On turning 40

Date: 12/03/08

I recently turned forty. Nothing unusual about that I hear all you over forties mumble in unison, but it happens to be the first time I’ve ever done it. Interestingly, it didn’t hurt all that much. Well, not at all, if I’m honest. Not that I was expecting it to hurt, not in a physical sense anyway. Mind you I have been expecting the arrival of this personal milestone for some time now so it really didn’t come as any surprise. I'm glad to report that nothing much happened to me. My body remained the same; my emotional state showed only the smallest flicker of a change and life continued on its way as if nothing at all had happened. It wasn't always like this...

Turning 20 was quite fun, I seem to remember. I was no longer a virgin for a start – a medical condition that gradually became a chronic and debilitating handicap from the age of about 16. Those three years of frustrated torture and torment were almost enough to test the chastity of a priest. But then one day it happened and the dark clouds parted, the sun came out, the sky was a beautiful azure blue and all was good with the world. I think that moment really did represent my transition into manhood. And I’ve been fighting to recapture my boyhood ever since. Lets face it, it’s not a lot of fun being a man (or grown up for that matter). OK, you get to drive and smoke and drink and all that but I miss the simple pleasure of ‘playing out’ in the fields with mates, getting up to mischief, making paper planes, dens, guns out of sticks and generally having a whale of a time doing not a lot. i can no longer do these things as a man. That sort of behaviour is viewed in a very dim light unless you can find some way of making money out of the activity.

The ten years between 20 and 30 were probably the most difficult years of my life. Yes, I was now a man, but what sort of man was I? I spent those 10 years struggling to find out. But just when I thought I had a grip on a few relatively sound ideas about how I should define my manhood I got married. This changed things a bit but I persevered with my task for a couple of years and almost came within spitting distance of drafting a complete manifesto outlining my personal 'life policies' when the wife and I initiated a short but disruptive breading programme. I spent the next four or five years totally bewildered and in a state of constant dizziness and was completely unable to come up with any ideas about the type of man I should be because as every parent knows, children dominate your time and your life so much. I lost all track of who I was, what I believed in and where I was going - I was lucky to put underwear on the right way round some days. Then, slowly, gradually, the mist cleared and I found myself with a little time to dwell on the big things again, I could spend time reflecting on personal metaphysics.

And then I turned 30. I secretly turned 30. I turned 30 without a fanfare, without a party, without any drama whatsoever. Even I didn’t know I had turned 30. Turning 30 activated the countdown to 40. I now had exactly 10 years to go until I crossed the magical threshold to the parlour full of the confused and bewildered, a room full of middle aged people who were greying and ageing, all rapidly turning into parents of adults, and desperate not to become grandparents too soon. Some of these people appear happy to occasionally shed respectability and behave in an amoral manner, constantly craving the opportunity to misbehave and cling to the last vestiges of youth, like trying to quench a thirst with an empty bottle.
Slowly the years ticked away, slowly I became more beige, more tired, a bit fatter and a lot grumpier. But on reaching 35 I realised I was still very much alive and decided to take an energetic run up at turning 40. I read more, ran a bit more, lost a bit of weight and by the age of 38 decided that I was me after all. Like a walker reaching the half way point on a mountain track, I now felt able to turn round and take in the journey to date, each year representing a stage of my life’s odyssey, some flat and easy, some hilly and heavy going, but each stage contributing to who I am now, who I have become. The stages from 38 to 40 have been undulating but mainly smooth and I’ve been able to pick an easier path now I know how to walk with care. Perhaps the next 40 years will be easy, perhaps they will be tough. Maybe they will be a combination, but that’s all for the future and I'll trudge on regardless, watching out for any dangers. I still enjoy the odd bout of mischief but the only bad behaviour I can get away with nowadays is drinking more than 3 glasses of wine with a meal. This is usually dealt with harshly and the punishment is meted out by my wife as she cruelly delivers the painful slap of a disappointed tut of disapproval.

Most of my friends are well past 40 and I’ll soon be able to witness their passage into late middle age as they creep past their half century. Whilst they are happy to forego some dignity they all seem to have retained their hair and teeth which is comforting. In the meantime I’ll continue to watch the clock and observe the days tick away as I now creep towards 50.

Old English hero...

Date: 22/11/07

With the release of the film Beowulf almost upon us I thought it might be a good idea to read the original to see how far the film-makers have deviated from the story. Once I managed to get my head around old English it was quite a good read, full of rich language and expression, providing the reader with an atmospheric depiction of an epic struggle of good against evil. Or was it? For those not familiar with the story I shall try to summarise in as few lines as possible, yes I have missed lots out about the setting and the people but hopefully you will get the gist;

A good and valiant king builds a mighty hall for his people to use for feasting and merrymaking. They use this hall to get drunk night after night and eventually they make enough noise to incense the local fen-monster (Grendel) into violent action. Grendel waits until they are all asleep and enters the hall, then proceeds to slaughter 30 of the sleeping party goers. This continues for a few nights until they get the message and refuse to use the hall at night. For twelve years the people are haunted by Grendel, many brave men die trying to fight the fiend. Eventually news of the situation reaches a brave young warrior called Beowulf. Beowulf is a big lad, a bit lazy but has a vice-like grip. He wants to prove to his father that he is actually a decent fellow and decides to fight Grendel. Taking twelve of his best men he sails to the where the tormented people live and talks their king into allowing him the opportunity of taking on the monster. That night the group stay in the hall and it is not long before they are visited by Grendel. A violent fight breaks our between the hero and the beast. Swords cannot pierce the hide of Grendel so Beowulf decides to wrestle him. As the fight continues Beowulf proves to be the stronger and sensing defeat Grendel attempts to flee but Beowulf’s grip is so strong that one of the monster’s arms is ripped off. The monster flees back to his liar and the people celebrate the victory.

Beowulf is not satisfied with this hasty departure and goes after the mortally wounded Grendel to make sure he is dead. The bloody trial leads him to a dank lake. Beowulf dives to the bottom of the lake and discovers a chamber and the dead Grendel. He also discovers Grendel’s mother. Obviously she is not too impressed that this man has murdered her son and another fight begins. The fight ends when Beowulf grabs a huge sword and manages to cut off her head. Returning to the hall victorious, Beowulf is richly rewarded for his actions and parts as friends with the king. He and his band return home with the many treasures.

Eventually Beowulf becomes king of his own people and rules with fairness and strength for fifty years.

One day a subject of King Beowulf stumbles on a sleeping dragon’s lair full of treasure and decides to help himself to an ornate goblet. When the dragon wakes it realises a human has stolen one of the many items and in a fit of rage flies around the land bar-b-queing anyone out in the open. News of this reaches the ageing Beowulf and he takes another band of men and an iron shield to defeat the dragon. The thief is also taken as a guide and before long they arrive at the cave. Another fight breaks out and all but one of the band run off into the woods leaving Beowulf and the remaining warrior. The shield does a good job of protecting them from the flames and allows Beowulf to land a blow on the dragon’s head whilst the other man plunges his sword into its body. Dying from a mortal wound the dragon manages to bite Beowulf in the neck. Beowulf lives long enough to issue funeral directions and is then carried back to the village where a mound is erected on the coast in his honour.

Anyway - there you have it in a nutshell. I recommend reading a full version as the peotry is beautiful and it provides a lot more depth.

The first part of the story is interesting in that it is nothing more that a dispute between a noisy neighbour and a violent fatherless lout that should have a tag and an ASBO, who takes offence to the loud music. Who can blame him for wanting a bit of piece and quiet? OK, so the manner in which he goes about things is perhaps a bit extreme but you have to feel some sympathy for him as he has never been invited to a single one of their nightly parties.

A comparative situation would be if a quaint old English village built a large wooden barn and held nightly parties, failing to invite the village mutant (the six foot seven farm hand that lives in a cottage on the edge of the village). Village mutant takes offence and storms the party every night for a week and eventually everyone in the village stops going. The handsome young farm lad from the other side of the village arrives and sees him off. Not quite as violent as the original and obviously a loose analogy but it demonstrates that the story can be used as the basis for many a story. For instance, take the A-Team. The story was always the same, a bunch of nice locals bothered by a greedy bully who was preventing something nice from happening – then the boys arrive and sort him out good and proper. They even borrow from the second half of the story – the shield, remember? Beowulf used that because the usual wooden one would be useless against a dragon and Mr T always armoured a car or a tractor every episode.

Returning the story though, the pursuit of the injured Grendel is probably not required, after all, who can survive losing an arm? However, considering Grendel is sort of supernatural, Beowulf is probably justified in his actions. Slaying the mother is also prudent as she may, in time, produce another being that is stronger and even more violent and with an even worse behavioural problems. It’s interesting that no father is mentioned which may be deliberate as a contemporary take on this is to view single parent families as wrong indicating that sons that grow up without a father turn out bad. Perhaps this was the intention with the original story. In the actual text there are concerns about Beowulf’s attitude and he is criticised for loafing around. His campaign to defeat Grendel can be seen as a move to silence critics and prove to his village and king that he is a decent young man with direction and purpose to his life.

Once home, the retelling of the story to his people and his king is reassuringly devoid of boasting and illustrates that he is clearly a modest man, confident of his strength and wisdom. He is also generous with the treasures bestowed on him by the grateful king of the liberated people. Honour and respect are key themes here, as is the defeat of bullies. History provides many examples of liberation from an aggressor, usually on state level with nation liberating a nation from an invader, Kuwait for example.
What is unusual about the second half of the story is the message that theft is acceptable, from a dragon anyway. Mythical figures and creatures are very often used as allegories in stories such as these so does the dragon represent financial bullying such as greed or unjust taxation? Furthermore, what made the thief think it was acceptable to take anything from the dragon in the first place? Why did Beowulf not insist that the thief return the item and face the dragon in the first place? Why did the dragon need to be destroyed? Before the item was stolen the dragon remained fast asleep and harmed no-one. Was there any possibility of negotiating a mutually agreed peace? Should the villagers have punished the thief for the deaths of those that the dragon torched?
There are many injustices here and they are not easy to explain. I’m not sure that the dragon serves any purpose other than to provide Beowulf with a death fit for an adventurer, after all warriors do not die peacefully in their beds (his king died in battle). And at the ripe old age of 70+ it would be unthinkable for such a dynamic figure to become pathetic, grey and weak before passing away in his bed. A death like that is reserved for thinkers and academics. No, Beowulf needs a hero’s death. The author could have had him die in a battle with another tribe but there would have been more deaths and anyway, I think the dragon is a good mechanism to provide a single heroic death and by their cowardice the men who run off into the woods serve to amplify his bravery. They are also there to carry his body back to the village. There is evidence in the original manuscript that suggests the story was reworked and I wonder how many endings were considered before the author(s) decided to stick with an almost lone fight with the dragon?

The Beowulf storyline clearly contributed to the notion that there are only seven basic plots for stories. In my opinion the story contains three, maybe four of the plots; the hero defeats a monster (three actually), there is a voyage and a return, and there is a tragedy as the hero dies (tenuous one…). The debatable plot is ‘the quest’ as this can be seen as a combination of the voyage and the monster plots.

The seven plots are...
1. Overcoming the monster
2. Rags to riches
3. The quest
4. Voyage and return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

Considering this story was written over 1000 years ago I think the author(s) does a first rate job with the plots. The story is actually quite tight and does not stray or digress from the point too far. There have been a few attempts at turning this adventure into a film and I dare say it will be done again in the years to come as technology advances. Let’s not forget that Lord of the Rings took two attempts before it was watchable with the original animated film finishing somewhere in the Two Towers book due to a lack of cash. The trick with these fantastic tales is to make the monsters and creatures real enough to prevent the audience laughing. Cast your mind back to the strange beasts in the 70’s Dr Who episodes, they were little more than blokes in rubber masks, and quite ridiculous by today’s standards. So creating a realistic scary fen-monster, his hideous beast of a mother and a fire breathing dragon have always been a challenge not to say a constraint which has probably put off many a film maker from tackling this classic tale.
One way to get round this is to adapt the story in order to remove the supernatural elements and in the film ‘The 13th Warrior’ which is based on Beowulf the film maker replaces the monster with an evil tribe and a witch living in the heart of the liar. All of the themes are present and the story doesn’t lose too much in the way of authenticity by changing the main character to a wise young Moor.

I’m surprised that more adaptations have not been created because it’s a great fireside tale, but perhaps the modern appetite finds this sort of tale unpalatable compared to most predictable Hollywood film plots or those found in the pages of bloated airport novels which are the literary equivalent of a large MacDonald’s meal – filling but no nutrition.

I’d like to see more of these ancient stories revived and given new life, on the big screen, in books or even graphic novels. Perhaps we are seeing a trend in that direction with Troy and 300 both providing spade-fulls of action and adventure, not to mention loads of fun. 300 was originally a graphic novel based on the account of a legendary battle between the Spartans and the Persians and was converted to the medium of film well, a bit like Sin-City. This is not surprising as graphic novel writers and artists specifically use cinematography to create a story board, which is a preliminary technique used by all film makers. Perhaps there is a logical media lifecycle at work here; story, graphic novel, movie – each step requiring less imagination from the reader/viewer.

To bring this meandering rant to a bit of close I think we need to understand the real characters and heroes of the story. Firstly, we have the unknown authors that sat around the fire in an Anglo-Saxon hall all those years ago and, over a few beers, came up with the framework of the tale which has been added to, tweaked and refined to produce the poem as it stands today. Second we need to acknowledge those who maintained it through the years, committing the 3000 lines to memory until one day someone literate decided to write it down (there were two, the first’s pen ran out at line 1939). Next we have the custodians of the one and only manuscript who managed to preserve it through the troubled times of the middle ages, and then there are the translators who made it accessible to those of us who don’t speak old English. And finally, I don’t think we should ever forget the poor manuscript itself. It encountered its own dragon and suffered damage in a fire in 1732 and has since deteriorated (much life our hero), crumbling and falling apart like an old dying man that was once very powerful. However, by copying the writing, making films and graphic adaptations we are building a bower around the story – a tribute to this once powerful and dynamic force. I think that when you consider its history, the book of Beowulf is Beowulf itself. Long live Beowulf!

The fat people are taking over...

Date:15/10/07

Lots of things have happened to me since my last entry. I’ll try and be brief otherwise this entry will just go on forever. But first I must get one thing off my chest. The tabloids have recently published a report about the increase in obesity and that by the year 2050 (or something like that) most of us will weigh about the same as a hippo and life expectancy will be the same as it was 200 years ago. This would suggest that although people are going to die fat at the age of 40 they will have managed to consume the same amount of food as a slim 80 year old. So although the world will still have a problem providing resources to the greedy northern hemisphere, I would imagine the pension fund problem is set to be resolved over time (every cloud…). And with hospitals investing in oversize beds and medical equipment can we expect to see this trend continue? Will cars be 40% to 50% wider? Will busses, trains and planes carry fewer but heavier passengers? And schools – will they need to reduce the class sizes and increase chair sizes? What about funerals – will the crematorium need supersize ovens to accommodate the supersize coffins? The few remaining slim people will walk around with a permanent smug expression, safe in the knowledge that they will grow old and enjoy watching their children reach adulthood. Will the bloated vision of humanity so beautifully illustrated in 2000AD actually be realised? (You needed to be an avid reader of the comic to know about the Mega City Fats citizens that where so fat that they needed a belly wheel to get around. It is also worth noting that in this futuristic version of the world sugar was a banned substance…)[Picture needed here I feel]
The running appears to be paying dividends and I have lost around 8 or 9 pounds and I am probably the lightest I have been in about 10 years. I’m also a lot fitter so I can safely say that I have managed to avoid (for the time being) joining the ranks of the salad-dodging morbidly obese, so when I said that I needed to get something off my chest I was really referring to the something that I have managed to get off my arse and my stomach…

Back to business then. This year’s summer turned out to be a bit of a wet affair. The family holiday in the Loire was a bit of a disappointment to say the least. I think I can speak for the whole family when I say that we are no longer entertaining the notion of sleeping under canvas in Northern Europe. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Northern Europe but to really enjoy it you need an abode that is capable of being warm and dry and a tent just does not provide that level of comfort. Next year is going to be a hot one even if it means we only go there (wherever there is) for a week. The journey was one of those long tiresome ones spent in a car that was packed with all manner of holiday gear. It was one of those journeys that you only ever do once ever three years because it takes that long for the effects to wear off. We decided to take the ferry from Dover to Calais so to break the journey we stopped for the night in a Travel Lodge in Margate. I’ve never been to Margate before and now I’ve been there I really don’t think I’m ever going to be ‘popping back’ ever again. It is fairly similar to any number of grotty British seaside resorts that have seen better days – those days being before the invention of planes that could carry people away from dumps like Margate. The ferry was due to leave at about 7.30 so we needed to be up and out by about 6.00. To do this we all needed a good night sleep, however the crowd of drunken cockneys in the pub opposite had other ideas and were merrily ‘rolling out the barrel’ until the wee small hours so in the end I think we got about 3 hours sleep (seriously, they did actually sing that song – I just thought it was a stereotype thing). The next day went without any hitches; we found the ferry port and managed to reach the other side in no time at all. The same cannot be said for the hundreds of people that were delayed due to a power failure in the Channel Tunnel. A train load of people were stuck in the tunnel whilst the motorway leading to Dover was at a standstill for a day and a half. Luckily, the road we took to Dover was down the eastern coast of Kent so we avoided the lot, jumped the queues and rolled straight onto the ferry.
The long drive down to the campsite was mainly uneventful with the monotony interrupted only once by an attempt to get some fuel from an automatic service station that refused to take anyone’s debit or credit card. Fortunately there was one very frustrated Frenchman who was doing his best to keep the queues of cars, bikes and trucks from getting too long. By the time we left the queues were very long and he looked like he about to have a heart attack.

We arrived at the campsite in the early evening and it was actually very good. I couldn’t really fault the campsite, or its facilities but it was a bit of a shame that we could not really enjoy the various outdoor activities that were available, or even use the pool, as the weather conspired to keep us in the car or the tent or a chateau for as long as possible. I’d never been in a chateau before and was really looking forward to seeing a few but they were often the only place you could go to when it rained and by the end of the holiday I had reached the stage where I never wanted to go in another one again. They went to great lengths to entertain the miserable crowd of British and Dutch campers with free shows. The concert in the castle courtyard was excellent but the magic show by the two weird blokes was something else. If they weren’t gay then I’ll eat my hat. Also, the older bloke, a sort of Gaelic Michael Barrymore, had an annoying habit of saying everything in English and French despite the fact that there were no French kids in the audience. French or English, he really needs to work on his patter because asking for a ‘very young boy and a very young girl to come and play wiz heem’ is just plain wrong. Anyway, the rain got worse and so did our mood so we took the decision to pack up early and go home. If the journey down was bad then the journey going home was set to be even worse as we decided to use the tunnel, but in fact it was very good. We stayed off the toll roads where possible which saved us money, miles and time and drove straight onto the train. Within the hour we were back in UK and made it home by early evening. In total it was well over 600 miles from door to door and that’s 550 miles more than I am prepared to drive next year. So with camping now consigned to the past I am looking forward to hot sand, blue skies, very few clothes, a cool pool, lengthy dinners and lots of wine. I only hope that I don’t have to sit next to a really fat person on the plane.

P.S. Can't wait to see what Google Ads throws up now!

Date:31/07/07
I might sound like a catholic that’s been on a bit of a bender and stayed away from church for too long but, it’s been a while since my last blog. I’ve struggled to find the time to put finger to keyboard, there’s been so much to do at work and at home that needed to be written about but no time to complete even a compressed bullet point chronicle. Today is a little different as I am on my way to London on the train so I now have about two hours in which I can amuse myself and annoy my fellow passengers by tapping away on the laptop which keeps sliding around on the pathetic plastic ‘table’ attached to the seat in front.

Earlier this month the family and I attended a free concert in Leeds, the first of which was an opera based show which was well attended by what can only be described as the SAGA crew of Yorkshire. All came very prepared for the night’s entertainment with containers of salad, dips, chicken legs and bottles of wine and beer. Their aged and hefty frames were fully supported by portable chairs because, lets face it, most of them would struggle to get off the floor again. The fine weather prevailed and the evening was most enjoyable, however, one or two members of the audience decided to enjoy it a bit too much and had to be carried off by the marshals after getting the dip/wine balance wrong. The following day was the turn of the youngsters and their ‘pop’ music but the youth of Leeds had obviously displeased the gods as the weather turned nasty. It could be said that weather matched the quality of the acts, so bad were they that the most entertaining spectacle of the day was the three kids who had clearly given up waiting for Jason Donovan and decided to make their own entertainment by creating a mud slide. Like walking Persil adverts, these little urchins were caked with mud from head to toe. But like all things harmless and innocent the activity was eventually hijacked by the bigger kids and then the photographer arrived and the whole thing became it bit serious until the inevitable happened and someone got hurt which put an end to the one thing worth watching. As the injured teenager was being carried away, Jason was being ushered onto the stage to do his one and a half songs, badly and with a dodgy guitar microphone. The heavy rain continued to fall throughout the gig until we could stand it no more and regretfully we had to leave before Beverley Knight who, judging by the size of the departing throng, probably played to the three mud soaked kids who by now had the entire park to slide around in.

On a different subject all together I’d like to know what I have done to upset all the people who work behind a till. I’ve clearly done something to offend them because I alone seem to be treated to the really irritating ‘turn away’ as soon as it’s my turn to be served. Take, for instance, the onsite Starbucks. The woman taking the orders has one of the easiest jobs on the planet, all she does is tick boxes printed on the cups to indicate the beverage required. At no point does she need to leave her post but always seems to find something to turn her attention to when it’s my turn to be served. Sometimes she can keep me waiting for a full minute or more for reasons that escape me. Often I don’t even want coffee and just want to pay for orange juice or a biscuit but she still turns away to wipe the surface behind her or check on the milk situation. And it’s not just the onsite Starbucks, oh no, it happens to me all the while, right across the globe. Always has and probably always will. Perhaps I should offer sacrifice, prayer and libations to the Goddess of the till, whoever she is, by way of appeasement to remove this curse.

I’m off on Holiday this Friday and can’t wait to get away from it all for a while. I’ve got a bit of a drive ahead but occasionally I like a long journey, especially if it’s to somewhere new. The weather appears to have had a change of heart and even the Gloucester ark builders have decided to rethink their plans so it should be a pleasant trip although I am fully expecting the person at the ferry check in to suddenly remember to empty the bin when it’s my turn to be served.

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Slow train to Poole
Date:15/06/07
This week I enjoyed the opportunity to travel on this great country’s rail network to Poole. As there isn’t a direct line from Crew to Poole I had to make a number of changes but didn’t encounter any major delays. I also travelled off peak to avoid being surrounded by the miserable, conversation free mob of suited commuters that crowd the carriages of the packed early morning trains. No, instead I travelled in the company of those seeking a budget ticket to, well, wherever they were going to… cheaply. I didn’t ask anyone where they were heading. Well, it’s rude to pry, isn’t it? My fellow travellers were a mixed bunch but I quickly picked up on the fact that there had been a heavy metal concert that had clearly attracted a small hoard of unclean young men with long greasy hair (It was Download 2007 – which is a shite name for a Heavy Metal concert. The previous name of ‘Monsters of Rock’ was far better!). The black clad members of this motley gang of reprobates were making their way back to their caves (stinking bedrooms with walls covered in ‘metal’ posters) for a well deserved shower and a good meal that included vegetables. Arriving at Poole I walked the half mile to the hotel and went for a thirty minute run, almost managing to get lost in the process although I now know where to find the HQ of the RNLI. The following day was reasonably uneventful. Obviously I had work to do but I am making a serious point of never discussing work in this blog as I want to keep my job. I caught the 3pm train from Poole to Bournemouth where I sat on the platform for a while before the next train to Birmingham arrived. I make a point of reserving seats on trains nowadays as I really hate standing up for hours. I also don’t like sitting next to ugly people. And my reserved seat was right next to something that had fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch. OK, I made her move all of her papers that were on my seat on principle but quickly noticed that the seat in front, one of those of a group of four with a table, was free and sat opposite this free seat was sat a vision of beauty. Given the choice between sitting next to Miss Swamp-thing or opposite Miss World, I’m sure every red blooded male in his right mind would have done the same thing and moved. The charming creature in front of me then proceeded to spend well over an hour and a half engaged in the task of applying as many cosmetic products to her body as possible. She was quite good looking before she started but by the time we arrived at Birmingham New Street she was a radiant goddess. The journey was slightly delayed at this point. Not by much, only ten minutes, but the travellers heading home to Walsall experienced a worse delay as the station master announced cancellations due to a fatality on the line. He wasn’t specific on what was dead, could have been a dog… or a horse… but it was probably a human, now nicely cut into pieces like an egg in an egg slicer, a crap old one with only two bits of wire left. Yuk! (poor analogy but you get the picture). That’s pretty much it for this entry but it wouldn’t be complete without a mention for my latest nemesis, and here is where I break my rules (only slightly) about discussing work. Chris and I have noticed that whenever we engage in chat, about any subject, there is one guy in the office who always, but always butts in. As a one off or even a couple of times it’s about tolerable but when it’s every single time it really starts to get on your nerves. Unfortunately Chris and I don’t speak another language otherwise we would use it to maintain a private conversation. Our only hope is that he suddenly and without warming loses his hearing and his voice.

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Slow train to Poole
Date:15/06/07
This week I enjoyed the opportunity to travel on this great country’s rail network to Poole. As there isn’t a direct line from Crew to Poole I had to make a number of changes but didn’t encounter any major delays. I also travelled off peak to avoid being surrounded by the miserable, conversation free mob of suited commuters that crowd the carriages of the packed early morning trains. No, instead I travelled in the company of those seeking a budget ticket to, well, wherever they were going to… cheaply. I didn’t ask anyone where they were heading. Well, it’s rude to pry, isn’t it? My fellow travellers were a mixed bunch but I quickly picked up on the fact that there had been a heavy metal concert that had clearly attracted a small hoard of unclean young men with long greasy hair (It was Download 2007 – which is a shite name for a Heavy Metal concert. The previous name of ‘Monsters of Rock’ was far better!). The black clad members of this motley gang of reprobates were making their way back to their caves (stinking bedrooms with walls covered in ‘metal’ posters) for a well deserved shower and a good meal that included vegetables. Arriving at Poole I walked the half mile to the hotel and went for a thirty minute run, almost managing to get lost in the process although I now know where to find the HQ of the RNLI. The following day was reasonably uneventful. Obviously I had work to do but I am making a serious point of never discussing work in this blog as I want to keep my job. I caught the 3pm train from Poole to Bournemouth where I sat on the platform for a while before the next train to Birmingham arrived. I make a point of reserving seats on trains nowadays as I really hate standing up for hours. I also don’t like sitting next to ugly people. And my reserved seat was right next to something that had fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch. OK, I made her move all of her papers that were on my seat on principle but quickly noticed that the seat in front, one of those of a group of four with a table, was free and sat opposite this free seat was sat a vision of beauty. Given the choice between sitting next to Miss Swamp-thing or opposite Miss World, I’m sure every red blooded male in his right mind would have done the same thing and moved. The charming creature in front of me then proceeded to spend well over an hour and a half engaged in the task of applying as many cosmetic products to her body as possible. She was quite good looking before she started but by the time we arrived at Birmingham New Street she was a radiant goddess. The journey was slightly delayed at this point. Not by much, only ten minutes, but the travellers heading home to Walsall experienced a worse delay as the station master announced cancellations due to a fatality on the line. He wasn’t specific on what was dead, could have been a dog… or a horse… but it was probably a human, now nicely cut into pieces like an egg in an egg slicer, a crap old one with only two bits of wire left. Yuk! (poor analogy but you get the picture). That’s pretty much it for this entry but it wouldn’t be complete without a mention for my latest nemesis, and here is where I break my rules (only slightly) about discussing work. Chris and I have noticed that whenever we engage in chat, about any subject, there is one guy in the office who always, but always butts in. As a one off or even a couple of times it’s about tolerable but when it’s every single time it really starts to get on your nerves. Unfortunately Chris and I don’t speak another language otherwise we would use it to maintain a private conversation. Our only hope is that he suddenly and without warming loses his hearing and his voice.

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Dead body
Date:04/06/07
I’ve managed to keep the running going recently and even managed to adhere to a lunchtime training plan of sorts. There are a few routes available right outside the gate and they all meander through a sleepy little 1.5 horse village which is surrounded by farmland. On one of these half hour sojourns into the Cheshire countryside I came across a dead body (not sure if Google Ads is going to come up with links to funeral firms), but there is no need for the reader to be alarmed as it was the dead body of a rabbit, which is quite common for these parts. Unfortunately the rabbit was missing some parts. Of it’s head. How can a car remove the top part of a rabbit’s head? Was the car equipped with a specially designed wildlife decapitation device? Anyway, it wasn’t a pretty sight. I’ve seen worse. Once, when I was working in Telford, I saw the remains of a badger on the main dual carriageway. The poor beast had been opened up and stretch over five metres (by a car equipped with the patented ‘Badger Wrecker’, only available in Shropshire). Now, those who take any sort of interest in the fauna of the British isles will be aware that your common badger is substantially larger that your common rabbit and as a consequence the resultant organic mess quite put me off my lunch. Before long the men from the council arrived with a shovel and a black bag and scrapped him off the road. They also had to hose the area down to wash away the small lake of badger blood as the area looked like there had been a beheading.

The dead bunny made me realise that there was the possibility of encountering a human body but the thought was eased when I jogged past a man walking his dog. You see I have this theory about men who walk dogs in that the only reason they have a dog to walk is to find dead bodies. This theory has been backed up a number of times by the evening news because loads of bodies are discovered by men out walking dogs. Some stiffs are found in the morning (done for the night before) and some are found in the evening (freshly done in) by a hapless mutt bounding around the hedges and verges, probably looking for rabbits, dead or otherwise. At first I was prepared to believe it was the same man and his dog that had missed its way and should have joined the police, it being a super sleuth capable of reliably sniffing out a cadaver. But that was just plain daft. No, it was a down to an exclusive club of dog owners who go out with the sole aim of finding dead people. Some could search for years and never find as much as a severed hand; other might find two or three once pooch gets the scent of decaying human flesh in his nostrils.

So on reflection I don’t think I’m ever going to dirty my Asics on discovering the naked body of a physically sexually abused young woman buried face down in a shallow grave several yards away from a woodland path as the chap with the dog will have found her before I’ve even had my toast and orange juice. I’ll have to be content with accidentally running through a crow’s dinner of mixed carrion and maggots.

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Please, no more!
Date:10/05/07
I’m going to remove all traces of any words that relate to the organic green areas to the front and rear of a house as I’m getting ads for products relating to nothing but. It’s very disappointing as I was hoping for all sorts of different and interesting ads for strange and obscure products. The only vaguely interesting ads that I have had to date are for a site to help me select a married woman to date (I’m doing this already, it’s the wife!), a site to help me spot the telltale signs of a wife having an affair and what to do if she is (possibly a divorce? Perhaps ‘do her in’ and bury her in the garden?) and one for quality topsoil (presumably for filling the grave containing a dead cheating wife topped off with a high quality lustrous green artificial l**n).

Google, please give me some ads for leg or hair related products! Come on, hairy legs are everywhere and demand constant grooming, there must be thousands of sites out there selling hundreds of products all designed to ensure ladies have smooth lower limbs.

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Google Ads nauseam
Date:09/05/07
I’ve now been running the Google Ads on this site for a couple of days and it is already displaying ads relating to text found on the page. To be honest though, I thought it was just going to do random ads for a week or so until it became a bit more familiar with the site and its textual content. What I did not expect it to do was to grab hold of just one word that is mentioned a mere five times. That word is (and I’m going to break it up so as not to make it six) l.a.w.n.

Nevertheless, the ads present an interesting if limited array of associated products which include; artificial L’s, grass seed, turf, weed killer and aerators. The ads roll round again and again every time you click the refresh button but once in a while, and this is a real surprise, you get one of three ads. The first to appear was for a site providing details of how to spot marital infidelity; information is supplied in a free report from a professional investigation company. All you have to do is supply a name and email address. The second one is for an allergy related web site. It’s very boring. As is the third one for cheap paper.

I think the first one was called into existing due to the presence of the word ‘wife’. The second is easy to understand as I did bang on about hay-fever in a previous post and the third is no doubt due to the lecture on paper sizes.

Now, if I just mention the word hair just a few times. Hair, hair, hair, hair. Lots of hair. And hair product ads might appear. Hair we go again with yet another use of the wonderful word hair! Had enough hair yet? Right, I’ve written it nine times in total, which beats the L-word hands down.

That word is fairly specific and should result in ads appearing for related products and services, but what if I introduce the word ‘leg’? What sort of ads would I get for the word leg. Leg, leg, leg, leg, leg. Man’s leg, woman’s leg. A table leg and a dog’s leg. That’s eleven times.

I’ll post this and report back. I might just possibly get an ad for a hyper-allergenic miniature mower designed to remove artificial stubble from lower limbs made entirely out of paper.

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May day, May day!
Date:08/05/07
I’ve signed up for the GoogleAds service which provides adverts and links to other websites based on the content of host web sites (see the stuff at the top of the page). Now as I intend to write about all sorts of stuff it will be really interesting to see what sort of ads appear on a weekly basis. Today, for instance there are ads for l*wn related services, probably because I wrote about mowing the l*wn in my last entry. Actually, I’d better not mention the ‘L’ word too many times as I’ll get ads for nothing but you-know-what.

You can try this if you like but clicking on refresh simply gives more of the same sort of ads. So don’t bother. I know it’s a bit boring but there you go.

There was an item on the news last night that said that all Germans want to reduce their carbon hoof print by taking local holidays to prevent any further damage to the European environment. There is an irony in there somewhere, help me look for it! Everyone has gone Carbon mad over here too. Well, the middle classes have, the upper and the lower continue to ignore guidelines that make perfect sense (travel, booze, fags, food, sex, etc), so we can all rely on them to continue to ruin things.

The girls took part in the annual parade and pagan festival on the heath again on Saturday where a 14 year old is crowned May Queen for a year and a gang of little girls all wrap a white pole in ribbons to ensure a bountiful crop and fertile beasts. I suppose it's better than a goat/chicken sacrifice, although that would be a nice change just for one year.

The fair was here too so everyone in the town put an extra padlock on sheds and stores, made a point of activating the house alarm every time they out the rubbish out and hid car keys under the floorboards with the family jewels. I love stereotypes and tarring social groups with the same yard-wide brush, it tends to keep things very simple and prepares me for old age and a bitter existence as a grumpy, bad mannered old man who dwells in the post office for no good reason and smells a bit.

Anyway I'd better crack on as I'm thinking of starting a business in Portugal. I reckon there's a big gap in the market for night-time child care, either that or providing a secure 'kids room' in apartments where parents can safely leave their kids whilst they go and do adult things for as long as they like. After all those pesky children are a bit of a bind after 2 or 3 years... Now, how do I get an ad for that on someone elses website?

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Moans, groans and a bird table
Date:30/04/07
Yet another fun packed weekend! All sorts of things have happened over the past few days and I think it’s important that I get them in order because whilst most of the experiences are insignificant there is one which defies belief. To start with there was Saturday and the task of replacing a car tyre. A recent MOT indicated that I the wife’s car needed a new front right tyre and the bloke at the tyre place also recommended that the brake pads AND disks should really be replaced if I ever wanted to stop without the aid of a hill going up or a soft stationary object. I’d better get it sorted as the wife is not all that well insured and she’s better with the kids. Mowing the l*wns was the afternoon’s job. I like mowing the l*wns; it makes the garden look neat and tidy. I say l*wns; they’re more of a collection of odd grasses and weeds which get trimmed now and again. As long as they’re green and flat I’m not too bothered. Besides, the kids like the daisies. The garden is one of those areas that demand so much attention and as usual, I managed to spot quite a few weeds in the borders so that became the next job. Followed by a tidy of the small patio area, and then watering the pots and weeding the larger patio area, planting out my peppers and the carrots and finally a good sweep up. I know I missed things but they will have to wait.
Sunday was full of peculiarity, and Sunday’s shouldn’t, as a rule, be peculiar. They should be steady, reliable and sometimes a bit boring. The day started early with a run. This should have been a nice jog around the town before breakfast but after about a mile and a half my body betrayed me. Before I started out I visited the toilet, as I usually do, and apart from passing a small amount of water no further ‘activity’ was required, if you catch my drift, but having passed the 1.5 mile post last night’s dinner decided it no longer wished to be a passenger and made every effort to leave. Being over a mile away from home I resisted these evacuation efforts and ploughed on but the discomfort increased and by the two mile point I gave up on the six mile target and headed home. It got worse. Bad enough, indeed, for me to scan my immediate vicinity for the possibility of an emergency crouch a-la Paula Radcliffe. I persevered, now desperate to get home to relieve myself of this burdensome load, abdominals racked with pain, engaged in the conflicting activities of clenching my buttocks and running because to walk would have delayed reaching my destination.
I made it, you will be glad to hear, with seconds to spare and I proceeded to undertake what could only be described as an immediate crash diet, shedding many pounds in the space of a minute. The relief was indescribable.

To take my mind from the fact that my waist was now two inches smaller I decided to construct a bird table out of the waste wood from the gate project. OK, it’s a bit on the rustic side but it performs the functions of a bird table and besides, the jackdaws and the magpies seem to like it as they cleared the bread I left inside five minutes. It was a bit like a scene from a horror film at one point but if you don’t mind playing host to the many ‘Agents of Mordor’ at breakfast then everything is OK. I also collected an unwanted composter from the wife’s aunt (just a point here, the spell checker did not contain the word composter and suggested composer, which would have been funny if I had been required to collect an unwanted composer!) as she no longer had room in her garden. I installed it and transferred all of last years vegetable waste into it and it just about covered the bottom. I estimate that by the year 2017 I will have a full composter. I can’t wait.

Monday morning was an interesting affair. I found a pink school bag laying on a car in the car park which contained the usual books and things as well as a Nintendo DS and a pair of glasses. Naturally I wanted to return the back to the rightful owner and after a mass email I managed to track down the father of the owner. I was incredulous that he said that he actually left it under the car for a reason (not sure what) and was a bit rude when I suggested that it could have been resulted in a security incident. Next time I hope the bomb squad pay a visit and blow his daughter’s DS to bits.

And finally, I was obliged to buy this year’s car tax which meant standing in a queue in the post office for twenty minutes at lunch time. This is not my favourite lunch time activity but what made it slightly more enjoyable was engaging in casual chat with the middle aged, middle class people in the middle of the queue. The electorate of our town varies between rather conservative and extreme right wing, depending on the price of stamps and gas, and today I managed to find myself in a conversation about the ‘shocking state of the country’ and the ‘disgraceful level of taxation’. Once the tutting classes get going all you have to do is throw in the odd provocative statement and off they go again, saying how clever Sheila was to have emigrated (lives in Spain, and she gets her pension paid!), how much the petrol tax is and how your voice is never listened to anymore… If it had not been for the necessary act of purchasing a tax disc, I dare say we would all still be there now, imploring Mrs Thatcher to come out of retirement and pleading for a return to the days of Empire. Mind you, if an official had bothered to ask if everything was wrong I dare say we would have all replied with the predictably British “No, everything is fine, thank-you”, before returning to the criticism once they were out of earshot. In many ways it’s a pity the discussion ended there as I would have liked to have included such matters as the lack of public conveniences to be found in suburban streets for the use of early morning runners in urgent need of a dump, the never-ending series of jobs to be found in a garden and what to do with suspicious pink bags, These are the matters our politicians should be addressing, never mind Iraq!

Long live the Queen!

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Paper Sizes
Date:27/04/07
I sat gazing at a sheet of paper today and was captivated by its pleasing dimensions and its milky white virginal pureness, unblemished by crayon, pencil, pen or Xerox Phaser 7500 toner. The longer I stared at the blank page the more I wondered what was to become of it. Would it contain the text of an email, be a page of a profound technical document or simply be used for mindless doodles, coffee rings and finally scrunched up and used as a projectile with the purpose of attracting someone’s attention…?
Now this piece of paper was of the common A4 size variety and arrived in the office accompanied by 499 identical brothers in a waxy lined pack which also indicated that the paper was 80 grams per square metre. Not the heaviest paper on the planet but I understand that this is the default standard for most office printers and copiers. Like I said, this was size A4. If you like holding a ruler to items then you will find that this is 210mm wide and 297mm tall, which is half the size of A3, which is half the size of A2, blah, blah, blah, and so on to A0 – the really big one which dwarfs my humble sheet with the dimensions of 841mm x1189mm. This is an interesting fact – A0 is actually 1m square. Isn’t that nice and neat? Let’s go in the other direction, let’s chop A4 in half to get A5, and again to get A6, A7 and then A8 which, at 52mm x 74mm, is a bit smaller than a credit card. You can get smaller. You can go all the way to A10 which at 26mm x 37mm is a particularly useless piece of paper. I am tempted to take this to the extreme and keep going to size A20 which comes in at 0.1563mm x 0.3125mm, and I’m no expert on this but I’m pretty sure that you’ll struggle to find an A20 adapter for your inkjet printer.
Mind you, when you consider the effort that has gone into to defining these sizes, I can’t help but be somewhat irritated by the fact that the ‘post-it notes’ people saw it fit to depart from every paper size standard on the planet and come up with their own. And continuing in the same vein I think it is fair to say that the real floating faecal matter in the aquatic swimming facility is the completely unnecessary ‘Letter’ size of 216mm x 279mm, that often results in a delayed printout due to the fact that Microsoft just could not be bothered to include paper sizes in the locale settings, face it guys, no-one in the UK prints stuff on ‘Letter’ size paper – and another thing, it’s day/month/year, OK?. How many times have you printed something, walked to the printer to collect it and been faced with the instruction to ‘Load Letter Size Paper’. Trust the yanks to veer away from yet another international standard. By the way, as with most things stationery (I seem to remember this included those nice dual holed metal pencil sharpeners), the Germans were responsible for the ‘A’ sizes.
Which brings me back to my particular ‘A’ something sized piece of bleached, flattened wood pulp and the agony of choice as to what to do with it? Possibly a poem, or a sonnet, or a map, or a sketch, or how about a paper plane (now you’re talking!), or even a water bomb (even better!). No, of all the wondrous things I could possibly do with this beautiful piece of paper I think I’m just going to screw it up into a ball and chuck it at Chris!

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Busy weekend
Date:25/04/07
I’ve had a busy old time of it recently with life containing a mixture of work and play, not to mention some interesting noises, but more about that later. I’d first like to tell you about the work bit as I spent most of Saturday and Sunday morning making a gate (picture supplied) for the side of the house. I hasten to add that no plans were used other than those which I have been carrying around in my head for the last three years as this was one of those projects which gets put off and put off as I constantly found something else to do. Not this weekend. This weekend was about creation, about wood, about screws, about bloody time according to the wife!
So without further ado I set off to procure only the very choicest materials for this bespoke garden portal from our local B&Q which, as it turns out, was full of mindless morons all drifting aimlessly around the store looking for things to attach to their homes with no-nails and constantly getting in the way of my impossibly insubordinate trolley which was full of planks. I eventually made it through the till and got to my car to begin the inevitable challenge of ‘fit the DIY product in the car puzzle’. I’d already stripped the car of most of the unnecessary furniture but was unable to get the front passenger seat out on account of it being firmly bolted to the chassis. However, with a couple of heavy planks resting on its back it sank forward like an old woman with a bad back allowing the remainder of the wood to be loaded.
Once back home I managed to construct what can only be described as a ‘gate’. I say that because sometimes the things I make don’t always resemble the objects that they are supposed to be. And three days in I’m proud to report that it is still performing the duties of a gate. Sunday morning provided an opportunity for me to slap a coat of light oak wood preserving stain which dried minutes before it tipped it down.
But I’m not done with Sunday yet. If Saturday provided the ‘work’ then Sunday provided the ‘play’ in the form of a lengthy concert in the MEN (Manchester Evening News Arena). Thin Lizzy opened the evening’s entertainment, and they were missing one key member whose absence was entirely understandable, given the fact that Phil Linnot is unfortunately a bit on the dead side. Thankfully his songs live on and the band was superb.
Next up was an American lot called Styx who I had never heard before but again the music was top-notch. The keyboard player was a tad flamboyant what with his fancy revolving piano and his incessant prancing around but his antics didn’t upset me enough to dislike him. The headline act was Deep Purple, those aging purveyors of the blues, those eternal defenders of British rock, and they can still hammer out decent tune. The gig lasted for about four hours and was enjoyed by all of the other denim clad middle aged dads in the arena.
I returned to work on Monday to the usual set of office based tasks but the one thing that will stay in my mind; the one enduring memory from that day will be the incredible deflating man in the cubicle next to me in the ground floor toilets of Block 12. I have no idea who he was and I really don’t want to know because I don’t think I could look him in the face. I would, however, be interested to know what his diet consists of because for a solid five minutes after he shut the door and took up residence on his porcelain perch he let out, in bursts short and long, a gaseous torrent the like of which could be compared to a deflating damp zeppelin. Occasionally the raspberry outbursts were accompanied by a plop and a splash as bullets of last night’s dinner were ejected from his behind like pellets from an air rifle. I completed my toiletry task and left the confines of my cubicle with the mystery methane man continuing to foul the air. For all I know he is probably still there, deflated and wrinkled like an old empty balloon.

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Cream Chicken
Date:12/04/07
Easter is just about done for this year and the chops are all selling off their unwanted eggs at half price before the chocolate goes all white and inedible. This is a bit unfortunate. The fact that chocolate goes all whit and stuff, I mean, because otherwise we could eat Easter eggs all year round. Take the humble Cream Egg. Probably the best sweat in the shop, if you ask me, but they only sell them for about 2 months of the year. Why? It’s far better than all the other gooey rubbish that the newsagent sells and I’m sure there are plenty of people out there just like me that would jump at the chance of scoffing one throughout the year.

Today I hatched (oh God, what a terrible pun) a plan to ensure a year round supply of the things. Somewhere in the bowels of the Cadbury factory there must be an enormous hut full of Cream Chickens. All I need to do is to somehow break in and nab one of the (many) birds and take it home, they’d never miss just one. That way I’d have a plentiful supply on tap. And it wouldn’t cost me a penny.

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Arms like C-3PO
Date:10/04/07
Everyone remembers the gold plated camp droid from Star Wars and his limited limb functionality, well my arms became temporarily C-3PO-alike last week. How did it happen? Well I rather stupidly took my father up on the offer of a free workout in his gym.
Following the short trip to the North East and a couple of days at work, I took the family off to Leicester to visit my Dad and his wife and to enjoy a few days in and around the East Midlands, a bit of walking and bit of shopping and the like. I never expected to be put through a boot camp. The gym was very nice, very clean and full of exercise kit. Yes, it did resemble a modern torture chamber but I went along with it thinking the weights would be fairly light seeing as the old boy is 68. In all, I think we played with about 8 of the lifting toys in total and I was instructed to move the pin the 50KG hole for all bar the leg press which was set to 110kg. I managed the required 20 reps on most of them with only one or two being a bit ‘hard’ by rep number 17. But just when I thought we were through and could enjoy a nice dip in the pool I was ushered to the treadmill room where we stayed, running at 9km/hour for the next 35 minutes. Now, running I can do. I like to run. I like to run on the pavement for about half an hour followed by a nice long sit down. I don’t like to run after lifting the equivalent of a large car. Neither did my body. The first fifteen minutes was the worst whilst my body slowly unwound from the extreme tension of the weight room.
Finally I was allowed to leave the treadmill and relax in the pool. I say relax but the plan was to do 20 lengths. Fortunately the pool was full of people relaxing so I adjourned to the steam room desperate for some relaxation… I slept well that night but woke up wondering if how I felt was how a corpse would feel if it knew it was dead and had rigor-mortis. My arms, shoulders and upper back had suffered a reduction in function and movement, leaving me in a permanent state of C-3PO-isation. Dressing myself was an interesting affair, donning the underpants was the most difficult and I descended the stairs hoping that I would not have to visit the toilet too often that day. After breakfast we all drove off in a short convoy of 2 cars to the magical and enchanted valley of Dove Dale in the Peak District. If yesterday was all about the upper body then today was about the legs! I know most people can do 6 miles without breaking into a sweat but this was a bit up and down and after yesterday I would have preferred more down than up but at least we were given a breather in the picturesque little village of Milldale for half an hour before retracing our steps to the car. To be fair though, the time spent in Leicester was very enjoyable but I need to do some training before I visit them again.

Saturday saw yet another drive, this time to our friends Leeds. Fortunately they took pity on us and only made us walk a three mile round trip to the shops and back before treating us to a sumptuous lamb loaded barbeque. If this little tale has a moral then it is that one should always find an excuse not to go to the gym with someone who should know better at the age of 68. OR, never underestimate the strength of your Dad because whilst you work 5 days a week, he probably works out 3 times a week and gets all the rest he needs to stay young and fit. Which on the face of it just doesn’t seem fair. Mind you, I bet C-3PO would just love to move his arms enough to enjoy a nice cold pint, which is what I can do now that the stiffness has left me!

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No one’s fool
Date:02/04/07
Not sure how long today’s entry is going to be but I’ll start and see where it ends. And there’s no better place to start than providing a brief resume of the weekend.

On Saturday I drove the family up to our friends in Hutton Henry, a small yet charming village just to the south of Peterlee. We spent an enjoyable day and a half with them and their 3 dogs before driving off to Durham on the Sunday afternoon to show the kids the cloisters which are used as one of the sets in Harry Potter. After a coffee and a cake we continued south and stopped at Harrogate for a cup of (mildly) expensive tea. Mind you, it was a nice cuppa, enjoyed in the very posh surroundings of Betty’s, which is right by the cenotaph. Finally we paid a flying visit to our friends in Leeds (well we were practically passing their front door…) for yet another cup of tea.

Our friends live close to the coast and we were treated to a rather bracing walk up a shingle beach which was full of the most amazing pebbles of all shapes, sizes and colours. I found a couple of well eroded bricks which, when placed on top of each other, formed an interesting sculpture. I like to think it looks like a tribal head of some sort. I took a photo (below), but now regret not bringing it home to install in the garden. I left it on the dune for the sea to continue to grind into sand.

Durham is a charming place which is completely dominated by the cathedral and the castle. The narrow cobbled streets and alleys are a result of the medieval need to build within the safety of the hill that the town centre sits on. The river almost provides a complete natural moat which seems to be used as a rowing circuit by the town’s many students, the university buildings lay on the banks and provide an idyllic setting. I would imagine a great many students make the short journey from the bar in the Union to the water of the river during the summer term.

Harrogate is as refined as Durham but a fair bit larger. Full of designer clothes shops and nice restaurants, the streets of this Yorkshire town afford hours of ambling and mooching, not to mention sauntering. We made a note to return in the future and stay for a weekend, perhaps for an anniversary.

Back to work today and we have all moved offices. Where we now work can only be described as Desk City, it’s like a warehouse or a hangar which has been completely populated with desks. I’ve got my back to the majority of the other occupants so it might not be all that bad. One positive note is that the Starbucks is not far away but Betty’s it aint!

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Nearly forgot to do this
Date:30/03/07
Again, not much to comment on for today, that smell is still in my nostrils but it’s not as bad. Still not sure what caused it, I’ve eliminated the trousers from my investigation, perhaps it’s the caustic anti-hay fever nasal spray that probably works by burning away the nose lining? Mind you, I am grateful to all the researchers that have managed to produce what can only be described as industrial strength antihistamines which are far better than the utter rubbish that was available in the 80’s when hay fever became fashionable. I remember the first time I had a really bad year, I think I was about 13 or there abouts and woke up one morning practically unable to breath and with both eyes glued together with eye snot. The gunk on my eye lashed had dried solid and for a minute I was a bit scared. For 13 years I had become accustomed to waking up to the view of my bedroom, something I plainly took for granted (as you do), but this morning I woke up and was faced with a pinky reddish vision of nothing. Whatsmore, under the dried layer of mucus was a rather nasty layer that had not had the opportunity to dry and was just like the usual snot that you find up your nose, and I had plenty of that too as my nose was completely blocked. So, unable to see and unable to breath through my nose I somehow managed to get to the bathroom and washed the crap out of my eyes.

I was given Piriton tablets. Loads of them. They were OK to start with, fairly effective, and the respite was welcome. The following year my hay fever had been down the gym and laughed in the face of the puny pink tablets. The snot oozed from every head orifice. I must have looked lovely. Perhaps it was then that my parents stopped loving me… Not that I blame them, after all, who would want to come within ten feet of a walking gland with a leak?

Triludan was the next medical device to try out and this was like a mini-nuke compared to Piriton. The relief was sweet; I had my life back during the spring and summer, although, like Piriton, it made me very sleepy and I later learnt that this caused heart murmurs in some people. Meanwhile, the hay fever was subdued but not beaten and it was secretly scoring steroids behind my back. It would wait until I was about twenty until it launched it’s next attack, and attack it did. It managed to find my lungs. Season asthma is not something that you would really want to ask Santa for. It is also not something that is enjoyed by a young man aching to spend quality time with young ladies. After ugliness and acne, galloping hay fever is probably the best contraceptive known to man. During the winter months I was fit, strong and virile but in the summer I was reduced to a slobbering hillbilly, an upright slug. On seeing me girls would turn and flee as fast as possible for fear of being sprayed by my green sneeze mist. It was just as well that I met my wife in the winter or I might still be a bachelor. Things are not so bad now, I take a one-a-day tablet by the name of ‘cetirizine’ which is brilliant. That and the acid nose spray, which is basically a steroid designed to reduce sensitivity (and by burning the lining?), both make spring and summer much more enjoyable. I just need to remember to stay out of rancid old cars…

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What is that smell?
Date: 29/03/07
I just can’t seem to get the rank smell of Chris’s old Porsche out of my head. It reminds me of the awful bloody cars that my dad used to buy for a few hundred quid when I was a child in the 70’s. It’s the cocktail of odours, the heady mix of stale petrol, engine oil, old leather, possibly residual puke from my brothers last episode of travel sickness, an exhausted fau-orange ‘air freshener’, wet carpets from a small leak in the rusty floor by the accelerator pedal, a full ashtray, the impregnated tobacco smoke in the seats and the ceiling and various other nameless items which make up the fabric of the interior. All of these contributed to the unmistakable stench that all old cars seems to accumulate, a smell so far removed from the seductive fragrance of a new car, the smell of a geriatric car way past it’s prime, of a car that has long since gone round the clock, a car that has endured too many long sticky summer journeys without the relief of air-con or deodorant, a car preparing for it’s last journey to the scrap yard. A bit like an old person gradually becoming slow, useless and costly to fix, to say nothing of the smell. Bits dropping off now and again. It’s still there, in my nostrils, it’s like a smell tattoo, a permanent fixture providing all the associated feelings of dizziness and nausea, the mental link from years ago as strong and as repulsive as ever. Perhaps it is in my trousers. I think I’ll change them tomorrow to see if it clears my head. I’m also moving office on Friday which may help.

It’s funny how something like a smell can jog a memory and cause symptoms to return. When I was a boy a car journey was an ordeal, an exercise in patience, restraint and invaded space. Thinking back to those days I’m glad my father was a decent driver, I’m even more grateful that my neurotic mother completely lost the ability (err, bottle) to drive back in the 60’s when main roads were as busy as country lanes. And my gratitude is also, in part, for the fact that he never crashed the car with his four children wedged in the back without seatbelts because if he had been involved in a head on collision I’m sure my sister and I would have been thrown through the windscreen, the windscreen which would have been removed by my mother and father who never wore a seatbelt either. Which is odd because I distinctly remember our household playing host to my dad’s parents who had taken a similar unscheduled departure from their vehicle and wound up with some very nasty injuries (I believe my grandfather died years later, of reasonably natural casues, with glass still lodged in his face). My younger brother and sister never knew how close they came to becoming orphans…

My modern Volvo, by comparison, makes every effort to bubble wrap me before an impact, providing me with an almost enjoyable Swedish crash ‘experience’. OK, the car will be a mess but at least I’ll be able to marvel at the newly acquired crumpled appearance from the side of the road and not a hospital bed. Enough about cars, I’ve taken a couple of Boots own brand paracetamols (noticed that paracetamol is not something that the Microsoft boys ever take, it being absent from the spell checker dictionary) and realised that it is almost time to go home for today. All I need to do now is send this home, redesign my Blog site and upload it. (hmmm, Blog is also not in the spell checker…)

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Is it me?
Date: 18/10/06
I didn't realise that I started this blog on National Blog day - Radio 4 has just read out excerpts from blogs written by some kids in London. And I thought mine was bad! I've just realised that no-one knows who I am so I can say whatever I like on here (within reason, I wouldn't want to upst anyone... too much).

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