My feet hurt

Posted on December 28, 2006
Filed Under Advertising, books, fauna, money, review, shopping, TV | Comments Off

My feet hurt so much I can hardly walk. I think I can trace my infirmity to Tuesday when I had a couch day. Not a duvet day so beloved of our American cousins but an actual couch day. My office is closed for the week so I had nothing to do Tuesday except get out of bed and sit on the couch for most of the day. I did make an occasional foray to the kitchen for ~~food~~ biscuits and chocolate but, for the majority of the day, the sofa = my home.

Television
I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t watch much television but, on Tuesday, the Discovery channel had almost a whole day of the American Chopper show. On this show, the company, Orange County Choppers, build a customised motorbike for their client. All the shows follow the same format. The client is introduced and the designers mock him (and it’s always a him). Then they start building the bike and, half-way through the build, the owner (Senior) and the owner’s son (Junior – I’m serious) fight for awhile over whether the bike should have pointy bits or not-so-pointy bits. Meanwhile, some part for the bike is delayed. Finally it arrives and the bike is built just in time to enormous applause for all concerned. Yippee! The shows were mind-numbingly hypnotic and it was brilliant.

To be honest, the best bits were the ads. Because Discovery is not regulated by anyone (?), they can show as many ads as they want. And believe me, they did! But it did allow me to channel hop and see what was on the other stations. I felt a sense of accomplishment for this multi-tasking and it slightly negated the guilt I felt for watching so much crappy TV.

It didn’t negate the guilt completely so I read a few throw-away thrillers. You know the sort, they’re usually 3 for 2 in your local bookshop and the lone, grumpy hero is dragged into something horrific or mysterious but he rises to the task and uses all his skills and contacts (Ed – thought he was a loner?) to save the day. I can usually read these books pretty fast because the writing is so cliched. It usually takes the author a paragraph or ~~two~~ three to say that it’s cloudy, or sunny, or a bit of both. So I usually just let my brain process the broad outlines of the book and concentrate only when there’s something happening or being said.

Books
The three books I read were Echo Park by Michael Connelly, Red Tide by G.M. Ford and Never Go Back by Robert Goddard.

In reverse order, I was very let down by Goddard‘s book. Parts of it were set in Swindon, for god’s sake. It was quite cliched and a bit Dad’s army. There was a cast of thousands who were given real names and nicknames. Goddard used them interchangably and it was hard to tell the characters apart. And because the story was so awful, it wasn’t worth the effort to try and remember everyone. Briefly, the story was that, 50 years ago, 15 young servicemen were sent to a remote Scottish castle for three months for an academic experiment in learning. The book starts with the run-up to the 50 year reunion which is to be held in the same venue (now a hotel). Soon, members of the group start dying in mysterious circumstances. The page-turner idea is ‘What really happened 50 years ago in that remote Scottish castle? Only Ossie (Harry) and Chipchase (Barry) can save the day!

The fact that the group members were approaching 70 years of age is the fatal flaw in this book. I won’t spoil the plot but why didn’t the killer(s) just bid their time and let them die natural deaths? It’s incredible that the Goddard has published over 15 books for Corgi, the publishers. And he’s a beardie!

Red Tide by G.M. Forde wasn’t as bad but barely passed into the ‘entertaining’ category. Frank Corso, the grumpy loner with the mysterious past, has to save the day when a biological disaster threatens Seattle. The science in it is laughable so I won’t dwell on it. In another scene, he sends the heroine home in a taxi and pre-pays the driver with a $100 bill. The fare turns out to be about $6 so the heroine uses the $96 balance to force the cab driver to follow a mysterious van. Here’s a random passage from the book. By random, I mean I opened a random page and picked the best passage I could see on those two pages.

And unless I’m mistaken, the good Dr Stafford looked pretty much scared shitless when she wheeled out of here.”

Dean and Sykes were momentarily taken aback. Neither could remember Harry Dobson ever having used profanity before, just as neither had ever heard the undercurrent of bitterness which had worked its way into his tone.

At least, this (goatee) author has only published 4 books before, although he has another coming out in 2007.

Despite Connelly sporting a beard, I can heartily recommend Michael Connelly’s Echo Park. It’s part of the Harry Bosch series of murder mystery books. In this series, Bosch is a grumpy loner who doesn’t have many friends or contacts. He has several psychological problems/hang-ups and nobody really likes or dislikes him. He doesn’t shoot people or beat them up. He just uses his brain as a detective should. In other words, he’s a believeable character.

In Echo Park, an un-solved murder that has haunted him for years could potentially be solved when fellow officers arrest a serial killer for other murders. How all these murders are connected and how they’re solved is the basis of this book. Here’s a random passage from the book. Bosch is interviewing the serial killer about his unsolved case. The serial killer has just described what he did to Bosch’s victim.

Bosch stared at [the serial killer] but couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth. It was moments like these that made him feel inadequate as a detective, moments when he was cowed by the depravity that was possible in the human form. They stared at each other until [another detective] spoke.

Shopping
Christmas was good to me and I got loads of very nice, thoughtful presents. Best is probably not the right word but the best present I got was ‘The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising‘ (amazon). It’s a first edition in mint condition and signed by both authors. As far as I know, the authors didn’t do any signings so I am privileged to have a book signed by both of them. The blurb describes the book thus:

Using contemporary diaries and recently released eye-witness testimonies [the authors] tell the story of a tumultuous week through the voices of the men and women who fought on each side, and of a population caught up in days of violence, looting and wild rumour. Reasserting the event as first and foremost a human drama…[the book] adds up to the most comprehensive and accessible account of Easter Week in print.

But there were still some things that only I could buy for myself. Plus, as a good capitalist, I wanted to see if there were any bargains in the sales!

For example, if my knees are up to it, I still aim to run the Dublin marathon in Oct 2007 so I needed to upgrade my runners now that I’m doing more and more running. I’m having trouble running on non-grass surfaces at the moment. I also (ahem) needed to buy a tripod for my camera. I got both, thank you very much, at decent prices.

Town was just mental. I wonder if people are buying things they actually want or are they just buying it because it’s â‚¬10 cheaper than it was last week? To be honest, I got caught up in the mood a little bit. I didn’t succumb to temptation but I spent about 3 hours wandering Dublin looking for something to buy. Thankfully, I didn’t buy anything I didn’t actually need but I was sorely tempted.

The saddest moment for me occured when I looked in the window of Maplins gadget store. They were selling a large remote-controlled toy car for â‚¬25. In fact, they were selling two of them. ‘Eureka‘, I thought, ‘I’ll buy both of them. One for me and one for my brother‘. My (married) brother lives in a rural area on a acre of land so we could play ‘cops and robbers‘ with the toy cars when I visited him! It made perfect sense until a passerby bumped into me and brought me back to reality. Reality being my brother is married!

Reality, and a sense of shame, drove me into Marks and Spencers. ‘I’ll buy something sensible‘, I reasoned, ‘and that’ll make the day worthwhile‘. M&S had different ideas, though. If the cut of their suits fit, it’s considered a good place to buy a suit because you can buy the jacket and two pairs of trousers at the same time. In theory, your suit should last twice as long. The only problem was that the suits that were on sale didn’t have any trousers while those that were not on sale wanted â‚¬100 for the trousers. â‚¬100 for a pair of M&S trousers! I don’t think so.

I think my negative brain waves must have set off some M&S sensors because the escalators were disabled when I tried to leave. Luckily, in typical M&S fashion, they disabled the escalators going up rather than those going down! A lucky escape for me.

And that’s why my feet hurt. I spent a fruitless day trapsing around Dublin trying to spend money but to no avail. I’m lucky the traders didn’t set the police on me.