Bank Holiday Blackout

When I wake up in the morning, I put my glasses on, and then reach for the IPhone. And of course this morning was no different, except that Twitter and Facebook have been uninstalled from my phone. So I felt a bit lost. Quick check of the BBC news site to see if the world has ended. But no real desire to look behind the headlines. Wonder what amusing messages post New Year's Eve I will be missing.

It's a Public Holiday today so news is likely to be a bit slow, but equally people have time on their hands so there is probably a lot of stuff which is either funny, or (perhaps more likely given the date) about self improvement. But not for me.

So I put the radio on. Radio is a feature of my work mornings but less often at weekends - it is a news medium for me rather than an entertainment one. It seems a bit pedestrian - is that in contrast to social media or is it actually just a sleepy Bank Holiday? If a social media-free month has driven me into the arms of Radio 4 it probably hasn't distanced me from the metropolitan elite.

Out and about later on, and getting a train down into Kent for a bit of a walk. Waiting for the train it feels natural to check the phone, but I can't. And there is no free paper today. I could stick headphones on and either dive into my backlog of podcasts, or some music, but that seems far more antisocial than the phone. Headphones are a barrier to conversation in a way that social media is not.

In other news I've done a lot of sorting out of my phone (uploading pictures, indexing music etc) largely because it fills the time I would otherwise by Tweeting. That's all done now, so I wonder what's next? Tomorrow is a normal working day so probably a much more representative test for me.

2014 and all that

On December 31^st 2013, I decided to try and blog my way through the coming year. Well, it sort of happened. In total 96 blog posts were achieved. There were a couple of month-long gaps in there when life got in the way but I'm actually quite proud that I managed quite as much as I did.

And I've decided to continue with the blog for the time-being anyway. Not least because on four months there will be a general election to get annoyed about. But I find it quite enjoyable to put finger to keyboard. A question I get asked quite often is ‘why?’. Why put stuff out there and let the world see it all? Why bother with things like Twitter? I'm not sure I have a great answer really. I enjoy it. I self-censor enough to ensure that I won’t share things that affect other people and which they might not want to be shared, and to ensure I don’t put anything out there that could be career-limiting. But other than that, this is no different to keeping a diary – just one that I let anybody read. I think that the knowledge that I am writing for an audience does prevent there being too much introspection, but it still has that cathartic effect.

So how has the year gone? Well – I've pulled up one of the early posts from 2014 and taken some of the headings from that – seems as good an idea as anything else.

Music - performance

Voxcetera continued to be a great source of pride for me – performing as I did at St Sepulchre in March, and then on tour in Edinburgh, before a ’home’ fixture in October and then a wonderful Christmas concert. This year promises a concert at St Martin’s in the Fields, and then Dublin.

But I also managed to sing in a Prom for the first time – with the Rachmaninov Choral Symphony (Crouch End Festival Chorus) being one of the most demanding pieces of music I have ever encountered. The sense of achievement was overwhelming.

Adding to that a Verdi Requiem, a (second) Mozart one, and six Albert Hall Christmas gigs (plus one at Birmingham Symphony Hall) made for a full year. And that is without adding in my involvement with Balham Ukulele Society – something I did not see in the tea leaves when looking ahead.

All the musical things I do have in common the opportunity to spend time with groups of people, from all walks of life, who are friendly, and who make my life a better place. I am grateful for all of them.

Music - In the audience

Two main words. Kate Bush. A dream fulfilled. But also Folk by the Oak – Richard Thompson, Seth Lakeman, and Keston Cobblers Club among others. James Taylor at the Albert Hall, Difford and Tilbrook at the Union Chapel and Chas’n’ Dave.

Add that to a range of smaller gigs, from solo guitarists to chamber and full choirs, and big bands, and it has been a busy year. I’d lost the habit of going to gigs and have gradually built it back up again. I am sure there will be more in 2015.

Holidays

Life got in the way a bit. The need to practice for a prom, and move house, mean that I didn't clock up the Air Miles this year. Mixed feelings about this. I don’t feel that I wasted my holiday entitlement, in that I look back and can see that I did plenty. But it would be nice to get away a little bit more in 2015. Pretty sure that the kids won’t want to come, so I can look to some more grown-up destinations.

Books

I've kept this one going – with a lot of Kindle stuff. Quite a bit of it has been fairly old and cheap sci-fi, but I've also read a bit of travel and some proper fiction. And I've read quite a lot of economics and social science-y stuff. But Thomas Piketty – just not had the drive to read him yet.

Media do overlap of course – I continue to be a great consumer of podcasts (one of the benefits of being a regular user of public transport). And I would heartily recommend Freakonomics, Planet Money, This American Life, No Such Thing as a Fish (the QI podcast) and Reply All. I greatly enjoyed ‘Serial’ too. Yes it is voyeuristic, and at times uncomfortable, but did have me on the edge of my seat – and we are all allowed one or two guilty pleasures, aren't we?

Work

I look back and (quoting directly from last year’s blog) ‘I do find myself thinking – worrying really, that I'm not sure I can, or want to, go at this pace for too much longer’. Wow. I think the pace has increased considerably. I have coped. In fact better than that, I feel more positive about my ability to do the job than I did then. I think that last year’s anxieties were a part of some more general malaise going on in my life, and that by correcting things elsewhere I had more reserves to devote to work. Of course, now that I look back I wonder whether I am pushing things too hard – just because I don’t see a problem at the moment doesn't mean I am not storing up issues. I'm currently very happy with what I do, but I suspect I should at least start to think about longer-term future options and prospects during the next year.

Health

THE major success story of 2014 for me. I managed to lose 30 pounds in the period from May/June to September. I have managed to put about 5 of them back on over Christmas, but am disgusted enough with myself over that to ensure they will not be sticking around. I found a level of will power I really didn't think I had, and (no surprise) that all you need to do is eat in a controlled way and do lots of exercise and it all comes good. Which makes me feel all the more stupid about the decade-long search for miracle ways of achieving it.

While dieting, I went almost entirely veggie for a couple of months. I've not stuck to that since I hit my target weight, but am eating much less meat that I have ever done – and I feel a lot better for it. At home, I could definitely do the veggie thing 100% of the time – it’s going out that kills it. Particularly it was three days away with work and the third consecutive mushroom risotto as the only choice on the menu that made me yearn for flesh. Does this go down as a fail? No. Because over all I am much much healthier. I have achieved something I knew I need and wanted to, but I think never really thought I would get to with weight etc. It would be better for me and the planet if I ate no meat, but eating it on a less frequent basis isn't a disaster for either.

Life

Big, big changes. Causing a lot of stress to me and to those around me (thank you to all those who gave me such support during what could have been a much trickier period without you). But I finally moved away from a situation that wasn't making me happy (and wasn't making anyone else happy either). With some time now elapsed between then and now, I know that I feel much better (and worry a little about where I would have been heading if I hadn't made the move – I think it would have been a pretty dark place). I've managed to keep what I valued most - my kids and the relationship I continue to have with them – whilst becoming (I hope) a much more balanced and centred individual.

So, there we go. Overall score? A few misses, a few definite hits, quite a few unexpected and unforeseen. A year of major change, and I feel very positive about it and about the future. So I have to put it down as a pretty good year. Of course, I now need to think about what challenges 2015 holds, and what I want to change or continue. More on that in future posts.

Meat probably isn't murder, but I have questions

I listen to a fairly large number of podcasts. I have a commute of about 40 minutes each way (walk and train) every day, at least two trips into town (1 hour min return) and gym visits (where I need something to drown out the awful music) which gives me about 11 hours of time to listen.

When preparing for a concert, this is largely spent with repeating the music over and over to try and drill it into my head. But the rest of the time it’s probably two-thirds or more of podcasts a week. And I listen on 1.5x speed – simply because I find regular speed a bit slow most of the time. If something is interesting and complex I will shift down to real-time. But I reckon that gives me 10 hours plus of podcast material to listen to most weeks.

And I listen to a wide range – from The Guardian on football, to quite a lot of economics stuff (Freakonomics is good, and More or Less can be), to law, to science and skepticism.

Usually (probably a factor of also having to be aware of surroundings and being on 1.5x speed) I skim across the stuff, and the most that happens is that something comes up in a conversation three weeks later, and I find that I know quite a bit about it*. But sometimes something really hits home.

And recently the thing that struck a chord was a discussion about vegetarianism. It was on a show called “Skeptics with a K” which is a (quite sweary) fortnightly podcast done by these guys.  It really got me thinking about my behaviour, and whether I should be changing it.

I like eating. Rather too much. And I like eating meat. I've never been squeamish or sentimental about it. I've eaten horse in France, and rabbit, and pigeon (not London pigeons – I'm not daft). I would baulk at a sheep’s eyeball I am sure, but Sainsbury's doesn't sell them yet. (Fill in your own joke about Wall's sausages here.)

But I have known for years that it is a quite a wasteful way of producing food. There are stats suggesting it takes 8 or 9 kg of plants to produce 1kg of beef (the argument presumably being that not having the cow allows three people to eat 3kg of plant stuff instead).

And there is an animal cruelty argument of course. I'm sure if we were being offered the choice, we wouldn't want to be strung up and have our throat slit, as halal and kosher practice requires. But, on being told that option b) was a much more humane death, but still a death, I’d be turning the paper over and looking for the third option – the one involving being alive.  Do animals suffer? Undoubtedly. In the way humans do? Probably not. So whilst this is a big issue for some and I respect that, it doesn't have me manning the barricades.

(On that subject, the halal discussion is another of those proxies – looking for a reason to be racist with a pretext – here animal cruelty. I didn’t see as much publicity criticising the French for the way fois gras is made, and that’s a lot more horrible. (No link folks – you might be reading this while eating your lunch.))

There are counter arguments: that it is harder to get protein from non-meat sources. And that without animals there is no milk, and no cheese, and no eggs (this latter isn't really an argument I suppose, it’s a fact). And that, try as you might, wheat isn't going to grow on the sheep fells of the Lake District. (Of course, much of this land wasn't sheep fell until we chopped the trees down – to allow for the sheep!)

In answer to that, I'm not suggesting we ban meat-eating, nor am I even advocating a non-meat or reduced meat diet for anyone else. I am just saying that this has made an impression on me, and I am seriously thinking about reducing my meat intake – perhaps all the way to nothing.

Of course, this produces all sorts of logistical problems – a lifetime of cheese sandwiches being one possibility – and I haven’t seen bacon patches available on the NHS yet. But for the first time in a long-time (and perhaps ever), I have started to think hard about what I am eating and the impact it has.

Being away this weekend in Scotland, I am guessing that a diet solely consisting of fruit and veg may be difficult to come by** so I will be tucking into the odd fried slice just as much as the next man will. But a seed has been sown, and who knows what is going to grow from it.

* Those of you who know me may be aware that I have a pretty good memory for fact and detail. Not quite eidetic (photographic) but pretty close.

** this is a joke. Edinburgh has plenty of fruit and veg. It may even have a Waitrose (it has two – Ed). Obviously, if it were Glasgow…***

***this is also a joke. Jesus people, do I have to put winky faces after everything now?