I knew it! Football is bad for your health

I've never been a huge fan of any sport. I like to watch the odd frame of snooker or gymnastics or athletics on the telly, but I wouldn't usually stay in for it or build my life around it, and I've never understood people who do. The thing I find hardest to understand is the national obsession with football. It's hard to avoid - even at work it's there in a fair proportion of the coffee machine conversations. Sorry, but it bores the hell out of me.

Now this morning comes news that it's actually bad for your health! Yes! Vindication at last! A study has proven a direct link between the incidence of heart attacks in men and the dates when their team are playing a "big" match. Apparently there's a three-fold increase in heart attacks among supporters on match days. The worry and the stress kills them off! How mad is that?

In a world where there are already way too many things conspiring to make us keel over, I'm happy to avoid the totally unnecessary ones, and this is a prime example. What's more, I now have the perfect rejoinder for anyone trying to engage me in a football conversation: "Watch out! That stuff can kill you!"

Pole 2 (pole)

Those nice people at Housing Units opted to replace our broken finial with the one from their display rather than make us wait while they re-ordered a pair, so I arrived home yesterday feeling well chuffed with the world. Here's the offending finial. Well, not the offending one, because that was broken. This is the replacement. It suffers from not having anything protecting the glass-brass interface, so you have to be really careful when screwing the glass ball onto the pole collar not to tighten it too tightly. The collar then slips over the pole end and is fastened by a small grub screw. Look nice, don't they? Although I think on balance I would go for one of the many varieties of metal finial if I had the choice over again. If we end up breaking any when we do any more decorating in here, I'll definitely replace them all.

Finding myself with a spare few minutes at the end of the afternoon today I thought I'd give Nikki a pleasant surprise and put the second pole up. Having already fitted the first one, I knew the drill (haha!) and it took less than half-an-hour to get the pole up and hang the curtains.

And here they are. It confused me for a while that, even though I thought I'd fixed the pole at exactly the same distance from the ceiling as in Nikki's side of the study, and the curtains are the same length, these hang almost to the bottom of the radiator while on her side they're about halfway down. Sometimes I can be sooooo sloooow. Nikki pointed out that she has no cornice on her side. I'd measured from the ceiling on her side, and from the bottom edge of the cornice on mine. Doh! But I couldn't have put my pole any higher without it looking silly. Maybe we'll have to hem these so they look the same. I don't really like them hanging over the radiator and sending all the heat out through the windows anyway. Still, another tick in the box and the study is one step closer to being "really" finished.

Book Review: The Life of Pi

After a month off for Christmas, the book club meeting beckons this coming Wednesday. This month's choice is Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Unusually for me, I started it over Christmas. Normally with two months to get through it, I would have left it until halfway through January, but I had some spare time during the holidays when there wasn't anything much on the telly, I'd had enough of being on the computer (yes, it does happen) and no other distraction presented itself, so I made a start.

Well pretty soon I'd decided I wasn't going to enjoy it. Martel's writing style seemed typically "Booker Prize" (this had won it in 2002), by which I mean reams and reams of pointlessly detailed description; over-complicated rationalisations and hidden meanings. He seemed incapable of describing any one thing without including a list of similar things. When talking about animals in the zoo he would list countless examples. When smells reminded him of something? Again, a huge long list. Forgive me, anyone who is familiar with the book, if these are not accurate examples. I use them as illustrations only, since I've long ago left that part of the book behind and can't be arsed to re-read it to find the real material.

But then something unusual happened. I put the book down and left it alone for a couple of weeks. Whether it was that break, or that I'd happened to reach the point in the story where the action takes off, I don't know. When I picked it back up again, I started to enjoy it. This was long before the ship sank and Pi was stranded in the lifeboat with only a crotchety Bengal tiger for company. When that happened, I enjoyed it even more. Some sections of the prose are positively delightful. Wonderfully crafted, deeply evocative, taughtly written and interesting.

Hard to imagine that there would be enough going on during the many weeks aboard a tiny vessel in the middle of the Pacific to hold one's interest, but it certainly does. For once I can say I think a book deserved its Booker Prize. It reminds me very much of another famous "survival" epic I read - oh - about thirty years ago (OK, this is getting beyond a joke now). It was recommended to me by my mother. The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz. That had a very similar flavour to it, as I recall. I also remember being quite upset when I discovered that its veracity had been called into question, as I'd believed implicitly it was an accurate and true story.

I don't read this kind of story very often, but I'd thoroughly recommend Pi to anyone looking for something a bit different.

An experiment: whisky vs gin

We have a cupboard full of booze. Not that we're mad drinkers or anything. It's been garnered slowly over years. Duty free gifts from family members; remains of interesting things left over from parties; even one or two bottles I brought home from helping a mate clear out his Mum's place when she went into sheltered accommodation.

Thing is, with all this choice, we tend to drink the same stuff. Gin and tonic, mainly, and the odd vodka and coke when I can get my hands on a bottle of vanilla vodka. So when the tipple of choice is exhausted, we buy another bottle, and the stock of other stuff sits there gathering dust.

So I decided after Christmas that this was a daft situation. I was driven by my sudden inability to stash a bottle of Eiswein we received as a Christmas present owing to the drinks cupboard being chocca. In a moment of clarity that is probably the nearest thing I'll get to a New Year's Resolution this year, I determined to drink up "the other stuff" before buying any "new stuff."

Since I prefer, in the main, long drinks (as you'll have noticed by the mention of G&T and VAC above) tonight was the first evening that I was on whisky and gingers. It must be about...oh, let me see...thirty years (*vbg*) since I last drank this particular tipple, preferring as I have recently, single malts with just a cube or two.

Anyway, here's the thing. Drink for drink it's apparent that whisky and ginger gets me drunker than G&T! Who'd 'a' thunk it? Three WAGs was way more potent than the FIVE G&Ts I've been known to put away on the odd Sunday when I feel like I don't want the weekend to end. I'll have to slow down if I'm to see this mopping up exercise through, or it'll be me needing mopping up!

Now it really is curtains

Finally, finally got around to putting up the new curtain poles in the study this afternoon. Or curtain pole I should say, because the larger of the two may require a little more study (lol) since we're not sure if it needs a central support bracket and if it does, I'll need to make a block to screw it into. Even more disappointing, upon opening the boxes one of the glass finials was cracked and will have to be returned. Yeah, I know, nothing is ever straightforward in this house!

We maybe should have ironed the curtains before hanging - they've been folded up in their packets since we bought them several months ago - but we'll see if they drop out first. For now, it's enough to have them - one set at least - up.

Hoorayyyyy......oh.

Having spent the last two weeks clambering in and out of the bath, Nikki gave me the nudge yesterday to check the bathroom suppliers for progress. I'd called the manufacturers as promised to be told that I needed to go back to the suppliers and have them fax the original order details through to the manufacturers to confirm the warranty and the part number, and they'd send a replacement right away.

As luck would have it the suppliers showroom is right along the road to my office, so I dropped in on that Monday morning, did the deed, and they told me they'd see to it right away and be in touch by Friday to let me know what was happening.

As in ... last Friday.

So I called them yesterday. "Oh yes Mr. Beresford. We've got your replacement valve here." Right. And you were going to tell me that when?

I dropped in on the way home. The guy must have seen me park up because as I approached the counter he approached from the opposite side carrying a shower valve that he placed on said counter. He smiled proudly. I looked at the valve. Looked at him.

"That...doesn't look...anything...like my shower valve."

His face fell. "Just a moment," he mumbled, and disappeared into the showroom, returning after a full five minutes brandishing two brochures.

"HSK?" he asked tentatively. I had no idea what he was on about, but slowly it dawned on me that he was probably asking what manufacturer it was.
"Imperial?" I offered, hoping I'd made the right assumption.

He brightened up and opened the second brochure, pointing immediately to the correct shower unit. For once his virtually eidetic memory had let him down. He'd remembered that we'd had something from HSK and assumed it was the shower (it was actually the hinged door panel). So we have another week to wait before we can shower again.

Friday Five

1. What do you need?
Potatoes. Nah, that's just an in joke really. All you need is love, The Beatles reckoned, and I'd go along with that. Throw in a home that you look forward to coming back to at the end of the day, where you feel safe and can entertain family and friends and that'll do me.

2. What won't you share?
I'd share anything, but don't leave it until the last minute to ask. If I get to the point where there's only those nice curled-over crisps left in the bag, you're not having one!

3. What do you hurry through?
The working day. I used to love it, now I can't wait for it to be over.

4. Who is worth waiting for?
The right person. Sometimes the wait can be long. Sometimes you think you've missed them. You haven't. You don't need to stick with someone just because it looks like they're the only thing on offer. If it doesn't feel right, it isn't right. You have to wait a while longer.

5. Friday fill-in:
I can't bear to ______.
be hot.

I heart you? Gimme a break

I've bemoaned the parlous state of English usage on here before, but I've seen this several times recently and for some reason it really bugs me.

OK, OK, I know English is a "living" language and that's part of its strength and yadda yadda, but another part of its strength is its rules. Years ago - why it may even be "thirty years ago" - we started to see these cute little bumper stickers with the heart on. I love New York they said and we all knew it and more to the point we all said it. The heart was just an original and cutesy way of saying love. It wasn't literal.

And now? Everywhere you look people are writing "I heart you." I heart this, I heart that. It's flippin' meaningless you morons. Heart is not a verb. You can no more heart something than you can kidney it. Get a grip. It's not big and it's not clever. And even more importantly, it's not English.

Glug, glug, splooooosh!

Our friendly neighbourhood rooferman came around this afternoon to inspect the problem.

Didn't take him long. I sometimes wish I was more use up a ladder, but above about ten feet I start to quiver and much higher than 15 feet I'm shaking so violently that the ladder starts to walk across the wall. I could never have been a roofer. Luckily for us, he can. And is. Up the ladder he went, returning after a few seconds to retrieve a length of plastic pipe from his van.

"It's either this, or I borrow your wellies," he said. "It's knee-deep up there."

!!!

A few seconds prodding about with his pipe and water began to gurgle down the main downspout. Then with an almighty rush, approximately a bath-full gushed out, overflowed the drain and ran splashing and flooding across the path and down the garden. Crikey. He climbed up into the valley and threw down a few handfuls of muck.

"Leaves, is it?" I asked knowingly.
"No," he said matter-of-factly. "Bits of tile. They're flaking so badly that bits of them are being washed down by the rain."

Eek! I got straight on the phone to the mortgage company to apply for an increased loan. There's no way we can let this go on any longer. :(

4 x 4 doesn't go

I'm amazed there aren't more accidents on the roads around our house, which become completely choked from 8.15 to 9.15 every day, and again at school chucking-out time.

Parents with more money than sense, often driving massive 4x4 wagons, many with personalised plates (yes, I mean you J1 MMY) driving their beloved progeny the few hundred yards to school because they think they're safer than if they walked or took the bus. The difference in traffic levels during half-term and full-term holidays is quite literally incredible. I know from experience that there's rarely more than 20% of my colleagues that take annual leave at half term. And yet there's easily less than half the number of vehicles on the roads during that week. Which means they're all "school run" vehicles.

I don't know what it is about parents doing the school run. Maybe it's the only driving they ever do. But they don't seem to have any road sense, knowledge of the highway code, or even much common sense. They let their kids fling open the doors without checking if there's anything coming. They walk out from between parked cars. They stop on the zig-zag markings at pedestrian crossings. They perform dangerous U-turns against the flow of traffic. They behave as if their journey was the only important one, and everyone else on the road should get out of their way.

An official, properly organised and ubiquitous school bus service is long overdue for this country, especially in the major cities. It would cut rush-hour traffic massively not to mention improving everyone's temper.

Drip, drip, drop

By the early evening yesterday, with no sign of the rain letting up, we were up to four buckets in the bedroom and it was beginning to look like we'd be sleeping in the spare room. Too much noise from the plipping and the plopping to do anything else.

We did have half a plan to put the laundry, some dust sheets and some towels under it all in the hope that it would quieten things down enough for us to get to sleep, but by bedtime as it turned out the rain had stopped and so, eventually, did the drips. Must remember to take the roofer's number with me to work tomorrow.

Paid a flying visit to my Mum today, just to buck her up a bit. She's still feeling very sorry for herself but the good news is the infection is getting better, the wound is not weeping any more and she's off the injected antibiotics. The bad news is she's rubbed her other heel raw with having to have her feet propped up all the time, so she's now bandaged up on both legs. She looks like half a mummy. We had a good laugh about that. She's still very weak and I'm more than a little pissed off that the hospital sent her home and expected her to cope on her own without arranging any help. I'll be calling Social Services tomorrow to see if they can do anything about helping her out with meals and general chores.

The other bad news was posted on the digital signs over the M1 southbound. Carriageway widening is about to start from junctions 28 to 25 and the sign says "Roadworks from Jan 27 until October 2010. Delays expected." October 2010?!?! Deep joy.

Plip, plop

Returning to bed after an early morning "visit" I was startled to hear a noise in the dark.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

I figured it out pretty quickly. The roof is leaking again. I'd found a wet patch on the bedroom floor on Tuesday morning but no signs of drips or leaks. Now there was a definite drip. The only question was - would I be able to get back to sleep with all that racket going on?

I almost managed it after about half an hour, but as I was drifting off Nikki gave me a sharp nudge.
"What's that noise? Is it a leak?"
"Yeah."
"We'd better get up then."

With the light on, two large wet areas were revealed directly under the beam that runs across the bay window, which was dripping merrily. I was puzzled where it was coming from. I'd already checked upstairs on Tuesday and there was no sign of any drips or damp patches.

It didn't take Nikki long to spot the wet patch on the wall though, which made it obvious why there was nothing to see in the upstairs room. There's a valley between us and next door. If the water can't flow down it properly and it backs up, it would overflow through the tiles at the lowest point. That could be because the gutters are blocked or it might simply be the volume of water - we've had torrential rain virtually non-stop for three days or so.

We fetched buckets, which guaranteed I wouldn't get back to sleep. The plopping noises in plastic and steel (we had to use a large cooking utensil too) was much louder than onto bare wood. I left Nikki to try to grab another hour's sleep in the rainforest while I made a coffee and sat worrying about how we'd certainly have to revise our thinking on when the roof needs replacing.

Friday Five and the conspiracy of fate

Why is it only when you're in a hurry that hold-ups occur?

Like the last two nights - we needed to be home early, scoff some dinner as quickly as possible and rush off to help with the panto. Any "regular" day, Nikki will get out of work up to five minutes after finishing time. Both yesterday and today she's had to take a call at the last minute, and not been out until fifteen minutes later than normal.

Then there's the road to the community hall where the Players play. 99 times out of 100 it's empty. We travel that road innumerable times to go shopping, or into Chorlton, to fetch decorating materials. We even go that way occasionally to the Trafford Centre. It's never busy. Tonight, when we're already running late, we find a learner driver trying to turn out into the main road in front of us, and then when we finally lose her there's a blimmin' taxi in front of us doing a three-point turn! Does my head in.

1. Where do you like to walk?
In the park near where we live. It's a traditional Victorian "urban" park with an avenue of trees and a lake. When I lived in Nottingham I used to like to walk by the river, but somehow I don't fancy doing that beside the Irwell.

2. What does your hair look like?
Like I'm bothered. Short, greasy at the moment because I haven't washed it for a while on account of the shower not working, and with increasing amounts of head showing through.

3. What are you jealous of?
I thought for ages about the answer to this. Jealousy is such a negative emotion that I squash it whenever it arises. If I ever feel it, however briefly, it tends to be when someone achieves something that I've been either wanting or trying to achieve and not yet made it. But that's because it was their turn. Being jealous won't help me get there. So I have a pang, occasionally, and then it goes away.

4. What kind of promises do you make?
How many different kinds are there? I tend not to make promises. I don't like letting people down. But if I commit to doing something then I do it. Sometimes reality gets in the way though.

5. What makes you stare?
Bizarre punkish hair-do's or extraordinary body piercings. And being deep in thought.

Panto!

Dress rehearsal for the Chorlton Players panto tonight and as usual I was there to take the production photographs.

I quite enjoy doing this. Getting a preview of the show is great fun, there's a sense of anticipation before the opening night and a great deal of satisfaction in grabbing the really good shots from the performance. Making sure you get a few good shots is a challenge, when the actors are almost constantly moving, the lighting is changing from one scene to the next and, having not been involved in rehearsals, I'm not aware of when the key scenes are coming up, so I have to be constantly on my toes and aware of the action. It's all too easy to slip into the role of "audience" - sitting there being entertained and letting the scenes unfold in front of me until I suddenly realise I've missed photographing a crucial moment. Maintaining concentration becomes ever harder as the evening wears on, since dress rehearsals rarely finish before 11pm.

So I was particularly pleased to capture this one - the moment where the principal boy, having examined his map, declares that everyone has to go "that way." In every production I generally manage 2 or 3 really good shots like this, out of the hundreds I take during the evening (I set a new personal record with this year's panto, taking 435 shots tonight over the course of 3 hours).

But the work doesn't stop when the rehearsal is over. I only have the raw material at that point. On my return home, I copy the contents of my memory card over to the PC (which takes a tad over 5 minutes!) and then perform a first pass selection, removing the motion blurred ones, the really bad facial expressions, and the ones where the actors have moved out of shot or blinked at the last second. On average this gets rid of 25% or so, leaving me with around 300 that are reasonably focussed (given that the primary display format will be on the web) and well framed.

I then do a second pass to select the "best" shots and copy these into a separate folder. These are the ones destined for the website. Normally I've ended up with 50 or so in here, but the last two productions have given me over 100 good shots. Am I getting better or discriminating less?

With the best shots selected, I open them all up and fix any red eye problems. I try to avoid using flash when I can. With a fast lens and the camera set to the equivalent of 400ASA film speed I don't usually need it, but for action scenes flash is essential or I'd end up with a blurry mess, and I also find it helps the colour balance on those scenes that are lit with a preponderence of red (scary scenes in the monster's hideaway, or the guts of the fox, or when the lighting crew dim the floods during a song). For these shots, unless the actors are looking across camera, there's always some degree of red eye.

Finally, I make the posters that hang on the doors of the theatre. I call them posters even though I only print them on A4 sheets. I normally do 6, with somewhere between 4 and 8 shots on the page depending on the content. I arrange them in various ways, some at 15° angles, and print them all off.

Then before going to bed (which I usually manage by about 2.30am) I kick off the FTP transfer of the best photos to the online gallery on the Chorlton Players website so that it will be finished by the time I wake up, and I can create the entry for that particular show.

Roman about & showering

It was back in November I told you that I'd checked out the packaging with our Roman blinds so I didn't get caught out putting them up and finding myself without some essential fixing.

Not wanting to rush into things (*koff*) I finally got round to putting them up this afternoon. You have to larf. What I thought was fixings peeking out at me from the cute little plastic bag was only that capstan thingy you wind the cords round to hold the blinds in one position. I still needed something to hang the buggers from. Sheesh.

Fortunately I inherited from my dear ol' Dad an extensive collection of screws. It didn't take much furtling around in the collection to find the five I needed, and up they went. Not that it's drafty in the bathroom since the windows were seen to; it just looks a little more "finished" now. It also makes using the bath a tad more private, which is important at the moment with the shower out of action.

Oh the leak's been fixed, but the temperature fault is still with us. I called the manufacturers and they decided the most likely explanation was that the shower simply needed recalibrating. I didn't argue. It's one of those situations where you have to follow their programmed fault-finding list before they'll send someone out. Recalibrating is an overblown term for adjusting the point at which the stop-button (anti-scalding device) activates, but since the shower never gets above cold I knew from the off this would not solve the problem. Sure enough with the temperature control knob pulled out so the stop-button could be bypassed, turning the knob fully in either direction did not change the temperature one jot. The only way I knew hot water was reaching the shower at all was that if I ran the hot tap in the wash basin the shower changed from cold to "flippin' freezing." That, and the fact that the chromed pipes coming through the wall were frosted with condensation on the cold side and hot to the touch on the other side. Like I said, it's the coil. I'll be calling them back tomorrow.

It could be a season for curtaining - I had a voice message from Housing Units on Thursday afternoon to tell me the curtain poles for the study had arrived. Something else for tomorrow: picking them up on my way home from the office. Fitting them will no doubt be next weekend's job. Luxury.

Wet wet wet

First time at Euston this year, and first time since they finished that escalator refurbishment. You know what? After all those months of effort, it looks EXACTLY THE SAME as it did before. Presumably it has all new gubbins underneath but the moving bits look just as scabby and the handrails just as worn and tatty. Glad we spent all that money on it.

It was pissing down when I emerged from Westminster tube too. Stupidly I'd seen the forecast but forgotten to bring my brolly. Maybe there'd be a handy taxi? No such luck. It was just shy of 9 o'clock and they were all full. I walked. I got drenched. I sat in the meeting steaming quietly to myself. Both physically and figuratively (it was an annoying and frustrating meeting).

The ultimate irony

My Mum got home from hospital this evening - two days later than originally estimated owing to picking up an infection in her hip from the operating theatre. Presumably it wasn't one of the scary ones - MRSA or C. difficile - or she'd still be in there. Or worse. Anyway, she's home. Still in a lot of pain, but they've given her pain meds for that. And here's where the "ultimate irony" comes in. For a woman with a lifelong phobia against hypodermic needles (she couldn't even watch when I had my inoculations as a child), the pain medication they've given her is morphine. Injectable morphine. Which she has to administer herself. Ouch.

Once a day for the next six days, straight into the stomach. Can she do it? Yes she can. Already done it, to her amazement. If it's true that everyone's on Earth to learn at least one lesson or face one fear, this might just be hers.

School 1957 vs. 2007

Had to share this with you. It was sent to me last week by my brother-in-law (well, the closest thing I've got to one and actually by far the best example of the breed I've had in my life). You may have seen it elsewhere but it's so accurate I thought it bore repeating!

Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fight after school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up mates.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charges them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario: Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.
1957 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good caning by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his neighbour's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normally, goes to uni, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy's Mum has affair with psychologist.

Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario: Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro gets extra tuition, passes English, goes to Uni.
2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. Class action lawsuit filed by anti discrimination commissioner against Education Dept and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers, puts them in a model aeroplane paint bottle, blows up an ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007 - Local police & AFP called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, parents investigated, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario: Johnny falls while running during morning tea and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in prison while Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

I trip off the road trip

Finally received email confirmation today that I've been credited with the cost of the iPod RoadTrip that I bought by mistake and returned before Christmas. Now I can go ahead and order what I thought I'd ordered in the first place - an iTrip Auto (pictured).

I was surprised (delighted!) that the original company had refunded the full amount including postage. The Amazon charter suggests that they're under no obligation to refund postage if the fault is not theirs, which it wasn't. I'd simply ordered the wrong thing. So top marks to Add-ons World for being an excellent supplier but unfortunately they are ten quid more expensive than anyone else for the iTrip Auto, so I'll be ordering that from another Amazon marketplace vendor. Customer loyalty only stretches as far as the edge of my wallet!

Catch my breath

Pardon us if we feel a bit smug. We feel like we've really achieved something this weekend. Only in a small way, you understand. It's not solving international diplomatic crises or writing the next great philosophical work. No, it's much more mundane than that - we spent the weekend doing those things you always put off because there's something more exciting to do.

Eventually, they mount up until it looks...well...like a mountain of a task. Even more of a disincentive to make a start. Until days like yesterday and today, when you think: "Right. Time to roll my sleeves up."

First order of business for Saturday was a bus ride into town to take back our only duplicate present: a copy of the new Eagles album. We opted to keep Nikki's copy (I'd removed the original packaging when wrapping it, whereas mine was still intact) which meant I had the added bonus of choosing a replacement present. I opted to continue the process of replacing my vinyl collection and chose another digitally remastered Caravan album: If I Could Do It All Over Again I'd Do It All Over You. We stopped off for a Starbucks and a skinny muffin but ended up finishing our coffees stood in the street, since the entire building was evacuated when the fire alarm went off. Still, it helped cool the coffee down quicker!

Returning home the second thing on the list was to clean up after Friday's visit from the plumber. Having swept and mopped everywhere we soon realised that the large hole in the kitchen ceiling had a cold howling draught blowing through it which was fetching down dust and small clumps of the debris that always lives in the ceiling void of old houses. Stuff left over from countless previous jobs - floorboard replacements, rewiring, plumbing - all tradesmen leave their shit under the floor where no-one sees it until the next job. That hole needed a temporary plug until we've sorted out what we want to do with the ceiling and hence became the most recent addition to that task list of "things I don't really want to do." A cannibalised cardboard box that had brought Christmas presents from the U.S. did the trick, held in place with a few long nails. It doesn't look pretty, but it's serviceable, quick and cheap.

Next on the list: taking down the Christmas decorations. I've never understood why so many people misinterpret the Twelfth Night superstition and believe that you must wait until then to take decorations down. The "rule" is actually that you mustn't leave them up after January 6, not that you can't take them down earlier. Personally I prefer to have everything back to normal before we go back to work. There's nothing more depressing than coming home from that first day back at work to a house with its Christmas tree and tinsel all still twinkling sadly at you, when you know the holidays are long gone and all stretches before you is the cold dark winter. But this year our last holiday day was New Year's Day itself and I didn't feel like spending that clearing up, so the decorations have hung around all week apart from a few lengths of tinsel that I've collected up when I happened to be passing.

So Saturday afternoon was dedicated to collecting up the hangings, de-decorating and disassembling the tree and putting everything back in its box. I was interrupted with the tree half denuded by the doorbell. One of neighbours computers had "gone all black" and could I help? I headed across the road once I'd boxed up the tree to find a delegation of neighbours watching some bulbs being planted. Perhaps 'delegation' is too strong a word - it was one other guy. When he learned I was there to tend to the sick computer he offered to cook us a meal if I could fix his - which appeared to be suffering from the same problem we had when Nikki's PC was new: one Vista; one XP; and never the twain shall file share.

Well the first examination was concluded fairly quickly. The patient was terminally ill with a blown video card. Hubby was quite happy to invest in a new card while wifey was keener on a new deal. I left them to the debate and re-crossed the road to sort out the file sharing issue. Turned out to be the same problem we had - Norton by default blocks Windows file sharing. Took me an hour to remember that, which was a tad frustrating, but I left neighbour #2 happier than I'd found him.

Today we collected up various piles of Christmas presents that still littered the study and the lounge, put DVDs in the "to watch" pile and ripped CDs onto the PCs, after which the only two jobs remaining for me were the two I hate most: ironing and budgeting.

I always say I'll record credit card transactions in the budget daily so they don't mount up. Then after three months, when my wallet can no longer be closed because of the wodge of credit card slips, I'll "get around" to doing the budget. And it takes hours. You'd think I'd have learned by now. Funny...it's the same with shirts. Iron one or two every time the laundry's done, or wait until there's 10 need doing at once, and you're facing an hour's worth of ironing? Guess.

You wait ages for a story and then three come along at once

In this instalment: Repairs to the shower; I visit my Mum in hospital and meet up with some old friends on the way home.

Busy day yesterday. First off the plumber man, Andy, came to investigate the leak in the shower and why it only runs cold. This has been going on some time, but since we opted for a tiled floor in the bathroom we knew the only way to investigate the leak was from below, which means taking down some of the kitchen ceiling.

The leak was never life-threatening so we decided to leave it until we were ready to start work on the kitchen and would be fixing up the ceiling anyway. We'd been a bit worried that it might have been a badly-fitted drain pipe, because it always seemed to leak worse when the shower trap was beginning to get blocked with hair. The other alternative was a badly sealed shower tray, and this is what it turned out to be (the hair blockage simply caused the water to rise above the lip of the tray, and then pour through the broken seal). But the news was, unfortunately, not as simple as that.

Andy (a man of some experience and also someone who likes doing things the right way) was worried about how the shower tray had been fitted. Cast resin trays that he's installed in the past have always had to be bedded down in sand and concrete so they don't flex. Ours has been mounted directly on the flooring joists. There's not even any floorboard to support the full width of the tray. I remember the original fitter saying he needed to take the boards out, and even shave an inch or so off the joists, so he could fit the tray flush with the floor. I never questioned it at the time, but we've ended up with a tray that is not supported in the inter-joist gaps which is not, apparently, a good thing, and one possible cause of the breakdown in the seal.

Another culprit is the tiling. The fitters tiled directly onto plasterboard. I remember an old plumber friend of mine telling me this was a bad idea ten years ago, but these guys assured me it was fine, so what can you do? For all I knew the intervening years had seen an improvement in materials, both board and tile adhesive, that rendered the old advice irrelevant. My mistake. Tiles mounted on plasterboard will always move, says Andy, which cracks the grout in the corners and allows leaks.

The solution is simple - bucketloads of silicon sealer - but it does mean we're probably now committed to replacing the seal regularly every time it breaks down. And the only indication we get when this has happened is a wet kitchen ceiling :(

Sadly the solution for the cold running shower was not so simple. After checking for blockages and testing that the valves were working OK, Andy concluded the coil is faulty. "Luckily" the shower is still under warranty, but it means more hassle digging out the paperwork and jumping through whatever hoops the manufacturer requires to organise a replacement.

To complete all the plumbing work had taken until after 1.30 which meant I was not going to make the afternoon visiting session at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, where my Mum underwent hip replacement surgery on Thursday. She'd been really suffering with it for some time, but it wasn't until a new GP arrived at her local surgery that she'd been offered a replacement. Can you believe her original GP (of almost 20 years) told her she couldn't have the operation because of her condition? The new guy put the lie to that as soon as he arrived and booked her in as an emergency appointment because she was in such a lot of pain.

I arrived in Nottingham in time for the evening visiting (6-8pm). Although I've visited people at QMC in the past I had no recollection of the parking arrangements and drove around the campus one-way system twice in the dark having missed the turn for the multi-storey car park the first time. I then discovered the car park is on the opposite side of the campus from Mum's ward. QMC is a huge place and it took me almost ten minutes to walk across to West block and find the right ward. Fortunately as with all hospitals everything is well sign-posted so I always knew where I was going.

Mum was feeling very sorry for herself. Propped up in bed with a foam block between her knees to keep her leg in the right position, she was unable to move around at all, although she wasn't in any pain. Just the discomfort of sitting "on the same cheek" for several hours at a time. The nurses to try to "turn" immobile patients regularly, but they are very busy so it's never quite regular enough. I was impressed by the security though. The last time I visited a sick relative - about ten years ago - there was free access to all wards, which simply opened on to public corridors. Some high-profile attack cases have forced improved security, and the most vulnerable wards are now protected with card-swipe entry systems. These are active both ways, so they protect against confused patients wandering off as well as against unauthorised ingress.

They're taking the MRSA/hygiene problem seriously too, with wall-mounted antiseptic gel canisters beside the doors and notices requesting visitors to clean their hands before entering, and upon leaving. I thought this a very positive move and duly cleaned my hands, but my cousin later informed me that their visiting experiences showed that most people ignored the notice.

I spent almost the full two hours with Mum but towards the end she was dropping off to sleep mid-sentence and becoming increasingly confused. She didn't want me to go, but I pointed out they'd be kicking me out anyway in 15 minutes and the nurses were coming round to sort out her position and needed access to both sides, so I said my goodbyes and left. Some of her confusion is probably a result of the meds, but I think a lot of it is simply that she's been knocked out of her routine and can't really cope. She hadn't realised she had a motorised control to change the angles of her bed, or that she had a personal TV, or that she'd been given an exercise sheet, and was confused by the difference between the drugs the hospital were giving her and the ones she takes regularly for chronic emphysema and other conditions. "What's this?" she kept asking, "I don't take this." Quite upsetting really, to see her so frail and vulnerable, but everyone I've spoken to says what a difference hip operations make, and I know she'll recover rapidly once she can get out of hospital.

Leaving Nottingham at that time meant I wasn't going to be home until 10pm so I'd decided to stop on the way home for a bite to eat, and the prospect of returning to the Dog & Partridge seemed very attractive. I had no idea what time they stopped serving food, but their meals were so delicious last time we stopped there I thought it was a risk worth taking and drove past motorway services and other sources of accessible commestibles, arriving at the Dog at 8.55pm. They weren't very pleased with me - meals finish at 9pm - but they took my order with good humour.

Walking in from the car park I'd passed a woman complaining to anyone who would listen about the back door being locked on a night like this (very blustery and rainy). I thought I'd recognised her but it wasn't until I stood next to her at the bar and she was joined by her husband that I realised who it was: Mark and Janet (he used to do all my plumbing when I lived in the village). I hadn't seen them for seven years and we spent a very pleasant hour catching up while we were waiting for our food to be served. I'd expected to have to eat alone, so the prospect of friendly company was a real fillip. We shared news over fish, burger, and lamb respectively. Mark's business is thriving. I remember him asking me, almost exactly ten years ago, whether I thought it was a good idea to branch out on his own or whether he should stay in the comfort and safety of being a paid employee. Well he DID set up his own business back then, and now has 14 people working for him and looks after the plumbing and heating requirements of small businesses across the whole UK. Nice one Mark! Not only that, but he'll be chairman of the Plumbing Foundation this year. A real success story, and an opportunity for me to name-drop!

Friday Five

1. Tell us something you love:
The smell of new rain on concrete.

2. Tell us something you know to be true:
You will see your loved ones again after you "die."

3. Tell us about someone new in your life:
Umm...I think this is supposed to be about a "special someone" and I don't have anyone "new" in that regard. Except that our relationship is so good that it feels new every day. As far as friends go, I guess the most recent new one would be someone at the book club, but I don't know who the newest one is.

4. Who can you never please?
Ah, there was someone. But she's a distant (bad) memory now.

5. Friday fill-in:
You know I ___.
You know I don't like dark mornings!

Waffles

What if John Lennon had sung "and so this is New Year...and what have you done?"

We were invited to three New Year's Eve parties this year, and what did we do? Stayed home and watched Babylon 5. Sorry to everyone who really wanted us to be there, but really, in my heart of hearts, I believe what they said on EastEnders tonight. New Year's Eve parties are for single people. They actually said sad single people, but I don't think it's necessary to be sad, only to hold out a hope for that exciting midnight kiss from someone you've been wanting to put your arms around for a long time but didn't have the courage, excuse, or opportunity.

When you're happy with your own company and your chosen partner, you don't particularly feel like partying, and there's no-one else you've got your eye on, staying home isn't a cop out. It's the real thing. The date doesn't matter. It's only a calendar event. And when midnight comes around, that person you want to put your arms around is right there with you already.

Does that sound like "bah, humbug?" I guess it might. But even when I was single and "celebrating" New Year, I never really felt it. Never felt part of it. I wrote a poem about New Year once, although for some reason I didn't put it up on my poetry pages. Christmas is my favourite time of year, but New Year, only a week later, is probably my least favourite. Part of that is probably because it's when the holiday runs out. I hate that feeling that you get as the time ticks away - the feeling that it's passing ever more quickly and you're struggling to hang on to the last few precious days, then hours, then minutes of holiday. Right now, three minutes past eleven on January 1, when I'm back in work in less than ten hours, I'm wishing I'd booked the rest of the week off.

Part of it is that I feel New Year should be a time for philosophy and reflection, but there's precious little space for that when the horns are hooting, the party is in full swing and, in recent years with increasing volume and duration, the fireworks are exploding all over the place. I never remember fireworks being a big part of New Year in the UK until 2000. Now it's unavoidable. Bah, humbug.

My mate Colleen Patrick thinks New Year is a time for reflection, renewal and rebirth. My mate Diane takes a philospohical approach and says simply that 2008 will have good stuff and bad stuff. Can't argue with that. As for renewal, I'm reminded of a time when I stood and watched the sun rise on a new decade. January 1, 1980, when I spent New Year in the Lakes and got up at 5am to drive out to the hill overlooking Derwent Water with the young man who, later that year, was to become my brother-in-law. Everyone thought we were mad - maybe he did too, a little - but that was one time I really did feel the New Year. Standing freezing our rocks off in the middle of a field in the dark, watching the rosy glow slowly brightening on the horizon, the mist parting and the first knife-edge of brilliant sun turning the dark sky to azure blue, I really felt I was part of the start of something. Well, in a funny way I was right. By the end of that decade (little did I know!) I would be married, divorced, married again, and have a daughter almost one year old. I'd have moved to a new department, made a name for myself and used it as a springboard for two further changes of career, as well as moving house 5 times.

Things have hardly been less hectic since. And now, here I am. Almost thirty years later (damn it, I'm going to invent a new tag to use on here every time I write "thirty years" - remember I started to worry about this over here?) and looking out on the start of another new year. OK it's not a new decade. Not yet. But still, it's daunting. Lots to do. Lots remaining undone that I've made a silent promise to myself to get done in the next twelve months. I've mentioned what CP and Diane say about New Year, but I haven't told you the best part. The most sensible part. Where do I look when I want to make sense of it all? To Nikki. She says no-one needs to wait for New Year to start over. Every day is the start of a new year. It's only that there's one calendar day - today - with the right number. That hackneyed phrase "tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life" may be well-worn but it's also true. While you're still breathing, you can still make a difference. So while for most people, tomorrow will only be the second of January, for me it will also be the new year.

Pole to Pole

Wanting to have as relaxing a New Year as possible, we elected to venture out today for both groceries (a short, sharp shop) and to see if we could finally find some curtain poles for the study. The first and only place on our list for these was Housing Units in Failsworth and we were lucky to find a reasonable selection of both poles and finials.

Naturally, the pole you want doesn't quite have the finial you want, and the finial you really like isn't available with the pole you decide looks nicest, but that's just life plain and simple. Too much choice and not enough combinations of that choice is a recipe for stress, and a lengthy discussion, deliberation and decision process, which we duly went through.

The situation is complicated by the larger of the two windows being a double sash. It has a casement between the two sashes which is not at the same level as the wall. It's further out. Hence any centre bracket has to be longer than the wall brackets on either side (and the window is, according to received wisdom, too wide to take a single pole without a centre support). A final further complication is that the window frame is set very high in the wall, so there is no gap between the top of the frame and the cornice. Hence the pole can't be mounted above the window as would normally be the case.

After much debate I agreed that the only way around it would be to make a small supporting block for the centre bracket, and screw this to the window frame. This was, in fact, the way it had been done prior to the strip out, but as usual not very accurately, so the pole had quite a bend in the middle. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make a better job of it this time round.

Before we set out today Nikki had found a few places online who would custom-make the poles and brackets, and if we'd decided to go with them we could have had the centre bracket as big as we liked, but as always everything comes at a cost, both financial and in further delay to the project. So we placed the order, benefitting from a 10% sale discount, and returned home feeling well satisfied with our short sojourn.

Friday Five

1. If you could change your name, what would it be?
When I was twelve I thought my name was boring, so I took the chance of meeting a new friend at a family wedding to tell him my name was Chris. Hours later I could hear this voice shouting "Chris! Chris!" so I looked around to see who he was yelling at. It was me, of course. I decided right then I'd better stick with John, even if it is common.

2. What is the worst name someone has called you?
I can't spell it.

3. If you could meet someone famous, who would it be?
Ha ha! You know my track record with meeting famous people. I'd probably dribble all over them. I wouldn't mind meeting Patrick Stewart though, just so I could bring him home for a coffee and casually say to Nikki "I've brought a friend round to meet you."

4. How do you like to travel home?
I drive, but I don't like it. The one part about going to London that I don't mind is the train journey home. Firstly, it's coming home, and secondly I can relax and read, or play games, or write and not feel guilty about not "working."

5. What kind of phone to you have?
It's an old Sharp. I also have an SPV C600 that I've not transferred over to yet. Basically I pick up Nikki's cast-offs every time she buys a new phone (about every 12-18 months). Each one is better than anything I would pick, so why not? She's more of a gadget girl than I'm a gadget guy.

Happy Christmas!!

Just enjoying a quiet cup of coffee in front of the 'puter before we open our presents (during which we'll be sipping a few glasses of chilled Eiswein which has been on ice since last week), and I thought I'd take the opportunity to say "Happy Christmas" to everyone. The "Now Xmas" album is playing as I type (and we'll be putting it on via the XBox when we transplant ourselves downstairs shortly) so the Christmas spirit is alive and well here.

Despite the Spice Girls Christmas Wrapping in the background I still feel a bit philosophical. This is our second Christmas in this house and a lot has happened this year. Two major projects completed on the house, great upheavals at work, but when I look back at how much I've achieved artistically I have to pause. It's a full two years since Annie and I put our first album together, and although we didn't set ourselves a deadline for the second one, progress this year has been dismal. Almost non-existent (we finished the eighth song in April). And on the second major project of mine (which chronologically and from a longevity perspective, should really be called the first project) - my novel - passed the first anniversary of the completion of its first draft back in August without any substantial progress on the editing.

By contrast a friend of mine had his first novel published this year - ironically on my birthday. Naturally I wish him all the luck in the world with that (good luck Chris!), but his success certainly did focus my mind. I've been enjoying writing for TV Scoop and it's true the profile of that site is on the increase (they're now achieving 8,000 unique visitors per day) so there's a lot of people reading my TV reviews, rants and suggestions for future viewing. But on a personal level, that is secondary to where I really want to go with my writing, and I know I'm going to have to give that more focus next year if I'm to get anywhere with it. I have a dozen ideas for other novels and none of them can really start until the first is properly finished.

I don't make New Year's resolutions or set goals, but if I did that would be #1.

I don't usually plan things either, but I know there'll continue to be a lot of work to do on the house this coming year too, with plans to do the kitchen and at least one of our bedroom or the dining room. If that's not to encroach on my writing time I'm going to have to be very disciplined and make sure I do protect that daily space - and it has to be daily - to write write write. I don't want to be looking back again this time next year on another 12 months of excuses and no progress.

Quiet Christmas Eve

Nikki had to work today, just for the morning, so I dropped her off at 8.20 and returned home to finish the wrapping. Incidentally I spotted another cool number plate on the way home: WH05 NXT (who's next). I wonder what he meant? Something rude I suspect, but the car it was on wasn't that much of a babe magnet lol.

On the plan, this morning was for wrapping Nikki's presents, but I'd managed to get that done lunchtimes on Thursday and Friday. I just had a couple to do for the girls and a rather large and unwieldy present for Annie. That was, until the postman called. With impeccable timing he brought the last of Blythe's presents, which I'd given up on. One more for the wrapping pile, and an increase in the success rate for online shopping. I've done well over 90% of my Christmas shopping online this year, and everything has arrived except one of Nikki's. I'm quite disappointed about that, because it was a "big" present, but it's the only one so I don't think I've done bad, and for this missing one I've printed off a picture so I can wrap that ;o)

While wrapping I took the chance to catch up on some TV we'd recorded that Nikki wasn't bothered about watching, namely: Frankenstein, a 2-hour updated dramatisation that had been on ITV in October. A good idea to try and bring the story into the 21st century - they'd created the monster through stem cell research instead of stitching body parts together - but really I had to admit it was a bit crap. I cleansed my audio-visual palate afterward by watching High Plains Drifter; something else I knew Nikki didn't really want to see.

She called at 12:45 to say they were finishing at 1, so I drove over and picked her up and we settled down for an afternoon of Christmas TV watching - there were more seasonal films and programmes being broadcast than you could shake a stick at, the highlight of which was Patrick Stewart in a TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol. There was a considerable amount of Thornton's troffing as well. How decadent!

Going for a croak

We'd been invited to a rather original party this evening - karaoke and pancakes. Whoever dreamt that up needs a medal. Combining two of my favourite things with a little wine and good company was bound to be a great evening.

It was a small but select do, and all the better for that. The pancakes, spread as they were with the traditional lemon and sugar and hence reminiscent of my childhood, were superb and seemed to get better throughout the evening (even though I wasn't drinking much, having driven to the party) but the highlight of the evening as always was the karaoke. Brilliant. If I were to have my time over again I'd move heaven and earth to be a professional singer. Just need to sort a few of those cdg files out, eh Annie? One of them was reminiscent of the karaoke we did in Fuertenventura one year. If you hadn't known the words to the song you would have been knackered, as they were appearing on screen a fraction of a second after they needed to be sung. Doh!

Friday Five

1. What's the last movie you saw?
When I originally filled this in it was Shall We Dance, but we've moved on a bit since then, past Deja Vu to the fabulous oldies we watched today while wrapping presents: White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life.

2. Are you gentle?
Like a kitten, baby.

3. Do you sleep with your bedroom door shut?
No. Unless either or both of the girls are in the house. Then we all need our privacy. Oh, and at weekends. Closing it helps keep the streetlights out so we can sleep in longer :o)

4. What's your middle name?
Christopher.

5. Friday fill-in:
I could learn to like ___.
Stephen Fry.


Interesting day today socially. We popped round to the new neighbours for a glass of wine and a mince pie as we'd been invited by Christmas card. It reminded me of us, a year ago. They moved in on almost exactly the same date as us (only this year) so they've been in about 9 weeks and the house is still looking a bit unlived in, if you know what I mean. Like things aren't quite in their right places yet. But the welcome was warm and quite a few of our other neighbours were there, so we expected to pass a pleasant 90 minutes or so before making our excuses to leave in time to prepare for the main event of the evening: mulled wine & mince pies at Jamie & Lise's. That was until conversation turned to what movies we've watched recently and one woman said she was looking forward to seeing The Golden Compass. Our host's demeanour changed instantly. "Oh no, you mustn't," she said seriously. "Philip Pullman hates God and his stories are all about killing God. You might think it's a simple story but the movie makers are doing what they did with Harry Potter... they'll draw you in and then in the final instalment you'll be watching them kill God. Don't go. Spread the word, warn all your friends about it."

Honestly, I thought I'd stepped back into the 11th century or something. We just sat there quietly not really knowing what to say. The usual advice is you shouldn't discuss religion or politics with friends and these were people we'd only known for like an hour. I wasn't about to engage them with any high level discourse on how His Dark Materials is set in a fantasy world and even though they're called daemons they're not actual mythic demons. Not, you know, works of the devil. And I certainly wasn't going to get into a debate about how anyone who believes God is omniscient, omnipotent, the creator of everything, could possibly be worried by a story, even if that story does involve killing God. Actually I think if you look a bit closer it's more likely to be about getting rid of the church, which is a different subject altogether. Anyway we stayed long enough to be polite and slipped unobtrusively away. If they ever find out about the ritual sacrifices, we're done for.

We opted to walk to Jamie & Lise's, because I didn't want to have to watch what I was drinking overmuch and because we didn't really have a feel for how far it is. The answer, surprisingly is "not far." Barely more than a 20-minute walk even allowing for the fact that the pavements were icy and the roads even more so.

We stayed until midnight, until the cockles of our 'earts were well and truly warmed by the wine and the great company, and then walked home again. Surprisingly for that time of night it seemed to have warmed up a bit. The cars that had been unused all day were still rimed with frost but those that had been out at some time hadn't frosted back up again.

Christmas Do. (part 4)

Lunch in the staff restaurant has never appealed to me. I always bring my own. Christmas though - that's a different kettle of peaswax. They make a special effort, and I can never have enough turkey dinners, so it's kind of a match made in heaven. Today was even more special, since it's my last day in the office for 2007. Three of us went down from my bit of the office (aside: you can't say "from my office" any more. Not since they went open plan. Time was when we all had offices big enough for small groups. Back then you did things by the office. I went down the pub with my office. I went bowling with my office. Not now. Now they've knocked all the walls down and the desks are arranged in little floats. Two desks back-to-back, arranged in groups of three. So six desks to a float. You can hardly say "I went to lunch with my float" can you? Makes you sound like a milkman.) and the place was really buzzing I can tell you.

We opted for roast tomato soup and crispy croutons for starters. Could have had liver paté or parmahamwithmelonballs. I thought paté might be a bit heavy for lunch time and when I eat melon I like to bury my face in a wedge, not delicately place individual balls in my mouth. Besides it was a cold and frosty morning (yes, Steve and Dave, I'm still playing the "get Christmas carol lines into the conversation" game) so I thought a bit of soup would go down lovely. It did.

Mains was the traditional roast turkey dinner and they had done us proud. Three thick slices of breast meat with a slab of stuffing on top, carrot batons, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, sprouts and as much cranberry sauce as you like. Fabulous. Feeling already somewhat stuffed (we've been dieting for three weeks after that fateful visit to the local club, and my stomach's shrunk) I joined the line-up again for dessert. What else - Christmas pudding. "Watch out for that brandy sauce," one of the dinner ladies advised. "It's a bit potent." She wasn't wrong. I think I had an entire bottle of brandy in my portion alone.

We sat at the table for half an hour after finishing the pudding, debating this and that. It wasn't that the conversation was especially stimulating, more that none of us could move. And all for a fiver, too. When you consider how much I paid to (almost) go without Tiramisu at Don Giovanni's, deciding which was the better meal is a bit of a no-brainer.

It's a wrap!

I wrapped my first Christmas present today. I can't tell you what's in it (obviously!) but I'm quite pleased with it. It looks like a regular box, but it hides a clever little secret. Bwaahaahaaaaa!

We don't have a problem wrapping the girls' presents. We won't be seeing them until Boxing Day, so we can leave them lying around on the table now in various states of undress. But Nikki & I have to dance round each other a bit. I'm planning to make a start during the week on the days I'm at home. Lunch in one hand, sellotape in the other. She'll get her chance on Sunday when I go to visit my Mum and then I have a final opportunity on Christmas Eve as she has to work during the morning.

It's getting quite exciting now that the pile of presents has started to grow.

What goes around does indeed come around

I guess there are some things that you can't blog about. Sometimes this is because it's simply inadvisable to reveal too much, and other times it's because, although something may have gone on around you, it's not really your story to tell.

So by way of allegory I'll recount a tale from my university days. Maybe this explains why the "how old are you" quiz on Facebook declared me to be 75 today. One of my answers was that I start my conversations with "When I was a kid..." Well hey, when the other choices are "You can't even talk anymore"; "wow, did you see those boobs/abs"; "MOOOOOOM..."; "yo, yo..."; and "listen to me..." wtf else am I going to pick? Anyway, I digress.

Around the beginning of my second year at Uni I started going out with a girl and pretty soon we got pretty serious, if you know what I mean. If we weren't staying at mine we were staying at hers and there weren't many nights we were staying at mine AND hers individually. During the holidays I drove down to Buckinghamshire to spend some time with her at her folks' place and was surprised (not to mention delighted) that her parents just quietly assumed we'd be sleeping together. Remember this is 1976/77 we're talking about. The summer of love was ten years old but parents weren't really part of it, at least not in my world.

So time ticked by, we carried on seeing each other, and eventually in the Easter break she wanted to repay the favour and come up to Nottingham to meet my folks. My folks who had always claimed to be very broad minded, and open minded, but who...well...maybe we'll save that story for another day. Let's just say they didn't always practice what they preached. Which gave me a bit of a dilemma. Did I let things ride and submit to sleeping on the sofa, which I knew would be the default option? Or did I make a stand for human rights (not a very well-used phrase in 1977), which would clearly be the more uncomfortable option parentally speaking?

In the end I decided to make a stand. Pun not intended. I took my parents on one side and said, basically "look, Sue and I sleep together while we're at Uni, and we sleep together while we're at her parents' house. This is your house and what goes on here is up to you, but in the light of what's already going on, are you really going to make me sleep on the sofa?" I didn't plead or cajole or try to make them feel inferior, I just put the facts in front of them and then we went out to the pub.

When we got back, there were two Cadbury's Creme Eggs sitting side by side on the pillow in my bedroom. My Dad's uniquely cryptic and non-embarrassing way of telling me they'd decided to accept the inevitable.

Right there and then something crystallised for me. Although it was never in any doubt in a subconscious way, I made a conscious decision never to put any offspring of mine in a similar position, be they male or female. Because to my mind, if a young person is ready to make that kind of decision, then as a parent you have to be ready to let them. During the intervening years, on the odd occasion when this kind of topic has cropped up in conversation with friends and colleagues, I've come in for some stick on this point. The general consensus of the rest of humanity seems to be "you'll feel differently when it's your own daughter," or "no-one will ever be good enough." But I never subscribed to those views while the conversation was hypothetical, and I'm pleased to say I continue to hold true to my decision, and my principles, now the topic has become material.

Heroes - Volume 2

Oh Boy. Spent most of today watching the second series of Heroes. This show just gets better and better. I know Tim Kring is on record admitting that it got off to a slow start, but when you watch seven episodes back-to-back it just ROCKS.

You know you should stop, and make the dinner. Or even stop for a drink or a toilet break. But then you think "nah - one more episode."

I hope they resolve the WGA writers' strike soon. I'll start getting withdrawal symptoms again before long.

Friday Five

1. Are you married?
Not at the moment, although I am in a long-term relationship. With two failed marriages behind me (and the last split particularly acrimonious) I'm kind of phobic.

2. When do your claws come out?
More than anything else the thing that is guaranteed to get me boiling mad and spitting is being accused of something I haven't done. Several nasty examples of this before the age of 10 has made me hyper-sensitive. Often, it doesn't even have to be anything especially important.

3. Have you ever been in a car accident?
Several fender-benders but one really significant and scary event where I hit a patch of black ice, span round twice and rolled over into a ditch. I hung upside down in the seatbelt for a few seconds before releasing the clasp and landing on my head. Dust and grit from the carpets rained down all around me. When I reoriented and pushed the button for the driver's window it opened onto the side of the ditch. Grass. No crawl space whatsoever. I opened the passenger side window and on that side, luckily, the ditch side was angled less steeply. There was a 9-inch gap just big enough for me to pull myself out, which I did - energised by visions of the inverted car exploding in a fireball at any second. When I stepped onto the road I nearly fell over - it was a solid sheet of ice. As my eyes accustomed to the gloom (it was around 6.30am) I noticed another car 30 feet from me which had suffered the same fate. I looked the other way and was just in time to jump out of the way of a third car pirouetting across the road to hit the ditch between me and the first.

When the police brought me back to the car later that day to pick up the rest of my stuff, I could see in the daylight that if I'd left the road 50 yards earlier or later there would have been no ditch to break my fall. A steep embankment fell away 100 feet to the moor below.

4. Who is the last person you held?
Nikki.

5. Describe a time you've gone overboard:
I went literally overboard when three mates and I took a boat on the Norfolk Broads in 1976. We anchored in the middle of a lake and went swimming.

Christmas Do. (part 3)

The final "do" of the year was this lunchtime and was organised by one of the ex-secretaries from our old building in Wythenshawe.

There was a strong sense of camaraderie in that building. When we first went there in 1996 the sense of something new and exciting starting imbued us with a kind of team spirit that has survived for ten years, even though many of the original joiners have since left the company. It was a new venture - the first time we had tried to build a business around Microsoft technologies and application development - and they were exciting times.

The excitement has long since passed, but the friendships remain and we'll probably continue to enjoy a Christmas dinner together every year as long as Chris keeps organising it. At 15, numbers were slightly reduced this year owing to many people working away from Manchester, and as it turned out the ex-staffers outnumbered those of us who are still there. That just meant the conversation was more interesting, as everyone brought their tales of the year's activities to the party.

We started out with a drink in the Paramount bar on Oxford Street and then repaired to Don Giovanni's for the meal around 1.30pm. The meal was nice, but nothing special. Tuscan bean soup followed by the traditional turkey dinner. There was one slight hiccup when the dessert course was served. We'd already waited for it for half an hour when the waiter came around with a notepad. I thought this a little strange, as we'd all placed our food orders over a month before, but didn't say anything except to repeat my request for Tiramisu.

He returned to the table ten minutes later to inform us that Tiramisu was off, and the remaining choices were profiteroles or panacotta. I was really disappointed with this as I'd been looking forward to the dessert all day, and I wasn't really in the mood to take it lying down. I layed into the guy, loudly telling him it was a disgusting way to treat Christmas guests, I'd only come for the Tiramisu, we'd placed our order months before so how could they have run out? I placed an order for panacotta but added I was very disappointed and it was the least bad choice as far as I was concerned.

The panacotta arrived (and between you and me looked quite nice) but I left it untouched in front of me. Ten minutes later the headwaiter came striding across the restaurant, beaming widely and carrying two plates. He'd managed to find two remaining portions of Tiramisu and placed one in front of me, and one for the person next to me. I thanked him graciously and tucked in. It was delicious. When I'd finished I noticed he hadn't removed the panacotta, so I polished that off too. Bonus!

Arseholes

This is what I woke up to this morning. Well, not THIS exactly, because this isn't a photo of my actual car. Funnily enough my first thought on discovering that some little scrote had put a baseball bat through my passenger window was not "oh, I must go get my camera and take a photo of that for my blog." But you get the picture. Ha ha.

Nothing was stolen. Truth is, there's nothing in the car TO steal, but since there was a heavy frost last night, the bastard had to smash the window to find that out. And if it had been one of those rare but occasional days when I'd forgotten to take the car radio panel out? Well then he would have won the star prize. A bog-standard, manufacturer's issue, crappy CD radio that won't play 8 out of 10 CDs and takes an hour to warm up to the point where it will turn on, if you made the mistake of turning it off. Whoop-di-do.

Who buys knock-off car radios anyway? And what would it fetch - a tenner? I would gladly give the twat a tenner just to save the hassle: a very cold and windy drive there and back to drop Nikki at work, staying in all day for the glass repair man and therefore not being able to get the grocery shopping done until 9pm, and an hour sweeping the broken bits off the footpath which, being old tarmac, hangs on to those little bitty pieces like they were diamonds. Oh and the small matter of £120 for the replacement glass and fitting. Which coincidentally is exactly the same as the insurance excess for window damage.

There's just a chance that someone saw me fiddling with my iPod and RoadTrip a couple of Sundays ago and wondered if two weeks was long enough for me to become complacent and leave it in the car, but the most likely explanation is they did it for a laugh. The same kind of laugh they get from smashing the glass bus shelters that we see littering the pavements every few weeks. Funny, isn't it?

Christmas Do. (part 2)

Not a bad night at the De Vere hotel, Daresbury last night (ooh, it do sound posh don't it?). A very nice room, after our complementary upgrade to an Executive King suite (that's a bigger bed to you and me, and very comfortable it was too) caused by the fact they'd over-booked the Christmas do in the "Alice Room" (the whole place has a Lewis Carroll theme) and had to bump us into a smaller side room instead.

OK, the decorations weren't up to much - a single Christmas tree plonked into one corner - and the dance floor was a little smaller, but it didn't affect the food and drink ;o)

We arrived as usual mid-afternoon and spent a pleasant couple of hours sipping drinks, chatting with Nikki's colleagues and, since the diet was once again on hold for the day, tucking into a plate of club sandwiches and chips. This is the best part of the event for me. The meal is just like any other mass-catered Christmas meal, the disco holds no interest whatever and the dinner conversation can be a bit hit and miss, but the afternoon session is the height of civilisation. Comfy seats, a warm lounge, beer (or, in this case, Magner's cider since the draught beer selection on offer was uniformly awful) and pleasant chat. I love it.

We repaired to our room to freshen up around 6 o'clock and returned, showered, shaved (that's just me doing the shaving) and togged up, to the bar for a pre-dinner drinkie around 6.30.

I carried my third pint of Magners of the day into dinner with me and was immediately offered another by Nikki's manager. You can't say no can you? It would be rude. I'd ordered a rather nice salmon roulade to start and a traditional Christmas dinner, which was fine as mass catering goes apart from the sprouts which were like bullets.

The pud was a bit disappointing though. One of those occasions where you stare longingly at what someone else has ordered (in this case the strawberry pavlova) because your own choice is not quite all that (chocolate tart). The coffee was piss-poor too. I don't think I've *ever* had a good cup of coffee in a hotel.

With crackers pulled, hats put on and taken off, balloons blown up and shot across the room and the disco in full swing I began to flag a bit. I was surprised to discover it was already almost 1am so I made my excuses. Nikki was enjoying the disco too much to want to leave just yet, but I was more than ready to sample the delights of the king bed and watch enough snooker to send me to sleep. That is, about 3 minutes' worth.

Sad nerdy geek speak

A few things we needed to sort out this morning prior to going off for the night to Nikki's works' do, chief among them going to the hair salon. Coming back from there, a band was being interviewed on the radio and as is my wont, I was only giving it half an ear.

The band are on tour at the moment, and the lead singer was telling the DJ that they only had 6 gigs left.

My immediate thought?

"Well that's plenty of space."

>sigh<

Christmas Do. (part 1a)

Hmm. Incipient senility. A frightening thing. I was convinced I had three Christmas do's in a row, but the one that was "today" - upon checking - is actually *next* Friday. Oh well...an unexpected bonus for next week!

Christmas Do. (part 1)

First works Christmas do of the year this evening - or I should say yesterday evening given that it's now past midnight - and it had to be in Reading.

Most of the guys in the Technical Group are based darn sarf, so that's where the meal was booked, even though the CTO sportingly tried to suggest somewhere more middling like Birmingham or Solihull. We didn't have anyone in the group who knew a decent curry house round there, so we gave up and resigned ourselves to a long journey.

I wouldn't have gone normally, but the CTO had arranged a meeting for the afternoon (which meant we could claim expenses for the travelling) and I also had a four-hour meeting at 10am which I *could* have attended as a voice conference, but in this case provided another excuse to go along to the meal.

We had about ten attendees from the North, and everyone but me arranged to stay over. I like my own bed too much though, and (thought) I had another Christmas lunch to attend tomorrow...err...today, so I wanted to be back in plenty of time.

The Technical Group meeting broke up around 5pm giving us 90 minutes to drive the 15 miles from Bracknell to Reading, park, and congregate at the nearest pub, which the organiser said was Branningham's. It was pissing down as we left Bracknell. I'd offered a lift to one of the other guys and we passed a pleasant 45 minutes in the rush-hour traffic catching up with what we'd each been doing since we last worked together. After we'd parked, we discovered neither of us really knew where this place was - either the curry house or the pub - so we wandered aimless through the pouring rain towards the Oracle shopping centre - the only landmark we'd been told about. Two nice young ladies pointed Branningham's out to us, but it wasn't much use. The place was a nightclub, not a bar, and didn't open until 9pm.

We spotted the Slug & Lettuce across the water and headed for that, me on the phone to the organiser to explain the situation and arrange the Slug as the alternative rendezvous. I downed a gin & tonic prior to dinner (still conscious of the diet even though the rest of the evening would be a disaster as far as that went!) and having all assembled and wet our whistles, we headed for the restaurant - the Bengal Reef. My passenger and I agreed we would never have found it - on the first floor of a separate mall round the back of the main precinct and down a narrow street that looked more like a service road. Once inside though, the restaurant looked very nice. We were shown to our tables - a 16-seater and a 10-seater - and perused the menus while sipping on bottles of Cobra.

Suffice to say the meal was equal to anything Manchester has to offer, but at 9pm with the prospect of a 200-mile journey ahead of me, I made my excuses and left. The rain continued unabated pretty much for the whole trip home, but at least the roads were clear and I arrived back soon after midnight, tired but buoyed up by the good food and company.

Having started the Christmas celebrations with our mulled wine party at the start of the week, this had been a perfect next step!

What is friendship?

We didn't go to the quiz tonight. We'd been invited by one of the girls from the book club and I was up for it initially, but Nikki had had such a shitty day at work and wanted nothing more than to cuddle up and watch telly. I know she wouldn't have minded had I wanted to go on my own, but sometimes it's more important to be together isn't it?

This small vignette into the complex world of relationships made me think about friendship in the large. If you're a regular reader of these pages you'll know I'm lucky to have maintained strong links with friends I made during my schooldays. I'm told it's unusual for a bunch of blokes to stick together the way we have - for over thirty years and through good times and bad. We've seen our mates' partners come and go, but new partners when they've been found have been welcomed into the group, which has continued to play a big part in our lives for all of those thirty years.

I couldn't even tell you what it is that keeps us together. Maybe it's one of those things that it doesn't do to look too closely at. One of us is a staunch (almost rabid) football fan. The subject bores me rigid. We all love music, but our tastes vary greatly (apart from a shared love of Genesis). Our beliefs too are varied. One comes from something approaching a "high church" family, I'm a Spiritualist, the rest are what you might call armchair atheists. We all work in (sometimes only slightly) different jobs. If I had to think of one thing that keeps us together, it's the shared experiences we've had, and continue to have. We were thrown together at a particular time, hung out, and gradually built up that catalogue of memories that now draws us together like the stitches that make up a tapestry.

But it's not always like that. Lest you somehow get the impression that any one of us is something special - some "friendship guru" to whom others flock looking for those elusive connections in their lives - I have to say that I've had times where I've felt I didn't have any friends at all. Two areas where, traditionally, people make good friendships are university and in the workplace.

While I was at UMIST I got to know three distinct bunches of people: those I lived with; those I studied with; and those I hung out with at the Students' Union, principally on the Socials Committee (which I led, as Socials Secretary, for a year). I met almost all the guys I lived with through sharing a floor with them in Owens Park tower. We got on alright, well enough to decide during our second year to share a house. Since leaving Uni almost exactly 30 years ago I've met one of them again, on one occasion in 1984. An awkward occasion it was too, which did nothing except prove the only thing I had in common with them was the fact that we shared the same space. I didn't much enjoy sharing space with them in my second year either. None of them knew how to wash a dish, or cook anything more complicated than bangers and mash.

The story is pretty much the same for the people on my degree course (which I didn't finish). I can hardly remember any of them now and those I can remember I knew from the off I wouldn't want to stay in touch with. Around the Socials Committee it was slightly different, and indeed I did stay in touch with a few of the guys from there - sharing a house with two of them in the first couple of years I worked at ICL, and socialising with another and his wife who stayed in Manchester. But the ties weren't strong enough for the friendships to last more than a few years.

So I think back and try to put my finger on exactly why they were "friends" and I realise they were at best acquaintances, and in reality probably closer to people you spend time with because otherwise you'd be on your own. You forgive their foibles, turn a blind eye to the mess they live in, agree to go to the pub when really you'd rather have a night in, just to be in the company of a few warm bodies and not left alone because you don't really fit in. Is that the right thing to do? I don't know. I don't know what "right" means in that context. I know we had some fun times and some laughs. Laughs I wouldn't have had if I hadn't made the conscious decision to join in. We drove a VW microbus to a Genesis concert at Hammersmith Odeon once, which was a great night. We took the same bus to Blackpool for a long weekend and slept in it. That was a good laugh too. There's no doubt I would rather have these memories than not. And there's no doubt I would never have had them if I hadn't decided at the time that their company may not have been "perfect" but it was what was on offer. That probably sounds really pompous, but I'm just trying to be honest. It wasn't really even a conscious decision at the time, but looking back it's obvious that none of them was "my kind of people" but that didn't prevent us all hanging out and having a good time. It just stopped us from having any incentive to keep in touch once we were no longer sharing the same space.

It's a similar story in the workplace. I get on with most of them. They're all decent, regular, "normal" people. In some cases I'll have known them thirty years come January 2008 (I'm starting to get seriously worried by the number of times the phrase "thirty years" crops up in these blogs). In one case I sat next to the same guy for almost 12 years. Worked with him day in, day out on a variety of projects. Travelled abroad on business with him. We shared a joke every day - had a very similar sense of humour - and we got on really well. Then he changed department and went to work in a different building. That was five years ago. I think I've seen him three times since then, and we hardly ever exchange emails.

Was he a friend? I thought so at the time. In fact I thought he was probably one of the few real friends I'd made at work. It's undoubtedly also true that if we found ourselves sharing an office again we'd pick up where we left off. But it's not enough for either of us to make the effort to keep in touch. And I think that's the crucial point. Making the effort - either to spend time with people in the first place, or to stay in touch with them when they move on.

But at least we have the excuse now of being separated by a few tens of miles. There are other cases I could quote where the distance between buildings holding old colleagues is a few tens of yards, yet none of us makes an effort to meet up for lunch, a coffee, or a walk around the car park.

I'll probably come back to that another time, this whole topic actually, cos this is already a bit of a diatribe. And then there's the subject of making new friends, which has happened a lot recently and really reinforces the point about making the effort. Meanwhile, there's a piece of old anonymous Internet lore about friends that come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I've linked one example there, but if you Google "reason season friendship" you'll find hundreds more. Not sure it really illuminates anything except why people move in and out of our lives, and it certainly doesn't answer my initial question.

Mulling it over

Last year, our first mulled wine party was a little later than expected and fell foul of a couple of works' socials. This year, we were determined to be first, not only with the decorations but with the partying. Maybe it's a little early to be celebrating Christmas, but at least it is December.

Last night the wine was mulled in perfect time, the nibbles distributed, the conservatory flung wide and heated, the candles lit and the music playing (streaming via the XBox from my PC, of course) when the first guest came knocking at a polite ten past eight. It was our new neighbour, who had moved in only a few weeks ago with her daughter and grandson. She was followed by the rest of the street during the next couple of hours, with only one house not represented and two couples only half present. A pretty good showing and easily comparable with last year.

But this year, of course, we knew everyone a lot better, so the conversation was even more relaxed, the pace laid back and the evening another sterling success. Don't take my word for it, we were told as much by each departing guest.

The longer we're here, the more I love it. One thing though. I mustn't stay on mulled wine the whole evening next time.