Kiss.
Simples.
I think that makes it a successful second date. I don't know. I'm no expert at this type of thing, but it's usually a good indicator.
One indicator that it was going to be a good date was that it had already been upgraded from 'drinks' to 'pub-grub'. Not a full, formal 'meal' but more than just booze. Slightly concerningly, as one hand gave, the other took away and I was warned that second date may be postponed depending on 'laser eye surgery'. Hmmm. Does that mean that he couldn't actually see me properly on the first date? Ah well, we must take our advantages where they are presented to us, and if that means dating someone half-blind on the basis they can't see that you're not beautiful, I'll take it. That and he repeatedly refers to me as 'mate' still.
As it was, he chickened out of the laser eye surgery, preferring instead to stick his fingers in his eye on a daily basis. So he was at least wearing contacts. Or 'does' wear contacts - he may not necessarily have had them in.
Pub-grub was burger. He was tempted by bangers and mash, but as I pointed out, that is really rather simple to do at home yourself, why pay a cook in a pub to make it for you. It obviously wasn't just bangers and mash. It was hand-reared free-range Lincolnshire pork sausages on a bed of creamy wholegrain mustard mashed King Edward potatoes with a rich spiced pork jus and ground rock salt seasoned, pan-fried parsnip crisps. Whatever happened to bangers and mash? The adjective and adverb marketing bodies have been working full-pelt to ensure that we don't just get served our nouns any more, they themselves have to be dressed with obviously superfluous words so that even if your meal is tiny, you still think you're getting more for your money because there are an extra dozen or so words peppered about on the menu. In my experience less is more - the smaller the meal, the longer the description. It's not just the sausages that come with a 'jus' to moisten them up.
Wednesday nights are a peculiar night at the moment, both in terms of the economic cycle and the annual cycle. Economically, people are tightening their belts and not going out at weekends; however I feel this may have shifted the focus point of the week. They may not be going out at the expensive weekends, but they still want to go out. They have been working very hard to keep their job, putting in more hours for less pay in real terms; and so need to reward themselves. So they seek out the mid-week bargain. Beer and a burger for £8, say. It is also past the mid-week moment, for those that work ordinary hours - there are just two days left to get through. That, of itself, is worth celebrating. So the hard-worker forgoes the traditional Friday night meal out with wine and a babysitter, instead opting for a quick Wednesday night bistro meal.
And the struggling pub has capitalised on this. Realising that Wednesday is the new Friday, and that pub is the new restaurant, they are doing all they can to get you in during the week. They have to make sure that if their burger isn't better than anyone else's, it is at least cheaper. Or the beer is warmer or colder. Or the service is quicker or friendlier. Or the experience is better. Or the menu has more adjectives. They do still need to convince you to step out, rather than order in a Chinese takeaway and a crate of lager to celebrate that most middling of days.
And that is where the time of the year comes into play as well. It's the end of October. Unless you have children who revel in Halloween or Bonfire night, there is absolutely nothing to look forward to aside from the weather deteriorating, the closest thing to sunlight being the artificial light in the office for the entire duration of daylight hours, and - eventually - the expense and discomfort of spending time and money on people that you see once a year. With months and months of nothingness, yes - you can go out on a Wednesday.
Factor in also that the students are still giddy with loan cheques still floating (just) their heads above water, and you will see why we failed to find a nice little snug to ourselves. The first bar, where we ate, was bouyed by students lapping up burgers and babysitting pints for well over an hour each. This was quite a nice bar, but at a busy accumulation of roads surrounded by flats. It was one of those segregated into various open-plan 'rooms', each styled slightly differently and yet still in the brewery's distinctive corporate taste on chic. Despite the brewery attempt to individualise each of the bars, using black-and-white photographs of the area from years gone by, because every bar in the chain has black-and-white photos they could be the identical photos in pretty near identical bars around the country.
The second bar was a nice, properly open-plan bar, very definitely tailored to the building. The bar was surrounded by tables and chairs, with a couple of sofas dotted around the edge of the room as has become the fashion of late as they try to blur the line between hostelry and coffee-shop. I don't know if they buy the sofas from shops that specialise in the 'lived-in-yet-still-brand-new' look, but that is how it is. The sofas are the Mayfair and Park Lane of the pub. They are what you aim for - if you don't get those, you have to sit bolt-upright on a rickety wooden chair. They are such hot property that the English will override their usual discomfort of sitting with strangers, for the comfort of sitting. And so, although we managed to steal a nice corner of the pub, it wasn't long before we had company; not that we had privacy anyway.
So we moved on to the oldest pub in the world. Well, in England at least, and one of them. There is a slight debate about which pub is the oldest pub, but both of the pubs with the best claim are in Nottingham. I have to say I prefer the claim of the Trip to Jerusalem" if for no other reason than it is set into the caves. This means that Hardy and Hansen have struggled to corporate it, and it is decorated throughout with course wooden benches and tables. Unfortunately the claim and the quirk have lead to it being a very popular pub and despite the various snugs and caves that you can sit in, it is rare to be alone.
And so I got invited back for a cup of tea. Well, I had a Bishop's Finger. It's a beer. I still wasn't quite sure what motive or agenda there was to inviting me back. Was it to obtain absolute privacy to chat away? Was it just to spend a little more time? Was it so that we could snog or even bonk? Or was it just to show off the flat. At least when I invite people back the latter is well off the cards. And so we chatted, me with my Finger in hand, he with mug of tea. It took the introduction of a rather large instrument to quicken the pace. For some reason he had a nice brass telescope in the doorway to the balcony. We went over to discuss the placement and for him to show me that it wasn't pointing at anything inappropriate, and I used the opportunity of the moment to kiss. There is something very romantic about standing on a balcony in the moonlight with the stars twinkling up above through a gentle shuffling, rustling tree, disturbed only by the dull, muffled screeches of the girls vomitting outside the bar down the road. And so we continued for the rest of the evening. Well, in fact we overran. I set a deadline for when I should be going home, and missed it by around three quarters of an hour, having to finish off my Finger very quickly. That surely is a good sign.
The only thing is that I don't know what job he does. In our online messaging he may have told me, but I have forgotten and cannot check up on the history as the site deletes it. I have tried to work it into conversation - asking how his day has been, what his team is like, how he came to be in Nottingham, even what degree he did, but to no avail. It may be one of those very indescript jobs without a proper title (or worse still with a title that is actual nonsense and means nothing to anyone), or - more likely - he may have told me and I have just forgotten. But I shall have to keep digging around on that one.
And then this morning I got a text again using the word 'mate'.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Hair today...
What has been described as 'zany', 'bizarre', 'unique' and 'like a duck's arse'?
My new haircut.
Awesome.
I haven't had a professional haircut in well over a decade. Usually, however, I don't get called such things. Well, not to my face. I have for the last 10 years or so owned a pair of clippers and, when my hair has gotten to the stage where it is 'too long' I buzz it all off.
'Too long' has been redefined over time, so much so that a couple of years ago I had to buy a pair of mini-straighteners. My hair has a tendency to go curly, particularly around the sides, which is irritating. Thus it either gets cut off, or straightened until I get bored with that too. My hair is also quite soft and thin so when it gets to a particular length the thinness is exaggerated and I do look like I'm trying to hang on to the last remnants of hairiness when I really should have let it go. Cut it short and it looks much thicker and a fuller head of hair.
The buzz-off usually results in the top going down to either a '8', a '6' or a '4'. Generally I prefer the '8' which is around an inch long, with a shorter back and sides, however this usually means that I have to tidy the sides up quite neatly. With a '6' (around 3/4 inch) I can be less careful as the difference - if I make a boob on the sides - is considerably less noticeable. I haven't had a '4' (at around 1/2 inch) for a while as that makes me look practically thuggish. So generally I will do an '8' unless I boob or decide that it is still too long and cut back to a '6'.
This time, however, I was rather enjoying the length. The only thing that niggled was the curly bits on the side. I don't know if it is because I was using a different shampoo or wax which helped to 'bulk' the hair up, alleviating any appearance of thinness but the top was fine. So I thought that I would have an experiment, and just tidy up the sides.
The clippers come with 'left' and 'right' guides, meaning you should just be able to swipe these along the side of your head and round the back and it has tapered it nicely for you.
'Should'.
The thicker end of the guide-wedge, though, is still shorter than the remaindement of the hair, creating a noticeable ridge in the hair. I managed to calm this down very carefully with the trimmers and the overall effect actually isn't too bad. Or at least I didn't think so.
Now, if you are doing this on your own it is actually quite difficult to see the back of your head. I have a mirror on the wall in front of me that I can use to do the sides; then also using a handheld mirror in the opposite hand to the trimmers have to perform moves of which a contortionist would be proud to see the back of my head. And tidying the actual hairline round the ears and back of the neck has to be done with the guard off and a very steady hand.
Anyhow, as I say, I don't think it is too bad. One of my work colleagues walked past the desk and exclaimed:
Now, I thought that I had timed the cut pretty well. I did it on a Wednesday night so that if it went wrong I could do my usual '8' or '6' buzz-off on the Thursday night, ready for my weekend of partying. Forgetting - of course - that I had my iDate planned for last Thursday. Not only would I not be able to sort out any problems before the weekend, I was now apparently going on a date with a haircut like a duck's arse.
Anyhow, my date was kind enough not to mention it, and I had thought that things were quietening down and growing out a little until yesterday when a colleague described it as:
As a matter of point, I no longer own the mini-hair-straighteners.
My new haircut.
Awesome.
I haven't had a professional haircut in well over a decade. Usually, however, I don't get called such things. Well, not to my face. I have for the last 10 years or so owned a pair of clippers and, when my hair has gotten to the stage where it is 'too long' I buzz it all off.
'Too long' has been redefined over time, so much so that a couple of years ago I had to buy a pair of mini-straighteners. My hair has a tendency to go curly, particularly around the sides, which is irritating. Thus it either gets cut off, or straightened until I get bored with that too. My hair is also quite soft and thin so when it gets to a particular length the thinness is exaggerated and I do look like I'm trying to hang on to the last remnants of hairiness when I really should have let it go. Cut it short and it looks much thicker and a fuller head of hair.
The buzz-off usually results in the top going down to either a '8', a '6' or a '4'. Generally I prefer the '8' which is around an inch long, with a shorter back and sides, however this usually means that I have to tidy the sides up quite neatly. With a '6' (around 3/4 inch) I can be less careful as the difference - if I make a boob on the sides - is considerably less noticeable. I haven't had a '4' (at around 1/2 inch) for a while as that makes me look practically thuggish. So generally I will do an '8' unless I boob or decide that it is still too long and cut back to a '6'.
This time, however, I was rather enjoying the length. The only thing that niggled was the curly bits on the side. I don't know if it is because I was using a different shampoo or wax which helped to 'bulk' the hair up, alleviating any appearance of thinness but the top was fine. So I thought that I would have an experiment, and just tidy up the sides.
The clippers come with 'left' and 'right' guides, meaning you should just be able to swipe these along the side of your head and round the back and it has tapered it nicely for you.
'Should'.
The thicker end of the guide-wedge, though, is still shorter than the remaindement of the hair, creating a noticeable ridge in the hair. I managed to calm this down very carefully with the trimmers and the overall effect actually isn't too bad. Or at least I didn't think so.
Now, if you are doing this on your own it is actually quite difficult to see the back of your head. I have a mirror on the wall in front of me that I can use to do the sides; then also using a handheld mirror in the opposite hand to the trimmers have to perform moves of which a contortionist would be proud to see the back of my head. And tidying the actual hairline round the ears and back of the neck has to be done with the guard off and a very steady hand.
Anyhow, as I say, I don't think it is too bad. One of my work colleagues walked past the desk and exclaimed:
"Bloody hell, what on earth happened to your hair!"
to which I explained that I had cut it myself and he asked if it was:
"the latest fashion inspired by those zany footballers."
I had to admit I had no idea what was in fashion amongst footballers at the moment. But he did at least confirm that both sides were level and neat (and presumably therefore equally as bad). One of my 'friends' described it as looking like
"a duck's arse"
before then going on to say that it was:
"Unique. And at least people won't forget you."
I don't know if it looking like a duck's arse is a good thing or a bad thing. Still, in the words of another of my colleagues:
"It's fun to experiement with your hair before it all falls out."
As if I needed reminding that that was probably well on the way to happening.Now, I thought that I had timed the cut pretty well. I did it on a Wednesday night so that if it went wrong I could do my usual '8' or '6' buzz-off on the Thursday night, ready for my weekend of partying. Forgetting - of course - that I had my iDate planned for last Thursday. Not only would I not be able to sort out any problems before the weekend, I was now apparently going on a date with a haircut like a duck's arse.
Anyhow, my date was kind enough not to mention it, and I had thought that things were quietening down and growing out a little until yesterday when a colleague described it as:
"bizarre"
but then again most of the people I work with are old and wouldn't know fashion if it waggled its sexy arse in their face. A mild point of concern is that the people who do seem to like it have haircuts which I could only describe as
"bizarre"
As a matter of point, I no longer own the mini-hair-straighteners.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Football fantastic?
So, I went to football training on Sunday.
It was the first time in eleven weeks. It was a legitimate break - I was not abstaining on any political or moral grounds particularly, although I was in a bit of an ennui with it. But mostly it was because of my various galavantings discussed here. Well, I was able to go again this week and so I did.
And how was it? Was it amazing? Was it terrible? Neither. But it was quite windy. I did enjoy it, but then again some of the people inspiring the ennui were not there.
It was a bit of an odd session actually. Previous occasions have seen many players turn up and us play 13 or 14-a-side to accommodate them all. There were only around 16 this session. And rather than having a full formal warm-up and a technique session at the start, we had a quick kickaround then went into a game.
One noticeable exception was my ex. I don't know why he wasn't there, nor am I particularly fussed either - he is his own man and I am mine. Also notably absent was the chairman who I haven't seen on football duty since the AGM where I was practically the only person to speak out. I didn't do so in a nasty way, it was purely to challenge some of the practices, but I fear it may have wrankled somewhat. In due course I may find out.
But I was happy to go along and feel knackered. Even if I didn't managed to get a decent touch-on (steady!) for the first half; I can at least still run, and my throw-ins are rather good. I'm sure I did one good pass and a couple of decent tackles. One of the things I am quite adept at though is the ability to boot the ball out. Unfortunately often when it would be better to keep it in.
But I've made the first step, which they say is the most difficult. The first step to regaining some of my fitness, and my Sunday night routine. It will be a bit of a bind stopping what I am doing at 4 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, but that is easier now the nights are drawing in and 4 o'clock is around the limit of external workability. And I'm not off galavanting around for a few weeks (although I do have a very important birthday party to attend in a few weeks).
And how did the date on Thursday go, you may ask?
Well...
It was the first time in eleven weeks. It was a legitimate break - I was not abstaining on any political or moral grounds particularly, although I was in a bit of an ennui with it. But mostly it was because of my various galavantings discussed here. Well, I was able to go again this week and so I did.
And how was it? Was it amazing? Was it terrible? Neither. But it was quite windy. I did enjoy it, but then again some of the people inspiring the ennui were not there.
It was a bit of an odd session actually. Previous occasions have seen many players turn up and us play 13 or 14-a-side to accommodate them all. There were only around 16 this session. And rather than having a full formal warm-up and a technique session at the start, we had a quick kickaround then went into a game.
One noticeable exception was my ex. I don't know why he wasn't there, nor am I particularly fussed either - he is his own man and I am mine. Also notably absent was the chairman who I haven't seen on football duty since the AGM where I was practically the only person to speak out. I didn't do so in a nasty way, it was purely to challenge some of the practices, but I fear it may have wrankled somewhat. In due course I may find out.
But I was happy to go along and feel knackered. Even if I didn't managed to get a decent touch-on (steady!) for the first half; I can at least still run, and my throw-ins are rather good. I'm sure I did one good pass and a couple of decent tackles. One of the things I am quite adept at though is the ability to boot the ball out. Unfortunately often when it would be better to keep it in.
But I've made the first step, which they say is the most difficult. The first step to regaining some of my fitness, and my Sunday night routine. It will be a bit of a bind stopping what I am doing at 4 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, but that is easier now the nights are drawing in and 4 o'clock is around the limit of external workability. And I'm not off galavanting around for a few weeks (although I do have a very important birthday party to attend in a few weeks).
And how did the date on Thursday go, you may ask?
Well...
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Ready... steady...
For a man who doesn't like dating, I certainly end up doing quite a bit of it!
I have another tonight. This is an iDate, but not with the person I went on three dates with. Someone new. Someone ginger...if the photo is to be believed.
It's not my fault. I like listenening to Gaydar Radio and I am lazy. The easiest way for me without typing it in - lazy, one-handed mouse using - is simply to click the down arrow on the address bar, select Gaydar and click login. It has my username and password saved so my fingers do not need to touch the keyboard at all. Yes, I could simply save the Gaydar Radio link as a favourite bookmark and click on it, but the way I do it I also get to check my messages. Otherwise I am a relatively 'passive' user - leaving myself logged in but not actually exploring the site (this is the only way in which I am 'passive' on the site!) This shows me as online, which encourages more people to message me a) because the site promotes my page (what with it being more active than non-logged in pages); and b) people think they have more chance of receiving a response. I do say 'think'.
The vast majority of messages I receive on the site take one of three formats:
Anyhow, as a result it is rare for me to respond. If they are not going to take the time and effort to think of something witty or unique (or at the very least demonstrate you have spent more than a millisecond reading the details on my profile page) then I am not going to bother responding. And in the modern day and age that is not particularly rude.
Anyhow, so it was that I received a message off of some chap going into quite some detail about the various entries on my profile, asking insightful questions about me, very properly introducing himself and most politely wishing me a good day. Oh, and attaching a reasonably decent picture. Of his face. Well, if someone goes to that effort, it is only polite of me to respond. And so it is that the date is to occur.
Anyhow, enough with the whys and wherefores; that was not the reason for the post.
Even though the date was on Thursday, I have been having to make various arrangements from Monday (when I was very politely 'reminded' that I had the date as otherwise I was going around rather ignorant of the fact I had agreed to it previously). For example:
Food
Because the date was to be a drink, Thursday evening food would need to be a rather quick affair. This usually involves some pasta or rice with some sort of pre-made (by me) sauce from the freezer. As I had problems and the freezer defrosted a few weeks ago, I have not had the opportunity to make many such sauces; therefore a very simple pasta sauce will be needed. So Thursday is pasta day. That means that Wednesday could not be.
I was to be out Wednesday night; so that would be takeaway - probably chicken with fries. Potato for the carbs - good, different - but that meant that Tuesday could be neither chicken for the substance of dinner; nor potato for the carbs.
So... Tuesday was to be pizza with spicy pork on it. Good. But that meant that Monday could not be bread-based carbs; nor pork-based meat.
Mondays generally tend to be fish days because I get to go shopping on a Monday so can pick up some reasonably fresh fish. Potato was now back available; so I had fish with grilled mash cakes and some vegetables.
And then there is prepping the salads for the week's lunches. Usually these get done the night before; however being out on Wednesday night and very pushed with the small amount of time on Thursday meant that the three salads for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday would need making on Tuesday. However I would not be going home on Friday so would just grab something from the supermarket; meaning I only had to make two salads on Tuesday. But it's still an additional job for the Tuesday night which brings me onto...
Jobs
Again, because I was losing an evening, my usual jobs needed to be shuffled around. However this was made even worse: I wasn't just losing one evening but two! AND there were more jobs than usual in this week's schedule. The week was bathroom-clean-week and it did need to be done - it oughtened be left for another week. But it was also bed-change-week which was delayed from the previous week. AND there was ironing to do as I only had shirts up to Thursday. So the things that would normally be spread over four nights were contracted into two. But successfully.
Clothes
As I was going out straight from work on Wednesday I needed to take suitable clothing with me to work - jeans and a t-shirt - but get changed at work in such a manner (well, at five-to-five and then hide in the toilet until I was sure they had gone) that my team would not notice. But it also couldn't be the same clothes as I wanted to wear Thursday night on the basis of taste and decency. And they couldn't be the same as Friday night either. So I needed to ensure I didn't accidentally wear Friday's clothes on Wednesday or any of the other incorrect combinations.
Shopping
I have the potential to shop on three days because of how my lunch falls - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Friday I was going out straight from work and wouldn't have the opportunity to drop anything at home; and the same was true on Wednesday. So any shopping I did on Wednesday had to be non-perishable so that I could bring it back on Thursday. But it couldn't be much - I didn't want to get sweaty lugging it home.
So, you can see how many things have to go into consideration, and why I had to start planning on Monday. A similar situation occurred a few weeks ago when I had an interview. Obviously I didn't want to announce this at work (it's not really the done thing, even if you don't get on with your work colleagues and want to get away from them as soon as possible, say) but it was on a Thursday afternoon. So, I had to start at the beginning of the week giving reasons for having to leave early. Fortunately it was this week that my freezer decided to defrost itself and I was able in the same breath as espouging my problems with it to claim my Thursday afternoon was being spent with an engineer.
And then there was the dress: I obviously had to wear a smart suit, whereas usually I am just in plain black trousers. So I would have to take the suit jacket and bag with me in a bag. But then I didn't want to be taking a big bag with me, so I had to take the suit jacket in the day before and tuck it discretely away in my locker. Then all I had to do was wear the suit trousers all week to avoid any attention to wearing considerably smarter trousers on the Thursday - again, my older, less smart trousers were 'in the wash after I spilled something down them'. And similar with my very smart shoes - they had to go to work the day before so that they didn't get dirty walking round in them until I was on my way to the interview.
But then my plans were thrown into disarray when they rearranged the interview for the Friday. Fridays are dress-down days. How was I going to explain going into work in a suit? Well I wouldn't. I would have the jacket and tie in the bag hidden from Wednesday, and merely wear my trousers and shirt as though I had 'forgotten' - which I genuinely could of as the Monday had been a bank holiday.
And again this impacted on my shopping. If the interview had been on Thursday, all well and good. But on the Friday I wouldn't be able to shop; and I was already losing Monday as a shopping day as it was a bank holiday and I was not in at work; so all of the shopping - including the beer for the weekend - had to be done on the Wednesday.
So you can see why I have to be organised about these things and make my lists and my plans.
Well, that and I enjoy it!
I have another tonight. This is an iDate, but not with the person I went on three dates with. Someone new. Someone ginger...if the photo is to be believed.
It's not my fault. I like listenening to Gaydar Radio and I am lazy. The easiest way for me without typing it in - lazy, one-handed mouse using - is simply to click the down arrow on the address bar, select Gaydar and click login. It has my username and password saved so my fingers do not need to touch the keyboard at all. Yes, I could simply save the Gaydar Radio link as a favourite bookmark and click on it, but the way I do it I also get to check my messages. Otherwise I am a relatively 'passive' user - leaving myself logged in but not actually exploring the site (this is the only way in which I am 'passive' on the site!) This shows me as online, which encourages more people to message me a) because the site promotes my page (what with it being more active than non-logged in pages); and b) people think they have more chance of receiving a response. I do say 'think'.
The vast majority of messages I receive on the site take one of three formats:
- Hey! How are you?
- Nice profile/pics
- Got any cock pics?
Anyhow, as a result it is rare for me to respond. If they are not going to take the time and effort to think of something witty or unique (or at the very least demonstrate you have spent more than a millisecond reading the details on my profile page) then I am not going to bother responding. And in the modern day and age that is not particularly rude.
Anyhow, so it was that I received a message off of some chap going into quite some detail about the various entries on my profile, asking insightful questions about me, very properly introducing himself and most politely wishing me a good day. Oh, and attaching a reasonably decent picture. Of his face. Well, if someone goes to that effort, it is only polite of me to respond. And so it is that the date is to occur.
Anyhow, enough with the whys and wherefores; that was not the reason for the post.
Even though the date was on Thursday, I have been having to make various arrangements from Monday (when I was very politely 'reminded' that I had the date as otherwise I was going around rather ignorant of the fact I had agreed to it previously). For example:
Food
Because the date was to be a drink, Thursday evening food would need to be a rather quick affair. This usually involves some pasta or rice with some sort of pre-made (by me) sauce from the freezer. As I had problems and the freezer defrosted a few weeks ago, I have not had the opportunity to make many such sauces; therefore a very simple pasta sauce will be needed. So Thursday is pasta day. That means that Wednesday could not be.
I was to be out Wednesday night; so that would be takeaway - probably chicken with fries. Potato for the carbs - good, different - but that meant that Tuesday could be neither chicken for the substance of dinner; nor potato for the carbs.
So... Tuesday was to be pizza with spicy pork on it. Good. But that meant that Monday could not be bread-based carbs; nor pork-based meat.
Mondays generally tend to be fish days because I get to go shopping on a Monday so can pick up some reasonably fresh fish. Potato was now back available; so I had fish with grilled mash cakes and some vegetables.
And then there is prepping the salads for the week's lunches. Usually these get done the night before; however being out on Wednesday night and very pushed with the small amount of time on Thursday meant that the three salads for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday would need making on Tuesday. However I would not be going home on Friday so would just grab something from the supermarket; meaning I only had to make two salads on Tuesday. But it's still an additional job for the Tuesday night which brings me onto...
Jobs
Again, because I was losing an evening, my usual jobs needed to be shuffled around. However this was made even worse: I wasn't just losing one evening but two! AND there were more jobs than usual in this week's schedule. The week was bathroom-clean-week and it did need to be done - it oughtened be left for another week. But it was also bed-change-week which was delayed from the previous week. AND there was ironing to do as I only had shirts up to Thursday. So the things that would normally be spread over four nights were contracted into two. But successfully.
Clothes
As I was going out straight from work on Wednesday I needed to take suitable clothing with me to work - jeans and a t-shirt - but get changed at work in such a manner (well, at five-to-five and then hide in the toilet until I was sure they had gone) that my team would not notice. But it also couldn't be the same clothes as I wanted to wear Thursday night on the basis of taste and decency. And they couldn't be the same as Friday night either. So I needed to ensure I didn't accidentally wear Friday's clothes on Wednesday or any of the other incorrect combinations.
Shopping
I have the potential to shop on three days because of how my lunch falls - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Friday I was going out straight from work and wouldn't have the opportunity to drop anything at home; and the same was true on Wednesday. So any shopping I did on Wednesday had to be non-perishable so that I could bring it back on Thursday. But it couldn't be much - I didn't want to get sweaty lugging it home.
So, you can see how many things have to go into consideration, and why I had to start planning on Monday. A similar situation occurred a few weeks ago when I had an interview. Obviously I didn't want to announce this at work (it's not really the done thing, even if you don't get on with your work colleagues and want to get away from them as soon as possible, say) but it was on a Thursday afternoon. So, I had to start at the beginning of the week giving reasons for having to leave early. Fortunately it was this week that my freezer decided to defrost itself and I was able in the same breath as espouging my problems with it to claim my Thursday afternoon was being spent with an engineer.
And then there was the dress: I obviously had to wear a smart suit, whereas usually I am just in plain black trousers. So I would have to take the suit jacket and bag with me in a bag. But then I didn't want to be taking a big bag with me, so I had to take the suit jacket in the day before and tuck it discretely away in my locker. Then all I had to do was wear the suit trousers all week to avoid any attention to wearing considerably smarter trousers on the Thursday - again, my older, less smart trousers were 'in the wash after I spilled something down them'. And similar with my very smart shoes - they had to go to work the day before so that they didn't get dirty walking round in them until I was on my way to the interview.
But then my plans were thrown into disarray when they rearranged the interview for the Friday. Fridays are dress-down days. How was I going to explain going into work in a suit? Well I wouldn't. I would have the jacket and tie in the bag hidden from Wednesday, and merely wear my trousers and shirt as though I had 'forgotten' - which I genuinely could of as the Monday had been a bank holiday.
And again this impacted on my shopping. If the interview had been on Thursday, all well and good. But on the Friday I wouldn't be able to shop; and I was already losing Monday as a shopping day as it was a bank holiday and I was not in at work; so all of the shopping - including the beer for the weekend - had to be done on the Wednesday.
So you can see why I have to be organised about these things and make my lists and my plans.
Well, that and I enjoy it!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Thick and creamy
Let's talk yogurt.
Well, the advertising of yogurt at least.
Advertising is an intrigue for me and one of my many side-line interests. I like it because it is intangible, ephemeral, ethereal and almost unmeasurable. And yet companies will often spend as much money on advertising a product as they will on developing the product. A good product may very well sell itself, in which case how do you identify the difference in sales that an advert has created? It is often very difficult to identify a control point against which to measure it.
Some people, even within the industry, confuse the notions of advertising and branding. Branding is hugely wide. Branding is about advertising, but also about goodwill, culture, the product of itself, portfolio, strategy, history and much more. Branding is far more intangible, unidentifyable, precious and fragile. No-one can forget how Gerald Ratner managed to fatally damage the entire brand of his business with some often misquoted or decontextualise comments about the quality of his products. But some say the damage had already been done to the brand when he devalued his portfolio and ignored the history of the business by embarking on a lower-profit-per-item, higher-turnover strategy.
And then we have already seen how Apple has had incredibly successful brand-management with very little, or very simple advertising. It managed to create a cool brand seemingly effortlessly, and certainly far cheaper. These days it barely needs to advertise as its core of customers will do the product placement for it, whipping up their own cultish-frenzy when a simple press release anounces the release of a new product.
Advertising is much more direct. Advertising is the actual method used to get the brand or product name in front of the customer. It is the print article or the billboard poster, the radio jingle or the 30 seconds of television air. It is the clicklink at the side of your Facebook newsfeed, it is the website which that leads you to, and it is the press release which precurses all of this.
There was a very interesting interview with Rosie Arnold of Bartle Bogle and Hegarty on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live (listen again available here for UK readers) in which she discusses key advertising campaigns and general trends within the advertising industry. If you get the opportunity you really should give it a listen.
One of the mistakes made by rookie advertisers in recent years has been to concentrate solely on 'new media' and 'social media'. Their advertising campaign is purely about trying to get people to retweet a message, or get users to share a Youtube video. These campaigns usually have very limited success on their own, and one has to wonder how it is the advertising agency has convinced the client to drop traditional media. Afterall, if you have made a clip for Youtube, it isn't going to cost much more to put it on television. And if you do, not only have you immediately increased the number of people you are directly advertising to, you have a greater number of people who are likely to share on their Facebook or Twitter thereby cementing the social-stretegy too. Social media should be used to diversify your offering, rather than to concentrate it: to support the 'core' campaign, rather than be it. Spread the message over a number of channels, rather than shed the more traditional ones. Well, assuming it is a good enough video.
Another failure of the new-focused advertisers is the abuse of social media, rather than the use of it. Yes, use your website and a few Facebook posts to get your message out there, but if you are too forceful it can be counter-productive. By all means offer a discount to those who subscribe to your Twitter feed, but if you spam their wall with too many posts, not only will they quickly unfollow you, but your core brand will get hurt as desperate or ignorant of their customers. Yes, ask your followers to pass on information as to your brand, but do so too forcefully and people will write your brand off as a con, wanting more for itself than it is a benefit to its customers.
I recently had to 'unlike' an art gallery on my Facebook page. I still enjoy going to the art gallery, but over the course of an hour they posted seven different posts about upcoming events. Not only did I ignore the contents of the last four or five posts, but I now will not see any of their future posts. That shows how a social marketing strategy can fail, and fail badly. Had they been witty, intelligent, teaser feeds then I would probably have paid attention.
And that is a very key point: the message needs to be good enough in the first place. Those that have 'gone viral' have been excellent pieces of advertising which people have naturally wanted to share.
One of the brands which has done very well out of the broad-based approach is Yeo Valley: the organic yogurt and milk company. Their Boy-Band Farmer advert has gone viral with far more people seeing it online on Youtube, their own website, on Facebook or being sent by email than saw its first airing on the Saturday night. So how did they do it? It is a good, funny video that people can interact with and that they want to share. It, far over and above the acts on the X Factor was the gossip in the office kitchen on the Monday morning. The new media here complimented the primary, traditional strategy. It gave people further resources to interact with, rather than being the resource. They didn't over-concentrate on the new media aspect exclusively (or even too heavily) if you listen to Rosie Arnold you will see the primary benefit of the Youtube channel was to get a much more immediate idea as to how the traditional advert had been received, rather than waiting around for sales figures, reviews, reports and research. Yes, it made sharing easier, but if people were going to share the message they were going to do so regardless.
Contrast this with the new Muller yogurt advert. I don't get what message they are trying to get over (and apparently quite a number of the comments on the Youtube page agree with comments such as 'pointless' and 'What is this commercial for'). There doesn't seem to be a story to the advert, or if it does it neither comes over nor resolves. It seems to be very formulaic. Someone has sat at the agency and simply gone "retro is cool, kids stuff is cool, animation over live-action is very 'now', lets throw it all together and we must have a hit." And so they don't. Whilst their previous adverts were very slick and smooth, simply using dreamy pictures of nice people enjoying life or the yogurts accompanied by Nina Simone's immediately infectious and enthusing I Got Life, their current advert doesn't actually say what their product is supposed to do.
And part of the reason they missed the message is that they missed the market. They didn't know who they were marketing to. That or they thought they were marketing to everybody. Yeo Valley identified very specifically one single advertising slot that they wanted, they identified very carefully what demographic would be watching at that time and they identified what that demographic wanted: entertainment and light relief. Humour. They didn't just want yogurt forcing down their throats.
Now there is a risk with that strategy: get the message slightly wrong; mis-identify the demographic or their needs and you may have missed entirely and spent thousands of pounds wastefully.
However, the Muller advert trys to spray far too widely and ends up missing all of its targets (if it actually had any). The 'kids is cool' idea works very well if you actually know to whom you are trying to retro. But they don't, and so they include as many different references as they can do, further confusing things. So we have Kit from Knight Rider, Transformers, Mr Men, Yogi Bear, Wacky Races and others. The cost of the IP rights alone must have been astronomical. And going for retro of itself has many risks amongst which are the chances that it could appear dated; and there is always a potential backlash of people feeling Yogi bear as sold-out or the cherished memories of Transformers has been denigrated for a bit of mouldy milk. For such a huge campaign (at 1m31s the advert is practically epic compared to usual 30-60s ads) this is a terrible miss.
Now, where did I put that yogurt...
Well, the advertising of yogurt at least.
Advertising is an intrigue for me and one of my many side-line interests. I like it because it is intangible, ephemeral, ethereal and almost unmeasurable. And yet companies will often spend as much money on advertising a product as they will on developing the product. A good product may very well sell itself, in which case how do you identify the difference in sales that an advert has created? It is often very difficult to identify a control point against which to measure it.
Some people, even within the industry, confuse the notions of advertising and branding. Branding is hugely wide. Branding is about advertising, but also about goodwill, culture, the product of itself, portfolio, strategy, history and much more. Branding is far more intangible, unidentifyable, precious and fragile. No-one can forget how Gerald Ratner managed to fatally damage the entire brand of his business with some often misquoted or decontextualise comments about the quality of his products. But some say the damage had already been done to the brand when he devalued his portfolio and ignored the history of the business by embarking on a lower-profit-per-item, higher-turnover strategy.
And then we have already seen how Apple has had incredibly successful brand-management with very little, or very simple advertising. It managed to create a cool brand seemingly effortlessly, and certainly far cheaper. These days it barely needs to advertise as its core of customers will do the product placement for it, whipping up their own cultish-frenzy when a simple press release anounces the release of a new product.
Advertising is much more direct. Advertising is the actual method used to get the brand or product name in front of the customer. It is the print article or the billboard poster, the radio jingle or the 30 seconds of television air. It is the clicklink at the side of your Facebook newsfeed, it is the website which that leads you to, and it is the press release which precurses all of this.
There was a very interesting interview with Rosie Arnold of Bartle Bogle and Hegarty on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live (listen again available here for UK readers) in which she discusses key advertising campaigns and general trends within the advertising industry. If you get the opportunity you really should give it a listen.
One of the mistakes made by rookie advertisers in recent years has been to concentrate solely on 'new media' and 'social media'. Their advertising campaign is purely about trying to get people to retweet a message, or get users to share a Youtube video. These campaigns usually have very limited success on their own, and one has to wonder how it is the advertising agency has convinced the client to drop traditional media. Afterall, if you have made a clip for Youtube, it isn't going to cost much more to put it on television. And if you do, not only have you immediately increased the number of people you are directly advertising to, you have a greater number of people who are likely to share on their Facebook or Twitter thereby cementing the social-stretegy too. Social media should be used to diversify your offering, rather than to concentrate it: to support the 'core' campaign, rather than be it. Spread the message over a number of channels, rather than shed the more traditional ones. Well, assuming it is a good enough video.
Another failure of the new-focused advertisers is the abuse of social media, rather than the use of it. Yes, use your website and a few Facebook posts to get your message out there, but if you are too forceful it can be counter-productive. By all means offer a discount to those who subscribe to your Twitter feed, but if you spam their wall with too many posts, not only will they quickly unfollow you, but your core brand will get hurt as desperate or ignorant of their customers. Yes, ask your followers to pass on information as to your brand, but do so too forcefully and people will write your brand off as a con, wanting more for itself than it is a benefit to its customers.
I recently had to 'unlike' an art gallery on my Facebook page. I still enjoy going to the art gallery, but over the course of an hour they posted seven different posts about upcoming events. Not only did I ignore the contents of the last four or five posts, but I now will not see any of their future posts. That shows how a social marketing strategy can fail, and fail badly. Had they been witty, intelligent, teaser feeds then I would probably have paid attention.
And that is a very key point: the message needs to be good enough in the first place. Those that have 'gone viral' have been excellent pieces of advertising which people have naturally wanted to share.
One of the brands which has done very well out of the broad-based approach is Yeo Valley: the organic yogurt and milk company. Their Boy-Band Farmer advert has gone viral with far more people seeing it online on Youtube, their own website, on Facebook or being sent by email than saw its first airing on the Saturday night. So how did they do it? It is a good, funny video that people can interact with and that they want to share. It, far over and above the acts on the X Factor was the gossip in the office kitchen on the Monday morning. The new media here complimented the primary, traditional strategy. It gave people further resources to interact with, rather than being the resource. They didn't over-concentrate on the new media aspect exclusively (or even too heavily) if you listen to Rosie Arnold you will see the primary benefit of the Youtube channel was to get a much more immediate idea as to how the traditional advert had been received, rather than waiting around for sales figures, reviews, reports and research. Yes, it made sharing easier, but if people were going to share the message they were going to do so regardless.
Contrast this with the new Muller yogurt advert. I don't get what message they are trying to get over (and apparently quite a number of the comments on the Youtube page agree with comments such as 'pointless' and 'What is this commercial for'). There doesn't seem to be a story to the advert, or if it does it neither comes over nor resolves. It seems to be very formulaic. Someone has sat at the agency and simply gone "retro is cool, kids stuff is cool, animation over live-action is very 'now', lets throw it all together and we must have a hit." And so they don't. Whilst their previous adverts were very slick and smooth, simply using dreamy pictures of nice people enjoying life or the yogurts accompanied by Nina Simone's immediately infectious and enthusing I Got Life, their current advert doesn't actually say what their product is supposed to do.
And part of the reason they missed the message is that they missed the market. They didn't know who they were marketing to. That or they thought they were marketing to everybody. Yeo Valley identified very specifically one single advertising slot that they wanted, they identified very carefully what demographic would be watching at that time and they identified what that demographic wanted: entertainment and light relief. Humour. They didn't just want yogurt forcing down their throats.
Now there is a risk with that strategy: get the message slightly wrong; mis-identify the demographic or their needs and you may have missed entirely and spent thousands of pounds wastefully.
However, the Muller advert trys to spray far too widely and ends up missing all of its targets (if it actually had any). The 'kids is cool' idea works very well if you actually know to whom you are trying to retro. But they don't, and so they include as many different references as they can do, further confusing things. So we have Kit from Knight Rider, Transformers, Mr Men, Yogi Bear, Wacky Races and others. The cost of the IP rights alone must have been astronomical. And going for retro of itself has many risks amongst which are the chances that it could appear dated; and there is always a potential backlash of people feeling Yogi bear as sold-out or the cherished memories of Transformers has been denigrated for a bit of mouldy milk. For such a huge campaign (at 1m31s the advert is practically epic compared to usual 30-60s ads) this is a terrible miss.
Now, where did I put that yogurt...
Monday, October 17, 2011
When I was that age...
10 days.
10 days without a post.
An awful lot can happen in 10 days.
It hasn't, but it could have.
There has been some excitement involving drinking with 'clebs; but I am loathe to name-drop so I won't go into that.
Anyhow, I have been ridiculously busy at work, and - moreover - have been working with even less privacy than usual, hence the lack of posts.
But let me waffle on about Break-Me-Up-Boy.
B-Mub is absolutely gorgeous. (I won't call him B-Mub again: it doesn't work). I have mentioned before; how he ticks every single box that I need ticking, even down to being a non-smoker. He is, [however/also] young. He is twenty. Just. And I am thirty.
Lets put this into context:
When he was age 10 and still at Primary school, I was twenty and finishing off my university degree.
Now, I know people go on about how age differences don't matter, and that age is just a number. Those are usually the people for whom age is just a rather large number. But the difference is really one of perspective. Ten years at age twenty when you are going through a hell of a lot of changes both physically, emotionally and socially - leaving school, leaving home, adapting to looking after yourself and learning in a whole new manner - is a vastly different ten years to that in your later life when the most massive change you may be experiencing is how and when to retire. The thoughts between people aged between, say, fifty and sixty are considerably closer than those between people aged between twenty and thirty.
Now, I am a young thirty. I still go out drinking and clubbing, enjoying gigs and festivals and sex and such like. Aside from the receding hairline (thanks mum's side of the family for that) and a few creases (which sounds better than wrinkles) I would fit in very well with a group aged twenty.
But I have to admit that my stage of life does pose different considerations.
So, for example, whilst he languishes in bed of a morning, I am already off on the morning commute. This doesn't just affect the morning routine, but I also have to consider this at night when he is probably off to all the student bars getting drunk and kebabed; and I am having the last cup of tea before bed.
Whilst he is debating whether to start writing the essay that needs to be in the following day; I am having to make a decision as to whether to apply for a different job or stay with the one I am already doing.
He has to decide whether to spend the last of his student loan on a book or a beer. I have a rigid monthly financial budget which has to ensure that my pension, mortgage, tax and bills get paid and yet still leaves me with enough money to live on.
And it's not just the sensible side of things either. It is the maturity too.
Whilst I may very well be looking for a relationship, looking to settle down, he probably just wants to go around bonking everything cute in sight. I know that at his age that was certainly the plan. Well, it wasn't really 'the plan' but it is what I ended up doing. And he probably needs to do that to realise eventually that I am the one that he wants to settle down with. Hopefully.
I recall back when I started university (way back when, before Facebook even existed) that on of my friends in freshers' week had a girlfriend. He had been dating her since A-Levels and continued to do so for the entire first year. They broke up the first summer he returned back because the distance was just too much. But his attitude was that being in a relationship during that first year was the worst thing he could have done. He felt so restricted, unable to fully enjoy himself, even to the extent that he felt 'tied' to back home and didn't really accept that he was in a new city to live - that he was only there temporarily. He didn't really settle into university life until the second year, by which time it was too late - everyone else had already made formative friendships and whilst he wanted to go out, drink and bonk; they all wanted to do reading researching and writing.
I have had the opportunity to enjoy myself and it would be wrong of me to deny that to him. And so I wasn't too disappointed when I suggested a date to be turned down. Well, I was actually - I was really quite gutted, but I took a step back and looked at things sensibly.
Obviously it will be difficult. I won't just be a bystander; waiting for the moment he wants a relationship with me. Because of the nature of the scene around town I will be there watching whilst he engages on 'entertaining' with other people. And I know full well that I will get annoyed by that. But I will have to man-up, be sensible about it (even though I will have been drinking) and tell myself that it is nothing personal to me, he's just having his fun and that is exactly what I was like when I was that age.
Lets put this into context:
When he was age 10 and still at Primary school, I was twenty and finishing off my university degree.
Now, I know people go on about how age differences don't matter, and that age is just a number. Those are usually the people for whom age is just a rather large number. But the difference is really one of perspective. Ten years at age twenty when you are going through a hell of a lot of changes both physically, emotionally and socially - leaving school, leaving home, adapting to looking after yourself and learning in a whole new manner - is a vastly different ten years to that in your later life when the most massive change you may be experiencing is how and when to retire. The thoughts between people aged between, say, fifty and sixty are considerably closer than those between people aged between twenty and thirty.
Now, I am a young thirty. I still go out drinking and clubbing, enjoying gigs and festivals and sex and such like. Aside from the receding hairline (thanks mum's side of the family for that) and a few creases (which sounds better than wrinkles) I would fit in very well with a group aged twenty.
But I have to admit that my stage of life does pose different considerations.
So, for example, whilst he languishes in bed of a morning, I am already off on the morning commute. This doesn't just affect the morning routine, but I also have to consider this at night when he is probably off to all the student bars getting drunk and kebabed; and I am having the last cup of tea before bed.
Whilst he is debating whether to start writing the essay that needs to be in the following day; I am having to make a decision as to whether to apply for a different job or stay with the one I am already doing.
He has to decide whether to spend the last of his student loan on a book or a beer. I have a rigid monthly financial budget which has to ensure that my pension, mortgage, tax and bills get paid and yet still leaves me with enough money to live on.
And it's not just the sensible side of things either. It is the maturity too.
Whilst I may very well be looking for a relationship, looking to settle down, he probably just wants to go around bonking everything cute in sight. I know that at his age that was certainly the plan. Well, it wasn't really 'the plan' but it is what I ended up doing. And he probably needs to do that to realise eventually that I am the one that he wants to settle down with. Hopefully.
I recall back when I started university (way back when, before Facebook even existed) that on of my friends in freshers' week had a girlfriend. He had been dating her since A-Levels and continued to do so for the entire first year. They broke up the first summer he returned back because the distance was just too much. But his attitude was that being in a relationship during that first year was the worst thing he could have done. He felt so restricted, unable to fully enjoy himself, even to the extent that he felt 'tied' to back home and didn't really accept that he was in a new city to live - that he was only there temporarily. He didn't really settle into university life until the second year, by which time it was too late - everyone else had already made formative friendships and whilst he wanted to go out, drink and bonk; they all wanted to do reading researching and writing.
I have had the opportunity to enjoy myself and it would be wrong of me to deny that to him. And so I wasn't too disappointed when I suggested a date to be turned down. Well, I was actually - I was really quite gutted, but I took a step back and looked at things sensibly.
Obviously it will be difficult. I won't just be a bystander; waiting for the moment he wants a relationship with me. Because of the nature of the scene around town I will be there watching whilst he engages on 'entertaining' with other people. And I know full well that I will get annoyed by that. But I will have to man-up, be sensible about it (even though I will have been drinking) and tell myself that it is nothing personal to me, he's just having his fun and that is exactly what I was like when I was that age.
And now I really do feel old.
Friday, October 07, 2011
Another mass-debate
I have a debate about this weekend.
You may wonder if this is how I spend every Friday afternoon when work dips a little quiet. It isn't. I'm usually listening to songs on Youtube whilst catching up on the latest edition of one of the legal magazines I have to read.
But in my life of constant dilemmas I have a new one.
You may recall a couple of months ago I reported that I was taking a period of enforced leave from football. This was due to a number of reasons, but mostly due to:
I wanted to take a break anyway; but last weekend was the first weekend that I would have been available to go along and train. Only training wasn't on - the team was up in Scotland playing against the entirely descriptive HotScots.Yes, they are Scotch; and yes, they are hot.
But that means I have a decision to make as to whether I go this weekend or not. Only it's not simply a decision as to whether I break my hiatus - these things are rarely as simple as that!
The main factor weighing in as to whether I stay away, is that one of the players is leaving. All the more reason to go, surely? No. He is leaving the county - he is moving away to Leeds. As such he is having official leaving drinks on the Sunday night, an hour after the end of training. Were these just nice, informal drinks they wouldn't have any bearing. However as they are formal 'leaving' drinks, I really should make the effort not only to attend, but to attend smartly.
Which is where the problem occurs.
Drinks start at 9pm, training finishes at 8pm. In that hour I have to cycle home from the training ground (30 mins); shower (10 mins); dress (10mins); faff around (10 mins) and then walk (30mins) to the pub where the drinks are. It just doesn't add up.
And again factors have conspired against me turning up late. Usually turning up half an hour late to these sorts of things is no bother at all. However I have to be at work the next day. Have to be. I did think about taking it off: I still have eight days of holiday to take before the end of the calender year and I have very little else pressing on them; and I haven't had a good night out with the footballers in a long time. However I am doing some testing on a new system to be released to clients which must start Monday morning. So I cannot be absent.
As such, bearing in mind the ridiculously early time I have to get up (5:45am) this means that the latest I can leave the pub really is midnight. So if I turn up at 9:30 instead of 9pm I have already lost 1/6th of my available drinking time.
So that is one factor working against my return.
But then there is my legs. One of the unmentioned reasons for taking the time off football was to rest a little. I have had some quite severe pains in my shins for a wee while. I have put these down to shin splints from football and jogging, so took a break from both over the summer month, though I have now restarted jogging again. But the pain is still there.
So maybe it isn't shin splints. Maybe it is bone cancer. I always think I have cancer. I'm a tiny bit of a hyperchondriac. I've had a constant pain in one of my lungs for a good couple of years now - I think that is cancer too. It probably isn't. If it were I'd probably be dead by now. It might be like that chap who inhaled a pea and it started growing in his lung. It might actually just be absolutely nothing. Or purely psychosomatic. That boy needs therapy.
But I will probably never know, because I don't go to the doctors'. The last time I set foot in the GP surgery was around three years ago, and even that was only to pick up a sick note that I had rung in for because I had a broken jaw. And the surgeons I saw for my broken jaw were the first medical professionals I had seen in a long while. And even that was only because of the said broken jaw.
I know I should go to the doctors about it. It's not as though it's a nothingness. It is actually quite painful; and it has been there fore a while. I just don't like to be a burden, or get a reputation as one of those people who is 'always at the doctors'' for one reason or another.
And I'll only be able to go to the doctors once I have sorted out my critical illness insurance anyway.
You may wonder if this is how I spend every Friday afternoon when work dips a little quiet. It isn't. I'm usually listening to songs on Youtube whilst catching up on the latest edition of one of the legal magazines I have to read.
But in my life of constant dilemmas I have a new one.
You may recall a couple of months ago I reported that I was taking a period of enforced leave from football. This was due to a number of reasons, but mostly due to:
- Brighton weekend
- V Festival
- Manchester
- London
I wanted to take a break anyway; but last weekend was the first weekend that I would have been available to go along and train. Only training wasn't on - the team was up in Scotland playing against the entirely descriptive HotScots.Yes, they are Scotch; and yes, they are hot.
But that means I have a decision to make as to whether I go this weekend or not. Only it's not simply a decision as to whether I break my hiatus - these things are rarely as simple as that!
The main factor weighing in as to whether I stay away, is that one of the players is leaving. All the more reason to go, surely? No. He is leaving the county - he is moving away to Leeds. As such he is having official leaving drinks on the Sunday night, an hour after the end of training. Were these just nice, informal drinks they wouldn't have any bearing. However as they are formal 'leaving' drinks, I really should make the effort not only to attend, but to attend smartly.
Which is where the problem occurs.
Drinks start at 9pm, training finishes at 8pm. In that hour I have to cycle home from the training ground (30 mins); shower (10 mins); dress (10mins); faff around (10 mins) and then walk (30mins) to the pub where the drinks are. It just doesn't add up.
And again factors have conspired against me turning up late. Usually turning up half an hour late to these sorts of things is no bother at all. However I have to be at work the next day. Have to be. I did think about taking it off: I still have eight days of holiday to take before the end of the calender year and I have very little else pressing on them; and I haven't had a good night out with the footballers in a long time. However I am doing some testing on a new system to be released to clients which must start Monday morning. So I cannot be absent.
As such, bearing in mind the ridiculously early time I have to get up (5:45am) this means that the latest I can leave the pub really is midnight. So if I turn up at 9:30 instead of 9pm I have already lost 1/6th of my available drinking time.
So that is one factor working against my return.
But then there is my legs. One of the unmentioned reasons for taking the time off football was to rest a little. I have had some quite severe pains in my shins for a wee while. I have put these down to shin splints from football and jogging, so took a break from both over the summer month, though I have now restarted jogging again. But the pain is still there.
So maybe it isn't shin splints. Maybe it is bone cancer. I always think I have cancer. I'm a tiny bit of a hyperchondriac. I've had a constant pain in one of my lungs for a good couple of years now - I think that is cancer too. It probably isn't. If it were I'd probably be dead by now. It might be like that chap who inhaled a pea and it started growing in his lung. It might actually just be absolutely nothing. Or purely psychosomatic. That boy needs therapy.
But I will probably never know, because I don't go to the doctors'. The last time I set foot in the GP surgery was around three years ago, and even that was only to pick up a sick note that I had rung in for because I had a broken jaw. And the surgeons I saw for my broken jaw were the first medical professionals I had seen in a long while. And even that was only because of the said broken jaw.
I know I should go to the doctors about it. It's not as though it's a nothingness. It is actually quite painful; and it has been there fore a while. I just don't like to be a burden, or get a reputation as one of those people who is 'always at the doctors'' for one reason or another.
And I'll only be able to go to the doctors once I have sorted out my critical illness insurance anyway.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
The Apple of my i
So, this is blog 100.
Wow.
100 posts since I started the blog back in July 2005. It's odd to think that back then it was the immediate aftermath of the 7 July bomb attacks on London which I very nearly got caught up in. You can see that neither my spelling nor my proof-reading have improved much since then. What is also slightly odd is that of the 100 posts, only 19 of them were before my hiatus until I restarted my posting in May this year. It must be something about the summer months.
Anyway, this was going to be a brief review of my posts over the period; however I decided to change my mind.
Last night Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers died. My Facebook feed and Twitter have gone bonkers with people I know pouring in tributes as if they knew the man, which they don't. But that is part of the Cult of Apple.
I don't say that as though they are disingenuous with their comments at all; it's just that people need a bit of perspective about these things. Yes, it is a very great loss to his family; and yes it is a very great loss to his business and let me not ever try to detract from that. But is it a very great loss to the man on the street? It is a point very wisely considered by by David Mitchell in the Guardian. And although the ever-so-slightly bad taste jokes have already started wizzing around the internet, any word raised which could remotely be considered to in some slight way question the absolutely unsullied reputation is tarred with the same brush and trolled and rubbished as though we are not allowed to even raise a question. And that is plain wrong. If anything it actually immediately invalidates that individual as they are trying to silence a slightly contrasting point of view. Life isn't all black and white, even at Apple.
So, what did Jobs, or more particularly Apple Inc. (as Apple Computers Inc. later became) actually do? How innovative or revolutionary were they, or did they become?
Let me set out my locus standi already - I am not and never have been an Apple customer. My greatest interaction with Apple was when an ex of mine had an Apple laptop and asked me for assistance and I was useless. I do this from the view of a bystander.
So, were they innovative? Were they revolutionary? Well, at the beginning - maybe. What Apple did was kick-start the personal computer revolution. Well, they tried. As with almost anything to which Apple turned its core, there were already PCs on the market. And popular, profitable ones too. The problem was with the P. They weren't really Personal to the consumer. They were still rather targetted at the geek. And this is where Apple did innovate and revolutionise. They did two things.
Firstly, they made the computer very quick and easy to set-up. The Apple II released in 1977 was an all-in-one solution. You had the box which contained the keyboard, the processor and the monitor. There were few wires to confuse yourself with. And bearing in mind at this time, for the average consumer, the most complicated thing they had touched was the television which still worked by turning a dial to the correct frequency.
And secondly, they made the software interface much more user-friendly. Rather than the standard of the time which was a very black screen with a single line of green text prompting you to type something (and heaven forbid if you typed in some code incorrectly!) they pioneered the window. You could see a file as an identifyable document. The display of itself worked as though a desk scattered with bits of paper. Rather than the carot being where the computer was, and having to input what you needed, you got to point at what you wanted, pick it up and move it to where you actually wanted it.
And there the innovation and revolution ends.
A contentious argument, yes. And definitely one to inflame the Apple die-hards. But it is one that is not without substance. Thereafter Apple actually did very little that was 'new'. In fact, what it has done has been incredibly prescriptive or even proscriptive. And actually quite aggressive. Apple these days is credited with four main lines: iPod, iPad, iPhone and iMac (whether standalone computer or Macbook Air or such like). But there was nothing revolutionary about these.
In all of the cases generic devices had been around for a while beforehand. The first MP3 player was released in 1997, a good four years before the first iPod. Apple saw that the digital revolution was taking off, and just made it cool. They had already established themselves as the 'cool' player in the industry to rival the staid, sturdy, reliable, dependable but very very grey IBM-type PC a few years prior with the very cool, very funky iMac - available in a range of bright colours to very distinctly establish that it was not grey. And having targetted artists and designers by specifically focusing their software offering towards that sector, they were definitely the cool guys that produced pretty pictures and fantastic graphics, rather than reems and reems of very useful but ultimately uninspiring data, probably printed out on green and white line paper with perforations.
But so it was that the iPod was born to an already adulating market sector. And if the designers were buying these things, they were cool. If you spoke to the guy in the data-room and asked him what his most exciting purchase had been he would have brandished a very bland bit of hardware at you with lots of things and bits attached, which had some name or description which was a long string of jumbled assortment of letters and numbers, with a list of stats and specs which made no sense to anyone. You could see why this device in its very very lovely shiny white, with its four buttons and a clicky wheel which did exactly what it said on the tin, quickly, easily and funkily flew off the shelves.
And again with the iPhone - touchscreen phones were already out there. All that Apple did was take them and sell the to the iFans. And it really didn't take much. All you need to do is look to the reaction there was yesterday when Apple, at its pretty-much annual ceremony didn't release a brand new iPhone5; but merely a slightly reworked iPhone4S. They will buy anything that has an Apple on it. And not just that, they will adopt it, devour it, love it. The biggest advert Apple has is the iFans. They ignore the glitches, the faults, the failings and the espouse better than any paid apostle the wonder that is Apple.
And, let's be clear, the 'cool' is not Jobs. The 'cool' is Jonathan Ive - a British designer who has been responsible for the iMac, the iPod and pretty much anything i.
In fact, it is a wonder that Apple - under Jobs leadership - has actually gotten anywhere. Only once he had absolute control of the company did the bickering and infighting (well, insurgency from Jobs really) stop. Is he a phenomenal business man? Well, lest I argue against a man who built up the second most valuable company in the world at a mere $400bn or so, the vast majority of what he does actually goes against the grain of successful business.
Apple does do somethings very, very well. Obviously he simplified things to make them consumable. The iPhone with its very simple menu and icons, not confusing you with many many screens and options, just a simple flick through. And then they tie you in and drain you of your cash through iTunes - making sure that you either can't purchase your music/video/app/content from anyone else (or, as a provider you must provide it - in some circumstances only through Apple) or if you can, it is so much more complicated that you might as well buy it from Apple. With them taking a 30% cut for their efforts.
And that is how they make a lot of money - they are very aggressive as to how they charge the content provider. Yes, they charge the end user; but not in a nasty way. If they did it in a nasty way then the users would quickly flee. They need the users so that the developers come. And then they can almost extort money out of the developers in a surprisingly aggressive manner.
And the complete package. This goes back to the very heart of Apple back in 1977. You got everything in the box. They have always bundled the hardware and the software; which - in business terms at least - is a very diversified (and not necessarily in a good way) way of operating. Usually, one company concentrates very much on creating hardware; whilst another develops software. Yes, the two work very synergetically together - the software developer finds ways to utilise the full capacity of the hardware; and in return makes demands of the hardware developer as to what new functionality or innovation it needs to progress its software. But it is rare that the brains and the brawn mix.
But that is where Apple has you. You may very well love their very user-friendly interface, but you only get that if you buy the box. You may love the slick lines, stylish colours of the product; but you get lumped with the operating system whether you like it or not. And believe me, there are a lot of people who do not. At the start, if you bought the very very cool iPod, you had to use iTunes. There was no way around it.
And you are very limited with choice too. If you go out and buy a PC, you get to choose. Do you want 512Mb RAM? Or 1 GB? or 2GB? Or 8GB? Which one of the 80 or so different processors do you want? What size hard-drive? Or do you want two hard-drives? Or ten? Do you want your software optimised for video? Or for gaming? Or for browsing? How big do you want your screen? But with Apple, it often literally is a choice between black or white. With their latest release of phone you have six options: three different size hard drives; and the phone is either in black or white. If you look for the latest Android phones there are dozens and dozens and dozens of them.
When it came to the box on the table, Apple had very limited success. It still does. In terms of operating systems, it holds a measly 8% market share. And you can guarantee that number comes from a) the people who have to use it for graphic design or such like; and b) the people who bought a MacBook because they already own pretty much everything else Apple and it just works easier together. In terms of desktops they have very little. But this is because you can't take your desktop out and show everyone how cool it is. And unless you are using the very specifically created programs for graphic design, modelling or such like, you realise as an operating system just how restrictive it actually is: again, the aggressiveness of Apple and its (anti)business model mean that developers only get access at a price.
So, really, what Apple has done is force others to innovate. These days we do far more on the internet - even functions usually highly demanding of power or memory such as gaming - very much because of format compatibility. Rather than spend twice the time and twice the money to create two different versions of exactly the same program; program developers themselves became creative, innovating to put these things online and then - rather than the rafts and rafts of different programs and formats - they user only needed one program, the brower, and everything else would be compatible with that browser regardless of whether you were Mac or PC. And they have again revolted against the perceived norm with apps. On facing increasingly higher charges from Apple, and increasingly restrictive practices as to how they charge for in-app content; the developers have instead opted for HMTL5 apps; so that you are not buying the content through the app but simply through the content-provider's website. So maybe we should be thankful for Apple for that - not themselves thinking differently, but forcing ourselves to think differently
And to think when I started my blog back in 2005 they were just releasing the iBook and the iMac...
Wow.
100 posts since I started the blog back in July 2005. It's odd to think that back then it was the immediate aftermath of the 7 July bomb attacks on London which I very nearly got caught up in. You can see that neither my spelling nor my proof-reading have improved much since then. What is also slightly odd is that of the 100 posts, only 19 of them were before my hiatus until I restarted my posting in May this year. It must be something about the summer months.
Anyway, this was going to be a brief review of my posts over the period; however I decided to change my mind.
Last night Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers died. My Facebook feed and Twitter have gone bonkers with people I know pouring in tributes as if they knew the man, which they don't. But that is part of the Cult of Apple.
I don't say that as though they are disingenuous with their comments at all; it's just that people need a bit of perspective about these things. Yes, it is a very great loss to his family; and yes it is a very great loss to his business and let me not ever try to detract from that. But is it a very great loss to the man on the street? It is a point very wisely considered by by David Mitchell in the Guardian. And although the ever-so-slightly bad taste jokes have already started wizzing around the internet, any word raised which could remotely be considered to in some slight way question the absolutely unsullied reputation is tarred with the same brush and trolled and rubbished as though we are not allowed to even raise a question. And that is plain wrong. If anything it actually immediately invalidates that individual as they are trying to silence a slightly contrasting point of view. Life isn't all black and white, even at Apple.
So, what did Jobs, or more particularly Apple Inc. (as Apple Computers Inc. later became) actually do? How innovative or revolutionary were they, or did they become?
Let me set out my locus standi already - I am not and never have been an Apple customer. My greatest interaction with Apple was when an ex of mine had an Apple laptop and asked me for assistance and I was useless. I do this from the view of a bystander.
So, were they innovative? Were they revolutionary? Well, at the beginning - maybe. What Apple did was kick-start the personal computer revolution. Well, they tried. As with almost anything to which Apple turned its core, there were already PCs on the market. And popular, profitable ones too. The problem was with the P. They weren't really Personal to the consumer. They were still rather targetted at the geek. And this is where Apple did innovate and revolutionise. They did two things.
Firstly, they made the computer very quick and easy to set-up. The Apple II released in 1977 was an all-in-one solution. You had the box which contained the keyboard, the processor and the monitor. There were few wires to confuse yourself with. And bearing in mind at this time, for the average consumer, the most complicated thing they had touched was the television which still worked by turning a dial to the correct frequency.
And secondly, they made the software interface much more user-friendly. Rather than the standard of the time which was a very black screen with a single line of green text prompting you to type something (and heaven forbid if you typed in some code incorrectly!) they pioneered the window. You could see a file as an identifyable document. The display of itself worked as though a desk scattered with bits of paper. Rather than the carot being where the computer was, and having to input what you needed, you got to point at what you wanted, pick it up and move it to where you actually wanted it.
And there the innovation and revolution ends.
A contentious argument, yes. And definitely one to inflame the Apple die-hards. But it is one that is not without substance. Thereafter Apple actually did very little that was 'new'. In fact, what it has done has been incredibly prescriptive or even proscriptive. And actually quite aggressive. Apple these days is credited with four main lines: iPod, iPad, iPhone and iMac (whether standalone computer or Macbook Air or such like). But there was nothing revolutionary about these.
In all of the cases generic devices had been around for a while beforehand. The first MP3 player was released in 1997, a good four years before the first iPod. Apple saw that the digital revolution was taking off, and just made it cool. They had already established themselves as the 'cool' player in the industry to rival the staid, sturdy, reliable, dependable but very very grey IBM-type PC a few years prior with the very cool, very funky iMac - available in a range of bright colours to very distinctly establish that it was not grey. And having targetted artists and designers by specifically focusing their software offering towards that sector, they were definitely the cool guys that produced pretty pictures and fantastic graphics, rather than reems and reems of very useful but ultimately uninspiring data, probably printed out on green and white line paper with perforations.
But so it was that the iPod was born to an already adulating market sector. And if the designers were buying these things, they were cool. If you spoke to the guy in the data-room and asked him what his most exciting purchase had been he would have brandished a very bland bit of hardware at you with lots of things and bits attached, which had some name or description which was a long string of jumbled assortment of letters and numbers, with a list of stats and specs which made no sense to anyone. You could see why this device in its very very lovely shiny white, with its four buttons and a clicky wheel which did exactly what it said on the tin, quickly, easily and funkily flew off the shelves.
And again with the iPhone - touchscreen phones were already out there. All that Apple did was take them and sell the to the iFans. And it really didn't take much. All you need to do is look to the reaction there was yesterday when Apple, at its pretty-much annual ceremony didn't release a brand new iPhone5; but merely a slightly reworked iPhone4S. They will buy anything that has an Apple on it. And not just that, they will adopt it, devour it, love it. The biggest advert Apple has is the iFans. They ignore the glitches, the faults, the failings and the espouse better than any paid apostle the wonder that is Apple.
And, let's be clear, the 'cool' is not Jobs. The 'cool' is Jonathan Ive - a British designer who has been responsible for the iMac, the iPod and pretty much anything i.
In fact, it is a wonder that Apple - under Jobs leadership - has actually gotten anywhere. Only once he had absolute control of the company did the bickering and infighting (well, insurgency from Jobs really) stop. Is he a phenomenal business man? Well, lest I argue against a man who built up the second most valuable company in the world at a mere $400bn or so, the vast majority of what he does actually goes against the grain of successful business.
Apple does do somethings very, very well. Obviously he simplified things to make them consumable. The iPhone with its very simple menu and icons, not confusing you with many many screens and options, just a simple flick through. And then they tie you in and drain you of your cash through iTunes - making sure that you either can't purchase your music/video/app/content from anyone else (or, as a provider you must provide it - in some circumstances only through Apple) or if you can, it is so much more complicated that you might as well buy it from Apple. With them taking a 30% cut for their efforts.
And that is how they make a lot of money - they are very aggressive as to how they charge the content provider. Yes, they charge the end user; but not in a nasty way. If they did it in a nasty way then the users would quickly flee. They need the users so that the developers come. And then they can almost extort money out of the developers in a surprisingly aggressive manner.
And the complete package. This goes back to the very heart of Apple back in 1977. You got everything in the box. They have always bundled the hardware and the software; which - in business terms at least - is a very diversified (and not necessarily in a good way) way of operating. Usually, one company concentrates very much on creating hardware; whilst another develops software. Yes, the two work very synergetically together - the software developer finds ways to utilise the full capacity of the hardware; and in return makes demands of the hardware developer as to what new functionality or innovation it needs to progress its software. But it is rare that the brains and the brawn mix.
But that is where Apple has you. You may very well love their very user-friendly interface, but you only get that if you buy the box. You may love the slick lines, stylish colours of the product; but you get lumped with the operating system whether you like it or not. And believe me, there are a lot of people who do not. At the start, if you bought the very very cool iPod, you had to use iTunes. There was no way around it.
And you are very limited with choice too. If you go out and buy a PC, you get to choose. Do you want 512Mb RAM? Or 1 GB? or 2GB? Or 8GB? Which one of the 80 or so different processors do you want? What size hard-drive? Or do you want two hard-drives? Or ten? Do you want your software optimised for video? Or for gaming? Or for browsing? How big do you want your screen? But with Apple, it often literally is a choice between black or white. With their latest release of phone you have six options: three different size hard drives; and the phone is either in black or white. If you look for the latest Android phones there are dozens and dozens and dozens of them.
When it came to the box on the table, Apple had very limited success. It still does. In terms of operating systems, it holds a measly 8% market share. And you can guarantee that number comes from a) the people who have to use it for graphic design or such like; and b) the people who bought a MacBook because they already own pretty much everything else Apple and it just works easier together. In terms of desktops they have very little. But this is because you can't take your desktop out and show everyone how cool it is. And unless you are using the very specifically created programs for graphic design, modelling or such like, you realise as an operating system just how restrictive it actually is: again, the aggressiveness of Apple and its (anti)business model mean that developers only get access at a price.
So, really, what Apple has done is force others to innovate. These days we do far more on the internet - even functions usually highly demanding of power or memory such as gaming - very much because of format compatibility. Rather than spend twice the time and twice the money to create two different versions of exactly the same program; program developers themselves became creative, innovating to put these things online and then - rather than the rafts and rafts of different programs and formats - they user only needed one program, the brower, and everything else would be compatible with that browser regardless of whether you were Mac or PC. And they have again revolted against the perceived norm with apps. On facing increasingly higher charges from Apple, and increasingly restrictive practices as to how they charge for in-app content; the developers have instead opted for HMTL5 apps; so that you are not buying the content through the app but simply through the content-provider's website. So maybe we should be thankful for Apple for that - not themselves thinking differently, but forcing ourselves to think differently
And to think when I started my blog back in 2005 they were just releasing the iBook and the iMac...
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Draws and drawers
Last night was the first night of the season that it was truly dark when I got home from work.
I don't like that.
It means that, very soon, all my hours of daylight will be spent in an artificially-lit office.
The other reason I don't particularly enjoy it is because I am forced to change my evening routine. No longer do I get home to spend a couple of hours pottering in the garden; I don't even get a couple of minutes. All my gardening now eats into my very precious weekend time (nay, forces itself there as there are many jobs which must - must be undertaken before winter hits and the ground freezes). Any jobs that I undertake have to be inside jobs. So to speak.
This isn't the major change - that occurs when the clocks change and I adopt an almost entirely new routine. But I suppose it does give another good reason behind the nesting discussed yesterday.
One of the things I do have to cheer me up though, is my new pyjamas. During the winter (after the clocks change) I shall use my long-legged pyjama bottoms with a nice, matching t-shirt. During the summer, however, I wear a shorts and t-shirt combo. My current sets of summer pyjamas are at the very end of their lifespan however, and have probably been kept alive by purely artificial means for a while.
The problem is that I haven't been able to find a satisfactory replacement. The shorts-and-t-shirt combos I have been wearing have been the very casual jersey type. What I have been looking for are the smarter cotton shirt-type top. With buttons. The problem is that you can't seem to find these with shorts. Well, I can't seem to at least.
The jersey-type material is nice and soft for winter, and casual for when you want to curl up in front of the fire (or modern, plasma equivalent). But I don't want it during summer. I want to look smarter.
As a result I have had to bodge it a bit, but quite successfully. I have bought some nice woven cotton, smart, check boxer-shorts; and matching shirts. The shirts are actually shirts that should be worn on a night out, but I don't care because the combination of shirt and shorts equated to the same cost as either a jersey-short and t-shirt; or a smarter long-pant and shirt. And I look smart.
I have also purchased a novelty 'onesie' for over winter. This is an all-in-one suit, in red jersey material. With tail and horns.
But for now at least, until the clocks go back or the weather changes for the cooler, I am revelling in my new summer pyjamas.
The only minor problem is that the shorts aren't quite long enough when I sit down. Still, it's not as though I get many evening visitors.
I don't like that.
It means that, very soon, all my hours of daylight will be spent in an artificially-lit office.
The other reason I don't particularly enjoy it is because I am forced to change my evening routine. No longer do I get home to spend a couple of hours pottering in the garden; I don't even get a couple of minutes. All my gardening now eats into my very precious weekend time (nay, forces itself there as there are many jobs which must - must be undertaken before winter hits and the ground freezes). Any jobs that I undertake have to be inside jobs. So to speak.
This isn't the major change - that occurs when the clocks change and I adopt an almost entirely new routine. But I suppose it does give another good reason behind the nesting discussed yesterday.
One of the things I do have to cheer me up though, is my new pyjamas. During the winter (after the clocks change) I shall use my long-legged pyjama bottoms with a nice, matching t-shirt. During the summer, however, I wear a shorts and t-shirt combo. My current sets of summer pyjamas are at the very end of their lifespan however, and have probably been kept alive by purely artificial means for a while.
The problem is that I haven't been able to find a satisfactory replacement. The shorts-and-t-shirt combos I have been wearing have been the very casual jersey type. What I have been looking for are the smarter cotton shirt-type top. With buttons. The problem is that you can't seem to find these with shorts. Well, I can't seem to at least.
The jersey-type material is nice and soft for winter, and casual for when you want to curl up in front of the fire (or modern, plasma equivalent). But I don't want it during summer. I want to look smarter.
As a result I have had to bodge it a bit, but quite successfully. I have bought some nice woven cotton, smart, check boxer-shorts; and matching shirts. The shirts are actually shirts that should be worn on a night out, but I don't care because the combination of shirt and shorts equated to the same cost as either a jersey-short and t-shirt; or a smarter long-pant and shirt. And I look smart.
I have also purchased a novelty 'onesie' for over winter. This is an all-in-one suit, in red jersey material. With tail and horns.
But for now at least, until the clocks go back or the weather changes for the cooler, I am revelling in my new summer pyjamas.
The only minor problem is that the shorts aren't quite long enough when I sit down. Still, it's not as though I get many evening visitors.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Nesting continues...
So, I'm nesting at the moment. Still. I've been at it for a few weeks now.
Nesting can take a number of forms. To some people, nesting is merely a case of a good tidy-up. To some others it involves essentially a deep, spring-style clean; and at its most extreme involves a whole-life clear-out. I am somewhere between the latter two.
It started as a good tidy, only the tidy was frustrated by the fact that the places I was trying to tidy stuff to were already filled with stuff; and that once tidy, the rooms still weren't clean.
The reasons for wanting a good tidy are probably four-fold
End of summer
Having been away so much over summer there are many, many little bits and bobs which have been put to one side - or happen to have fallen by the wayside - until I have had the time to do them.
Christmas is coming
And not just Christmas. Having a birthday a week before Christmas and New Year the week after Christmas means a fortnight of celebration and relaxation. Combine that with all the special preparation that the season involves and I really do need to be on top of my usual jobs.
It's Autumn
Not much happens in Autumn. Between September and December there is only Halloween and Bonfire night. And they are neither bank holidays nor fun unless you are a child or a parent. And so I have the time to do these things. Particularly as everyone is reigning in the spending ready for the festive celebrations.
I'm frustrated
Add to all of this my usual mood fluctations, and my frustration at being stuck in a job I'd rather be out of and in a house I'd rather be out of and in a general situation of enuii, I need to a) do what I can to distract myself from my frustations that I am unable to relieve or do anything about and; b) I need to convince myself that I am doing what I can about the things that I can, readying them should my situation change.
So, the kitchen has been scrubbed. The oven was dismantled last week and ever molecule of dried or burned food in there scoured off (much the chargrin of my fingertips); the fridge and the freezer have been defrosted, emptied, cleaned, and reconstituted; the hob taken to pieces and again subjected to the most astonishing processes it has ever known. The bathroom has had all the little jobs done like fitting the magnetic catches on the cupboard doors, the toilet seat and brush replaced and such like. And the garden has all the finishing touches and prepping for winter sorted (including the removal of a few bushes and trees which wasn't strictly necessary before winter but they were annoying me.)
And finally there has been the selling. I've had bits and bobs kicking around for ages which have novelty value or a feint memory or may, possibly, at some stage in the future have some sort of use. And of course they have no value to me, no memory or use, they are just cluttering up the house on the basis that I just can't throw anything away: I need to hoard. I don't need the money from selling them; I don't need the space they create; but I don't need the items either (and at the back of my mind it is less to pack should I need to dash off in a hurry).
And at least I've fixed that floorboard which was, quite frankly, a deathtrap even on the lighter mornings, let alone now it is dark.
Monday, October 03, 2011
Smitten
So, I suspect you're practically bursting with excitement today: did I go on the date? Did I have sex? And made even worse by missing a missive on Friday, too.
I had every intention of writing on Friday. I had a topic thought of and content to go with it. But then the day turned out to be one of 'those' days.
I dozed off on the morning train. This isn't a particularly unusual experience. What is unusual is that I normally either doze very lightly if at all; or that I have the foresight to set my alarm. There was a failure on both levels on this occasion; hence why I gradually regained consciousness as the train pulled out of my destination station and I then had to get off at the next station; sleepily cross to the other platform and await the next train back; eventually arriving at the office an hour late.
But don't tell my work colleagues that: they think that the train staff didn't turn up for work.
All this makes the eventual turn of events towards the pleasant, all the more surprising. Usually when a day starts off badly like that it doesn't get better. But it did. I got out of the office on time and home in my usual routine; the fish and chips from the new place were nice (fish was lovely, chips slightly underdone) and I had time for a nice doze on the sofa before getting ready to go out. Now, this was Friday night; not my date which was on Saturday night.
Let me take you back in time... You may recall that when I split up from my last proper boyfriend I did so in the slightly indignified manner by snogging someone else. You may also recall that I snogged this boy again when I was down in London. For ease of understanding we shall keep his moniker as 'Break-Me-Up-Boy.
Well, he is now back in town full time having started uni here. And he was out on Friday night. And I bumped into him almost immediately. And by the end of the night we were back at mine making sweet, sweet love. And yes, I think I am slightly smitten with him. Not only down to the fact that our passion has finally been requited after many months of absence (without the usual disappointment where I have built up expectations); but also because he ticks every single box that I look for.
We'll have to see whether or not it goes any further - knowing my luck he will probably be very similar to me: either due to the fact that we have now been together he will lose interest; or alternatively he will be disappointed that I haven't lived up to his high expectations engendered by the delay and seek solice elsewhere.
Anyway, that was Friday night; and with those thoughts still coursing through my head I probably shouldn't have gone on the date on Saturday night. I wasn't really concentrating. Well, that's actually not fair - I was concentrating; I had just cemented even further my pre-date concerns that he just wasn't right for me. In fact we actually seemed to aggravate each other, though I don't think his had any malicious intent, but purely to curry conversation.
In fairness, I wasn't malicious with my comments, I think I was just using them to reinforce my decision that we weren't right. And it did ferment good, polite, involved discussion, though on many occasions I was playing Devil's Advocate rather than actually expressing my own opinion. We discussed art and philsophy and psychology, although he was slightly obsessed with the Milgram Experiment and seemed to believe that we always operated under pressure either from an individual or from peer pressure to conform with instruction (whether express or convention).
Annoyingly, he seems not to have picked up on the signs I was giving off. That or he did and just sought to dismiss them, hoping beyond hope to make something where there is nothing. In fact there isn't just a 'nothing' but quite specifically something else distracting my attentions. Anyhow, I have already received a request for another date - that would be date 4 and something pretty much unheard of without some sort of decision as to whether we are 'going with'. I have dealt with this by responding about everything else in the text except for the question of the date, hoping that it will disappear into the ether. I wouldn't mind if he wants to meet up purely as friends for scintilating conversation; however he doesn't go the places I like to go, and I think there will always be The Great Unmentionned in that he actually wants me naked.
So in short, the answers were yes. Yes I did go on the date; yes I did have sex...just not with the person I went on the date with.
I had every intention of writing on Friday. I had a topic thought of and content to go with it. But then the day turned out to be one of 'those' days.
I dozed off on the morning train. This isn't a particularly unusual experience. What is unusual is that I normally either doze very lightly if at all; or that I have the foresight to set my alarm. There was a failure on both levels on this occasion; hence why I gradually regained consciousness as the train pulled out of my destination station and I then had to get off at the next station; sleepily cross to the other platform and await the next train back; eventually arriving at the office an hour late.
But don't tell my work colleagues that: they think that the train staff didn't turn up for work.
All this makes the eventual turn of events towards the pleasant, all the more surprising. Usually when a day starts off badly like that it doesn't get better. But it did. I got out of the office on time and home in my usual routine; the fish and chips from the new place were nice (fish was lovely, chips slightly underdone) and I had time for a nice doze on the sofa before getting ready to go out. Now, this was Friday night; not my date which was on Saturday night.
Let me take you back in time... You may recall that when I split up from my last proper boyfriend I did so in the slightly indignified manner by snogging someone else. You may also recall that I snogged this boy again when I was down in London. For ease of understanding we shall keep his moniker as 'Break-Me-Up-Boy.
Well, he is now back in town full time having started uni here. And he was out on Friday night. And I bumped into him almost immediately. And by the end of the night we were back at mine making sweet, sweet love. And yes, I think I am slightly smitten with him. Not only down to the fact that our passion has finally been requited after many months of absence (without the usual disappointment where I have built up expectations); but also because he ticks every single box that I look for.
We'll have to see whether or not it goes any further - knowing my luck he will probably be very similar to me: either due to the fact that we have now been together he will lose interest; or alternatively he will be disappointed that I haven't lived up to his high expectations engendered by the delay and seek solice elsewhere.
Anyway, that was Friday night; and with those thoughts still coursing through my head I probably shouldn't have gone on the date on Saturday night. I wasn't really concentrating. Well, that's actually not fair - I was concentrating; I had just cemented even further my pre-date concerns that he just wasn't right for me. In fact we actually seemed to aggravate each other, though I don't think his had any malicious intent, but purely to curry conversation.
In fairness, I wasn't malicious with my comments, I think I was just using them to reinforce my decision that we weren't right. And it did ferment good, polite, involved discussion, though on many occasions I was playing Devil's Advocate rather than actually expressing my own opinion. We discussed art and philsophy and psychology, although he was slightly obsessed with the Milgram Experiment and seemed to believe that we always operated under pressure either from an individual or from peer pressure to conform with instruction (whether express or convention).
Annoyingly, he seems not to have picked up on the signs I was giving off. That or he did and just sought to dismiss them, hoping beyond hope to make something where there is nothing. In fact there isn't just a 'nothing' but quite specifically something else distracting my attentions. Anyhow, I have already received a request for another date - that would be date 4 and something pretty much unheard of without some sort of decision as to whether we are 'going with'. I have dealt with this by responding about everything else in the text except for the question of the date, hoping that it will disappear into the ether. I wouldn't mind if he wants to meet up purely as friends for scintilating conversation; however he doesn't go the places I like to go, and I think there will always be The Great Unmentionned in that he actually wants me naked.
So in short, the answers were yes. Yes I did go on the date; yes I did have sex...just not with the person I went on the date with.
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