Voice of the Alter Ego

Cold

2011-10-17T20:16:00.005+01:00

Two red eyes, stare at me malevolently from the darkness, unblinking, unwavering, heartless.

I know in my heart they've been there, lurking throughout, but during the halcyon days, I have been able to put them out of my mind, my thoughts, almost convincing myself that they were gone, resigned to the fact they no longer had sway over me, that they no longer had relevance for me.

But I knew, in my heart they would be back. I knew I was not free.

So now I find myself locked into a optical stalemate, unwilling to break the gaze for fear of....well...for fear. Thoughts of Dr Who; don't blink, DO. NOT. BLINK. No wonder that episode had such resonance, plumbing such a primordial fear.

Maybe if I back away, slowly, carefully close the door, they will give up, go away, find some other place to haunt, some other person to torment. It has to be worth a try?

Doesn't it?

Fingers close on the edge of the door and so slowly, begin its arc, all the time maintaining a mantra of smooth...smooth..don't rush...don't slam...

Finally, the door is closed. Not shut fast, but close enough. Or not. For I find myself filled with the need to check. Are they still there? Do our fears only exist when the door is open? Are they no more than the light in the fridge?

I won't look.

I won't.

I don't want to. Please don't make me.

But I know I must. I must confront those two red eyes and know, once and for all if they are truly back.

I crack the door, just enough to dart my head forward, to see without being seen, and immediately wish I hadn't.

They stare back at me, confirming my deepest fears, knowing now, all doubts and uncertainty banished, replaced with the certainty of cold, of darkness, of pain, of the struggle to remember the days of light and laughter and warmth.

The red eyes stare at me, silently mocking me with the knowledge. The knowledge that winter is here and my central heating and hot water have come on.

Who IS that?

2011-10-04T19:44:00.002+01:00

Have you ever looked at a picture and, for a moment, not realised that the person in it is you?

Have you ever found yourself looking back at a time and place and almost feeling that the memories, the emotions, the thoughts and feelings it evokes are almost a fiction, a narrative that happened to someone else?

I've been reading some of my posts and, apart from spotting some grammatical mistakes I either didn't notice or couldn't be bothered to correct at the time, I find myself almost detached from them, as if I'm reading the meanderings of another mind.

I dint know if this is normal, a side effect of the impulsive and unplanned nature of my jottings or whether it's the first signs of the reality I'd joked about - that my blog would act as a way for me to remember when my memory fades. Either way, I'm hoping I will enjoy what I read and, rather more importantly, if you come across this, that you enjoy reading it too.

Heck, if your memory goes too, I hope you enjoy reading it again and again!.

Have you ever

2011-10-03T17:05:00.002+01:00

Have you ever pretended to be someone you're not?

I'm sure you have. All of us have at some point in our lives, whether that's pretending to be someone we're not in the school playground (I have a feeling that, for a while, I was Jacques Cousteau's son - not a good plan if you don't speak a word of French).

Or perhaps, in later life, in an interview. I remember once explaining that I had a PhD in the articulation of arthropod knees and it's potential application to the creation of hinged cricket stumps.

I didn't get the job which, I seem to remember, was for a trainee manager's position with HFC Bank.

Later still, some of you may have experienced the joy that is online dating. Many MANY people there pretend to be someone they're not. I know this from personal and anecdotal experience. I don't just mean the 'lop-a-couple-of-years-and/or-a-couple-of-pounds-off-the-profile' type creative accounting, but the full blown 'are-you-SURE-I-didn't-mention-my-three-wives-and-seventeen-kids' type creativity. My personal favourite was the chap who claimed to be a Squadron Leader in a Tornado squadron of the RAF. He turned up in full uniform on at least one occasion, used military jargon in all his emails and actually promised his girlfriend (a friend of mine) a flight.

He turned out to be an Estate Agent.

Still, if I were an estate agent, I'd probably lie too.

Of course, this can work to your benefit, as I'm becoming convinced that whatever you say about yourself, people now automatically add several years/pounds or deduct several..... what IS the collective noun for hairs?....... bushells? That'll do. Several bushells of hair. So when you actually ARE what you say, it can work to your benefit.

I hope.

But despite honesty in that arena, we all sometimes pretend to be someone we're not. I just did it. Just now. I've done it before, but this time it somehow hit me. Maybe it's "that" time of year. Whatever the reason, it's not something I felt good about.

I just sent my daughter an email with her motor insurance certificate.

I told her to check it carefully and let me know if anything was incorrect.

I told her to keep a copy with the car.

I signed it "Dad".

And it suddenly struck me.

I'm an imposter.

I'm not 'Dad'. Dad is Dad. I'm me. His son.

I feel all unsettled.

Think I need to go and talk to Dad.

The sound of silence

2011-09-20T11:01:00.003+01:00

I think the silence is the worst thing.

It’s not just the absence of sound, but something that is almost physical, cloying, thickening the air around me and dampening all other noises so they seem unable to penetrate it,to break through. I hear noises and, for a second, I think she’s home, in her room, chatting excitedly on the phone in that tone of voice reserved exclusively for anyone who isn’t her parent.

But it’s not her and the silence almost seems to deepen in malicious, gleeful response.

Earlier, I stood at the foot of her bed, the duvet thrown back exactly as it had been when she’d got out of bed this morning, the pillow still bearing the indent of her head. I notice, with a vision grown suddenly acute, a stray hair on the pillow and resist the impulse to gather it up, hold it in my hand. G-d forbid I should smell it. My acute vision blurs, acuity lost as, once more, the tears well up unbidden, unresisted.

So much has changed in such a short time. Just hours ago my life, if not exactly revolving around her any more, was still constrained within the confines of her needs. Would she be home for dinner? Was she going to be with me at the weekend? Did she need a lift somewhere? This last despite the fact that she now had her car, the little purple monstrosity inherited from a generous Aunt that, in such a short time, became almost as much a financial drain as another child and even more demanding.

Oh yes, the car. It now sits, unloved and un-needed on my Mother’s drive, almost recriminating with me for not taking it shopping, to a party, out for pasta. Yet even if I drove it, I feel it wouldn’t respond to my silence, to the radio, missing the laughter, the shouting, the unique coded language that she and her friends shared, excluding anyone old enough to remember the days when social networking meant meeting people.

G-d but I hate this silence.

I make a mental note to see if I can reduce the number of channels on the cable TV package. It was only a matter of weeks since I proudly told her I’d extended them, giving her access to channels I knew she’d watch in 6 second bursts, as the remote control was punched repeatedly at the screen in some sort of cathode-ray gunfight at the OK Corral. I make a mental note to stop thinking of things on TV I need to tell her about, to stop buying DVDs we can watch together as we eat dinner off trays on our laps.

What to make for dinner? Suddenly I don’t have to worry about what she will want, whether she will like it. I don’t have to consider a menu that will entice her to spend an evening with me, rather than being out with her friends, although perhaps that would have, should have prepared me for this feeling of emptiness, of loneliness. For this terrible aching silence.

I dread the next Friday night dinner at my Mother’s, knowing that the empty chair, the un-set place will be a hole in the fabric of my life, sucking my gaze inexorably into it, almost believing if I stare hard enough, she will be there, a light at the end of the tunnel. I find myself wishing I had a tape of her voice, like the one I made for her when, terrified and crying, she went on her first school trip to York. I made a recording of our ritual goodnight and embedded it in a teddy bear, so it would be my proxy when she hugged it at night.

I could do with a hug. I really could do with a hug right now.

I think of where she has gone and, fleetingly, I wish I could have gone with her.

I should have. She shouldn’t have had to go there alone. No child should have to go through that without a loving father by her side.

But where she has gone, I can’t follow. My life has to continue on its own path, a path suddenly more bleak, yet I know in my heart she would not want me to be with her, she would want me to carry on with my own path and not deviate from it to be with her.

That is, after all, why she decided to go to University in Birmingham and move away from home. I was so excited when she got the place, even though I knew it would mean her moving out. To think, I was worried about how SHE would feel.

Who knew?

Al Green

2010-08-11T09:39:00.005+01:00

I wonder why it is that I only really feel the urge to 'Blog' at times of emotional excess? Loneliness, sadness, OK - embarrassment, joy (although I'll have to read back and see if there many of those), all seem to bring on the urge to write something here.

Perhaps it's because I don't really seem to have anyone else I can truly TALK to? I have friends, I have family.

In that order.

But do I really, honestly have someone I can TALK to. Someone who will listen without feeling the need to speak. Someone who will hear what I have to say without feeling the need to tell me I'm wrong?

No, not really.

I've never been good at 'friends'. I don't mean I'm incapable of having, and BEING a good friend, I'm not. To assorted people throughout my life, I have been a very good friend.

That may be part of my problem, but let's park that for now.

I think however that I am a victim of my parents. Don't get me wrong, they were superb parents and set an example to me in many ways that I will always struggle to live up to as a parent myself. I sometimes wonder if this is an aspect of my generation. Somehow, we just don't seem to be as 'grown up' as our parents were.

Maybe a war does that to you?

Or maybe it's just a perspective thing, and our own parents felt the same about theirs, viewing post-Victorian morals and mores as the sign of being adult, whilst they jived and jitterbugged and... OK, so my knowledge of dance is as limited as my knowledge of Psychology and self-insight, but that's what happens when you have two left feet.

However, my parents, whilst possessing a large social circle, often through various committees and groups, they only had a small circle of true friends. Growing up, we saw a lot of these people, so there never seemed any kind of vacuum, but I noticed that, once my Father had died, my Mother struggled and, sadly, many of these friends couldn't cope and deserted her. Over recent years, even more sadly, almost all of her closest friends have themselves passed away, leaving her increasingly isolated and angry.

We deal with this, supporting her as much as we can, but as I intimated above, friends and family are, largely, not interchangeable. She feels the gulf in her life and I find myself wondering if she regrets focusing on a small circle of true friends.

Perhaps it's not a choice we can make. Perhaps, in truth, it's the way we're wired as individuals, nature, or instilled in us from an early age. The eternal debate.

All I know is, I sit here today, conscious that, yet again, I feel so very alone. It's not helped by being a private person in some respects, or by being someone who doesn't really enjoy many of the group activities - football, drinking, team sports - that my peer group use to create and maintain social bondings, but I can't help feeling that I need to make a concerted effort to address this.

But it's not all about friendships, as I want so much more.

I am someone who has always invested heavily in relationships. Sometimes, many times, this has been to my detriment. Yet holding back doesn't seem to work for me either.

Bloody difficult.

I have been told I am a good person, a kind person. That hated term, a 'nice' person. I have been told that women don't like b@st@rds. I am told that even those women who blatantly DO like b@st@rds will, ultimately, see the error of their ways and will want a nice man.

This, it would seem, is b******s.

Maybe that's a generalisation, but I can only base it on my own experience. Of course I am aware that I have my own failings and that whether you consider being 'nice' to be one of them depends on your point of view. These other failings may perhaps outweigh niceness as a positive feature, but even so, I see no sign of it being more than a short-term attractant, almost a novelty or bit of light relief.

So I will have to change, become that which I despise. Overcome the nurture AND nature and focus on MY needs, MY desires and if they come at the expense of someone else's, well, so be it. I need to become selfish.

Yeah.

Right.

Not gonna happen.

I know that, in the unlikely event that I COULD do that, I would actually find that, the end result is that I wouldn't like myself. I realise that, actually, I like nice people and I like who I am, at least in that respect. If I have to change to be with someone, then I will be alone.

I don't want to date. I don't want to look back at each year past and tick off all the people I've been out with. I don't want to kiss a lot of frogs. I know I'm unlikely to have an 'eyes meeting across a crowded room' moment.

Not least because I'm not big on crowded rooms.

Or frog-ponds.

But I think this is something else I can blame on my Parents and, in particular, my Mother. I was brought up on a diet of 1940's and 50's romantic films, which has perhaps left me expecting exactly that, complete with the string section of a hidden orchestra and soft focus (much to my benefit). The fact that, once our eyes have met, I cannot glide across the floor to her like Fred Astaire is a slight hitch but one that, with lessons and appropriate footwear, I'm sure I can overcome to some extent.

Maybe the soft focus will help mask the two left feet?

Maybe not.

But how many other people my age can sing (OK, chant) the lyrics to "I hear music, and there's no-one there"? More to the point, how many people my age WANT to?

Not including those addicted to hallucinogenic drugs.

I'm feeling vulnerable and an element of self-pity at the moment, but with a few more cups of coffee, it will pass.

I'm sure what I want is no more than what most people want, but sometimes, just sometimes, I have a feeling that someone forgot to tell me one important piece of information.

That, of course, is rubbish.

So perhaps, for now, I need to take the advice my Grandmother gave me, which is that "when you can't find something, look for something else and you will find it".

Problem is, I can't find so many things: Car keys, wallet, inspiration, the £10 winning lottery ticket from a couple of months ago, the 'koyach' to make some of the phone calls I need to, the right words to say to my Mother, my Daughter, myself, that I'm running out of things I CAN look for.

So, I'm off to look for the Holy Grail, Unicorns and the Philosopher's Stone and, in the meantime, will leave behind something I could find.

I have always loved music, although it seems to weave in and out of my life, touching key events and times and leaving a footprint, like those in the cement of Hollywood Boulevard, indelible and permanent. A marker, saying "You were here then, and, at that moment, I was here with you".

A little like this Blog.

Musings on a Park Bench and a Blackberry

2010-04-14T20:14:00.002+01:00

I sit on the bench, placed on a small area of green in an otherwise stony promenade, vain attempts at the mimicry of a Cote D'Colour otherwise doomed to failure by climate and psyche. But my bench, and it's small patch of natural green evoke the smells of my youth; cut grass, wind-borne salt, burgers.

Before me, a small-yacht marina. Row upon row of retirement fund dreams, weekend delusions of Kontiki or Captain Cook, whilst belowdecks the thoughts are more of Harvey Niki and Captain Bligh.

The wind stirs my grass and with it the furled rigging, metal implements that exist beyond my knowledge of name or purpose, striking the aluminium masts, creating an anvil chorus of a thousand effeminate dwarfish smiths.

The seafront is dead. Despite the sun sinking low in the sky in a denial of the stereotyped weather I had been promised, only a smattering of pattering trainer-clad feet pass my patch, theirs owners lost in the intricacies of music from distant shores, denying the cultural heritage proclaimed from every road sign.

In the distance, a clock tower lends it sonorous chimes to the dwarfs, a counterpoint and gentle admonishment, a teacher gently demonstrating without discouraging: then the moment is past and the Dwarfs continue their discordant song, but more quietly now, as they realise that only I and the small black dog are their audience, the former with no ear for their music, the latter's perhaps keen enough to hear their subtleties, or too polite to criticise by walking away.

My shadow lengthens, pointing the way back to my beautiful, luxurious, soulless and oh-so-lonely hotel, reminding me that a reverie can only ever be an interlude. An interlude now ended by youths in hats that, unaccountably, make me angry. Is this the sum of what I have become? A man who gets angry at hats?

The Sun continues to shine, but it's capacity to heat has long past, like an elderly body-builder, it is merely going through the motions, oblivious to the quiet scorn of the audience. It is time to return, to leave my patch and face my evening. Will I carry the memory of this patch with me, or will it fade like so much else, leaving just the distant sound of tiny anvils and the disdain of the small black dog?

Travel, they tell me, broadens the mind. New sights, sounds, sensations. But alone, they almost feel like a critique. Home is not wherever you lay your hat, but where it doesn't make you angry.

Two in the bush

2010-02-28T03:07:00.004Z

Many people procrastinate.

I do.

Badly.

Normally, at this stage, I would crack the obvious joke, but on this occasion - being 3.10am - even I am going to avoid both a predilection to corny jokes and, ironically, to the topic of this post and will get to the point.

Many will consider that procrastination is simply the inability to make a decision and in many cases, this definition is probably adequate, but as I've just realised, not always.

Sometimes, there is more to it than that. Sometimes, it seems, you CAN make a decision, you just don't want to. Making a decision commits you to something, to a course of action. It closes doors, reduces or removes possibility, crystallises reality.

Whilst this means you can achieve success, it also means you run an enhanced risk of failure. It's a classic risk-reward calculation. If you don't try, you can't succeed, but you cannot fail either.

There is a joke about the man, in dire financial straits, who prays every week for G-d to let him win the lottery. Every week, he doesn't win and his prayers become more fervent, making promises of good deeds and charity, if G-d lets him win. Finally a voice comes from on high, exhorting the man to "at least meet me half way.......buy a TICKET!".

I buy a ticket - religiously - every week. However, I don't check it immediately. Days, sometimes even weeks will go by before I will check it. Why? Isn't winning important to me? Of course it is, but I am a realist (which is what an optimist calls a pessimist) and do not expect to win.

As long as I don't check my ticket, my chances of winning are better. Intellectually, I know that as soon as the draw has taken place, I have either won or I have not. There is a mathematical certainty of this. Yet I would rather have the hope, the potential of winning, than have the certainty of losing. For as long as I don't actually check, I somehow still have the potential of winning. I derive a warmth, a sense of hope carrying that ticket around with me. Once I have checked, that has gone. I may actually BE that millionaire that the adverts promise, but I am willing to sacrifice that small chance, at least temporarily, for the feeling of hope derived from carrying a ticket around with me, unchecked.

Yes, I know this is stupid.

I now recognise this in myself in many other ways. Somehow, the potential of something gives me a sense of security, of possibility and hope that the actualisation does not. So much of my life has passed in a haze of procrastination, so much opportunity missed, purely because, not as it may seem I have not wanted - or been scared - to make a decision, but rather because I simply didn't want to. Because it feels nicer to not make one and still have the possibility of success.

I sit here tonight with an opportunity. Not a great one perhaps, but an opportunity nonetheless. I have had an idea, a dream, for years. I need to act on it, commit myself to the action for once, but if I do, and I fail, then my cupboard of dreams may be left bare. Is not not better to have something there, a small investment of possibility, than to take my meagre capital and risk losing it all on a gamble?

Risk-reward. Is the risk of failure, worth the rewards of succeeding?

This is a rhetorical question.

I know what I should do. I know I should "but myself no buts".

But I'm scared.

Shopping and Motorcycles

2009-11-12T18:34:00.002Z

I am going, as always, to the Motorcycle Show at the NEC in Birmingham in a few days.

And, as always, I will be going in the car.

Now, this may seem strange for someone who professes to love bikes and for whom paying for parking is an irritation at best and anathema at worst. However, there is method to my madness, over and above a less than passionate love of the M6 on a winter's night and this is best explained by a post on the Motorcycle News forum after my last foray to the, much more convenient, London Show in February of this year:

"How the HELL....?

Ok, here's the thing.

I'm thinking of doing a bit of green-laning, partly as I may be going on a bike holiday that involves some off-roadish stuff, partly to improve my skills. So I thought I'd invest in some proper kit - nothing too expensive, until I know I like it, but enough to at least LOOK the part!

So, as I found myself with a few hours to spare unexpectedly this afternoon, I took myself off to the Excel show, see if I could pick up a bargain.

And I did, sort of.

I managed to get a nice Shark MX helmet quite cheap (although did rather fall in love with the new Arai Tour-X3, but couldn't justify the cost) and a pair of Oxtar MX boots.

However, when I got back to the bike, having congratulated myself for having the foresight to bring the Dulls, with it's panniers and top box, I made some interesting discoveries.

MX helmets are a different shape and take up a lot more room in a top box.
MX helmets don't fit into the pull out helmet section of an Oxford rucksack
You should always carry a cargo net or bungees
MX boots are bloody HUGE and don't bend. This means that they don't fit in a top box full of MX helmet
They also don't fit into the side panniers of a Dulls. To be honest, not much does.
So, bright idea time - put the Oxtars ON, and squeeze my ordinary, well worn and therefore flexible road boots into the top box.

Next interesting discovery. Trying to put on brand new and stiff MX boots, in a dark car park is a new meaning for the word 'fun'.

Finally, I managed to get everything squashed in, by which time it was completely dark and they were gritting the acccess roads.

So, off I went, out of the car park, onto the slip... or rather, as it's now gritted with appears to be fine sand.... slippery road, which is where I made my most interesting discovery.

MX boots are so big and clumpy, you cant' get your toes under the gear shift to change up.
No matter what I did, I couldn't change gear. Nor, for that matter, could I feel a bloody thing.

So, I have no idea whether this a feature of the Dullsville or whether I'm doing something wrong, but I rode home with two huge MX boots strapped to my back with a mixture of my back protector and the braces that hold my strides up.

If I'd come off, I would not only have hurt my back, but would have mooned the Emergency services.

So, HELP!

How the HELL are you supposed to ride in these things??????"

So, shopping or riding. Those who know me will understand............ no competition.

Ergonomics

2009-09-24T07:02:00.002+01:00

er⋅go⋅nom⋅ic

Dictionary.com defines Ergonomics as:

human engineering

–noun an applied science that coordinates the design of devices, systems, and physical working conditions with the capacities and requirements of the worker.

Voice of the Alter Ego defines it as:

The science of creating and deploying technology in such a way as to give yourself and your colleagues a really good laugh at somebody Else's expense.

An example of this is the loos at the hotel I'm currently at.

When you walk in, the lights sense movement and come on automatically.

When you wash your hands, the taps sense your hands beneath them and turn the water on automatically.

And naturally, not to mention hygienically, the toilet flush requires no physical contact, detecting the movement of your hand over a sensor on the wall and flushing automatically and, it must be said, vigorously.

This is, you may think, a demonstration of the perfect deployment of technology, and I would be inclined to agree with you.

However (and there is always a 'however'), this is where the Voice of the Alter Ego definition of Ergonomics comes in:

Ergonomics engineers decide that although the light sensor comes on when you open the door to the toilet on the way in......... it is less sensitive when you exit your cubicle to pitch darkness. There is always the alternative of playing basketball whilst using the facilities, but for a man, that would constitute multi-tasking.

We don't multi-task.

IF you are fortunate enough to guess what has happened, you will stand there in pitch darkness, waving your arms like a student of method acting 'being' a windmill. This is fine, unless someone walks in at that moment - triggering the light naturally - to find you standing there, wondering why you are pretending to swim in the middle of the toilet?

If you are not fortunate enough to guess what has happened, you will spend some time, fumbling round the walls in some sort of Fort Boyard type test, looking for a non-existent light switch. This seems to defeat the purpose, unless of course, you subscribe to the Voice's definition....

Ergonomics will also dictate that, as you cannot manually turn on or control the water, you will probably scald one hand, freeze the other and, in all probability, splash water down to the front of your trousers in that way that is so common, but so impossible to explain. This does not however prevent you from trying.

However, Ergonomic's greatest flash of brilliance is reserved for the flushing mechanism.

It is wonderfully clever to create a flush that merely requires you to wave your hand over a sensor on the wall, removing the need for physical contact with something that, almost by definition, will not be very hygienic.

It is truly INSPIRED however to mount it on the wall DIRECTLY above the toilet roll holder.

So, as you sit there (in all probability in pitch darkness), you reach for the paper and WHOOOOOSH. Your hand passes in front of the sensor and you are rewarded with the feeling that you have been sitting - commando - over the blow-hole of a Sperm Whale returning from a particularly arduous dive.

Oh, how they must be laughing at Acme Ergonomics Inc.

Oh what fun they must have, coming up with these wonderful ways to deploy technology.

I wonder if they have any jobs going?

Progress

2009-08-25T11:02:00.003+01:00

I've been trying to compile my list of 'Desert Island Discs' which is difficult for any number of reasons. For a start, what IS the protocol on the spelling of 'Disc'? Is it Disc for records (if you don't remember records, don't bother reading on) but Disk for computer media? Or vice versa?

For convention and out of an innate laziness, I'm going to stick with 'Disc' for now, not least because this post is not about discs.

Because it strikes me that any person or organisation that is willing to strand me on a desert island, with a means of playing discs, a favourite book (as well as the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespere) and a luxury of my choice, can also stretch the envelope a little, and provide me with some means of playing videos.

This thought was prompted by an idle browsing of YouTube not, as is my normal wont, for videos of cats doing amusing things or people coming a cropper, often on motorcycles, but of music videos, and this, oddly, made me realise something.

The songs that move me are NOT necessarily the same as the videos that do.

For anyone who may not be familiar with the concept of Desert Island Discs, you can take eight songs with you, which is all the music you will have on your island, for an undefined period of time. If you're going to take eight songs and ONLY eight songs with you, they have to be songs that move you, or mean something to you.

I've already started compiling my Desert Island Discs on here, although I've hit a bit of a brick wall and I fully intend to continue with this. However, when I've looked at the videos - the proper videos, not someone's home mash-up or a kareoke soft-focus jobbie - I've often found myself un-moved. How odd. A song that can move me to tears - of sadness, joy, regret or simply rememberance - can leave me relatively cold when 'enhanced' by video. Yet songs which I like, but which I wouldn't consider as part of my desert island list strike that emotional nerve in much the same way as the end of ET or the old Post Office advert with the little girl and the birthday cards.

If music has charms to soothe the savage breast, then it would seem, videos have charms to make a middle-aged bloke well up.

This morning, for example, I watched Meatloaf's "Objects in the Rearview Mirror" (sic). Although my pedant warning was triggered by a deviance from the the lyric, replacing a car with a biplane, I have to say the emotion of the song got to me in a way I wasn't expecting. Although the story in no way relates to my own years as a child - my father never hit me, let alone again and again and again - I found myself mourning my lost youth, missed opportunities, friendships squandered, lessons not learned. I've always believed you cannot look back and yet, in truth, I do so more and more.

Hopefully, as I get older, my memory will continue to deteriorate and I won't do this so much.

Perhaps, in truth, this would not be a good song to take to the Island, for that very reason. It would not be sensible to sit there on the beach, mourning lost friendships and lost youth, when I should be out gathering coconuts.

So, over subsequent posts, it is my intention to identify other songs where the video enhances the experience for me, to the extent that it creates an emotional response. However, I have an subconcious worry that these will all tend toward the sad end of the spectrum, so I apologise for that in advance and will fully understand if you wish to skip these and look for content highlighting my innate inability to deal with the complexities of modern life, such as mobile phones and Facebook.

But do check out Meatloaf's video - just not when I'm around please, unless you like seeing a grown man cry.

The Visit

2009-08-16T11:24:00.003+01:00

This was first posted on Six Sentences, but has apparently been deleted, so I'm posting it here for posterity and posting it today because today is painful.

I visited my Father today.

It has been some time since my last visit as, over time, the demands of a frenetic lifestyle led to them becoming less and less frequent, filial duty replacing desire, obligation replacing need.

Originally, I would talk of many things, asking for advice and guidance, receiving none, regaling him with stories of the latest exploits of his granddaughters, as if he could not see for himself how they grow and yet, over time, the content dwindled proportionate to the visits, the intervals longer and longer, the words no longer flowing.

Today was different.

Today, as so many times before, I began as the mature adult, long absolved of the need for parental navigation through the exigencies of adult reality, began with the same hollow synopsis of complex lives and personalities, began to speak without talking.

Yet today, it was all stripped away from me, not layer by layer but at once, a magician’s reveal of my inner child and suddenly, I was not an adult fulfilling a social expectation or a student seeking tutorial guidance, but, with great wracking sobs, I was that child, needing the Daddy taken from him too soon.

Hate

2009-08-12T09:25:00.002+01:00

There are many, many things I hate.

Probably far too many than are healthy for me - certainly too many than are healthy for society. Many of these hatreds I can contain and, unless you are a devotee of Tim Roth's alleged use of 'micro-gestures', I would challenge most people to even be aware of them. This is odd, because I'm useless at Poker.

However, this is not always the case.

For example, there are circumstances that not only prevent the masking of hatreds, but, quite the opposite, seem to exacerbate and amplify them beyond reason (assuming of course that they are reasonable in the first place) to the extent that they take over. The most obvious of these circumstances in when I am encased in a small metal box, with an engine and controls supposedly designed to get me where I am meant to be more quickly.

More quickly than what? Teleportation? Have you SEEN the amount of traffic on the road these days, huge numbers with foreign number-plates so they can avoid paying road tax or.......

Ok, and breeeeeeath..........

However, this post is not about the hatreds that emerge when I'm driving. That would take too long and you'd never reach the end. No, this post is about the hatred that emerges when I am in bed.

(Before you leave, no, it's not about anything like that. This is a 12 certificate post).

This is my hatred of phones that ring in the night. Or rather, the three hatreds related to phones that ring in the night.

Firstly, I hate phones that ring in the wee hours. It is never good news. Never. It is never a long lost cousin in Tierre del Fuego telling you you have just inherited an estate in Monte Carlo and the Mona Lisa. So, when it rings, my heart plummets as, simultaneously, my stomach tries to escape through my sinuses. Not a nice feeling, although I could probably get a Cadbury's advert out of it if I could do it to order.

I had a call like this the night my Father died.

So, when the phone rings in the wee hours, I know I am not going to be pleased, whatever happens.

So, I hate it when the phone rings in the wee hours. That's number one.

Secondly, I hate when, having been jarred from, hopefully pleasant, dreams, you fumble for the phone, knocking glasses of water (sans teeth thank goodness), alarm clocks, pots of cufflinks and a pile of intellectually challenging books that you fully intend to read - one day - flying. I hate it even more when, along with the assorted detritus, you also knock the phone flying.

What I hate even more however is, when you finally find the phone, find which side and end is meant to be next to your ear and work out how to answer it, a process which seems to take hours, but in fact only takes a few dischordant rings, you manage to answer it, only for there to be no-one there.

Not, I stress, to find they have hung up. That is without doubt annoying, but no, this I would suggest, is worse.

What I hate is when you find that, having finally mastered the process of answering the phone, there is nobody there responding to you. You can tell the line is not dead - there are faint noises of speech in the background, but nobody responds to your increasingly shrill cries of "hello! HELLO!". Finally, as your voice reaches the pitch at which bats fall from the sky in distress, you hang up in discuss, place the phone back on the table, knocking it and any remaining accumulated rubbish to the floor, roll over and try, rather too hard, to recover the dream that, unusually, was rather vividly in your memory. I hate people who call in the middle of the night but don't speak to you.

However, what I think I hate most of all, is when the following morning, you remember the incident and determine to put your full investigative skills to work in tracking down the miscreant.

You find the phone amongst the rubbish on the floor.

You dial 1471 to find the last caller's number.

The robotic (yet strangely authoratitive) voice reads the number to you and, as always, you wonder if Stephen Hawking uses this as a chat-line?

You frown, vaguely recognising the mobile phone number you've been given. You dial 1471 a second time, to hear it again. Yes. You know it. You can't place it, but you know it. You run through a mental check-list. Kids. Nope. Mum. Look it up (she never turns it on so you never call it)- nope. Ex - nope. Brother - errr - nope.

So who IS it???

And then you remember.

You know why you never call this number.

It's because it's your number.

So, the thing I hate most about phones that ring in the night is when you leave your mobile on the bed and, in the throes of a dream, roll onto it, inciting it to ring the last number called. Your number. Last called because, as always, you couldn't find the landline handset.

The thing I hate most is when you roll onto your phone, call yourself in the wee hours, hears yourself saying "hello, HELLO!" in the background, and finally go back to sleep cursing yourself for your inconsideration.

So, I hate phones that ring in the night.

But I hate being a dingbat more.

Somehow this strikes a chord... you need to click on the cartoon to see the whole thing

2009-08-06T09:41:00.001+01:00

Welcome to 2001, a musical oddity

2008-11-21T11:30:00.005Z

I have an i-pod.

Not ony do I have an i-pod, but I resist calling it an ipod (short 'eye') like some sort of pseudo-greek heroic tale, despite the urge to appear like some sort of High Court Judge saying "The Beatles?".

Apparently, it's a '4 gig nano'. I know this, because:

(a) It said so on the very neat and beautifully formed plastic box. Why is it that Apple can make money, despite spending more on designing small plastic boxes for their gadgets than Microsoft spent on designing Vista?

Oh, of course. Doh.

Anyway....

(b) I have teenagers. They fill in the gaps on a number of aspects of technology for me. Not the technical aspects - oddly, I can manage those - but the more important things, such as that wearing your headphones outside your clothes is really not on and you need to thread them like some sort of FBI sting inside your clothing, making the act of replying when spoken to a circus act of contortion. They tell me which gadgets are cool (Fonzie must be thrilled to still hear kids saying 'cool'. Or would be, except like me, he's probably going deaf).

Probably explains why I can't seem to get my i-pod loud enough.

However, after years of picking up i-pods in shops, turning them lovingly over and over in my hands, musing, then replacing them. After hours spent reading reviews of alternatives and deciding that they offered far better value for money, could play alternative formats, probably had greater longevity, as money was spent on function rather than form, I finally have an i-pod.

It was, of course, a gift.

You didn't think I would have ever made an actual DECISION about it, did you?

One of the factors that made me hesitate was music. I listen to music mostly in the car, which is where I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my life. I have a CD player in there, together with a wonderful device that plays random music, often things I've never heard before by artists I hope to never hear again. I have no control over the playing order, which is oddly satisfying, as it removes one decision-making requirement from the life of the man who defines procrastination. So for me, this 'radio' thingy is great.

However, in truth, most of what I listen to on the radio is actually speech, rather than music. Drama, comedy, discussion, education, phone-in's (why do I feel the need for an apostrophe there I wonder?).

So one of the hesitations over the i-pod issue was simply "would I have enough music to FILL four 'gigs'?

Incidentally, when was the crossover age? What was the year of birth for people who think a 'gig' is a measure of storage rather than a performance by a rather dodgy band in the back room of a pub?

I digress.

I do that a lot. Sorry.

So, there I was with this beautifully formed little sliver of metal and plastic, design screaming from every millimeter of brushed aluminium and carefully calculated curve, wondering what to put on it and when I would use it? The obvious answers were of course, everything I could find and at the gym.

Yes, well. It seems I can't find half of what I thought I had musically and I cancelled my Gym membership when they sent me a 'most profitable member' award for the third year running.

Then I was introduced to i-tunes.

I've had this thing on my pc for ages, but have always switched back to other media players, partly from a stiff-necked resistence to being part of the Apple 'crowd'. A technological version of Groucho Marx's comment about being a member of any club that would have him as a member perhaps, or maybe just a desire to cultivate an air of pseudo-luddite.

I really should have been a High Court Judge.

But with an i-pod, you have no choice. It is the only way to load the little bugger with the tunes that you haven't listened to for years but which, oddly, suddenly make it onto your 'Desert Island' list.

And no, I haven't forgotten....

And herein lies the problem, or rather, one of them.

Because i-tunes allows you to sort your tunes into 'playlists'. Songs can be grouped by artist, genre, album, category, year, style, composer, drummer, recording studio and roadie's inside leg amongst others.

For some people, this would be heaven. People who file papers. People who have tabs in their ring binders. People who sort their clothes by colour in the wardrobe.

People who know where their car keys are.

You know who you are.

For people like that, i-tunes and it's organisational capabilities are wonderful, ensuring the right tune is always on hand for a given mood or moment.

For people like me, it's merely another stress. Another element of decision making. Another thing on the 'list'.

Or would be, if I was organised enough to make a list.

And then it starts asking me if I want to sign on to download an album cover. Why would I want to do that? Is it that some people are simply unable to remember a track without the visual cue of an album that they've probably never owned, having downloaded the track, either legally or illegally? And I have to PAY for it too? Thank you, but no thank you.

Which, brings me to the issue of downloads. I seem to remember the days when people would be excited by the promise of the internet. It was going to liberate us, provide equality of information and knowledge, provide us with the leisure time to live, rather than exist. Now, listening to most people, it seems to revolve around the best way to breach copyright and download tunes either free or for a fraction of a dollar (it seems the dollar has become the default currency of intellectual property theft).

Well, that and porn of course.

Allegedly.

On top of all this, I have to learn not to cringe every time I write 'i-pod' or 'i-tunes' without capitalisation, as only then will I be a fully paid-up member of the modern age.

It's not going to happpen.

And then I discovered pod-casts. It seems I can download all sorts of content, free of charge. I can download speech, rather than music. Drama, comedy, discussion, education, phone-in's (why do I feel the need for an apostrophe there I wonder?).

So now, I can listen to the things I listen to in my car anywhere (well, anywhere except the Gym). My i-pod has liberated me from my car, in the sense that now, no matter where I am, I can feel as if I am driving somewhere. Now, truly, all my waking hours (and, thanks to the tiny earphones, many of my sleeping ones), can feel like my working life.

That's progress.

Inappropriate

2008-05-04T13:40:00.002+01:00

Have you ever considered how our actions, or perhaps more accurately, our reactions, are inappropriate?

Sometimes, despite the situation, despite the logical response to set of circumstances, stimuli, our reactions are illogical and completely the opposite of what we would expect. An example that may be familiar to those of you with children, is the response to their safe escape from danger. The child who runs into the road, avoiding injury, or wanders off and is recovered safely, none the worse for their adventure. The logical response is relief, gratitude, perhaps a prayer to a normally-ignored deity. What often ensues of course, is a back-breaking hug, followed in quick succession with what my late Grandma would call a 'Chlop'.

I was 'Chlopped' more than once.

Oddly, this is not only something that moves downwards through the generations.

The distress of a parent struggling, their dependency, the helplessness we both feel, the solitude of responsibility created by being 'the one who's around', all conspire to create this dichotomy.

I should just feel compassion and my anger distresses me, engenders non-profitable guilt which in turn, amplifies the anger.

At least I know she won't remember my anger. I just hope she can remember me and what she means to me.

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse

2008-05-04T13:05:00.003+01:00

Humph is dead.

Humphrey Littleton http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/people/humphrey_littleton_person_page.shtml died last week and with him, another voice, wit, humour was taken from my life. His sense of immpecable timing, his sarcasm, his ability to strike home with a razor-sharp barb, yet leave you rejoicing in the fact it left no scar.

If you don't know his work (his comedy work, rather than his gifted performance as a Jazz musician), then I encourage, indeed insist, that you find some. As host of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, he was confronted by four of the greatest comedy minds of a number of generations. When Willy Rushton was taken from us, the original panel was supplemented by a guest, yet the standard never diminished. Confronted by such consumate skill, it would have been easy to recede, to become merely the 'host' and butt of jokes. http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/imsorryihaventaclue/

Yet 'Humph' did not baulk and his dry dead-pan delivery and masterful use of complete silence, allowing the audience to complete the joke for him to devastating effect. Indeed, just when you thought you'd completed the line, he would show you how your own comedic skills were inadequate, his use of words, intonation and timing a masterclass in how it should be done.

To have such skills as the second string to your bow could be intimidating. I never met Humph in person, yet he was a man who you felt would never be anything other than courteous and welcoming to someone who shared his passions.

I would listed to ISIHAC in my car and have been known more than once to arrive at my destination, yet refuse to leave the car until it was over. Someone once said to Oscar Wilde "I wish I'd said that", to which he replied "You will dear Boy, you will"

Humph's closing lines and double-entendres fall squarly into that bracket, but I don't think I will ever try to repeat them.

I just don't have the skill.

That won't stop me enjoying them though and a selection can be found here: http://www.g0akh.f2s.com/isihac/Humphs_Closing_Gems_Page.php

Thank you Humph.

Mornington Crescent.

Kerplunk

2008-03-20T23:35:00.003Z

This has not been a good week.

This week, four elements of my childhood have been taken from me, which is unpleasantly like growing up.

Firstly, Arthur C Clarke died. His predictions, his fiction, his desire to bring science to the masses and make it accessible made him seem a constant. Without him, I would not have shortened my middle name to HAL for a while. Without him, I wouldn't have known the joy of tunelessley blaring Also Sprach Zarathustra before jumping into a swimming pool. I've never really understood 2001, but thanks in part to Arthur, I understand science and, more importantly, I've learned to love the fact that there is so much I don't know, don't understand. Thank you Arthur, for my curiosity and the sense of awe.

Secondly, Paul Schofield. At 15, for English Literature, I studied 'A Man for all Seasons'. I enjoyed the play, the text and then, the film was run for us to watch. The story itself, the dramatisation, Robert Shaw as Henry, John Hurt playing a weak man on the downhill slope in the way only he can, all helped bring the text to life. But then I heard Paul Schofield speak. I heard him say the words that I had read on the one dimensional page, and my breath left my body. It may have been the most understated bravura performance I've ever seen, ever will see. Perhaps he understood the need for contrast against Shaw's Henry, knew he couldn't compete with that, but he conveyed a man's doubts, his anguish, his fear and his strength with nothing more than his eyes and his voice, both in the way he spoke the words and, importantly the way he didn't. His silence conveyed so much and only served to underline that wonderful, rich voice. Thank you Paul, for bringing a text to life and making the history live for me.

Thirdly, Brian Wilde. An unassuming actor, he was a key charecter in what to my mind is still one of the best situation comedies of it's time, indeed, of any time. Porridge. However, he is probably better known for the Last of the Summer Wine, in which he played the hapless 'Foggy', a man constantly trying to exceed his own reality and convince others he was more than the sum of his own parts. As the hapless Oliver Hardy to the Stan Laurels of Compo and Clegg, he would always be the butt of jokes and the scorn of his friends. Although not a great fan of the program itself however, three things remain with me from this - the wonderful scenery of that Yorkshire village, the gentle fun that three old men could have, wandering through it and the fact that, no matter what they had been through, at the end of each episode, they would be togther, friends. Thank you Brian, for making me less afraid of being old.

Finally, John Hewer. Most people will not know who he was. Although he'd been an actor for many many years, not many will know him. At least, not by that name. Yet millions of people would know him immediately by the name of his character - Captain Birdseye. For over 30 years, he was the figure who advertised Birdseye Fish Fingers. I have early memories of sitting in my friend Stephen's house, eating fish fingers, knowing they were good because the Cap'n said they were. I don't really have much to thank him for, but he's probab;y a larger part of my childhood than all of the others combined and, as such, I find myself saddened by his loss out of all proportion to his contribution.

Increasingly, my life feels like a game of cosmic Kerplunk. I sit at the top as, below me, the sticks of my past are pulled away, one by one.

One day, hopefully not too soon, the final stick will be pulled out and I will tumble down and each stick withdrawn makes me more aware of how tenuous my position is.

I can only hope that, when I do, someone will post the words "thank you" on their blog when they hear the news.

Next Course

2008-03-19T19:31:00.002Z

Some years ago, we had our last family holiday.

My Father had his heart set on having an apartment in the South of Spain and was having a place built there. His dream was to sell his business, trade down on their house and spend the winters there, taking his grandchildren and playing with them in the warm sun. But, in the meantime, he rented a villa and persuaded my older brother to come with. One last family holiday.

Of course, he wasn't to know about the Cancer that, even then, was beginning to knaw at his flesh or that he would never live to see his apartment finished, so he wasn't aware this was the last holiday but, nonetheless, he was the sort of man who made each moment with him special, as if in some way, some biological level, he suspected.

We spent spent the days by the pool, or on the beach, enjoying the feeling of sun on our skins the way only the English or a Trogladyte can, eating out in the evenings, sampling different restaurants, different foods, glowing from Mediterranean cuisine.

One afternoon, for a change, I wandered into the local town. Whitewashed, thick-walled buildings, tiled floors, terracotta roof tiles, the town was almost a parody of itself and yet avoided the touristy cynicism so prevalent down the coast. As I wandered, window shopping, mindless in that way you can become when shopping for nothing, with no time constraints, I came across a shop with a cool interior beckoning me in.

What the shop sold has faded like so many memories - I have a vague recollection of wicker, or pottery, but one thing remains fixed in my memory, a buoy to fix those memories of the trip, of my Father to.

On the stereo was playing, softly, a piece of music. Suddenly, as I listened, all thoughts of everything, everyone else faded and I was entranced.

The music was Rodriego's Concierto de Aranjuez http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8LL1x6J2rU

I can't explain why, but as soon as I hear this music, I'm transported. Wherever I am, I close my eyes and can see the shadows the setting sun casts on the Sierra Nevada, the mountain range that sits behind the coast of Andalucia. I can hear the chirping of the insects, feel the warmth in my bones, the smells of cooking, olives, oranges, bourganvillia. My heart slows, my breathing deepens and once again, I'm with my family, my Father. Although an adult, for a moment, I'm absolved of adult responsibilities, duties, the weight of duty.

I can't listen to it in the car, as I would not be in the present and rarely do I have the time to sit, listen, drift.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I will put it on and, as a soft tear rolls down my face, I smile and know that, oddly, I'm home.

Just Deserts

2008-03-08T11:10:00.004Z

No.

I didn't mean desserts.

BBC Radio 4 has a program that has run for many years, called Desert Island Discs. A guest - celebrity, politician, musician, author, whatever - is invited to list the 8 records they would take with them if stranded on a desert island, and why, what they mean to them. At the end, they have to select just one to keep, along with a book (the island already has the Complete Works of Shakespeare and the Bible - don't they all?) and a single luxury.

As a format for an interview, it's unique, insightful and very entertaining. As a way of documenting your life and giving an insight into what makes you who you are, it's very powerful.

I often muse on my 8 desert island discs, which I find change with regularity, depending on mood, circumstances, bank balance. Yet for all this, there are certain constants, so I have decided to try to list them here, to give myself a touchstone of my changing inner self. I don't intend to post them all now, but will do them as they occur to me and it will be interesting to see if my opinion changes. However, I will leave them to stand and won't cheat.

1) Streetlife - The Crusaders with Randy Crawford

In 1981, I went to the Capital Radio Jazz Festival, an open air concert at Knebworth House, a stately home north of London. Some 20,000 people sat in a field, watching acts like Dizzy Gillespie, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Spyrogyra, Shakatak, A Trad New Orleans Jazz Band and others. It started at noon and finished at 10pm.

Top of the bill were the Crusaders.

It was one of those rare English Summer days, when the heat is comfortable, but not oppressive. A heat that warms your bones and your soul in equal measure. Warm enough to sleep, cool enough to not worry about burning. One of those days that erases thoughts of leaving. A picnic, friends, sunshine, music, nice people and the lack of pressure that comes from being young enough to be free of responsibility.

As the penultimate band finished, everyone prepared for the Crusaders. Roadies scuttled across the stage like manic crabs, and the crowd shuffled and moved like grains of sand on a dune, expectantly, positioning for a view.

Finally, to a roar of approbation, they came on.

Most of the set has faded into the cotton wool of my memory, a vague recollection of dancing, grinning, clapping, cheering and finally, all too soon, it was nearly 10pm and darkness begins to envelope the bowl, creeping up like a sea mist, a comfort blanket to settle the day to sleep.

The song ended, and Wilton Felder came up to the mike.

"We have to finish at 10pm" he said (Boos)
"Sorry, but we're not allowed to go on beyond 10" (Louder Boos)
A pause

"But we're not going to finish ONE SECOND before" (Huge Cheers)

With this, he steps back and, raising his sax to his mouth, begins to play. Gentle, emotional notes, so clear it's almost as if you feel rather than hear them. A soft improvisation, variation, unclear what it is. Yet.

Finally, the theme becomes clear and expectation builds. The vocals come in, soft, personal, directed to me alone.

If you know the song, the full version rather than the sugar-free one often played on the radio, you will know that this is the precursor to the opening bars, the four loud, vibrant, exciting chords rising up the scale, that herald the start of Street Life proper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ZvDI7XGFU.

As those four notes rang out, everyone cheered and, on the fifth, as the full band came in, EVERY light on the stage, which had been dark until then, came on.

Every time I hear the song, the hairs go up on my arms, the back of my neck.

Every time I hear it, I'm 19 again and happy.

Even as I write this, without even hearing it, my body reacts and my eyes fill with tears.

My life has had many happy moments - hopefully will have many more. Yet this sits in my soul as one of the best days, one of the best moments in my life, when everything was good and there was an air of innocence and simplicity that can't be recovered.

So when I listen to Street Life, when I hear the sax solo, my heart lifts and I remember that sometimes, life can be perfect.

It gives me hope. The link above is not the right version, does not have that gentle build, that sweet tension, but I hope you enjoy it and that it gives you hope too.

When I'm calling youooo-oooooo-ooooh!

2008-03-01T12:49:00.002Z

When, in 50,000 years, archeologists from Ulton-Minor visit the barren remains of Earth, they will discover many things, and marvel at the terrible ways we developed to inflict cruelty and pain on each other. Yet the worst excesses of the inquisition, the horrific practices of the Khmer Rouge or terrible interrogation methods of the KGB and, latterly, our defenders in the war against terror, all will pale into insignificance when the Ultro-Minorians discover the greatest horror and indignity that man can inflict on man.

The offshore Call-Centre.

Last week, I realised my Visa card was about to expire and had not received the replacement.

Terror clutched my soul, but, there was no choice, if I wanted to avoid identity theft, penury and a life in a carboard box, I would have to go where there be dragons.

Call the number.

Press 1
Press 4
Press 3
Press 1

Accept that calls may be recorded for security and training purposes.

Be thrilled that, despite 'unexpectedly high call volumes, my call is important to them'.

SO nice to be important to someone.

Finally, a human voice.

Hallo, my name is Sfhjhsfosjfhsohan, how may I help you today?

This is actually a good start - normally, you get a pronounced Asian accent, and the words "my name is Trevor". He knows it's not. You know it's not. He knows you know it's not, but you somehow just accept it. When else, when someone opens a conversation with an outright lie, do you just let it go.

This time, I barely understand his name, but hey, that doesn't matter, I want to discuss my credit card, not invite him to dinner.

I explain the situation and he assures me the card will be here by the end of the month. Yes, I reply, but normally they arrive weeks beforehand. It will be there by the end of the month sir.

Ok, but today is the 26th. "Yes, so that gives until Friday, it will be there. Is there anything else I can help you with today?" So I tell him I've moved and can update the address on my other card and send me a new Pin and the call ends.

This morning, I awake with a splitting headache (I thought Alcohol was meant to be good for you?) and realise it's the start of the month, and no card, despite Sfhjhsfosjfhsohan's promise, so here we go again (for the purposes of brevity, I will assume you remember the process).

"Good morning, my name is R_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _er (didn't even get close to catching this one), how may I help you today?"

I explain, and tap tap tappity tap.

"Ok, this card was sent out to you on 1st December."

So, why didn't Sfhjhsfosjfhsohan tell me that? Anyway, it hasn't arrived.

More security questions. Have I lost my pin. No, but I can't remember it. I asked for a new one. That's not arrived either. Have I lost my Driving license? Have I lost my passport? No, just my patience.

Finally, he confirms he has "Blocked my account and will send me out a new card, but oh, he can't send it to me because they have changed my address"

Changed my address? No, that was on my Mastercard, it's my VIS.... oh.

Bugger.

I have two cards with the same company. I have just blocked the Mastercard, the one I received and activated safely. The one I changed the address on. My Visa, which is alone out there in the big bad world, is a different number.

Through the same process. Same security questions (did they think I may have changed my postcode, telephone number or date of birth mid-call?) and block that card.

However, they will have to write to me and I will have to send back proof of address before they will send me the new card, because I've changed it.

So, now I have two defunct cards -one expired, one blocked (they can't unblock it), it will probably be weeks before it's all sorted out and I don't even have the satisfaction of getting angry with them as, despite Sfhjhsfosjfhsohan's original incompetence, this is mostly my own fault.

Lord knows how these criminals manage identity theft, I can't even manage my real one.

Here we go again

2008-02-26T23:41:00.001Z

Off to Scotland obscenely early tomorrow morning, and staying in a hotel.

Who would like to give me odds on having a disabled room?

Watch this space......

Odd

2008-02-25T10:37:00.003Z

How you can write something and be pleased with it.

Then a little later, you read it back and hate it.

Pretentious, badly constructed and vacuous.

This is made even worse by not being able to work out how you delete one, so now I feel both inadequate and incompetent.

And (he said, beginning a sentence with a preposition) today looked like it was starting SO well...

That lovely warm feeling

2008-02-24T10:22:00.002Z

Last weekend the sun was shining, there was a speedway event on at my local bike meet, a bike club I'd joined were going and I didn't have the kids.

No excuses.

Nothing to prevent me from going. Even the racing didn't start until this weekend.

Saturday passed in a bit of a fuzz of intended jobs not happening, but by the afternoon, even I'd run out of procrastinations and went over to where Witty (my bike is called Witty, as the last three numbers of the plate are WTT. Seemed apt.) lives and thought I'd start her up, just to get her ready for the ride-out the next day.

Click. WHIRRRrrrrrr......silence.

Dead battery.

Removed the seat to find the battery was dry as a bone. Odd, but happens I guess. Not wanting to risk getting stranded, off I took myself to get a new one, but the local shop closes at 5. I got there at 4 minutes past.

Grrrrrr

Off to a dealer where, £47 pounds later, I have a new battery which has to charge overnight so the following morning, after much swearing and a small amount of blood, it sits proudly in Witty's underseat cubbyhole. I'm ready. I'm going on a ride-out. Really.

Except by now, it's too late to ride over to North London to meet them. However, they are riding to my local meeting place, so I can meet them there.

I get there, but no sign of them. Hang around for around an hour, then give up and ride to the local tea-hut, which is mobbed, only to get a call saying they are there now. Ride back, no sign. Call and it turns out they are at the tea hut and I'd ridden (ok, paddled) within two feet of them. So ride back. Again.

Finally met up and after standing around for a while, the decision is made to ride to the Ace Cafe www.ace-cafe-london.co.uk, so off we go in convoy.

Riding round a major arterial route in heavy traffic has never been my favourite type of riding, but at least I was with my new 'friends', so I was having fu.... sniff sniff.... n or I'm su...snifff... re I would hav...sniff what IS that.. e.... it smells like smoke... e.

A glance down, a deep inhale, and I realise with delight that I am on fire.

Now, I do not have the sort of bum that makes girls giggle and sigh. Agents do not approach me in the street and ask if I've ever considered underwear modelling. I am, however, deeply attached to it and we have an understanding, a partnership. It's a bit like a marriage. We sometimes have our problems and issues, but we're both better off together and I most certainly do not want it cooked.

I made it to the Ace (the alterntive being stopping on the carriageway and being called names to make a Docker blush), but couldn't work out what was wrong. No sign of burning, other than the white acrid smoke that had been pouring from beneath my friend. In the end, I had to risk it, so left the others and rode home, opting to take the motorway so that I wouldn't be stuck in traffic.

I made it home and, some £150 later, have a new Regulator, replacing the "spectatcularly fried and melted one. Although you may need a new Generator too sir, we can't tell yet." Great.

And my new found friends? How many of them have dropped me an email, to see if I'd made it home safely?

Yeah.

So, my effort to have a ride-out has left me some £200 out of pocket, for which I could have had a week's holiday, has reminded me that people are, well, people and made me wonder whether Witty should be renamed Piss-Taker?

Most of all, it makes me think that I should change the bit of my profile that says my hobby is biking.

It will now read: "Hobbies - Procrastination"

Anyone wanna buy a bike? comes with a new battery, new regulator and pseudo-friends?

Aaaagh

2008-02-12T21:24:00.000Z

I went to the gym tonight.

I haven't been for a long time and decided to cancel, but with a three month cancellation period, I still have to pay until the end of May.

So, what the heck, not as if I have a social life and I REALLY need to lose weight and get fit.

Ok, so "fit" is a relative term.

So, there I was, climbing the stairs to the gym and wondering when they retained Esher as their stairway architect. I swear that the last time I went, it was a simple staircase. Not even a Fiddler-on-the-roof jobbie, with one long staircase just for going up and another even longer going down. Nope, just a simple climb up open the door enter the gym common or garden staircase. I now know how those figures in his staircase picture feel.

Knackered. That's how they feel.

A few years ago, I was using the gym regularly and had an entire schedule worked out. I'd put together a playlist on my original MP3 player to take me through the whole thing so, in a rare display of organisation, I found said player where I'd left it and took it with.

I swear, by the end of song one, I was wondering whether the imagined extra stairs were real and I'd climbed to around 14,000 feet.

By the end of song two, I was thinking that maybe the MP3 player had gone wrong and was playing at 10% of normal speed.

By the end of song three, I was in pain. Not aches, not twinges, but the sort of pain no man should have to feel. The sort of pain that defines why women have the babies.

I have to drive about 500 miles tomorrow, and am severely worried that I may not make it to the car, let alone the meeting.

I hurt.

PMA

2008-02-08T21:41:00.000Z

I have always worked in sales, which may either may or may not explain why I hate the utter bullshit that seems to surround sales as a 'profession'.

I think a lot of this comes from the other side of the Atlantic, where sales and selling have been escalated to a science, an artform and a profession. Entire sections of bookshops are devoted to the techniques, skills and science of selling, including shelves full of books on self-visualisation, Positive mental attitude (the above-mentioned 'PMA') and NLP. Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

I am ashamed to say I have bought two books on NLP.

I am proud to say I have read neither. Answers on a postcard.

To me, NLP remains a terrorist organisation focussed on the Liberation of Newts.

I don't know what the P stands for either.

But two things seem recently to have become even more popular and, as a consequence, are irritating me the way a spot just where your clothes rub irritates.

One of these is the "Inspirational Poster". Some arty photograph, of sea birds in flight, or a sunset, a small child offering friend a sweet, waves crashing on a beach (you get the idea) is accompanied by some pseudo-profound statement, such as

"Teamwork - when getting there together makes everyone whole"

The bucket is under the sink.

I know I'm not alone in my feelings on this, as increasingly, you can find DEmotivational posters on the net. Trust me, search and ye shall find.

Geez, now I sound like one.

Anyway, the OTHER thing that irritates me is the verbal equivalant of these. I had one thrown at me the other day. Upon remarking that I'd assumed something, I was told:

"Never assume, as you make an ass of you and me".

I refrained, on that occasions from thanking him for the insight into Bottom's transformation in A Midsummer's Nights Dream, and contented myself with musing that I may make myself an ass, but he was a self-made arse.

However, today, I was in a less tolerant mood.

So when told "There is no I in T. E. A. M." I could not resist.

So I pointed out "No, but there is a ME in it".

I love it when they can't think of what to say.....

That's what friends are for

2008-02-07T20:59:00.000Z

I got a phone call tonight.

A mutual friend, a friend for whom I acted as Toastmaster at his wedding, called.

He'd heard, telling me he'd had a call this afternoon.

I was really touched. Touched that at least one of our mutual friends cared enough to call and make sure I was ok.

"I got a call this afternoon" he said, and I was touched, "I've been asked if we can arrange a time to meet up so I can give you the things you left at her house. And if you have any bits there, plus her keys, we can, well, meet up to hand them over."

Odd, in a single sentence, I went from touched to disgusted and hurt.

I didn't shoot the messenger, but I DID tell him how I felt. That I was rather annoyed that after all that time together, she wasn't able to be civilised enough to meet me in person and hand stuff back. I explained that I have my kids this weekend, so I won't be doing anything. I explained that I would call him next week.

"Is it alright if I call you next week then?"

No it bloody well isn't. I will call YOU.

So, that's what friends are for. To do the dirty work you don't have the courage to do yourself. And this from someone who accused ME of avoiding confrontation. That's what friends are for. Just seems he's not one of mine.

There's a surprise.

So that is that

2008-02-07T15:04:00.000Z

It seems that sometimes, love is not enough.

But then, you knew that.

Personally, I blame the Guild of Screenwriters. They fill our minds with ideas that love can conquer all, that love will find a way, that money can't buy you love.... no, hang on, that was the Beatles. Anyway, whatever they say, it's not enough.

I have bought (but not read) a number of those 'Idiots' or 'Dummies' guide to whatever, but have checked, and there doesn't seem to be one which is a "Idiots Guide to Relationships" or a "Dummies Guide to Women".

Pity

I could do with one.

But then, so I suspect could most men.

Funny old life

2008-02-03T12:55:00.000Z

Relationships.

We all want one and when we get one, it causes nothing but pain.

At least, that's how it feels at this moment.

Why we believe, time after time, that this time it will be different and that two people, with different backgrounds, upbringing, values, attitudes, beliefs and desires can be together as one single being always amazes me.

Problem is, it only ever amazes me when it falls apart. Why can't I just accept and believe this BEFORE I start the process of getting hurt and, if I'm honest, of hurting?

Yet each time, I blunder on in the belief that the "whole will be greater than the sum of the parts".

I've never got round to a divorce, not least because of the likely cost of a highly contested argument about money and property. I've simply not had the money and, if I'm honest again, the mental resources for the confrontation and conflict. It's a failing of mine that I bury my head in the sand, avoiding confronting issues. I know it's a fault. I know I need to do something about it. But it's not that easy.

And before anyone reading this bridles at that, it's no different from someone with an intense phobia or addiction. It's always easy for someone to tell you that you just have to make your mind up to do it, less easy to actually do it.

So now, in the immortal words of Gilbert O'Sullivan (no, not Gilbert AND Sullivan), "Alone again, naturally".

And what's odd is that I spoke to my ex about a divorce and she's amenable to a discussion, a mediated settlement and keeping it civilised. She doesn't have the money (or will?) for a fight either. Not yet at least.

And then she asked me if my relationship had anything to do with this decision? And when I explained what had happened, she told me that she wasn't a stranger and that she was there if I needed to talk to someone.

Odd.

The one person who I thought of as my opponent. The one person I felt would be judgemental turns out to be the one person who is there for me.

Funny old life innit?

Here we go again

2007-12-19T19:43:00.000Z

Back in hotels.

Checking in, the lady on the desk considerately mentions that there is an Xmas party in the hotel tonight and that she will try to find me a quiet room.

Tap tap tappity tap.

Frown

SMILE

Looks up

I have a room on the other side of the hotel which will be quieter.....

.... it's a (yes, you guessed it)

DISABLED ROOM.

It is at this point that I did something so uncharacteristic, so un-ENGLISH, that I worry I am in fact someone else, an Alien in Harlequin form.

I said no.

I may not even have said "no THANK YOU".

I just did a Mrs Reagan and just said "no"

I think this is why my room echos to the sounds of knocking hot water pipes. Why I have the only room number not displayed on signs and why my kettle just gave me an electric shock.

Do I care?

Do I heck.

I have a BATH, not a huge tiled room with floor rails.

True, when I brush my teeth, I virtually need to STAND in said bath, but a bath I have, nonetheless.

I'm very proud of myself.

Just a pity that the hotel has a health club, with 3 Jacuzzis, a steam room and sauna, so I don't need to use the bath.

But that's not the point.

Is it?

The dichotomy of hotel rooms

2007-12-12T00:20:00.000Z

I remember, when I was a child, going on holiday with my parents. Typically, I'd share a room with my elder brother and we'd have an interconnecting door with my parents room, which would be open or at least ajar.

Sorry Mum and Dad.

A couple of years ago, we were talking about holidays and my Mum mentioned how, sometimes, she'd suggest we all go and have a nap, so that we could stay up later that night.

She also told me why.

There are SOME things about your parents that, even if you know intellectually, you need to NOT know emotionally.

Ewwww.

Some of my earliest memories and indeed, some of my best, are of hotel rooms in various parts of the world and I can still remember the thrill, the excitement of being given a key and running into what would be our new home for a week or two. Even the mundane - the phone between my brother's bed and mine. Hotel stationery, embossed with a pseudo-crest like some D-Lister playing on a name not his own. I never did have anyone to write to, let alone someone who'd be impressed by the Hotel (silent H) de Charcuterie. Even wardrobes were thrilling.

Nowadays, I seem to spend a huge part of my life in hotel rooms. I have woken in hotels in far-flung parts of the world and only known where I was when I turned on the TV. Oddly, I still find a slight thrill as I stand on the threshold of my new temporary home, wondering, but today the only thrill seems to come when I find that, for a change, I haven't been given a disabled room.

Again.

I don't know what it is, but I seem to constantly get a disabled room. Recently I walked in my bedroom in Manchester, to find that my bathroom was twice the size of my bedroom. I'd opened the main door and been a little surprised at how small the bedroom was but hey, it was only for a couple of nights. I then opened the bathroom door and it was like a tiled Narnia. An entire ceramic world lay on the other side of that door. A veritable wet-room, although I fail to see the benefit of being able to shower from the comfort of your wheelchair. Would you want to spend the day on a wet seat?

I don't know whether someone at the agents thinks it's funny, or whether by some mysterious electronic glitch my constant demand for a non-smoking room has been registered as something more difficult to deal with, but the fact remains, hotels the length and breadth of the country think I am fulfilling a quota for them.

Oh, smoking rooms. We now have a ban on smoking in public places. You're not even allowed to smoke in a company vehicle, as a non-smoker may get in. So how come last month I was told all the non-smoking rooms had gone and they'd given me a smoking room?

And yes.

It was disabled.

Well, the room wasn't (although the remote control for the TV was), but you know what I mean.

So, as I sit here, I wonder how I can get the thrill back? I mean, for many people, staying in a hotel is still exciting, still something new. The problem, is that so many things that were special then, are mundane in the extreme now.

When I was a child, the idea of having a phone, an actual phone, that you could make calls on or buzz your parents and ruin their sex lives, in your bedroom, was amazing. Now you can make international calls, send media files and surf the Internet on something smaller than the silver case my Dad kept his cigarettes in, when you were allowed to smoke in hotel room.... oh.

Sometimes, in the room, was Television. I proper one, with actual programs. Heck, I remember when I first encountered a remote control. What a high. Now of course, you can get streaming video on said phone in your pocket. TVs in the home are becoming the size of cinema screens from my childhood, yet all anyone wants to do is peer myopically at the palm of their hand whilst simultaneously cooing like a gaggle of maiden aunts over a new-born and congratulating each other over how 'on it' they are.

Sorry to burst your bubble guys, but being 'on it' should surely take more than the ability to be approved for an 18 month phone contract? Or maybe not. Maybe fashion ratings and credit ratings are more closely aligned than I thought? Perhaps, somewhere, there is a fashion-rating bureau.

Equifax does your credit rating
Equifash does your credibility rating

(I realise that those of you who may read this outside the UK probably don't know who Equifax are, but then, you probably didn't know the collective noun for Maiden Aunts was 'Gaggle', so you've learned something, which is always good).

And finally, room service. I've just stuck the tray outside my door, having eaten food I didn't really want, didn't enjoy and am already regretting. A few years ago, room service was SO exciting. Even a couple of years ago, I remember my kids excitement when we ordered it on one of our trips. Now? With so many ready meals, TV dinners, instant-gratification-and-regret-in-a-plastic-tray lifestyle aids, having dinner, in your bedroom(!) in front of the TV(!) whilst ignoring the phone(!) by your bed for all except an early morning call(!!), room service is just bland, uninteresting and instantly forgettable. And that's before we talk about the food.

So, I'll put the tray outside the door for someone else to collect, so they can wash the dishes. Go and have a shower and leave the towels on the floor to be replaced with clean ones in the morning and get into my bed, freshly made by someone else and muse on the disappointment of hote.... hold on a minute.

Dishes taken and washed.

Towels taken and replaced

Bed made.

I LIKE hotels.

Senseless

2007-12-10T11:30:00.000Z

Like most people I suspect, I have mused on occasions on the question:

"If you had to lose ONE sense, which would it be?"

I remember being asked this question in a class once and I remember that my answer "Common" did NOT go down well with the teacher, although my peers loved it.

Looking back, I think that was the start of something.

However, the reason for this post is actually not about that, but about being blind.

I am not blind and although I had a friend who was, can have no concept of what it would be like. I do know however that it would be devastating. I would miss so much, so many many things, including movies.

I'm at home this morning, packing as I'm away on business for the week and on the TV (for only the 32nd time this month) is "Where Eagles Dare".

This is a movie I wouldn't miss.

Not because I don't think it's good - ok, a bit corny, but even so - but because this is a movie I could STILL enjoy without sight.

Next time it's on, close your eyes and listen:

The sound of the wind, which chills you with imaginary snow down the back of your neck. You hear it in the background whistling past the embrasures in the castle walls. You hear the silence echoing off the walls and stone floors.

The wonderful timbre of Richard Burton's voice "Broadsword calling Danny Boy" and even Clint, being, well, Clint.

And most of all, the music. From the opening drums, through the building tension, the action crescendos to the closing scene in the plane, the whole score just builds a complete picture in the mind.

Ok, so the film is corny and jingoistic.

But if I ever lose my sight, I'll send the dog out to buy me a copy.

Tempus Fugitive

2007-12-10T10:49:00.000Z

Last night I was at a 40th Wedding party.

The tables were adorned with pictures, mostly from cruising holidays, that the happy couple and their sons have taken over the years, together with their wedding album.

Initially, this seemed like a good idea, allowing their assembled friends and family to laugh and joke about how young they looked, about the fashions, hairstyles and generally be happy about how much better such things are now.

Then reality bit, as it has a tendency to do.

Fashions come and go and, in truth, those of us still capable of breathing will no doubt laugh at what we wore last night, at some point in the future. Glasses (specs that is) in particular seem to give rise to hilarity more quickly than most things.

However, the thing that dampened the general enthusiasm for the past was, quite simply, the number of people absent. Pictures of our past can be a source of happiness, reawakening memories of times that seem, almost exclusively, better. Perhaps this is because we tend not to take pictures of times and things that make us sad?

The absence of so many people who had been there for the original celebration however, serves to remind us that time is not kind to things other than fashion. So many faces, smiling out of the yellowed pages of an album, oblivious of the gulf that now lay between them looking out and us looking in. So maybe the pictures taken last night, a stream of ones and zeros uploaded into the ether rather than glued into a scrapbook, will engender the same emotions in others and, it's to be hoped in us, some time in the future?

This week, my Aunt had a stroke. As I write, she lies in a hospital bed, being given the best our wonderful Health Service can offer - except the unit she needs has been closed and she's too ill to be moved. I hope and pray she will pull through, not only for herself, but for my Mother and in a truly selfish way, for myself. Losing a relative is always painful, but it's more the implication of what it means in relation to my Mother and what the loss of her Sister, (GF) would do to her.

For me, the implications are different. It reinforces the realisation that I'm no longer a child. As our parents age, the relationship we have with them is reversed - we become the parent and they the child. But in truth, this isn't complete and we never lose that irrational, almost primeval belief in their permanence. Each event, each loss, erodes that like the sea undermining a cliff, until finally it collapses under it's own mass. When that happens, we finally, irrevocably, grow up.

And I'm not ready.

I heard that, pardon?

2007-11-14T23:39:00.000Z

I bought a hearing aid yesterday.

I've been finding it more difficult to hear, to make out conversation, particularly in crowded social environments, largely due to a mis-spent youth as a DJ and, despite the pleasure this gives me in annoying my children by having the TV too loud, it has been irritating me more and more.

Yesterday, I was in Dublin and, having left a meeting, was walking down the street, soaking up the different sameness that is the Republic of Ireland. They drive on the left, but speeds are in Kilometers. The some of the shops are identical (McDonalds and Burger King vie for space in the litter bins and gutters) but then you encounter stores that look familiar but someone has changed the names when you weren't looking. Prices are in Euros, but people still talk about "30 bob". Signs are in Gaelic first, with English subtitles, but the language you hear on the street is English.

Or so I thought.

I'd left the meeting and, having cut my arm, needed some tape, so when I saw what I thought was a pharmacy, I darted in. However, what I found was in fact a medical supplies shop with prices that were, well, keen to say the least. Having found myself walking down the street and really struggling to understand what was being said around me, I made an impulse buy and am now the proud owner of a hearing aid.

Ok, it's not medical standard and is more an in-ear amplifier. Well, partially in-ear. Ok, it sticks out the side of my head like a badly-parked Volkswagen Beetle, but I thought it may make a difference.

Out in the street, I parked it in my ear and, once I'd got past the stage where it whistled like a building site spotting a blond in a mini-skirt, prepared myself for a whole new era of clarity and understanding.

Which is when I discovered that Dublin is full of Poles and, as a consequence, my confusion was due less to auditory atrophy and more to the fact that they were speaking Polish.

Anyone want to buy a Volkswagen?

Pardon?

Nature versus Common Sense

2007-11-14T07:58:00.000Z

There are lots of useless things.

Wasps, men's nipples, people who call you up from India and try to sell you things whilst maintaining that their names are Jeremy, Nigel or Tracy. I don't know whether they are the work of a deity, of nature, or a mere random chance that has persisted, but either way, there are lots of things that just defy a rational explanation of their existence.

However, there is one thing that seems to exceed all others in it's sheer lack of justification. One thing that serves no useful purpose whatsoever, yet is more manifest than all of the others.

I speak, of course, of hair.

Not ordinary hair. Not the tumbling locks of teenage girls, straightened when naturally curly, curled when naturally straight. Not the full, glistening repositories of the output of half the world's chemical industry, cloaked in names like jasmine, coconut and Jojoba. What the hell IS jojoba anyway? Not the tweaked outrageous quiffs of 'yoofs'; coloured, lacquered, spiked as a vehement protest against..........well.............. jojoba I guess. Not even the hair that adorns men's (and some women's) faces which, for some reason, I'm told is a sign of untrustworthyness. How can it be untrustworthy, when so many priests and royalty have had bear...

Oh. Ok. I'll give you that one.

I'm not even referring to the hair that curls out from the armpits of the women of some European countries (and the odd absent/bloody-minded film star).

No, the hair I refer to is the most bizarre, pointless and curious thing.

Ear hair.

When I was young, I had hair on my head.

As I got older, I developed it on my arms, chest and the ability (resisted) to sprout it on my chin. My ears, thank you very much, were smooth, unadorned and didn't even stick out unduly.

Then, one day, something happens.

You wake up and everything has changed.

Along with things like the noise that you make standing or sitting; the sudden interest in unsuitable fashion; the urge to buy a sports-car or motorcycle; the delusion that nobody notices you surreptitiously looking at the bottoms of young girls; something goes wrong with your DNA.

Clever little helixes that, for years have told your fingernails not to grow on your teeth, your stomach to produce acid strong enough to digest your food but weak enough not to digest itself, suddenly have a bad day. You can imagine the conversation.

"Hi, how's it going?"

"Not so bad, just making some enzymes and stuff. How's things with you?"

"Honestly? I'm a bit cheesed off. He's really irritating me."

"Why? Are you still pissed off about the reduced demand for sperm? I did explain that that's not really his fault."

"I don't know, I think I'm just jaded. Been doing this for too long. Same things, day in day out. I just need to get out of this rut and be free to EXPRESS myself."

"Well, what do you want to do? I mean, it's not as if you can break the rules and make his fingernails grow on his teeth is it? You've already messed with his digestion with all that strong acid, so he can't eat those hot curries any more. We're making his hair fall out, so short of making it grow back somewhere else...... hey..... why have you gone all thoughtful and quiet????"

So, there you have it. One day we wake up and, when absentmindedly stroking your ear, you suddenly feel it. For a moment, you have visions of your kids super-glueing a hamster to the side of your head when you were asleep but no, it's there, it's all yours and from now on, you have a choice. Accept it graciously and with dignity...

...Or buy a pair of tweezers and pluck the little buggers out.

However, it's only then that you realise the genius that is nature.

All of a sudden, you understand what earwax is for.

IT'S TO WAX YOUR EARS WITH!!

Useless

2007-11-13T22:47:00.000Z

There are lots of useless things.

Including me, when it comes to technology.

I just posted the same blog twice and can't work out how to delete one of them.

Hey ho, not as if I work for a technology company or anything...

Where is a small child when you really need one?

(And I mean to help with your computer, before I get a knock on the door from someone thinking I mean something else!)

Neighbours, everybody loves good neighbours..

2007-11-10T14:05:00.001Z

I have new neighbours

They owned the flat next to mine which they rented out, but sold their house and moved back in.

I met them a few months ago, doing their garden, which seems to be about all they do. I think the state of mine offended them at some fundamental, almost religeous level and, if I'm honest, even the wildlife was avoiding it now it was so untidy. You have to understand that the garden's are open plan, with each ground floor flat having it's own bit. Seemed nice enough people, although building a patio close to my boundry wall without mentioning it did seem a bit offhand.

I tidied it up and then got a gardener to finish off, but was left with a large pile of cuttings etc, which I was letting mulch down.

I walked into my kitchen a moment ago, just in time to see him throw a match onto my now petrol-sodden compost heap, which effectively exploded, taking both of us rather by surprise. The rather beautiful Buddlia bush behind it is also now basically charcoal. I am now faced with having to go in an explain that, whilst I appreciate his kindness in garden maintainence, I would rather he KEEPS THE F*CK OFF MY PLOT.

Where do these people get off? I am fuming and that is the only reason I'm not out there right now, but following closely on from the previous post, I am just NOT going to be 'English' about this. Sod etiquette (odd how a French word is used for something the French don't do), if this were America I'd have shot his lawnmower by now.

And Breatheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee............

Enough is enough

2007-11-10T12:41:00.000Z

I just took a call from my Aunt. She was berating me for the fact that I can't make a family event, which coincides with my birthday. Claims she told my mother the date ages ago and can't I cancel the plans (I have tickets to see Les Mis).

I am 45.

Not 14

She knows it's my birthday around then, she stated as much, which is why she claims she told my Mother.

I am 45.

If you want to tell me something, tell me.

Not my Mother.

Me.

Unfortunately, my Mother can remember what happened to her at 16, but struggles sometimes to complete her sentences, losing the thread halfway through, so that she will complete her sentence with words completely disconnected from it's start. It's like seeing someone with the jacket from a blue suit and the trousers from a brown one and is both distressing and irritating, which in turn makes you feel terrible for feeling irritated.

I have a splitting headache, and was laying down with my eyes closed when my Aunt rang and it begins again.

And you know, for once, instead of "yes Auntie, I'll see what I can do Auntie", I actually said "well, instead of telling Mum you should have told ME." She then suggested that I don't eat before the show (going to the matinee) and go to the function first? I declined.

I am 45.

Perhaps I'm finally beginning to act it?

Oh, I DO hope not.

Why is it

2007-11-05T19:40:00.000Z

Someone has tried to blow up the seat of democracy, the Houses of Parliament. In the name of their religion, they tried to plant a bomb that would have killed dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. I'm sure they believed they had right, had G-d on their side, but how does that give them the right?

And the response from the population at large?

To celebrate the anniversary each year with fireworks and bonfires, burning the lead conspirator in effigy. To me this seems odd - someone tried to blow up politicians, so we burn him alive. This shows a strange dichotomy in attitude towards politicians to my mind.

It's odd what people do in the name of their religion though (wow, profound tonight, for my next trick I may remember my name) but I heard on the news today about a Jehovah's Witness who, at 22, gave birth to twins. She hugged them, but there were complications and she lost a lot of blood. This could have been handled with a transfusion, but she, her husband, her parents all refused to let them.

She died, leaving her husband "distraught" to bring up the two babies who will never know their Mother.

There was a phone-in on the radio, with lots of people saying how 'ridiculous' it was and how it 'shouldn't have been allowed'.

Personally, I don't understand her choice and it goes against my personal credo, but who am I to decide what her faith does and doesn't allow? But I have two questions:

What would be the decision of her church in the situation when she was in danger BEFORE the babies were born? Would they have let both her and the twins die? She can make a decision, but the babies?
No matter how good their door-to-door sales pitch is, how the hell are they going to get around THIS one when they come selling Watchtower?

Maybe I will ask them, next time they come.

Then again, maybe not.

Her G-d may be able to forgive her - I just hope her kids can too one day.

How to save seven years

2007-11-05T16:01:00.000Z

Went back to the Dr this week, to get the results of my blood tests.

Nothing

Nada

Gornicht.

Don't get me wrong, this is good, as far as it goes, but still doesn't take my Dr any closer to why I am gaining weight and have stomach problems. Which is stress.

She sent me to see the Phlebotomist and what I want to know is; why does everyone have to have an impressive latin title these days? Is someone who is flips burgers a victualia-vexologist? What does that make me? A Boviscatologist?

The answer is yes, but I still don't know what to do for stress.

Answers on a postcard

How many crises can you fit into one mid-life?

2007-11-01T20:46:00.000Z

I ride a motorcycle.

Ok, that's a lie.

I have a motorcycle, but for the most part, it sits in my mother's garage, unridden. I sometimes have a vision of it sitting there, surrounded by toys outgrown by disinterested children, who despite this won't let them be thrown away. Surrounded by blunt garden tools and garden furniture that has that strange smell nature reserves to keep other smelly things of it. Surrounded by boxes of books that we promise ourselves we will read again, atlases full of countries that no longer exist, of borders long dishonoured, encyclopedias full of discredited opinions (what price a 1970 explanation of DNA anyone?).

I have this vision of it sitting there, like some automotive puppy, starting at the door with big round headlampeyes, willing the door to lift and it's master to stomp in, red and black kit making him look like a cross between spiderman and well, a walrus, to undo the chains cruelly holding it down and for those wide open spaces to beckon. To run free, the joy in the running, not the destination.

Yet, day after day, week after week, it sits there and both our joints become stiffer, the weather becomes colder, wetter and the odds of me riding anywhere become longer as the days become shorter. The closest I come is having a picture of the poor wee beastie as wallpaper on my PC.

Today, I was with a client. A few years older than me perhaps, divorced, in a new house, all sounding rather familiar.

I have found that when people see the bike, they often comment, creating a good icebreaker and it's amazing how many people comment along the lines of I had/have/would love to have a(nother) bike, if I could justify/use/get away with it with the wife.

This latter does tend to be the men, but I live in hope.

If they ask what it is, I explain that it's "a Honda Mid-Life Crisis".

Today however, the client took one look and before I could trot out my rehearsed line, commented "my mid life crisis is better" . In his garage, was a Harley Davidson, a bike that I've always wanted to ride down Route 1, but which is frankly silly down English country lanes. However, biker fraternalality (good word - wish it existed) didn't allow me to comment and we chatted biker chat for a while.

Turns out that his bike sits in it's respective garage just like mine, having done a little over 2000 miles in 2 years. Is this different from my bosses, buying themselves Porsches when they sold the business? In a way it is, as they at least use their cars as transport, although this could be seen as a type of arrogance - "I can not only afford a Porsche, I can afford to use it as a car".

But it gets me thinking. Why do we, as our joints begin to creak and our feet become dimly remembered friends, still out there somewhere but not seen in a long time, why do we feel the need to try to wrest back some sense of youth by committing ourselves to toys that, in our minds at least, roll back the clock. Do we REALLY believe that, in some esoteric way, our possession of these youthful accoutrement's sends us back through some kind of Stephen Hawking wormhole, to a time when we were young and fit, even if such a time never existed?

Earlier this week, I was at an exhibition with some of the Directors. One company had hired an attractive young blond model to wander round, dressed as Little Bo Peep, all fluff and fake-tan, handing out leaflets.

The exhibition was dead and so most of the talking was between exhibitors. At one point, one of the wealthier Directors was standing with a group of us, including Bo Peep, chatting. A nice chap, his svelte days are long past, but he is now a very wealthy man.

Somewhat brazenly, he asked Bo Peep if she'd "go out with a fat man?".

She was polite, she was trying to avoid offense, but she was innately honest, so "no".

Now, you have to understand that I am a salesman. I sell. It's what I do, so that's what I did.

"But" I asked, "would you go out with a fat man with a Lamborghini?"

Brief hesitation "Yes" she said, then did a double take "Do YOU have a Lamborghini?" (this asked of him, not me you understand).

One of my colleagues then chips in "Yes, he has a Lamborghini, plus he owns a Napoleonic Fort in the Solent, with a luxury flat on the top".

Bo Peep was clearly moved and I've applied for the group marketing role.

But to come back to the question of why do we buy them, I think I've answered my own question....

.... but I'm still not going for a ride. My joints are telling me it's going to rain.

I'm just a boy who cain't say no

2007-10-26T17:23:00.000+01:00

I've just been commissioned to write two articles on cars for a magazine.

Now, before everyone starts scaling tall buildings along my route to enable them to shower me with ticker tape (can you still GET ticker tape in this age of computer screens and online trading? If not, what a great loss. What will they do when China puts a man on the moon, and then puts another one on the moon an hour later?)

Anyway, I digress.

Again.

Sooooo...

Before you get all excited, I should admit that these commissions are based far more on WHO I know than my Hemingwayesque writing skills. The next Jeremy Clarkson I am not.

Well, not yet anyway. FAR too tolerant (stop laughing at the back).

However, I need to deliver both articles by the 31st.

I am in Belfast at the moment, sitting in an airport lounge and am off again for a large chunk of next week. Which means I have committed to writing two professional, glossy executive magazine style articles over the weekend.

On a subject that, frankly, I don't know much about. If, 10, maybe 15 years ago I'd been asked to write about supercars, I could have done it easily.

20 or 25 years ago, and you probably would have found me struggling to write about much else. I could quote the BHP, 0-60 times and pros & cons of the Ferrari 308 GTS (the Magnum car - see, now you know the one) compared with a 911 Turbo. I could tell you that a Lamborghini Countach SS was ferociously fast, but that you couldn't see out of the back and needed to hang out of the door to reverse.

The clutch would also break your leg if you didn't watch it like a hawk.

But that was a long time ago and now, I know a Ferrari when I see one, but couldn't tell a Scuderia (and before you think it, I just read the name on the front of a magazine) from a Raspberry Ripple.

So, here I sit in Belfast, £10 lighter and 10lb heavier from Car magazines, facing a weekend of research and writing.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love writing and love the idea of being PAID to write even more.

But WHY do I always commit myself to things I simply don't have the time or resources to do?

Will you join me in the chorus?

All together....

He's just a boy who cain't say no,
he's in a terrible state
He just commits to everything
He's far too much on his plate.

Still, if I get paid, does that make me a proper writer? Damn, I hope this doesn't just become a 'job' to me.

Although, then again, if you pay me enough

Now, where did I put those magazines?

Talking to strangers

2007-10-24T20:30:00.000+01:00

The UK is a small place.

Having seen the vast distances in the US, where the distance from horizon to horizon is the distance from my home to my Brother's, I realise how small.

I don't see my brother much because of the distance.

Well, the distance and because we've drifted apart. I think the continental drift started the night my Father died. I went to pick him up to go to the hospital, and he offered his hand in a handshake. I ignored it and hugged him, but could feel drift begin even then, inexorable but definite.

So given the lack of size, it amazes me sometimes the huge differences even a few miles can make in regional personality and behaviour.

A few months ago, I went on my annual road trip with my daughters. Each year, we pack a bag, and set off, following our noses (a not difficult task in my case), stopping for the night in hotels wherever we may be, letting them enjoy the thrill of the things I take for granted in my life - room service, free sewing kits and shower gel, notepads and branded pencils. I remember their excitement the first time I confirmed they could keep them, along with the credit-card sized keys.

Now, experienced travellers that they are, they take them for granted.

Innocence lost.

We ended up in Blackpool. It's sort of like Las Vegas, but without the class.

Or entertainment

Or anything else particularly.

But that's where we ended up. Why were we up there? Because my youngest, bless her, when asked where she wanted to go, replied:

"Can we go anywhere?"

"Anywhere within reason, yes."

"Cool. Can we go to Manchester?"

"Manchester? Why on earth do you want to go there????"

Turned out a friend had been to the shopping centre there and told her it was "amazing"

It's not. It's a mall. But that's where we ended up and so from there to Blackpool seemed like a good idea.

What has this to do with anything? Well, not a lot, but I have found that in a blog, it's hard to keep to the point. So forgive me.

Anyway, both the girls were stunned by the different accents, the slower pace and different nature of the people they met up there. Particularly, how chatty and friendly everyone was.

They were also amazed by how their Dad was so chatty too, talking to complete strangers, immersing himself in conversations with complete strangers.

And that's my point. In the US, you get regional differences, noticeable changes in accent from State to State, region to region, with personalities seemingly growing out of the earth. I've been to New England and met people who wouldn't p*ss on you if you were on fire, and I've chatted to a Navajo indian at the side of a desert road as if he was an old friend and found that he had visited Great Yarmouth.

But that's another story.

But in England, less than 50 miles can mean a different attitude, accent and view on life.

So here I sit in Belfast, in a lonely hotel room, wondering whether to order room service or go to the pub (can't afford the hotel restaurant), and looking back on a day of chatting to the lovely Irish people I've met. This place is my secret - nobody else from work comes here, because they all think it's a war zone.

Why do they think that?

I couldn't POSSIBLY say, unless somebody, somebody who wants to keep the secret to himself, somebody devious has told them that.

People here are nice. They chat, they laugh, they smile. How they had so much trouble for so long I don't understand. How can you get on so well with a stranger, yet hate your next door neighbour enough to kill him?

I like talking to strangers. They are interesting, you can't guess what they are going to say. Sometimes you can't UNDERSTAND what they say, but that's ok too.

Best of all, they haven't heard my jokes.

And some of them are nice enough to laugh, which makes them friends.

Odd that, isn't it?

I didn't win

2007-10-21T23:39:00.000+01:00

I didn't win tickets, or rather, the right to buy tickets for the Led Zeppelin concert next month.

By rights, I'm a little too young to be a true Led Zep fan. I make a noise when I get up from a chair, a sort of cross between a duck laying an ostrich egg and a seven-stone weakling lifting 300lbs in the gym, but the egg still gets laid, the weight lifted.

My joints creak as I bend to pick up a piece of paper, but I can still bend.

I have my 'Craft' moments (Can't Remember a F***ing Thing), but can still remember my kids when they come and ask for money.

More's the pity.

And as I started young, I remember their songs, their lyrics. I remember lying in a darkened bedroom in my parents house, headphones the size of Volkswagen beetles on my head, volume turned up to eleven before Spinal Tap. I remember leaping horizontally 3 feet into the air as my mother, thinking I'd fallen asleep, sneaked in and lifted the headphones off.

I'm grateful, as now I will recognise the heart attack when it comes.

But I'm sad I didn't win tickets. Sad I won't be able to say to my grandchildren that, when the latest boy band covers Black Dog as an acapella harmony, all covered zits and rippling pecs, that I remember actually SEEING Led Zeppelin, the REAL Led Zeppelin, in concert. Sad that I will never have the chance to hear Stairway to Heaven, live, warts, bum notes and all. Something to look back on as the Craft moments take over more and more, knowing this is one thing I will remember, along with my generation's Kennedy, the Towers. I'm sad because I won't be at this last of the great concerts, when others will be, others who simply have money, but no right.

And, if I'm honest, I'm sad I won't be able to sell the tickets on Ebay and clear my cards. Sad I won't be able to persuade some corporate poseur that he should entertain his clients there, letting them hark back to their youth whilst he cynically reckons the value of nostalgia in future orders.

Besides, let's get real here. When I was too young to go to a Led Zeppelin concert, the joints Robert Plant was concerned with weren't the ones he has to smear with Tiger Balm when it looks like rain.

So, do I REALLY want to sit there, realising that they have subtly changed the lyrics, and now, in 2007, they're singing about a "Stairlift to Heaven"?

You bet I do.

Bugger.

The oddest things

2007-10-20T12:25:00.000+01:00

Make me laugh.

I have just heard a television presenter say:

"The only way to take a tapir's temperature..."

Say it out loud.

Now tell me that's not funny.

Oh well, takes all sorts I s'pose.

However, I makes me think I will keep a section of this blog for the things that make me laugh, in the hope it does the same for you.

Right, I'm off to wander round saying "only way to take a tapir's temperature" and chuckle.

To Blog or not to Blog

2007-10-20T11:59:00.000+01:00

Well, here we are, committing what I'd always considered to be the height of self-absorbed arrogance - Blogging. Committing to cyberspace my thoughts, in the curious idea that somebody, anybody, may want to read them.

So, in the spirit of a litigious world, these are the terms and conditions of my blog.

This blog is intended for my personal use. Any content is intended not for the reader, but for myself. It's primary use is as a receptacle for the outpourings of my subconscious, as a personal journal which I won't put down and lose.

Ok, so I don't lose things, I just remember them being elsewhere.

None of the thoughts, statements or opinions are posted to elicit any reaction in the reader, as I fully expect the reader to be me. They are not designed to be provocative, confrontational or indeed, accurate. I fully reserve the right to post comments that are ill-judged, founded on poor logic and just plain silly. It's my blog, if you want to disagree, get your own. I promise not to read it.

I do not commit to posting with any regularity, for my posts to have any particular theme or even to make sense. This is not a journal of any aspect of my life, it just 'is'.

Some of the things I post on here will be true.

Some of the things I post on here will be fiction.

Some of the things I post on here, I will be able to distinguish between the two.

Others I may not.

I leave it to you to decide which is which. If you can tell, please don't hesitate to tell me. All assistance in dealing with reality is gladly received.

Generally ignored, but gratefully received.

This blog will therefore be free of all warranties, guarantees, promises and commitments. I don't do well with commitment. I've spent my life trying to avoid being committed. Then again, they tell me the food is good in there and they now have cable...

All I do promise to try to keep my posts readable, grammatically correct (unless for effect) and wherever possible, free of spelling errors. This last is promised because I've just noticed the spellcheck button. Now I live in fear of American spelling.

If you wish to comment on anything posted (Blogged? See? Already I'm struggling), please feel free. I may even read your comments, or even comment on your comment.

Then again, that will rely on my remembering my password. For me, passwords are a bit like car keys. I put them down in a logical, safe place.

Then someone moves them.

I blame the sock-pixies.

Over time, I'm sure I will become more familiar with Blogging, and this journal will evolve.

Or maybe not. Either way, you have no grounds for complaint.

I have only one request.

If something I post on here makes you smile or laugh, then I'm glad and please feel free to tell me. If something I post on here makes you sad, then please feel free to share that too. If something I post on here makes you angry with me, then please feel free to stick it.

If I want to be reminded of my failings, I talk to my children. They're professionals.

I thang yow.