Norman Ralph

Following on from the success of the Chris Worfolk Foundation’s Enquiry 2010 conference, where I was a speaker, the organisation will be running another weekend conference this year.

The event will be running over the weekend of 16th and 17th April 2011 in the Scottish city of Edinburgh. Enquiry 2011 will feature headline speakers such as Professor Paul Braterman, author of 59 Seconds Professor Richard Wiseman, journalist Jon Ronson, comedian Robin Ince and Dr Gijsbert Stoet. The event will also feature live music from Carmen De Cruz and a magic show presented by Declan Dineen. Further acts and speakers are due to be announced over the next few weeks.

Tickets are available direct from the foundation’s website and will cost £45 (£35 concessions).

The second week of January is upon us and it seems my diary is filling up faster than I could ever have imagined. I have developed a very bad habit in recent years of making big plans and not really following through with them, with perhaps the exception of the trip to Europe I did last year.

To try and counter that, I am going to post up the things I have planned right now so that I will hopefully see them through. It will also remind me to blog about the events and give me a lot more to say in my review of 2011, rather than the the relatively dismal look back at 2010.

The first major highlight of 2011 I have already organised is a trip to opening night at Opera North’s production of Carmen with my friend Aislin. I really love the opera and have only really started up going to see them again since I met Aislin. It is really cool to have a friend that likes some of the more obscure hobbies that interest me like opera and ballet etc.

Carmen was a natural choice for me to go and see as it is one of my favourites. I have seen a couple of productions of it, although both times were amateur ones, so will be great to see a professional performance.

I am hoping to squeeze in a few more operas this year too following the success of Turn of the Screw last year and what I am sure is going to be an epic experience at Carmen. It will also be my very first opening night!

Next up is a trip to Langdale with some of my family. Langdale is one of my favourite places int he whole world despite its relatively unglamorous reputation in comparison to the rest of the Lake District. For me though, the valley has everything I could possible want from a remote, relaxing holiday destination. It is quite simply a stunning part of the country, a long glacial valley with a few vllages spread out along the valley floor and walled by soe impressive hills. The valley is home to three of my top 5 Lake District pubs, the Old and New Dungeon Ghyll hotels and the Wainwright Inn.

February also sees Andrew’s stag night, which will be an interesting experience as it will be my first ever stag do. Andrew is getting married in Jamaica in March which i can’t afford to attend, so it is my intention to make sure he gets a fantastic send off! Whilst I am talking about Andy, I should probably plug his great football blog that is probably his one true love (sorry Laura).

I have two trips abroad planned for April this year. The first is to go an see a band I really like play live in Dublin. Josh Ritter is doing a few dates in Europe as part of his tour and Dublin was the cheapest place to go and see him play. The other two cities he is doing in British Isles are Edinburgh and London and at the moment, both of those places are more expensive to get to and stay over in than Dublin. So look out Emerald Isle, I am coming for a party.

I plan to head over to Dublin on a Thursday and stay until Sunday, hopefully getting in a tour of the Guinness brewery as well as maybe seeing some of the sights and sounds of one of Europe’s capital cities.

The second trip in April is a little more ambitious. I hope to go and visit a friend of mine who is currently working for the British government in New York City. I am hoping to get out there for a week or so around Easter time to take advantage of the bank holidays (meaning I have to take less annual leave from work). I have never been to the Big Apple before, other than layovers at the airports there. I am not usually a city fan and prefer countryside and remoteness over the hustle and bustle of one of the world’s most populous conurbations. However, it is one of those cities that is everyone’s must visit list and that includes me. I want to be able to say I have see Time square, visited central park and been up the Empire State building.

I am going in April so that I have a chance of catching a ball game at Yankee stadium but I haven’t actually checked the schedules to see if this is going to be possible.

Following that is not going to be easy, but I have plans to go on holiday to Malta at the start of summer with my mum. Normally I would never consider Malta as a holiday destination, but on seeing the photos and stories my mum and auntie told when they visited the island a couple of years ago I was instantly sold on the idea. Malta has a rich history, perhaps best known for its role in the second world war where the nation and its people were awarded the George Cross for resisting the axis powers.

June sees the long awaited marriage of two good friends of mine, Bryony and Chris. They have been together for over five years and I don’t think anyone could imagine them not getting married. The ceremony is taking place at Lincoln Cathedral and I have the honour of being one of the ushers. I have been to quite a few weddings over the years, but this will be my first as a participant (of sorts) and the first of my generation of friends. Technically Laura and Andrew get married earlier, but as they will be in Jamaica and I will be in Leeds I don’t think it counts.

The final plans for 2011 are less entrenched than those above. I want to try and get back to Venice in the Autumn as I had such a fantastic time there last year and would love to spend a few more days there, perhaps an extended weekend. I aim to also spend more time in my role on the management board of the AHS as I feel that the next 18-24 months for the organisation could be key to its continued success.

I hate “New Year”.

For as long as I can remember I have hated new year celebrations. Not so much the actual celebrating – I like a drink and a party as much as the next guy – but the fact that celebration takes place at all. Wht do we celebrate the transition from 31st December to 1st January? Maybe a more improtant question, is what are we actually celebrating with this quasi-festival?

Many will answer that we are celebrating the end of one year and the start of the next – a traditional rebirth metaphor On the surface, this seems a fairly good answer, if a little pagan, as this cyclical nature of death and rebirth is so ingrained in the human psyche that it would be stranger to miss a chance to celebrate the metaphor given half a chance.

My question to those that support this view would be why this particular point in the Earth’s orbit of the sun? There is at least some demarcation in other rebirth metaphors – night into day, phases of the moon, literal life and death – but this is just one of many opportunities to celebrate the fact that the planet is still orbiting its star.

Some argue that we are celebrating the fact we are moving from one calendar year to the next. This is perhaps a little more forgivable than the first argument as there is at least some demarcation. We are ripping up the calendar for 2010 and crakcing out the calendar for 2011 (I went from a Trinity Hospice in the Fylde calendar to a Marvel one).

It is far harder for me to find fault with this argument, although it still feels an arbitrary reason. I mean the calendar we use today was invented by Pope Gregory XIII to prevent Easter having to move all the time as the previous calendar had slightly miscalculated the vernal equinox, meaning the year was 11 minutes too short.

As an atheist and veritable anti-papist, I find it a little odd that I am supposed to celebrate the continued use of a tool invented to control congregations and ensure the continued influence of the Catholic Church on modern life. Don’t get me wrong here, I am fully aware that the calendar as a popular tool today has little to do with the Catholic Church and its continuing influence. However, I find it just as difficult to celebrate Christmas with its historical ties to Christianity and that tradition is well over 1000 years old. New Year as we know it less than 300 years of tradition (Britain didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752).

The third argument (although I have only ever heard it once from a Catholic friend of mine) is the celebration of the circumcision of Jesus. This one I have absolutely no problems with. If people want to celebrate this then go ahead. Obviously, this defence only works for those sects of Christianity and Messianic Judaism that believe and therefore celebrate this. I don’t believe in Jesus as a god (and barely believe in him as a figure from history) and certainly would never celebrate the barbaric act of none-medical circumcision under any circumstances.

The final argument (and the one that my skeptical and atheist friends tend to fall back on) is one of opportunity. Why should we pass up on a chance to party just because the historical or traditional rationale for the party doesn’t hold up. Why can’t we celebrate an arbitrary festival for arbitrary (or no) reason?

Whilst there are idealistic flaws with this argument, these tend to come from contrarianism rather than any real evidentiary basis. This argument is clearly the hardest to refute as it basically says “who cares?” and in my experience, the answer is “very few”.

So, I continue to party at new year. I also continue to have this argument with anyone that will listen in the hope that one day someone will offer a better option than “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

Any ideas then feel free to add a comment!

2010 started quietly for me on the blogging front, apart from my Twitter updates my first real blog post was about the 10:23 Homeopathy Overdose Project (which I was unfortunately unable to attend due to work commitments) and my strongly worded letter to David Cameron.

February was another quiet month on the blog front although I did spend a week in the Lakes and come hoem to find my house was flooded which left me without a PC for nearly a month.

March saw me foolishly making some long term plans about future living arrangements as well as celebrating Normanralph.com’s 3rd birthday. I also gave up my car to cut down on costs and get ready for city centre living.

A good friend of mine was deported in April and threatened with death on his return to his native Pakistan. Leeds Atheist Society ran Reason Week 2010 and I started following Major League Soccer.

In May I spent a lot of time preparing for my speaking engagement at CWF’s Enquiry conference in Birmingham. I also split up with my partner and moved in with Chris and George.

June was world cup month, so the less said about it the better, but I was hardly in a celebrating mood following the events of the previous month.

I spent most of July running around the country with work, really throwing myself in to my job.

Blackpool started their Premier League campaign during August and I started to really get ready for my trip of a lifetime. The month finished with a really great weekend with Sarann at Solfest.

Eurotrip 2010 took up September. In three weeks Chris, Kieran, George and I took in Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Munich, Salzburg, Venice, Verona, St Gallen, Montreux, Monte Carlo and Jard-Sur-Mer. I also turned 26.

October was a catching up month. I was working a lot to pay off Europe and to make sure that I got my best ever performance review to date.

I was off around the country again in November. Taking in an audience with Greg Epstein and a load of gigs.

December saw me celebrate the success story of Blackpool FC’s season in the Premier League so far as well as the contribution made by their manager. I also found time to go and see Tim Minchin thank god for Sam’s Mum’s Cateracts.

As you can see, it has been a mixed bag of a year. Some real highs in the form of Eurotrip and the number of gigs I’ve managed to catch, but also some real lows.

I think 2011 might be OK, there are some things that I am already really excited about seeing how they pan out as well as some concrete plans to go to Dublin, Malta and maybe even back to Verona over the summer. I also have some great work to do with some of the organisations I support i.e. the AHS and BHA as well as continuing to build up my own career and developing some projects of my own.

Here’s to you 2011.

I have been lucky enough to get to a number of gigs over the last month or so and I thought I would put a quick post up about them.

November started with Linkin Park at the MEN Arena in Manchester. I used to love Linkin Park back when I was a youngish teenager but I have to admit that I had kind of drifted away from their music over the last few years, bar the odd scream-along at Wendy House when one of their singles came on. This meant I surprised myself as much as anyone else when I suggested to Chris that I tagged along with him to go and see them play.

The gig was pretty good all round, despite the fact we were sat at the back of the arena on the upper tier (about as far away from the stage as possible). Their new material from the album A Thousand Suns is really good, but not necessarily designed for arena tours. I felt that they blended the new stuff in pretty well with their older material. Chris posts his views on the gig here, where he disagrees with my view on this.

I had a really good time at the concert and it was fun to relive some of my angsty youth.

The second gig of the month was a freebie from work in recognition of some of the work I have been doing over the last few months. I got an email on a Thursday to say that I had been awarded two tickets to see a concert at the MEN on the Friday (as in the next day!) This was quite a shock and meant that I would have to arrange travel etc to Manchester and find someone to go with. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but for some reason whenever I get tickets to stuff from work there never seems to be anyone that wants to go.

Luckily for me, the tickets were to see Gorillaz, which is an awesome band, so I didn’t mind the last minute running around trying to sort everything out. The other lucky break was that another girl from my ofice had also won tickets, so meant that it didn’t matter if I found someone to go with I could always tag along with her and her partner. Little did I know at this stage that the running around trying to find someone to come would prove to be the least stressful thing of the whole occasion!

I left work on the Friday at three-thirty and headed back to my colleague’s house to grab a quick drink and then catch a train from Dewsbury to Manchester. This journey normally takes a little over an hour, however on this occasion it took nearly 4 hours, including having to change at Rochdale due to the train being too late to carry on!

Anyway, we eventually made it to the gig about 2 hours later than expected and got into the arena just in time to see that last couple of songs by the support act, De La Soul, who were really rather good. Chris showed up just as Gorillaz started (see his story here) and we enjoyed a fantastic show. The event was made even sweeter by the realisation that all our drinks and food were on expenses.

The Gorillaz themselves were really good. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect as I struggled to work out how an animated band would translate to real life performance, but Damon Albarn really pulled it off with his high energy style and fantastic animation of the band on the giant screen on stage.

I am not a huge Gorillaz fan beyond a few of their singles, but the concert was really good (the free beer helped no doubt) and I would recommend them to anyone who wants a really fun, live band who don’t take themselves too seriously!

The final gig of November saw me head to York’s Theatre Royal to see comedian Kevin Bridges perform. I have come across Kevin Bridges a few times, mainly on TV shows like Mock The Week and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, and I have always found him to be really funny. He is a Glaswegian and proud of it and has some fantastic material covering crazy people, nostalgia and self-image issues.

I went with some friends from work and we enjoyed a few beverages on the train and then in York, which is always a nice palce to go drinking, before heading to the theatre. The support act was a young Scot whose name escapes me now, but he was funny enough and a good warm-up act using plenty of crowd interaction to get us in the mood. Kevin’s set was fairly long and had me in stitches quite a few times. The funniest part of the night was when he learned (from a member of the audience) that suit pockets are really pockets and if he undid the temporary stitching he could use them. They say everyday’s a school day!

Again, an act I would recommend to those that like some not too mainstream comedy but also not too alternative. A good laugh.

So, well and truly biten by the travel bug since my return from Europe at the weekend, I have been looking with envy at all my friend’s travel plans. An old uni friend is heading off to West Africa for the best part of four months starting in October. She has started a blog to keep track of her progress so I recommend you all keep an eye on it and leave encouraging messages!

Enjoy!

With only a couple of days left of our trip round Europe, I thought I would write a quick post from our gite in Jard-sur-Mer, France to sum up the last few days and throw out some thoughts on the trip as a whole.

We have been staying in gite in a little village just north of La Rochelle where the order of day has been swimming in the pool and drinking rather large quantities of beer and cocktails. This frivolity has been interspersed with good cheese and plenty of barbecued steak!

We really haven’t done much, although this has entirely been by design due to the 3000 miles we had clocked up on our whistle stop tour of Western Europe.

I have enjoyed the relative serenity of the Atlantic coast and have caught up on reading and quiet contemplation, but I do rather miss the channelled excitement of venturing into a new city and the joy of the open road (even the Italian ones).

I’m really glad I got the chance to do this trip and I have made a decision about what order to visit the cities we have encountered en route. Venice and Salzburg were two cities that I am already looking forward to revisiting and Luxembourg still holds some pull due to the fact we only got a taste of its allure.

Part of me is a little surprised that the four of us managed to live so closely for so long without any major eruptions or falling outs, but maybe those fears were unfounded as we have all spent plenty of time together in the past.

The photos from our trip are starting to appear on Facebook and Twitter. Kieran’s website is still tracking our hashtag and movements, so check it out for developments over the last couple of days of our trip.

Our ferry back to the UK departs St Malo at about 10am on Saturday so we should be back in Leeds in the early hours of Sunday morning when real life must start again.

.This is the penultimate blog post for the driving part of our European road trip. Tomorrow night we stay in Monte Carlo, Monaco then we head to France for a week of chillaxing on the Atlantic coast.

The drive through Switzerland today was a tale of two halves. The first was a twisty turny drive through central Switzerland followed by a rush through the motorways of the south western region of the country.

We set off from St Gallen at around 11.30 after a brief wander around the old part of the city and the monastery buildings (which make up a world heritage sight). We arrived in Montreux at a little after 5pm. Following the Alpine scenery of yesterday was always going to a be a tough job, but Lake Geneva has managed to do a darned good job!

The lake is really beautiful, and the mountainous backdrop adds a real sense of drama. Montreux sits on the ‘Swiss Riviera’ and enjoys a much milder climate than the surrounding region.

We watched the sun set behind the mountains whilse enjoying some fantastic French/Italian fusion cuisine. Kieran had mussel pizza! I enjoyed a great (in both taste and size) bowl of moules marieniere et frites.

I am writing this post sat on the lake terrace of the hotel enjoying a cold beer; and whilst I have enjoyed every second of the trip so far, I am really looking forward to some well earned rest and relaxation in La Rochelle.

I will be posting a few times in France, but it won’t be every day. Please keep commenting on my posts and following my Twitter feed

Well my laptop is dead. So rest of posts will be made from my Blackberry, which means no pics. What I will do I’d try and upload some pics as separate posts when we have wifi connectivity. I’m not going to post them on 3g.

Back on topic, we have spent a 2nd day in Italy today. The first time on the trip we have spent consecutive nights sleeping within the same national borders!

We left Venice for Verona at around 1pm having spent the morning walking through the narrow streets and soaking in as much of the history and magic of the city as possible.

It is impossible to describe how completely bewildered yet enchanted Venice has left me. If it were possible to form a romantic attachment to a city, Venice and I would be starting some some of affair right now.

Anyway, enough of the hyperbole and cliche. We decided to shun the motorways and highways of Italy for some country roads on our hop from Venice to Verona. We experienced some great rural scenery and some colourful Italian driving! I could (and maybe will) dedicate a whole post to the crazy and apparent random nature of Italian driving. I haven’t had the pleasure of driving in Italy yet, but part of me is looking forward to the experience and the other half is saying it would rather climb a mountain in 2nd gear behind a coach!

We arrived in Verona in the early evening and headed straight out into town. We wandered the old town streets, taking photos of old churches and marvelling at the architecture and culture of this Shakespearean corner of Italy until we decided to get down to the serious business of eating and drinking some of Italy’s finest exports. Namely lasagne and wine. I was responsible for lasagne and Chris for wine, and I think we handled our tasks well, even if our waiter interpreted a glass of sweet white wine as a glass of rich red.

A few beers later we headed off to finish our odyssey by visiting the Casa da Giuletta. Unfortunately, the courtyard was closed for what looked like a private photo shoot, but we could see enough to make out the fact that most people thought that touching the bosom of Juliet’s statue would bless their relationship.

Tomorrow is my birthday, which will be spent crossing the Alps into St. Gallen, Switzerland. Apparently the town’s university has one of the most ornate libraries in Europe.

As always, please keep up to date by visiting my homepage or on Twitter. You can follow our real time progress on Kieran’s page here.

Following the relative peace and calm of day one of our trip to Europe, where I had time to blog about my day, have a nap and change my shirt before going out for dinner, today has been rather more busy. After consuming a rather charming full English breakfast for a modest fee, we left the sights and sounds of Amsterdam behind us and hit the road for day two of out trip.

It is probably worth mentioning here that I was the designated driver to kick start today’s proceedings, which meant navigating us through the streets of inner city Amsterdam and getting us safe and sound onto the motorway heading for Eindhoven. I have never driven in Europe in my life, never mind city centre driving, so it was all a bit of an experience. Luckily, Kieran has a VW Golf which is very similar to my old polo so I picked up the driving mechanics pretty quickly. The difficult bit wasn’t the driving on the right, or the fact the car was pretty much dead weight with all the gear we had packed in, but the fact I just couldn’t get my lane positioning right due to the driving position relative to the other road users. It took me the few kilometres of Amsterdam’s arterial routes to really get to grips with and then perhaps the next twenty or so kilometres of the motorway to put that into practice. However, after a little over an hour after setting off, I reckon I have the hang of this whole driving thing again. Although, we won’t mention the few near misses we encountered when negotiating a roundabout in Luxembourg!

The drive to Eindhoven was pretty unremarkable in all fairness, although we knew that from the outset as we had consciously decided to try and make it pretty much to Belgium on the motorway then head off the beaten track for the rest of the day.

My driving stint ended a few kilometres north of Eindhoven when I swapped with Chris after filling the tank. Chris then took us into Belgium (where we posed for the obligatory photo) and through the Flemish region, again fairly uneventfully, until we hit the French region around Huy. We lunched at a Belgian supermarket before setting off again towards Luxembourg.

It was my turn again to drive when we set the sat-nav to Bastogne and headed for the national park. We had a few navigational hiccups involving filter lanes, 4-leaf clover junctions and an off piste search for a bathroom, but we made it to the Belgian/Luxembourg border pretty much unscathed. t was here that I decided to not see the car coming from our left when I pulled out onto a mini-roundabout. Luckily nothing happened apart from maybe turning a few of all our hairs grey and we could chalk it down to a experience and a few tweets at my expense.

The last stage of the journey was through mountainous north Luxembourg, which Kieran piloted without incident, where we took one of the most scenic routes I have had the pleasure of driving along. Definitely one of the high points of the trip so far.

We made it into Luxembourg a little after seven and by the time we were all checked in and had quaffed a beer or two the city was starting to be cloaked in darkness. I managed to get aa couple of snaps in of Notre Dame Cathedral and of the road leading up to the cathedral from our hotel, but the light was pretty bad by then and my Blackberry’s camera isn’t that great at night anyway.

The part of the city that overlooks the canal and leads down the rather steep cliff faces towards the canal itself is really rather something. Irt was beautifully eerie and romantic. The atmosphere, architecture and road layouts really made it something to behold. Definitely somewhere I would visit again with a special some one. Very, very romantic indeed! Pity I had to share the moment with Chris, George and Kieran!

By 9pm we were all starving so started to look for somewhere to eat. it seems that Luxembourg is not a weekend city as almost every restaurant was shut or shutting. We eventually found a nice little Chinese place still serving where we ate heartily before heading back to the hotel.

Driving is tiring work, so we are all pretty shattered right now. It is after midnight local time at the moment and everyone else hit the sack a while ago. I am determined to try and get a post up every night of the trip, so please read and comment as it means I am more motivated to burn the candles at both ends to bring you my thoughts and experiences from the trip.

Tomorrow we are making the 500km trip to Munich via the Black Forest and we are planning to have left Luxembourg by around 9am, so not long for me to sleep now!

As always you can follow my thought and progress via my homepage or Twitter account, or the live tracking of our trip at Kieran’s site.