Strolling

For me, to think and mull over things about myself or the world I tend to go on a really long walk. Nothing works better in clearing my head than to close the door, sniff and start shuffling those feet. Where I head, I’m not really too fussed, it literally is aimless walking, sometimes on the path, other times across a field (I do believe I walked past a dogging gathering once). Since I was a young un’ I have enjoyed walking and used to see how far I could venture until I was truly lost. Although I don’t adapt the walking style you see in the Olympic Games I do tend to shift some without realising it. But it’s the opportunity for me to think things deeply that motivates me to do it. Taking in a cool breath of air kind of mellows my mind from ideas buzzing around my head and allows me to approach them rationally instead of going ‘yeah that’s great.’ Then two minutes later I’m thinking about another one and then another. I don’t actually given them due consideration and eventual realisation that some of them are pretty pants unless I think about them while walking. Hey, Meredith Belbin always said I was a ‘Plant’. So while walking along making the hole in my plimpsole even larger my head sorts them out by thinking, is it possible to do this? If so, how can it be done? How much money will it cost? Usually by step two it’s faltered. I snigger and we carry on. Other times my mind is preoccupied with the usual clichéd but still somewhat significant topic we all share, ‘am I doing the right thing for me in this moment in life?’

To deal with this I let my mind’s eye take over and create several alternative selfs all exactly the same as me but one is richer, another sensible and the final one adventurous. The richer one would definitely be living in New York, in an apartment similar to the one that’s featured in the beginning of Cloverfield, when the camera is first turned on in the morning. When I saw that scene my heart kind of melted seeing the view of New York below. How I would love to one day pull back the curtains and see that view, know and feeling I am part of such a magnificent city. The smile would grow and grow. The sensible version of me would probably be related to the rich aspect. Had I been sensible I could have aspired to those extremely financially rewarding professions. But from a young age I’ve wrestled with that aspect, when being told being a solicitor or accountant are professions I must push towards. Straightaway I thought they were boring, I didn’t want to follow that route. However, I do not wish to write disparaging remarks about those types of careers. As I get older I realise that in order to reach those kinds of jobs you need to develop skills like, analytical and observational both of which are useful in every job. Perhaps that is why those who fail in those professions succeed elsewhere because they have nurtured these transferable assets. I think the sensible version of me is the most dangerous, he would be content with money but inside him would harbour a resentment for not being just himself until reaching mid life and break down, fall to pieces and then start to resent the time wasted achieving those career goals only to throw them all away again from going bonkers.

And the adventurous one, well, it’s pretty obvious to myself I’d like to be travelling, perhaps right now sitting in some café in Japan reading some Murakami in peace while occasionally looking outside and see the people go to work, smiling at the cute office girl as she buys her breakfast. But adventure doesn’t mean gallivanting around the globe. What adventure would arise if I just quit my job one day? Said it was over and not come back. Turn on my laptop and really hammer through my progressive text I wrote. Rewrote the parts that were woeful, spend hours on a paragraph, days rereading the text until I was happy with it. Develop new skills in the progress as I tackle problems with the story, its direction and the fact I can flutter between tenses more times than Vanessa Feltz can re-launch her career. Sounds pretty fucking ace but reality is that it can’t really happen and besides how long would the motivation last?

It’s at this point I tend to realise that I’m in another estate far, far away and my knees are creaking. I’m glad I think about those things but it usually makes me hungry too so I always end up heading to a Tesco Express and buying a Double Decker. Man I love that Chocolate bar.

Here is me walking along listening to The Acorn. I recommend them.

Spreading That Toast

Dang, according to my recent observations these last couple of weeks I can pretty much tell how I will act during the day by none other than the choice of my spread that goes on my toast in the mornings. It’s dire but I started to see how my day pans out after a take a mouthful of Marmite, honey, peanut butter or margarine. It’s messed up, I know, but what I fancy in the morning pretty much tells me how my approach to the day will unravel once I’ve fully awoken.

Ok when I slap the toast down and push the button I know that my day is going to be a boring one when I want margarine. It’s like subconsciously I already know I can’t be bothered with it and there isn’t enough gusto inside me because to try and change this feeling. I’m either really tired or pissed off about something. When I spread the margarine I know that I’m not motivated, I’m not interested in enlightening my life today, thank you, I am quite happy to fester. To be honest I’d probably be content staring at the wall at work examining the cracks and the little animals that crawl out of them.

Yet it’s different when the toast pops up all golden and the next morning I'm craving honey. I sort of know I’ll soon have loads of ideas. Don’t know why, maybe it’s the sweet taste but I get small scale ones like where to go for lunch ‘screw the cafeteria I want to check out that Sushi Bar next to All Bar One’. Or larger ones like ‘if I save 5k and then take a 5k loan I can go travelling around the world for a year, right I’ll start saving now’. My mind just gets these random ideas which help the day roll by.

When it’s Marmite I want, I’m thinking about getting fit. I’ve got a love/hate relationship with marmite. I can go weeks eating it, scoffing it down everyday which seems to coincide when I’m on some sort of health vibe, like going for runs or playing squash. But then I stop playing these sports and all of a sudden I hate the black stuff. Even seeing the jar makes me gag and if I smell it I’m heaving like a cat coughing up a furball.

Occasionally I get the urge to slap on peanut butter and my day is random, I make random choices and do random things like roll up one sleeve but keep the other down. What I am trying to do, keep it real or something? Or the time I went for a walk at lunch and kept walking until I reached a small wood realised that it took me 55 minutes to get there and I’ve only got an hour for lunch so spent another 25 minutes reading my book sitting on a fallen tree trunk.


Either way I do find it strange that there is a connection (maybe sprinkled heavily with coincidence)between my morning eating habits and the feelings I have towards the day.

Credit + Bank = Woes (and Dohs)

Seems there is going to be a winter of financial discontent these forthcoming months according to news programs, newspapers and radio shows. Banks seemed to be writing off billions worth of pounds whereas two of America's biggest (and daftest named) mortgage related companies had to be bailed out by the US Government because they were heading for financial meltdown. I wish I could write off all my debts because my estate was in disrepute. Unfortunately everyone’s darling, Alistair, would not help me but instead continues to suckle every last penny from my account to help pay for the Labour party's convention and then slap me across the face with his big bushy eyebrows. So this constant hammering of dismal economic climates, banks struggling, companies folding and the government sweating leaves me, well, just bored of it all. Fuck, someone screwed up or knew what they were doing was stupid but realised they could make a lot of money and get the hell out. Yeah the financial guardians let their guard down a bit and lent money to anyone to buy a house, even the local tramp that hangs out by the park got one (yet he still sits on the bench all day). I'm pretty sure prisoners were able to get themselves a mortgage whilst serving their fifteen to twenty year sentences. Yet now we need credit to keep the economy chugging along otherwise we will be facing a recession and if you are like me you do not want someone like the current Chancellor leading our way back to growth. So I refuse to feel guilty in buying the Bourne Ultimatum on DVD yesterday because I should be acting frugal with my money. Or buy some new trainers because my plimpsoles now have a hole in the sole. Or buy one of those thin scarves that make me look like I'm out of a H&M advert. Hey, I work for it, I'll blow it any way I want. And I advise everyone to do so too *. Not stupidly obviously, but if there is some spare disposable income we should pump it into the economy whilst we get superficial consumer goods in return where the novelty value wares off after a week. Please I am getting so bored in hearing business analysts confirm only what the newscaster said a few moments earlier And how boring are these analysts? Their monotone voices only add to the despair they conjure when hearing about the ‘credit crunch’.

I do think it was good a thing that the US Government let the Lehman Brothers bank go bankrupt. This showed that they were not willing to bail every bank out because their bosses had messed up so much (I say this because I read in Private Eye and according to their sources, they paid out $5.4 billion in bonuses over the last two years) and probably made other precarious decisions. If they had bailed them out it would be like saying 'hey you can practically make any decision you want, invest in any venture you want, including buying stocks in Stewie Griffin's Death Ray Project, and when everything proves worthless, don't worry we'll bail you out and you'll still get shit loads of money (HBOS messed up big time and their CEO still got his £2 million as part of the buy out by Lloyds TSB).' Oh wait, actually that is exactly what is happening in the US of A right now with the US Government trying to buy back bad debt off the banks for $700 billion. This is so confidence can be restored and they can start to lend to each other again. Shit, talk about having a license to piss money up a wall. I can understand what the US Government is trying to do and it is pretty admirable considering the alternative is serious financial meltdown which might liquescent the guy of the Halifax advert. But I do hope that they insert conditions that the decision makers who woefully made the wrong ones are not rewarded with tax payers money of millions of dollars. It's not on really because the public did not ask for this to happen, they are the cause of the problem and yet they will be rewarded with the money of the public. You may wonder why I've focused on the States in the last section. That's because we pretty much copy anything they do and if they start to prevent people obtaining bonuses then Britain will too. In the meantime I’ll go make a cup of tea.

*My advice should not be followed under any circumstances as it is based on me discussing the world’s problems with various people in different queues.

Here's my holey plimpsole

Release

Finally I have completed my Spanish course. I had my final oral exam at 20:38 which lasted about fifteen minutes. Prior to that time I was nothing more than a gibbering nervous wreck due to reckless consumption of five cups of coffee during the day. The theory was that by drinking copious amounts of coffee I’d be as perky as Pamela Anderson’s assets. However, because I was anxious or perhaps excited about my oral exam I drunk more than my usual three cups. By four o’clock I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I’d stare at the computer screen writing out an email but as soon as I’d finished typing out the recipient’s name my conscious thought insisted that I should turn my attentions to revising a few Spanish verbs. So I turned my head and gave a deft glance at the list hidden beneath my writing pad. I’d got as far a revising the verb of ‘hablar’ when my mind informed me it was time to grab something to eat. I wasn’t even hungry and it wasn’t until I was in the canteen that I realised that being in a queue for a Mars Bar I didn’t want was nothing more than stupidity. Realising that my mind was finding it hard to concentrate it was time to consider drastic measures to ensure that I’d be able to speak coherently for the oral.

So arriving home I decided to nullify the caffeine by using a sedative this being, a glass of red wine. It went down a treat and I could feel the tension literally evaporate from my shoulders. It had such a good affect on me that I turned to a second glass and hit the books practicing my verbs, prepositions and pronunciations. It seemed to literally role of my tongue like I’d been speaking the language for years. The feeling of confidence oozed and I wanted more so poured another and knocked it back. After putting down the empty glass I suddenly felt languid, I’d overdone it. The verve had left me and all I wanted to do was lie down and watch Alan Partridge. The urge to attend this tutorial started to diminish with every thought of speaking a language I kind of understood to an expert who would nod, wince and perhaps even scowl as I got things wrong. However, I rallied. It was important to finish the course because it has haunted me since February, looming around my neck like a boil that won’t disappear. You can forget about it for a little while but every now and then you realise it is there. It felt almost like subtle harassment if such a term could exist. Even though it was for my benefit I just could not help that it was intruding on my life rather than contributing it. Yet, I still persisted, even though studying wasn’t daily or even weekly. It was important I took the final exam, so I made myself another coffee pouring in three teaspoons of sugar for an extra kick and made myself ready by standing outside for no apparent reason.

The exam itself was quite quick. I spoke, was asked some questions which I eventually answered after saying ‘errr’ quite a lot and also feeling my heart beating really fast only to slow down after a few seconds and then to speed up again. It all came to an end after twenty minutes and thought I should write this blog whilst I’m in this incoherent manner. So apologies but thought it would read kind of disjointed tomorrow when I’m off the caffeine/wine comedown.

The Coughing And Sniffing Express

I was on a coach the other day, nestled tightly in a chair and staring wide-eyed out of the window. As the cars went past the coach with ease (including a battered Robin Reliant) I was grateful that it wasn’t chucking it outside and that travelling on a coach isn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be. My new found affection for this form of public transport soon changed.

It started about twenty minutes into the journey. I heard a small squeak behind me and wondered what on earth it could be, surely there weren’t any rodents scurrying along the aisle. The squeaking persisted so to satisfy my curiosity I turned my head around pretending to look for the toilet and caught the glimpse of a petite lady trying with great distress to stifle her sneezing. The person sitting next to her, a thin bespectacled gentleman shuffled a little further away each time she squeaked. I turned back to my seat satisfied that there was no rat around stowing away underneath the seats when I next heard an almighty cough. A great roar making the windows shake ever so slightly by a man sitting in the next aisle brought me out of my thoughts. I sunk a little deeper when moments later I heard another sneeze, this time from the person sitting in front of me. It seemed I was surrounded by people with colds. There must have been germs circulating around me waiting to be hovered up by my snout so they could unleash havoc inside. I had only just recovered from a horrible cold that left me bed bound for days I wasn’t going to let these germs invade and violate me without my permission. There wasn’t much I could do though. No one chooses to be ill and I can’t go and try and reason with a germ. My meagre efforts consisted of turning off the air conditioning contraption above me. It seemed pretty rickety anyhow but I remember reading somewhere at some point in time that most people catch colds from the air con because it recycles the air and gives the germs a rollercoaster of a ride before infecting unsuspecting people snoozing with their mouths open. My other attempt to fortify my body was to flip up my hoodie and pull the strings so it all closed up like a little ET in a Parker jacket. It didn’t bother me that I looked like a freak and that my peripheral vision became nonexistent as the hoodie closed in tighter. I would virtually do anything not to catch that cold again.

The sneezing continued. There were squeaks behind me, roars to my left and the standard sneeze you hear in adverts in front of me. I could hear a few more sneezes further in front close to the driver. The only person in my vicinity who was not sneezing was the lady sitting next to me. She just stole curious glances at me as I stared out of the window again with my hood covering most of my face. I was deep in thought that this coach was nothing more than a conduit for a plethora of germs to infect an unsuspecting city. Each one of these people sneezing would go off on their merry-way infecting their friends, family and strangers. Still what can anyone do other than hide within your attire? Was it a vindicated manoeuvre? Well, the lady sitting next to me started to sniffle just as we pulled in, so I say it was.

In other news, your sex is on fire.

Eyeful

I had an eye appointment yesterday and managed to muster up the energy to make the visit after feeling ill the last few days. I decided it was best to shave as I felt a felt of hair all over my face usually terrifies people let alone me.

Everything happened as usual in the eye shop, checking in and sitting down while I waited for the optometrist. It is strange being involved in a social situation but the reason for being there is business. Like when you go to the doctors or dentist you are only there for business reasons but whilst waiting everyone is in a social situation, well you are if there are other people waiting as well. In this case there was and as usual no one really talks to each other which is fine with me. I had a guy in suit but with jack-ups almost scratching his knees sitting next to me while a lady on my right looked pensively ahead staring at the optometrist’s closed door. It made me feel slightly uncomfortable at the way she stared at the door in such an intense manner. Her brow frowning and her mouth grimacing slightly. I wondered if she was here to see the eye man for personal reasons. Perhaps she was here to collect an outstanding debt or maybe she had been left jilted at the alter and she was now here to exact revenge, leaving me and Jack-ups as potential witnesses to a murder. My concentration was broken by the call of my name and I noticed the optometrist standing a few metres in front of me carrying his clipboard. I looked to see if he noticed the lady boring her eyes down on him but he was only concerned about the clipboard. As I headed to the office I turned back to see the woman now looking at me with a look of disgust spread all over her face, Jack-ups just had his arm folded probably wondering why his ankles were so cold.

The optometrist got me to sit down and read letters off the wall as they all do. I was really good on the first two lines but once I reached the middle my sight failed me and all I could see was little black blobs. I was then asked to place my chin on a little machine where it enabled him to examine my eye. I did so and almost immediately was hit by a bright light, I blinked to block its brightness and the eye man said not to blink. I told him it was hard when he is flashing a light directly into my iris. He said nothing and instead got up and pulled out a small pipette full of liquid. The eye man told me this liquid would brighten up any scratches I had on my cornea and pulled my head back with some force. Next thing I know he squeezed the pipette and drops of liquid were swirling around in my eyes. I blinked profusely but he shoved my head back on the machine. Looking back into my eyes he announced there is no problem with them at all. He shuffles me out of his office where his assistant tells me that I will be contacted once my contact lenses come in (the whole point of the appointment was to check my suitability for a new type). So off I went wandering around town looking for Season 2 of Alan Partridge.

It was about five minutes that I noticed people staring at me rather oddly. First it was an old lady pulling her trolley along. I just assumed she was odd. Then it was a woman in her thirties who looked at me as she walked past. Everyone seemed strange as I ventured into HMV. There I picked up Partridge on DVD and headed to the counter. It was there that the till guy took the merchandise for scanning before asking why my eyes were orange. I asked him what he was on about and he just told me that my eyes were orange and so was my eyelids. It then dawned on me that the optometrist had been pouring random liquids into my peepers. I bought the DVD and quickly found a mirror in another shop where I saw in front of me exactly what I would look like if I was a zombie in 28 Days later. I cursed the eye man but grinned at my new look before heading home.

I am sick

Grrr, I have been struck down by what many of the opposite sex denote as Man Flu. However, in my humble opinion it is a terrible illness that has rendered me unable to perform daily tasks such as shaving. At work, I sniffle through meetings and rock my head in front of my computer. When I talk it sounds like I’m chewing eight pieces of toffee whilst trying to ask where the train station is, in German. When I get home I just crash on my bed and delve underneath the covers until nestled in a comfortable position. In bed I have listened to Andy Murray beat Nadal in the US Open and then heard him get spanked by Federer in the final, all this in between sneezing, coughing and the occasional groaning.

I am bloody weak and it’s annoying. Physically I have the strength of Mr Muscle from those adverts. It seems my legs can only carry me a few metres before needing to rest. My arms have trouble holding on to an egg mayonnaise baguette and a bottle of blueberry juice. They were twitching in strain and I was glad to throw them on the counter once I reached the till. The till lady looked at me pathetically as my unshaved face and gaunt eyes looked around for the right change in my pocket. Mentally I’ve become slow, no more am I able to throw a four syllable word in a conversation to give my sentence some extra poignancy. Instead I grunt and if asked a question my mouth tends to open and my eyelids lower a little. It’s not a pretty sight and neither are the words that come out of my mouth which tend to be ‘bah’ or ‘whaaaa’. Even reading is draining my energy and I cannot seem to get through a paragraph without having to close my eyes for at least one minute. It is really annoying and highlights how much I miss being able to do things quickly and on a whim. At the moment I’m stagnate and morose unable to do anything or think of anything.

So to combat my ‘man flu’ I’ve adopted a fruit based assault. A concoction of tea, lemon and honey has had some affect. However, realising that it is only the lemon that contains the any useful properties I attempted to eat one on its own. This was not a good move on my part and shoving half a lemon in my mouth only made me contort my face into features even the elephant man would have been proud of. Still, after the initial gush of bitter juice running down my throat it got a bit easier. Someone also recommended drinking boiled water with ginger in it which again does not taste amazing but I’ll drink anything right now. I really cannot wait to get back to full strength again as I feel really weak and just in general, rubbish.

Ok, can anyone tell me why on every episode of The Midsomer Murders it is always sunny? How do they do it because England is such a rainy place (yes, these are the things that keep me awake at night)!