Expedition by bike from Kidlington to the to the 2019-08-01 51 -1 hashpoint in Charlbury via the Oxford Canal towpath, Begbroke, Oxford Airport, Woodstock, Blenheim Palace, and
Stonesfield, and back via two geocaches.
Last weekend was an exciting and unusual experience, full of exciting (expected) things interspersed with a handful of exciting (unexpected) things. Let’s go chronologically:
Thursday/Friday – Mario, Magic, Marriage
I left work, picked up a rental car (having unfortunately forgotten to take my counterpart driving license to the rental place, I had the choice of either cycling for an hour to collect
it or else paying a fiver for them to run a DVLA check, and I opted for the latter on the grounds that an hour of my time (especially if I have to spend it cycling back and forth along
the same stretch of road) is worth more to me than a picture of Elizabeth Fry. I drove home, packed a bag, said goodbye to Ruth, JTA, and Annabel, and drove up to Preston.
“I just found this card; is it yours? Maybe it will be, later.”
There, I spent most of Friday playing the new Mario game with my
sister Becky, gave a few small performances of magic (did I mention I’m doing magic nowadays? – guess that’ll have to
wait for another blog post) at various places around Preston, and went out for a curry with my mother, my sisters Becky and Sarah, and Sarah’s boyfriend Richard. So far, so ordinary,
right? Well that’s where things took a turn. Because as Becky, our mother, and I looked at the drinks menu as we waited for Sarah and her boyfriend to turn up… something different
happened instead.
Never before in our family has a marriage been conducted with so little pomp nor pre-planning. Except for our mother’s, of course.
Sarah turned up with her husband.
It turns out that they’d gotten married earlier that afternoon. They’d not told anybody in advance – nobody at all – but had simply gone to the registry office (via a jewellers, to
rustle up some rings, and a Starbucks, to rustle up some witnesses) and tied the knot. Okay; that’s not strictly true: clearly they had at least three weeks planning on account of the
way that marriage banns work in the UK. Any case case, I’ve suddenly got
the temptation to write some software that monitors marriage announcements (assuming there are XML feeds, or something) and compares them to your address book to let you know if anybody
you know is planning to elope, just to save me from the moment of surprise that caught me out in a curry house on Friday evening.
Tie some cans behind that trolley and spray “just married” on it in shaving foam, would you?
So it turns out I’ve acquired a brother-in-law. He’s a lovely chap and everything, but man, that was surprising. There’ll doubtless be more about it in Episode 32 of Becky’s “Family Vlog”, so if there was ever an episode that you ought to watch,
then it’s this one – with its marriage surprise and (probably) moments of magic – that you ought to keep an eye out for.
Next, I made my way up to Edinburgh to meet up with Matt R and his man-buddies for a stag night to
remember. Or, failing that, a stag night to forget in a drunken haze: it’s been a long, long time since I’ve drunk like I did on that particular outing. After warming up with a beer or
two in our hotel room, the five of us made our way to the Glenkinchie Distillery, for a
wonderful exploration into the world of whiskies.
It’s hard to appreciate how large the pair of stills at Glenkinchie are, if you’ve only seen the stills at other Scottish distilleries before. See the people in the background, for
scale.
And then, of course, began the real drinking. Four or five whiskies at the distillery bar, followed by another beer back in the hotel room, followed by a couple more beers
at bars, followed by another four whiskies at the Whiski Rooms (which I’d first visited while in Edinburgh for the fringe, last year), followed by a beer with
dinner… and I was already pretty wiped-out. Another of the ‘stags’ and I – he equally knackered and anticipating a full day of work, in the morning – retired to the hotel room while the
remainder took Matt out “in search of a titty bar” (a mission in which, I gather, they were unsuccessful).
The Glenkinchie Distillery bar carries a full range of Diageo Scotch whiskies, plus a handful of other brands, and expert staff are on hand to help with tasting.
Do you remember being in your early twenties and being able to throw back that kind of level of booze without so much as a shudder? Gosh, it gets harder a decade later. On the other
hand, I was sufficiently pickled that I wasn’t for a moment disturbed by the gents I was sharing a room with, who I should re-name “snore-monster”, “fart-monster”, and
“gets-up-a-half-dozen-times-during-the-night-to-hug-the-toilet-bowl-monster”. I just passed out and stayed that way until the morning came, when I went in search of a sobering
double-helping of fried food to set me right before the long journey back to Oxford.
All in all: hell of a stag night, and a great pre-party in anticipation of next weekend’s pair of weddings… y’know, the ones which I’d stupidly thought would be the only
two couples I knew who’d be getting married this fortnight!
Those of you who’ve met my family will probably already have an understanding of… what they’re like. Those of you who haven’t are probably about to gain one.
Did you did you… did you know that: Becky can eat mango, all by herself?
It started on a weekend in April, when my mother and I went to a Pink concert. The support act were a really fun band called
Walk the Moon, who finished their energetic set with I Can Lift A Car, with its’ catchy chorus hook “Did you did you… did you know know: I can lift a car up, all by
myself?” Over the weeks that followed, perhaps because of its earworm qualities,
this song became sort-of an inside Rickroll between my mum and I.
For example, this Bel-Air-meme style text message used a shaggy dog story to deliver a play on words.
At one point, she sent me a link to this video (also visible below), in which she is seen to lift
a (toy) car. My sister Becky (also known as “Godzilla”) was behind the camera (and, according to the credits,
everything else), and wrote in the doobly doo: “I think I’m gonna start doing family vlogs.”
She’d experimented with vlogging before, with a short series of make-up tutorials and a “test video post” on her blog, but this represented something new: an effort to show off her family (and guest
appearances from her friends) as they really are; perhaps this was an effort to answer the inevitable question asked by people who’ve visited them – “are they always like
that?” Perhaps that’s why she chose the name she did for the Family Vlog – “IRL”.
The essential Family Vlog (“IRL”) scene is the car scene, with the camera facing backwards from the dashboard. See also my second review…
At the time of writing, Becky (on her YouTube channel) has produced eight such videos
(one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight), reliably rolling out one a week for the last two months. I thought they
were pretty good – I thought that was just because they were my family, but I was surprised to find that it’s slowly finding a wider reach, as I end up speaking to friends who mention
to me that they “saw the latest family vlog” (sometimes before I’ve had a chance to see it!).
As I was visiting Preston, I ended up featuring in “IRL – Week 6”. My review (click on the image for it), therefore, seemed to be equal in parts recursive and narcissistic.
Naturally, then, the only logical thing to do was to start producing my own YouTube series, on my channel,
providing reviews of each episode of my sister’s vlog. I’ve managed to get seven out so far (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven), and I’d like to think that they’re actually better than the
originals. They’re certainly more-concise, which counts for a lot, because they trim the original vlog down to just the highlights (interrupted only occasionally by my wittering
atop them).
The widget above (or this playlist) will let
you navigate your way through the entire body of vlogs, and their reviews (or lets you play them all back to back, if you’ve got two and a quarter hours to spare and a pile of brain
cells you want killing). But if you’re just looking for a taster, to see if it’s for you, then here are some starting-out points:
The best episode? My favourite is six, but number two has the most views, probably the keywords “lesbian foursome”
are popular search terms. Or possibly “girls peeing”. I’m not sure which scares me the most.
Of if you just want to drop-in and have a taster, start from the latest review.
