip in 2005 and has attended every one since, and Harry started in a blaze of glory attending the first three trips and then took a breather for just the nine years before rejoining us in 2012 and 2013 (and 2014, all being well).

Year	Dates	Transport and Pubs	General Notes
2002	18-21 Oct	Andy's Saab	Swanage 0! Andy's Mum's static caravan. Cheese racing. Port.
2003	23-26 May	Andy's Saab The Vista Bar	Phil! Matrix Reloaded. Rhythm Sticks. Table tennis in the Vista Bar. Phil’s Famous Backwards Golf Shot. Snow Flaps. Police layby interview with Carling tinnies. Phil being banned from Swanage forever.
2003	7-10 Nov	Andy's Saab The Vista Bar	Last trip to the caravan. Grappa and blue Aftershock. Matrix Revolutions. Harry asleep in the Red Lion. Table tennis and bowling in the Vista Bar aborted due to child invasion. Harry's wrist exerciser. Harry's "special interest" videos (aka wrist exercisers).
2004	3-6 Sep	Andy's Saab	Camping! Sunny weather. Train trip to Corfe. Russian porn model. Banged shins. Vomiting. Wurzels.
2005	14-17 Oct	Andy’s Scooby The Worm's Head The King's Head	Llangennith! i.e. not actually Swanage at all. Richard's first trip. Overloaded Scooby. Cats (small, far away). Quaver Dog. Barmaids. Angry snake. Herbal interruptions. Fireworks. Splintered/splinted tent poles.
2006	22-25 Sep	Andy’s Scooby The Mowlem	Seafront wave chicken. Lighthouse walk. Farty Globe. Ryder Cup climax.
2007	5-8 Oct	Andy’s Scooby Square and Compass The King's Arms Royal Oak	Blues Festival! Power cut. Caving. Fishing at Winspit. Fish supper. The Matraverses. The legendary 23lb carp. Stan being gutted. Weird starey kid in The Royal Oak. Pumpkins. Loganberry beer.
2008	19-22 Sep	Dave’s Mum’s Scooby Square and Compass Scott Arms	Richard's hole-in-one. More fish. No buses to Scott Arms. Taxi to Scott Arms. Chapman's Pool. Ryder Cup again.
2009	11-14 Sep	Andy’s Landy The Ship The (Studland) Bankes Arms The Village Inn The Crow's Nest	First trip in the Land Rover. Camo hats. Folk festival! Morris dancers. Bender in a Bun. Kyle. Kyle's Mom. Sandbanks. Bus on a boat. Nudists! Last of the (late) summer Purbecks. Will Killeen and his mum. Crazy Clogging Care in the Community Crystal Carl. Or was it Chris?
2010	15-18 Oct	Andy’s Landy The Greyhound The (Corfe) Bankes Arms	Green Bastards. Vote For Yourself! Train to Corfe. Demise of the Purbeck. Hypnocat. Appletise? Appletiser? Burning the fencepost.
2011	16-19 Sep	Andy’s Landy Various Wareham pubs The Square and Compass	Decaf coffee!? Orange women. Bus to Wareham. Pigs! Supermodels in the Old Granary. Pickle the dog. Barbecuing Andy's pants. Beaver Maintenance.
2012	29 Sep - 1 Oct	Andy’s Landy The Greyhound The (Corfe) Bankes Arms	Return of the Harry! Swanage X (or so we thought at the time). Ridge walk to Corfe. Exploding Party Grill. Ryder Cup smartphone updates.
2013	11-14 Oct	Andy’s Landy The Crow's Nest The Bull and Boat	Do Not Touch This Window. The Bull and Boat webcam. Very wet walk via Peverill Point.
2014	10-13 Oct	Andy’s Landy	Who knows?

avant moi, le déluge

A couple more photo galleries for you, documenting some recent travels. Firstly the annual Swanage trip (Swanage XIV according to the agreed though potentially confusing and/or inaccurate numbering system), conducted in general in much better weather than last year, although thanks to some torrential rain during the preceding couple of days we found the golf course under several inches of water on the Friday, and, while much improved, still somewhat soggy on the Saturday.

Sadly in my case the conditions induced a state of extreme mental derangement and Andy won both the Friday and Saturday competitions. But, y'know, whatever, let's adjourn to the pub. And just as well we did, as we managed to catch the thrilling last quarter of the Japan v South Africa match in the White Horse. The obligatory Sunday walk this time saw us get a lift out to Corfe Castle and then walk back along the dunes and heathland at the southern edge of Poole Harbour to Studland, where we had a richly deserved pint in the Bankes Arms before getting a bus back to Swanage. A whisker under 9 miles in total according to the GPS; route map is below.

Here's the traditionally-formatted entry for the Swanage history list:

Year	Dates	Transport and Pubs	General Notes
2015	18-21 Sep	Dave's Mondeo The Crow's Nest The Bull and Boat The Square and Compass The Bankes Arms (Studland)	Woodhenge. Waterlogged golf. Kirkwood's storm flaps. Jag and Japan in the White Horse. Walking to Scotland, and thence to Greenland. Topless bus action.

Secondly we went back, with my parents, to the cottage in west Pembrokeshire we'd been to back in 2012, when Nia was just a couple of months old. Again, the weather was pretty good, which allowed a couple of trips to the beach at Abermawr, and also allowed Hazel and me the opportunity to get out for a walk on our own, something we don't get to do much these days. Just a low-level one of just over 9 miles, but nice to get out - Mum and Dad very kindly minded the girls for us.

All the GPS info above was captured on my phone using the BackCountry Navigator app, which is free as long as you don't mind a few easily-ignorable ads along the bottom of the screen, and despite sounding like a proprietary brand of buttplug is in fact excellent and very handy for impromptu navigation and track recording.

Anyway, Swanage photos are linked from the table above but can also be found here; Pembrokeshire photos are here.

soon may the bloggerman come

This seems at first glance like it fits into the lookeylikey category, but strictly it doesn't as I'm very confident these are literally the same people in two different (but thematically linked) contexts, and indeed locations.

Anyone who hangs out on Twitter for any length of time will be aware that trends come and go, things happen, literally everyone is talking about them, they mutate into memes that people copy, retweet, etc., then five minutes later they've been forgotten. Already in 2021 we've had Bean Dad Twitter, Tasing Himself In The Balls To Death While Doing A Terrorism Guy Twitter and now Sea Shanty Twitter. 

Those of us with a cultural connection to Wales will of course puff ruminatively on our pipe-stems (made out of a hollowed-out daffodil in the traditional manner) at this point and chuckle indulgently at the kids suddenly discovering the joys of close-harmony male voice singing, as this is something of a cultural fixture over here. And there is something rather magnificent about a group of Welshmen of a certain age, probably with a couple of fortifying pints of Mr. Brain's finest ale inside them, belting out Men of Harlech or something similar.

Anyway, while perusing one of the latest of the mashed-up multi-layered versions of Wellerman, the current undisputed number one Twitter sea shanty, I noticed that someone had tweeted a link to this rather splendid rendition of Bully In The Alley, a song in a very similar style ("bully" in this context is apparently one of the seemingly limitless collection of words that just means "drunk"). The thing that immediately grabbed my attention, apart from the barrel-chested magnificence of the guy leading the singing, was the white-bearded guy on the left of the line-up. I felt sure I'd seen him before. Here he is:

Fortunately I am blessed, or perhaps cursed, with a prodigious memory and I recalled almost immediately where it was. When it was was slightly more hazy, but a bit of searching through some old photos yielded this, taken in a shop doorway (presumably chosen for its pleasing acoustics) in Swanage in 2009. 

While the bearded guy on the right with the distinctive shorts and thumbs-in-pockets stance is clearly the guy on the left in the video, notice also how the guy next to him with the distinctive hairline and left-hand-on-ear pose is almost certainly the guy leading the song in the YouTube video. Just a minute there, Sherlock Columbo, you'll be saying, this is all a bit speculative; white-bearded guys in shorts and sandals and rotund types with their fingers in their ears must be ten a penny in folky circles. And I hear what you're saying, but a bit of research (including reading the text below the YouTube video) reveals that these guys are members of a folk troupe called Kimber's Men. If you look carefully at the contents of the open case at the bottom of the Swanage photo you'll see that these guys are offering CDs for sale, and, although the resolution is a bit sketchy, I think you will agree that the upright one is the one pictured here.

Further evidence is provided by the alternative rendition of Bully In The Alley delivered here - the bearded guy in the middle is pretty clearly the guy on the left in the Swanage photo. Just to be clear, this smaller group is Kimber's Men, the large group in the first YouTube video presumably being swelled by the presence of a load of other singers - it was apparently captured at the Deal Maritime Festival in September 2013. 

If you follow the link to the Kimber's Men website above you will note that the white-bearded guy is absent - this is apparently because he died in 2017. His name was Joe Stead and he was evidently something of a legend in folky circles. 

Traditional British folk music carries an unpalatable whiff of real ale and Morris dancing to most people (not that I am averse to the whiff of real ale, as you know) but it's something I like a lot, in carefully calibrated doses. To be honest the fact that it's a thing best enjoyed live in a slightly cramped and sweaty pub just adds to the attraction for me. The reason that Kimber's Men were hanging out in Swanage in the first place was because our visit in 2009 happened to coincide with the Swanage Folk Festival, and I cannot deny that among the many musical acts on display there was quite a bit of Morris dancing, most of it thankfully centred on the wide open areas on the seafront (the esplanade, if you will) rather than in the pubs. Pictures from that trip can be found here.

Swanage Day 1: Friday

Over the years (with a few slight changes in personnel) we've honed the annual Swanage weekend to a pretty fine art. I'll break it up into its constituent days so as not to make it too indigestible for you.

Friday breaks down like this: we pack up in Bristol and head off in the biggest car we can find (which in this instance was Andy's Subaru Forester), down the A36 and A350 to Blandford Forum, where we ransack the local Tesco's for as much beer and meat as we can fit in the car. Then it's off south again, for the first major attraction of the trip....

The Spetisbury Bumps

Turn right off the A350 in Spetisbury onto the B3075 (signposted to Wareham). Take a right/left chicane across the A31 and carry on down through Morden. Take the left/right chicane across the A35; this brings you onto the road across the nature reserve at Gore Heath. Almost as you pass the first picnic area on the left, the road straightens up into a half-mile stretch of dead-straight undulating road, all dips and humps, like a giant tarmac rollercoaster. At this point, assuming you haven't got someone crawling along looking for a picnic spot in front of you, you floor it and fire off the top of the bumps as fast as you dare with a large 4x4 estate car full of fat blokes and lager. Actually taking off is the thing to aim for here, ideally without removing the entire underside of the car when you land.

Once you reach the crest of the final bump you're nearly in Wareham. From there we branch off to Worth Matravers and the next attraction....

The Square and Compass

There is a Facebook group called "Is the Square And Compass the best pub in Britain?". Now, granted, there's probably a similar group for a number of other pubs, some pretty undeserving, but I can see where they're coming from here. The first time I came here, when I was about 15, it was run by a couple of lavishly bearded elderly brothers, who may very well have been ZZ Top's dads. Apart from the old blokes being gone the place hasn't changed at all. Everything you want in a proper rustic British pub is here - real ale served straight out of the barrel over a little hatch, skull-crushingly low headroom and murky lighting, random dogs sleeping in corners, etc.

After a cheeky pint here we head off into Swanage, book into the campsite at Priest's Way, crack open a couple of tinnies, get the tent up, and then head off down to the first Official Swanage Pub of the weekend....

The Globe

This is the nearest pub to the campsite, so it's ideal for easing into the weekend gently. Very nice Ringwood Best and Fuller's London Pride, and a pool table ideally suited for a pool marathon. At closing time it's a short stumble across the road to the Golden Bengal Indian restaurant to pick up a take-away curry.

Swanage Day 2: Saturday

Swanage Saturday is about three things: playing golf, going on a pub crawl, and eating charred meat out of white bread buns while sitting in the dark wearing a head torch. It's also about starting the day with a nutritious full English breakfast washed down with a can of Stella.

Golf

Fortified by this we walk the mile or so to the lavishly appointed Kirkwood Park pitch & putt course - 1058 of the Queen's yards of pure golfing majesty. And graced, on this occasion, by one of the greatest rounds of golf ever played. I refer to none other than my own calm, precise yet swaggeringly virile and masculine 64, good enough to win by four shots from Andy's workmanlike, worthy but ultimately utterly inadequate 68. By the end he was a broken man, ruthlessly impaled and run through by the rapier of my own pitiless genius.

And so begins the legendary Swanage pub crawl. I haven't collated the photos as yet so that link will have to wait, but here's a summary:

East

Formerly The Peverill, and since subject to a not entirely welcome makeover, this is now a sort of up-market sports bar. Which was quite handy, as it happens, because we were there just in time to catch the end of the England-Australia rugby World Cup semi-final, drink a couple of pints of Grolsch, play a couple of games of pool, and move on. To....

The White Horse

A nondescript sort of place, formerly a bit of a lottery beer-wise but now serving some quite good Ringwood Best and Fortyniner - Ringwood seem to be making a bit of a push into Dorset, and a good thing too, I say. Just the one here and then we moved on to....

The Purbeck

Home of the legendary test-tube rack of Jägermeister, as well as very good London Pride (both pictured), as well as more pool. They also have an intriguing bit of above-the-urinal reading in the gents' - tune in for the photo link later to see what I mean.

Then on to the gruelling and physically demanding middle section of the crawl, and where we usually lose track, in later recollection, of exactly what pubs we went to and in which order. Well, not any more. Photographic evidence reveals the truth, and it goes something like this....

The Ship

This place has gone a little up-market as well, since we first came here - they've gone all gastro-pubby on our ass, as well as getting rid of the dartboard. It's also had a bit of a beer rethink - it used to serve some slightly ropey local Dorset brew, but it's gone all Ringwood as well. I had a pint of Huffkin, and very nice too.

The White Swan

This illustrates nicely the benefits of real ale consumption - leave aside the sculpted physique, manly musky odour and uncanny attractiveness to the ladies, what drinking proper beer also does for you is allow you to enjoy a pint (Ringwood Best again) even when there's a power cut (which there was). Suck it, lagerboy!

The Anchor

Third step in the "difficult" middle section, this one stands out from all the others by virtue of being on the other side of the road. Other than that it's not especially memorable. More Ringwood I think.

The Red Lion

This was always the banker location as far as getting in a decent game of arrers was concerned. That may still be the case, but on this particular occasion things had been moved around somewhat to accommodate some artists performing as part of the Swanage Blues & Roots Festival. Which was all fine; we were in no fit state to object (let alone chuck darts) by this point anyway. Very nice Timothy Taylor's Landlord as well.

The Black Swan

Phew. Last one. More blues action here, though a bit of disappointment on the beer front. Normally they do very good Shepherd Neame Spitfire, but by the time we got there they'd run out of, well, pretty much everything. So Guinness it was.

The point, in retrospect, is that all of these pubs are within about a mile of each other. So there's no wasting time with too much walking about between pubs, and more quality time sitting around drinking and talking bollocks.

And so to bed. No, hang on, there was a barbecue to be had yet. So we got back to the tent, sparked up the barbies and loaded them up with meat. And I mean a lot of meat (see left). That's what you need (plus bread) when you've got a skinful of ale to soak up.

mind you don't get sand in your eye

A few brief notes on the last couple of weekends' activities:

• The weekend before last saw our annual trip to Swanage for the usual drinking, golf, barbecue and walking adventures. This time our Sunday walk took us over to Sandbanks and thence back round the coast via Studland, Old Harry Rocks and Ballard Down to Swanage.
• Studland is most famous for a section of the east-facing beach being reserved for naturists. There seems to be a bit of controversy going on at the moment about a possible restriction on the areas through which one can gambol with one's genitalia flapping freely in the breeze - there is even a website campaigning for greater freedom (needless to say most of this is NSFW). Whether the guy who had parked himself at the extreme south end of the nudist zone, literally about 5 feet from the "please put some pants on now" sign, with just a t-shirt on and his exposed genitalia pointing towards the "textile" zone, was executing some sort of nudist activist protest in relation to this or whether he was just a pervert I do not know. Despite having no particular urge to cavort naked in the dunes I am broadly sympathetic to their cause, but I don't think waving your cock at people to make a point (as it were) necessarily helps.
• Last weekend Hazel and I went to Bruges for a long weekend. I haven't seen In Bruges, as it happens, so all I can say is a) we went to some of the locations in the film and b) it looks like it might be quite amusing.
• What the world needs now is probably not a list of things to do in Bruges, but I would recommend a visit to the De Halve Maan brewery, where you can go on a brewery tour and then sup a complimentary Brugse Zot afterwards.

Anyway, about these photos: Swanage here, Bruges here. Enjoy.

that's the storify of my life

Here's the brief post-Swanage round-up. A bit of a mixed bag this year in terms of weather, but to be fair both the golf games were conducted in the dry (in the sunshine, even, on Saturday) and it was really only on Sunday that we got properly rained on.

If I were to fill in the last line in the big table I included in the previous post, it would look something like this:

Year	Dates	Transport and Pubs	General Notes
2014	10-13 Oct	Andy's Landy The Crow's Nest The Bull and Boat The Square and Compass The King's Head	In-car Stella pouches. High five! Harry wins the golf?! Corben! Corben? Wet and windy walk to Worth. Y-shaped dog turds. Pumpkins. Chickens. The tiny island of Estonia. The world's worst game of darts. Continue along Cockrod for 1.3 miles.

Photos can be found here. As promised we did also live-tweet a bit of pub-crawl action on the Saturday, and various other inconsequential stuff at other times. Twitter's hashtag-viewing facility obviously has some weird algorithm in it that excludes tweets (even from the "All" view) based on some impenetrable set of criteria, so only a small handful of the full set of tweets are now available via the standard hashtag link.

This simply will not do, so what I've done instead is use Storify to create a (hopefully) permanent record of our inane witterings and drunken blurry gurnings; have a look at this. It's ordered with the most recent tweets first, so drop down to the bottom and work up if you want them in chronological order. [STOP PRESS: I found the button that orders them the other way, so you shouldn't need to do this now.] It is also alleged that one can embed the Storify timeline in a web page, so let's have a go:

bravo victor golf uniform

Everyone else is doing their My Favourite Ryder Cup Moments bit at the moment, so I'm going to get in on the act as well. I actually came to the Ryder Cup a bit late; while my earliest live TV golf-watching recollection is of the end of the Duel In The Sun at Turnberry in 1977 (when I was seven), I don't specifically recall watching any live Ryder Cup coverage until 1993, when the USA won 15-13 at the Belfry (their last victory on European soil, as it happens) to retain the cup they'd won back in The War On The Shore at Kiawah Island two years before. My Ryder Cup history since then goes something like this:

• In 1995 I happened to drop into The Ship on Lower Park Row in Bristol on a Sunday evening for a pint on the way back from somewhere (probably on the way up to my flat from the railway station), only to discover that they had the golf coverage on and they were about halfway through the singles. Several hours later I staggered out and home having witnessed Europe come back to win from being behind after the doubles for the first (and, until 2012, only) time in Ryder Cup history. Nick Faldo's nerveless up-and-down from 93 yards to beat Curtis Strange was the key moment (combined with a calamitous sequence of missed putts from Strange), and Philip Walton's nervy stumble over the line a while later clinched it. This is probably my favourite Ryder Cup experience, just for the general happy unexpectedness of it all - firstly getting to see it at all, and then the result.
• I watched the climaxes to the Ryder Cups of 1997, 1999 and 2002 at home, but I couldn't say for certain that I watched any of them strictly live; it might have been the BBC's highlights package a bit later.
• I can certainly say that I watched the highlights package for the 2004 Ryder Cup, having done a bit of Likely Lads-style keeping my head down to avoid finding out the result. Plenty of schadenfreude as it became clear it was going to be a record-breaking rout, but it's never quite the same as a nail-biting finish.
• 2006 saw the first of two occasions where the Ryder Cup weekend coincided with the Swanage weekend; in this case (largely by luck) we'd just got to the pub after the traditional Sunday walk when the key singles matches started finishing, so we were comfortably settled in with a pint when Henrik Stenson holed the match-winning putt. Again, as great as that was it was another rout for Europe (18.5-9.5, the same score as in 2004), so the nail-biting element was lost.
• I honestly can't remember watching in 2008, though since Europe got their arse plated up and handed to them I could just have blotted the experience out. I expect it's more than likely I saw at least some of it.
• In 2010 the Ryder Cup took place at Celtic Manor, a mere mile-and-a-half from our house. Anticipating traffic gridlock and general chaos we decided to go on holiday to Turkey for the week, returning on the Monday, the day after it finished. Inevitably this plan was scuppered by the Welsh weather as the match had to be concluded on the Monday. Swings and roundabouts, though, as we had some hours to kill between checking out of the hotel and getting the coach to the airport and took ourselves plus bags off to the local sports bar, which just happened to be showing the golf. Not only that, but the nail-biting finish to Graeme McDowell's match with Hunter Mahan that delivered the cup back to Europe took place with a few minutes to spare before we had to shoot off and catch the coach. 
• In 2012 the match once again coincided with the Swanage weekend; this time we were back at the campsite having a barbecue when the climactic Sunday action happened, so we had to keep up with events via Andy's smartphone and a rather intermittent mobile signal. The interminable waits for the BBC Sports page to refresh added an element of suspense of their own.

So what to expect from 2014? Well, I'll be at work on the Friday and at a wedding on the Saturday, but you can rest assured I've cleared out my V+ box in anticipation of recording much of the coverage for later watching. I fully intend to dedicate a big chunk of Sunday to watching the singles, though.

And who'll win? Well, home advantage counts for a lot - only six of the seventeen matches since 1979 have resulted in "away wins", four for Europe and two for USA: USA in 1981, Europe in 1987, USA in 1993 and Europe in 1995, 2004 and 2012. Both teams look very strong, though I suppose there is a question mark over the European wildcards - Westwood and Poulter have both been picked on past Ryder Cup form rather than on having done anything much this year. As for the rookies, Jamie Donaldson is a very solid player these days, Stephen Gallacher is a reserved type who needs to show that he's not intimidated by the raucous atmosphere, and Victor Dubuisson is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a garlic baguette.

There is the Tiger Woods factor, though - the last time he failed to make the team was in 2008 when he was recovering from knee surgery, whereupon a young USA team featuring six rookies won handsomely. The idea that the Ryder Cup format suits neither him nor his team-mates (when he's on the team) is probably an over-simplification, but there seems to be something in it.

A neutral would probably say that another nail-biting finish resulting in a narrow victory for the USA would be the best thing for the long-term health of the competition. To that I'd say: you're probably right, but can we leave that till next time, please?

Swanage: the slightly more sober version

Here's a few photos from our trip down to Dorset at the weekend. Hazel was keen to re-enact some of the activities from our annual Swanage weekends, so we had a curry, went to play golf (but failed as the course was shut) and then went to some pubs and got drunk.

Later in the weekend we went for a walk around Studland and Old Harry's Rocks and then took the Sandbanks ferry over towards Bournemouth to visit our friends Hannah and Mark and their new(ish) baby daughter.

The photo shows me in the legendary Square And Compass in Worth Matravers. Note that I seem to have made a fairly elementary beer-drinking error in plumping for the tiny pint in my hand, instead of the gargantuan one on the table in front of me.

gentlemen, start your livers

It's nearly time for the yearly trip to Swanage for a weekend of drinking, pitch-and-putt golf and eating semi-cooked meat products (and hopefully some cheese racing). In fact if Andy's on time we should be off in about half an hour (but he probably won't be).

I'll post a more detailed run-down of the weekend's events after I get back, complete with photos and an itinerary of the legendary Swanage Pub Crawl which we'll be doing on Saturday afternoon. One of the reasons for taking the camera is that no-one can ever quite remember, after the event, what the pubs are called or what order they're in (for reasons which I assume are obvious), so the plan is to document things photographically this year so that we, and future generations, will know. Some photos from last year can be found here - the one on the right is the four of us (l-r: Richard, Andy, Robin, me) in the Purbeck, home of fine Fuller's London Pride and test tubes of Jagermeister (I think that's what we're holding in the picture). No, I know, but it always seems like a good idea at the time.

that golf scorecard in full

Full details of the 2007 Swanage Pitch & Putt While Slightly Hungover And Supping From A Can Of Wife-Beater Open are below (click on the image for a bigger version):


And yes, I know I put the overall totals in the "Total Out" boxes. For comparison purposes last year's scorecard is below. Note that a) the scores and result are exactly the reverse of this year - the pupil has become the master! and also that b) Andy's commentary on Richard's 2nd hole birdie was prompted by Richard hammering a putt from off the green into the flagstick at approximately Mach 3 and seeing it drop like a stone into the hole. That's golf, folks.

momentous news

I passed my driving test on Monday. This is quite a major moment for me, so permit me to bang on about it at some length.

It's been a long and tortuous process, characterised by brief flurries of activity separated by years of inactivity, and I can tell you that the test that I passed on Monday was either the fourth or fifth that I've taken since my driving career began 20 or so years ago. I couldn't honestly tell you which of those it is, as my recollection of how many tests I took back when I was a teenager is a bit hazy; it was either two or three. If I had to guess I have a feeling it might have been three, which would make it five overall. But it doesn't really matter, except inasmuch as anyone who might have the notion I've been taking a couple a year since I was 17, and would now be somewhere in the 40s, would be wrong. I'd be skint, for one thing - lessons, not to mention test fees, don't come cheap.

The full test history is, if my assumptions above are correct:

• Three in the late 1980s when I was about 18. I don't recall much about them, except that I failed one when the examiner had to make a "verbal intervention" (which equates to an instant failure, not surprisingly) when I was about (as he saw it, anyway) to kill a cyclist.
• One in March 2000 after a course of lessons with BSM. No complaints about the tuition; the flow of the course was broken up a bit by a badly-timed three-week trip to Africa right in the middle of it, and a couple of cancelled lessons after I got back when I was in bed with what at one stage might have been malaria, but later turned out to be the slightly less serious Not Malaria.
• And finally a week-long intensive course from the good people at Safeway UK, and in particular my excellent and unflappable instructor Paul, culminating in a test on Monday morning at the Newport test centre. Here's a tip for you: if you're planning a test in Newport, make it at about 8:40am, so that there's a good chance the examiner will avoid the rush-hour traffic jams in the town centre, and instead take you off up the dual carriageway towards the M4 and into sleepy suburban Ringland for the usual driving around and manoeuvring activities. I believe it's Route 15 in this list of official test routes.

It also seemed advisable to pass the test before they made it any more complicated; since I took my first one in about 1988 the following additions have been made:

• the theory test
• the parallel parking manoeuvre
• the hazard perception test
• the bay parking manoeuvre
• the "show me, tell me" questions
• the extension of the test length up to a maximum of 48 minutes

So it seemed like a good idea to get it out of the way now before you have to assemble the car from a pile of random parts and make your own petrol out of some coal before setting off.

So.....now I have to buy a car. Despite Andy's best efforts to get me to buy a Land Rover to facilitate future Swanage trips, I think I might start with something a little more practical.

All that remains before I end this self-indulgent rambling is a quick roll-call of those whose generosity and patience I have exploited over the years. This is not exhaustive, so feel free to be offended by your omission if you like.

• the lovely Hazel
• my friends, work colleagues and occasional sporting opponents Robin, Andy and James
• my parents - other notable family-related mentions include my brothers-in-law Ben and Ray
• my ex-girlfriend Anne
• my friend and exciting sports-car owner Alex
• my friends and fellow cheese-racing enthusiasts Mario, Tony, Martyn, Jon, Steffen, Andy and Ian
• my ex-work colleagues Andy and Paul (aka Yorkie)
• my ex-landlady Catherine
• my old schoolfriends Mark, Andrew, Peter, Lucinda and Pippa

Thanks everyone. The frequency with which you'll be asked for lifts should now decrease. Conversely, the frequency with which you'll be run off the road, to death, by me, may go up slightly to compensate. Swings and roundabouts.

you (now) know what I did last summer

Here's a few links to some recent batches of photos that may or may not be of interest:

• Firstly, and rather belatedly, some photos from my wedding to the lovely Hazel back in June at the delightful Steppes Farm, which is in Rockfield just a few miles from Monmouth. The licensed venue for weddings at Steppes Farm is their restaurant, The Stonemill, which is also well worth a visit just for the food, which is excellent. They also serve excellent beer from the Kingstone Brewery, which is just a few miles away in Tintern - the Kingstone Gold is particularly quaffable, and I should know, as I quaffed quite a quantity of it on the day.
• Secondly, the annual Swanage trip in September. You'll pretty much know the drill by now, and I've eased off on the obsessive documentation of the pub crawl(s), so there are fewer photos than in previous years. We did, however, branch out on the Sunday and go to Wareham, where, after a pitifully short token stroll up the river and back we did a tour of some pubs, most of which were quite good, the pick probably being The Old Granary, which in addition to having a scenic riverside location and some of the best Badger beer I've ever had, appears to have a strictly all-supermodel bar staff hiring policy in place, which is nice.
• Finally, a brief jaunt to Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago to do a recce for a wedding Hazel is shooting in December, as well as some standard touristy activities we didn't do last time we were there in February 2009. One of the things we did do last time was visit the Scotch Whisky Experience up by the castle, but as it was being refurbished at the time we got a somewhat cut-down version of the full experience - basically a room, a video, a PowerPoint presentation and a glass of whisky. This time, however, we got the full multimedia package complete with a trip on a little ghost-train style ride with carriages shaped like whisky barrels. And, equally importantly, more whisky (Old Pulteney, as it happens, on this occasion). Served, interestingly, in a room dedicated to displaying the world's largest single collection of Scotch whisky, collected by some guy from Chile and then donated. A fascinating historical document (of, in a lot of cases, distilleries that no longer exist and whiskies that can no longer be obtained, anywhere) but I really think buying this stuff and then not consuming it is missing the point a bit. We also rectified an omission from an earlier trip and climbed the 287 steps to the top of the Scott Monument. I should warn anyone aspiring to do this that the last section is very cramped and narrow; I am not especially fat (well, not massively fat, anyway) but I did struggle to cram my broad manly shoulders through the top section of the spiral staircase and emerge onto the top platform. Good views, though. And you get a certificate (see right). While Hazel was off doing wedding-related activity on the Saturday morning I took myself off on the train from Haymarket to North Queensferry (about a fiver for a return, and a trip of about 15-20 minutes) to have a look at the Forth Bridge. And very impressive too, although it was still somewhat shrouded in mist. So I went back to the station, got on a train going the other way, got off at Dalmeny on the other side of the bridge and wandered about the slightly larger and more interesting South Queensferry for a bit. By that time the mist had cleared and I got some quite good pictures, aided by the bridge being largely free of unsightly scaffolding for once. Those even more fascinated by bridges than me might want to get even more up close and personal, in which case try either this video of someone taking a lift to the top, or this account of some somewhat hair-raising ninja-stylee urban exploration.
  

cheeses H Christ

Our cheese racing exploits in Swanage were of the sadly disappointing variety, caused - I reckon - in the main by the sub-standard quality of the disposable barbecues we used. They were struggling to cook the meat, so there was precious little heat left to incinerate cheese with. In addition to that we'd bought a wide variety of experimental cheese products (as pictured on the left), which may have muddied the cheesy waters a bit.

So it's nice to see that there's some really textbook cheese racing video footage out there on YouTube. Check out some of these:

• Some crazy Americans in a field - this one is already available directly from the website, I think. Excellent deployment of the official Cheese Racing apron, a bit too much focus on the whooping participants and not enough cheese footage in the early stages, but it gets more cheese-centric after a minute or so. And the interviews with the participants are excellent: "Why do you cheese race, Joanie?" "Because I'm from Wisconsin."
• Some very good footage, apparently from Manchester. Barbecue looks, if anything, a bit too hot, but there's some textbook inflation, plus some excellent pulsating of the victorious cheese at the end.
• This is an interesting new departure - cheese racing in a toaster oven. But there's no arguing with the results - and the dramatic music (Phantom Of The Opera, I think) adds an extra frisson of tension to the whole thing.

my brain! it's melting....

We went to a pub (the Royal Oak on the road back into Swanage) after our Sunday fishing exploits, and there was a bloke in the pub who spotted the fishing rods and engaged us in conversation - solely, it turned out, to regale us with tales of his own carp-wrangling exploits in a local lake. He'd had a 25-pounder, a 23-pounder, a couple of 18-pounders, and, well, you get the idea.

I was not the only one to be reminded of Paul Whitehouse's Fast Show pub bore character (not the frizzy-haired "hold the bells" bloke, that was Simon Day): "...hardest game in the world, the old fishing game". Apparently he was called Archie, though I don't think it was ever mentioned in the programme.

Aaaaaaanyway, the reason I mention all this is that I Googled "hardest game in the world" and came up with, among other things, this online brain-teasing puzzle thingy. Have a go, but be prepared for your head to hurt. And you'll need some time, unless you're some sort of genius.

tweet fanny adams

Just a very quick one to say: if you happen to want to keep up with the 2014 Swanage activities in real time then your best bet is to do one of the following:

• keep an eye on the live webcam at the Bull and Boat - if we adhere roughly to last year's schedule we'll be there about 5pm on the Saturday;
• watch out for tweets with the hastag #SwanageXIII - I can't promise how much live-tweeting action there'll be, as we may be too busy necking ale and talking bollocks, but we may manage a few, no doubt of increasing profanity and incoherence as the evening wears on.

berry nice

Couple of quick links for you:

I haven't done a squid post for quite a while, so here's one for you: the colossal squid caught off New Zealand just over a year ago has been defrosted and dissected by an international team of scientists at the Te Papa Tongarewa museum in Wellington. A brief photographic summary can be found here; more details are available at the Te Papa blog. Nice to see that they've done the taste test and confirmed that it tastes of piss.

Secondly, I've set up a YouTube account to post occasional amusing stuff to. I've got a couple of things lying around to post, one of which I've uploaded just as a test. It's a short film shot and directed by Andy and starring me. The subject matter is the slightly odd loganberry-flavoured beer we were drinking at the legendary Square & Compasses pub in Worth Matravers on our last Swanage trip. It's called Logan's Berry (you see what they did there) and it appears to be brewed by Downton's in Salisbury. I couldn't honestly say I'd recommend it, but then I don't really like beer that's been mucked around with, which rules out things like Young's Waggledance and Chocolate Stout as well.

sirhowy you? fine, thanks

Swanage 2014 photos to follow in due course, but in the meantime here's a small gallery of pictures I took when we went on a brief family walk near Newport a week or so ago. We went to the Sirhowy Valley Country Park, the car park for which is a few miles west of Newport over near Wattsville. The main path follows the route of the old Sirhowy Railway and is consequently nice and level, though you can branch off either south up onto the ridge that eventually takes you to Mynydd Machen (thus duplicating the walk I did to bag it back in 2009) or north down towards the Sirhowy River, which is what we did here, as it seemed likely that nearer the river would be a good place to hunt for muddy puddles to jump in.

As always there's a high proportion of shots just of Nia being adorable; if you can't be bothered to scroll through these one by one I've put together a little animated GIF of her throwing some dance moves which you can view here. I should also plug the people at gifmaker.me for their free GIF-generating facility, and also remind you of this earlier example featuring me, Doug and Anna re-enacting the old Morecambe and Wise going-off-stage routine on Penarth pier in 2007.

Swanage day 3: Sunday

Well, it's late so I'll keep this brief - Sunday usually involves going for a healthy walk somewhere before segue-ing into a slightly more leisurely and less poisonous pub excursion than on the previous day.

So we set out along the coast path westwards past Dancing Ledge to Winspit, where Andy and Robin got their tackle out. Fishing tackle, that is. We'd forgotten to bring any bait so we had to hunt around for some limpets, and luckily we found a couple of whoppers - a bit of frenzied gouging and slicing later and we were sorted for bait.

Frankly I was somewhat sceptical about the likelihood of catching anything, apart from maybe pneumonia, but after a long fruitless (and indeed fishless) start we caught three medium-sized wrasse within the space of about ten minutes.

I'd never been directly involved in the transition from live wriggling fish to beautifully prepared Filet-O-Wrasse before, but actually it's quite simple, as long as you're not at all squeamish. Just give it a quick bash on the back of the neck with a heavy rock. slit it open, scoop all the internal goop out into a convenient rock pool (on no account fill your Thermos from this pool afterwards) and then cut its head off. My Dartmoor knife was ideal for this sort of work. For larger specimens like, say, tuna, or whale sharks, I might have to deploy the axe instead.

Internet opinion seems divided to say the least on the edibility of wrasse, but we chucked them on the barbecue with a couple of slices of lemon from the corner shop and a sprig of rosemary harvested from someone's garden hedge on the way home, and it was really quite nice. I reckon the cat piss on the rosemary cancelled out the raw sewage in the fish.

Anyway, the full series of pictures from the weekend is now up on the gallery, as are some photos from a trip to Reading last weekend. Most of these are from a walk round the Warburg Nature Reserve - Doug has more info over at Blue-Grey.

head over the water, on the Transporter

A couple more recent photo galleries for you:

• The annual Swanage trip - a month or so later than usual this year, so we were even luckier than usual with the weather. The standard Saturday pub crawl had to omit the Purbeck, usually a focal point of Jägermeister consumption and pool competition, as it's still closed following a drugs bust earlier this year. We managed to work around it, though, by taking along a hip-flask full of Jag and having a ceremonial swig on the pavement outside. Incidentally the evil-looking cocktails pictured alogside the breakfast things are Green Bastards, which are made by mixing a shot of blue Bols with a pint of cider. Yum. The reason there's a picture of an Appletise ice bucket in there is that we were having a discussion about when it switched to being called Appletiser. Their website is a bit vague, but the answer appears to be 2001. The strange picture of the guy with the sword is taken at Kirkwood Park golf course, and portrays the proprietor in the guise of some sort of mystical democracy warrior; this is by way of publicity for his website. Have a look at some of the embedded YouTube videos if you like; if you're trying to gauge the nuttiness quotient you'll find the first mention of the Illuminati tucked away here.
• We had a visit from Doug and Anna yesterday and to entertain ourselves we went to a couple of pubs up in Caerleon, most notably the Red Lion, which has nice London Pride, good grub and a nice big garden out the back with a gravelly pétanque area and a pub rabbit hopping around. The original plan had been to visit the nearby Roman remains, but we got a bit carried away drinking and playing pétanque and had to skip it. Instead we headed down to have a ride on the newly renovated Transporter Bridge, and very exciting too. It moves a bit quicker than you might expect, so the crossing only takes a couple of minutes, and it's free to pedestrians, so you can just ride to and fro all day if you like. The sign pictured shows the distances to the handful of other transporter bridges in the world. Anyway, we went across and back and then went to the pub again. We had intended to go to the Waterloo, which we've been to before to eat (and very nice too), but it was shut, so we went round the corner to the West of England instead, which despite the welcoming tone of their website I couldn't honestly say I'd recommend. Anyway, I took a few pictures from the bridge, which can be found here.