World of more

2003 - the year of the wedding, at least, that's how I'll remember it. My year so far has been one big morass of marriages, a confusion of ceremonies, a bevy of betrothals, a parade of pairings, a...I think you get the picture. I've received eight invitations, bought nine wedding presents, attended four ceremonies, danced at three ceilidhs and too many cheesy discos, been on two hen nights and one stag night. I've given up nine of my precious weekends (SIX in the last eight weeks) to travel around and outside the country for assorted friends' celebrations. It's been time-consuming, tiring and downright expensive and when asked I express jaded sentiments about my participation in repeated nuptial fandangos. But my world-weary expression is just a facade to impress the naive and inexperienced, in truth each wedding has been an absolute joy. Every event has put its own spin on the particular pleasures of weddings. I've seen the four most beautiful women in...

One of the conditions I imposed before I accepted the offer of becoming a Linhope resident two years ago was to get a cleaner to come weekly to try to impress cleanliness on the cluttered house. A simple rule for a tidier life is not to trust three busy, lazy and male city-types to expend much effort on domesticity; the fur-lined coffee cups and overflowing bins I saw on my first visit bore out my suspicions. It was a wise move, our current cleaner is excellent, cleaning every exposed surface well enough to reveal quite how old and tatty the house really is. Her efforts have made it possible (but not necessarily advisable) to walk on the carpet in socks without stepping in last week's leftover pizza crust, to have a cup of coffee without rooting through the washing up, and I can almost guarantee that at least one saucepan will be clean at any given time. Hard though she works she never can never quite make Linhope resemble the white-linen and mahogany bachelor pad that lives in m...

Vague shapes demarcated by flashing lights rolled through the thick fog draped across Heathrow. From the lounge only two planes could be seen, the rest of the world had disappeared. Despite the gloom the fog layer was thin, perhaps a hundred metres high, and twenty seconds after take-off I was blinded by the sun as the plane left the clouds below. From six miles up the fog was white crayon childishly scrawled over the drab khaki of Britain, as flat and still as a puddle of spilt milk. The blank, bright surface ruptured only by power station cooling towers, fountains of cloud pumping more and more frothy white foam over the landscape.

"Play something funky,", she smiled, swaying uncertainly to either the music pulsing from the speakers close to her head or the hammering effect of the cocktail she was sipping "yeah, play something with a bit of funk in it.". I had to lie, "Sorry, I left my funk records at home.". I don't like funk, never bought any funk records, never owned anything funkier than an Orb dub track, but I couldn't insult her by immediately dissing her taste. "Oh go on, play something funky.". Just for a few seconds, I hated being a DJ. We, that is Ruffles and Spankee (I am Graham Spankee*, Scott is Justin Ruffles **, together we are Ruffles and Spankee***), threw a party this weekend. Although we let my flatmate Barry pretend it was for his birthday, it was really just a chance to get a lot of people we knew, and a fair few we didn't, into a bar and play on our record decks in front of them. Playing music I like to large groups of people is such ...

Apparently, perennial J-Lo botherer P Diddy was presented with the chance of competing in the Stevenage Half Marathon , but he opted for the balmy climate and iconic architecture of New York over the undulating cycle lanes and busy roundabouts of Hertfordshire's finest. Wuss. I'm made of sterner stuff than the hip-hop has-been and on Sunday I lined up with about six hundred others outside some anonymous leisure centre just off the A1 to compete in my second ever half marathon. Conditions were not particularly good, wait, let me rephrase that, conditions were foul, appalling, disgusting. As I arrived torrential rain fell from the low, dark ceiling of cloud and was whipped in all directions by squalling gusts of cold wind. Ankle deep puddles of murky water lined the kerbs and the pavements were covered in a skin of slippery leaf mulch. I met up with my virtual running partner*, Helen, as she pulled another fleece out of her bag and hurriedly wrapped it around herself. She q...

Non-technical readers please look away now. OK, those still with me, prepare for some self-indulgent geekery and a small drum roll - compared to Friday, this website is now totally different. I'll admit it's not different in any visible way unless you're someone who uses a text browser or takes great pleasure in viewing the page source, but nevertheless I spent most of my weekend on a redesign and I'm rather pleased with the result. I've had a nagging feeling I should be doing something with CSS after reading people's bletherings on various blogs , but I never really understood what they were talking about and dismissed it as handwaving by standards-obsessed arty designer types. Then I found this excellent presentation and, with a bit of work-avoidance surfing , realised that CSS was probably fairly straightforward. Like a work related version of the Fire Triangle I remember from GCSE Chemistry, the perfect alignment of motivation, time and the spark of ins...

I tweaked this site a lot over the weekend, and some of you might be experiencing problems with your bookmarks. The proper address for the home page is http://www.worldofmore.com/ (as you should know if you managed to get here). Sorry for the disruption.

After the success of last year's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe trip to Paris, Cairo was selected as the destination for the second annual Linhope Memorial Weekend. The whole of Linhope - that's disorganised Hoxtonite Davis, vociferous paddler Barry and myself - headed to Egypt for three days to meet up with one time Linhope resident Gus , currently working through a three month secondment in Alexandria. Gus acted as tour guide, his time in Egypt giving him knowledge of Cairo and a useful command of Arabic vocabulary. Alas, Gus is rather more fluent in brazen self-confidence than any particular foreign tongue and his frequent emphatic corrections of amused locals became the comedic highpoints of the trip. We didn't mind that his entertaining version of Cairo's history: "The pyramids were built 150 years ago using Victorian steam shovels." didn't quite tally with the guidebook's stories when we could watch him tell the amused waiter with strident fu...

After eighteen months working on a selection of assignments; creating user interfaces in Ipswich, debugging Java code in Glasgow, running requirements workshops in Hereford, I'm back in the corporate head office in London. It's a bit of a culture shock. Every client I've ever worked for has been a corporate idiot, unable to make the correct decision or build a new system without my colleagues and me shouting instructions in their ear and guiding their trembling hands. Working full-time on site with a client has always been frustrating and infuriating. But the best bit about being a consultant is that all the times I've smiled at these fools and ignored their dreadful theories, I've known full well that they aren't my direct employer*. I can sneer (under my breath of course, the professional veneer on my face never cracks) at their lack of direction, technical incompetence or poor canteen facilities, smug in the knowledge that in six months time I won't ...

As well as picking up something of batholiths and synchrotrons, Rutherford and Hutton, I learnt to dance at University. Prior to the tutelage of my college dance mentor I hated dancefloors and the mysterious transformation that occurred to those that strayed into their grasp. I was shamefully unable to move my body like Gary Barlow on Top of the Pops and I despised friends for trying to drag me into their swaying circles at rubbish birthday discos. Jigging to crappy Abba and Europop tunes wasn't fun, it was just a mechanism for humiliating me and my poorly co-ordinated geek comrades. Fortunately, the social life of a small-town boy did not hold many occasions organised enough for dancing, particularly when all events were a reluctant parental taxi ride away. University life increased the embarrassment opportunities, Thursday night was dancing night. Everyone in college congregated at The Pav, a free disco in the cricket Pavilion and the night out partner to Super Hall; the forma...

For Jo n Brian's recent wedding I was given the choice of attending the hen night or the stag night. In bald terms, one of the following options: Option A : Go to Glasgow for the weekend with a large bunch of hard-drinking Scots, Australians and Irish that I don't know. Get beaten up at the Celtic game for being as English as EastEnders and Tim Henman. Get left behind to be picked up by the police when collapsing in gutter outside seedy strip joint. Option B : Spend three days on the beach in Mallorca with my bestest friends . Ogle bikini-clad beauties. Eat paella and drink sangria. Get pink as Pink by being English in the sun. I didn't need much help in selection Option B, but there were unforeseen consequences; apparently I can no longer be considered a man at all. At least that's the inference I drew from the reception I and the other male hen night attendees got at the wedding. I sat at the officially appointed 'singles' table - the table smugly an...

Glaswegian weather is a capricious beast. Although UK weather is notoriously changeable, Glasgow takes meteorological indecisiveness to a higher level, flip-flopping between low grey clouds and soaring blue skies on an almost hourly basis. Opening the heavy hotel room curtains at 8am is a voyage of discovery - the previous night's light drizzle could have been replaced by glorious clear skies, or may just as easily have attained downpour proportions. Bright and clear days are much more common than Scotland's damp, precipitative reputation might ascribe, but the sunlight frightens the pale-faced locals who are used to carrying umbrellas but not sunglasses. Photophobes, they scurry across the broad streets, squinting at the reflections from the white paving stones and glass clad buildings, speeding between dingy offices, dark shops and shady basement bars. To Glasgow's discredit, the town's facilities mirror the locals' vampiric dislike of sunlight and the city ce...

At school, you had friends who liked you when you were unformed, before you became the person you wanted to be. In real terms, they are the last group of people to accept you without judgment or proviso. Scary, isn't it? Barbara Ellen, The Observer Magazine , 31 August 2003 It's not scary if you still list eight or so of your schoolmates as your closest friends. Geography enforces long periods during which we don't see each other en masse (although I can be found watching bad TV in the Ruffles's front room of a Sunday afternoon more often than not) but when important ceremonies overcome separation you'll find all of us laughing at each other on the dance floor as if it were a more relaxed version of a school disco. We congregated on our rural Oxfordshire homeland this week, travelling from London, Aylesbury, Nottingham, Jersey, Australia and New Zealand to celebrate the wedding of one of our number. We went to Mallorca for the hen do (yes, I went to the hen do), ...

My hard work has paid off and I have achieved the exalted status of Silver Card holder for both Radisson Gold Points and the British Airways Executive Club in the same week. It may not sound like much, but just look at these benefits: Access to all BA lounges worldwide, no matter which class you travel in Gather 15% more points for each hotel stay Enjoy FREE drinks at the bar on weekday evenings 10% discount on food and drink during any of your hotel stay Wait, that's not all: FREE accommodation - weekend nights in anonymous corporate hotels located in unappealing industrial estates or horrid concrete Midlands towns MissManners® Club - be 15% more violent and obnoxious whilst barging past those unfortunates who are not members of a loyalty scheme MissManners® Club - be up to 25% more supercilious to all staff before they retaliate and spit in your drink when your back is turned MissManners® Club - queue jump an extra four places ahead (valid only in hotel, but please behave...

My back weighed twenty tons and was made from solid concrete. Invisible hi-tensile hawsers anchored on each shoulder blade left me contorted like a butterfly pinned in a display case, my head was brought up short by unyielding knots of restraining rope when I tipped forward. Pressure was building in the cramped, tight dorsal muscles and could only manifest itself in tension and headaches. It was time to leave the stresses of the office, take advantage of the Radisson Hotel 's spa services and book a massage. In the sterile white treatment room new-age type music tinkled pathetically from the stereo and lightly scented nightlights sat in carved crystal holders on the shelves and ledges. I lay face down on the treatment table covered from the waist down by a towel and waited for Alice to return to the room and start the massage. I knew I was going to hate her, this detestable aromatherapy drenched, alternative hippy pseudo science crap would annoy me, the appalling music would g...

When I was ten it was obvious that my two remaining grandparents weren't real people. A production line in a distant factory created old folk by the bus load (a mould of olds creating a cast of casts) and distributed them around the world to do old people things like drink tea and talk to each other for ever and ever about motorways. There was no connection between their slow, quiet ways and my non-stop zipping and dashing. My mother showed me the black and white photos of twenty five year old Doreen and Jim that hung in the cool, dark hallway, but I couldn't connect them with the aged versions that gave me pretend pipes to smoke and let me help with the crossword. Nor could I connect them with me, twenty five was too far a stretch for my childhood imagination, it was an impossible lie that grown-ups over sixteen grew from us kids under twelve. At twenty, one grandparent poorer, I could mentally rewind time's arrow and turn my grandad's friendly, lined face into that...

Spat out from the Peru flight into the sticky heat of Dallas Fort Worth airport at 9am on a Saturday morning, with seven hours to kill before my next flight, I decided to play intrepid traveller and see what attractions downtown Dallas had to offer. The US's famous car culture is not particularly welcoming to those without wheels and I'd neglected to pack my SUV in my hand luggage. Naoka, the friendly Terminal A voluntary airport ambassador (what's all that about? my kindly Aunt Sylvia used to be a Friend of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, but the American transport infrastructure does not strike me as a particularly worthy recipient of volunteers' time) suggested a $40 cab ride to the town centre, or better still a $20 cab ride to the nearest swanky mall. Schooled by Dervala's minimal spending habits over the previous weeks I balked at the expense and struck off to uncover public transport. Three dollars, one shuttle bus, one half hour wait, one train - a...

You see, the thing is, I've been busy, and they're working me hard, and I'd like to be writing more, but, well.... what she said .

After a few quiet nights in the hotel, I've finally got around to putting up my Inca Trail photos - here .

A series of muffled raps and shakes of the tent poles was followed by the sound of the zip opening, then grubby hands thrust two cups of coca tea and a quiet buenos diaz through the open door. Outside it was still cold and 4am dark but the electric-blue washes of dawn were starting to push above the distant mountains. Extremely early mornings induce a state of quivering, adrenal, apprehension in me which fuelled me through the mechanical camping routines of stuffing body into clothes and spare clothes and sleeping material into bags. Dervala needed little encouragement to do likewise and soon we were stretching and yawning in the cool, damp air of a high mountain dawn. At a sleepy dinner the night before, Raul, our guide, had persuaded us that an early, early start would see us free of the hordes of other trekking groups. He was right, around us lay the grey toadstools of myriad tents, each full of quiet snuffling or snoring noises. Our porters were breaking camp with stage whispe...

The late cancellation of my flight to Cusco and subsequent combination with a later departure meant my window seat on a half-empty plane became an aisle seat on a full plane. Instead of Andean panoramas and glorious cloudscapes I had to content myself with silent comedy films and the annoying bletherings of a middle-aged American woman assailing her travelling companion with stories of healing the scarred Andes with Amazonian river water and quite how wonderful the jungle tribes were. The fortuanate side-effect of such arrant nonsense was that irritation overwhelmed apprehension until I stepped from the plane into Cusco's bright daylight and prepared myself to head for the town centre to meet Dervala. Suddenly, and rather belatedly, nerves and questions popped up in my mind like some mental Whack-a-Mole. What in heaven's name was I doing in the middle of Peru? What was she going to be like? Would we get on? For two weeks? Three hours and thirty e-mails is surely no basis ...

Like Marstonճ 6X and Sardinian Canonau, I donմ travel well. Well obviously I travel well, I can pick my tickets up from my secretary, get on a plane and check-in to a Holiday Inn like I was born to it, but when it comes to sticking a pack on my back and stepping out into a foreign country with nothing more than a sheaf of funny looking money in my wallet and a book of somebody elseճ thoughts on the place I get a dry mouth and itchy palms. Iխ sure Freud would have a field day attempting to identify the deep-seated reasons for all of this, but the fact is when my destiny is placed in my own hands and I have to do something all on my own, such as finding accommodation in a strange town in a foreign language, I get even clammier hands than normal. Personal history is not on my side; at 18 I failed to complete two months of inter-railing across Europe (my peers' plan was some kind of drunken Nirvana soundtracked tour of various cheap campsites), opting instead to spend a month lying on ...

Bored with life's predictable eddies and swirls at Christmas I decided to do something unpredictable and different this year, to step a bit further out of my normal circles and see what the world had to offer. I toyed for a while with the idea of voluntary work sabbaticals or large career switches but couldn't summon up the courage needed for such life-wrenching changes. I needed something challenging but not too disruptive, a source of anecdotes and experience, turning everything upside-down is next year's project. In February an e-mail invitation dropped into my inbox. It was from Dervala, whom I had met for one evening last July , and had been in occasional e-mail contact with as she travelled the world. I had been following her excellent website (which now forms part of my daily work-avoidance half-hour before I reluctantly convert my computer from internet-browsing device to word processor) and knew she was heading to South America. Did I want to join her for a b...

I keep a small machine in the bottom drawer of the chest in my bedroom. It's portable and lightweight, but can only be deployed when conditions are perfect. It runs on numerous different ingredients including Sundays, bad journalism and breakfast tables. It can be part-fuelled by fatigue, the metabolic remnants of Saturday night excesses or it can run solely on like-mindedness and banter. It acts as a lens through which different interpretations of life's underlying truths can be seen. I present to you my Whimsy Generator. A previous use of the machine during a long train ride from Brussels revealed the cow that lives in Phil and Gareth's Putney flat. Its bovine duties were initially restricted to milk production, but after proving trustworthy, its role has been extended to light domestic cleaning and a part-time minicab service named "Tom Harris Cow Taxis" specialising in picking up drunks from Southfields station. A long time ago the Whimsy Generator prove...

The best word to describe the Glasgow Hilton is unappealing. It is a tall, narrow building, a twenty-storey architect's photocopy of myriad other undistinguished hotels and office blocks around the world. On one side lies a red-light district, on the other lies a flaking concrete morass of motorway, bridge and slip road that writhes around the incongruously well kept front lawn. The pedestrian's approach from the city centre is through an unlit tunnel coated in pigeon crap and up the slip ramp dodging taxis. From my room on the fourteenth floor all the architectural and locational tediousness is easily forgiven. I can see far beyond the fringes of the city, where the low hills that fringe the entire horizon stand grey and quiet. I am part of the sky that fades from a clear blue above to a dark blue and sunset oranges elsewhere, scabbed in places with small cloud scuds. In the further reaches of the city, the shiny metal dome of the exhibition centre glints in the remainin...

I haven't felt much like posting recently, as the month gap between this post and the last demonstrates. I can't put my finger on why there's been a hiatus, I could say it was because I've been too busy, but that's always an unconvincing stand-in excuse for a deeper change in priorities. This entry is just to prove to myself that posting is no big effort and prove to you that my writing hands haven't atrophied. More soon. Probably.

For no particular reason I'm doing a 10K fun run around Hyde Park on May 18th. Although I'm not motivated through a desire to be particularly philanthropic, the event is raising funds for a charity called Help a London Child who (according to an e-mail they've just sent me): distribute grants of up to 000 to community and voluntary groups all across London fund projects that will help disadvantaged children and young people (18 and under) including: young carers, after-school clubs, disabled, terminally sick children and many more Appallingly, I am indifferent to Help a London Child's efforts, but if you're feeling eleemosynary you can sponsor me online using nothing more than your credit card and typing fingers. Better still, why not use this as a spur to give some money to an unrelated charity entirely of your choosing.

I wear my MiniDisc player like a coat for walking around town. When the tightly sealed headphones are slotted firmly home in my ears and Deep Dish are coursing through the electronic veins of the glittering little gadget I can ward off the city's roar and watch other's dance to the tune in my head. It's easy to drown in the enormity of the music, and impossible to believe that the sounds wedged into my head are not filling the rest of the world. Soul of Man 's enormous breakdowns must be syncopating the High Street's activities, Orbital 's soaring riffs have to be forcing the sun to shine such a beautiful light, Digweed 's soothing tracks are hushing and calming the train carriage. So I start to move in time too, occasional hand sweeps to introduce new bars, head nods to keep the rhythm, and huge, ear-splitting, pumped up, smiles as the bassline comes back fast and hard from the vertiginous breakdown. I looked a bit of a pillock walking through Ipswich ...

Friday Night 20:00 - Congregate at Linhope. Beforehand you must either have lugged inappropriately large bags of walking kit around your various business commitments all day, or travelled at least 100 miles to get there. 20:15 - Pile into the car, ladies first and in the back, men in the front (it's 'cos the women have shorter legs, or something). Barry gets to pick the music, it's his car; there will always be Bob Dylan, other allowed artistes are The Streets, 2 Many DJs, Lou Reed and any Gangsta Rap (Barry likes to keep it real). On no account will Take That or Abba be allowed. 20:15 - 22:00 - Crank music up very loud and drive very fast on a succession of nearly empty motorways. Have at least one major swearing session at bad drivers. If you are sitting in the back you must fall asleep before leaving the M25. 22:00 - Swap drivers on a cold roundabout. 22:00 - 00:30 - Drive just as fast down some smaller roads, overcook at least one bend. 00:30 - Arrive at dark ...

My work to do list sprawls across an increasing number of pages in my notebook, I'm prevented from consigning entries to the forgotten wastebin of completion by being called into meeting after meeting. The instant I return to my desk I am assailed by yet another person or more documents left for review, and all the while e-mails sleet soundlessly into my Inbox. As it is with work, so it is with my personal life, long term single status having drilled me into never turning down an invitation my diary is filled with all manner of engagements. The variety is fun and fabulous, although the sheer logistics I must master to drag myself and associated belongings across the country for walking in Snowdonia, a dinner party in Leicester, a housewarming in Brighton with a flat and car in Ipswich and a home in London has probably now qualified me for a senior post in the army. And so my hours are filled with rushing and hurrying, ticking off objectives and tasks; type up the minutes, talk t...

Amongst the excellent birthday presents deemed suitable for a thirty year old manchild by my friends - a helicopter ride, a pogo stick, remote controlled cars - my sister bought me a tiny, tiny digital camera . Now to look for more instances of natural beauty.

Like the Queen, I celebrated my birthday twice. On the chronologically accurate date I had to go out for dinner with ten of my work colleagues. Ten days later I threw a big party for everyone I knew (and their friends too). I'd forgotten how nervewracking hosting a party is. The first hurdle to cross (not counting arranging venues and timings) is writing the invite. The task of crafting an amusing, informative and succinct e-mail and ensuring the To: list won't cause offence now induces shallow, panicked breathing and trembling fingers far more than my infrequent public presentation gigs. The memory of previous mistakes such as concentrating so much on a good gag that I've got the directions wrong or omitted the date increases the pressure that is relieved only by that final click of the Send... button. Within fifteen minutes of sending the invite, I'd had six replies all telling me they couldn't come, geographic excuses ranging from Birmingham to Edinburgh to ...

Gus and I packed the boot with winter walking gear; fleeces, coats, down jackets and sleeping bags, bivvy bags, ice axes. When we had no more bags to cram into the car we filled the remaining space with music and set off. A million snare drum snaps and guitar chords from The Streets, The Pixies, The Chemical Brothers and a tiny bit of Bob Dylan fuelled us through the sodium draped Midlands murk into the cold, dark clarity of North Wales. Saturday dawned frost-covered, the sky empty and sharp. Snow-dusted mountains thirty miles away were etched into the cool blue backdrop like photographic negatives, tiny but ornately detailed through the icy air. The car spooled the hills closer and closer until we parked at the base of Tryfan and started walking up Carnedd Dafydd. We soon ascended from the sub-zero shadow of Y Garn into the sunshine that cleanly coloured the steep mountain side. Even with our weighty packs we passed dawdling and unfit groups struggling up the scree and shale pat...

I always thought the age thirty was a place other people went to, not me. From a youth filled perspective, thirty looked like a glamorous place. I imagined that come thirty I'd be a confident professional of indeterminate occupation, immeasurably successful, simultaneously engaging in deeply earnest adult conversations with my interestingly grown-up friends and tousling the hair of an awestruck young nephew. My foibles would have long been ironed out by a gentle maturation, I would be able to achieve anything. And by and large I suppose I've achieved my imaginings, I am a successful professional, I can hold earnest conversations with friends who are now all over 25, the only thing I lack is the awestruck young nephew. But thirty as a glamorous destination has been ruined by the presence of all the extra life baggage that unexpectedly came with me; I like Pickled Onion Monster Munch, I play videogames, I laugh at toilet humour, I show no sign of starting a family. In The Art ...

Don't get attached to anything you can't walk out on in 30 seconds if you feel the heat around the corner. Neil McCauley (Robert de Niro), Heat The Sunday Times Magazine once published a feature (which I can't find online) on those who suddenly acquire wealth through lottery wins, unexpected inheritances etc., to determine if those tabloid stories of "Lottery Win Ruined My Life" had basis in fact. The conclusion was that too much money could spoil things and that five million pounds was the right amount to win, enough to ensure you could lead a comfortable life, but not so much that you could acquire stressful belongings. The downside of wealth was high maintenance possessions - the beach house in Malibu and collection of Ferrari's - that required time and effort to look after. I'm a long way shy of five million quid, but my small, unkempt bedroom is heavy with belongings; CDs stack from floor to light switch, MiniDiscs engulf the toiletries, bag straps ...