One Man and His Blog

To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, it’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas. About three weeks ago or so I was subjected to my first major blast of instore festive tunes while shopping, as first Ol’ Blue Eyes noted how seasonal it was appearing to be, and then both Bono and Jon Bon Jovi in succession requested that I come home for Christmas. Well, as I’ve not yet been blessed with the gift of omnipotence, I suspect there’ll be at least one rock megastar left disappointed by my non-appearance on December 25th; that said, Jonbon did add that if I couldn’t make it for Chrimbo itself, then reaching him "by New Year’s Night" would be fine. So it should all work out OK.

Since then, of course, the frequency with which I’ve been subjected to seasonal songs in shops has grown exponentially (blimey, all these long words, I’m beginning to sound like Dith…). And then, today, I had a surreal moment when I walked into a shop which doesn’t normally play music and heard something in the background. "Oh, here we go again," I thought to myself, "more festive cheese". And then I recognised the song, as the Isley Brothers started crooning about that summer breeze that makes them feel fine. Now, were we in the southern hemisphere, it would kind of make sense hearing that in November, but not in Britain… Still, it made a very pleasant change from all the usual fun-but-overplayed (and in some cases painful-and-overplayed) Christmas tunes everywhere else.

In other news – yesterday’s aches and shivers have gone, although now I seem to be sweating profusely – again, a classic flu symptom, but still lacking the head cold part of the set-up. Ho hum, never mind, the point is I’m feeling much much better. Oh, and then there’s the pub quiz… but I might leave that for tomorrow. Goodnight, and good luck.

I am feeling pretty rough tonight. Having not had enough sleep all week, I’ve had early nights all weekend, but still don’t feel I’ve slept that much, partly because I’ve had at least one bad night’s kip. However my main problem is currently that I’m feeling achey, sore and stiff, and absolutely freezing, for no apparent reason. In other words, I have half the symptoms of flu but no sign of a sore head or unruly sinuses. Hopefully another early night will get me through work tomorrow – and the pub quiz tomorrow night…

Anyway, I don’t want to just moan and whinge, so here are some more pleasant and entertaining moments from my quiet weekend:

Went out for a house curry last night with my three housemates, plus one housemate’s brother and friend, who were both visiting. Our local curry house is pretty good; the staff are friendly, the service is usually pretty quick (took longer than usual last night, but we don’t normally go on a Saturday, so that probably explains it), the food is really tasty and very reasonably priced, the bill is brought round with jelly babies and chocolate mice, more often than not there’s an offer of a complimentary drink, all the ladies are given a rose as they leave – and it’s two minutes’ walk from our house! We had a good time as usual, although we were quite intrigued by one item on the menu, a house special which gives little information about its contents but states that you need to give 24 hours’ notice if you want to order it! What on earth could it be? We may have to investigate the next time we go there…

Went out for lunch today too, with my friend Pete and a guy we met at church earlier. We went to Drucker’s, a patisserie type place in town renowned for its cakes. Indeed, I must say my Bavarian apple flan was quite nice, and certainly better than the rather flavourless tuna melt panini that followed it – yes, I know normally people eat mains before dessert, but as we were given our desserts first and were hungry and bored of waiting, we gave in and started on the cakes. The counter service was a bit odd – five people who all ask you the same questions – and the waitresses bringing our mains had clearly been taught "service with a scowl", and the whole thing was really rather overpriced – £9 for a panini, small piece of cake and a glass of Coke? Where do you think we are, London?! – but the company and convivial banter made it all worthwhile. (Incidentally, we were rather confused by the board on the counter telling us we could find out where our nearest branch of Drucker’s was by visiting their website; we considered telling the staff that we didn’t have internet access and ask if they could tell us where our nearest one was, but given the somewhat uncheery staff we decided against it.)

Bizarrely before getting in the queue, I realised I needed some money so I popped to the cashpoint opposite, specifically asked to withdraw just £10 as it’s rather close to payday now – and was somewhat surprised when a £20 note slipped out of the slot. Wonder what they’ll have charged me for that when I see my bank statement…

And finally, something that made me laugh – Pete had been to the ill-fated England football match on Wednesday, and was telling of the enormous tailback of people trying to get from Wembley Stadium to the tube station. The police were making announcements over a tannoy to encourage people to be patient and not do too much pushing and shoving; when an announcement came over the tannoy asking, "please do not run or push forward", some quick-witted bloke in the crowd was heard to mutter, "ah, yes, McClaren’s tactics…"

Anyway, enough of my ramblings – I’m sorry for the brevity of my last post, but as you can now see, normal service has been resumed, whether you wanted it to be or not. Until the next time, friends… be careful out there.

It’s been a rubbish day.

Various news stories in brief:

Hard at work on that exciting creative project I mentioned some time ago. Well, obviously, since I’m writing this, I’m not hard at work on it at this precise second, but we’re getting somewhere. More details to follow – promise.

Went to a 50th birthday party t’other night and found myself, for the first and possibly only time in my life, dancing to ‘Rabbit’ by Chas & Dave. (For those of you outside the UK and unacquainted with Chas & Dave, I imagine you could find some of their vast body of work on YouTube. Although whether you’d want to or not is an entirely different matter.)

We had a bit of snow last night. Leaving the house just before 7 to go to a prayer thing at church, it was quite sleaty, and given that it had been fairly damp during the day, we didn’t expect it to settle. By the time we left the prayer thing about quarter past ten, there was a couple of inches outside and it was still coming down pretty thick. So when we got home, housemate and I unleashed our inner children by writing various things in the snow and both making our first ever attempts at snow angels. Mine looked more like a snow blob, to be honest, but it was a laugh anyway. The snow seemed to have stopped soon after, and it’s mostly gone now, but the novelty of snow in November in Britain just cheered us up somewhat.

And finally, a word to the wise – never ever drop a Bible on your laptop. I did, and now the @ button (which also does apostrophes) has fallen off and I’m not sure how to stick it back on. Any suggestions gratefully received.

I’ve spent the best part of an hour writing something here, and then realised it might be better not to tell you it now, but maybe to wait a while longer. So I’ll do that.

But I don’t want to have wasted a whole hour, so I’m trying to think of something else to put here to make it worth my while, and yours too.

Well, my busy crazy week has lived up to its billing. At work there have been mountains of paperwork, visits to schools, rubbish training courses, a huge volume of phone calls, and all manner of other stuff. And in the evenings there have been planning meetings, deep and meaningful chats, shallow and meaningless chats, encouraging stories, and comedy involving a real live skeleton (well, you know what I mean).

Now I have a few days off work, but any plans to take it easy are out of the window. I have much tidying and clearing up to do, and other things happening for the rest of today. And if I hadn’t spent the last hour doing this, I might have had time to do some of it. But now I can’t.

Ho hum. Suppose I should get on with something important.

Like facebook…

A conversation one of my fellow youth leaders realyed to me at a meeting this evening…

Youth #1: "There are lots of people who have to work on Sundays, like doctors and nurses, and vicars of course. But then, it’s not such a problem for vicars, as they have the rest of the week off."

Youth #2: "Well, yeah, but then most of them have another job in the week, don’t they?"

I have lots of thoughts on stuff to write, but can’t seem to put them into any coherent order, or indeed decide what is and isn’t worth mentioning. So here’s just a few things running through my brain right now:

1. Why can’t my nose just either be blocked or running, instead of switching between the two about once every half an hour?
2. I’m so glad I have friends I can talk to about stuff.
3. Next time I talk to said friends about stuff, I’ll try to make sure it happens earlier in the evening, and not at 1.45 in the morning.
4. It’s a bit nervewracking, this waiting for feedback lark.
5. What a busy week I have ahead of me.
6. I so wish I could blog about X, but I really can’t.
7. Well, I could, but I don’t think it would be a good idea.
8. I really should be ironing a shirt instead of blogging right now.
9. God knows what He’s doing; I just wish I had a better idea of what it is.
10. To whom it may concern: don’t get me wrong, I really like you, but you don’t half do my head in a lot of the time.
11. I wish I could help people more and talk at them less.
12. Blimey, is that the time? I really should be in bed by now.
13. At least I finished the thing I’ve been toiling over for the last few weeks (which I’ll tell you more about later in the week, hopefully).
14. No, that’s it for now.

Our fire alarm went off this morning, which usually means that someone somewhere in our building has put their toaster on slightly too high a setting. As we all stood around outside, some of the ladies and I (I’m one of only two blokes in my bit of the office) were having a natter and a bit of a laugh, and then… one of my colleagues lost the plot for a moment and called me Chris. And then a few minutes later, another one somehow mistook me for her son and called me George. Yes, after two years working there, people still don’t know my name… But it’s OK, I answer to most things. When I first started doing youth work at my current church, a few of the lads decided to call me Dave to try and wind me up. When I just took no notice and answered to Dave, most of them got bored and stopped. But one of them carried on calling me Dave for about a year and a half. Maybe he couldn’t remember my real name… I seem to have that effect.

There was also much comedy ensuing when someone else asked if anyone had seen some programme on TV last night, and someone else had said they’d missed it because they were watching "that programme about killer genes". Which was actually some programme looking at how certain people’s genetic make-up is more susceptable to certain illnesses and diseases etc, but of course at least three of us heard it as "killer jeans" and had visions of pairs of jeans walking about on their own, unexpectedly producing flick-knives from their pockets and stabbing people in the leg. I was so tempted to start singing, "they were killer, jeeeee-eeeeans" to the tune of a well-known Queen song, but to the relief of everyone I managed to suppress that urge all day.

Talking of genes, I was talking to Orlando* from the office next door this afternoon, and he mentioned that he was turning 28 soon and would thus be "a grandad". When I pointed out that I’m already a year ahead of him, he was amazed. "I put you at about 23, 24!" he said. He’s not the first one. I think partly it’s because I avoid acting my age whenever possible, and partly because a lot of my friends are a few years younger than me, but I reckon it’s also because all of our family look younger than we actually are. We just have youthful genes, I guess. One day, maybe, when I meet new people they won’t say, "so are you studying at the uni then?" and I won’t have to say, "no, I’m well past uni age, I’m actually 173 but this Oil of Olay stuff works wonders", and then explain the joke and watch as they don’t laugh because jokes are never funny after you’ve explained them. OK, so that one’s not very funny before explanation, but that’s not the point.

*not his real name, but as he’s currently featuring in a local ad campaign as an Orlando Bloom lookalike, we sometimes call him Orlando to wind him up a little.

Yes Jeff, you’re such an inspiration, I’ve named this entry after you

Well, actually, not really. But I am feeling quite tired and, perhaps as a result, I’m also feeling quite emotional. Socially speaking, this has been "The Quiet Week" after "The Busy Week" and before "The Next Busy Week". But it hasn’t felt quiet and it hasn’t been relaxing, and I’m starting to realise some strange stuff about how God does things and times stuff to happen at particular moments and the like.

I’d love to unpack it more; with God, in my own head, and here in WibWorld. But frankly, I just can’t seem to find the time. So I’ll just keep blagging it a while longer and hope it all starts to make more sense as time goes on…

Anyway, I now have to go and do something which someone is quite unhappy with me not having done yet and I am quite unhappy at not having done yet and now I’m unhappy that they’ve expressed their unhappiness to me which has just made me feel worse that I haven’t done it yet and really I just want to go to bed but then the thing I haven’t done still won’t be done and the unhappy person will be even more unhappy… As I said, both tired and emotional.

How can organisations have such amazingly flashy websites with seemingly every conceivable piece of information available – except the one thing you want it to tell you, which is either not there or so hard to find that you give up searching? Gaaaah…