One Man and His Blog

If I’m going to be completely and utterly honest with you, gentle reader, I’m not a big fan of my surname. It’s not an especially common one, but not an especially unusual one either. It just seems slightly awkward to me, and for some reason I just have a bit of an aversion to using it – usually at work, if I’m asking someone to send me a fax, I’ll just say to address it to “Steve” (thankfully I am, as Matt Lucas might say, The Only Steve In The Office) and only give my surname if asked for it.

However, in recent times I’ve noticed that some of my friends have taken to calling me just by my surname. And while I don’t have a problem if they’re being mock-formal and calling me Mr XXXX (that’s an anonymity device there, I’m not named after an Australian lager), it winds me up a bit if I’m just XXXX on its own. One of my best friends, who I love dearly, is probably the worst offender, but I’m aware that I often just call her by her surname and derivations of it, so my challenge for the next month is not to refer to her by her surname at all, and see whether she ends up doing the same back to me.

Meanwhile, it is now 30 days until my 30th birthday. I have something planned… watch this space…

The sunburn is dying down now, although it’s still a bit sore. Affected areas = back of my neck, left elbow and right ankle. How those parts managed to get burned when the rest of me didn’t is a bit of a mystery, but never mind.

The sunburn was a result of going to Barry Island yesterday. In case you don’t know, Barry Island is a seaside resort on the south coast of Wales. Apparently it used to actually be an island, although it isn’t any more; I’d like to think that it took its name from some bloke called Barry swimming out to plant a flag on it and declare ownership.

Anyway, some folks from church had organised a day trip, so we spent the day on the beach (hot), going into the sea (cold), digging holes in the sand (tiring), playing boule (relaxing), walking up the cliff to admire the view (gorgeous), eating chips (tasty), going on a couple of rides at the Pleasure Park funfair (ricketty) and getting changed in the nearest toilets (grim). [Bizarrely, the toilets all had signs saying they weren't to be used as changing rooms, but no explanation why. So we took no notice.] It was a lovely day out, if a bit long and tiring.

And as predicted, I had a terrible night’s sleep; not so much from the sunburn as the stifling humidity overnight. Looks like more of the same tonight; the weather was dry (if slightly hotter than I’d like it) for most of the day before torrential storms hit in the early evening. I popped to the takeaway round the corner between showers, and on the way there, the bottom end of our road resembled a lake and in order to get across, I had to take a running jump to clear the puddle taking up a third of the width of the road. By the time I came back it had all drained away, but a little bit later it started again. I think it’s going to be on and off all night, much like my sleep.

This, my friends, is the joy of British summer time – you never know what to expect, and usually whatever they forecast is wrong too. I hate the phrase “expect the unexpected” because it defeats its own purpose and is thus utterly pointless, but I guess in the case of our weather, it’s all you can do.

*and so is Michael Fish.

I have rather a lot of sunburn this evening. I’m expecting an uncomfortable night’s sleep (or lack thereof)…

More details to follow.

As you will probably be aware by now, our kindly benefactor Dave has had some tribulations in the last few days, and in a show of solidarity with him, someone has set up a ‘We Support Dave Walker’ group on facebook. However, it appears some of us in the group are unsure what form this support ought to take.

I was thinking about it earlier, and wondered whether we should all follow Dave around everywhere in replica Dave shirts, chanting things like, “We love you Dave-o, we do, we love you Dave-o, we do, we love you Dave-o, we do, oh, Dave-o we love you!” and “Come on you Dave!” Then I realised this was a bit silly, so I thought again and had a much more sensible and realistic idea.

Everyone loves a huge charity concert, right? Well then, we could show our support for Dave by organising Dave Aid – a huge concert celebrating the contribution made to the world by Daves over the centuries. And of course, the line-up would have to feature only the finest musical Daves around. I’m thinking maybe Dave Bowie headlining, with Dave Gilmour in support, plus a bit of wobbly-headed singer-songwriter stuff from Dave Gray, and then maybe Dave Clark (of the Dave Clark Five), Dave Dee (of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch) and Dave (of Sam and Dave).

And warming up the crowds, maybe some Dave-themed tribute bands? American punk from Green Dave, gentle acoustic tunes from All About Dave, camp 90s pop from Right Said Dave, camp 80s pop from Dave Goes To Hollywood and newly-reformed boy band New Daves On The Block.

Now, if only I could think of a suitable TV channel to cover the gig…

What do you get for the man who doesn’t have a great deal, but tends to have already bought anything he particularly wants already?

Five weeks today, I will finally be leaving my twenties behind forever. I’m loking forward to many jokes about pension books, zimmer frames and Stannah stairlifts from my younger friends, secure in the knowledge that in the next few years, vengeance shall be mine. But there’s a problem.

It’s traditional in our office that, when someone has a “big” birthday, there’s a whip-round and, in the case of colleagues who are particularly good friends with the birthday boy or girl, a few individual presents. Yesterday my team manager suddenly asked me if I had any ideas what I would like, as (and I quote) “people will ask, and no one really knows what you’re into”.

Perhaps that’s because I’m not entirely sure what I’m into either. I love music and films, but I tend to have already bought CDs or DVDs that I really want already, and while there’s nothing wrong with a gift voucher, it’s not the most exciting present to open. I like football but I’m not obsessed with it, and don’t support any particular team. I’m not a huge fashion follower, and my favourite thing in all the world – hanging out with my friends – is very difficult to turn into a gift in this context. So what can I ask for?

Well, I kind of like quirky presents, something a little out of the ordinary, and maybe a bit daft and childish – for further reference, please see the pogo stick Tina and Spike got me for Christmas, or the set of stick-on comedy moustaches from some friends two birthdays ago. That said, I’m not yet sure I can bring myself to tell my manager, “for my thirtieth birthday, to show how grown up I am, I’d like a space hopper please”.

On a similar note, I’m getting my hair cut tomrrow, and no doubt when they ask me what I want them to do, I’ll give my usual reply – “erm, not sure really…” – and just hope I don’t come out looking like Billy Ray Cyrus.

Whatever you do, just don’t ask me to make a decision. Because I might get it wrong.

At lunch time today I met up with a friend. She’d read something recently which talked about the need to try to find some beauty when you leave the office for lunch. So that must be why she came to see me.

Or maybe not, as her suggestion wasn’t to simply spend an hour gazing at my face, but instead to wander around the art gallery. Now, I’m a big fan of art galleries, and so it’s to my shame that I have never visited the one which is housed in the same building I have worked in for the last two and a half years. But I’m definitely going to return to this one very soon.

Some amazing and very detailed paintings, both old and new, plus interesting sculptures and ceramics, lots of interactive stuff where you can create your own art (although it’s probably more geared towards kids, but that didn’t stop us) – and it cost absolutely nothing!! Entertaining and edumacational, and all totally free!! Genius.

*yes, I know; it was painful to type too, but I’m short of ideas tonight.

Do you ever find there’s so much going on in your mind that you can’t process it in any logical manner, and the only way to get it out is to just splurge it, either verbally or written? That’s exactly how I’m feeling right now. So, in no particular order:

One of the answers seems to be coming to me at last… but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it now.

Tonight was supposed to be a great night out, and thanks to the people I was with, it was. But compared with other times I’ve been to the same place, tonight the music was lame and there were so many people on the dancefloor that it was impossible to move at all, never mind with anything approaching rhythm. Disappointing.

Why did our ex-housemate come round today to get changed and use our loo, when the place he was going to is about two minutes from our house and would have had facilities for him to do both things there? Not that it wasn’t nice to see him, just that it would have been nicer if he could have come for a cuppa instead…

It would appear my impending 30th birthday is going to become an excuse for doing about ten different social activities over the next six months or so. Hurrah for that.

Why do people never compliment you on things until you tell them you’re thinking of changing them? Then you find yourself in two minds about whether you should still change them, or go back on what you’ve told everyone you’re going to do.

I know the person I want to talk to. But they’re not around. And they’ve told me to email them, which I have. And they said they’d reply, which they haven’t. And anyway, some of the stuff in the email is irrelevant and out of date now. Ho hum.

I’d better hurry up and finish emptying my brain into my computer, as I probably should have been in bed at least half an hour ago, if not more.

And on that last point, I’m off. Goodnight campers.

Following on from the helpful comments from my last post, I will now attempt to share some more Bill Bailey Cockney magic with you…

…did that work?

It’s Monday, but you’ve probably noticed that already. It’s also been a rather good Monday, particularly for a first day back at work after a week off (although I had to get my head around having a new computer and a load of stuff on my desk having been oved around to accommodate it, but I was just about there by the end of the day).

Anyway, I’ve never really mastered the art of posting links into my blog (if anyone can advise I’ll be very grateful), but I’m hoping this one will work. An old favourite of mine, that came up in discussion with one of my housemates earlier… Bill Bailey’s guide to the influence of Cockney music on the great classical composers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyMxn8RmSDw

Left the house a little late for church this morning. Then the bus was a bit late arriving. Then the bus spent five minutes sitting around, apparently because a wheelchair user wanted to board and the driver didn’t seem to know how to operate the ramp to get her on. When I eventually got there, church was really good. But…

This morning’s talk was about how we deal with unanswered prayer. Which was great, but unfortunately by the end of the service I was rather confused by two issues which I’ve been wrestling with for a while, because I started to feel like God was now giving me different answers to the ones I’ve been getting up until now. Have I been getting it wrong? Has God changed His mind? Are the new answers even right?

I don’t know. But what seems interesting (for want of a better word) is that, in both of these situations, the answers I was being pointed towards this morning are ones that I have considered in the past, but then decided are so difficult and so unlikely that they can’t possibly be right. Well, actually, I’m not sure that saying they’re "too difficult" is the right way of putting it, but I think I’ve dismissed the ideas before because I couldn’t see how they could possibly work and have resigned myself to the idea that I should just opt for Plan B instead, because Plan A is far too ambitious.

Perhaps I need to remember that all things are possible through God. Because most of the time, all I remember is that many things are not possible through Steve.