Those wonderful moments

I just had a ludicrously silly conversation with Jem that ended in her doubled over in laughter and me silently feeling very pleased with myself for causing it, especially with such inane rubbish.

I’ll attempt to transcribe the conversation here, but take this as fair warning – you really did have to be there, it won’t be anywhere near as funny writtten out.

It all started with Jem sniffing my armpit (don’t ask) and informing me that I smelt good. The conversation then went as follows:

G: I always smell good. [in French accent] It’s all thanks to Pong de Light Guard*

J: *laughs*

G: [after thinking that “Pong de” sounds a bit like “Pomme de”, and again spoken in a French accent] I’m working on my next fragrance, it smells like potato. I call it “Pong de terre.”

J: *laughter* You’re a ‘nana.

G: [French] Ah, non, that fragrance isn’t ready yet. “Pong de peel.”

J: *laughter* Oh dear.

G: I should really have gone with “Paco Banane” for that one.

J: *guttural moans*

G: [back to French] I think you’d also really enjoy my pea-flavoured fragrance, “Petits Pong.”

J: OK, that’s enough now.

G: Or my bean-themed product, “Pong tout.”

J: Please stop.

Sometimes, it’s the little moments that really make you appreciate the person you’re with.

* Not sure why I said “Light Guard” instead of “Right Guard” here, but in the interests of accuracy I’ve not bothered to correct it.

Driving me up the wall

As regular followers of this blog will know, I love cars and I love driving. The feeling of freedom, of being able to go and do whatever I want in any part of the country (provided I have enough fuel and money to get there of course) coupled with the sheer fun of some roads is very addictive.

But, of course, as with all good things, there are many bad things that balance things out. So, this post is about some of my pet peeves on the road – some of them to do with other people’s driving skills, and some other niggles and thoughts!

Poster-children for the Carphone Warehouse

This seems to be something of a pandemic at the moment. When I’m out driving, or even when I’m walking through town, I will regularly see drivers take their eyes off the road and glance down at their lap – clearly with some sort of phone or other mobile device tucked down there that they’re texting on or something like that. I see this in all ages, but there’s a definite bias towards younger drivers – which is even more frightening as arguably they are the exact group of people that should be concentrating more.

Studies have regularly shown that the dangers of driving while using a mobile phone or other handheld device are very real. Unfortunately, it seems that the rampant cuts to police budgets (as well as an apparent indifference amongst many officers) means that the semi-recently introduced laws surrounding the use of hand-held devices in a car just aren’t being enforced, and people are obviously starting to wise up to that fact.

When you confront people about this, if you don’t get a torrent of abuse hurled back at you, they usually try and defend themselves with logic like, “it was only a short message” or “I had to call to let them know I was going to be late back”, neither of which are really good excuses. Some people like to state that it’s “no worse than talking to a passenger in the car”, which is clearly rubbish of course as passengers can work out when to shut the hell up based on road conditions or the body language of the driver.

Now, despite all my ranting here, I can’t plead complete innocence myself. I sometimes get my phone out of my pocket while driving, but it’s almost always to move it somewhere else so that I can use it as a sat-nav, or to make my leg more comfortable. I’ve certainly never had a phone call while holding the device, that’s what Bluetooth was invented for – although I’m even starting to turn myself off those calls, as it very clearly affects my concentration on the road ahead.

Touch screens in cars

Many modern cars now include some form of “infotainment” system in the dashboard, often containing a satellite navigation unit, stereo controls, car settings menus etc.

However, a rather disturbing trend is for many of them to not have physical buttons to operate them, but instead to use entirely touch-based input. This is a retrograde step for one simple reason – physical buttons can be memorised and their position “felt” without looking. With touch screens, you don’t get any of this physical feedback so you need to look at the screen to work out what button you’re about to press, which seems very dangerous!

The most extreme example of this in recent times is, in my opinion, the Tesla Model S – the interior of which is pictured above. A truly groundbreaking car in many respects – I think it’s the first production full-electric vehicle capable of going 200 miles on a single charge, and it’s certainly the first production EV to be able to sprint from 0-60mph in under 3 seconds.

But look at the size of that touch screen on the centre console. Sure, it might look impressive, but are you seriously telling me that this won’t be a distraction!

Tailgaters

A nice quick rant, this. I really hate people that glue themselves to my arse. I get this a surprising amount, especially in the Celica, which – looking as it does – probably goads people into thinking they can get me to race them.

Sod off, I’m not interested, and if you’d like to climb out of my rectal passage at the same time, then that’d do me just fine.

My usual method of dealing with this problem is simply to gradually slow down until they overtake – I’d rather have an idiot in front of me where I can keep an eye on them, than behind me where I can’t.

The “M6 TOLL CLEAR” sign

Regular travellers on the M40/M42 will be familiar with the sign that gives an update of the level of congestion on the M6 Toll. Which is to say, that it almost always seems to say “M6 TOLL CLEAR” and nothing else.

I don’t particularly have a problem with that, per se, but it would to my mind be far more useful for it to tell me how congested the M6 is, so that I can decide whether to use the toll road or not.

I’ve been reliably informed that in actual fact, the sign does warn of congestion on the M6 too, and that if the sign simply says “M6 TOLL CLEAR” then the main M6 is fairly clear too. But it still rubs me up the wrong way.

The “how dare you overtake” club

I’ve been driving for over 10 years now, and (touch wood) in all of that time I’ve never had a speeding ticket and never had an accident. Actually, that last bit isn’t strictly true, I was involved in an accident last year but it wasn’t my fault and there wasn’t anything I could have done to prevent it short of physically not being there, so I don’t count that.

I (usually) drive a fairly powerful car that is capable of overtaking most things with little fuss.

So it really grinds my gears when the person I’m overtaking takes umbrage at my manoeuvre and then proceeds to speed up – sometimes before I’ve completed the overtake – and shake their fists at me.

Perhaps if they weren’t going at 40mph in a 60mph limit in clear conditions, I wouldn’t have overtaken.

But the real pet peeve for me is when oncoming cars flash their lights at me after I’ve completed an overtake, as if to say “Watch out, you bloody maniac!” – nearly every time this happens, there’s a good 4-5 second gap between me pulling back on to my own side of the road and them going past me. I do recall one time when I cut it a little close, but in my defence the oncoming car was clearly travelling way in excess of the speed limit – something which only became obvious as they got closer to me.

And finally…

People that don’t seem to be able to park in a single space in a car park. They have to straddle the lines, because they’re inconsiderate prats.

Or they park ludicrously close to the white lines so that I have to climb out of my own car via the sunroof. Although to be fair, in some of these cases it’s quite possible that they had to park like that because of other prats who have subsequently driven off.

 

Kinetic Impatient Defenceless Symbiotes

At least, I assume that’s what KIDS are.

I’ve long held the opinion that, when it comes to children, I don’t want any. I’ve never been particularly keen on them, probably mainly because I didn’t really “get” them and consequently always felt really awkward around them.

My complete lack of desire to procreate destroyed two of my previous relationships, so it was with much trepidation that I embarked on my relationship with Jem, who – as some of you will know – has two children from her previous relationship.

If I went back in time a few years and told my past self that in The Year Of Our Lord 2015 I would be living with two children and my partner, I’m fairly sure that past self would have scoffed and then probably tried to have my current self sectioned or something like that, but there you go – I guess things change.

For my part, I realised immediately after meeting Jem that everything about her was just… right, and as she appeared to feel the same way about me, I didn’t think it justifiable to effectively stop our chances of mutual happiness just because her vagina had expunged a couple of mini-humans.

Speaking of those two, here they are, in a photo that I took of them at the weekend while they were running around playing at being superheroes. Oliver, on the left, was “Superman” (in a cape that for reasons unknown reminds me of the rocket from Button Moon) and Isabel was “Superlady, Queen of the Strawberries.”

I’ve been living with Jem for just over a couple of months now, and although admittedly the kids weren’t here for a lot of that time (during the summer holidays, they spend most of the week with their Dad and the weekends with us) I’m quite surprised by how quickly I’ve become accustomed to having the little ankle-biters around.

Dare I say it, I’m even becoming attached to them!

I suppose it helps enormously that they seem to like me and are apparently keen to spend time with Jem and I, so that’s good – it could have been very different I suppose, had they taken umbrage at my appearance on the scene.

I’m also definitely softening up as a result of the exposure to little people. I can genuinely see why (some) parents talk endlessly about their “little cherubs” and take any opportunity they can to whip a photo out of their purse/wallet to show anyone that will listen.

One of the things that I like most about Izzy and Olly is that they respond very well to being spoken to like adults – if that makes sense. I’ve always hated it when people do the whole “baby talk” thing (“cootchie-cootchie-coo” and all that rubbish) even though with other people’s kids I’ve found myself doing that almost without thinking. With these two, I can have a reasonably adult conversation with them and they will be able to respond back – they’re also of sound mind enough to ask me to explain something if they don’t understand what I’m rabbiting on about, which is refreshing.

Jem is a trooper too, and puts up with what is possibly the worst part of parenting – the temper tantrums. I don’t quite feel “ready” to become a proper “stepdad” to them as it were, and would feel really awkward disciplining the kids – they’re not mine to discipline, after all – so Jem has to deal with that side of things.

She’s clearly nuts though, as a couple of weeks ago Jem asked me to babysit for her on the Sunday morning while she went to Ellesmere to compete in a 10K race. To say I was terrified is something of an understatement…

What’s the worst that could happen?

Well, quite.

Jem had primed the kids already, telling them that I’d be looking after them and that they had to be good. Yeah, like that’d work.

I figured, with Jem’s agreement and blessing, that I could just shove a film on for them and they’d sit there and watch that. They love the Despicable Me films (as do most kids I imagine) so I put on Despicable Me 2* and left them to it.

Regrettably, this didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped – probably because they’d only just watched the film the previous weekend, so they got bored fairly quickly and started running around the house doing their own thing. Which, you know, I don’t have a problem with, but I was just a bit overwhelmed having to try and keep track of what they were doing.

So, I suggested we take a walk to the nearby park and they could have a play on the play area. They were very keen on this idea, so I dutifully got them into their shoes and coats, asked them if they needed the loo (both gave a resounding “Noooo!”) and then we set off.

Upon arrival at the park, the kids had a bit of a play on some of the play equipment and then decided to start making cakes for their imaginary family that they’d just created on the spot – which is another thing I like about these two. I guess this is the same for most children, but their imaginations are incredible – I don’t ever remember being as creative or imaginative when I was a child.

At some point, I heard a rather loud trickling sound and realised, to my horror, that Olly had had an accident and pee’d himself – not really his fault, he’s currently potty training and can still sometimes get a bit overexcited. I didn’t have much of a clue what to do, but figured I had two choices:

  1. Walk back home and get him changed into some fresh clothes
  2. Let him carry on rolling about in the grass etc. in the knowledge that he’d soon dry off (it was quite warm outside)

I chose number two. Jem later told me she would have gone for number one, and in hindsight I probably should have, but we’d pretty much only just got there so walking back home straight away seemed like a bit of a waste.

At least Olly hadn’t also chosen a number two for his accident – I’ve never had to deal with anything like that before and the concept still frightens me a little! It’s not even just kids either, I’m not hugely fond of dealing with that kind of thing in any shape or form – I used to have to let my Mum clean up the dog poop from the back garden when I was growing up etc.

Other than that, the rest of the morning passed by without incident – I even made the kids some lunch, how very adult of me! I then sat them down in front of The Trap Door until Jem got home.

The most interesting thing for me was that, even though I was terrified of this responsibility, I actually enjoyed it. I never thought I’d see myself type that, but I genuinely did. It’s really quite nice to be part of a family, and even though they’re not my kids, I do hope that I can become an intrinsic part of the family unit as time goes on.

* As a side note, one thing I’ve learned since starting to see Jem is that kids, when put in front of a film or TV show, will somehow manage to identify the one line in the dialogue that will annoy the hell out of any adults nearby when repeated ad infinitum, and then proceed to do just that. In the case of Despicable Me 2, this honour goes to this simple line, which is forever etched into my conscious (and probably subconscious too, by now): “LIPSTICK TAAAAAA-SERRRRRRRR!!!”

 

A trip down memory lane…

While compiling photos for my cat-post on Sunday, I realised I didn’t have any photos of my old cat Kipper so had to raid my parents’ photo albums.

In doing so, I found lots more photos from my childhood – although it also became rapidly clear to me that frankly no-one in my family was fit to hold a camera at the time, the number of badly composed photos or photos with crucial parts missing (either because the lens had been obscured by a fat finger, or by someone cutting someone’s head off in the photo) was ludicrously high.

Nevertheless, I managed to find photos of two occasions in my childhood which have always stuck in my mind.

Camper Van Explosion

I’m not exactly sure how old I was when this occurred, but I was at primary school. My school was situated on the street next to the one I grew up on, and was about 2 minutes walk away from my home, and as such I used to walk to and from school alone from quite an early age.

On this day, my brother Mike was waiting outside the school gates for me, and informed me that we couldn’t go home as the street had been evacuated due to an explosion a couple of doors down from our house.

I was old enough to understand what this meant, so I assume I was fairly far into the primary school system. We were allowed on our street though, we just had to stay as far away from the source of the explosion as possible.

Our next-door-neighbours but one owned a VW Camper. I don’t remember an awful lot about it, other than that I think it was green or blue.

Like most motorhomes, it had gas connections and could take gas cylinders to act as fuel for cookers and what-not. Perhaps this practice has stopped now and most run on electricity, I’m not sure, but this one certainly ran on gas.

It seems that the gas cylinders in this particular campervan weren’t 100% safe, for reasons unknown. I’m sure you can guess what happened next:

It does look like there might be some blue paint left visible there, so I guess I was right in my assumption.

Fun fact: On the left there was our immediate neighbour, Ken. Affectionately known as “Deaf Ken” to my brothers and I, as he always pretended not to hear you when you spoke to him. In later years, he grassed me up to my parents when, with a friend of mine, an air rifle and a can of deodorant, I inadvertently created a 30 ft high fireball in the back garden.

Anyway, the neighbours didn’t bother with a camper van after this incident. Probably for the best.

The holiday from hell

This should have been fun, and one of the highlights of my childhood. My first holiday abroad – to Majorca, in 1993. I was 9 years old, and eagerly waiting to see some of that Mediterranean sun.

We were staying in Peguera, and one of the beaches closest to our hotel looked like this:

Not an awful lot of sand there most of the time, just a bit when the tide went out. Still, many of the locals used to hang around this area and fish from that little pier/jetty (which, incidentally, I can’t see any health and safety official signing off on these days!)

Truth be told, the holiday was – for me at least – mostly uneventful. I played on the beaches, I swam in the sea. I remember metaphorically crapping myself upon leaving our apartment one day just as a huge thunderclap went off overhead, making me run like hell down to the bar near the photo above to my parents.

There was one major incident for me though, which I’ll come to shortly.

But first, you see that big long line of rocks on the photo above? My Dad was walking across those a couple of days in to the holiday, and somehow slipped. He fell in to the water, where he was promptly bitten/stung by what the local doctors referred to as a “sea eagle” – it stuck a load of spines in his arse basically.

He also sliced his feet open on the rocks as he went over, and had some miscellaneous cuts and bruises too. Hence this picture:

The red marks are not blood, they’re iodine or something like it that the doctors used to “mark” his injuries.

Dad then spent a couple of days laid up recovering, although that suited him down to the ground anyway!

Mum also managed to fall down a small hill and stub her big toe on a metal pole at the bottom of it, so she walked with a bit of a limp after that.

As for my incident? Well, see this photo:

See the boat? And the umbrellas in front of it? And the little “step” between them?

Well, on the last day of the holiday, a mere eight hours or so before we were supposed to be catching our flight home, I was running across the pier/jetty thing, across that little rocky step. Unfortunately for me, it was covered in seaweed, and I slipped over and went underwater – fully clothed.

That wasn’t the worst part though – there were people fishing off that rocky bit, and consequently as I went in the water and started flailing around like an idiot, panicking and trying to get to the surface, I managed to get myself tangled up in their fishing wire.

Fortunately, the sudden tugging on their fishing rods (that and the commotion, I imagine) alerted them to the fact that something wasn’t quite right, and some locals dived in and managed to rescue me. I didn’t lose consciousness or anything, so it could have been much worse, but it really did frighten the life out of me.

It’s a jolly good job that the weather that day was, as Paula Fisch puts it, “scorchio!” as the sun dried out all of my clothes in time to catch our flight.

I’d like to say the problems ended there, but I’d be lying.

My brother Mike picked us up from Manchester airport when we landed, and we were about halfway home (so a good hour or so into the journey from the airport) when I became aware that I couldn’t see anything, and I realised that I’d left my glasses on the plane.

Oh well, they were only NHS specials – quite possible that I did it deliberately to try and get some nicer looking ones…

Who wants to be a millionaire?

I would, certainly. But since I no longer play the lottery, and the topic of this post is a quiz show that isn’t the titular programme, I guess it’ll have to wait.

I’m sure those of you who follow me on Facebook and Twitter (all two of you, anyway) will have seen a plethora of posts turn up on those respective platforms about this, but this evening I (along with Jem and my three brothers) appeared on BBC2, taking on the might of the Eggheads.

You can watch the episode here, until the 5th October anyway.

If you don’t want to watch it, or the link’s broken because I’ve forgotten to remove it after the fact, here’s me in glorious Eggheadovision:

We travelled up to Glasgow in January this year to record the show, after auditioning a few months earlier and apparently wowing the judges enough with our mad quizzing skillz to secure a place in the series.

Now that the programme has aired, I can tell you more about how the day went. I will do it in the form of a Frequently Asked Questions section, which is handy because in the past 9 months I’ve had a lot of questions asked about it. Let’s start with the most frequent:

Q. Do you know when you’re on yet???

A. Yes, and it’s been and gone. If you missed it and can’t now get it on the link that is in the post, then don’t worry – you’re not missing much.

Q. Is CJ as smug in real life as he is on the telly? I’d really like to punch him in the face.

A. No, in person he is as nice as pie – although it seems somewhat odd that today is the day that revelations of him apparently killing a mugger have come to light. His smugness is, as it is for many TV personalities I imagine, probably just a character.

Or maybe he is actually that smug in real life, but he just hides it when fraternising with the “normals” – who knows? I liked him, anyway. But then, some people think I’m a bit smug. Hopefully none of those people want to punch me in the face, though.

Q. Do they tell you to faff around before getting to the answer, even if you know it?

A. No, quite the opposite. They go to some lengths to tell you that if you know the answer, just come straight out with it rather than try to pussy foot around coming up with some sort of justification for the answer. Of course, that didn’t stop my brother Mike, who dilly-dallied around a bit on a couple of questions.

Q. Did you win?

A. No. Still, never mind, eh? It was a good laugh and that’s all that matters – and it didn’t actually cost us anything to enter (the production company put us up for the night and paid our travel expenses and what not)

Q. Is Dermot Murnaghan as nice as he seems to be?

A. Can’t answer that one, Dermot no longer presents Eggheads – we were hosted by the (quite lovely) Jeremy Vine. Interesting that Tim Vine is his brother, they don’t look that much alike to me.

Q. What’s the recording like?

A. Surprisingly straightforward. I kind of imagined that it would be all “CUT!” and “ACTION!” (except in the reverse order, natch) of different parts that they would then edit together, but we recorded it in exactly the same order that it was shown. In fact, apart from general guff between bits of the recording, nothing really landed on the cutting room floor. The only exception was during Mike’s sudden death round. Judith and Mike battled it out for around 8 questions or so in the sudden death round, which I guess the producers felt went on a bit long so they trimmed it down a bit.

Q. How many episodes do they record in a day?

A. I seem to remember Jeremy and the Eggheads (good name for a band, that) saying that the day we were recording was quite unusual because they were recording five episodes. That’s a long work day, it probably took us around 2 hours to get everything recorded, not including time spent in makeup etc.

Q. How long did you spend in makeup?

A. About 10-15 minutes, although Jem took longer – not because she’s ugly or anything, but they seemed to want to “doll up” the female contestants. As someone who doesn’t wear make up usually, Jem wasn’t keen, but here she is:

Q. Would you do it again?

A. Absolutely, without question. It was a great day out, a great experience, and super good fun. It’s just a shame we didn’t win, but never mind, eh?

It’s Caturday! But on a Sunday!

This post is going to be a bit light on words, as I’m suffering from a relapse of the problems described in my post a couple of days ago (which was what prompted it) and, although I’m a bit better today, I’m still rather struggling!

So yes, Caturday. The Internet name for posting pictures of cats on a Saturday. Except it’s Sunday. Although possibly it isn’t in some far-flung corner of the world, so IT STILL COUNTS.

For most of my childhood, I didn’t have an awful lot of exposure to cats – we had a cat called Kipper when I was very young, but he/she died while I was still too young to really remember her so all I have to go on is this photo (and photos kept by my siblings)

Excuse the poor quality, it’s a scanned image from a very old photograph.

We then got a dog called Odie, who won’t feature in this post as he isn’t a cat. He is a dog though, but he won’t even fit.

My next “exposure” to cats was when I started dating a gal named, aptly enough, Kat (“hello” if you’re reading this!) – Kat had three cats – Bandit, Smoky and Sooty. I’ve not got any photos of Sooty handy, which is not surprising as she was a jet black cat and was therefore incredibly difficult to take a decent photo of.

But, here’s Bandit:

Handsome little bugger, isn’t he? Don’t let the exterior fool you, he was quite scratchy-scratchy! Never in a particularly aggressive manner, mind you.

Here’s Smoky, being a bit herp-derp:

Smoky seemed to be very attached to me and spent a lot of time hanging around me. I was gutted when the relationship ended and Kat took Smoky with her, but – you know, she was her cat, so I can’t really blame her!

Being in the same flat as the three cats made me realise how awesome cats are as pets. They’re fairly chilled, don’t need walking twice a day and (if you get the right one, or two or five thousand) are just as loyal and loving as dogs.

So, a few months after Kat moved out the loneliness got the better of me, and I got hold of Nutmeg, who had been used as a breeder up until then (she’s a pedigree British Shorthair) and I think she was just glad to get out of there, really!

Lots of photos of Nutters on this website, but here’s one of my favourites:

And so it stayed for a couple of years, just Nutmeg and I walking through the wasteland of life.

Then I met another gal, Alex. She had no cats of her own but had always grown up around them, and we decided to get Nutmeg a play mate. We made the mistake of getting a kitten, which essentially meant that old Nutmeg couldn’t keep up, and the new kitten (that we named Fenton) ran rings around her and it seemed Nutmeg didn’t enjoy her new friend being around at all. Here he is, though:

The relationship between Alex and I ended and we went our separate ways. I kept Nutters, of course, and Alex took Fenton. I was upset by this a bit at the time, but realise now that it was definitely for the best, Nutmeg really didn’t get on with him.

Shortly after, I met Jem. Another gal with three cats (there’s a pattern forming) – Crumble, Fudge and Hex. Crumble is a bit of a tart and loves a fuss, but now that Jem has started letting her cats outside, we barely see Crumble any more so typically I’ve not been able to get a photo of her.

Fudge is a very nervous cat but is slowly warming up to me – he even came and gave me a boop this morning while I lay in bed, unprecedented behaviour. It might have just been because he was hungry, but I choose to think not.

Hex is the most laid back and patient cat I have ever met. He will just lie there and take whatever fuss you give him, and short of throwing him across the room I can’t think of anything I could do that would make him get up and walk off. I wanted to get into my sleeping bag this morning (I often sit at my desk in the sleeping bag, as it keeps me warmer) but he was lying in it. I picked it up, thinking he’d move but no, he just fell right down into the bottom of the sleeping bag.

He would have stayed there too even with my feet next to him – he made no effort to climb out. I had to grab him out of it and put him back on the bed.

Fudge and Hex are like best buds, they spend most of their time curled up in each other’s paws. Take a look:

Fudge on the left and Hex on the right. Hex also ably demonstrating here why I have no good photos of Sooty.

Before I moved in with Jem, I did get a rescue cat in a bid to keep Nutmeg company again. A 5 year old tortoiseshell cat named Gizmo. Unfortunately though, Gizmo and Nutmeg really didn’t get on (it made Fenton look like the Pope) so I had to put Gizmo back into the rescue centre – but she’s found a happy home again now!

Fortunately, Nutmeg now seems to get on pretty well with all of Jem’s cats. There was quite a bit of hissing and head-bapping to begin with, but things seem to have settled down now and they can all share the same space without incident:

And that’s basically it – my cat history in a single post.

To end this post, have another photo of Fudge and Hex, this time in the middle of one of their play fights…

“Don’t listen to them Jeremy. You’re beautiful, and I love you.”

Freaky Eaters

Harry Hill, everyone’s favourite hipster* family comedian, used to regularly lampoon a TV show named Freaky Eaters during his Saturday evening entertainment show TV Burp.

The show (Freaky Eaters, not TV Burp) aired between 2007 and 2009 and each week followed the eating habits of people that were addicted to a particular type of food – crisps, chips, biscuits, chicken etc.

I can’t say I’ve ever been addicted to a particular type of food, but up until fairly recently I was an incredibly fussy eater and would steadfastly refuse to eat some of the most basic food types.

I’m reasonably sure that my food fussiness during my childhood stemmed from my Dad, who was (and still is) ludicrously fussy about the food that he eats. He’s not keen on foreign food at all (although I’m not sure if he’s ever actually tried it) so generally subsists on a diet of beef dinners. Nothing wrong with that, of course, you eat what you eat and it’s fairly nutritious!

(in case you’re reading, Dad, I don’t look back on my fussiness in a bad way, so don’t think that I “blame” you for anything!)

My brother Bob is also very fussy with his food, although he has improved in recent years. There’s a bit of a running joke in my family about Bob’s diet consisting entirely of meatballs and mashed potatoes – and they had to be specifically Campbells meatballs, from a can. I seem to remember reading ages ago that Campbells no longer exist, which is perhaps what spurred him on to widen his tastes.

So, what did I eat when I was a kid?

Well, apart from the usual Sunday roast dinners and Monday roast dinners (prepared on the Sunday, covered with clingfilm and then reheated in the microwave) I basically ate chips, sausages and burgers and not much else. I didn’t even really start eating burgers until fairly late on.

Even at school, instead of spending my lunch money on a decent lunch, I used to spend it at the first break time and buy six packs of salt and vinegar French Fries and munch those down in the 15 minute break, and then not really have much of a lunch.

Quite amazing really that I’ve always been tall and slender!

What didn’t I eat? Well, you name it, chances are I wouldn’t eat it. Bacon, eggs, cheese, most fruits, most vegetables, ham, curries, anything foreign, fish, rice, pasta, onions… I could go on.

And what changed?

I’m not quite sure exactly what it was that pushed me towards trying to change my tastes. I started working for Source when I was 20, and – just as it was in my family with Bob – it became something of a running joke whenever we went out for nights our or meals as a team that I wouldn’t eat anything more adventurous than fries and a burger.

At some point I can only assume I got sick of this, and decided to do something about it, and came up with an entirely new policy for myself – never outright reject a foodstuff, try it at least once. If you don’t like it, fair enough, but you can at least say you’ve tried it. I also added an additional “rule” – I have to regularly retry food items every 5 years or so to see if my tastebuds have changed.

This new policy has worked wonders, and I now regularly eat pretty much all of the things that I used to turn my nose up at.

I also now eat my steaks either medium-rare or rare, rather than well done. That was a gradual process, started since I entered into my relationship with Jem, but I can’t quite believe that I missed out on such goodness for so long.

image credit: demaria.nl

“Pretty much all?”

Yes, I’m not quite ready to claim the title of King Umami or anything. There are still certain foods that I still can’t stomach. The two main ones are eggs and cheese.

I try a fried egg every so often when we have a fry-up, and so far they’ve always seemed bland and tasteless (which I guess is kind of the point?) and the texture rubs me up the wrong way. But, I can at least eat bits of egg without retching now, so that’s progress. Mayonnaise can go jump off a cliff though.

The same goes for cheese, really. Time was I could not take it at all – one of my earliest memories is of primary school, back when I was 5 years old. We were doing a “blind taste test” – each child was blindfolded and then given a morsel of food that we had to try and then identify what it was.

I was about 8th in the queue, and the whole time I was waiting my turn I was thinking to myself, “please don’t give me cheese – please.” Of course, I put my morsel in my mouth and as soon as it hit my tongue I knew instantly that it was my nemesis and I reflexively spat it back out (apparently hitting my teacher in the face with it) and said “That’s cheese.”

I still can’t really eat it today. I can just about tolerate mozzarella on pizzas and parmesan grated over the top of pasta, but I’d really rather not and if I order a pizza (either at a restaurant or from the ASDA “build your own” counter) I’ll always order it sans fromage.

Other than those two (oh, and mushrooms – bloody evil things) I’ll eat pretty much whatever’s put in front of me these days, and I don’t even eat that many chips any more!

* OK, so he may not have a beard and he dresses rather… uniquely, but that crazy-oversized popped collar? Hipster before it was cool, man.

Perturbing and Painfully Persistent Posture Problems

Wind back the clock, if you will, to 1997.

It’s early morning, some time during the school term. I’m lying in bed, fast asleep, most likely dreaming about Louise Nurding or some other attractive female celebrity – hey, I’m 13, don’t judge.

Something interrupts my sleep. Pain. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I wake up with a start and attempt to locate the source.

I can’t move.

At least, not without sending shockwaves of pain that would probably register a solid 11 on the Richter scale if they were capable of doing so.

I try and move again. No dice.

All I can do is twist my neck and move my head, and even that causes some serious discomfort.

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, so I do the only thing that any sensible 13 year old would do in that situation – I scream bloody murder for my parents in the hope that they’ll burst in like knights in shining armour and rescue me from my bed-shaped prison.

Dad bursts in through the door to find out what’s up, and I explain as calmly as I can everything I’ve just described to you.

I end up essentially bed-ridden for a solid two days, staying off school (which was not something I ever did lightly) while my joints and muscles healed enough to let me move without cursing the God I don’t believe in.

That was my first experience of back problems, and ever since then I’ve experienced the occasional relapse.

So, what was it?

image credit: totaloffice.biz

Well, as I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out from that helpful image and the needlessly alliterative heading, it was essentially my spine being buggered, most likely from years of bad posture when sat at chairs and desks – a common symptom of high computer use.

My most painful relapse was when I was about 19 or 20 – it still wasn’t as bad as my original episode, but I decided to do something about it and ended up on a six month course of physiotherapy, referred by my GP.

It was during this physio process that I learned more about good posture, ergonomics and how to avoid slouching at my desk. After the physio came to a close, I went a good 5 or 6 years without any further trouble.

Unfortunately, I can only assume that my posture is getting worse again as the back problems are becoming more frequent.

Fat wallet syndrome

I also noticed a few years ago that, if I drove a long distance or sat in the same spot for a long time (an hour and a half or more) that by the time I stood up, my right leg was very difficult to “command” and ached like hell.

Worrying about sciatica and other conditions, I went to my GP who diagnosed me with “fat wallet syndrome.”

She explained that having a wallet in the back pocket of my trousers that I was then sitting on in the car was quite possibly restricting the flow of blood in the nerves around that region, which was basically stopping circulation to my leg and leading to the problems.

Her only recommendation to me was simple – either stop using wallets, or move it to another pocket.

I opted for the latter, moving it from my back pocket to my front pocket. It took a week or so to get used to not putting it in my back pocket automatically, but the problem immediately stopped and I’ve had no further issues with my legs since.

Well, not issues related to fat wallet syndrome at least. My chronic inability to tolerate alcohol has led to a few scrapes.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Since my early teenage years I have had a fascination with nuclear energy in all its forms – whether it be as a source of power, as a weapon (some may say that nuclear weapons are the greatest source of power there is – political power, of course) or as a science.

I can’t quite remember what it was that got me interested in it – if I had to guess, I’d put it down to one of two things:

  • Watching some sort of post apocalyptic film/TV show
  • Playing SimCity 2000 on my Amiga, and being fascinated by the Fusion power stations that are invented around the year 2050.

I also remember my brother Mike telling me in great detail about how cold fusion would change the world, and how we would be able to take a rocket from the Earth to the Moon and beyond with just a teaspoon’s worth of fuel.

Since then, I’ve taken quite a bit of my spare time researching nuclear science and many of its products, with an (un)healthy dose of post apocalyptica thrown in.

The Fallout Series

I’m not 100% sure how this passed me by for so long – perhaps because I was very late to the party when it came to getting my own home PC – but the Fallout series of video games didn’t really show up on my radar until the release of Fallout 3 in 2008.

The game immediately gripped me and the rich setting (if rather drab looking) of the Capitol Wasteland coupled with my own interest in the genre saw me through to the end and I loved every minute of it.

I wanted more so sought out the original games (well, Fallout 1 and 2 at least) and loved every minute of those too, although I did find some of the pop-culture references in Fallout 2 a little weary after a while.

Then Fallout: New Vegas arrived and blew Fallout 3 completely out of the water (although some of my pals prefer Fallout 3, these people are clearly wrong) and we of course have Fallout 4 coming in November – something I can’t wait for.

Threads

Not many people have heard of Threads, which is both a good and a bad thing. Threads is a made-for-TV movie, produced by the BBC in 1984. Styled very much as a "mockumentary" before they became a thing, it charted the life of two families from Sheffield, joined by a relationship between the son and daughter of each family.

To begin with, the film focuses mainly on their lives as they go about their day to day business. Ruth, the daughter, discovers she is pregnant so decides to marry her partner Jimmy. In the background of all of this, there are signs of rising tension between the US and the USSR, with the possibility of a nuclear exchange being touted.

Eventually, these tensions become too much to bear and attacks start. Sheffield is hit by a devastating nuclear weapon that destroys much of the city and takes many lives, and the movie shows how even the most well prepared Government could potentially be utterly ruined in hours by even a fairly small nuclear exchange.

The movie then moves on to showing the aftermath – from the days immediately after the attack up until 10 years after.

It is incredibly bleak and depressing – it’s definitely not a film you watch to cheer yourself up. But it’s also very compelling, and a stark reminder that these weapons exist and probably shouldn’t.

The Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock has appeared on many covers of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and is now maintained by them. In short, it keeps track of how close various experts feel that we, the human race, are to irrevocable disaster that would threaten civilisation as we know it.

The closer the clock is to midnight, the more in danger we are. It is currently at 23:57 – 3 minutes to midnight.

Originally it started out tracking the prospect of nuclear war and the devastation it would wreak on the human race, but in more recent times has changed to also incorporate the dangers of climate change and other global phenomena.

The closest we have ever been to midnight was 23:58. This was in 1953, when both the US and USSR tested thermonuclear weapons in the same year.

The furthest from midnight we’ve been was 23:43 – 17 minutes from midnight. This was in 1991, after both the US and the USSR signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the USSR collapsed, effectively ending the Cold War.

Stanislav Petrov

During the 1980s, Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the USSR’s Air Defence Force. On September 26, 1983 – two and a bit weeks after I was born – he was duty officer at the main command centre for the USSR’s Nuclear Early Warning System, Oko.

In the early hours of the morning, Oko reported that the US had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) targeted at the USSR. Petrov was faced with the ultimate dilemma – should he order a retaliatory nuclear strike, or not?

He reasoned, correctly, that the report was likely to be a computer error, as the system had already proven itself to be unreliable and the logic of the US launching just one missile did not stack up – if the US were to launch a first strike nuclear attack, they would launch many missiles in an attempt to destroy any means of launching a counter-attack. Shortly afterwards, four more missiles appeared on the system yet he still reasoned that this was not enough to be taken seriously.

Had the missile launches been real, Petrov’s decision to take no action would have meant that by the time the missiles could be positively verified on radar, the USSR would not have had enough time to counter and would likely have been devastated beyond imagination.

Of course, as it turned out, his decision was sound and his inaction most likely averted a worldwide catastrophe – had he launched a counter attack, the US would have detected it and considered it a first strike attack and the world as we know it would quite possibly have been obliterated.

Petrov was praised for his decision at the time, yet received no reward from his superiors and was reportedly disciplined for improper filing of paperwork relating to the incident – perhaps a thinly disguised punitive measure for not following procedure.

In 2004, Petrov’s actions were recognised by the Association of World Citizens, who gave him their World Citizen’s Award. He has since received plaudits from many other organisations – including the United Nations – and was interviewed for the 2014 documentary film, The Man Who Saved The World.

It’s chilling to think that, had Petrov been ill that day and his duties were being performed by someone else, that the world I live in today could have been destroyed before I barely had a chance to open my eyes.

And finally, a word about nuclear power…

People that know me would have expected me to write at length about the Chernobyl disaster here. I considered it, I even drafted a fairly long piece about the causes of the disaster and the effects that it has had on the area and the world as a whole.

So, why not include it?

Well, put simply, I’m a firm believer that the world’s energy crisis (i.e. the rapidly dwindling supply of fossil fuels and the apparent lack of investment in other renewable energy sources) would be solved quite easily by a larger uptake of nuclear power.

Unfortunately, disasters like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi have utterly destroyed the reputation of nuclear power in most people’s minds – and quite unfairly, in my opinion.

Nuclear power remains the safest form of power generation that we currently have. Statistically, coal power generation is responsible for 4,000 times as many deaths as nuclear power.

The thorny issue of the waste byproducts is often used as a negative to nuclear power. However, with current nuclear reactors, 90% of the waste byproducts can be recycled to be used as further fuel, and any remainder is routinely kept very safe and shielded until the radiation it gives off poses no threat.

Furthermore, with the ongoing research into other types of fuel such as thorium, the levels of radioactive waste produced can be reduced significantly.

The challenge is to try and change the public’s perception of nuclear power – which is not likely to be an easy task.

Brand loyalty

It’s day two, and rather than retreading on one of the usual subjects of my blog I thought I’d touch on something a bit different.

I’ve long considered myself to be fairly "brand agnostic" – i.e. not biased to any particular brand, and just interested in whichever does the job better. For example, I’ve never really given a toss about the "Mac vs. PC" argument – both computers are incredibly capable machines in their own rights, and the decision about which one to use really comes down to personal preference and familiarity rather than some misguided attempt at zealotry.

However, the more I’ve thought about my life, I’ve come to realise that I do actually have loyalty (or certainly something approaching it) to quite a few brands, which surprised me. Here are just a few of them:

BMW and Toyota

As someone who loves their cars, it would be silly of me not to open with this one. I’ve owned 22 cars since passing my test (soon to be 23) and a topic on the Pistonheads forum just the other day made me take stock of which car brands I’ve been "involved" with.

There’ve been 9 car brands in total. 8 of those 23 cars have been BMWs (9 if you include the MINI I owned, which is a BMW brand of course) and 5 of them have been Toyotas. The majority of the other car brands clock up just one car in my history.

Coca-Cola

I do love my soft drinks – never been much of an alcohol drinker to be honest with you, but soft drinks are definitely my cup of tea (no pun intended.)

I have an odd loyalty to Coca-Cola (and the numerous varieties of Coke) – which is strange as it’s not for taste reasons (I’m one of these apparent freaks that find Pepsi and Coke to taste the same)

Perhaps it’s the wider variety of flavours (Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke are my mainstays) or perhaps it’s just that my favourite colour is red – who knows?

Of course, even though my "bread and butter" soft drink is Coke, I do purchase and enjoy the occasional Fentimans cola (usually Cherry Tree Cola, to continue the theme) as a treat to myself.

Amiga

Confusingly, despite my statement above about not caring a jot about the Mac vs. PC argument, from circa. 1993/4 right up until 2003 I was a die-hard zealot of the Amiga.

Yes, towards the end of that I was very much aware that it was a dying platform and that other modern machines were far more capable, but I still clung on to hope that the Amiga would RISE FROM THE ASHES. It never happened.

Still, I wouldn’t be where I am today without the Amiga and the introduction that it (and the Spectrum, I guess) provided me into the world of programming.

Morrisons

Not sure this one really counts, as I expect the vast majority of people are brand loyal to a particular supermarket. My reasoning may be slightly different to most, though – in my case, it’s not out of proximity (certainly not now that I’ve moved about 20 miles away from the one that I usually frequent) but is more that my Mum is fiercely brand loyal to Morrisons, and as I used to do her shopping for her once a week I always ended up there.

Apple

Referring back to my earlier comment about choosing whichever option does the job best, I have an iPhone, and have owned one since the original iPhone was released. The only iPhone handsets that I’ve not owned at some point are the original iPhone 5 and the iPhone 5c. I currently have an iPhone 6, but have previously had a 6 Plus – for all of 2 days before I took it back as being simply too big even for my facehugger-like digits.

I also own an Apple Watch. I have previously owned Mac minis and MacBook Airs, although my current home computers are both non-Apple devices.

I’ve tried Android, and can’t get on with it. Yet conversely I hate Mac OS X with a passion (especially the godawful Finder, which isn’t much better than Windows Explorer but at least I can switch Windows Explorer out for Directory Opus)

I’m not a typical Apple zealot though, and I won’t spend hours (or even seconds) defending iOS in online arguments about which mobile operating system is best. I’m sure they’re both as good as each other, but I get on better with iOS and have a fair amount invested in the App Store ecosystem, so I can’t see me switching any time soon.

Plus, you know, I can pay for things with my wrist. That never ceases to raise a smile amongst checkout operators at Morrisons – which is perhaps another reason I’m so loyal…

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