January 2012
2 posts
To Have and To.
With my own nuptials trundling slowly into my grasp, Mexico City’s latest idea of ‘fixed-term’ marriages is a quandrous idea. The concept is simple: set a time limit at the beginning, decide what you do if it all goes south and then opt in or out when the bell rings. It’s not so much death as paperwork that does the parting.
With soaring divorce rates, is this the answer...
Enough
So this isn’t so much a blog post as my Open University coursework. Thoughts are appreciated.
———————————————————————————————————————-
He has the look of a man...
December 2011
2 posts
There's Nothing To Fear. But.
Tonight a chap and another chap got on the tube with a box of beers. They looked like they were having fun so I smiled at them. The Polish one asked his English friend how to say ‘cheers’ to a girl on the tube. His friend replied that this was London, and that people are scared here. You do not say cheers on the tube.
So I turned and said cheers. Who decided we were too scared as a...
You, me and an ass
When you woke up this morning, did you think about your day? Did you think about going to work, getting a sandwich, maybe calling your mum? Did you think about getting into bed tonight?
The saying goes ‘assume and you make an ass out of you and me’, and yet assumptions are in our nature. We’re hard-wired to learn from the past and establish patterns of behaviour, so sunk into...
November 2011
2 posts
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
I bloody love winter.
I know that’s not a popular viewpoint, but it’s an amazing time of year. I’ll admit I’m mostly in love with pre-Christmas winter, the loathers can have February and March, but it’s an undeniable attraction. I await her arrival anxiously as the leaves turn, little flutters of excitement coming upon me at unexpected moments. The first night after...
Take a closer look
Isn’t it funny to think that all the people you know are actually people? Think about a friend of yours, or the person sitting next to you, but don’t look at them. You can see their face in your head, but try thinking distinctly about the features. Bit fuzzy? I’ll bet you a fiver the next time you see them they don’t look the same as you think, not really.
The brain is so...
October 2011
1 post
The Key To.
What is success? Technically, I guess, it’s being the best at something, but only one person can hold that elated position, so what about the rest of us? How do we quantify ourselves as a success on the family christmas card?
There are those folk, you probably know one or two of them, who are utterly driven to achieve something. They have a goal, it’s the light at the end of the...
September 2011
5 posts
Places to go, people to...
If you really want to see a country, here’s the plan. Pick a bigish city or two, then play a little Location Roulette for the rest of your trip. Find some little-visited cityette and spend a few days there. I don’t reckon you ever need more than 3 days in a place to really get a feel for it, to know what it’s about and how it likes its coffee. Cities are kinda like art galleries,...
Come Fly With Me
‘This is nice’. Not words I thought I’d say about an airport. But, we’d arrived early for our flight from Chicago to Omaha, our hosts having left for work and the nanny trying her darndest to cajole extra ‘sweaters’ on to us, and we were sitting with our breakfast in a half empty departure lounge. It was nice.
A friend of mine said once that you have to enjoy...
Plan A.
Compromise. The very word is full of logic and ideals and maturity and a smidgeon of disappointment. You give up a little something and get a little something back. The perfect answer to a difficult situation. It’s so demoralisingly adult, full of the promise of a well-rounded thoughts and rational decisions.
Everyone wants to get their own way, even though we’re not really supposed...
The Parent Trap
A minimum of 412 times in my life, I have believed I am the result of a long discarded and forgotten attempt at human cloning. One look at a picture of my folks and you’ll understand why. But there are subtler signs. My mum grew into her fear of flying around the age I am when I’m becoming more wary of getting into a massive metal box that seems to become airborne only by default, as...
The Irrationality Complex
Laughing at funerals. What is that?!? What makes that entirely innapropriate little giggle burst forth and force its way into the world as a massive, improper guffaw?
Daily, I wish there was an ‘are you sure you want to proceed’ button before you act. Everything from laughter to snap comments to that moment when your voice comes out the wrong way, all those things just seem to pop out...
August 2011
1 post
FYI
I found a picture of someone online today that I’ve never met, but whom I needed to know the face of. A couple of carefully chosen keywords in my browser and bam, there it was. The frustrating thing was the lack of other available data. That was when I realised quite how much we’ve come to expect from the internet, how much information is readily available. Not just readily available,...
July 2011
4 posts
Centrifugal Force
Wake up after a night with friends having a few drinks. Head’s a little fuzzy, belly is having a sulk. It wasn’t a Katy Perry ‘Friday Night’ affair but there’s a nagging sensation that something, nae, everything is wrong. Quietly, terribly, wrong. You might know the feeling.
Some people wake up with a hint of paranoia after a night of not-heavy drinking. They...
The hands have it.
The other day I opened my eyes to see a small thai woman straddling me in a dimly lit room. Her hands were all over me. Her knees too. Work had bought me a massage for my birthday and it was one of the more surreal experiences of my life thus far.
Naivety isn’t one of my strong suits, more my Sunday Best, and I was expecting a whole lot of my being nude and a her laying hands on me. The...
Make a wish...
I love Wednesdays. You wake up on the wrong side of the week but by 1pm you’re on the slippery slope to the weekend.
The only problem is, this is that thing your mum always told you not to do. “Don’t wish your life away, dear, or soon there won’t be any left.” Scratching off the tally of days in the week is like a desperate hike across the post-work evening mountains...
Degrees of Seperation
Right about now, across the country, folks are emerging bleary-eyed and studyhungover from 3 years of University. They’re out in the Big Wide World now and it is fascinating. If life were a wildlife documentary Sir David would be 0.2 of an octave higher and the music would be kicking in.
To degree or not to degree is becoming a more pressing question. £9000 a year fees and an...
June 2011
5 posts
Britain's got...
I spent the weekend with a whole bunch of very talented people. Better yet, I spent the weekend with a whole bunch of very lovely, talented people. See, a lot of people are a lot of talented. Collectively, we go gaga for people with talent but really, talent is like hair: you’re born with it or you’re not. The big thing is what you do with it.
A girl at work was telling me a story...
Testing, testing
So the other morning I blew £115 in 45 minutes. Before you begin your four page ranting letter (no, just me?) about my wanton spending, I didn’t buy a thing. I took my driving test and snuffed it up.
The most frustrating thing was, I had two minors. It was a great drive, except for one mistake. In real life, it wouldn’t have been jack. Two seconds of tiny error and BAM, a whole chunk...
Someone pass the TV crew.
Picture the scene. A London restaurant on a Friday night. Me, my girlfriend, my girlfriend’s parents. Then chuck in my girlfriend’s ex, their parents, godmother and girlfriend. No, we weren’t at some sort of mediation for custody of the cats; the aforementioned in-laws were over for the first time in a couple of years and it was time for everybody to get together for a visit....
The In-Laws Cometh...
Most of this evening has been spent washing up, tidying, febreezing and what can only be described as grooming a sheepskin rug. It is amazing what a hairdryer and a brush can do (although it wasn’t until I got the first electric shock that I realised an ion dryer, vigorous brushing and natural fibers are well on the way to an awkward conversation with our fire insurer).
No, I haven’t...
Our house is held together by tape and string
I freaking love DIY. Trouble is, I’m not very good at it. When I was little, my grandad instilled in me that absolutely anything that was less than 98% holes was fixable with a little bit of old yoghurt pot, something that was last made in the 50s and some twine. Cue 14 hours for an ‘oh, it’ll only take a minute’ job that got far worse before it got better. It did get...
May 2011
2 posts
Hometown Glory
The other day I watched a YouTube spoof of my hometown. (Actually, it was my schooltown but my hometown is so small YouTube hasn’t found it yet.) It brilliantly summed up every reason most of us moved away: the chavs, the thugs, the teenage pregnancies, the throroughly uninspiring environment, the chavs, the thugs. It’s a typical south-east London/north Kent town; it looks and feels...
She's Listing...
I’m pretty sure that the line that won me my job was ‘I’m a list person, I love a list’. I was, of course, lying. I’m not ‘a list person’: I’m neither made of lists nor do I count them as my favourite pets/hobbies/bodyparts. I doubt that there is anyone who genuinely feels passionately about (and hopefully definitely not towards) lists, but they are bloody useful.
Forget race, gender, religion....
April 2011
3 posts
Get up, Get Down and Get Outside
We just spent the perfect long weekend camping in the New Forest. Us and our little handmade family of friends, 4 days of glorious hot-hot-hot sunshine and more barbequed meat than any digestive system can handle. Hours were spent in pub gardens, in fields playing frisbee and with my girlfriend suddenly suffering from ADHD. She brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘shit-flinging’,...
TFITheWeekend
Ah the weekend. That beautiful manna that feeds the soul and rejuvenates after the long struggle through the week. On a Monday morning, those five days seem insurmountable, but come 1pm Wednesday you’re half way through Hump Day and coasting your way towards that glorious goal.
Weekends are unequivocally too short. But the minute one arrives it’s all-hands-on-deck to wring every last...
Love Thy Neighbour... or poo in their garden
You can have all the surveys done and all the late-night drives around the local area that you like, but the one unknown quantity when you move house will always be the neighbours. They can make or break your stay in a house and no amount of period features will make it better.
We have two sets of remarkable neighbours. Downstairs are, thankfully, deaf as the father from ‘Friday Night...
March 2011
7 posts
Frustration time
Today was a trying day. A very trying day. My usually dire sense of spatial awareness has taken an early Bank Holiday so I’ve spent most of the day knocking extremeties on desks and doorframes. Work that has been milling around for nigh-on a month suddenly reached its deadline without anyone doing any of it. Rounding everything off nicely, I couldn’t find the £20 I left on the side for...
Don't worry, be happy
Worry is the pet tortoise of Fear.
I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t worry, at least a little bit. I worry, probably more than I’d like to admit. Only about money though, money and being late to meet people. Not about dying, or missing trains, or the crisis in the Middle East, and definitely not about food poisoning.
William R. Inge said that ‘worry is the interest paid...
cyclist vs Cyclist
Recently, I’ve bought myself a membership to Boris’ bikes. Even though they’re nearly as heavy as I am and have hit a few of the branches of the ugly tree on the way down, they offer a superb alternative to having your bike nicked/punctured every other week if you cycle in London. Once firmly in the territory of ‘god no, you’d never catch me doing that’, the...
It must be funny
Money makes the world go round. Money is the root of all evil. Therefore, does evil make the world go round?
Today was a day at a very posh hotel, for work. Now, I’m not quite on the penniless-writer platform just yet, but this kind of opulence is the province of those much further up the food chain. Think marble, 2-inch deep carpet and individual towels for drying your hands. You know you...
The best things come in small packages.
I love menial tasks. They’re not big and they’re not clever but they hold a special place with me. I noticed two thirds of the way through the washing up that, after spending the last 13 hours doing complex logistical equations over everything from business planning days to when would be better to call my mum, I was thinking about absolutely nothing but the fork and sponge in my hands....
February 2011
7 posts
Tick, tick, tick, BOOM
Time is a funny thing. No two pieces ever feel the same, or ever pass the same way. You could repeat the same day over and over again ad nauseum but no two will be twins. Some days draaaaaaaaaaaaggggg on and on into infinity, a long road stretching ahead of you at 11.30am. Today was one of those days, for sure. Other days it’s 4pm and you’ve barely had your first thought at less than...
Eye Key Uh
As part of the moving in ritual, we went to IKEA. An event I loved as a kid, the concept now strikes utter fear and loathing into my heart. This is the stuff nightmares are made of, an endless maze of deceptively expensive, poorly-built consumerism.
The key is, I think, to approach any trip as an endurance sport event. Hydrate, take on extra calories, hydrate some more and pace yourself....
Stop. Hammertime.
Hands-free on the train when all you’ve got in your hands is your phone - potentially the fastest way to looking like a crazy that doesn’t involve indecent exposure/dribbling. When I look at you, I don’t think ‘wow, you are SO cool, you’ve got a hands-free kit’ I think ‘Who are you talking to? Are you talking to yourself? Where’s the nearest...
Today's Friday Fail →
Stupid things I do for money.
Like a worringly-dwindling number of people, I have a job. Like an exponentially-rising number of people, it’s probably not what I want to be doing in fifteen years. It’s a good job, a solid job, it pays (some of) the bills and the people are funny.
Sometimes though, just sometimes, I think that what I do, what a lot of us do, is ridiculous. After 3 hours in a meeting with exactly...
I want to make this →
Go nowhere fast...
The room went dark, the strobes went on and the trance music started. Against my better judgment, I realised I was spinning. None of this adds up. I’m indoors, I’m sweating onto a hired towel, I’m surrounded by a bunch of people I don’t know (and, worse, one I do) and I’m expending pounds of energy to get absolutely no further than I was when I started. I...
January 2011
8 posts
It's simple, isn't it?....Isn't it?
In the last few years I have undergone a personal-space revolution. A 6th form common room that was all not-enough-chairs and a few years with my old boss have transformed me into loving hugs, cuddles and all their affiliated family members. I’ll happily hug near-strangers goodbye or greet someone with a kiss on the cheek, when before I would, shamefully, stand staring or shake their hand.
...
Ah Daily Mail, how you once again fail to make... →
Mum, mum, mum, mum, MUM, look at me, goddamnit
I’ve long since thought that bragging about how much you know is something a person grows out of some time between 6 and 14, as having their head flushed repeatedly down the toilet kicks in and they get wise to the fact no-one like’s a smart arse.
I was rudely disappropriated of this perception at my first tutorial for the Open Degree that I’ve been worming my way through. For the first twenty...
“Poop”
– Because, and you know it, it is eternally funny.
I love her music without condition. →
A free laugh with your morning, sir?
A succession of beautiful things happened to me this morning. Small things, the kind of things you miss with your iPod in and your newspaper out. It nearly started so badly with a sprint for a train that consistently arrives late when I’m on time and early when I’m late. I took my usual place on the handrail, slightly wedged against the door and hooked on to the grid. Texts sent and Facebook...
Sexually, I'm more of a Switzerland →
Buy this book. Buy it now.
Moving on up
I think we are destined, as folks just the right side of a coma, to be tired from the age of 11. Beautifully, scientists have proven that we need more sleep just as we are starting to push the boundaries of bedtimes or curfews, and from there an overdraft facility is arranged with the Bank of Sleep. The overdraft creeps up in increments until, really, you need to take out a loan from the Caffeine...
November 2010
2 posts
Poets Day
Today was Poets Day at work. All week people have been dropping the phrase into conversations like a half sucked sweet, all sugar and uncertainty and sticky bits of fluff. Would anyone care to explain?
So it turns out that POETS day is actually Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday, which means that once a month, if your deadlines are all met, you can go home at 3. But that’s a big IF. I...