meish dot org: life, unfolding

Challenged by m’colleague Neil to reveal what I’ve been consuming, media-wise this week, I am delighted to flash my digital hem, as it were, particularly because it affords me the parallel opportunity to apologise for being AWOL since before Christmas. I’ve been away, you see, and as a result, my media consumption for the past week has been a bit different in many ways to what I might otherwise have consumed.

What I read
Despite not being in the office (or perhaps because of it), I’ve enjoyed reading the paper: The Guardian, of course and particularly enjoyed the NYE quiz special edition of G2 – I got further with King Williams College Quiz than in previous years (i.e. managed to answer a whole 23 questions), and the general quiz of the year kept me guessing for at least a few pots of tea. But since I’ve been up in Scotland for a few days, I’ve also been reading The Oban Times (which is handy for broader local news as well as the cult-reading that is D Morisson’s weekly roundup of Scalpay news) as well as Round And About Mull, the monthly island paper, for local perspective (i.e. in order to understand the contexts of what many local conversations are about).

In addition, I flicked through the Birmingham Airport free magazine (called Destinations, I think) and had a saunter through both The Herald and The Daily Record in the BA lounge this afternoon, though I don’t think we can really count that as reading. Oh, and I read an article about the Isle of Mull Weavers at Ardalanish, which featured in Country Life of all things, which my mum had borrowed from a friend. I swear I didn’t read anything else in there, though.

I also dipped into Utopian Dreams by Tobias Jones, which I’d heard snatches of when serialised on Radio 4, but found a copy of at my mum’s house. But managed not to touch the book I took up with me for holiday reading (A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon) until the train/plane today, because I was so busy. Busy relaxing, of course…

What I watched
Not a right lot. This is basically because my mum doesn’t have a television. However, in the few days I was in Shropshire at the end of last week, I saw The History Boys on the BBC, and the news. On DVD, I watched a couple of episodes of Coast 2 with my mum (showing her how to watch DVDs on new laptop) and after dinner with some friends on the Ross of Mull, An Inconvenient Truth, which I’d somehow managed to miss. And on New Year’s Day, when particularly hungover, I took the laptop back to bed and watched Dara O’Briain’s live solo standup gig via the streaming version of iPlayer. And let me tell you, for that alone, I *heart* the BBC.

I singularly failed to watch either of the DVDs I carried around with me because they’d just arrived from Lovefilm before I set off on my travels – The Magicians and The Lives of Others. Maybe this weekend – could make for a slightly random double bill…

What I listened to
Being in a rather (how can I put this politely?) radio-wave-light area, radio didn’t feature too hugely in my daily audio diet, but I did manage to receive Radio 4 (sort of) when driving across the island yesterday, and used the BBC’s Listen Again to catch up on news from R4.

Musically-speaking, I listened (with my dad) to some Peter Skellern, a lot of Bach, some Ella Fitzgerald and a bunch of 1950s Trinidadian London Calypso and (with my mum) to Julie Fowlis’ excellent Cuilidh album, plus Kate Rusby’s Awkward Annie, among others. On my ipod, I continued to plough my way through the This American Life archives (from about 1999), mainly. I didn’t listen to much music via ipod, really, which is odd for me.

What I surfed
Given that I’ve been away, a lot of my normal surfing patterns were disrupted, and so any surfing fell into two distinct classes: Maintenance (which included Gmail, Twitter, Netvibes and Flickr) and Random Weird Shit (which included ebay searching for sonic mouse deterrents for a friend of mum’s, Nestoria property porn and the official rules of shinty). When I could (and it wasn’t often) I used my phone to keep up with twitter and gmail. I used the web to create, though – both within flickr and for the local community on Mull following the annual Hogmanay Shinty on the beach shenanigans.

….and finally, though this wasn’t in the original meme: What I played
I can’t let an opportunity go by without mentioning Peggle (and specifically, Peggle for iPod) which kept my thumbs occupied for much of the journeying. I also played a lot of cards: Shithead, mostly.

I know I’m supposed to tag someone with this meme, though I don’t want anyone to feel under pressure, especially this early in the year. So, um, feel free to share what you’ve been consuming (if you want), Caroline, Tom, Gordon, Cliff and Wendy. Or don’t. It’s all gravy.