Diary's are cool.

The dreams are getting weirder, and more real. They can be both things. Shut up. Problem is, I'm not remembering them. This is probably part of a bigger problem, but I'll come to that later, if I remember. Thing is though, I'm waking up angry at people, sometimes people I haven't spoke to in weeks. This must mean that people are dicks in my dreams. Admittedly, most of them are dicks in real life, but that's why I spend time with them, puts my own dickery into perspective in my head. And dickery should always be placed firmly in perspective, otherwise you'd end up confused between the small dickery, and the far away dickery. I'm going to stop writing the word dickery now.

What on earth was I nobbing on about? Oh yeah, a message to my brother. If you're going to buy a new car, in my dream, don't park it on a beach at low tide, in my dream, then leave me to guard it, in my dream. I know I'm an impressive man, but I cannot control the tides. Yet.

Idiot!

Bump

So I do what I planned and I go to the random word generator and challenge myself to write something not entirely sleep inducing about whatever word it spits out. Maybe i’ll have to write about some form of food, or an activity that i’ve done in the past, maybe i’ll really luck out and get a big topic that i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, like love, or hope, or even bridges.

’Bump.

There it is, the minute the page loads up, ‘Bump’.

Right. Well..erm.. yeah.

Now for some reason all that settles into mind is Mr Bump, a childhood favourite for me as I recall, after Mr Tickle of course, who could get his own breakfast in bed. Maybe it was in the tale of this little blue bandaged sphere that I found the kindling for my great love of schadenfruede. Who can’t be entertained by what is essentially a fat, smurf that walks into things and falls down holes. It’s the learning to read equivalent of watching a toddler drop his ice cream on the floor. Then of course the whole thing goes all Taoist on our backsides when the clumsy critter takes decides to work with, rather than struggle against, his disability, and of course now we’re in the 21st century we can recognise his tendency towards accidental injury as a disability, when back in the 20th century he would simply have been thought of as somewhere between unlucky and foolish. In fact if we think about it nowadays he would be viewed, depending on which newspaper you read, either as somebody with an unfortunate condition that should be understood, treated, and used as an excuse for not doing so well in his GCSEs or as a con man of the highest order with Legal Vultures 4 U on speed dial.

Wait, I did a tangent. Yeah our beach ball shaped chum goes and gets himself a job walking into trees in an orchard and causing the apples to fall down. Now you can call me a monster of you like and set the Society for the Patronisation of Clumsy People on me, but I can’t for the life of me think of a better job than as Security Camera Operator at that orchard. Watching Bumpy go about his daily business, tottering into a tree, falling back on his bum rubbing his forehead as the apple smacks him on the bonce.

I’d never be late for work.

All in one

Dear Sir,

The above vehicle, registered in your name, was recently observed on the 20th January 2008 @ 08.20hrs with glove box wide open / sat nav also on display therefore rendering the vehicle vulnerable.

yours faithfully, The Police

——

translated

Dr Mr Idiot,

If you’re gonna leave your sat nav on display inside your car on one of the crappiest streets in Preston don’t come crying to us when it gets nicked. We have better things to do that wipe your arse for you.

yours after they made me trog round on Dimwit Patrol first thing on a Sunday morning, Your Friendly Local Bobby

——

Now, i’m all for preventative policing, even if it is sponsored by Halfords (they offer details of the store and a couple of security product suggestions within the letter), and I can’t fault the police at all for taking the initiative and trying to save them, and me, time, money and inconvenience in this way, it is, on a very practical level, the right thing to do.

But I am left uncomfortable by how this action highlights the further shifting of the responsibility for crime away from the purpetrator and onto the victim. We’ve already had the right to make mistakes or to have accidents taken away from us by no win no fee blame and cash in culture but now we’re being encouraged to do away with our right to trust. I’d rather have my stuff nicked a hundred times and continue to act in a way that suggests i trust the people I live amongst than to assume everyone the enemy and live permanently on guard.

Don’t get me wrong, i’m not some ridiculous hippy that believes everyone is full of warming goodness and should be treated as a brother and welcomed into our homes for cookies and milk. I believe firmly in having spaces and possessions that are exclusively ours and i’m fully aware that the human being is a despicable thing capable of the most remorseless horror. And I know that if i do not take precautions against being bitten on the arse, i will at some point be bitten on the arse.

But i fear if you erode our ability to trust too far then there is no way back.

I was going to write about the party I went to last night before i got that letter. I may do later, it was a strange experience for me, the buffet included radishes, there was some kind of cheese sauce on the celery and 5 different kinds of cheese on offer to be consumed with biscuits and wine. There was also an amusing incident with a muffin, and i was introduced to the concept of ‘toe cleavage’. A good time was had, unexpected laughter was brought to the floor and time actually did what they say it does when you’re having fun and ‘flew’. However there was also unpoliced karaoke in a contained space which i think we can all agree is a much greater threat to our lives than having our sat nav swiped.

This is not cable-stayed

Everyone seems to be blogging this week. Maybe it’s because the party has finally worn off, the floods have subsided and we’re all feeling a bit more reflective. Maybe it’s just cos there’s nothing good on TV. Either way, i’ve been meaning to get back into it and there’s nothing like a crowd to follow for spurring people into action so may as well join in.

I’ve started and scrapped several blogs over the past months, mostly because it became apparent a few long winded paragraphs in that i didn’t really have anything to write about. You see, the thing with a blog, is it’s like a diary, people write about what they’re up to and how they are doing and such things, and in order to do this to to a level interesting enough to waste your eyesight it requires a fair degree of openness and sensitivity and other such hippy crap that has never really been my bag. I’ve built up some pretty impressive walls which i’m hoping to eventually roof and then apply for classification as a listed structure so i’m damned if i’m gonna start taking bricks out without a bloody good reason.

I considered bypassing this by writing about ‘topics’ and such, i even found a web based ‘random word generator’ and considered setting myself the challenge of writing each day about whatever word crops up. I may still do this to be honest, because the reason i write blogs isn’t because i’m under the misguided notion that anyone actually wants to know anything about me or mine, but more just for the exercise of writing, i like the sound of my own fingers, and it reassures me that my brain hasn’t fallen apart at the seams completely and i can still at least string words together in a way what is good a bit.

I just got distracted by Jeremy Clarkson in a day glo ski jacket. What the hell was I wittering about? Oh yeah, if you haven’t fallen asleep yet I was saying i’d given up writing any blogs because i’m an emotional miser who would generally rather give you a fiver than a feeling. This of course isn’t true in the slightest but we all have our self portraits to preserve, no matter how much of a scribble they are.

But frankly not blogging in the traditional manner through a lack of desire to reveal a chink in the armor (i was sure armor had a u in it) is paramount to not leaving the bed through fear of standing on slug, it’s no way to live your life.

So here goes. My copy of Blogging for Dummies tells me that a Classic Blog should start with a paragraph on how the writer is feeling at the moment. This would of course be much easier if I was of the lying kind, but as honesty is probably the only virtue i do possess it’s gonna be a matter of sucking it up and getting on with it really.

Right this minute I’m feeling pretty ashamed of myself in the most part. I was drunk last night and i was very inconsiderate and selfish towards a friend. So now not only do I have a relationship to rebuild, but I have a friend who is feeling crappy that I can’t help. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t cut it when you break a trust like that. And people only ever say ‘sorry’ to make themselves feel better anyway. On the positive side (and every single cloud does have a silver lining, and if you ever need me to show you it i gladly will) this happening and me feeling bad about it has brought into focus that it’s something that’s been happening to lesser degrees altogether too much recently, and something I need to sort out. Hopefully it will also have encouraged them to punch me in the face in future, preferably with words rather than a fist, when I deserve it.

But obviously we don’t only have one feeling inside us at once, if that was the case girls wouldn’t have anything to think themselves into a state about. So on a smaller scale i’m feeling fairly proud of myself, because i’m writing this instead of playing pro evo, though i am aware that not only is my pro evo training suffering by this choice but that i could be doing something far more worthwhile with my time, like getting those basslines practiced, or feeding the hungry, or conversing over dinner with a friend, or making love with a beautiful woman. But y’know, we can’t be doing everything all the time.

What does the manual say I have to do next? Right, what have i been up to since the last blog. well that was in.... August, that recent? wow. I’m practically prolific. Ok so, since the end of august what have I done. I jumped out of a plane. Always good to start with something dramatic I think. Although, once you’ve said it you’ve said it, there isn’t really any follow up information, the parachute obviously opened, and nobody really wants to know about the end cell closure or the slightly botched landing, besides, everyones done it these days, some people use it as an alternative to public transport on the commute to work. So what else have I done in the last 5 months.

Erm.

Er.. see, here is the problem. The most significant activity of the winter months for me has been watching a lot of TV programs about bridges, and some about tunnels, and this one about the Panama Canal, and this great boat that Brunel built that cost shit loads and never made a voyage. And in terms of blogging readability, that doesn’t really cut the mustard, you may as well just read wikipedia. But it is significant for me you see, because it’s revealed to me that i’m actually interested in something, i actually feel the need to learn about these materials and techniques and designs. Which is quite a big thing, because it’s very rare i’m interested in anything much beyond where my next meal or my next kiss is coming from. And let’s face it, everybody needs a hobby, because boredom is not a desirable long term lifestyle choice.

Of course this isn’t all i’ve done, i’ve been out, i’ve had fun with friends, i’ve had drunken nights and hungover days, i’ve played music, i’ve seen family, i’ve driven, i’ve eaten and i’ve slept. But we all do this, every day, so in very real terms, it’s nothing to write home about. I haven’t fallen in love, I haven’t changed the world, i’ve just trundled through each day doing whatever i needed to do to get to the next one and hopefully have a laugh on the way.

These ‘ere instructions tell me it’s best to close a blog with a short piece about your plans and hopes and dreams for the future. But i’m not sure about that, i’m not big on hopes and dreams, the origin of suffering is desire, or attachment, or money, or women, or last nights doner kebab, or cats, or myspace, or something. But yeah, i don’t like to talk about stuff that’s planned, incase it jinxes it, or someone steals it, or you change your mind and don’t do it and then look like a flakey fool. So i’m not gonna do that, and to be honest, this blog is far too long as it is, and I have to have a shower or i won’t be allowed into the castle for the princess’ debut.

Adios for now.

There's something about brownies

I've been thinking a lot about food recently. or rather, food has been on my mind. not in the usual healthy 'mmm, what tasty treat can i eat next' way, but in the more worrying 'i really shouldn't have eaten that whole box of brownie bites' way. which probably means i'm a girl, which isn't appealing at the best of times, especially when you're a girl who looks like me.

Thing is, i'm starting to get a belly, all my life i've been on the underbuilt side of the body bullying fence thanks to a metabolism so fast that it seems to take exactly twelve minutes for any meal to go from plate to poo (a digestive tradition that is strangely still with me despite the obvious expansion of girth at naval height) and obviously now i'm pushing 30 (i am NOT pushing 30 yet, i have 14 months to go, but it has begun to amuse me to say it, probably something of a defence mechanism where by if i say it enough it will stop terrifying me so much that i want to take a plane to my outer skin in a desperate attempt to shave myself back down to reveal the 19 year old inside), i'm fully aware this is the time of life that so many men find there body finally gives up on trying to breakdown the shite they pump into it on a daily basis and screams 'fuck you, you can be fat!'.

A person who makes as many fat jokes per day as i do cannot afford to chunk up.

So what do you do. well first you dispose of the usual weekly diet of 4 chinese meals, 2 lots of fish and chips, and a plate of home cooked fajitas, with sausage butties daily for breakfast and cheese burgers (with spiral fries) for supper. you go to the supermarket and stock up.

you're lazy, so you have to buy things that will take little to no effort to prepare, otherwise shanghai house will be receiving calls again, after a few months of trial and error i settled upon this, each days meal will be based around either - a plate of leaves with french dressing on them, a pre-packed portion of mixed veg, or the right veg to put in either a stir fry or a spag bol. this will be eaten (apart from the spag bol) with some chunk of meat that can be grilled. preferably with a taste on it such as 'chinese pork chops' or 'minted lamp chops' or 'peppered kebab sticks'

so you stock up. sorted.

only it's not is it. you see, i live alone (aww, poor me etc). they don't sell interesting packages of meat in single portions. and it goes off pretty quickly. you can't freeze it because defrosting takes forward planning and you'll never eat any of it because a frozen slab of meat is simply an invitation to call china rose. so you're constantly conscious of the mass of meat that starts rotting from the minute it goes in the fridge and once you've opened a pack of 4 steaks, you have to eat them. so you have 2 with your dinner and then have two as hot sandwhiches for supper. that's 4 steaks, or 4 chops (8 if they are supposed to be served 2 to a portion) every day. before you were just having half a plate of fried rice and then 4oz of reconstituted beef. this can't be right... can it?

on top of that you have to get your 5 a day in. five more things to eat. and only one is allowed to be juice.. apparently 9 glasses of pure pineapple juice (not from concentrate) still only counts as 1 of your 5., so you're not doing yourself any favours, you're just increasing the need to pee too often. and the leaves or whatever you have with you're meat is only 1 more.... 2 if you really push it... but pushing it is what all this was supposed to stop wasn't it.

then of course there's the brownie bites...

screw it, i've got some new trainers and there's a nature reserve just been built 4minutes from my flat, i'll just think about jogging some more...

p.s. there is someone subscribed to my blogs that i've never met, i must be incredible.

Frigeworthy

now it's not usually my way to do the blog about days out and fancy holidays and such. no. i'm far more likely to jot down meandering barely-sensical ramblings about some dream i had or how i was scared by my own reflection and such idiocy. 

but i've just spent 3 days at an event that i now know i will return to every year for the rest of my life so it would seem disrespectful not to at least jot a bit down. i haven't been to everywhere in the world, but i can say as fact that edinburgh (the fringe and a bunch of other stuff) in august is the best event in all existance

i'm biased of course, as many of you i bore in person will know, if you were to for some reason drop the word Edinburgh into a conversation with me, depending on the timing, the end result would fall somewhere between me relentlessly wittering about how spellbinding the place is, and us actually being there 4 hours later. i could talk about how i feel as 'at home' on the royal mile as i do in my own flat, i could talk about how the shock of moving so swiftly between hollyrood park and princes street brings the world into focus and how beautiful it is outside the parliament building at night, and i would definatley talk about the underground vaults and the closes and i would fail miserably to describe how on the coldest nights it can be the warmest place.

first off though, having booked a hotel room late and having to find one a couple of miles outside the city centre, fate decided to do me the favour of putting arthur's seat between me and where all the fun was centered. To me this was brilliant, i got to walk through a national park on my way to town. well, i did have the option of walking round it, which if we're being honest was quicker, but if somebody sticks a massive green valley in front of you.. unless your soul as been eaten by an internal combustion engine, you're gonna fancy trecking through it, even if it does add 20minutes onto the trip.. you've got all your life haven't you.

of course, where there is a valley there is a hill, in this case it's a pretty big one and you get to thinking, bet if i wander up the side a bit there's a pretty decent view, as all you can generally see from the bottom of a valley, is the sides of a valley.. which is nice... but.. y'know. problem is once you've climbed a bit you start looking right up at the top, the peak, it's not really on your was is it.. but you've never climbed to the top before, it's something you should really do at some point

so a bit of a sigh and a deep breath and you start climbing higher and higher.. about half way up you want to sit down... fuck it, lie down, and recover, but there's a couple behind you who seem to be wandering up to the peak as part of a relaxing dinner time stroll, so you'd be embarrased to look like you were struggling. 

three quarters of the way up you are repeating to yourself the phrase 'i'm an idiot i'm an idiot i'm a massive idiot i'm going to die' as you see a man running... running towards you (at this stage you have taken to occasionally using your hands to make sure you don't trip over on the uneven floor and rolypoly back down the the valley floor) and find yourself wheezing out loud 'he's an idiot'

but you press on. you're 20rds (vertical) from the peak, the sense of achievement is going to be fantastic, and the view just as good. you're sweating, everywhere, you can hear yourself panting over your headphones, but it's ok, you're there, in a minute you can sit down and enjoy.

then this small girl (ok so she could be in her 20s, but she's 5ft high and, well, a girl) has the audacity to appear, ambling towards you, away from the peak, not a bead of sweat on her, the same facial expression that somebody would have while having a bath, not in the least bit troubled by the climb she has obviously recently made. and you have to suck it all in and pretend you're not dying from the superhuman effort that has been the last 30minutes.

it's a blow but it's ok, you've made it, you're at the top. you sit down and spend 5 minutes fighting the urge to throw yourself off, not for any medlodramatic reason, but just because it's the easiest way to get back down. then you stand up and survey the routes from where you are to where you want to be and obviously it's to go back to where you started in the first place. obviously.

100yrds down the return journey your sense of achievement, of pride, takes a bit of a hit. that girl. THAT GIRL! is walking back towards you FROM THE OTHER PEAK. it's been five, maybe ten minutes since you last saw her. that's quite a pace. 

obviously at this point all this was running round my head and i sat down to make a few nots on my mobile about how i was going to blog it, as nobody does anything these days without simultaneously thinking about how the will tell the internet about it. just like nobody thinks anything of switching from 2nd person to 1st person during a narrative. it's a post modern world and we love it.

while writing... not even giving me time to stop writing. that superhuman 5ft lump of attractively shaped muscle comes jogging past me... jogging. it's important to note here that previous to this point there was no indication that she was out exercising or training in anyway, the previous movement, the manner of dress, was all indication of a simple volcano sympathising tourist just like me she was simply not satisfied with making me look like a useless subperson with her accelarated and unflinching wanderings around the peaks and troughs of this park, she needed something extra to keep her interested, so she broke into a jog. HOW DARE SHE! my sense of achievement is squashed under her feet as they pad delicately past. i haven't acheived anything, i''ve failed, i've been beaten by a girl... and I haven't even been beaten by her at anything particularly impressive.. i've been beaten by her at CLIMBING HILLS! 

rubbish.

i got distracted there. sorry. but yeah. basically edinburgh fringe festival is amazing. i spent 3 days there and was never bored at any moment. i spent the entire daylight hours of first 1 and half days simply wander up and down the royal mile being entertained by the street performers and people trying to sell there shows. you name me one other street in the world that a person can spend close to 15 hours just walking up and down, sitting on, without getting bored. and that's before you even start to look at the shows. i watched a gothic shakespeare at midnight. i watched stuart lee AND richard herring. and yes both their routines dwelled largely on the problems of being a 40something comedian that used to be on tv. only one of them mentioned fist of fun, by using a joke from the show, nobody in the room got the allusion until it was pointed out in the nest sentence. a saw a reletively poor sketch show played out to a room of a hundred people. and i saw a young comedian try and perferm his routine to an audience of just 6 people. ok, so he didn't try and perform his routine. he sat and chatted to us for an hour. but nobody minded. because they could walk out of that room and into another at any point to find a different entertainment.

and i didn't even get involved in the 24hour party that was caused by tens of thousands of people, from every age group, from every country in the world, all decending on one small area of one scottish city.

i have to go now and book my accomadation for next year. you should come.

River of Dreams

it seems that when waking life becomes a little pedestrian, dreams take up the slack, natural defence against depression i guess, which we all know is caused by boredom, and stupidity, but mostly boredom

anyway, at first my dear old brain decided the best way to keep me happy juices running was to simply release unrequested feelings of absolute terror at various points through out the night, not even really with connected dreams, just like a command, a little thought sat there on it's squidgy cloud singing 'you are going to feel more scared then you've ever felt in your life...... now.' and hey preston i have to wrench myself awake, ignore the things i see in the dark and sit up too scared to close my eyes.

all very exciting, but not particularly good for the self esteem of a 28 year old man

so last night it has a new solution. starts of innocently enough, sat around playing those riddle/puzzle type games where you're like 'you have a 20m length of hose, some water, a potato and several old christmas cards. what do you do?' y'know, THAT game, the one we play all the time.. yeah? ...no? i didn't either, but it seemed so familiar at the time

obviously this moved on from a theoretical game to one where a bunch of us actually found a long hose in a wooden tower by a lake and a bunch of other stuff and started acting out the crazy schemes and plans we'd drawn up. oddly the first thing one guy did was take the end of the hose and rub it in the mouth of another guy, confusion rained as the victim ran around looking a bit worried until eventually found someone with a toothbrush and paste and applied them to their standard use. turns out what this wag had done is 'dirtied his teeth', oh the hilarity

this all continues for a while and i take a few steps back just in time to see a police car and ambulance rushing towards minor incident around the other side of the lake, in order to get there they had to cross a thin strip of land between the edge of the lake and some trees which was just wide enough for the vehicles, the problem was it was a hill which angles at 45degrees across it's width down towards the lake. the police car crossed without trouble but the taller ambulance, with it's higher centre of gravity struggled, tipping slowly, slowly tipping until... sploosh. everyone cheers, highlight of the dream. it was ok though folks, it was an amphibious ambulance.

it goes without saying that as the sun went down all this devoped into a party in the wooden tower (which was on stilts over the water) it was very popular and The Who were playing live onstage, but the crowd got a bit rowdy and concern spread about the safety of the wooden flooring, so The Who were asked to leave and replaced by a fairly average girl fronted glam band that sat somewhere between Paramore and Hole and bizarrely had the lead singer from a Lancaster band i've known. From outside i could see the sun coming up and the students across the water complaining to the police about the noise and so decided it was time to pull the plug and headed towards the stage. Once there, before i could ask the band to wrap it up I had to follow a tramp around who had climbed onstage and begun trying to play the unusual number of spare instruments that had been left set up and unused around the stage.

plug bulled i bothered about trying to find the organisers to tidy up the mess when the phone rang, it was my brother, he was at home and a bag had just thrown itself across the room and he was a bit scared so i had to go home

it seems also then that when our life becomes a little pedestrian our brains melt a little inside