11 posts tagged “wales”
...It's been a LONG few weeks.
The Student Union Real Ale and Cider festivals was all that it promised. Me and will teamed up to show whoever wrote the Pub quiz that setting a round on Dinosaurs followed by one on Ancient Rome and when one team consisted of an archaeologist with an interest in paleontology and an ancient historian was a recipe for disaster for them, and a guaranteed win for our teem. We only got one t-shirt, one bottle of beer and six beer tokens between the 10 of us, but the gloating right were worth it. I then promptly got onto the cider (I still maintain that the American phrase "hard Cider" is a blasphemy, ALL cider is by definition alcoholic) which was a nice whiskey cask conditioned scrumpy on the masochistic side of 8% and the rest of the day became quite hazy.
The next day, unwilling to let my unused low value tokens go to past, i went to the beer festivel again and had a far more sedate time with Bullmastiff Son Of a Bitch, Valley of Glamorgan Vog y Grog, Bragdy Mŵs Piws (purple moose brewery) Ochr Tywyll y MŴs (Dark side of the moose) and a whole other range of Porters, stouts and Milds, especially a nice little mild i think was by Rhymney brewery in Mertha tydfil.
Then came Thursdays trip to London to see the British Museum, then go to the millennium dome to see Tut Ankh Aten, later Tut Ankh Amun, well, we knew HE wasn't there, but a lot of his grave goods were in London on display, and although i have seen them, and in fact seen his mummy in Egypt, it was worth the trip to take another look.
However, to get there in time we had to leave Caerdydd at 0600, which for me meant getting up at 0530. For R it meant leaving work at 0430, drunk, to get there just in time to fall asleep in a doorway, so me and the rest of our friends had to pick him up and guide him to the bus.
This more or less set the tone for the rest of the day as the next generation of the UK's finest archaeologists wandered in a sleep deprived, and as far as at least 50% of these present, hungover state, about the capital ("Hey guys, if we get drunk we'll get to sleep really early and so waking up at five will be okay!"). However the Brit was, as always, excellent, and as our lecturer knew some people there we got to go behind the scenes and handles some roman finds.
Tut was also good. Sure, the boy king himself was absent and the display on Akhenaten, AKA Amenhotep the fourth, was far to brief, mentioning only that he was most likely the father of Tut-ankh-amen, and mentioning briefly his sweeping religions reforms that replaced most of the traditional pantheon with the worship of one god, the Sun Disk, The Aten.
So aside from not mentioning the most interesting new kingdom Pharaoh, if not THE most interesting pharaoh exept in breif terms, the exhibit was good. Oh, and i had the minor inconvenience of having to empty all my pockets as the coin that slipped out through the hole in my coat pocket and is not trapped in the lining set of all the metal detectors. Considering that i carry several pounds of largely useless, occasionally VERY useful shrapnel such as miniature screwdrivers for fixing my glasses, a comb, gaffa-tape, a hip flask, a tin of fisherman's friends lozenges and a dozen bottle openers on my person at all times, as well as scrapes of paper with useful aids to the memory, this took five full minutes and attracted a small crowd. Remarkably the security did not bat an eyelid and were quite happy to let a walking toolkit like me in, despite the fact sleep deprivation was kicking in and i was quite possibly dribbling slightly at the time.
The exhibit was... beautiful.
After a full two hours and an quarter oggaling the exhibit, including giving a small child a basic lesson in how to read Hieroglyphs ( read from the direction the animals face, and remeber that the names of gods come at the start of a cartouche name, so for example Tut-Ankh-amun is written "Amun Tut Ankh") we had to leave as several other groups had lapped us and because as i was wearing my National Geographic top, and the exhibit was sponsored by National Geographic, and because i was telling anyone who would listen about how great Akhenaten compared to the rest of the 18th dynasty several people had mistaken me for staff. Eventually, too tired to even get drunk, we were herded about London aimlessly until we got the bus home were me, R and the third year organizers of the trip ended up stuck next to the bus's emergency loo, one that by the smell had seldom, if ever, been cleaned. Ammonia closet aside, the trip back was utterly hilarious, in that way ANYTHING is when you have had 4 hours sleep in the last 48, some of them in a doorway if you were R.
Fast forward to Saturday; Rugby time!
the weather killed the attendance's at the big open air screen dead- we went twice and the first time about 12 people were there, the second only a few hundred. Considering there more than that on the ground floor of the gatekeeper when we left it to check out the open air screen we went back.
Ireland lost their match, which upset me, but i did take solace in the projector repair man. As the Projector the Gatekeeper mega-pub uses to show big games had broken weeks ago, and considering this was the biggest match for years and they were the closest watering hole of any size to the stadium, and this would be one of the biggest drinking days for years in wales, you would think they would have had the projector fixed before now.
They hadn't.
So when we got there, there was STILL a repair man rising out of the sea of red rugby shirts struggling with a machine that I could from a distance of ten meter, tell was utterly kaput. The burn-marks were a clue. so what did the repair man do facing a potential angry mob if the wales-France match failed to make it from the many small plasma-screens to the giant screen at the appointed time?
He went outside for a moment, came back with ANOTHER projector and, i kid you not, strapped it to the bottom of the first one with car-ties and gaffa-tape. Thus the second half of the Ireland match and the entirely of the vital wales France match could be viewed on the big screen.
As for that match i will say only this; I have never been in a more alive crowd and taken part in more genuine jubilation than on that sweaty and beer-soaked pub floor on that day. It is not something i think i will ever forget, not look back on with anything but genuine happiness.
Wales, this is for you.
Oh and a happy St Patrick's day.
Well, with Ireland winning against Scotland and wales and england also willing it looked unlikely from the start that me and my Anglo-welsh mix of friends would stay sober, and it being Em's Birthday meant a party was inevitable.
First me, my flatmates and J went to a Weatherspoons to see the wales match and the first half of the Ireland match. This would have been easier on me and J if we weren't still very hungover from another birthday the day before. So during the interval we went to our respective homes to eat breakfast, shower, see the second half of the Ireland match and get changed planing to meet up at Em's birthday curry. The curry was good, and the place let you bring your own drinks in. Em's Dad brought lots of wine, and we got on fine as although he was Scottish i tactfully neglected to mention that i was a supporter of the Ireland rugby team; sometimes an utterly untraceable accent is your friend. After a very fun meal and fair amount of wine we went to the pub. after the pub we went to Em's house Sans Em's parents and ordered a crate of beer form the all night booze delivery people. It was not a proper Cardiff Archaeologists night in that the party ended at a mere 3three AM as opposed to the obligatory six or seven, but fortunately it had the other one hallmark of a real archaeologists house party; it only ended early as me and a friend had to carry an unconscious third friend back to his home. Considering Wales bet Italy 47-8 and most of my friends here are welsh, this was inevitable and all in all good clean exercise.
Firstly, national preferences aside, i think anyone will have to admit that the Welsh comeback in the last quarter of yesterdays six nations match was a peace of utterly thrilling rugby.
As Ireland had already won their match i was happy to sit and watch the England-Wales at Rob's house and indiscriminately egg-on/mock both sides as the game progressed. What was quite fun was that out of the two Welshmen, one half-Welsh-half-English, one half Irish-half-English (me), one Australian (a girl) and two Englishmen only one person there supported england. He was quietly confident all the way through the first half. Then the second half started. Things did not go well for Wales to start with in the second half either, and so it was suggested that if Me, Rob and Joe wore plastic Viking Hats, Wales would win.as the person suggesting this was giving me beer i did not think this was a bad idea.
We put on the hats.
Wales won.
Now, a must say i cannot take sole credit for the welsh turn-around that started seconds after the plastic hit my head, Joe and Rob also had the hats on, and so the 3 million Welshmen who now owe me everything should also defer to those two. But needles to say, there was quite a party; we could, in the house, overt the top of the music and drinking, hear the distant chart of "Wales! Waaalllles!" from every pub in Caerdydd. I can remember comparatively little of the next few hours as we went drinking when we exhausted the supply of alcohol in the flat, but i recall the center of town was packed to bursting point with jubilant Welshmen, and that i ended up drinking beer out of one of the plastic horns of the helmet (yes, as a archaeologist i KNOW that real viking never wore horns on their helmets, but real viking also did not have plastic molding and rugby) and getting very lost and winding up with a kebab-meat pizza.
which just goes to show. something.
Here are web-comics i like, or at leas all the ones i am prepared to admit to seeing my sister can read this blog.
http://www.rcsitravel.net/Archives.html
Code name Hunter: Odd but fun, picture James Bond but played out in a fantasy land of magic that is hidden in plane sight and policed from London.
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000001.html
Dinosaur Comics: same artwork ever week, relies on good writing to be funny. Has Easter Eggs Too.
http://legostargalactica.comicgen.com/d/20020825.html
Legostar galatica: A sci-fi epic! In lego! join the crew and thier indestructible red-shirt as they boldly go...somewhere. and cause lots of chaos. Has lego and blatantly mocks Star Trek, 'Wars, and 'Gate as well as Naruto and other Manga. also has occasional crossovers with Irregular webcomic. Occasional swearing.
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20000612.html
Shlock Mercenary: A space-opera with a gelatinous life-form that shoots things, eats things, blows things up, and has a plasma gun that goes "ominous hummmmmmm" as it warms up. Very funny, very violent but non-graphic. very fun.
http://www.xkcd.com/1/
http://www.xkcd.com/123/
Xkcd: geek culture at it's finest. Science jokes, nerdy references, centripetal force, stick-men! black and white! it has it all! ALSO look up "men in hats" a webcomic that explains why the stickman with a hat is evil in this webcomic.
http://www.frozenreality.co.uk/comic/bunny/index.php?id=0
Bunny. Just plain weird. Surreal, welsh and with no plot or continuity really, but hilarious, insightful and deep at the same time.
http://www.angryflower.com/
Bob the Angry Flower: Truly the product of an utterly mad mind, and brillant as such. No continuity, no plot, no Mercy! the characters are Bob, the eponymous angry flower, a sentient plank of wood, and a levitating foetus. Need i say more? Probably not suitable for kids. Or adults for that matter.
http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/digger.php?view=archive&chapter=5028&mpe=1
Digger: One of the best comics on the web ever. Funny, with pop-culture and Pratchett references and excellent footnotes and reader comments. Also surprisingly emotive at times and contains the best working definition of evil you will ever find in a comic. Contains Wombats, and is black and white perfection.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00001.htm
Freefall: funny, deep, hard-sci-fi in wonderful grey scale (later strips in colour never as good, stick to the grey-scale option) with enough science, humor, emotion and charm to float a boat if not the USS Ronald Regan. A kleptomaniac Alien, a childish robot and a moral Bowman's Wolf try to play their part the the human colonisation of a new world.
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1.html
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?fivelast=1063&theme=6&bytheme=next
Irregular Webcomic: the pride of the interweb. with the the nerdy of nerdy, geeky of geeky. Lego men and role playing models, occasional drawing and tons of photoshop magic combine to produce something funny, political, intelligent, geeky, Australian and brilliant! Roll-playing! Death of insanely overpowered fireballs! the Allosaurus! Cthulhu! Nazi science sneering! A podcast! Genuinly funny and insightful Polls! Not one but two other webcomics run by the same guy (DMM or Dangermouse). It has it all!
I would like to thank everyone who helped make this weekends great welsh beer festival work out so well.
I would also like to thank Ramblers Ruin, Bullmastiff Welsh Black and Son Of A Bitch, Bull Lane Jacks' Flag, Battledown Turncoat, Mws Piws (Purple Moose) Darkside of the Moose and Cwrw Glaslyn, Stonehenge Original Wood, Valley of Glamorgan (VoG) Grog y VoG, all the German beers upstairs, and the cider and perry table, especially the dry farmhouse perry with the slight natural fizz and the old Foxwhelp Cider, plus anything i was to drunk to write down the name of when i drank it, for giving me a great three days (and a blessed four hours of memory).
and of course, i will thank the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and cask marque and all the volunteers who run this festival.
Well, I'm back in_England for a MRI scan, and it slightly nice to get away from_Wales for a bit considering what’s been going on there. I have been helping a PhD student with some geophysics, and the results have sofar been limited to early mornings in my a-metallic clothing so I can help him run the fluxgate magnetometer. Mag is always tricky and this one seems to hate us. The unreliability and fussiness of the kit aside, our biggest problem was sheep.
Jokes about Wales aside, these sheep were the sheep from hell. The overly aggressive ram was the least of our problems, it was the smallest ewe that caused us the most problems., That tiny sheep was freakishly intelligent for livestock and managed to example and lure the rest of the heard to exactly where we didn’t want them several times. Then a small child managed to chase all the sheep across the field, driving them towards me. fortunately it turns out the ram is easily scared off by any beeping equipment and so rather than getting charged for getting between the ram and his ewes I just had to more or less wade through sheep with the magnetometer to get the survey done. We were hoping to find a mediaeval manor house, but I think we found son thing industrial (but still mediaeval and probably manorial) instead. During the lunch break the sheep regrouped and retaliated by surrounding and licking all the equipment whilst we weren’t looking. It also turns out that ancient breeds of sheep have a strange fondness for eating yellow spray paint off the wooden pegs we were using to mark out the grids for geophysics. Equipment covered in sheep spit aside, we worked on and made good time, and then right at the end of the weekend we discovered that one of the sheep had decided to chew through both of the cables connecting the resitometer to its spacer probes.
Oh well. hopefully we'll be able o finish the work next week without any more equipment getting eastern.
Also MRI scans are VERY noisy. Mine sounded like a train of all things.
To everyone who made the CardiffUniveristy Real Ale and Cider festival 2006-2007 such a good weekend, I thank you.
To the Brewers, I have nothing but the deepest love and respect for people who would produce such fine a product despite the fact economies of scale would work against them and hurt their profits.
To My Friends, that you for turning up and not being total larger-boys and drinking the near-frozen love-in-a-canoe stuff they sell at the Union most days. "Bud-light; just when you thought we had perfected bottled urine, we found a way to extract 30% MORE favour and content."
To the attractive young lady with the pork-scratching. You know who you are; which was more than could be said for me at the time.
To everyone you joined in when we started singing.
And to the Bouncers; I will never forgive you as long as I live. I understand you have to hurry people up at the end of the night, but did you REALY have to tell me I’d have to down the finest pint of winter sipping ale in the world or you would confiscate my commemorative Pint glass? That stuff was like Flayrah, with a kick to it like something that ought to have the words "Pan Galactic" in it's name. You didn't even let me stay long enough to find out what it was called!
Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau
Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi,
Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri;
Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tra mâd,
Dros ryddid collasant eu gwaed.
- Gwlad, gwlad, pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad.
- Tra môr yn fur i'r bur hoff bau,
- O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau.
Hen Gymru fynyddig, paradwys y bardd,
Pob dyffryn, pob clogwyn, i'm golwg sydd hardd;
Trwy deimlad gwladgarol, mor swynol yw si
Ei nentydd, afonydd, i mi.
Os treisiodd y gelyn fy ngwlad tan ei droed,
Mae hen iaith y Cymry mor fyw ag erioed,
Ni luddiwyd yr awen gan erchyll law brad,
Na thelyn berseiniol fy ngwlad.
Believe it or not, despite the apparent superficial similarity, Rugby and American Football have surprisingly little in common; One is an action packed sport for real men playing dangerously with oval balls, the other is American Football, which from a rugby fans point of view consists entirely of padding, Cheerleaders, and forward passing, which takes the skill out of any game. That and the fact American football seems to accelerate you to the speed of light, because that is the only possible way to explain why everything seems so slow when you watch it. Do we really need to see every single trough in super slow motion eight or nine times? Why does the game consist entirely of stoppages? Some people say American football is like war. They are right; Short, brutal periods of action separated by long periods of boredom. I like American football, but I simply can not watch it after a Rugby match. It’s a great sport, all football sports are, but compared to Gaelic football, Australian rules or it pales. Heck the Canadian Version is far more fun, and association football faster. After racing or athletics it seems great by comparison because it has far more action, after rugby you start to wonder what the point is. Plus due to the time difference it will be on at the time the pubs start to close, which means watching it at home, And if I am going to watch anything at home with a few beers tonight it is going to be the UFC Mixed Martial Arts. THATS a sport for tough men that is genuinely exiting to watch! Plus you can do it in the comfort of your own home... if you are in SouthWales and live with a Muay Thai kickboxer. We had a few friends over for the boxing in Vegas a few weeks ago. One of them is on the welsh judo team. He was drunk, due to time difference the main fight would not start until 5 am and we were all bored. Result; light My Tai sparing with pads in the living room, until someone panicked at being boxed, resorted to Judo and took a leg of our table using one of my flatmates as a blunt implement. Everyone was fine and the table is now sturdier than ever thanks to the magic that is Gaffer Tape. This may be a terrible example of what people will do when they get board watching sports at home, but after today’s stunning Rugby (I am half Irish, and very happy!) I do not think I would actually sit though the Superbowl considering the truly brilliant sporting action we have already had today from the Irish and Welsh Rugby teams and the promise of MMA later.
