That life thing, eh? it sure gets in the way of blogging sometimes.
So, its just been my son and I at home for the last few days as Mrs 1537 and her (occasionally) evil teenage clone have been down in London, sampling the delights of the city – including the new Kinks musical, which they loved. I’ve been home doing all manner of building work, laying a brick patio, shovelling several tons of soil around and building a pergola*, in the hot sun and generally defying science by just being even more manly than I already was, while my heir has been revising hard for his GCSE’s next week.
So we managed to eat good stuff and watch some classic movies – In the Heat of the Night, Chinatown and The Sting on successive nights, what an education! We also played quite a bit of Star Munchkin, so feast your eyes folks on the game’s glorious daftness:
Best of all though was last night when, just like we did back in 2013, we went to see, Bill Bailey play at Theatre Cymru in Llandudno on his ‘Limboland’ tour. It was a brilliant way to counteract a stressful day at work, to just leap into the car and drive an hour off into North Wales to the gorgeous old Victorian coastal resort, eat chips on the sea front and go to a comedy show. Bill was, as he always is, brilliant value for money – very clever, eccentric and a wonderful purveyor of kind, wordy comedy. As always there were some amazing musical bits – my personal favourite was his rendition of Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’ on Alpine cow bells and closing with a funny version of ‘Highway To Hell’, where we all got to sing along. This gives a bit of a flavour:
It’s a nice little father/son tradition we’ve got going on there. Driving home in the dark along that fabulous coastline I felt properly content, despite the fact that I can’t get him remotely interested in AC/DC or Zeppelin. Blooming rebel!
Oh and after vowing not to buy any LPs in June I had one of those mysterious lunchtime blackouts that I’m sadly prone to and ended up buying Queen today – I’ve not owned this since I taped it off a friend back in ’85. It has a few clunky moments but there are some real gems on here too like ‘The Night Comes Down’, I can’t have listened to this album in over 26 years but I could still sing along with most of it, word perfect – that’s scary!
665 Down (still).
*just call me Ozymandias.
Nice write up!
Sounds like an awfy splendid way to spend some time. Magic.
I hear July’s a good month not to buy any records. They get too hot during transport and you end up with card stuck together with tar. So I hear …
Absolutely, both counts. That Juarez record is dead good though …
On my list!
Sorry, again!
I don’t believe you …
Father son bonding! I fully endorse it! Hard manual labour in the sun? In a weirdly satisfying way, I endorse that too! Yeah it sucks and you’re sore and tired after, but the manliness boost is always essential. 🙂
No LPs in June???? Have you gone MAD? Haha it’s early days and you broke it already. Ah well, there’s always July…
Yup I lasted all the way until 2nd of the month! I’ve played it a couple times more now and I’m really enjoying the album.
Sounds like quality family time!
A pergola and patio? Do you and Mrs have a flower garden? I try to, but the dandelions are winning the war at the moment…
And bloody ‘ell, that Ticketmaster abomination has wormed its way into the UK too, eh…
Thanks, it was a quality time.
Yup, we do – Mrs 1537 is the gardener, I just provide cheap unskilled labour. We have a decent sized garden that we plant up to be as wildlife friendly as we can and for it to be somewhere nice for us to sit in and contemplate life occasionally, preferably with something cold in a glass.
Sounds like a properly awesome past few days. Well worth skipping writing over I’d say. And you’ve got the whole manly thing going for you. “The Adonis of Wales” is what I here they’re referring to you as down at the Winchester and Probe Records.
This card game looks great, by the way. I need to see about getting it myself.
Well, its really not for me to say … but you’re totally right I am truly, truly awesome.
I’m sure your brood would love Munchkin – my advice is to go for the standard version first. Have you got a decent games/comics shop near you? or is it all feed stores and Christian book shops?
Fantastic. You are without doubt the young vital active version of Fatherdom I’ve never got close to. Paving, pergolas, comedy and chips. Wonderful. Oh, and Munchkin in Space looks brilliant. The boy loves it (got it for last Christmas). We got him the Legends version for his birthday, which is full of equally funny in-jokes.
BTW, is Llandudno where there’s a little tram/train thing running down from the promontory? I got a free ride on it once after almost freezing to death on the Great Orme.
Thanks Bruce, but trust me I’m neither young nor ever vital of my own accord! I love the Legends version, really pleased he likes it so much – they’re all really good actually, just rude enough too.
Yup, that’s Llandudno alright and I once ran a half marathon which involved running up the Great Orme, it almost killed me and I’ve never done anything that stupid since!
How does the saying go? ‘Life is what happens while you’re making plans for something else.’
I can definitely relate.
Yup totally, no acquatic monsters in my week though!
Lol