I sometimes wonder if there is a pattern in my life. A slightly odd one...

I sometimes wonder if there is a pattern in my life. A slightly odd one.

On Saturday night I watch Crime Scene Investigation: New York, on Sunday night Waking the Dead – Part 1 (before that there was Garrow’s Law, Zen, and Sherlock), on Monday night Waking the Dead – Part 2, on Tuesday Crime Scene Investigation (the Las Vegas one), on Wednesday night NCIS Naval Criminal Investigations Service, on Thursday night a catch up on something like Morse or Lewis (preferably Lewis as I like the characters more in Lewis, they seem nicer people), and on Friday The Mentalist.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a morbid crime addicted weirdo who watches all the crime dramas on television. I read some of them and listen to them on the radio as well. Nevertheless, I am still not a morbid crime addicted weirdo.

I am a big fan of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle and Georges Simenon. This interest all started when I was younger and my sister had collections of Agatha Christie, Margery Alligham, Dorothy L Sayers, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I am not one of those people who try to work out the crime before the end of the book, I just enjoy the story that the author has created. Two of my favourite books are ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ and ‘The ABC Murders’ by Agatha Christie.

Over the last couple of years, I have taken to the stories of David Ashton and his wonderful Victorian creation, Inspector James McLevy of the Edinburgh Constabulary. If you are a fan of Victorian crime novels, and if you like Scottish based crime, why not combine the two and read a David Ashton novel. Start with “The Shadow of the Serpent”, it’s really very good.

Modern crime is fine, I would whole-heatedly recommend Iain Rankin and Val McDermid, but the classics of crime fiction still enthral and entertain. Anyway, enough of this rambling I am off to have some lunch. My wife has just prepared some mushrooms for me… at least I hope they are mushrooms…

The night started well and ended well

The weekend is over and my wife and I have now attended my niece’s birthday party and a good time was had by all.

A couple of hours before we were due to leave the house I decided what I was going to wear. I opened the wardrobe door, picked out a pair of trousers and a shirt, yeah, fine. I took out a pair of shoes, quickly wiped them, yeah, fine and then relaxed.

My wife said, “We have a couple of hours, I have plenty of time to sort my outfit out.” Ha! A mental snort of derision escaped from my brain. You have never been ready in less than two hours in all the years I have known you! No woman is capable of being ready in less than two hours! So as I watched an episode of Spaced (series 1 episode 7: Ends) written by the wonderful Jessica Stevenson and the very strange but wonderful Simon Pegg, my wife began her ‘attempt’ to be ready in less than two hours.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, 1 hour and 55 minutes later, my wife was ready. So we headed out to the venue.

The night started well and ended well. I have to say that quite a bit of alcohol was consumed, but only to the point where people were happy and not at the fighting stage. Jokes and funny stories told, and dancing was done. I was the drunken uncle who sat happily in the corner mumbling away but not to himself but to the other members of the family around the many tables spread about the spacious hall. I did not dance (my wife was very pleased by this. I do not ‘bust shapes’ on the dance floor, as previously mentioned my dancing is somewhat Thunderbird puppet based).

Before you think “Oh god he was the drunken uncle who bores people to death”, no I was not. Honestly, I was not. No, really I wasn’t. Nobody was boring everyone was entertaining, especially the birthday girl. There was a DJ with what can only be described as a wide variety of music, everything from Abba, The Scissor Sisters (“Dancing Queen” and “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’” can turn even the straightest man into a dance floor diva) to ZZ Top.

Drink. Music. Dancing. Drink. Music. Dancing. You get the picture, indeed many pictures were taking. All I will say is that it was a great night.

Anyway, I need to get back to important things, not that this is not important, but more important this. So until the next time, I will say hail and farewell.

The good, the bad and the (not so) ugly

I actually meant to post this on Saturday, but for one reason and other I never got round to it, but it is what I was thinking at the time so I am posting it now.

Tonight (Saturday 26^th March) is my nieces’ birthday party. She will be 30 years old, but does not look it. What happened to the year’s in-between her 21^st birthday party and this one?

Anyway, I have a decision to make. Do I go along and become the drunken uncle, who has all the dance moves of a Thunderbird puppet? On the other hand, do I go along and become the drunken uncle who sits happily in the corner mumbling away to himself, and receives dagger like stares from his wife due to the fact it is her turn to drive on this occasion?

The good, the bad and the (not so) ugly could actually describe up all those attending tonight’s get together or indeed the looks I will receive from his wife due to the fact it is  her turn to drive on this occasion. Either way, it is going to be a fun night. Drink. Dancing (either Thunderbird puppet based or not) and plenty of banter.

Next weekend I am going shooting with a couple of friends. Before you get all high and mighty, we shoot clay pigeons, not real pigeons or indeed real anything, except real clay pigeons.

We get together about three or four times a year to reduce the number of clay pigeons to a reasonable amount, and every time we go there, we fail. Don’t get me wrong we hit a lot, but not as many as we really should. Its fun, it is entertaining, it is a chance for good friends to get together and laugh at each other inability to hit a small flying saucer shaped object travelling at high speed.

We know HOW to do it and we have the means TO do it, so why cant we totally wipe out all of the clay pigeons that come our way? Well, it is just a bit of fun. Isn’t it? Well, for us yes, it is. We have been going clay pigeon shooting for about 5 years or so and it wasn’t until this year we decided that we should get a bit competitive. So we have made a tacky little trophy and who ever achieves the highest score at the end of the year gets the tacky little trophy and, wait for it, AND their meal paid for.

“A meal?” I hear you say ask. “What’s all this about a meal?” Oh, it is all very civilised. Before we go out blasting away, we have a cup of tea and a bun in the very pleasant clubhouse restaurant (they also cater for golfers). After we come back from our clay culling, we sit down to a proper meal. This proper meal usually consists of freshly made beef burgers, chipped potatoes and salad followed by some vintage cola (none of your sugar free nonsense, as we need to build up our strength after a strenuous morning ‘wasting’ clay pigeons).

Anyway, these events are in the future and this is now, so I will see what I can remember and perhaps add it to this blog, so until then, I say hail and farewell.

Why did I need so much science fiction in my life when I was younger?

Why did I need so much science fiction in my life when I was younger? Do not get me wrong, I still like science fiction, but certainly not as much as I use to. Did I need a massive escape from reality? Did I need something to strive for? Did I want to be an astronaut? Of course I did! I wanted to be an astronaut as much as any young lad who grew up with Apollo Saturn launches every few months and then Skylab.

As you get older, or at least as I got older that I realised that a lot of the stuff I watched, listened to and read was merely chaff, with the odd bit of wheat in the pile. I still like the older stuff of Arthur C Clarke (A Fall of Moondust, The Sentinel, 2001 A Space Odyssey) and Isaac Asimov (any of the robot stories), but I was ‘blinkered’ by TV and started getting into stuff that was frankly rubbish.

Science fiction when I was younger was best on radio and in book form. BBC radio decided to broadcast Douglas Adams serial ‘The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’ and then repeats of the classic 1950s ‘Journey into Space’. Oh what a time I had eyes closed, listening to the adventures of Ford Prefect and Andrew ‘Jet’ Morgan and seeing the vast journeys through time and space in my mind. The problem with TV science fiction was the special effects or rather the lack of ‘special’ in the effects. Some of them were very ropey indeed, making them laughable. The problem was that the stories were sometimes extremely good, hence the reason they worked better in radio and in book.

I now look at my collection of books and see less science fiction and more fiction, as well as history, travel and biography. I like books, I really do. When I have time, I lose myself in a great writer like Len Deighton (The Game Set and Match novels and their sequels Faith, Hope and Charity) or John Le Carré, especially the early Smiley novels (check out A Call for the Dead).

I look at my bookshelf and see collections of Ian Fleming (Bond from the 1950s novel is a very different man from Bond of the movies, at least until Daniel Craig took over). I see many books by Agatha Christie (the queen of crime), Chris Ryan, Andy McNab (a bit of gratuitous violence never goes a miss). Alistair MacLean (Guns of Navarone being the best), Frederick Forsyth (The Shepard, Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, etc), travel books by Michael Palin and Pete McCarthy as well as the aforementioned Len Deighton and John Le Carré.

I was going to apologise for getting a bit ‘blokey’ with the books that I have mentioned, but these are after all the random jottings of a random mind, and it is my mind, so there!

The other day I saw something that I found quite disturbing.

The other day I saw something that I found quite disturbing. I saw someone who I can only describe as ‘wide’ riding a bicycle. At first I wondered why they had saddlebags the same colour as the material they were wearing, then I realised it was not saddlebags, but flabby parts of their anatomy. I hope you all have that image now. I would hate to think I am the only person who is suffering.

I would also like to think that the sales person who sold the leggings that this bicycle riding individual was wearing received a severe talking to from his or her boss and possible emotional readjustment. I have no issues with people and their size, I never have, but I feel that a line really needs to be drawn when it comes to wearing either nylon or lycra, especially by cyclists, all cyclists whether they be wide or not wide! I have and never will be guilty of such a crime to fashion.

Why is it at this moment and over the last few months I have responded to several questions from family and friends with ‘I have absolutely no idea’? Why do I respond like this? Simply because I have absolutely no idea what the answers to their questions are. Even I am becoming bored with my answer and really need to start checking up on more things to give a decent answer in future.

The worrying thing about the information I have stored in my head is that a lot of it is just nonsense. It was the author, playwright and wit Oscar Wilde who said ‘It is a sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information’. Oscar, I beg to differ. In my opinion, there is too much. Trivia and useless information just drags you in and away from the important things in life. Due to the large amount of useless information I have stored in my head I cant think of anything important at the moment, so you see, I am right on this one.

I mean, okay I’m a man, but why do I need to know stuff about helicopters or when the Battle of Waterloo was? By the way, the big one with the twin engines is called a Chinook, the Battle of Waterloo took place in June 1815, and just in case you were wondering, Waterloo is in Belgium. See! Trivia!

What is the point of all this useless knowledge? If only the human brain was like the inside of a computer or indeed like a flash drive. Remove the un-necessary wasteful data and keep only essential information. Obviously, there is a need for a certain element of society to hang onto trivia. The world needs Google and Wikipedia as well as people like Stephen Fry, otherwise we would drown in our own boredom, but why do I need so much of this nonsense that fills my head?

Let me see if this works… right-click my brain… select item… select delete and… No! Its still there!

Stranger in a strange land

I woke very early this morning to a bit of a bright but breezy day, as time passed it developed into a slightly dull and windy morning, culminating into a grey blustery afternoon, but what a lovely day Monday was especially the afternoon.

It was bright, very little cloud in the sky although it was a bit windy, however that did not stop me from sitting outside enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. Little birds twittered and seagulls cawed in only the way seagulls do. The small garden trees to my left provided a natural windbreak. Ah, the peace and tranquillity of an early spring day.

On Monday, like every other day I checked emails looking to see what exciting jobs were out there for a young, upwardly mobile individual like me. Then I did household activities (I will not bore you with the trivia that revolves around the duster, furniture polish and vacuum cleaner), after I sat resting on a garden chair contemplating the meaning of life. This philosophical moment lasted for approximately 2 seconds until I realised I could do nothing about the state of the universe, after all, I am not Professor Brian Cox nor am I Dr Carl Sagan.

Therefore, I sat there eyes closed, with thoughts of golden beaches and lapping seawater drifting through the vast canyons of my mind. Thoughts of Spain drift in and out of my mind on a regular basis. I do not need to be ‘basking’ under a tepid, watery Scottish sun to think of Spain. Nevertheless, it helps.

Ah, Guardamar with its lovely beach and its lack of tourists. Guardamar beach tends to be a local beach for local people, but not in a creepy, League of Gentlemen kind of way. As far as I know there is no Spanish equivalent of Edward and Tubbs to scare the foreigners, but if I do encounter them, I will be sure to mention it.

For anyone who has never seen or heard of the seriously disturbed but creepily brilliant ‘League of Gentlemen’, those last comments will mean absolutely nothing at all. Just put it down to the ramblings of a pasty-skinned Scottish sunstroke victim who should not fall asleep outside on a warm day.

However, that was yesterday and today is today. I tend to find that even in my world, Tuesday follows Monday on a regular basis, except when I use to work night shifts, and everyday just seemed to be the same.

So what excitement filled my Tuesday? Well, to be perfectly honest, nothing. Oh did take my in-laws for the weekly shop, this was unusual in itself as this always occurs on a Thursday. I do not know if that constitutes a rip in the fabric of reality when something that trivial happens, but if a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world can power a wind farm in the Mull of Kintyre, anything is possible.

As I say Mull of Kintyre, thoughts of visits there spring into my head. There were many walks along the coast and across a sand bank only accessible at low tide to a little rocky island, these images flicker like an old film across the front of my mind.

Anyway, before I begin drifting into a world of weirdness and insanity due to the sun, I will say farewell. So, err, farewell.

Right here, right now

Sometime ago not in a galaxy far, far away, I started writing a blog.

The reason I started it was because a friend of mine thought that some of the anecdotes I recounted about what my friends and I got up to on hikes, hill climbs, and when we go and reduce the life expectancy of clay pigeons, sounded like fun. And, I must admit it was fun to write.

Then I realised that those events were few and far between. Surely my life was not just one large lump of boredom with a series of exciting bits in between? Well, yes it was. But that is what life is all about.

If I’m to be honest, I’m not quite sure why I have taken up the electronic pen and started doing it again. Maybe I need to get my mind into some sort of order. Maybe I need to practice my typing. Maybe all of that is an excuse for me to see exactly what I do with my life on a regular basis, and then realise I do nothing of note. I don’t know. Really I don’t.

Why do I want to get my mind into some sort of order? Well, if you ever saw my mind you wouldn’t have to ask that question. I have to say that over the last few weeks I have been (almost) the perfect husband at the weekends. As my good lady rests her weary head on the pillow on a Saturday and Sunday morning I am doing my best impression of a man who knows his way around a kitchen.

After almost 18 years of marriage I know what a frying pan and a bread-knife look like. And I am not afraid to use them! About 10 years ago the frying pan was replaced, where possible, with the grill. No longer do sausages drown in their own juices. No longer does the occasional piece of black pudding bob up and down in its own fat! No longer does white bread launch itself from the toaster!

I should point out that I actually like white bread. I feel it is impossible to make a decent Breville Toaster toasty with brown bread. If anyone has a good recipe for brown bread in a Breville Toaster that stops it falling apart when you try and remove it from the aforementioned Breville Toaster, could you please let me know. These last comments come from the dark recesses of the ‘single-man’ part of my brain. More of these may appear.

Another thing I have been doing is shaving properly at the weekends. What? I hear you gasp. A man shaving properly at the weekends! This is impossible! Well, I do. I am. Stop this incredulity at once. Monday to Friday I am clean shaven and almost respectable, but after a Friday morning I never looked at a razor until the alarm went off on a Monday morning, but that has all changed.

Don’t worry, I haven’t hit that point in my life where I am planning on buying a huge motorbike or starting to rant like Jeremy Clarkson (although he can be pretty funny sometime), I just feel that I need to give myself a bit of motivation and clear my mind of rubbish and nonsense. And that’s what I am doing. I feel that if I release these random thoughts every once in a while I will feel better, and already I do.

I’m not as good as Wendy who writes a great blog on the life of a mum who explains the issues surrounding autism http://www.savette.com/. It should be pointed out that unlike ignorance, bigotry and racism autism is not contagious. Read the blog and you will see that there are some really stupid people in the world.

Nor indeed is my life as interesting as SadieX http://www.sadiex.blogspot.com/. I say no more other than read the blog. If this had appeared before Helen Fielding wrote Bridget Jones, Rene Zellweger would have been playing a very different role.

Anyway, before I begin ranting about the noise that flock of geese passing overhead are making, I will say farewell until the next outpouring of loosely connected thoughts. Farewell.