Mp3 player

One of the best things about owning an mp3 player is walking down the street with the music blaring in your head and pretending that you’re in a movie.

Life’s so much better when you have your own personal soundtrack. Try it sometime, it’s ace.

It makes you feel like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, or one of the Simpsons in the countless movie, strutting in time to the music, parodies they do.



When you’re walking along the street, and you’re walking in time to the music, you feel like everyone should be looking at you and going “wow, look at that guy, he’s so cool”. Except of course nobody else can even hear the music let alone know you’re walking in time to it.

So you end up feeling like a bit of a bell end; a silly immature bell end. But it’s still fun.

So far I’ve only just done it to whatever song happens to be playing at the time. I might start tailoring it. Charlie Brooker recommends walking around your house in the dead of night with some Halloween music cranked up in your earphones. I might give that a try. Sounds like a right giggle*

Or perhaps put on the Benny Hill tune after a comedy misunderstanding has somehow led to a group of scantily clad nurses chasing me down the street.

Next time you’re walking down the street and a good song comes on your mp3 player, start strutting like Travolta.

I’d recommend Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand, Aisha by Death in Vegas and Can You Feel It by The Jackson Five.

*actually I imagine it would be quite scary, combining the creepy music with the inability to hear anything due to the headphones.

clicking next blog

I was just idly clicking "next blog" at the top of the screen to see what I saw when I came across this blog olhar de formiguinha

As far as I can tell, because I don't speak Portugese, she's some kind of designer with an eye for pretty things.

Anyway the thing that struck me was this



Now i don't know if she made this herself but I love it.

National no smoking day

So it's national no smoking day. Can they call it that? National no smoking day? Shouldn't it be called national quit smoking day?

It's such a ridiculous habit when you think about it too. You're burning some dried up leaves and paper and inhaling the smoke from it. What's that all about?

You wouldn't put some leaves and paper on a bonfire and then stand there breathing in the smoke.
Well maybe you would, what do I know?

It's an incredibly expensive habit, cigarettes range from £4 odd to just under £6.
It's extremely bad for your health, aside from cancer it causes a whole host of other horrendous diseases and ailments.
And it makes you stink really really badly.

Also it's not as cool as it used to be. Smoking used to make you look cool but that public image has changed and now it just makes you look like a bit of a muppet.

You don't see people smoking in films and on telly as much as you used to though there is the odd exception, like Dot Cotton in Eastenders but I think she gets away with it because it's an important part of her character.

All in all smoking's bad m'kay. It's bad for your health, bad for your pocket and bad for your image.

I still haven't managed to quit though.

Brand new Sony Walkman, £29.39

I’d decided I was going to be a bit more active with this blog and to get me started I was going to try and add something to it every day this week.

Except when I got up this morning I couldn’t think of anything to write!

I decided not to worry and to wait and see what the journey to work would bring.

Cue the most uneventful drive to work ever. The only thing of any interest that happened was I missed the end of Janet and John on Terry Wogan’s show because I was going through the Clyde tunnel but that’s hardly enough to warrant a blog post.

Not to worry, I thought, the morning will bring something of interest.

It didn’t.

But praise be to God/Buddha/Allah* delete as appropriate, lunch time brought a thin sliver of interest.

My work colleague Robert recently purchased an Italian phrase book (complete with audio cassette) as he’s going to Italy for a holiday.

This being not the 80’s he doesn’t own a cassette player of any type so we set out at lunch time to find one.

We tried Argos, ah good old Argos, they had two choices of personal cassette player, a Sony walkman or an Argos branded one.

The Argos branded one was a tenner and guaranteed to be rubbish. The Sony one was nearly £30!

How can you possibly charge £30 for a personal cassette player in this day and age.

Needless to say Argos got skipped.

We made our way along the High Street and found a homewares shop. We went inside and asked the guy in there if they had any cassette players.

The guy said “Any what?”

“Cassette players? Like a Sony Walkman or something?”

“Pffft, no!”

That was that idea scoofed then, the cheeky get.

Two shops further down though he managed to get one. Ten quid for a decent looking personal cassette player and it’s got a radio! Though I was a bit upset it didn’t have the headphones with the orange sponge.



Take that Argos and cheeky homeware guy!

Slumdog Millionaire

I went to see slumdog millionaire on Saturday.

It was really good, a very enjoyable film.

The two young boys and girl at the start who were playing the characters as kids were fantastic; they were worth the ticket price alone.

The night started for me and my wife with us dropping the kids off at my Mum’s house. That went smoothly as the kids love visiting their Gran.

We got to the cinema a few minutes before the film was due to start, we both got nachos with cheese and an enormous bucket of Pepsi.

We went in to get our seats; there weren’t many people there, about a dozen or so couples dotted around the place.

We took our seats and settled in; just before the film started two ladies came in and sat in the seats directly in front of us. My wife and I looked at each other in amazement as if to say “out of the entire nearly empty cinema why did they choose to sit right in front of us?” but as they were both quite short we just ignored them.

The film went by at a decent pace using that back and forth flashback style that Danny Boyle uses to good effect.

I won’t say anything about the film so as not to spoil it for anybody except for this, the guy playing the host of the quiz show couldn’t say millionaire. He pronounced it millinaire, which made me think he was saying “who wants to be a milliner” which is a different game show altogether!

Slumdog Milliner: the story of a young man who fights his way out of poverty to become a world famous hat designer.

Apart from that the film was awesome and I’d highly recommend it.

Once the film was over we went to my Mum’s to pick up the kids. They’d had a great night and didn’t want to come home. This point was made apparent when my son (who is 4) said to his Gran “Gran, can I stay here?” she replied, “Why do you want to stay here?” and with a contemptuous glance over his shoulder at us he replied “I don’t like that family”!

Kids eh?

Pigeons

I was outside having a break, absent mindedly watching some pigeons.

There was a male pigeon with his chest all puffed up and his tail all fanned out doing his wee dance and there was a female pigeon doing her best to pretend he wasn't there. She was doing that thing that female pigeons do in that situation, not flying away but keeping just a couple of steps out reach (why do they do that? why don't they just fly away?).

This was when I noticed the third pigeon.

There's always a third pigeon, slightly apart from the other two but keeping up with proceedings.

What's this pigeon's role in the dance?

Is it a male pigeon, shouting encouragement to his buddy
"Come on George! Do that thing with your tail! The ladies love that!"
or
waiting patiently for his turn,
or
maybe he's trying to cut in but he just can't get close enough
"excuse me...pardon me...may I...if I could just...".

Maybe it's a female pigeon,
she could be saying
"Come on Shirley, this guys giving me the creeps"
or
"Shirley! Either dance with the guy or don't! Stop leading him on!".

Or maybe that third pigeon's just a bit creepy. Maybe that third pigeon is some kind of avian voyeur.

Unless I learn to speak pigeon I'll never know.

It's been a while

I've not added anything to the blog in a quite a while.
It's over a year since I got married and I now have a daughter Lucy.
Lucy is 8 months old, she'll be one in May and Sam has just turned four.

Matrimony

Well, I finally done it!
I finally got married.
The 31st of August was the big day for me. Despite all my fears and worries the whole day went by without a hitch.
Just!
My mum, who was also bringing my sister who was one of my witnesses, got lost on the way. The ceremony was due to start at 1:30 and she turned up at 1:29.
The registrar told me that if they didn't make it on time I would have to find another witness!
They turned up just in time and from that point on the day sailed by effortlessly.

We had a great time and everybody really enjoyed themselves. My new wife looked absolutely stunning and the boys looked so smart in their kilts.

Mind you as good a day as it was i really wouldn't fancy doing it again!

Golf

I played a round of golf on Friday with my 3 uncles and 3 of my cousins.
I've been playing golf since I was young, probably about 6 or 7. I hadn't played a full proper round for quite a few years mind you cos none of my friends are into golf, but I wasn't too bad as a youngster and I go to the driving range now and again.
However, I was totally gash, I mean I was really really rubbish.
The par for the course is 71 i hit a 111. That's 40 over par.
40 over!!!

Turns out my driving is woeful. Every drive I hit ended up in the trees or in a burn or in some bushes or anywhere apart from the fairway.

My irons and chipping shots were ok but then when it came to putting I went back to rubbish again!

But never mind, that doesn't matter cos I had a good day out and we all had a good laugh, especially when my cousin forgot to bring a change of shoes and had to go into the club house in his socks.

Whoever said golf is a waste of a good walk wasn't far off the mark.

Blood Donor

I gave blood last Wednesday.
It was something I'd always wanted to do but I'd just never got round to it.
When I saw the poster up in my work I signed up for it.
I got to the blood truck thing and waited for about an hour in the queue. The people running the truck couldn't have been nicer mind you. I got the the little thumb prick test which made me jump!
Then I got taken to one of the bed things and told to lie down. All the medical gubbins was set up and we were off!
A mere 5 minutes later and I was finished. The lady took all the tubes and stuff away and gave me a bit of cotton wool to hold on to my arm.
"Lie there for 5 minutes and then you can go." she said.
5 minutes passed, when she came back she asked me if I was ok as she took away my pillow, turned the fan on and made me raise my knees.
I felt absolutely fine but she said I was really pale. After 5 minutes she got me to sit up, then 5 minutes later again she told me to lie back down, another 5 minutes I was to sit up, another 5 minutes later I had to lie back down. This happened a few more times, all the while I felt totally fine though.
Eventually they let me go, I got made to drink a load of juice and eat a chocolate biscuit first though (they don't do tea any more, caffeine's bad for you apparently). I got back to the office and sat at my desk, ten minutes later it hit me. I felt like my head was full of cotton wool, I was dizzy and hot and just felt weird. I went home and spent the rest of the night flat on my back.

I've done it once but I shan't be doing it again!