Adventures in the new forest 06-09-09

Hayley and I have been in the new forest this weekend, camping in a little pop up tent. Things started in a unpromising manner last week, when I entrusted her with the responsibility to select and book the campsite. Soon after this she forwarded to me the confirmatory email, stating quite blatantly in bold that the campsite she had chosen had no facilities, but did welcome dogs (I hate dogs). When interrogated, she revealed that she had not actually bothered to look at the details of each campsite, but had just booked the one with the nicest name. She’s a simple girl. She did however manage to highlight in bold red text for me the detail about dogs being welcome. Very thoughtful.
Fortunately we managed to change the booking, to the disappointment of many of my colleagues and in the event it had lovely showers, thanks Dan Bunder for showing such concern last week. The only problem was that this campsite also welcomed dogs, and in fact boasted of ‘Dog Showers’, something I cannot picture (how would the dog operate the shower?). As we approached the wild woods where the campsite was meant to be there seemed to be nobody about, and I became concerned that the site was being occupied by hostile packs of wild hounds, enjoying the hospitality on offer.
We sped down there on Friday night, stopping only to buy some crap music (RnB hits or some such, with shiny people on a beach on the cover) and some fuel. In the petrol station was a guy who said he’d taken a wrong turn, and how could he get to Exeter? Turn right and carry on about 300 miles, muppet.
Arriving was a relief in itself, for Hayley drives a mini as if she’s taking part in the Italian Job. Her solution to any adversity is greater speed. Can’t see what’s ahead? Accelerate, so that it comes into view more quickly. Approaching a roundabout and suddenly realise you don’t have time to slow down? Just speed up a bit, and try to jump it. She almost killed me at Cressex last week, heading the wrong way around a major roundabout in the wet before shuddering to a halt in front a green light.
Handily she has a pop up tent, which meant we could build it in a few minutes. We did have to drive around in total darkness for a while trying to find a space at least 10 yards from anyone else, without any puddles or haunted woodland. Our drunkenness and ipod speakers were sure to upset those nearby.
Then we drank a bottle of wine each, as I tackled the job of plugging the gaping hole on one side of the tent, which I managed to do with 2 blue and white plastic bags, although it did look a bit like a trapped dolphin. We seemed to have major condensation inside the tent, which I suspect can be blamed on there being something wrong with Hayley’s breathing. On the second night she added to the internal moisture content by knocking over a can of stella, which poured beer under all the bedding. She tried her best to pick it up quickly but then burst out laughing and couldn’t reach it, so the rest poured out as well. Reach for it Hayley! Just pick it up as soon as you can! There’s a clever girl. Oh, too late.
On Saturday we were very excited to be able to visit Paultons Theme Park, no apostrophe, and apparently no theme either, unless the theme is ‘Pauls’, and I don’t think it is (I would know). We tried hard to find a good sign to photograph me in front of the ‘ton’ and make ‘Paul s Park’, but they weren’t really playing along.
This is the biggest theme park in the new forest, that’ll be ‘Only’ then, and boasts over 50 attractions – although most of them are just a shed with some totally irrelevant, worn sign on the front proclaiming something incredible to be inside, such as ‘Magic Carpet’ or ‘Digger Ride’, or a bloke wielding a stuffed animal in a mildly threatening manner.
We headed immediately to the ‘Cobra’ the most fearsome rollercoaster on site, rising to a height of some 10 yards possibly before plunging terrifyingly into a sequence of turns and loosely-bolted bits of track. To be fair it was quite scary, but not necessarily in the way intended, more the shambolic construction of the track.
We managed to resist going on the log flume, which went round in basically a square route, and the flying frog, which like all the roller coasters, disappeared into a shed for a short section. I think Paultons must have done a deal on about 300 sheds from Wickes.
There were also go-karts, on a course described creatively as ‘a classic oval’. Nearby was the swamp of ‘grunting dinosaurs’ I had been so looking forward to, but the grunting was not what I had hoped for. There was a fairly generic loud roaring noise on repeat, that I suppose was ascribed to all the dinosaurs simultaneously.
At this point we studied the map looking for anything to do that was not entirely lame. Our attention was drawn to ‘Wizard Percy and the Lost Dragon of Paultons’. Wizard Percy is just a man dressed as an Owl, albeit with a face that looks suspiciously like Nemo. Later in the shop there were hundreds of unsold Wizard Percys available. It got me thinking that in a development oversight the owners must have suddenly realised they had no mascot and no money left, and come up with the idea of buying up a huge quantity of cheap faulty yellow Nemo faces, and wondering what kind of body to stick them onto – and coming up with the idea of Percy the Wizard/Owl.
The Lost dragon of Paultons Park is not a man dressed as a dragon, as might be expected, but for some reason a man dressed as a knight, holding a blue toy dragon about the size of a cat, with a terrified look on its face. Check him out here:
http://www.paultonspark.co.uk/2009/ridesattractions/attractionsall.html
Further merriment followed at the Wind in the Willows attraction, a big shed with a bunch of slowly rotating woodland mammals inside. Some of them looked quite unsettling and whoever knocked that place together must have been really high. Nearby was the magic forest, which Hayley was very excited about, but it was just another shed. Before going in I was secretly hoping it would be an even more weird woodland experience dreamed up to use up the leftover moles and badgers from Wind in the Willows, but inside were a load of strange nursery rhyme scenes, like 3 men in a tub and a woman living in a shoe.
We had a go on ‘Jumping Bean’, a ride that goes up then down, etc. This actually made me feel quite sick. I was also a bit troubled by the simplistic naming used on many rides. Here are some examples: Rabbit Ride; Ladybird Ride; Percy’s Bouncer(?); Penguins. Genius. ‘Penguins’ surprisingly featured a number of penguins in a pool. They were being fed fish. Another of the rides was a pair of tractors, making agonising progress around a circular track. The name of this was Trekking tractors.
Underneath the ‘Jumping Bean’ was the tagline “It’s a Hoot! Hoot!” I don’t get this.
Here’s a better name: Meerkat Manor. It was a shed with a meerkat sat thoughtfully outside – there was no apparent door to enable the meerkat to enter his manor though.
Incidentally, visiting Paultons gave me the idea for a new theme park – Single Mum Land. It would feature rides like “The Double Buggy of Doom”.
At this point we cut our losses and turned our attention to obtaining a disposable barbecue and some food. We eventually got these at a Morrisons store, no apostrophe, along with other camping essentials like beer and a magazine. On the way back we stopped in our town of Lyndhurst to look for things like tongs, a blanket, possibly some cutlery. Brilliantly there was a camping shop, but it had nothing useful, only daft contraptions like “Ipod Chairs”. I bought 2 forks. This was the first time I have ever bought 2 forks.
There was also an array of nice cars and a Ferrari showroom, where Hayley got a little bit inappropriately aroused, as she did over a Porsche parked at Morrisons too. We did manage to buy a blanket in Budgens, in a fetching burgundy colour.
Then we made our way back to begin the barbecue.
Barbecues possibly were not invented with me and Hayley in mind. I have the common sense of an 8-year old and Hayley is not exactly the holder of a PhD. They told us to elevate the disposable barbecue off the ground, so I positioned it on top of the cardboard box it came in, on top of the rug. What’s remarkable is that everything didn’t go up in smoke sooner. We managed to cook the burgers without incident, except for Hayley not knowing where my 2 forks were, and hence trying to flip the burgers with a Pringles lid.
Then on went the raw chicken pieces, Hayley using the same forks, and licking them clean. A few minutes later I became aware of a thickening of the pillar of smoke and a slight glow around the base of the cardboard, which rapidly spread and engulfed the box in flame. My reaction was one of panic, as I assumed the whole blanket and tent were about to burn down. ‘This is becoming a situation’ I remarked to Hayley, who helpfully burst out laughing. I had already burnt myself twice on the barbecue so I had to use wet wipes to pick it up and cast it away onto the grass. Fortunately the rug was melted in a very neat hole, but evidently not very combustible and the fire went out pretty quick. This meant we had a nice red cape, and I put it on the next morning to try it out for size.
We just about managed to cook half the chicken. Hayley asked me if we should leave out the rest for the wild horses to pick at.
We went to sleep at about 8pm. Staggeringly uncomfortable, at one point I was awoken by Hayley coughing straight into my face from about 3 inches.
On Sunday we packed up, which took ages because those pop up tents are a bit tricky to fold. Eventually a young lady on reception sort of helped, and we drove to Beaulieu, “Bewley”, a country estate and museum of motoring. If Paultons was full of children, this place seemed at times like a rally for personal mobility vehicles. The motor museum was pretty interesting, featuring some old cars and some of the land speed record cars. It also had some of the vehicles used in the James Bond films. There was a little exhibition on Top Gear and some of the modified cars they have had on the show.
Running around Beaulieu is one of the most pointless monorails I have come across. It goes between 2 stations about 400 yards apart, and potentially saves you about 20 seconds compared to walking. It might be argued that it enables those of limited mobility to get around quickly – until you realise the station is at the top of 2 flights of steps. The train itself is rickety and appears to be rather unsafe – it shut down for half an hour today for “testing” – and the track looks like it’s made of cereal boxes and bobbins. But then, are not all monorails pointless, almost by definition?
Elsewhere was Beaulieu Palace house and gardens. This was worth seeing, although unbelievably Hayley walked in, went straight to the visitor book and wrote ‘This place smells funny’ – and put my name first. She also had a quick go on the piano which had ‘Please do not touch’ written on it.
There were some interesting items in there, such as a kitchen and pantry with a lot of bells on the wall, one for each room.
There’s also a ruined abbey, where Hayley took a picture of the chives.
Another feature I disapproved of was the ‘Dog Waiting Area’. This is ridiculous – it featured a wall, some bowls and some chains, rather like a medieval dungeon. I cannot imagine any dogs, hateful things, wandering around Beaulieu and thinking to themselves, ‘I need somewhere to wait an indefinite period of time but I can’t abide these ghastly human waiting areas… oh look, a Dog Waiting Area, I shall chain myself up at once and behave impeccably.’
And then we drove home, and I’m still alive.
I still wonder at the sanity of these people who have perfectly good homes, but choose to pack up hideous specialist camping clothes and drive into the woods to sleep in a small bag with some other people. For a couple of days it’s fun, but no more than that.
To be fair our tent was unusually small. Sat in it, in one of the photos I look like I've just arrived from space in some kind of interstellar egg.

On canine intellect and high fiving 20-08-09

I am in Glasgow Airport. Suffice to say, I won’t be coming here for my honeymoon.
The Lockerbie bomber is coming through here shortly on his way home to Libya, so there are several policemen around and a police dog, I hate dogs, which is of the wrong breed I think, and on the side of the dog it says “Please don’t distract me”. I find this hilarious on a number of levels.
For one thing, the use of the word “me” implies that they think someone, somewhere might be stupid enough to believe that the dog itself wrote this message. Ridiculous! I suppose this means that if it just stoically said “Please do not distract this horrid, vicious hound from its godforsaken calling” they think we would be less emotionally affected by it. I also like the idea of distracting dogs from their work in general, presumably with some kind of high-tempo piano tune or tap-dancing routine, which is something that wouldn’t even have occurred to me had there not been an explicit instruction on the side of the dog telling me not to distract it.
In the event they have only aroused in me a determination to somehow distract the dog from its unspecified task and thus slightly reduce the efficiency of the universe.
There’s also a small and useless football store leaning against a wall, featuring lots of Celtic gear but only in a yellow and black bee-like design.
My dad used to keep bees, large numbers of them, in the orchard. They made honey. Then they all left. The daft white masked spacesuit has hung unused on a hook ever since.
I went home last weekend. My sister Cathy and her husband were there, back from Sydney where they live, and also their child names ‘Noah’ who is very small indeed. I will write more on this topic later.
Specifically I am in Frankie and Benny’s and I noticed that my pizza was burnt underneath, quite a lot, to the point that I was forced to take the moral high ground, assure them (when asked) that my food was fine, scrape off the topping and eat it, then turn over the burnt base and display it to the world. I still didn’t get a free dessert, although they did give me a £5 voucher off my next visit, which was rather presumptuous of them. Now they are looking at me funnily, as though I should have left before now.
I have just left and sat somewhere else.
Things to do in a lift when everyone’s being uncomfortably quiet and you’re Paul Harland: half-suppress a giggle while looking at the ceiling, look anywhere but other people’s eyes, pull out one’s blackberry and perform flicking stunts, don’t drop blackberry because the lift might stop just when you’re bending down to pick it up, don’t mention the weather in post-ironic tones, don’t stare back at the small child staring at you, don’t ‘beep’ in anticipation of lift beeping, don’t bruno oneself in the narrow side-mirror, do completely ignore any attempt by others to initiate conversation, thus maximising their subsequent discomfort, do maximise female’s discomfort by starting out facing the door, but then halfway down turn around so that you are face to face with her, do not under any circumstances do jazz hands or elbow-down break dancing.
Last night I stayed on floor 9 of the Jurys Inn, no apostrophe there because they are muppets.
I dislike dogs. I also dislike high-fiving, though less than dogs.
High fiving is a ridiculous activity that leaves all involved feeling uncomfortable and slightly ashamed. It is designed to occur in the aftermath of some sporting achievement or other small victory, but to me it never feels a remotely sensible thing to do. If I have potted a ball in an inconsequential game of pool, making the short but painful journey around the table to high-five my partner seems a pointless and totally unrewarding detour, culminating in a gentle and somewhat gay hand-slap. As my hand rises to engage in a high-five I am a mixture of shame, self-consciousness and unwillingness. I suppose it does not fit with my macho image. I invariably need to be told to high-five, by someone enthusiastically saying ‘High-five!’, which appears to disprove any spontaneity that may be imagined to exist. This is coercion.
On the other hand, were I to score a winning goal in the world netball final, high-fiving would be totally below my aspirations by way of celebration. I would most likely be engaging in some vigorous hugging with my team mates, not camply high-fiving them so that our chests don’t quite meet.
The other thing about high-fiving is that it’s very easy to miss, creating a limp and regrettable tap, possibly involving nail-jabbing and pain, such that the entire objective, namely generation of a loud clapping sound, is lost.
I am now back in High Wycombe. I had to repeat the name of this place to everyone I met in Scotland. Next time I may just say London. On Saturday is an intriguing ‘Sri Lankan’ day on the Mead, a park near here, apparently consisting of cricket and curry, neatly distilling any simplistic stereotypes we might have of Sri Lankan culture. I am looking forward to this.
I have set up a small sideline business dealing in small pots of body lotion nicked from hotels. Contact me for prices.

Harry Potter and the Breasts of Pigeon 06-08-09

Today I am staying at the Benefield Wheatsheaf. This is a pub in Cambridgeshire or thereabouts, noted for good food and hot waitresses – a different one for each course. I like the one with dark hair who talks in very complete sentences. I am fascinated by the way it is impossible to get her to stumble on her words, or begin a sentence halfway through like normal people do (even if I accidentally flick carrot from my cutlery). For her it is a complete sentence or nothing. Sometimes she realises in mid-sentence that the current sentence is no longer entirely relevant and that she needs to switch to a different sentence. This does not trouble her – she calmly completes the obsolete sentence, pauses and then gets on with the more appropriate one. I admire this. I don’t know her name.
Cambridgeshire is a simple place, that doesn’t seem to have any hills or weather.
Tonight I dined on pigeon, which is so small you have to have 2, followed by venison, cooked medium apparently, and 1 beer and 1 glass of wine no.22.
I am now 27 years old. This is 3 cubed, or for a graphic representation of my age, you can picture the little boxes in a Rubik’s cube. It makes me feel a bit old.
I had a birthday recently, which lasted for about a week, and revealed what I have been missing by not having any birthdays for about 12 years. First we went to London for a school disco, which was in a school and didn’t have air conditioning. Everyone enjoyed this greatly but I for one can’t remember much after we got onto the minibus to London, and judging by the photos I just spent the night grinning at anyone I recognised and trying to unbutton my shirt. One girl made the mistake of trying to steal my hat, an orange golf visor, very appropriate to the theme. I have had issues in the past with hat theft so my policy is zero tolerance, and this takes the form of throwing myself angrily upon the thief and pummelling them until I manage to retrieve the hat, which is not a pretty sight when I am drunk and the thief is female.
There was a bit of innocently intentioned homoeroticism with Carlos, which no one is allowed to talk about because his family back in brazil might come and kill me for scarring him. So I’ll just mention that.
We had badges with my fictitious school St Pauls and little ‘Most likely to…’ badges made for us by Gem, not to mention a cake. Vijay dressed up as a headmaster and gave me a ukulele.
This week I saw Harry Potter and the Something of Somethings at the cinema with Linda, my flatmate. Not having read many of the books, I had no idea what was going on, except it featured a lot of odd-looking adults dressing up as children. There was no apparent story linking the scenes together. I do think though that Emma Watson is hot.
I should also make a note here that this week I drove past a dead seal by the side of the road in Wiltshire. I guess this is something to do with Stonehenge.
I would guess that JK Rowling looks back on her decision to call the headmaster Dumbledore with embarrassment, given that it is such a daft name. When she wrote the first book she presumably thought she could get away with silly names and it was only when the books became popular and intelligent people started reading them that she realised she had made a massive mistake giving such a central character such a daft name. It really grates when Harry or some other loser is saying some otherwise quite sharp sentence but then has to put ‘Dumbledore’ in it, as if he is talking down to a 5 year old child.
Last week we went to London as part of the grand plan to do more spontaneous stuff. This involved driving to Wandsworth where there was a little pub doing a music session performed by the ‘2nd hottest guy in the world’ apparently. He said I looked a bit like Jason Mraz. Is this a good thing? It can’t be easy when your entire life is a spelling mistake.
The other thing I did for my birthday was buy cakes for people in the office. This was well received and I didn’t know but when one does this one receives numerous best wishes emails, and lots of people come up and shake one’s hand. I tried to accommodate numerous interests by offering muffins, flapjack, animal shaped biscuits and other stuff. Not many people are into animal shaped biscuits, I discovered. I also bought in some weight watchers cakes. I bet not many IFS people do that.

Perils of misheard lyrics 13-07-09

Today I welcome Hayley Clark to the creative side of Live Blog. Welcome to Hayley Clark; may your blogging be as colourful as the rest of your interesting life.
I went to the gym this evening and I enjoyed the first bit in which I ran 3km. But then I didn’t like the last bit, in which there were lots of loutish types gathered around the multi-gym, sweating and grunting. I would assume they no longer know their mothers. I aspire to one day attend a gym that has more demure female people and less of these. On the plus side I found that there is a sauna round the back which is ‘mixed’. Saunas are permitted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWj5UWkzwY
A new discovery has been made in the paul misheard lyrics category. It turns out that Gwen Stefani is saying that she ain’t no ‘Hollaback Girl’, which has no apparent meaning, unless she is saying that you can say something to her and she will not respond in a grating hiphopish way. I much prefer the me version, in which she is saying ‘there ain’t no heart in that girl’, meaning cleverly that the other girl in question is a heartless cow. This joins the classic misheard Justin Timberlake lyric in which he creepily asks ‘tell me your rhythm’, some kind of crude demand for details of one’s preference of humping rate. Actually he was just saying ‘Cry me a river’, which is lame.
The Haynes project is finished and Penny sent out the glorymail last week. It amuses me that as well as manuals for Austins and Fords, they also do a dinosaur manual. I hope to read it next time I am there, and find out how to take apart my dinosaur and put it back together.
I rate my parking this evening at 95%, given its near-perfect alignment to the kerb and the fact that I was performing an upper body dance to Snow Patrol at the time.
I really hate dogs. I may have mentioned it before, but they really upset me with their wobbly jaws, sharp teeth and pointless enthusiasm.
My hair is unnecessarily long.
I noticed something today about the IFS fire marshal team. It is probably the foxiest fire marshal team I have come across. It contains Clare, Cassie, Becky, Gem, EJ and Jeremy Brett, and I think this could present a problem, as it almost encourages arson. I would quite like to have been asked to be in the fire marshal team but I suppose it could be said I lack the necessary attributes, common sense and such.
Jeremys are the most successful people. This I read in a magazine.
Jennifer Love Hewitt has not physically changed in 12 years – I find this unusual. She sounds like a tennis player.
This week will be interesting, as it features the IFS presentation room quiz on Thursday, and Cassie has warned Paul Massey about me although I don’t know what about, and Sarah’s barbecue on Friday and Chantazia’s birthday party on Saturday back in the homeland (Derbyshire). Chantazia is not her real name, but is much better. Tomorrow is Yo Sushi though in Bluewater shopping mall, which looks spiky like this:
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/bluewater-shop-centre.jpg
and obscurely reminds me of this place in Turkey:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheCvs8QlXKGNos9uHnIZaXq1zCk0f7XoldL89ZMC_5HMnNhJ7wXlDLosVGztkQlCgPj1KJ3lMtdNLII3A-tuCo5Mef-Mj-7ybR1d4xFE8c8IrXXuFd30GKBKwhyvOD864W4Tgb0F0g7Ooq/s320/2370804360029147320wvbuzy_fs.jpg
which I didn’t have time to go to.

Seniority measured in tea spheres 01-07-09

Linda and I have been learning the dance moves to Thriller for 3 nights now and I think we are pretty much nailing it. As it is a world record attempt it has to be over 5 minutes apparently and feature the original dance moves. This means it is quite tiring and we still need to learn how to link all the bits together. But Hayley Clark has agreed to also join in, so that will make a total of 3 people. Simon Green laughed heartily when we started practicing and I bet he is regretting it now, but I’m not going to let him in our group when he comes begging.
Nor is Dan Bunder likely to tag along after his disparaging words towards Jackson last week. The Thrill the World event will be in London in 2 or 3 months and everyone is invited. If we get 29 people we can have a local event, but I’m not sure that’s a goer – as I would then presumably need to lead the dancing myself. Learn the dance moves here if you are up for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVvnBiBYcvY&feature=related
I should be quick to point out that we are definitely not only doing this because He is dead.
I tried performing the moves after the IFS outing on Saturday night – this was without music, across some discarded suitcases and other rubbish, and with alcohol in me, in other words in a challenging environment – and it was fair to say the performance worked for all observers. My expression was described as ‘serious’, which I like.
The IFS outing was amazing, though would have been better if more of the people I know had been there. As it was I talked philosophy and ate chips with the casually dressed Peter Donnelly and learned something profound, though I may have since forgotten it. Peter Donnelly now knows how to use my phone to update his facebook status, although it takes him quite a while.
I won £12.50 on race 3 then promptly stopped betting and sat drinking with Becca Charik, whose nickname should be but isn’t Charbecca, Iram and Irram, who are spelt differently.
Irrepressible minx Clare asked me for a dance on the boat rather than vice versa. Luckily for her I said yes.
I think I am now approximately 5th in command at IFS. This is evidenced by the fact that when everything went wrong on Saturday and everyone was grumbling on the jetty, it seemed to be my job to find Cassie and get her to the scene, inebriated though she was. Currently Paul Massey, Cassie, Jeremy Brett and possibly Simon Ball are senior to me (I calculate). I made a cup of tea for Jeremy today, which was a major step forward for my tea sphere. He received it well but I was probably undermined by the unexplained replacement of milk by bottles of curdled butter, a substance which sits on top of the tea in an oily and suspicious way.
The girl downstairs on the boat who served me the burger which was then partially stolen from me by Cassie was called Harriet, and she goes to Manchester University and has just completed her first year. She told me she didn’t really want to go up on the deck and dance to YMCA with us though. This was understandable, in the cold light of day.
Angela Lovett is a dancer of the highest class. I suspect she is ballet trained or some such. It takes grace to recover from falling over on a boat in front of ones colleagues with such calm.

Avoiding nuisance in Newcastle 02-06-09

I have chosen to spend Tuesday 2nd June 2009 in Newcastle upon Tyne, which rhymes a bit. This formerly great city clings to such northern objects as conspicuous flour mills in the town centre, phone booths pasted with adverts for films that no longer exist and sad little allotments. I am concealed within Holiday Inn Express in an almost deserted lobby watching a tedious NDubz video with some beer-drinkers in tatty and ill-fitting Great North Run tshirts and a smart, nervous looking man who is slowly coming to the realisation that he is hideously overdressed and likely to be followed home by someone or something.
Newcastle features a football team and although it is 9 days since they were relegated I can still see a morbid gathering of filthy, abandoned souls mourning the event, either curled up in a mess of ale cans and half-eaten chips outside the stadium or draped like broken corpses across steps and other concrete objects in the immediate vicinity. The council should do something about that.
They do good sushi here. I had 24 pieces 6xSalmon, 6xPrawn, 6xCrabstick and 6xTuna +1Asahi. The chef was of average ability in the art of juggling eggs and catching them in his hat, but I felt I could have taught him some superior jedi egg-handling moves if he had bothered to ask.
I went to bed at 23.25 last night and got up at 4.39am, exactly 6 minutes ahead of schedule and my alarm, which adds further weight to the theory that I have a miniature alarm clock in my head that measures time not in seconds but in fear.
I took a Cooper’s car to the airport. This new limo-driven lifestyle very much suits my style and ego, although I have noticed that I am required to make polite conversation with the drivers. I have deduced that the way I should make conversation with my limo driver is slightly more upmarket than the way I should make conversation with someone back home who is cutting my hair. Nevertheless the exchange is equally likely to meander towards a mutually apathetic conclusion.
My customer here is Wellstream, a relatively interesting company that is noted for making pipes which carry oil around under the sea, or what they might call ‘a wide variety of offshore fluid transportation applications’. This justifies my standing in corridors looking at explanatory posters which show boats operating amidst shoals of truly enormous fish. Amusingly they are located right next to Byker Grove- though as I recall, in a curious oversight the makers of that program never had the courage to explore this potential gripping, locally-flavoured, global-energy themed plotline.
In a slightly embarrassing slip I just performed some seated, upper body-only dance moves to the Black Eyed Peas’ Boom Boom Pow and then realised that the smart, nervous man was watching me.
Last night some shocking new images related to the Piñata scandal came to light. In one I appear to be riding the abused animal bareback, chained to its fractured horn by a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs while gamely inserting some kind of decorative pole between its hind legs. I remain confident of coming up with a plausible explanation.
In a totally-unrelated thread Gemma received a pink birthday Piñata last night which was somewhat tougher to break open than we had expected. I only had minimal time to buy it, wrap it up, write words in the card and all that preparatory stuff so I didn’t really manage to have cellotape or a ribbon to hand. This provided me with an opportunity to experiment and I found that the flex of the battery charger that comes with a Sony DSC-P235 Digital Camera is an almost perfect reusable solution to the task of tying the gift wrap around a present. Meanwhile this was a functional piñata, containing not only sweets and pink handcuffs but also a tube of Colgate. I had failed to allow for the beating the piñata would receive though, and in the event some of the toothpaste had dribbled upon the minstrels, giving them an After Eight-like taste.
We went to a Thai restaurant too and had it to ourselves, a situation I find very relaxing compared to the horror of a restaurant full of rival diners all glaring competitively at me. I managed to completely fox the waiter though, in one of those situations where they misunderstand something you say and you can never quite bring yourself to put them right, and end up telling outwardly-spiralling lies to paradoxically maintain the integrity of your message. So he thinks I live in Twickenham, just a couple of miles from Beaconsfield, in some kind of commune with many other IFS consultants and their families, and that Gem is a live-in slave, related to some or most of us, and that I pay £800 a month rent, equivalent to £100 a week.

Thoughts on pain and Barbecues 31-05-09

I have major/life-threatening damage to my tongue and foot. Hayley kicked me in the face twice for as yet unknown reasons and I am still trying to think of ways to blame her for the foot injury which was mostly caused by me kicking a bag full of bottles.
Carlos very kindly went to Brazil so that we could sample the local beef, and then dragged it through an enormous amount of salt and put it on the barbecue, where it was cooked by Matt. We were then careful to slice it up using the same knife and fork we had previously used to slice up the raw chicken and enjoyed it very much.
Carlos reminds me of an interesting fact about Brazil nuts that I learned in Australia. Brazil nuts fall to the floor encased in a remarkably tough outer shell which only one animal can chew through, that being the Agouti, a pointy rabbit with an excellent memory. This way the nuts are protected from being eaten by other animals. However the shell is so tough that even the shoot of the nut itself cannot get through. This means that the only brazil nut trees that ever grow occur when an Agouti finds a nut, nibbles the end off, then buries it and dies, thus forgetting where it buried it – and allowing the shoot to grow out through the hole.
The temperature of the surface of the sun is 6000 degrees but in the centre it is exactly 15 million degrees.
Paul has been in the garden doing Yoga for 8 minutes.
If you have 16 sausages and 7 equally-hungry people they should get 2.28 sausages each.
Right now a red kite is circling overhead.
Gemma had a birthday party yesterday which was mostly a barbecue and an exchanging of strange gifts. The central gift was a paddling pool full of 4500 buttons, which was well received although it is worth pointing out that she has an almost irrational love of buttons. The pool makes an excellent goal for my lightweight football which almost everyone kicked over the fence at some point, but I got told off for kicking it into the buttons and sullying them.
Sarah is now starting the barbecue again. This is a bit like being in Australia – where you start the barbecue every time you get hungry and they love it so much the council puts out public barbecues with gas and trowels to scrape them clean with. The garden is now full of the swirling ash of Brazilian beef and Stephen Fung.

Boy loves fish 25-05-09

I like Japanese art so on Saturday we went to see the Kuniyoshi exhibition in the Academy of Art near Piccadilly. My friend Gem needs culture according to her dad so by assisting her in the obtaining of this I appear wise and eligible. I was keen to experiment with driving into London and finding a tube station to catch a train, in my mind a cunning and efficient travel solution.
We got somewhere near St John’s Wood, incidentally the only tube station name in London that does not contain any of the letters in the word ‘mackerel’, and found a very expensive underground car park full of Aston martins and porsches, that also seemed to feature many fake doors and false exits designed to trap the unwary, possessing the air of a convenient place to dump stolen vehicles or unwanted corpses.
We discovered immediately that the trains were not running from this station and instead caught buses, but this presented me with further dangers as I discovered I don’t know how to use an oyster card. The bus driver took advantage of me until I flapped my card repeatedly at the scanner and then got stuck in the door. This was in Baker Street and reminded me that no matter how comfortable one feels with technology one is seldom far from humiliation.
The exhibition was notable for the “warrior art” such as a boy wrestling a large fish or giant toad and also some strange pictures of apparently ordinary scenes with something untoward in the background, such as a lady snoozing and drooling in a room while behind her a giant octopus attacks and consumes a ship.
We had bonus time and managed to go to the Science museum, a place I have always feared because of all the children touching the little puzzly experiments before me, leaving me with an urgent need to wash my hands. On this occasion we avoided the horrid, inquisitive little things and learned about plastic and other materials instead. We also went to a coffee shop but I don’t like these places as they are too formal and require me to know what to do, and I don’t know where I am meant to stand, sit, say etc, or when to go and pay the bill or make polite conversation. They had some good pots of sauce on the table.
Yesterday I went to Yoga class in the morning. The lady who teaches it is very bendy and has poked me on both occasions when I have been, sneakily when nobody else could see. Most of the postures are ok but I am not yet comfortable taking one breath every 2 minutes or sitting there flapping my legs and making hummingbird sounds. Also I have issues collecting cosmic energy from my spiritual entity of choice as shining globes in my hands and absorbing them into my solar plexus as I don’t know where my solar plexus is and I’m not allowed to open my eyes and see what the others are doing. So I’m probably putting my globes of energy in the wrong place, which presumably may have dire consequences.

experiments with food 24-05-09

Unlikely phenomenon yesterday - Paul "WhiteWineandOrange" Harland attempted cookery and it went to plan. This followed the debacle last saturday in which I tried to cook an "ethnic" dinner for Gem and ended up in the wrong continent. Spaghetti bolognese should be straightforward even for a mummy's boy but it quickly emerged that I had failed to ensure spaghetti was available. That would have been fine, for one can use Penne, referred to sometimes incorrectly as pasta quills, but I then discovered that the jar of sauce I had just opened was also not bolognese but Lloyd Grossman's jalfrezi. To complete the fusion we went with wensleydale cheese in place of the regular parmesan. Remarkably Gem is still speaking to me. This is doubtless due to the thai-style star shaped carved carrots. We decided that although the dish would certainly never occur again in this or any other universe, it should take the name of Beef Jalfrensleydale...
And this gave me the idea for a cockup-cookbook full of apparently familiar recipes, but during each recipe it has amusing but non-catastrophic mistakes. This would almost certainly be successful but I haven't written it yet.
The next day concluded at Sarah's house with Sarah feeding me and her flatmates and her family, me sitting between her mum and dad, calling her mum 'baby' and playing a very brief and quite one-sided game of footsie with her under the table. Sarah's mum and I also share a total unawareness of Pinatas, which I find strange, if they really do exist - apparently the Spanish make them out of papier mache and hang them from washing lines. How could that be true? And if it is why has nobody ever told me about them? I had to lie down to make sense of it, and tried to control Sarah's family through the Xbox joypad. Further revelation on Smurfs, which are much older than I had previously thought, as apparently the footage dates from the late seventies, whereas when I was watching them circa 1998 I assumed I was watching it live. This is discussed in Donnie Darko according to VanWyk, which is a film I haven't seen. Gemma Copping then ironed 5 of my shirts, and in my consequent gratitude I made a small but telling donation to the IFS ladies race for life thing which is to do with running.
The kitchen despair continued when I tried to do Japanese rice a few days later using a steamer and a sheet of kitchen roll but this only ended with me burning Linda's pan. It is mostly ok but I may have to buy a new one to appease her anyway. I owe her one birthday present at any rate. Then I went to Yo Sushi on Thursday in Bluewater, on IFS expenses which is the best way to do it, and managed to only eat only pink plates, which is an achievement which I find pleasing. During a 147 break in snooker there is a moment when the commentator slightly nervously remarks, "that's 6 reds, 6 blacks, and I bet his mind's turning to the £147,000 available for a maximum..." and it's much the same when you've had 3 pink dishes in Yo sushi and start to wonder whether you can complete the meal without having an orange, or purple or a blue. Without the money I suppose.
Ambitiously I tried to cook again yesterday (incidentally it went extremely well this time) but in the car park I balanced a bit too much in my bag for life (as it's important to me when in a supermarket to be able to fit everything exactly into one bag) and sadly the chicken breasts fell out the front and under the tyres of the trolley. This greatly reduced my speed of motion, until the error was pointed out by my co-shopper and the slightly gritty chicken breasts were retrieved from the ground. My suspicion is that this was the first ever experiment into the effectiveness of chicken breasts as brake pads.