Natural Born Stragglers

The great mass of runners participating in the ING Luxembourg Night Marathon started passing my front door at around twenty to eight this evening. My apartment was just shy of the 12 kilometer mark, so well over half way if you were doing the half marathon, but a good bit short of half way if you had signed up for the full lot.

I don’t know how many people signed up to do this; but this I do know: they are all better people than me.

Luxembourg City had a weather warning in force for both today, and also for tomorrow, for high temperatures. When the runners set off at 7pm this evening, it was 29 degrees. It was still 29 degrees when they passed my door at 7.40 and now, at 20 past 9, it has fallen all the way to 28 degrees.

It will be a warm evening.

I stood outside when the first runners passed, and I watched them. And I stayed until the last runners passed and I cheered them. It is the great mass of people who do stuff that is hard, that they know they may fail to complete and who still do it anyway, who are heroes in my book. As I write, some of them will still be working their way around the route to get them to the finish line, be it 30 km away, be it 9 km away.

Not many people do this, I noticed. By the time the last five or six runners passed, the last of the stragglers, followed only by the police and a pick up bus, there was near no one left cheering them on. No one still shaking the cheap tambourines that ING appear to have handed out along with their orange straw hats. The only blue giant balloons to be seen were being dragged along by a runner wearing Luxair team gear.

By the time the main body of runners has passed, there are still a few groups, here and there 5 and 6 runners, or 3 or 4 having a conversation, trying to calculate how far they have left to go.

I “did” the Women’s Mini Marathon in Dublin once. I didn’t run it. I wound up middle of the walking field which is a fairly big field in that race. I don’t know if there are stragglers catching up in it. But I never ran it and my own personal interest in running is for solo trail stuff. I will almost certainly never sign up for the Night Marathon in Luxembourg.

There’s a pin floating around pinterest along the lines of “no matter how slow you are going, you’re still people the people on their sofas.

Runners at the Night Marathon. 2017.

All Successful People have smoothies for breakfast

I am sometimes inclined to wonder how many successful people actually read books or watched videos which amounted to “How to be Successful”.

I mean,  you just know that the bosses of a bunch of high value tech start ups get up every morning and tune into the latest “How to be a Boss” vlogs on youtube. And yet there are loads of them. And by the vagaries of Youtube’s near totally useless recommender system which has decided that because I like bullet journaling videos, I am probably interested in other videos by organisational experts who are telling you how to live your life. This morning tossed up an assortment of 20 year old law students with perfect lives selling you their lifestyle. One of them went through a morning routine.

My morning routine is fairly simple.

  • Get up
  • Make my bed
  • Have a shower
  • Dress
  • Get breakfast
  • Pick up bag
  • Walk out the door.

This is it. In fact, I attach a lot of importance to the bed making bit because back when I was a student in student accommodation, my bed was my sofa. The place looked a lot tidier and was a bit more useful if the sofa was usable.

Also – and for me now this is the single most important feature of making my bed first thing – I won’t have to make it 14 hours later when I am falling into bed wrecked. No one sane likes having to do their bed clothes when they are shattered after a hard day at the coal face of sitting in front of a computer and listening to colleagues moaning.

I digress. A common feature of morning routines involves breakfast and the perfect breakfast. This morning, I was informed that smoothie bowls were great. I was a bit bemused by this because I wasn’t familiar with the concept of smoothie bowls. I made smoothies for breakfast for years but recent comments about it being better to eat fruit rather than liquidise it first means I’m less inclined to do them. Smoothie bowls are actually smoothies in a bowl with a pile of fruit plonked on them. I suppose the good point is you get the pleasure of the smoothie with some food chomping. What I’m not so sure about is the assertion that because smoothies were so go for you, probably lots of really successful people must be making them because they are, like, really successful, and smoothies probably contribute to that because they are looking after themselves.

Right.

Gotcha.

Think you are talking nonsense, but anyway.

I’ve watched an awful lot of How to be success in Life type lifestyle videos on Youtube. It is a veritable little industry between telling people how to organise, how to live, how to eat, when to sleep, how to apply make up how much to stuff into life, staring meaningfully into the distance while “studying” . It’s not because I don’t know how to organise mornings. I used to get up at 10 past 7 when I was in university and had a regular little routine going. It never occurred to me that 20 years later people like me would be flogging these routines on Youtube videos. The comment on my grave will be “She was very organised”. It’s just, I like art journals and youtube’s recommender system pulls me down continuingly awful rabbit holes (try looking at one small cat video and you’ll be fighting off recommendations about kitten rescues for months).

I don’t try to monetise this but really, if you want to be successful, following someone else’s morning routine isn’t going to help. There is no moral/financial pay off ratio that makes having a smoothie a tool of success. I was bitterly unhappy for the months I was having smoothie breakfasts; not because of the smoothies (oh they were nice) but because I wasn’t knee deep in the key thing “Find out what you want to do, and what you have to do to achieve it, and do it”. When I figured that out, it really didn’t matter what I had for breakfast.

Spotlight on Spotlight

One of the things I discovered in Luxembourg since I got here are the Spotlight Verlag language learning magazines. I cannot think of a single corresponding example in the English media market but most of the newsagents have some if not all of these.

Spotlight Verlag produce regular publications in French, German, English, Spanish and Italian for learners of those languages. For English, they have two – a regular English one, and a business English one. In addition to Spotlight, another company called Colour Media, I think, produce a couple in English, also regular and business level. I’ve picked up some of the English stuff purely on the back of how interesting – despite being targeted at beginners – the Spanish ones are. I have the French and German ones but I haven’t been finding time.

ECOS is the Spanish one. It is very obviously directed at Germans as its tagline is Einfach Besser Spanisch and the glossaries are Spanish German. My Spanish is limited and goes back 30 years and I am planning to bring it right up to scratch in the next two years. If you were to ask me what is the best language resource I have found to date, it would be this. The articles are colour coded and there are idiomatic pieces each month for Easy and Intermediate levels. There is plenty of content in advanced Spanish as well , along with puzzles and games.

I cannot think of corresponding equivalents in English which is, I suspect, damning to say the least. I suppose it is not helped by the fact that English magazine market seems to be dying a slow painful death. I have had a look at some of the resources available for maintaining foreign language skills – I’m mildly disappointed with them (which means I should write one myself). Mostly the issue is that I find the creators of content guiding people in how to maintain their foreign language skills are more of a Look At MEEE I’m trying to maintain 13 languages…

I suppose for Spanish I had expected something helpful like “Here’s a list of Spanish news sites and magazines online” and “Follow this link for 100 Spanish radio stations.” Instead I get “Sign up for my product here” and “Here’s a mini essay about how the only people I speak Italian to are my parents”.

In summary every time I look at online language learning resources I feel cheated and hard done by. But magazines which give you interesting content and which are about give you steps forward, that’s great. It is a pity that the availability is a bit limited.

People who get up early in the morning

Enda Kenny announced during the week that he was stepping down as leader of the party currently in minority government, and this, needless to mention, caused a leadership battle. The two front runners included Leo Varadkar. It was reported during the week that he wanted to lead the party “for people who get up early in the morning”. (Irish Times report)

This is generous of him but it hides something. Many people in Ireland who get up early do so not because they are spectacularly productive but because they have no choice. Leo Varadker wants to lead a party for people who spend 3 to 4 hours a day commuting to jobs in Ireland’s urban centres. Some of these people are not that far from work as the crow flies, it is just they need to negotiate the M50 in Dublin or the N20 and Dunkettle Roundabout in Cork. Leo Varadker was Minister of Transport who shelved the M20 from Cork to Limerick and also, who applied the first delay to Metro North in Dublin. He cut PSO subsidies too.

I used to live in Dublin, and I used to get up early in the morning. Much of that was to ensure I got across the city without spending one hour in traffic. There was a time it was to get stuff done in the mornings, like study, self education and the like. But that stopped when I stopped working somewhere that didn’t involve city centre traffic, for example. When I hear Leo Varadkar talking about being a leader for a party for people who get up early in the morning, he is probably trying to make you think he wants to be a leader for a party for the movers and shakers in the country. Watch any two bit productivity how to be successful video on youtube and many of them will talk about getting up early. Set your alarm 30 minutes earlier. None of them then say “and go to bed 30 minutes earlier”.

But the vast majority of people getting up early in the morning are losing hours of their lives daily to commuting. They are trying to exist as best they can in a country which does nothing if its back is not up against a wall pushing bricks out behind them over a cliff.

We are not talking about armies of Steve Jobs here. We are talking about the kind of people that Theresa May in the UK described as JAMS. Just About Managing.

I’d like to see someone have a vision for Ireland. Radically improved public transport in Dublin and its hinterlands is something which should be built not grudgingly and as little as possible, but with a lot more forward thinking and reality. Stop talking about Metro North and build it. Stop talking about the M20 and build it. Rethink how Ireland approaches public transport. Desire for people to have better lives. Not to be spending hours trying to commute to and from work or school. Desire for more people to be able to live close to work and work on that. This means rethinking how we approach accommodation. Talk about building a better lifestyle for Ireland. Which feeds into better mental health and better physical health. People who are spending 3 to 4 hours commuting daily are shattered. They are not getting enough exercise, they are probably not eating healthily. They are not spending enough time with their families.

Be the leader for a party fighting for these people, Leo. And drop the pity slogans about “people who get up early”.

Pianos and love

I fell in love with a few pianos today. It is hard to say how you can be in love with a few pianos simultaneously but…it happens. Today I went to the Marcus Hübner Pianohaus in Trier.

This is a veritable jewel of a piano shop. It has a large selection of grand and upright pianos. I must confess I skipped the digital section because I play a digital piano at home and this is to remind me that a digital piano, while it allows me to play, is still not the same as a real piano.

Hübner Pianos are a Steinway dealer. I have to confess that while I recognise the workmanship that goes in to them, I have never felt a grá for them in the way I have felt a love of 19th century Bechstein grand pianos for example. And the reason I went to Hübner anyway is because they also sell a piano I had never actually seen before – they have their own in-house piano models.

Most people who know me are aware that for most of the last 20 years I have been saying I want a grand piano. So it might come as a surprise to know that the piano I truly gave my heart to today was an upright piano. It is a Jubilaumsklavier  and it has a beautiful rich sound, the like of which I have never gotten out of another upright piano. I’ve played a few of the newer Bechstein designed uprights like the Hoffmans and I’ve played a couple of Yamahas and one or two Kawais. They really never made me feel the way a beautiful grand made me feel. This didn’t just come close; it bypassed the feeling that I get from some of the smaller grands like the smaller new Kawai grands.

Hübner make grand pianos as well a few of which I played. In particular I played – and loved – a B212 Artist. For the longest tie I assumed that my grand piano, if and when it eventually came, would be a Kawai but to be honest, I don’t think this will be true any more. I preferred the B212 to the B187 – the B187 is a smaller piano and in truth, I tend to prefer the pianos that are at least 1.5m – there is something more aesthetically pleasing about them – the proportions are more balanced, even when the difference in the length of the piano is only around 3cm.

What I loved about the Hübner pianos – both the uprights and grands – is the responsiveness of the keys. The keys seemed just perfectly weighted – and this really brings into stark contrast why a real piano is still a far greater instrument than a digital – and the tone of the piano was far easier to control. The pianos resonate perfectly – and I should mention I was in the shop on a Saturday morning when they had a few people testing pianos – and the sound balances perfectly around you as a player. In practical terms, I cannot actually get one of these pianos just yet but when the time comes I may lock myself away with a Hübner piano and emerge only for breakfast.

In addition to those pianos,  I also played one of the smaller Steinways – I didn’t note the model but if I remember rightly it was a secondhand piano  – and I liked it a lot more than I like Steinways. It is possible that part of it is that someone else has broken the piano in but based on other things I noticed about the shop, I suspect it may be because Hübner have outstanding piano technicians looking after their pianos. This piano was far more responsive to what I wanted to do, and its dynamic range was broader than I have met on most pianos.

The other piano which I met and loved, again somewhat unexpectedly, was a Yamaha C3. I think the year of manufacture was noted as 1976 but I may be mixing it up with another one. This makes it one of the older Yamahas I have played.

I have a love-hate relationship with Yamahas in general, but especially with their grands. In my experience, their pianos are very hard to play; their key action requires quite a lot of force to get a sound out of the piano and for someone who has a soft touch, it just seems like too much hard work. At some point a few years ago I had a conversation about this with a piano dealership in Ireland and the salesman recommended I try just one particular Yamaha which was second hand and which their technician had done some work on. I’ve concluded since then that Yamaha probably build beautiful pianos, but I will never buy one new and I would definitely want a good technician to have at it. I have played I don’t know how many Yamahas over my life but I’ve really only liked two of them. Both of them were C3s and both of them were second hands and not exactly recently built. This probably doesn’t prove anything. Anyway, the C3 compared well with my expected grand piano budget but will have to compete with either a Hübner upright or, if I save up extra specially hard, with a Hübner grand and neither is going to happen yet.

It would be very easy for me to stop here and say, yes, Hübner is a lovely piano shop, and they have a selection of absolutely beautiful pianos that fill your heart with joy to play. But I won’t. One of the things which marked out Hübner as much, if not more, than their pianos, were their staff. I met three of them, including Mr Hübner himself, I believe. They were unfailingly friendly and helpful and more than willing to help in any way or answer any questions I might have. I found it to be a welcoming piano shop.

I come from a very different piano tradition to most people in Germany. I grew up playing the music of Ireland with some classical thrown in. I never play classical in public and what I used to test the pianos were variations on music from the folk traditions of Ireland, Scotland and Brittany. I was made to feel utterly at home in front of their pianos.

 

 

BR: Coming Home – M. McCaughan

Michael McCaughan is not a writer that I am all that familiar with – this is because I have not tended to read the Irish Times all that much where he has apparently frequently provided dispatches from South America. This book, however, covers his journey around Irish.

I am not sure what sort of a journey it is to be honest.

In the grand scheme of things, the highlight of this book – for me – really should be the discussion he had with Peadar O Riada on the question of native Irish speakers and people of the Gaeltacht and how they may not necessarily overlap. Unfortunately for me, this was somewhat tainted by what I’d consider to be an irrelevant side story about not switching on his tape recorder.

Apart from that book, he dealt with an Irish Times article written by Rosita Boland who questioned the benefit of the time she devoted to Irish. He talked at length about Irish in the North and it seemed clear to me that he felt it was more valued and more supported in the north. He also complained on several occasions that he had not learned anything of the history of the language, and implied this was normal. This annoyed me greatly because I spent two years studying a little book called Stair na Teanga which every student of Irish presenting for the Leaving Certificate both for ordinary and higher level Irish in the 1980s and early 1990s had to learn. It simply is not true to say people did not learn it when people not that much younger than him I think had to. Whether it still features in the syllabus I do not know. The text book we used is on Scribd as it happens.  I’m sure it’s been updated since. By the way, Aidan Doyle has a really interesting looking book on the history of the Irish language between Norman times and independence, details here. I haven’t read it yet myself but someone I trust a lot has been extremely positive about it.

What struck me as a bit annoying about this book, however, was that the writer was happy enough to inflict his Irish on people who did not understand because he needed the practice. He describes an anecdote involving buying a ferry ticket in Clare where he just flatly refused to speak English but complained later about Gaelbores who did exactly that. He described it as ironic when he insisted on Irish even if others in the company could not understand. I’m not sure that “ironic” is the word I would personally choose.

I found this book difficult to swallow. It didn’t attract me to join his journey because it just seemed chaotic and self absorbed. I didn’t feel a love for the language emanating from the pages which I’m sure would shock him. My kind of feeling is that if the whole Irish language thing makes him happy, well that’s grand. But the grá did not come across to me as I read this book. I grew weary of barbed comments about the difficulty of the modh coinníollach for example, and I found it hard to believe that someone who understood Spanish and who had apparently been reasonably good with Irish at school did not know that Irish had masculine and feminine forms.

I highlighted various sections as I read the book with a view to dealing with them in more detail when I sat down to review the book and well…I’m not going to do that now. I did not really enjoy the book at the end of the day, and that’s really all I can say about it.