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I played my first game of cricket in nearly 3 years last night, here in yer actual Canada. And now I’m aching. It’s amazing that even when I played fairly regularly cricket hurts more than ice hockey or a hard day’s skiing. I blame the tea.

Anyway back to the game. I was turning out for the Glenmore Taverners. I’m not sure who we were playing - maybe they were the Warriors. They all spoke Punjabi that’s for sure. And that’s a clue that cricket in Calgary isn’t bad. Our team was very diverse: numerous Indians, at least 1 Sri Lankan, an Aussie, a Brit (hello) and a couple of Canadians who had lived in Australia. There were some interesting rules too. 15 8-ball overs per side, max 3 overs each bowler, max 8 step run-up (that was a new one to me), max 30 runs each batsman.

The bowling rule was tricky. I like quite a long run up before delivering my dibbly-dobbly filth. I did take some ‘tap’ in my first over as I worked out what I was doing but I came back much stronger in the second. I was quite pleased with myself in actually working out a plan and sticking to it. It was clear that both batsmen could time the ball pretty sweetly if you gave them any width. So I pitched up at their legs and a number of dot-balls ensued. Go me!

The Warriors set us what I thought was a pretty competitive 175 to win off 120 balls. We didn’t get off to a great start losing a wicket in the first over and were only about 60 in the 5th over. I came in a little later at number 5 and got off to my usual start of resolute blocking and wild swipes hitting nothing but air. I started to think the T20 format might not be my game. Also I wasn’t too sure how the wicket would play - it was one of those concrete and carpet jobs and I’d never played on one of them, but it turned out to be pretty good. After a confident drive out to mid off I thought it was time to hit out or get out and so I tried to give it some humpty. Much to my surprise it paid off! Next over I managed the first six of our innings back over the bowler’s head. After a few more big hits, lucky edges and some very dodgy running between the wickets the scorer shouted I was on 29. One more push to mid wicket and that was my 30 and I had to retire. I was chuffed!

I wasn’t the only retiree on our side. 2 others made a maximum and that set us for a tense finish. 24 needed off 16 balls. Some big hits and some wide bowling turned the game towards us: 6 needed off 8. But then our captain was controversially run out! But our nerve held in the final over and much to the amazement of my team-mates we won (apparently that hasn’t happened very often). Good times indeed. Unfortunately the season is nearly over and I’m not available for 2 of the remaining 3 games but it’s certainly fun to be playing again.

Last week:

This week:

I can’t sleep. I tried to go to bed early because it’s a school night but my mind is racing and I’m angry and frustrated and I can’t settle. Even reading Jasper Fforde isn’t calming me down. Tonight’s euro-elections have got me het up. I’m disapointed, but given the circumstances not completely shocked, that the BNP won two seats. Paul Kenny, the GMB leader sums up what that means very vividly:

On D-Day, Britain sent an army to Europe to stop the Nazis getting to Britain. It is an absolute insult to the memories to those who fought that 65 years later Britain is now sending Nazis to Europe to represent us.

This was an army of people like my father, who began the war as a conscientious objector and ended it a major in the Gordon Highlanders because he felt that the fight against fascism was too important to leave to other people alone. But what’s got me so roiled up is actually some of the reaction to this news. I spent a really interesting evening following peoples’  comments on twitter and facebook. There was predictable (and commendable) outrage and disgust. But also a lot of expats saying how glad they were to have left Britain behind, or people saying they couldn’t wait to leave. And here I am outside the country feeling nothing more than I want to come back because if you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem. Part of me wanted to tell these people to fuck off out of the country at their earliest convenience - “He that hath no stomach for this fight - let him depart” - but that seems pretty rich coming from someone in a flat in Calgary. Hence the frustration.

Now the anger. People were also dismissing the BNP voters as rascist, stupid or both. I don’t doubt that some of them are and I’ll put 100% of BNP members in that category. There is racism in the UK, there has been for a long time and it’s not for me to say if that trend is going up or down but I don’t think today marks the triumph of racism in Britain: to me it marks the failure of mainstream politics. It seems snobbish, elitist and narrowminded to write off the people who voted BNP as idiots. If nobody listens to these people, if nobody within the political elites can find a discourse that resonates outside their ivory towers or duck houses, beyond their moats or second Jags and into the lives of people who it turns out can actually be bothered to vote then this won’t be the last time the BNP wins a seat. I refuse to believe it’ll be because people suddenly start to buy that stuff about a pure British genotype, or their views on the holocaust, mixed marriage or forced repatriation. It’ll be because people feel they have nowhere left to turn.

I’d be amazed if amongst the people who voted BNP today there weren’t some with fathers or grandfathers who had been on one of the ships alongside my father’s, crossing the channel towards Sword beach 65 years ago. The fact that they cast a vote for apologists for the regime that that generation fought together to overthrow is a terrible thought. I believe in personal responsibility, so I condemn them for that choice but I condemn the Labour party, Conservatives and Lib Dems all the more for making that choice seem like a good one.

They say we get the politics we deserve but I believe we deserve better.

We had a lovely sun kissed week in Calgary which spurned me on to organising my first hike of the summer. Like last year I wanted to try Nihahi Ridge which is in Kananaskis Country and forms the very front range of the Rockies, where the foothills become the mountains. It’s meant to be a good early season hike as it’s free from snow sooner than the high passes further into the Rockies. Unfortunately last year there was torrential rain and zero visibility the weekend I wanted to go. This year however things looked better and I’d found some other ThoughtWorkers who wanted to come too.

Then the jet stream got involved. While it spent the last week happily jet streaming away north of us and pulling lots of warm dry air up from the Southern USA, it tracked south on Thursday night bringing cold cold air from the Arctic with it. I looked out of my window on Saturday morning and it was snowing very lightly. On June 6th! But still my colleagues were up for getting out of the city and into the outdoors, god bless ‘em. So we headed west, past Bragg Creek and along the Elbow valley to the trail head. Which looked like this:

June 6th!

The snow had been getting heavier and heavier as we got to the mountains. If this had been a ski trip I would have so excited at the thought of the fresh tracks that awaited us. I’m not sure the broad-leafed trees will be so excited though. This has got to hurt if you happen to be of the deciduous inclination:

We abandoned plans for the full trip up the ridge but hiked on anyway. It wasn’t that cold and the snow started to peter out before too long. It was fun to walk through snow in June and the deer who bounded across the path every now and then seemed to enjoy it too. The sun even came out when we stopped for lunch and the way down was very actually quite warm - apart from when melting snow fell off a branch and right down your back.

Anita, Anne and Bei

Back at the car it was a lovely day, and almost a completely different landscape. But there was still time for more snow, rain, hail and warm sunshine before we got back to Calgary.

These mountains are crazy!

I have come to the conclusion that this writing project I had undertaken is now a forlorn hope, at least in terms of getting it published. Regular phone calls and emails to the publishers have yielded no response and the company website maintains a non-comittal “Under Construction” silence. Sunday was the deadline for submitting my copy and as I’ve heard nothing from anyone I assume it’s not happening. I’m not particularly bothered to be honest. I’ve written the thing anyway, it’s had an excellent editorial overhauling from Sara and I might unleash it on my coworkers or on my work blog just the same.

Probably the highlight of the whole writing process was getting my author photo taken. The publishers, when they were still talking to me, said they needed ‘a professional head shot’ from each of the people submitting an article to the book. Luckily my excellent friend Ashley is a photographer with lots of portrait experience so one day before her baby was due I popped round to hers for a photo shoot.

She snapped away merrily, taking mostly fairly naturalistic and not too posed shots. A couple in particular came out really nicely but those aren’t the ones I want to show you. Oh no. You see in the course of the shoot it struck me that there is one universal signifier for authority and gravitas in photos: you hold your chin. And when else do you get to hold your chin? Never - unless you’re Steve Buscemi in Fargo chin holding opportunities are few and far between. I suggested to Ashley that we try some. The results were, I thought, remarkable…

Would you buy software development advice from this man?

Springtime in Calgary takes a long time to get going. Here we are at the end of May and still half the trees on my street are bare. Across the city though I would say more trees are in leaf than aren’t so I guess that means spring is over and summer must be here soon. Certainly this weekend has been warm and sunny. Mind you so was last weekend. And then on Monday it was 0 degrees and snowing. Even I have officially had enough of winter so come on summer - bring it on!

I can call last weekend the official end of winter because it was my last ski day. Sara and I, plus my friend Anita, headed up to Sunshine Village for the annual May Long weekend closing party. It turned out to be a terrific ski day, lots of sunshine and soft snow without it being too gluey. When the snow get’s sticky like that I can feel my cruciate ligaments just waiting for the chance to snap so that’s a good sign to stop. As always on the May long weekend BC/DC were on hand to offer some hard rock to go with the soft snow.

I also turned the ripe old age of 39 this month. To celebrate we went to what I think has become my favourite restaurant in town, Farm on 17th Avenue SW, only a 5 minute walk from my flat. They describe themselves as “a casual tasting kitchen” and specialise in small dishes, cheeses, meat and wines. Group bookings however get the one big table in the joint and have the “Harvest Menu” which turns out to be fancy Mac n’ Cheese. It was fancy and delicious but I really loved the platters of cheese and charcuterie they bring out at the start.

Ashley, Turner and Sloane came despite Ashley being due to give birth that day! Luckily she managed not to go into labour before the final course of fresh cookies and thus upstage my big day. Alexander Selkirk Bristowe Turner turned up about a week later so congratulations all youse! He’ll find a big sister going though one of the most marvelous times in life - the falling in love with Star Wars times! At my meal Sloaner was drawing some pictures which she presented to me at the end. One had two faces on it. She pointed at the smaller face with the curly hair “This is me” she said. Pointing at the bigger person she said “And this is…” - I was expecting ‘Daddy’ or maybe even ‘johnjohnston’ - “.. this is Obi Wan Kenobi!” Happy days!

Another reason for the relative radio silence here, apart from the Stanley Cup playoffs which takes up most of my time (Go Pittsburgh! Go Sid!!), is that I’m trying to do some writing at the weekends. I submitted a proposal for a chapter in a forthcoming book about Agile software development. It was accepted and I’ve started work but my motivation is starting to drag. This is largely because I have a nagging fear that the publisher has gone bust. I’ve had no response to numerous phone calls or emails. Makes a change from the dog ate my homework excuse - the recession ate my publisher. Anyway I’m going to get it done and see what happens.

It’s that time of the year again. Crazy weather time. One minute it’s sunny and warm next minute it’s snowing (right now it’s snowing). Last week was a particularly fine example of what can happen. The graph below gives a nice visual indicator of how fast things can change. At 5pm on Tuesday the temperature was pushing 22C, by 8am the next morning it was just above 0C. Look at the temperature fall off a cliff between 5 and 6am!

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get around to writing about Punk Rock Bingo because it’s the most fun you can have in this city on a school night. It’s held every Tuesday at Broken City on 11th Ave which is certainly my favourite bar in town and it’s bingo night with a difference.

That’s not an egg in his pint

Like traditional bingo nights some of the clientèle have blue hair but there’s probably a lot more tattoos here, and that’s just on the geezer calling the numbers. The big difference is the soundtrack. There’s a DJ spinning tunes all night long and while it may not all be punk there’s certainly a lot of rock and everything is very very loud. That’s one of the particular local challenges as you try and hear the numbers being called whilst “Suspect Device” by Stiff Little Fingers is blaring out of the speakers at full volume.

Then there are the prizes. The MC sets up a very varied selection every week. Some stuff is donated by local shops and restaurants and the rest seems to be pillaged from charity shops or under his bed. So you could win a t-shirt, or maybe you’d prefer a Mexican wresting mask or picnic basket. Or perhaps the free piercing or 1hr tattooing voucher or the bong. Last week one happy customer walked away with a tasteful print of the Last Supper but strangely nobody took the machete. The fact that you can leave a bar drunker and more heavily armed than when you came in seems to be one of the peculiar charms of PRB. The other is seeing people get paddled when they call an erroneous Bingo.

Bullshit bingo!

It’s not just about the bingo either. It’s wing night @ Broken City (Wingo!) and their salt and pepper wings kick a lot of ass. If that’s not your scene then you could also challenge the champion for the Rock Paper Scissors title. Truly something for everyone.

RSP Challenge. Mask optional

For the Easter long weekend I managed to invite myself to stay with my friends Kate and Rupert on Vancouver Island and they graciously accepted. I was very keen to go and see them again because they are off back to Blighty next month. Not only that but I’ve decided that I love Vancouver Island and any opportunity to go there should be taken up. I’d also heard rumours that K&R had got themselves a lovely new daughter to go with the lovely Amy with whom I’d struck up a friendship over the Gruffalo last year. That rumour turned out to be true but lovely turned out to be too small a word to capture the magic of Lila:

Kate and Rupert live in a village called Cumberland, in the Comox valley. It’s a small place but it’s pretty happening. The village easter egg hunt was certainly, um, hopping once the easter bunny arrived.

It’s not just fun and games for the kids though. That night there was an extraordinary band playing in the pub called Delhi 2 Dublin. They did exactly what it said on the tin: a mix of bhangra with foot stomping Irish fiddle music. If that wasn’t multi-cultural enough they boasted a Korean guitarist who wore a kilt, a Judas Priest t-shirt and played the electric Sitar. Only in Canada!

Cumberland is also close to Vancouver Island’s main ski hill, Mount Washington, and although the season was about to end I’m always keen to add another notch to my ski hill bedpost so Rupert drove me up there. Conditions weren’t ideal, it’s fair to say. The problem wasn’t a shortage of snow however; in fact quite the opposite. It was snowing hard but big wet flakes that stuck to your goggles and reduced visibility to about 1cm. I was skiing and doing a manual windscreen wiper with my thumb every 10 seconds or so. It was still fun though and I would love to come back in proper winter conditions as it looks like just the sort of terrain I would enjoy. As is the way of things the sun did come out, just as I’d returned my skis to the rental shop but at least I got a better view of the lay of the land.

Now all this outdoor shenanigans is fun and all that but the true highlight of the weekend for me was when I found Rupert’s Twin Peaks DVDs. Aaaah Twin Peaks! I was absolutely addicted to it when it first aired in 1990. Some of my happiest memories of my second year at university were of racing home on a Tuesday night so we could all be in front of the TV and shout “Michael Horse!?” when that actor’s name appeared on the credits. But I’ve never seen it again, in fact I’d never seen the pilot episode at all so it was good to start with that one this time. We only got as far as episode 3 I think but by that was enough to re-kindle my interest. By that time we’d had murder, the log lady, weird dwarves dancing and lots of Special Agent Dale Cooper’s unique brand of crazy. I remembered all the stuff about the “Damn fine coffee!” and his devotion to good pie but I’d forgotten his obsession with the natural world of Twin Peaks. “What are these trees, Harry?” he asked the local police chief. “They are Douglas Fir.” “Douglas Fir!! mmmm” he replied. They don’t write dialogue like that anymore.

I was late for work this morning. Almost exactly an hour late in fact. But the odd thing is I was blissfully unaware of this until about 10 minutes before I got to the office.

I blame Punk Rock Bingo on Tuesday night. I promise to write more about PRB soon but as it was I was out lateish on a school night and I forgot to set my alarm. But no problem I thought in the morning as it appeared I’d woken at the time my alarm normally went off. In my drowzy state I stared at my alarm clock and the time looked mostly like 6:00 am. Mostly, but crucially, not completely. I was 75% right in fact - the :00 was absolutely to be expected. I just failed to clock the 7 on the, er, clock.

So I lay dozing, as is my want, to the soothing sounds of Jim Brown and the Calgary Eyeopener on CBC radio. Each hour follows a fairly standard pattern of world news, local features and some weather. When they say what the temperature is going to be in Calgary today I get up because it’s 6:40. Only today it was 7:40.

I then had the normal routine of showering, some tea, breakfast and a spot of Simon Mayo on the computer. I may have listened for longer than normal because of the Hillsborough coverage but I looked at the clock on my microwave which said it was half past and thus time to leave. Again I failed utterly to recognise that it was actually half past 8 and that’s the time I usually get to work.

I didn’t notice that perhaps the sun was higher in the sky as I walked to the C-train. I had a new podcast from Adam and Joe to listen to so I was distracted and to be honest I was just glad it was sunny and quite warm as opposed to snowing hard which it had been yesterday morning. I then slumped down into my seat for the 20 minute ride to Whitehorn Station from where I normally catch a bus to the office. It was only as we were drawing into Whitehorn that I looked at my watch and for the first time that day I actually read the first digit. It came as quite a shock.

9:15 AM

9:15!! How the hell could it be 9:15?? I only left the house at 7:30! I was absolutely bamboozled and dumfounded. I thought for a second my new watch was to blame. It’s an atomic watch and thus updates itself from the atomic clock in Colorado every night - maybe the daylight savings setting had gone screwy?? But no, my mobile confirmed it was 9.15 as did all the other clocks that I could see in the station and the car park across the road. Gah! Instead of waiting for the bus as I would normally do I jumped into a taxi in a desperate bid to make up some time but still got to my desk at pretty much exactly an hour later than normal.

I take two points away from this cautionary tale:

• So far as clocks and watches go: you’ve paid for all the numbers so might as well use them
• Douglas Adams had a point when he said that human beings were so amazingly primitive that they still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea