#39

Peace on Earth and good will to all Earthlings.

Apologies to those who know me, since the Christmas card in the preceding blog entry will probably be repeat material for you (I wondered how long it would be before I started doing repeats). I considered doing another Sumpy the Cat Christmas card but for some reason it just seemed like it'd be cat exploitation...even though Sumpy probably quite enjoyed playing about with tinsel for the photographs of the last card, I didn't think he'd enjoy the enforced adornment of a cat sized Santa hat which was my idea for this Christmas's card. Although getting Sumpy to wear a cute red Father Christmas hat would have been quite difficult, the task of actually getting the photos onto the computer, choosing a good shot and editing it would certainly have been so much easier than last time, because last time I took the photos of Sumpy with a, now considered 'old-fashioned', non-digital film camera, it being about three years ago -- because on a non-digital camera you can't review the photos you've just taken and see if you have at least a couple of clear crisp well-framed shots (obviously because there is no handy screen on the back of the camera). I had to take a whole role of film (36 photos of tensely Sumpy frolics) to make sure I would have at least a few good shots to choose from. Now... you may begin to start to get an inkling of the extra mental stresses you have to endure when you are a creative type of person, if you imagine going down to the local chemist to get a film developed containing 36 consecutive specially lit cat-frolicking photos. What on earth does the person developing the photos think? 'Cat worrier' perhaps? Upon my return to pick-up the developed photos I was greeted by that strange look from the person behind the counter, one that resumed, once my ticket had been handed-over and my photos located, as the person behind the counter slowly handed me the package of photos from: it is the look that says in that unspoken way that: they know that you know that they know. It is a look from film developers that I had well gotten used to in the era of pre-digital amateur photography, since I often tried photographing unusual things or trying experiments with photography -- things which would certainly make my roll of film stand-out a mile from all the other far more typical films in the developing-room of family holidays snaps etc, etc... for example once I experimented with taking long exposure night-time photos featuring laser trials

and when you go and collect photos like that you expect the look..... but one time I got the look totally unexpectedly when I was going to collect what I thought was an ordinary film of photos of me an my mates out and about. It was at Frosts the chemist in Sutton Coldfield town centre, in the late Eighties I think... I had left the a roll of film there for developing on a 'one hour' service. I was not particularly surprised when I returned one hour later and was told that the photos would not be ready until the next day, since I had long-ago come to learn that the cheerful: 'one hour developing', or: 'your photo ready in 1 hour' signs displayed in chemist shops actually mean: 'come back in an hour to be told when your photos will actually be ready'... but what did surprise me was that, as I say: I got that look... not only that, but two other shop assistants were conducting some sort of clandestine hushed conversation at the back of the shop with each other inbetween paying me frequent and guarded glances. But at the time I shrugged-off this behaviour from the three young gap-year doofi behind the counter, and I just put it down to paranoia, assuming I had imagined it somehow or that they were just 'admiring' my mad hair -- my mad mad hair that would occasionally compel people in passing cars to yell things like 'get a hair cut' out of the window. Even polite people who said nothing upon seeing me would suddenly feel the need to look at their reflection in a shop window and flatten down their own hair to make sure they weren't also suffering a bad hair catastrophe. I think my mad hair was probably what got me the nick name of Moose. Now-a-days though being as I'm half bald my hair is only half as mad, and as such does not exceed the threshold of madness which compels people to comment on it suddenly and loudly. I do my best with what hair I have left however, to purvey at least a token appearance of mad-hair-ness... one does what one can. Oh yeah, I've diverged from the main theme somewhat haven't I? (Sorry -- reading my blog must be as infuriating as listening to the 'Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!' but without being as amusing). Yeah well right, back to the main subject:- I went back to the photo developer's shop the next day during my lunch hour and got the same kind of response and the same strange looks and secretive conversations between the three furtive assistants on one configuration or other (one doofus serving me and the other two doofi secretly conversing). Again I was fobbed-off and told to come back the next day (I was given some excuse about the processing equipment having broken down). This happened three days running... but on the fourth day I went there in the lunch hour and was finally, at last, handed my photos. I went down there with my mate RussH and we had a good flick though the pics on the way back to the office, having the customary chuckle at the expense of whoever had been captured on this or that photo at a point in time where they had some weird expression or when they had their eyes shut or whatever. Well, all seemed normal enough, just ordinary snaps of friends, family, cat, car, etc. so I just forgot about the strange looks I received in the shop. Some days later however I remembered that I had taken some pictures of planes during one foggy night... I live under a main flight path to Birmingham international airport which is about 20 miles away so planes come quite low over our house. I thought pictures of the planes' landing-lights through the fog might make some quite nice moody pics, and at the time I was quite interested in UFOs and remember thinking, like many others, how conveniently crap some pictures of UFOs were that you get in UFO mags etc, especially those taken at night... so I thought I'd see how pictures of aircraft turned-out and see if perhaps if it's more difficult than I thought taking pictures of craft moving across the sky (and actually it was a bit more difficult than I expected and I had the advantage of having a camera all set-up ready and the knowledge of the general direction, speed and path that the planes would take). That's funny, I thought, I don't remember seeing the prints of those plane shots in the envelope of photos I collected from the developers a few days back. So I had a look through and sure enough they were missing. So then I went to check the negatives, because sometimes if you have very dark exposures on your film the developer just thinks they are un-exposed frames when scanning through them quickly on the machine and does not print them (so in that case you would have to goback and get those frames specially printed). So I looked through the negatives (which were also in the envelope collected from the developers) and to my amazement I found that the negative frames for my plane photos had been nicked!!! Audaciously the individual frames in question had been actually cut-out of the strips of negatives. Bastards! Those gap-year-idiots must have stolen them thinking they were ground breaking pictures of alien UFOs and they probably envisaged being able to sell them for a fortune to the papers or whoever. What a bunch of idiots. I was slightly upset about having those negatives bastard-well stolen but I decided not to involve the police because the feeling of indignation was far far out-weighed by the great amusement it gave me, and continues to give me, when I think of them trying to do shady deals with the press, trying to peddle those bogus UFO negatives when they are actually just pictures of Bowing 707 planes, and so on, through a city fog. WHAT A BUCH OF PLONKERS!

#38

#37

(Apologies in advance because the spelling checker is refusing to work and I'm in a hurry so you'll have to fight through the bad spellings and typos...I don't even know how to spell 'apologies' -- I seem to remember there being something unusual about it like it maybe only has one 'p' in it despite words like 'appear' having two.. or am I thinking of something else...hmmm)

It's 10:28pm (19th Dec) and I've just been on a walk to stretch my legs. I walk along a few streets which are a bit more secluded and less urban than most around where I live, they include a stretch along side a grave yard and some quiet back streets that may only see a moving car every ten minutes. I go walking at night when it's dark... for a number of reasons -- one because the air is so much fresher-- you can really enjoy those deep breaths, there being not so much diesel soot and general pollution in the air, and every thing is much more peaceful too -- most conducive to the art of contemplation. Also at this time of year you get a bit of a preview at some early Christmas lights put-up by outward thinking folk in their gardens, front windows or under their eves. One thing that hath no lights however is the typical stealth cyclist which I usually see one of when I take one of these walks... these are people, fools, cycling along the main road at night dressed in very dark, if not black, clothing without any kind of cycle lamp adorning their vehicle what so ever. Even their bike is usually very dark and drab, with mudded-over reflectors...how long can these people live I wonder? This group of people must reproduce early in their life in order to continue their 'death-wish human sub-species' because they surely can't have a life expectancy of much above 22 years... I certainly never see old or even middle aged stealth cyclists. Oh yeah and one more thing .. stealth cyclists never wear helmets either. The stealth cyclist is in stark contrast to the 'pavement cyclist'...the pavement cyclist is almost always cycling along the foot path with bright fully functioning cycle lamps front and rear (usually those attention grabbing flashy ones) merrily luring cars into lamposts on thick foggy nights, and they usually wear bright clothing and a cycle helmet too-- cycling on the pavement is obviouslty just not safe enough for them! If only these two extreme groups could some-how learn from each other. Either of these illegal types of cyclist (which I seem to see more of at night than any other type) would have infuriated my Dad who in his youth was fined for cycling without a lamp. There was obviously zero tolerace on these kind of things pre-war compared to today.

There is anther reason I go for a walk in the dark... it's because there is less chance of meeting people and possibly having to actually talk to them and having to think of something interesting to say which does not come easily to me in the 'off-the-cuff' time-frame due to my very very slow brain... if I do have to suddenly talk to people who I've not expected to meet I can hardly string more than two words together and the other person must go away thinking I'm some kind of uncommunicative retarded fellow (which I am in some respects) ...... and besides, night-time walks are better because there are some people you don't want to meet at all, arn't there? I capitalize on the fact that people are more cautious about making eye contact after dark ( presumably incase you be a hoodlem ) and that there are less people out-and-about to start with ( presumably because they stay indoors lest they meet a hoodlem ) and I walk and think uninhibited, safe from being accosted by one or two of the obligatory annoying people one gets to 'know' when you live in the same area most of your existance. I have in the past been accused of being antisocial and when being accused I have acted all offended, mortified even, and I've insisted that although I may well be unsocialble due to being generally socialy inept, I'm not actually antisocial. "Antisocial!", that's an insult I would protest... however after thinking about the nocturnal timing of my walks, whilst walking tonight's walk: I think probably those accusers perhaps, maybe, have a teeny tiny semi-valid point. I'm a strange mixed-up kind of semi-social animal you see -- I hate big party-like gatherings which consist of a large proportion of strangers, but I'm very susceptable to lonelyness and I don't find it hard to get a-long with people really, infact I love us humans, I think we're ace, a much miss-understood species, I'm far less synical about the human condidtion than most, far, far, less. If you watch the news you'd think all us humans are murderous selfish shallow bastards, but nice ordinary folk just don't get on the news do they? And ordinary people make-up most people. After-all we're the only species proven to exhibit true altruism (although to be fair if your pet cat, for example, were to have altruistic urges how would it put those into action in a way we would recognize?... it's hard to be altruistic without money, hands, speech and a powerful brain and so on -- I mean, they can't reach the charity collection tin can they, nor grip a coin in their furry little paws, the most they can do is leave a dead rat on your mat which cats find to there dismay is a largely unappreciated gesture ). Since all the shit on the news must be caused by such a small proportion of humans then I feel that once we find a cure for the condition of being a sociopath ( which accounts for about 4% of the population ) then this would be a significant improvement in the human condition reducing some of the shit on the news: there would bound to be a drop in pre-meditated murder (where the motive is a selfish one), and there'll be less rape, massacre, torture, explotation etc. I suppose they'd still be as many wars started for reasons of greed, but hopefully a reduction in those started in order to 'wipe the others out' or to ethnically cleanse.

Generally I find I do a lot of thinking on my night-time walks and think-up more things to whinge about, I mean discuss, than I could ever find time to type-up for this blog. I had thought doing this blog would prove therapeutic and that all the thoughts circling in a holding pattern around my brain would come into land in the form of blog entries which would free-up my mind, free it up to do great things great things (some hope), but no, it has not even freed my mind to do things, quite the opposite has happened... I just think of more and more junk, my head's full to bursting now. It hurts. Now I just spend my time trying to keep multiple threads of though going long-enough 'til I can get to my lap top or find a pen and paper. I have a stack of half finished blog entries about all sorts of issues (whether it be atheism, a deep analysis of the microcosm of the film Tron, instructions on how to maintain an organic lawn,or whatever) blog entries that I hurriedly managed to typed-in (or typed-in an instruction to myself to type it in later) before whatever incredibly insightful-ish thought runs-out of fuel and drops-out of it's holding pattern and crashes and burns never to grace my noggin again.

#36

The goose is running and Christmas is getting fat. For me at the moment seems to be a bit of pre-Christmas quiet before the storm. If you're a bloke and you're taking full advantage of your stereotypical blokey mentality, like me, then you will be leaving all Christmas preparations till the last possible minute ...and if you have managed to remain oblivious to the impending panic then, like me, you'll be actually enjoying a happy mellow period as the general air of expectancy of the holidays amongst friends and colleagues becomes infectious, and the odd festive precursor like a mince pie or two and the few white frosty mornings we've had this week, start to set the mood.

The quiet before the storm takes many forms, like for example I'm looking forward to there being far less weary-some traffic on the way to work due to children breaking-up from school and due to some commuters starting their hols early. Timmy Town, on the other hand, does not look forward to the school holidays, because, as she complained last Sunday at the customary gathering round Russ's: there is, of all things, a distinct Frosties shortage during school holidays, presumably from hoards of juveniles on a backlash from school dinners gorging themselves all day on multiple bowls of sugar-encrusted cereals, whilst Timmy Town, alas, hath none, all sad, peering into an empty breakfast bowl.

The last Sunday gathering was adorned by Russ's new 42 inch (or one of those really big sizes)high def TV, fully wired for hi def via a PS3 and cable TV, we merely had Russ's projector to watch movies on before, how impoverished were we?... seriously though, I'm more impressed with hi res TV than I thought I was going to be -- the way you can see the patterns on people's irises on portrait shots is really impressive, perhaps even it'd take a bit of getting used to.

Hermit, not all that unexpectedly in my mind, has gotten into the final of the IGF video game writing comp with Studio Work3, for Ooki Bloks. The clever thing about Ooki Blocks, where Hermit is concerned, is to do with the sounds that are made by your character in the game as it rebounds around the levels and collects stuff and all that. These sounds are cleverly manipulated or contrived so that they are in time and in tune with the main background music... maybe even the back ground music is adapted live, I can't remember. This is a development in video game that is well over-due in my opinion...with most games it'll remain impossible or undesirable to do this, but for some games, like Ooki Bloks it must add a lot to the satisfaction of game play -- the fact that you contribute to the sound track rather than detracting from it when playing the game -- normally the sound-effects (eg. bags, crashes, swooshes etc) of what your character does on screen over-ride or upstage the music to some extent at least, but with Ooki Bloks your actions should instead add to the music -- music and sound effects co-existing in perfect harmony. Would it only be that directors of some music videos could learn this lesson and harmonize what is happening on screen with the music -- some of the poorest examples make me so mad -- sometimes people can be doing something really abrupt like jumping-up and down in the video and it's not in any way in time with the music. Bah.

Oo-yack! (that is, as I remember it, the Finnish for 'yuk', in phonetic form). Oo-yak!! Why? Because I had a cup of tea from a bad tea bag on Friday. From what I gather I'm one of the few people who can taste when a tea bag has gone off in it's early stages of going-off-ness. I think it is because I have been sensitised to the particular taste. The taste is basically like how rotting Altumn leaves smell, if that makes any sense. We (Russ, Barkfoot, me, etc) nick named Earl Grey tea as 'twig tea' because of it's unusual taste... and a cup of twig tea is the traditional initial gesture of hospitality at one of Russ's Sunday gatherings --Russ brews you-up a nice cup of twig Rosy as soon as you arrive. By chance, last year, in some sort of emporium, Barkfoot came across a type of tea that was actually made from twigs, and he brought some of the tea bags to Russ's for general sampling. I had a cup of it and thought it was quite interesting, not an every day drink for sure but none the less a taste I thought I'd like to sample now and again, and so Barkfoot gave me a couple of bags to take home which I put in my bag and... promptly forgot about for the next six, maybe 10 months. Still, not wishing to be wasteful, upon their eventual discovery, I brewed-up a cup of (actual) twig tea and started drinking it... there was definitely a 'funny' secondary taste to the tea... but again, not wishing to be wasteful, I drank on. The taste kind-of accumulated in my mouth and became more and more horrible, and soon over-powered the taste of the tea itself. But again, not wishing to be wasteful, I drank-on. I finished the cup of tea and, as it turned-out, any desire to drink any other cup of any kind of tea for the next few days. I felt totally nauseous for the rest of the day with this indelible taste of rotten leaves in my mouth. Now if I have a cuppa made from a tea bag which is even remotely thinking about going-off, in a way as ordinary folk would not notice at all, it makes me feel really repulsed for a couple of hours.



Oh yeah by the way ... have you ever had a 'custard apple'? What is this custard apple of which I speak? you might ask. Well it's doesn't look like much like an apple, and it's much softer, but it is some type of fruit or veg (I know not if it groweth on the branch like an apple though). But I don't think you will ever find another example of a fruit that is so aptly and exactly named as regards its taste. It tastes exactly like apple and custard (probably lightly stewed apple and custard)... plus, perhaps, there is a very slight third taste -- perhaps a slight taste of strawberry, I'm not sure. I cut mine open and spoon-out the soft flesh. I don't eat the skin or seeds -- I think that's probably right, but what do I know, your guess would probably be as good as mine on how to eat'em. Anyway,if you're interested, keep your eye's open in the shops next year about October time (if this year was anything to go by). If you do get one then don't delay in eating as they go off very quickly -- they go ultra soft and crack and ooze very very very sticky goo, presumably, appley custard tasting goo, from the cracks. I have a very bizzar plan.... and the plan is to grow a custard apple orchard and make custard apple cider...mmmm... more of a yummy dream than a plan -- I never expect to do it, and as I said, I don't even know if the things grow on trees or anything.

Well now it's Sunday already and the ramp-up to Christmas is starting to pick-up a pace. There is already illogical extra panic-buying styley Christmas grocery shopping to do (my Mother was most insistent yesterday that we stock-up on many extra items that I've never in all my life known not to be in plentiful supply right up until Christmas Eve and all through Christmas but by her general tone you would have thought yesterday was the last chance saloon for these items). I have allowed myself to properly listen to Slade's famous Christmas song for the first time these festivities which is an official mile-stone for me. It is a bit like me not letting myself listen to any Beach Boys music until about July so that the surfy vibe it creates does not become lack-lustre by the time my surfing season actually starts in late September. Lets hope amongst the eventual Christmas panic I get time to do my Christmas blog entry -- it's bound to be the last this side of Christmas day.

#35

There's been a bit of talk about the Union Flag lately (or the maritime version: the good old Union Jack). People have commented that it should have the Welsh Dragon on the flag to represent Wales. I agree that something for Wales should be added. I spend probably more time than anyone thinking about what a new Union flag should/could look like, and I can tell you it is one of the most difficult ponderings you could set yourself. It's easy to see what is wrong with it now: it is too English-centric -- the cross of Saint George is too dominant and crosses over all the other countries' flags. The ideal situation is that each country is represented in equal measure and one does not upstage the other.... and that is one hell of a task. You certainly would not be able to please everybody, but would hopefully be able to please most of the people of each country. So what are the problems? For starters there are so many ways the dominance of one county's graphic can be interpreted -- the surface area it covers, the positioning (for example if it is in the centre or at a corner), the vibrancy of the colours, how it over-laps other graphics or is over-lapped by others, and... if say Wales was represented by a dragon but the other countries by crosses, then how do you compare the dominance of pictorial images, like a dragon, with geometric images, like crosses? I've had a few attempts at designing one (and writing this is making me want to have another go now)... I have found it's easier to make it fair for all if you put graphics side by side (rather than over lapping) but you tend to end-up with something very finicky, cluttered and detailed. The current Union Flag, although too dominated by the cross of Saint George is, a very clever design aesthetically speaking -- very bold and eye catching, we really want something equally as striking, and not a fiddly mish-mash. Also how far do you go in recognition of countries? Should you include Cornwall as well? I'd say yes -- personally that's where I'd draw the line. The current flag, or so I understand, does not include Wales or Cornwall because they were already lumped-in with England at the time of the final union... so I think we should go back before that, but how far should we go back in time? Some mad folk would even have the Kingdom of Mercia on the flag -- I think that would be just plain silly, however I can't think of an objective reason for it to be rejected... but, well, as I say, the new flag would not be able to please every body, so all we can do is try, and I think we definitely should. If I ever come-up with anything that even satisfies me, let-a-lone the whole of the UK, I'll post it up, I hope others out there are trying too. Being a cultural ignoramus of the English variety does make it somewhat tricky for me to put myself in the position of what the other countries like Scotland would want... but the more I learn and the more I think about it the closer I may get to solving the puzzle (to my own semi-satisfaction at least).

#34

The ghouls are gathering and sharpening their horrible little pointy teeth. They are excited because apparently there is some big boxing match about to happen in Vegas. Civilisation has progressed much since the law of the jungle reigned... punch-ups between men over women have quite rightly been outlawed and indeed frowned upon, punch-ups over territory have quite rightly been out-lawed, punch-ups over your or your loved-ones' honour have quite rightly been outlawed, duels and brawls alike... so why, oh why, is it OK for a punch-up to take place in the name of mere sport or entertainment???? Just because both parties consent does not diminish the barbarism. It is a sport where each opponent hits the other as hard as possible and, although thankfully rare, fatalities are inevitable. If you hit someone in an every-day situation, where it is not self defence, and you deliberately meant to hurt them, and that person dies as a result (even if not immediately) then that's man slaughter, surely.... but for some reason as long as it's for entertainment then that's OK? No, feck off. Time to grow-up and join the rest of civilization. War and self defence is the only excuse for violence, i.e. out of desperation or protection, not for a fecking good night-out or an entertaining night on the telly. How can people hope to stop war when they can't even stop violence for entertainment's sake. Any violent contest (in the UK) is totally illegal except where the opponents are human, for example: dog fighting or cock fighting -- it wasn't always that way of course, but because civilisation gradually progresses they are illegal now, so when are we going to get round out-lawing such violence between humans too???

#33

He's done it again... Russ cycled from his house to Russ's house [confused?] on his unicycle again. What a dude. Although understandably, after a couple of drinks, he opted for a lift home in my Volvo estate when the evening was over. Fitting his unicycle in the back wasn't a great challenge.

#32

It must be late Altumn...well OK there's no point in ignoring the shivering elephant in the room: it must already be early Winter, because there are few, or no, leaves left on the trees and the customary vat of home made cider (this year made using donated apples from my Cousin's garden) is bubbling away in its little niche next to the radiator in the kitchen in between a cupboard and Sumpy's hide-out, waiting to be liberated for Christmas Eve merriment which is usually round at Russ's place. As you can see there's only about five litres of it this year due to a shortage of donated apples, but plenty enough for Christmas Eve since my cider tends to be about 12% alcohol per volume, or more, so however much you try and pace yourself when consuming it, it usually catches you out and you get drunk very quickly...especially one year, when I thought I'd make some low alcohol cider by putting loads less sugar in it than usual... but as it turned-out on that particularly mentally fuzzy Christmas Eve, round Russ's, unbeknownst to me before I consumed it, it was somehow just as strong as previous years, so expecting it to be about 5% and not 12% I drank twice as quickly sending me in to some altered state of reality, when, as informed days later by the folk who were there assembled, for the rest of the evening I assumed the persona of a comedy style mad professor with a French accent. Alas, I think Russ might even have a sound recording of the performance. Yeesh...all those dead brain cells, may they rest in peace...damn... with my brain problems I need every brain cell I can on the team too. And what tends to seal the brain cell decimation process on these Christmas Eves is that I'm not the only one to bring-along home-made toxins -- Barkfoot also comes-round with all sorts of home-made alcoholic fair... and of course it would be rude not to have a proper drink or two of each of his offerings which are usually in the form of very, very alcoholiclyallicly spirits.... for example slo gin, ginger whiskey type stuff and the most lime flavored liquor known to mankind. I only probably tend have a drink about once a month on average during the rest of the year now-a-days (it's not like the days of our youth trawling multiple pubs every evening) so not being used to alcohol and, the tolerance there gained, it means my the Christmas period is a somewhat floaty dreamy period... especially now I'm old and have started to endulge in the the alco-pop for the aged: sweet sherry in-between the usual Christmas drinking sessions.

I've brewed my own cider for many years now... some years it turns-out really nice,some years it's very disappointing indeed, but it's always been very pure and very alcoholic, as described above. It always has a most welcome an unusual trait not found in most commercially available alcoholic beverages -- it makes your head go numb with-in a couple of minutes and your body follows soon after, I'm sure Barkfoot will testify to this. Generally though it's a life long voyage to get it right because you only get one stab at it per year -- trying more or less apples, sugar, water, and perhaps other ingredients each time...I could do it do more brews a year, but it would mean buying apples and would defeat the object for me... when apples come from a friend or your own garden it just has more meaning somehow -- you're making something good (hopefully) from what would otherwise go to waste. Well, I'm not sure why I used the phrase 'from your own garden' because it's a lucky year when I even get one apple from my Mother's garden (which is kind-of 'my' garden because I live at my Mother's house, or as I less stigmatizingly prefer to call it: 'The Homestead') where there is but one small apple tree, upon which grows nice eating apples, which inevitably is heartlessly stripped-bare, bare I tell ye, of each and every fruit the instant it ripens by the greedy-bastard squirrels. This is in stark contrast to the situation in the garden next door, a garden consisting of ten large apple trees which are heavily laden with cooking apples every Altumn which are not even touched by the little fury gits, obviously because cooking apples are sour.....you do occasionally, occasionally, see one of the blighters perched on a branch on a tree next door trying a single bite of one and then disgruntle-y alum-faced, casting is abruptly directly down onto the ground. They might make quite good cider those cooking apples because yeast tends to like the more acidic apples, but the land lord who owns next door is not the most approachable person so I've not asked if I can take any....they inevitably fall to the ground and rot where they land un-utilised by man nor beast (certainly not squirrel beasts... perhaps waspy beasties through).

#30

I'm starting to get a bit edgy now. I've been on a break for too long now. I'm not talking about a break from my day job -- I've been working quite hard at that and not had much time-off at all lately. No... I'm talking about my 'post mid-life crisis' break. The break I allowed myself in which to have a chill-out without having to worry what I was going to do with the second half of my existence, but at the same time with the hope that I might just stumble into something fortuitous that I could both enjoy and profit from, something I could excel at. Last weekend I sat at my computer and tried to restart a video game project I had not touched for about a year: to get back in the saddle, so to speak. I could not believe it -- my heart was pounding like I was having a mild panic attack, and all I managed to do was to compile and run the program before having to stop and shutdown. It must be very difficult for other people to see why this could be. Well I'll try and explain. Should video games be what I spend the rest of my life doing? Writing video games has been one of my greatest loves, probably the greatest one in terms of vocation...but I'm not all that good at the overall gig of writing games yet. I can write bits of video games extremely well, and have some very imaginative ideas, but I have just missed the mark on getting the whole act together and getting a whole project out there and finished. One reason is I'm just too fickle about what kind of scale or type of place I should occupy in the video gaming world.... for starters should I be professional or should I be amateur, should I write tiny fun little games or should I make big ambitious games that might take me 3 years to do as a spare time project ... and it would indeed have to be a spare time project even if I was to do it for profession reasons since I couldn't afford to give-up the day job (again) until I had sold something. What caused me to be so stressed about looking at starting-up video game programming again was that although it's a great love of mine it has cost me dearly, it's cost me big chunks of life and big chunks of money. On just one of my over ambitious game projects I must have spent 2 solid years working 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, with no income -- I was living off savings... which is a double whammy when you think about it because not only are you using money but you're using it, no, losing it, double because you miss out on the earnings you would have had over that time had you been working. Strewth... that could easily be 50 grand down the drain, easily.... uneasily ... gulp. And there is incalculable cost due to it messing-up your CV and making you 'less employable'. So there is real pain there.... that has gotten deep into my subconscious, a bit like a bigger version of when I was young and my Dad dropped his soldering iron on the floor and I picked-it-up for him... by the hot end! And after the weeks of having my hand in bandages was over, it was many further weeks before I could even go near a soldering iron, despite electronics being one of my hobbies, and when I did manage to use one there was some considerable panic accompanying the experience I can tell ye....but... well... I got over it in the end... and even a few years later when a soldering iron exploded in my face I could not be deterred, so probably this is only one such interlude that I'll recover from, but on a bigger scale.

It's the mid life crisis jitters. How ever much you think it's not going to happen to you, don't count on it, especially if you haven't yet quite 'hit the mark' in life like me, because when you hit middle age you can not avoid your brain involuntarily and constantly posing this basic question: "Right, you're half way though Buddy, it's time to decide: is what you've been doing for the first half of your life ever going to amount to anything, or should you cut your losses now and try something new?? If you don't decide now it may be too late to make a success of what ever path you choose... and you'd better make the right decision chum because if you get it wrong you'll have wasted your whole life, your whole entire life." This is very serious, and anyone who tries to trivialize or brush aside someones mid-life crisis does not realise the gravity of the situation and may well be oblivious to their own possible impending crisis, which could make it's arrival all the more of a shock. Even if you have been successful in the first half of your life, perhaps you brain will still demand you to do a complete stock-take and might ask you something like: "Is this really what you want to be doing till you're old and grey?" or: "You're successful, but would anyone really care if you got run over by a bus tomorrow? Would you leave any kind of legacy at all?" It seems to be mainly men you hear about getting mid-life crises, and female trivializers of men's mid life crises will often be a bit Gemaine Grear-ly condescending to men going through it and accuse them of making a fuss about nothing, telling the man to pull themselves together and to stop winging just because women don't fancy them anymore ... but I don't think the 'women not fancying you anymore' bit is the real core of the mid life crisis ....it's certainly not the case with me because women stopped fancying me ages ago.... a time in my life succinctly illustrated by what my Mother said to me when I was about thirty (a decade back) : "What are you going to do now you have lost your youthful good looks?" she said... this was moderately devastating I must say -- not because I had lost my youthful good looks but because up until that very split second I'd not been aware that I had any... imagine someone saying to you: "Oh by the way y'know that lottery ticket I bought for you ages ago... that one that won the jackpot... remember? Oh didn't I tell you? Anyway I'd had it so long it expired yesterday so I chucked it." Although the 'women not fancying you anymore' issue is not the core of the crisis, I suppose if it happens to occur at the same time then that would be a considerable extra bummer which you could well end-up obsessing about (especially if people kept telling you that was what was wrong with you). "I'm not going to have a mid-life crisis because I haven't really had 'a life' to have a crisis about, ha-har"... I used to jokingly say during my thirties, but one still came and kicked my arse all the same....so be prepared, be very prepared, if you're approaching middle age.

Anyway, I've since been able to look at the video game I was doing, in more detail, without panicking too much. But now I've reviewed it I find I have simply gone-off it... because I'm not so sure if it will make a good game after all, despite it being a very interesting ( and possibly even totally new ) concept.... maybe it was even a bit too avaunt guard and up its own arse to be much fun to play. So maybe I'll think of a new game to write. Starting projects are always the most interesting and enjoyable bit, filled with hope and new ideas, so it's not surprising that me or anyone else is tempted to start a new project before finishing their current one (at least when it's a project your doing as a hobby i.e. for enjoyment). So, there's another quarter-finished project to add to my pile...and, as ever, I convince myself I will renew efforts to actually get some projects finished in the next few months. Even Hermit has a good array of part finished projects, but ... he does also have an impressive array of completed ones too, it has to be said. Perhaps I just haven't thought of the 'killer project' yet and when I do I'll become addicted to it and get carried away by it to it's ultimate completion and success...so I'd better get thinking.

#28

Amongst the usual road bastards encountered on my week daily commute (along the A452) to and from work, like the manic under-takers and the evil-diesel belchers, I encountered a new and oblivious type of road bastard today ... this is a new breed that drives-across a set of traffic lights where the tarmac is hatched in yellow road paint (a box junction I think they are called, where you can get fined if you stop on the yellow hatched area) but he stops as soon as he's driven-off the hatched area, even though there are two or three car lengths of unoccupied road infront of him, leaving you, in the car behind, stranded on the hatched area whilst he's in the I'm-alright-Jack-no-fear-of-prosicution zone. Now I've mentioned the manic under-takers I guess I ought to have a moan about them as well.... I can only hope the perpetrators of this crime are foreigners and hence don't know any better, it would be a national disgrace if any of these people turned-out to be British. Any British person found to be manically under-taking (in other words over-taking on the left hand side instead of on the right and at at an alarming rate) should be disowned by Britain, stripped of their citizenship, and deported along with all the other disgraced people like those who don't know how to queue and all the people who pronounce the letter 'Z' as 'zee' instead of 'zed'.. (yes especially those ones -- it's bloody 'zebra' not bloody 'zeebra'-- what bloody school did you go to?). I'm not talking about the sort of under-taking people do on the motorway where they slowly and safely go past any idiots that have permanently occupied the overtaking lanes when there are perfectly good vacant lanes to their left, oh no, I'm talking about the bastards who razz past you on the inside on urban streets just as you are trying to pull back into the left lane after passing some parked cars. Indicating left when ever you're changing to the lane on your left has now become a necessity on British roads if you don't want to be rear-end shunted. Bastards. Well at least my exposure to road bastards has reduced of late because I don't have to drive clean across town, in addition to my commute, to visit my Mum in hospital in the evening because I'm very happy to say she is now back home and doing quite well. She's getting about very well considering she had a hip replacement only 2 weeks ago. In fact on the surface, apart from walking slowly with sticks, she does a very good impression of being well and normal, but upon questioning she insists she still has much recovery to go, and of course it would be absurd to expect she was A-OK after such a short space of time. The drive across Birmingham and out the other side (from Sutton Coldfield to the Royal Orthopedic Hospital) along the A38 was quite amusing. The part after the city centre towards the hospital is generally quite an amusing stretch of road -- it is one of those two lane roads that has had the white lines repainted to make it into a 4 lane road where you are practically touching wing mirrors with the car on your right and on the other side you are practically rubbing your tyre along the curb. I don't know if it's just me that finds driving down it quite stressful, but once by the time I had reached the hospital I found that I had temporarily lost all feeling in my right hand through gripping the steering wheel so tightly. Of course the whole lane system is made a mockery of since buses and lorries take-up one and a half lanes making for a kind-of vehicular Tetris (but hopefully without the rotations). My hat goes-off to anyone who commutes down there every day, month on end, especially with all the speed cameras-- I'm not a speed camera hater generally but that stretch of the A38 changes from 30 to 40mph and back again so many times that it's easy to miss one of the changes when distracted by doing frivolous things like minding pedestrians crossing in front of you whilst keeping rigidly to your narrow lane (daring not to steer more than a tenth of a degree too far either way). And the stretch of the A38 through the city centre itself I've always thought to be an amusing concept ever since I was little. It is a dual carriage-way (lanes of proper width on this stretch) going through a few tunnels and over an overpass which all runs parallel right alongside vernacular ground-level two-lane roads either side. There are no slip roads or traffic lights or roundabouts to join these roads, no, instead in between the tunnels and over-pass, where the roads are briefly on the same level, there are are short gaps in the barrier where two lanes become four and people wanting to change from one parallel road to the other must engage in a (hopefully) ballet-like movement: converging, merging then diverging: swapping with cars on the parallel road wanting to change to the road they are now leaving. Considering that the traffic on both roads are sometimes moving at different speeds (due to traffic jams etc) and that, in any case, the slow lane of the inner two-lane road has to merge with the fast lane of the outer two-lane road, it is quite impressive how well the system seems to work... it does benefit from a lot of give-and-take on the part of drivers and perhaps simply may not have been viable in other parts of the world with different driving ethics, but even these British driving ethics don't always save the day as I found when stuck in a snarl-up at one of these merge points last week where the system had broken-down and there was dead-lock with cars at all sorts of angles in an untidy herring-bone pattern unable to progress until one vital car at the front moved unKaplunking the whole thing. There was much unBritish honking of horns.

While I think about, following the huge interest (not) from featuring the last one of my ad-hoc cooking aids (at the bottom of #16) I proudly present my 'sausage regimentor device'. I made it from a strip of stainless steel, bending it back and forward. If you have ever been annoyed by disobedient sausages (which when being grilled and turned to an unbrowned part promptly roll back again) then this is the device for you. You simply put this device in your grill pan and place a sausages in each corrugation. This cradles each sausage and so to whatever precise position you turn them they stay like that and don't roll-about of their own accord -- so you are finally in control and don't have to put up with those mutinous sausages that insist on being blackened down one side by rolling themselves to the same position every time. This device has proven very effective indeed.

#27

The best custard tarts I've yet tried are from Marks & Spencer, as far as tast goes they have it spot on, but their custards do have structural problems -- they are very moist which weakens the pastry case-- you have to eat them very quickly to avoid them collapsing in your hand so the sad fact about them is that you can't really savor the taste ... you can't even put the remainder of your custard back on the plate in-between bites to eek-out it's consumption because as soon as you have taken a bite out of it what structural strength it does have is totally compromised so there is no way you can pick it back-up from the plate in one piece (the above bitten M&S custard in the photo required extremely careful handling to maintain it in the observed good condition). So the lack of being able to savour your custard means that to elongate the experience in some way one is forced, forced, to have two in one sitting. Mmm. So to avoid me getting fat this tart needs strengthening please Mr Mark and Mr Spencer. Now there is a job I would like: 'Cake Engineer'.... generally I'm sure that the field of cakes is very well served by people striving for better taste and texture, but it is very lacking in the engineering department.... I'm not a qualified engineer, and so I could not sign-off the plans of a sky scraper as being safe and be able to sleep at nights, but I think I could quite confidently corrugate and rib the pastry of an M&S custard tart to improve its structural properties without significant increase in its outer dimensions or volume of pastry used, or cause any reduction in custard carrying capacity. Hmm, 'Cake Engineer'... maybe I'll make myself some phoney business cards with that on and when people ask me what I do at parties....

#26

My Mum had a hip replacement a few days ago and is doing quite well, although it will still take her a long time to recover. It's on the NHS and it's only about 8 weeks since she first approached her GP about getting the operation... a time-span that came as quite a shock to her considering that last time she had to wait 9 months to have her other hip replaced... even more of a shock when they phoned her-up after about 4 weeks and offered her a cancellation. You see she was expecting to go to the doc's and mention she wanted the op and be able to put it at the back of her mind for many months. I suppose it is like, but on a much bigger scale of feeling, when you go to your dentist for a check-up -- you're only going for a check-up so if you happen to be afraid of injections or having your teeth drilled then you need fear not on that particular occasion -- he's just going to look... but then he says something like: "Hmm, yes you need a small filling there...my next patient has cancelled so I may as well do it now." Drill, drill. Of course not all waiting lists have reduced so dramatically, and the NHS does go through bad patches over the years but no matter how good or bad it is there is one thing I like about it regardless, it is something that seems a bit of a wet sentimental thing to think, but none the less it's something that figures quit large in my psyche... it's something that's hard to put into words but basically it's this: 'Britain, my country, cares about me', no matter how rich or poor, if I'm ill it will try and do something for me.......sometimes what it does might be woefully inadequate, sometimes it might be very effective, it just depends... but that's not the issue I'm on-about here... it's like: some children may have effective parents or guardians, some children have hopeless ones, but in either case if they loved you and, whether successful or not, tried to do good for you, then that is a huge plus in your psyche that you would not want to be with-out at any cost.

#25 *

I keep forgetting to say why I called this blog 'Blame Uncle Clive'. Well, for starters, I'm not Uncle Clive. Nor do I have an uncle who is called Clive, nor are there any parentally-aged friends of the family called Clive who could be 'honorary uncles'... nor do I have any young friends called Clive who I call Uncle in some sort of ironic way. Infact I do not know anyone called Clive at all. I don't even know if the bloke I refer to as Uncle Clive, has any nieces or nephews.... I hope he does though, because he would make a most goodly uncle... infact it would be one of the acest things if this Uncle Clive was actually your real Uncle Clive, especially if it was during the early Eighties. But whether he has actual nieces or nephews or not, most people who think of him as Uncle Clive are no relation and have never met him... possibly there are many thousands of us who affectionately call him Uncle Clive. Can you guess who it is yet? He's as British and as inventive as Baird, Swan, or the real McCoy. He is of course Sir Clive Sinclair. He's the one to blame. He's the one that gave a glimmer of hope that life might actually turn-out to be interesting, creative, even exciting, for the common man. Imagine, if you will, it had only been about half a decade since man first walked on the moon and Concorde had started conveying passengers at over twice the speed of sound -- technology seemed to be racing ahead, but those giant exciting steps for mankind didn't really seem to be directly effecting the boring everyday life of a man (or of a boy as I was then)... ordinary life was still very very ordinary. At first there were...hmm.. err.. I know: biros, oo and digital watches and electronic calculators (although you were still not allowed to use them in school because it was thought they'd turn your brain to jelly)... oh and things like smaller, cheaper, more reliable radios and, later, tellies thanks to transistors'n'silicone chips. I can't remember the exact year, and anyway perhaps it'd been going-on for a while without me noticing... but finally, finally, something really new and interesting did happen... something especially interesting to your typical boy like me (no, not girls, apparently they weren't new and had been invented long ago)... that miracle of technology had arrived: computers! That's what happened: computers. And none of your boring boring boring boring boring desk top PC shit either... no... and the chances are the first time the average 'man on the street' got down and dirty and interfaced with a computer was indeed: on the street, by going into the arcade, or even into their local chip shop for that matter, to play Space Invaders, Asteroids, and the like -- proper proper computers, cool computers... no not just 'cool' but 'kuh-oo-oo-ool'. Computers that would still be just as fun and easy to use today as they were then. Babbage, Lovelace would have wet themselves with glee if they could have seen how their science had been used to excite the senses and in such a fun way. When going on your hols to the coast with your Mum Dad and Sister the arcades beckoned, they were the highlight of the whole trip. Imagine where there had been a 'man-machine interactivity void' since the year dot for there to be, seemingly suddenly, these boxes with space ships, cowboys, submarines, aliens and missiles darting around their screens in hot glowing phosphor, drawing your gaze like a magnet, ready to be controlled by you. Oh and the sound -- one of my favorite sounds in the whole world was that of the late 70's arcade... because each sound was synthesized and comparatively simple and pure compared to the sounds of today's computer games so they didn't merge together as a mush of noise but instead they formed a beautiful varied mix of sound, like the dawn chorus on some far-off tropical alien world. If only I could hear that sound again. If only. The fun continued. More and more interesting games appeared, and also you began to be able to buy simple video games to play at home, which usually consisted of batting piercingly white square balls back and forth across your old valve telly's screen. It was one era handing over to the next really, as the old valve telly hosted the youthful exuberance of the new silicone chipped computer... the latter, incidentally, hastening the demise of the former by its brilliant white bats and balls permanently burning themselves into the tellies' phosphor screens. Then things moved-up a notch -- I remember in 1979 seeing a proper version of Space Invaders on an Atari console at my friends house on a telly-- now that was impressive, very impressive. But something was missing in all of this for a young enquiring mind. My Farther worked for a large company: Lucas, where they actually had a computer for doing design work on (Computer Aided Design as it is known) and he would sometimes talk about them and try and explain to me about how you write a program and how the computer follows it...I remember at the time I couldn't quite 100% get it because computers were like nothing ordinary people had ever dreamt-of, so without my Dad making it into a detailed lecture about how you made programs and how they were stored and all that (which might have risked putting me off the subject) it was just hard for me to imagine how all this stuff really worked.... however he had achieved the important thing of planting that notion in my head that people programmed computers and maybe, just maybe, one of those people, one day, might be me. And slowly but surely every video game I played a tiny nagging feeling or notion grew that someone, somewhere, was making... programming... these games, which gradually fed a frustration that I was being left-out. By this time, the late 70's, there were computers that you could buy and program but they did cost a couple of thousand quid for the most basic one, or at least that's what I remember from watching Tomorrow's World back then. Britain was still very poor compared to the USA and these computers must have been aimed at the US market because literally no-one I knew, no-one my parents knew, or even anyone I had ever even heard-of, owned or had access to a computer that you could program. No-one but no-one. Essentially they did not exist. Then it happened. One of those people who had been making those there new-fangled calculators that had been turning childrens' brains to jelly: Clive Sinclair, made something new -- he'd only gone and dun-it hadn't he? The clock struck 1980 and the 21st century began 20 years early in our household. The ZX80 was born -- a user programmable computer that could be bought for just 100 quid...it even had rudimentary graphics. My Dad was quite quick off the mark and ordered his quite soon after pawing-over the ads in The Observer colour supplement...he was very keen, both to get his hands on it himself, and to educate me about computers, in equal measure. It was fantastic... ideal timing for a 14 year old too, here was modern technology and I could control it. My Dad, of course did his best to try and enthuse me to use it for maths and physics calculations to help me learn about those subjects at the same time as learning about computers, and he did have some success with me... but mainly I was totally blinkered and set about experimenting writing games every spare moment. It was primitive compared to arcade games -- for starters you couldn't do animations unless they were extremely flickery because the computer was not powerful to display the picture on the telly and do calculations at the same time. I remember writing a space rocket flight type emulator -- which could not have any graphics due to the ZX80' limitations -- it just had lots of figures like velocity and gravity etc... and I also wrote a cowboy 'draw and shoot' quick-gun reaction time game where the computer was one cowboy and you were the other.

Well that was the start of the golden age of computers (which I will cover in a future blog entry) where nearly everything in the field of software was still out there to be invented, and games were still games and not alternate realities. For now I think the golden age has long finished, it perhaps finished in the mid Nineties, but that's not to say there is not another one just round the corner and we won't know until it hits us in the face. At the moment things have fragmented a bit too much and become a bit too abundant -- too much of a good thing -- there are so many different types of computer with different types of operating systems ('platforms') it's hard to know where to begin or which to choose to program games for. You can't even program some computers at all, like the games consoles, because the manufacturers only allow established companies to program them -- nothing there for the common man. And even platforms you can program, like the PC with windows, you have to choose a computer language and vendor and do a lot of down-loading of development kits and all sorts before you can actually write a single line of program, and not to forget that it takes 5 minutes for a PC to boot before you can do anything at all on it.... you see with the ZX80 (and its successors the ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum) you could just switch it on and literally within 5 seconds you could be programming -- the only language available for it: BASIC, was already loaded and ready to go. So the choice of platform was something that you didn't have to worry about in 1980. It's a bit like telly, once there was not much to watch and only 2 or three channels -- but it wasn't half quick to decide what you wanted to watch, and, chances are, you friends watched the same programme so you had a shared experience, and you didn't have the nagging feeling that you were missing something good on some other channel so you appreciated it much more.


Sadly now, there are no people visiting the moon, there is no supersonic passenger travel, and there are no natty little computers that anyone can switch-on and instantly program a little game on when ever the mood takes them without the distractions of email and operating system updates and virus checkers and goodness knows what else. In my opinion we are back in 1968. Roll-on 1980 o'clock.

#24

I caught part of 'Any Answers?' on Radio 4 and as usual there was something on it to boil my blood. Any Answers is phone-in programme where callers put their views on the subjects discussed on a programme called 'Any Questions?' on an earlier day. (Any Questions? is like the BBC1 telly programme 'Question Time'). At least on Any Questions? it is politicians who are discussing stuff and because you're used to their general blah blah pattern of speech when they talk crap, you can just let it wash over you and you don't get bothered by it too much. I'm sure you've all heard low-brow phone-in programmes on local radio where you get a relentless precession of idiots phoning-in who are all infuriating... however, Any Answers? is more of a roller-coaster listen because some (not many though) callers are extremely well informed and have very well considered views, but you still do get the real idiots, just like you do on the local radio phone-ins, so your spirits are lifted then your blood is boiled alternately in the same programme interspersed with eye brow converging nose wrinklingly perplexing moments where you are forced to just flop back in your chair, look into space, and say: 'eh?'

.... anyway what made me livid this week was people phoning-in, from both England and Scotland, each saying their country would do much better financially, commercially, etc, if it left the UK, and hence that it should. I really cannot think how the people of the UK came to totally loose the plot like this. What the feck has money got to do with nationality??? Is that all people think of these days: money. Doesn't anyone have a heart any more? Nationality should be about people, geography, landscape, history, language... the food you eat, the air you breath, and the love of the very ground you walk on. Money?... money?... Would you marry for money, or divorce for the lack of it? You're in need of a heart and a soul if you would. I have every respect for people who want to see their country independent because they feel it in their heart.... although personally, I feel Britain in mine.

I can understand people being upset about money, but that should be a reason to campaign to make things fairer and get things sorted-out properly, but not a reason to abandon ship.

#23

Sunday's surfing trip went well. I only got a sprained foot this time -- much better than manking my knee joints as I have done for the previous two years. I put my comparative good fortune down to steering clear of Widemouth Bay (Bude, North Cornwall) and heading further down the coast. Widemouth is a bit bad-ass. What surprised me is that I have seen it listed in a few places on the web as a good place for novice surfers. Good in what way I wonder... good at crippling novices perhaps because in my experience it has some very nasty tricks: its worst is that every so often about 5 waves combine together (as each wave gradually catches-up with the wave in-front) to produce vertical walls of water. Not a nice clean wall, but a raging wall of foam about 8 feet high. Also the out-wash of the spent waves flowing back down the beach is some of the most rapid and force-full I have come across. Just a few inches in depth of it has, on a number of occasions, dragged me flailing around uncontrollably from the shallows back into the sea. The shallows rapidly clear meaning that the advancing 8 foot wall of water is often racing across bare sand and rocks and if you are unlucky enough to find yourself perched on top of that wall, on your surfboard, as I was once, if you fall off in-front of the wall you have no water below to break your fall. It's a bad bastard time. Fortunately I did not fall forward off my board -- I decided not to stand for starters (on account of being scared shitless) and kept my weight well back on the board to stop myself going over the edge, but I so nearly did, especially when an additional wave came in from the rear and suddenly tipped me forward onto the brink. It was a similar wall of water that caused my worst surfing injury so far. This time I was in the shallows in-front of the developing wall of water. I was at the time unaware of this 'Widemouth wall-of-water' phenomenon so I was not really looking-out for the danger. At the time Barkfoot and I we were trying to launch his kayak into the sea. By the time we saw the impending danger it was too late for me. Barkfoot managed to run out of the way but the powerful out-wash had buried my feet in the sand and I was stuck fast. Total wipe-out: the wall of water delivered a powerful thump on it's own but, as if that was not enough, it was carrying the gift of Barkfoot's kayak directly at my captive legs. Ow. That particular injury kept me walking about with the aid of a stick for a month. I guess we should have heeded the warning signs... amongst which were the fist-sized boulders floating-around in shallows about an inch or so off the sand, held up by some bizarre hydrodynamic effect. These were ordinary stones as heavy as you like, clattering around your ankles. We should have been more worried than bemused, and got-out while we could. The currents are just crazy on that beach. Once I was in the water upto my chest and the sheer sudden difference between the under current and the surface current pulled my knee out of joint. Fortunately it went back into its socket straight away because it did not get twisted -- it was exactly like someone had grabbed my ankle and suddenly pulled directly down -- well crazy.

Well, anyway, only a sprained foot this time as I say. The waves weren't that good but it was well worth the trip to get dunked in the drink, churned-up, and get slabs of water blasted in y'face -- it helps you feel connected to the world: if you're ever susceptible to deflating philosophical thoughts such as: 'Do I really exist?' and: 'Could all this just be a dream from a sleep in another reality?', then after having cold refreshing reality beaten into you by the power of the sea, I'd venture that you'd feel inclined to scrap that line of thinking pretty smartish

During the journey it is customary for me to mainly exist on oat based snaks: flapjacks mainly. Of the big brands the Marathon flapjack is probably the best, but generally the thinker, solid-er, and heavier the flapjack usually the better --- a more reliable indicator of flapjack yummyness than price or boastful slogans on the packaging I find. The fish'n'chips I got on the way home from the Launceston Fryers were pretty good (not the best-est ever fish and chips but way above average). Being as it is early in the surfing season the part of the trip home along the unlit A30 was not cloaked in pitch black night -- it was only dusk, which is less beautiful and twinkly, but it does mean that the menace of the slowly driven Ford Focus is greatly diminished. For when it is totally totally pitch black and you only have the rear lights of cars to judge the distances by, that is when the danger emerges... because some Ford Focuses have lights much higher than most cars and they are not so far apart, so in the blackness they appear 20 or 30 feet further away then they actually are, making the approach upto a Focus ahead of you, which is being tootled along at say 45 when you are doing 70, quite alarmingly abrupt. If you often have to journey along straight fast unlit roads at night and and you like to take your time about it, then I would not make the Focus top of your list of potential buys for your next vehicular purchase -- personally I would feel vulnerable to rear end collisions. It has to be said that some other cars have similar rear lighting configurations, like the Vauxhall Corsa, but I've not noticed the problem with them... perhaps they don't frequent the A30. Talking about vehicular purchases, some might wonder why a cool surf dude like me... eh-hum... goes around in a 1992 Volvo 940 estate: it was basically the longest estate car I could think of -- all the better to fit a long surf board in. In fact the basic sequence of events was: buy the car, drive to the beach with a tape measure, fold the passenger seat etc forward, and see what would be the longest surf board I could possibly fit in there and go and buy it from the beach-side surf shop... then of course go surfing. An eight foot surfie stick easily fitted in there as you can see below.

Oh and before I forget -- back on to the subject of driving at night down the A30: expect the unexpected, because I have come across all-sorts in the middle of the road: like breeze blocks and cut lengths of log. Since it's as good a road as any motorway, it's easy to forget it's a local road as well, and owing to it running through mostly rural areas I suspect that it is host to more than the average number of open trailers and pick-up trucks from which these things fall.

#22

For the three days Friday, Saturday and Sunday I solely eat 'raspberries and cream' for lunch. I can't afford to have lunch and a pudding because I'm getting in shape for the surfing season (which, gadzooks, starts tomorrow!), so considering I over-bought on the double cream by a factor of three when my top notch Nephew and Sister and Cousin visited last week-end, the cream had to be used up, and my Mother obliged by buying loads of raspberries on a 2 for 3 offer. Well raspberries are good for you.. aren't they? Hmm, thinking about it this sounds very much like my rational for when I cannot resist the temptation of buying a chocolate bar to eat on the way home after a hard day at work: I buy a Marathon bar as apposed to, say, a Mars bar, because I can pretend to myself that I have gained some nutritional advantage from the peanuts in the Marathon bar, and so lessen the feeling of being a weak willed. Err, well, anyway, to counteract the effect of the oceans of double cream I have consumed, I had a cold-liver oil capsule or two to get some omega3 in me, help keep the blood going to those important bits like brain and stuff.

Eating the same unusual lunch three days in a row reminds me of the eating experiments I started to do many years ago... perhaps I'll try some more in the future. The inspiration came when I heard one food expert say on TV that you don't need to have a balanced diet where you eat a whole variety of stuff in one day: it's good enough to get the full breadth of food every few days, advice that has probably been contradicted since knowing these notoriously fickle dietary experts, but it did kind of conger-up an interesting picture in my mind of say just eating nothing but cabbage one day then nothing but potatoes the next then nothing but oranges the next and so on, and I think that inspired my eating experiments where I try eating nothing but one thing for a day. Well I'm glad that I didn't try eating cabbage for a whole day, in retrospect, because some years later I read that strange story in the Fortean Times of that bloke who eat loads and loads of cabbage and farted so much during his sleep in his poorly ventilated bedroom that he asphyxiated himself in his self-created sulphurous atmosphere of farts. I have to point-out here that these eating experiments of mine were nothing like the stupid experiments they do to athletes on Diet Doctors (#3) where people have to cram themselves stupid with one particular food for a whole week when the they know full well it will f**k them up.... my eating experiments were a genuine experiments to see what would happen (and not expecting anything bad), and just for the one day. Also it was before those very funny sketch-ettes on the Fast Show where the bloke emerges from an outside bog saying: "Today, I have mostly been eating...", which may well have put me off the idea. I remember the first eating experiment involved eating only beetroot for a day. Well, things seemed to go well, no ill effects were observed, and I didn't feel sick or anything. This somewhat lulled me into a false sense of security and by the following day I had resumed a normal diet and was thinking about other things when upon going for a wee I was horrified...oh no I'd better got to hospital there's blood in my urine....oh no.... oh,wait a minute... it's all that beetroot I eat yesterday... phew! I have since heard people since proclaim in a know-it all fashion: that it's a myth that beetroot makes your piss red -- an old wives tale they squawk... when I hear that I just smile to myself, and don't say anything, and speculate that one day the know-it-all eats enough to cause them an embarrassing trip to A and E the next day, only to find, after considerable unnecessary invasive procedures (on parts you'd rather not be subject to them), that actually, contrary to their smart-arse beliefs, beetroot does indeed turn your piss red. The next eating experiment was: pineapple, raw pineapple. Now the inadvisable nature of this experiment became apparent somewhat earlier-on in the day. I started the experiment in good spirits, cutting-up my nice big fresh pineapple and enjoying that great smell, relishing getting started. But it can't of been more than a couple of hours after eating about half of the pineapple before the pain started. It wasn't a bad pain at first, just mild discomfort of the tongue and gums. So I continued eating pineapple, but after about another hour was I curled-up on the floor in real pain! It felt like my gums were on fire. FIRE I TELL YE! Needless to say: that eating experiment was abandoned and it took endless swilling-out of my mouth with water to even start to make the pain go away. I almost, almost, went to hospital. It felt like my teeth were going to fall-out. Well, it wasn't until some months later that I learnt that the feeling of dental deciduousness was not far off the mark because, apparently, raw pineapple contains a powerful enzyme, which after prolonged exposure (presumably many days), does actually make your teeth quite literally fall-out! As a result of this experiment the obvious advice for consumers of pineapple is to either cook it first, or if you dare eat it raw -- do it in small portions... occasionally. Tinned pineapple is now always my preference since it is cooked during the canning process.

Tomorrow morning it'll be time to head-out on the road and head South West. Yksin. A journey which feels more like a mission because it's from the most urban of urban: Spaghetti Junction, to the the fresh foamy blue surf, calling from beyond the horizon. Some people might think of Spaghetti Junction as looking like the gates of Hell, where as I think she is a complete work of art: a gritty, grimy, twisted, mean bastard beautiful tangle of a construction, and because they built her so completely incompetently she's always changing, always having ugly arrays of metal drilled into it's dirty columns to stop them collapsing. They have to keep patching her up -- they can never, never, demolish and rebuild her because the entire nation would grind to a halt if they did... she is the diseased heart that pains you so but that you'd die without. When they banned lead in petrol they stole something from Spaghetti's beautiful urban heart, they stole her boast of having the highest air-borne lead levels anywhere in Europe but now the 'great unwashed' are buying diesel cars in their droves she has a new venom, venom of carcinogenic diesel soot, before she could only retard your childrens' mental development, now she can give you cancer, now, presumably, she can actually kill you. What ever is the current crime of the motor car, she'll concentrate it and spit in your face. What ever you think of Spaghetti, she's a damn good dramatic setting to start your journey to the coast -- and if you do think she looks like the gates of Hell, then just think how wonderful the gates of Hell would look if you're on your way out... not that Birmingham is any more hellish than other cities (except of course it can never be as hellish as the city that is the definition of Hades: London) it's just that any urban environment is only impressive and exciting in small doses, eventually it degrades you. So escape to the surf.

#21

Congratulations to anyone who has trudged through this blog from the beginning. I have been worried that some people have taken some of the entries a bit too seriously, and indeed Hermit did say in a recent email that he found the blog a bit depressing to begin with until he picked-up on the general tone of things. Some entries are serious but as a general rule if I'm complaining about brain problems or my ill fated exploits, it is probably my Marvinesque humour intended to entertain rather than depress. Marvinesque? Well Barkfoot's comments at the bottom of #1 were quite appropriate in saying it's just the diodes down my left side, because of course Marvin is the far from gruntled android in the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. My favorite piece of actual Marvin humour is the part where he is asked why he has his head in a bucket of water to which he replied, something along the lines of: "Because it's easier to feel retched with your head in a bucket of water". To make the tone of my blog easier to get a handle on, I suppose I should have used emoticons, I think I may have forced myself to put in one or two but mainly my blog is devoid of them because I've never gotten used to using 'em ...they were a bit before my time you see.... and if I start using smiley faces now it would only make what has gone before look all the more serious by comparison. The only emoticon, of a kind, we had in my day, sonny, was the sign for sarcasm, which was an exclamation mark in brackets...but I have stopped using that now because what with all emoticons being pictorial in nature I dread to think what it could be misinterpreted as. What is very definitely before my time are emails without any punctuation in, at all... nor with capital letters at the start of sentences or for proper nouns, or anything... it's just all in capitals (or all in lower case if that's what the ol' caps lock was up-to at the time). Quite a culture shock to someone like me who even types his text messages in mixed case, fully punctuated. Not easy to read either for folk like me with brain problems. Actually I don't think I've had more than a couple of emails like that, but where you do see a lot of it is on internet forums...is it because people are posting to the forum from their mobile phone... is it because they are embracing a new enlightened unencumbered way of out-poring streams of pure human consciousness... or is it because they are morons? It seems to be only perpetrated by people below about twenty though ...and since women of that age are way too young for me it means that at least I don't have to encounter such literary mush, along with any potential embarrassing miss-understandings it might cause, when taking my occasional stab at using computer dating websites. I don't like taking more than an occasional stab at a dating site since you don't want to be rejected any more than once a fortnight do you?... if you were to put some real time into it you could be easily be rejected 10 times a week and if you were a shallow impulsive communicator (perhaps of the unpunctuating variety) I'm sure you could increase that number to 50 times a week. That could slightly take the edge off your confidence and general chirpy nature. Even just my low activity use of dating sites during my annual rutting season can really feel like you're wading through mud because supply and demand (for want of a more romantic or even raunchy expression) is totally totally out of whack:- any woman can put an ad on one of those sites without a photo, without anything special (probably even without punctuation) and get 10 unsolicited replies within three days... but if you're an average looking bloke with a photo and plenty of interesting description you're annual inbox of unsolicited messages will be exactly bloody zero. This is not totally to womens' advantage though as the demand seems to go to their heads and they become so unbelievably picky that they rarely find anyone meeting all of their many unrealistic criteria. How do I know woman have many unrealistic criteria?...because they sometimes list them all on their page! It really can be a depressing human version of a cattle market. Something has gone wrong somewhere. Considering the unbalanced supply and demand it's all the more surprising that woman, of say 40, may well send you a photo that is ten years old. 'OK', you might say, 'I bet the blokes do that too'. Well maybe many do, but I do not, so very naively I didn't expect women to either, which makes my introduction to this practice, one ill fated date of mine, all the more flabbergasting for me. Due to my brain problems (mental slowness), when it's not appropriate to show my disappointment, like when opening a disappointing Christmas present, I can usually hold back the accompanying facial expression... this is because, when I am considering something, it takes so long for nerve impulses to reach the muscles on my face that I can usually intercept and cancel the neurological signals before they have even left my brain. But after many favorable emails and chat room chats with one woman and receiving additional, unsuspectedly carbon-datable, photos of her:- when I actually met her her face-to-face on that ill fated date, I could not prevent the sheer shock I experienced from showing on my face, for she looked considerably considerably older than I expected. My face started with the initial quizzing facial expression of 'Who are you?' quickly morphing to: 'No it can't be.' and onto: 'No... it really is you, isn't it?' I'm pretty sure even my jaw dropped. Well, take it from me, that has to be one of the most effective ways of starting-off a date somewhat badly. I felt bad about it to begin with but it really wasn't my fault considering the data I had available, and the annoying fact was the deceit was unnecessary because she looked more attractive at forty than thirty really.... although I figured that mentioning she used to look a bit on the plain side but had greatly improved with age, would not really rescue the situation. I dunno...women hey, for some reason they just don't like back-handed complements. The date continued, painfully. And the next day, to really take the biscuit, came the verdict laden email from her which said: she did not fancy me. She did not fancy me? Me, who had sent an up-to-date photo, showing balding head in full view and all other possible put-offs openly declared days in advance? Time for me to make an exception and use an emoticon I think :-( Good night.

#20

If you are highly susceptible to suggestion or you are in any way a hypochondriac or a sufferer of psychosomatic illnesses then do not read on. Because this week I have been suffering from the Jimmy Legs and while reading its definition on Wikkipedia I started to have the Jimmy Leg urges in parts I didn't think you could have them. I was already getting them in my back and the classic name-sake location: legs. If you don't know what the 'Jimmy Legs' is, it's the urge to move, usually your legs, to satisfy strange almost crawling 'stretch me' feelings in your muscles.
The Jimmy Legs complaint became much more widely known thanks to an episode of Seinfeld ('The Money') where Kramer's girl friend was disturbing his sleep with the Jimmy Legs.

For mild occasional sufferers, like me, suffering from the complaint is almost as amusing as the name itself. The particular brand of the complaint I suffer from I call: 'Isometric Jimmy Legs'...for example: if I get the Jimmy Leg urge to lift my leg up I will tense the muscles as if to do that but also the opposing muscles to counteract it so my leg does not move but it still hopefully satisfies the Jimmy Leg urge and stretches the right muscles. There are pro's and con's to this: the good side is that you don't have to wave your limbs about and attract attention to yourself when submitting to the urges (like you would with 'Concentric Jimmy Legs'), but if someone did happen to spot you Jimmying it would look well suspicious... especially if it's a back and leg Jimmy urge combo since it can result in subtle pelvic thrusts or bum sticky-out-y movements which could possibly be mistaken for some kind of surreptitious clandestine personal activity.

The Wikkipedia article about Jimmy legs says that only 2.5 percent of people suffer from it...personally I think it is more like 25 percent when mild sufferers are taken into account, so if you suffer from it then I reckon there's a good chance one of your friends does too... but wait... who has the best (or should I say worst) Jimmy Legs?? Because we all like a bit of one-up-man-ship when talking to our friends about our ailments so I have come-up with a Jimmy Legs scale ranging from Force 1 to Force 10. You can gauge your level by seeing where your experience fits on the scale below... I have placed scenarios on the scale so that you can compare your own experiences and judge the magnitude of your Jimmy Legness, however I don't think I've managed to make it very easy to pin-point your level of suffering from 1 to 10, but perhaps that's a good thing because when engaging in ailment jousting with your friends you want there to be at least a bit of room for inane disagreement. The definition for Force 1 and the potentially fatal Force 10 seem quite good though I think.



Force 1 --- You have urges in your muscles but it would not effect your concentration doing your work and you could easily resist the temptation to Jimmy-about for about 3 hours. For example if you were at work and started having the Jimmy Legs at 10am you could wait till lunch time till having a good Jimmy.

Force 2 --- You could concentrate on your work for about 15 minutes before having to Jimmy-about.

Force 3 --- Like Force2 but for about 5 minutes.

Force 4 ---Like Force 3 you could resist the temptation to Jimmy-about for about 5 minutes but it would be futile because you could not concentrate on your work until after you have satisfied the urges.

Force 5 --- If you were doing urgent and important work where others are relying on you where Jimmying-about might mean you did not finish in time, but where Jimmying-about was no risk to heath or safety, you could not resist the urges for more than 30 seconds. For example you have to submit a tender to a customer by a dead-line for your boss or else he loses the business.

Force 7 --- You would have to submit to your Jimmy urges if doing something urgent and important where others are relying on you and there is a small risk to heath or safety, for example if you had the Jimmy urges while driving your boss to the airport, with no spare time to stop, you would be able to wait until you were driving on a straight clear stretch of road before submitting to your Jimmy Leg urges -- you would not have to Jimmy-about while driving round a traffic island or navigating a road junction.

Force 8 --- You're are talking to your prospective boss (who doesn't strike you being even remotely the 'understanding type') at a job interview for a job you really really want but your Jimmy urges are so strong you cannot resist Jimmying about in front of him.

Force 9 --- As Force, 8 but you have been unemployed for over a year and your house is about to be repossessed.

Force 10 --- You have urges that are so strong that even if you were standing on the edge of a 100foot high cliff and you had urges in your legs, you could not resist Jimmying your legs about. [Obvious advice for sufferers at this level: keep away from the edges of cliffs.]


Myself: I had a few episodes of the Force 4 Isometric Jimmy Legs this last week. I wonder if cats have the Jimmy Legs. Sumpy the Cat does seem to have uncontrollable urges but they mainly seem to be the ones to lye on his side and shred the stair carpet at the bottom step with all fours, having some kind of 'possessed by the devil' look in his eyes...