Yorkshire

So I just got off the phone with BT and the phat pipe gets closed off tomorrow. I’ve spent a couple of hours paring down my luggage and making liberal use of the phrase ‘I’ll buy one of those when I get there’ until my main bag is under 20Kg and the hand luggage consists of my camera bag and the laptop.

I’m quite proud of the packing selection because I’ve got stuff to cover working in business environments right through to bivvying on top of mountains. I’ve even included the climbing gear because I know un hombre de la cuerda (a man of the rope).

It’s the Bradford Film Festival and I’ve been to a few things this week.

Hohokam: Basically a low budget film which wants to be French, in that nothing happens. But it doesn’t happen in stylish and significant ways… unfortunately they’re not French, the story is set in Arizona.

Shotgun Stories: Excellent Arkansan revenge drama, a vendetta that has a surprising and pleasing denoument.

Sounds For Silents (Un chien andalou and The Finishing Touch) Silent films with live accompaniment are great: even mad Spanish surrealist eyeball slashing madness. Laurel and Hardy formed a great, weird second half. The music was composed by students from the Royal Academy.

Brazil: I’m so glad I’ve seen it on the big screen. Prescient, scary, relevant and Gilliam-strange. Braaaazillll…. da da da dee da da da deee….

Cthulu: Well we’re gonna do the Lovecraftian Horror, but the protagonist is going to be gay. And we’ll steal the plot of the wicker man, well we would if we could afford it. Some nice touches, genuinely creepy until the hordes of cthulu stumble onto the beach to claim the world as their own (my gran could have outrun them: and she died a long time ago).

Redacted:Brian de Palma goes all experimental using ‘found footage’ to create a bleak but gripping Iraq story.

XXY: Fifteen year old hermaphrodite struggles with more than the usual teenage sexual issues. Ricardo Darin sleepwalks through the movie, but he’s Ricardo Darin, so he’s still cool.

This is Cinerama: Bill Bryson raved about Cinerama. Frankly, I was bored. Maybe it’s the 50′s Americana, or maybe it was the 20 minutes of Aida that was so static it felt like 2 days. Still the screen’s good.

2001: A Space Odyssey: Being a young’un I hadn’t seen this in the cinema before so the 70mm print, on the massive curved screen of Pictureville (it’s behind the usual screen and is a good third wider) with the sound turned up to 11 was brilliant.

Highights so far: 2001 and Brazil. Lowlight: noticing that so many of the attendees were balding fat men who looked like they should be writing train numbers down and realizing that these are the sort of people who go to the daytime showings in the film festival, and the creeping sensation of ‘one of us, one of us, one of us’ that followed.

So, we went to Lancashire today, on the bikes, and tried the longest continuous incline in England, at Cragg Vale near Mytholmroyd. It was pretty chilly.

<a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-kingdom/halifax/166901497″ mce_href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-kingdom/halifax/166901497″>To Lancashire!</a><br/><a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-kingdom/halifax” mce_href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-kingdom/halifax”>Find more Bike Rides in Halifax, United Kingdom</a>

Spring is here and the quarry awaits
Originally uploaded by Moonyabbit.

At last, the sun is out, and the my knee is recovered from its lack of ACL. Now all I need to do is to get better.

The traverse is fingery and devoid of good footholds. Great fun. I have this sense of ‘At last, I’m home’

So I was sitting in the cafe today following a physio session (they’re starting to talk about discharge which is good, so I may be climbing soon) and I was minding my own business but couldn’t help overhearing what was going on at the table next to me. The cafe is a nice one, they do good coffee, the owner is cheerful and friendly and I like it a lot. It sounded like she knew the customers and was telling them about some of her plans for the cafe.

Cafe Owner: So come November we’re going to have a two hour session every monday and wednesday. It’s like acupuncture but without the needles.

My ears prick up at this point. Like acupuncture? The last stuff I read about acupuncture was an interesting comparison of acupuncture with sham-acupuncture (where needles are stuck in randomised locations but by someone who behaves like a ‘qualified’ acupuncturist. There was no difference in result).

C.O.: Yes it’s incredible, you know it can deal with headaches, migraines, joint pain, rheumatism lots of things.

Hmm, that’s quite a claim, I wonder if I should ask a question.

C.O.: It’s really a way of releasing your stress and toxins. 99 no 98% of all illness is due to stress.

Ahhh good old toxins. Wow. That’s… um so wrong. Cancer? Stress, Necrotising Faciitis… maybe that’s one of the one no two percent. Should I stand up and say something.

C.O.: It’s quite a new thing, it’s basically the combination of science and quantum physics.

This would be the quantum physics that isn’t science. At this point I wanted to ask her a little about quantum physics, maybe ask if she could describe some of the current areas of research or maybe what is quantum. And while she was at it, what toxins was she talking about?

C.O: I mean, we’re all blocked in some way from reaching our potential maybe by something deep in our past, something where someone has said you can’t do that, you’re not able to do something and this can release all that. You don’t even have to identify it out loud. You can just think it and afterwards you’ll be so liberated. It’s amazing to see, some people laugh, or yawn or just look really happy. You’ve heard of NLP? Lot’s of neurolinguistic programmers use it.

I’m stifling a laugh here. It’s quantum physics / needle-less-acupuntcture / psychoanalysis / psychic all in one handy afternoon session in the coffee shop. I really should say something. I really should stand up and not let this twaddle go unchallenged.

It’s not my conversation, I shouldn’t be listening in, I shouldn’t be telling other people what to think. It’s not polite to interfere. I’ll keep reading my book.

I answered the phone on Saturday and it was the ICM polling people. Seeing as I had time I answered the questions. It was illuminating. I’ve never been particularly trusting of polls but after this I’ll be even less so.

ICM: Would you say that this country is generally going in the right direction or the wrong direction?

My Head: Well, that’s an interesting question. I’ve got some opinions about some policies I think are misguided and some I think are pretty good. I’d like to discuss some more what you consider a direction and let’s talk about the state of the nation…

My Mouth: uhhh… pretty much the right direction I guess.

ICM: Society is broken, we need to tackle immigration, anti-social behavior (typically David Cameron comment)… would that make you more or less likely to vote for David Cameron.

My Head: Oh. That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware we had a presidential position that we could vote for. I thought we voted for our local MPs. I wouldn’t vote for David Cameron unless he had a complete personality and policy transplant… and even then I probably wouldn’t vote for the Eton goon.

My Mouth: No more Likely.

ICM: On a scale of one to one hundred how do you rate Gordon Brown

My Head: Hmmm, I think he’s a very serious considered politician but in the end he’s still a politician and his raison d’etre seems to be to get re-elected. So much of the Labour position seems to be spin and re-election, I get very tired of all this on-message and new media savvy approach…

My Mouth: 60

ICM: Ming Campbell

My Head: Sigh… I get so disappointed with the Lib Dems. So much of what they say seems sensible but they have no chance of getting in so what value is their blather? I do, however agree with them on electoral reform and the tax policies…

My Mouth: 45

ICM: David Cameron

My Head: He makes me want to punch the television every time he’s on it, he seems capable of saying or pretending to believe anything as long as it will get him elected. I trust him about as much as I trust a two year old to juggle.

My Mouth: 5


At least my head and my mouth agreed on the last one.

Three weeks ago a certain surgeon called Mr Bollen, he of the gnarl stripe, did his business with my snapped anterior cruciate ligament. This was my first overnight in a hospital and my first general anaesthetic. They’re fun aren’t they?

Fortunately it all went well and I haven’t had any pain from the op, the physios say it’s one of the neatest scars they’ve seen.

I’ve been to the ACL club at Calderdale Royal Infirmary three times now and I’m up to the intermediate recovery plan, which largely involves knee bends (although not deep ones) and proprioception work. My current regime is:

• 10 minutes on the exercise bike
• 20 shallow knee bends (on the bad leg)
• 20 wall squats
• 20 flicks
• wobbles (lie on your front, wobble your foot in a small range of motion at each of three positions for 45 secondes… surprisingly hard)
• 20 unsupported step ups
• 5 minutes walking backwards on an inclined treadmill
• 20 calf raises
• proprioception exercises, touch toes to targets on steps.
• hamstring stretches x 3
• Ice

Add to that a mile a day (as long as the knee doesn’t swell or become painful) and I should be back to bouldering by Christmas… yay!

Clare will be happy to know that Liz is using the bike… now she just has to practice a bit more with the clippy pedals… getting her foot out when she stops is the top of the list.

The website I’m developing for Yorkshire and Humberside Centres of Excellence went out into user testing yesterday so with more (what? even more) time I found the complete ‘Fish Heads’ video.

Ben, the physio, said that cycling is good for pre-op exercise. It’s also good fun. This was today’s ride out. Great views, empty roads, lots of up, lots of down. From New Hay road it was a really nice 5 miles of down. Shame we live at the top of a hill that makes you swear (from that direction anyway. If you go to the map my ride site you can see the elevation too.