Horse Tranquil

2011

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I went out last night. The first time I ventured out of the house since the 17th December. I woke up on Thursday feeling like the back of this flu/bronchitis had finally been broken; but I didn't take any chances and stayed in all day. Yesterday was an even bigger improvement and I joined the wife and dogs for a dog walk in the pouring of rain and while we were only out for about 35 minutes, it felt good to get the real world under my feet again.

This paved the way for us to receive our Christmas present from RnB, which this year, because of our, at times, perilous financial position, was a trip to our favourite restaurant on them. We were supposed to go on the 23rd, but I was far too sick to even consider getting dressed and therefore it would have been a waste of money and an evening - I've been out when I've been suffering once before, about 7 years ago with our good friends Jay and Selina and while it was a great night out, I really wanted to be snuggled up on the sofa under a quilt and surrounded by dogs.

By the time 6.15 rolled around last night, I was feeling a little worse than I had all day, but I had also been scurrying around the house for best part of the day, so I might have just overdone it a tad, because, by the time we got to the restaurant I was feeling pretty chipper. We had a very good meal, which I have to say I maybe didn't taste as well as my three compadres, and I decided that I was well enough to go to the pub and imbibe my first alcohol since December 15 (I did have some champagne over Christmas, but it was watered down with lots of orange juice).

We got home a little after 10; I still felt pretty good and this afternoon, as I sit here writing this, I feel just about well enough to embark on a new school term. Although I expect to return to work on Tuesday armed with tissues because of the amount of junk that is now, finally, expelling itself from my rather gaunt figure. It would have been nice to have not been ill throughout the entire break, but arguably, it might have done me some good and realistically, I had six months off during the summer and didn't do much more than I have for the last couple of weeks; so it all works out in the end - swings and roundabouts and all that...

It has been my intention to do a review of the year, which I found quite weird really as I tend to hate this week between Christmas and the New Year because all you get is Year end reviews and frankly, in this 24 hour news world we live in, we already remember the last 12 months like it has been etched on our brains! So, as I already did a review of music a few weeks ago and nothing much has changed since writing that; and I've basically subjected you all to the mixture of excellent and abysmal TV I watch throughout the year; given you my left wing perspective on politics and wibbled about all manner of shit anyhow, there doesn't seem to be much point. If you want to know about my perspective of 2011, read my blog for the last 12 months!

Where does that leave us then?

Well, this will be the last blog entry in this stylee. I'm going spend an hour at some point during my last two days off redesigning the page and changing the layout of how I present my entries. It's an annual thing now for me to change something and this year's revamp is sponsored by the rediscovery of my mojo.

Said mojo started to creep back into my psyche about a month ago and had it not been for the last two sobering weeks of feeling shit, I might have been even more insufferable over the holidays than I usually am. Because I have an inherent undertow of expecting the worst to happen, my mojo is tempered by the need to never allow myself to lapse from my prepared script, because I'm acutely aware that my luck tends to be limited.

I was laying in bed last night thinking about the irony of returning to school and my memory played a chronological trick on me. It made me remember how, at times, school seemed to drag into the distance and how terms seemed like huge chasms of time that would never, ever, arrive. It then reminded me that when I was at school I had a finite time there; now as part of the faculty I have potentially an even longer time there. Of course the big differences are that I get paid and the holidays have as much significance as they did when I was a lad. Yes, I will have days when I long for half terms, but there aren't that many jobs in the world that have such pre-ordained breaks and the knowledge that it's about 6 weeks between each break and 6 weeks when you're nearly 50 is considerably less time than 6 weeks is when you're 13.

I think my brain sent me in that direction because I'm still having a battle in my head over the fact that my first holiday has been wrecked by illness and that the few plans we did have were either cancelled or drastically altered. I also don't think my subconscious is convinced I'm cured, but that might just be its sense of fairness being a bit warped. I do still have an horrendous cough and I expect I'll still have it when half term comes around in the middle of February.

Anyhow, I digress. My mojo is working again and I feel confident about 2012 from a working perspective and frankly if that can be as good as I hope it will be then the rest of the year should be relatively stable. Shit will happen; that's unavoidable, but as long as the shit is kept to a minimum in 2012 then I'll be satisfied.

My one resolution for the coming year is to continue to work hard and become an important and liked member of my employment team. I want a few, uncontroversial, years without any stress or worry and if I work hard and keep my head down there's no reason I can't do that.

My hopes for 2012 are rather at odds with each other. There are many things I'd like to see for the country and the world, but many of them couldn't happen at the same time. Therefore my only public political desire is that Ed Milliband wakes up one morning soon and realises that for all his ideals, his nous and his desire to be a great prime minister, the rest of the country doesn't have any faith in him as a potential boss. If that happens, I'd hope that some senior Labour party advisers have a quiet word in Ed Balls' ear and get him to step aside and allow his wife to become the leader. Yvette Cooper is arguably the only person on the shadow cabinet bench who is good enough - all round - to lead the party; the rest just lack gravitas and believability.

Obviously I'd like to see my beloved Tottenham remain challenging for the title for the rest of the season and pull away from 4th place so that immortality is confirmed and we can take our place, rightly, amongst the top 3 teams in the country. This dream is not too fanciful, but as I support Tottenham this brings its own parcel shelf of doubt and expectations being shattered, because, that's what they do best.

Personally, apart from the work thing, I'd like a year of not having some ailment to steal 6 weeks of my life, minimum. A healthy year isn't too much to ask for is it?

Right, I've spent far too much time doing nothing this festive season, so I have nothing more to say than I hope that 2012 doesn't bring you anything you can't deal with. I hope that no one loses a loved one and come December 31st 2012 we can look back and say 'It could have been better, but it really could have been much much worse.'

Allez maintenant.

The Last Temptation of Fate

Sunday 18th December, the morning I woke up with a stinking cold and feeling like shit (although one wonders if shit actually feels anything, considering it is just smelly human waste), should have been a couple of days of manflu, with me ordering the wife from the sofa while still managing to do most of the things I usually do - cook, whinge and be as sociable as I usually am. However, by the time Tuesday came around, I was feeling considerably worse than I had on the previous Sunday. No worries, thought I. It'll be okay by Christmas.

By the 23rd, I was sitting in the doctor's office with a raging temperature, a chest that seemed full of red hot coals and the warning that if I felt worse I needed to contact the out of hours emergency team because if it did get worse, I might be looking at pneumonia. I know that sounds almost scaremongering by my GP, but a careful look at my ancient medical records shows that I had pneumonia back in 1980 and you have a better than average chance of getting it again.

The original 1980 diagnosis, by my Northampton GP, was that I might have glandular fever, because my, then extant, tonsils were swollen and my glands were all fucked up. That initial diagnosis was totally pooh-poohed by a fantastic guy called Dr Wadge, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

The reason for this 1980 serious illness can be laid squarely at the feet of one person, but because she is still alive and connected to my family, I'll breeze over the fact that this person seemed intent on killing me, all of which culminated in her washing my bed clothes and then putting them on my bed while they were still wet. I got home from work after a late shift, went to crawl into bed and discovered my sheets were all very much the ocean side of damp. My solution to this was to grab a couple of bath towels and lay one on the bottom while draping the other over the top of me and still using the damp sheets to give me some warmth. I was 18; it never occurred to me that I might as well have got into a bath full of streptococcus pneumoniae.

Within a couple of days, what had been a minor sniffle turned into a full blown case of serious illness. I was prone to infections because of my diseased tonsils, but this time whatever was wrong with me didn't just stop in my throat. My mother called me in the evening of the third day and while I have no recollection of this conversation, I do remember my dad turning up at the place where I lived at some point after it, carrying me to his car and waking up 60 miles from where I started.

The glandular fever diagnosis was pursued, because another GP had said that was what it was, but Dr Wadge - who was also my parents' boss at the time - ran blood tests, which all came back as negative and this wasn't a surprise to him. He concluded that I had pneumonia. The fact that I was bed-ridden for three weeks seemed to confirm this diagnosis. In total, I was off work for 6 weeks, of which most of them were horrendous days of feeling like my chest was in a vice and phlegm that looked like it had been filtered through my blood supply.

Just prior to this Christmas, I watched George Michael talk about his own pneumonia experience in Austria and how emotional and weak he was from it all; I could sympathise completely. By the time I was well enough to return home to Northampton, the person partially responsible for me almost dying and my brother decided they needed to live in their own place and had made moves to separate themselves from me. This was good and never again did I have to suffer wet sheets, rotten steak, hidden toothbrushes and an assortment of little 'suggestions' that my presence wasn't required.

Obviously my 2011 GP's suggestion that I might be susceptible to another bout of pneumonia was the catalyst for bringing back 30 year old memories, but by Christmas Day I was thinking that maybe I was due for another one. It had been a week since I woke up feeling crappy and here I was feeling even crappier...

Normally, antibiotics work for me inside 48 hours and the fact that I haven't had any for over 4 years meant that my body was not, in any way, tolerant of them. I don't eat meat, so there was no residual animal antibiotics floating around my system and, much to my old friend Mitch's amusement, I can track my bad health record back almost six years, so I knew that this was possibly the worst case of lurgy I'd had since that horrible spring of 1980. So why weren't they working now?

The wife has suggested that my new job is essentially a Petri Dish of Disease, so having something bad isn't really that unexpected, but Jesus Hairy Christ, the last 10 days have been the fucking Nightmare of Christmas. Yes, I don't really enjoy the festive season and I am Bah Humbug Man, but I look forward to it because it's an excuse to do fuck all for a fortnight. Yes, I have done fuck all for the last 10 days, but I really would have liked to have a say in it.

Today, I have woken up feeling like the fever has finally broken. I feel a little like my old self, but I still have a vice around my chest and I feel pretty weak - I know that's a pathetic thing to admit, but it's true - but I feel like I can actually do some stuff. I've missed taking my dogs out for a good walk; I've missed having a drink and indulging in treats and I've felt that the last ten days have been grossly unfair; like someone is kicking me, for the last time, in a year that has been dogged with bad luck and misery. The last few years have been pretty shitty in terms of my health - what with my shoulder, my back and my joints - but I've been fortunate that the worst I've suffered in illness terms has been a couple of doses of manflu and a couple of colds. This recent bout has surpassed much and has left me worried because in a week I'm back at work and I need to see a massive improvement in the next 7 days to be ready for the new challenges and rules (that I'm responsible for) of 2012.

I might have broken the back of this thing, but I'm acutely aware that I still have three days of antibiotics left and that if I overdo things it might all slide back into the nastiness of the week before Christmas. But I think I'm entitled to be a little positive; I might get a few days of my winter break for me. Yes, I'm tempting fate and whenever I do that I end up on my arse regretting saying anything, but I don't care.

***

So, Boxing Day has always traditionally been the best day on TV. Every year I look at the Radio Times and find at least half a dozen things to watch on the 26th; this year I found nothing. Boxing Day made Christmas Day look like a blockbuster of a day; so we decided to watch a movie.

The preferred choice was The Ides of March, a political thriller with George Clooney and Ryan Gosling. Unfortunately, the advance review copy that I downloaded was a bit buggered and did some interesting things to my DVD player. I tried burning it to another disc and to the same result, so we were left with the best of an average lot as an alternative. The wife suggested we watch Winter's Bone, a critically acclaimed indie film from last year. All we knew about it was it was set in the mid-west of the USA and was about a young girl trying to find her father.

My God, what a depressingly awesome film it is. I have seen horror movies that have creeped me out less. It is a cold, stark and deeply menacing movie that has an ending that I suppose is more upbeat than the rest of the movie, but only in a way that makes losing your hand much better than losing your entire arm. It is, I suppose, a sort of road movie, but equally it's the kind of film that makes you realise that parts of the USA are no better off than parts of the Sudan or North Korea. In fact, it paints a picture of the backwoods of the States as a place that is, in many ways, far more dangerous for people than going to Afghanistan wearing nothing but a Stars & Stripes flag while singing 'All Muslims are Gay'.

Not exactly festive viewing, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm glad I watched it. I doubt I have seen a more thought provoking and disturbing movie in the last 12 months and I watched Terry Gilliam's Tideland this year! If you want to see a film that is just depressingly brilliant, wonderfully shot and full of characters that could easily be seen for all being inter-related, then watch this. Don't if you fancy a fun-filled night in with the gang!

The other big film we watched was Bridesmaids, which I have to admit was good fun, but nowhere near as brilliant as the critics seemed to think it was. I like Kristen Wiig - the two previous films I'd 'seen' her in were How To Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me, both brilliant films from 2010 and her performance in Bridesmaids was pretty excellent; but you just got the impression that the film makers could have gone the extra mile in the film. To me the film fell between two stools and therefore never really fulfilled its potential. I also think the makers copped out several times when they could have really pushed the comedy envelope. Still, it wasn't bad.

***

The big TV event was Doctor Who, an annual event that I usually am so drunk by the time it comes on I miss most of it from falling asleep. This year, no booze had passed my lips and I watched it expecting another really naff special. So imagine my surprise when the episode finished and I found myself wiping a tear from my eye. Not at the main story, full of plot holes and nods to other children's fantasy fiction, but at the end, when the Doctor arrived at Amy's house for Christmas.

I think, without a doubt, that Karen Gillan is possibly the most interesting, sexy and devastatingly good looking woman ever to be stuck next to a doctor and in the two minutes on screen on Sunday, I realised that Moffatt has to do something special now that she is leaving for pastures new. I've been highly critical of the Matt Smith era, because they had 4/5ths of a great cast, a good budget and stories that flip flopped about and caused more confusion than entertainment; but Amy Pond has been a revelation and I don't think DW will be the same again...

***

Just to prove that if I like something I've downloaded I get the original. One of my presents was Hurry Up, We're Dreaming by M83 - the album I've been saying for two months is my favourite album of the year. Guess what? It still is.

***

Either I'm just getting old or the flu/infection thing I've had has made me a big softy, but my eyes have leaked more this Christmas than I can remember. Music and TV have both had moments where I've felt that hitch at the back of my throat, or the sensation of having something in my eye. Maybe being ill at Christmas has made me a little more sensitive, or maybe I just miss my long departed parents. Or it might be that I've felt unbelievably isolated this time - whatever it is, I found I had to turn a film over on Saturday because I knew I was going to blub...

***

The plan for today was to go out with the dogs and then go to the pub quiz; however, most of my optimism has evaporated as the wife takes the dogs out and I sit here finishing this off feeling crappy again and cold.

I suppose I just need to take it easy, but I'm a bit stir crazy. I have, at least, prepared dinner and I still intend to take my fellow quizzers to the pub, even if I just drop them off, come home and then pick them up again after 11pm...

***

Incidentally, I've grown a beard.

***

Anyhow; thanks to everyone who sent well wishes my way either via the phone, email or Facebook. Much appreciated!

Autistic Queen

The one thing you can set your watch and warrant by this Christmas is that I will receive the latest Stephen King novel. It's traditional, despite me almost giving up the author, in disgust, after the Dark Tower debacle.

Eating Pie

I was clearing out a box in my cupboard; something caught my eye that ended up being nothing and instead I pulled out a copy of Wired from the mid 1990s. I had it because on the cover was a photo of an old friend of mine, who I discovered had died towards the end of the 1990s. There had been some discussion between the few of us who knew each other back then and still were in contact. Most agreed the picture looked like Shelley, but I was convinced. He had a slightly dodgy and bulbous septum and this was perfectly highlighted in this cover image of something Wired was christening a Zippy - a computer-savvy hippy.

Pulling out the magazine brought back some strange memories of a period of my life that I've often wanted to talk about, but has been breezed over for a number of reasons - the gaps in my memory; some of the things I did and the fact that, at times, it was the most carefree, dangerous and exciting period of my life. I experienced the world in microcosm while I lived in Shenley, Hertfordshire. When I came back to the drudgery of Northampton in July 1982, despite my friends having had all their own adventures, mine just seemed more 'real'. Not surprisingly really as they were my memories and all I had was what I offered - my own stories, probably just as meh as I thought theirs were.

Shelley was one of a gang of people I spent about 18 months being really close friends with. I was the baby of the group and Shelley had held that status before I was bundled into their little group. This little clique consisted of Gerty, Ricky, Rory, Jim, Ruth, Andy, George, and a few others, who I am ashamed to say I've forgotten their names, even if their faces are clear in my head. I joined their loose affiliation almost by accident. I had been the victim of mistaken identity and was about to suffer the consequences...

During the first game of the 1981 FA Cup Final between Spurs and Man Citeh, which ended in a 1-1 draw, someone called Spurs' winger Tony Galvin 'A useless Irish wanker' and it wasn't me. However, at the social club my folks ran there was a huge Irish workforce and this being 1981, there was also a huge number of very anti-British Republicans. A small number were believed to be IRA sympathisers and while I would never know for sure, I wouldn't have been surprised. One of these people believed it was me who had shouted the racist comment, when I believe to this day it was fellow Spurs fan, a guy called Wolfie, who had said it; he was sitting next to me at the time when this chap called Martin took massive offence.

Later that evening, I got invited back to one of the weekly parties in the female nursing home and to be honest, I was a little out of my depth. I was only just 19 and had mainly befriended a few of the first year RMN students; this new bunch of people were 2nd and 3rd year students - they were almost proper Registered Mental Nurses and therefore were considerably more mental than my usual friends. I was sitting, minding my own business, against a wall and drinking a can of Skol when out of nowhere I heard a commotion and saw a fist flying directly at me, which connected with the side of my head and was heightened by the fact I was pressed against the wall of the relatively small room. I just about passed out, but not before I saw a knight in ginger armour. Gerty, who would become one of my best friends of all time and someone I still ache to see at times, despite not having seen him in over 25 years, rugby tackled this owner of the fist - Martin - and they went sprawling over the floor, scattering ashtrays, drugs, beer and people everywhere. I think I blacked out after that, because the next thing I remember was a girl called Gaynor wiping my face with a cool flannel and a bunch of concerned looking nurses standing over me - these were to become the people who would protect me from the big bad Irish Mafia for the next year and become one of the true highlights of my life so far.

Gerty was from Wales, he was built like a shit house rat and was going bald despite only being 2 years older than me. Jim, who I still talk to as he's from Northampton, was tall, wiry and as hard as a bullet; he had and still does have a slightly mad stare, enough to make you back off if you're not 100% sure. Ruth was the tomboy of our pack; with bright red flowing hair and a very butch attitude; she'd hate me for this; she looked after us and we saved her from herself a number of times; she had bad taste in men. Andy was ex-Rhodesian SAS and the first person I ever met who had actually killed a man (I'd like to say he was the only, but he isn't, but he was the only one who hadn't been to prison for it). He was bonkers, but thankfully in a very bizarre way. He had more funny sayings than Imelda Marcos had shoes. I've talked about George before; he was the gay guy who had every hot woman hanging around him. Rory was about 200lbs of solid muscle, was as thick as a brick and was loyal and lovable like that cartoon character who just wanted to hug you and kiss you and be your fwiend. Rory was also Irish and he didn't believe for a second that I could have said anything detrimental; he eventually played peacemaker, despite the fact he struggled to spell his own name. He was also so full of bullshit, we developed an expression whenever he started wandering off into the realms of fantasy. Ricky was from Barbados; we had a token woman, gay and Welshman, we had to have a black guy! Ricky was essentially our drug supplier and next to Gerty this man was probably the closest one I was to. And then there was Shelley, who unlike the others didn't have a definable past. All we knew about him was he'd come into nursing because there was nothing else to do in the north Midlands, where he originated, but hadn't lived in for a few years. Shelley had a closed past and none of us ever tried to get into it.

My relationship with Shelley had never been as easy as it had been with the others; he had liked being the mascot of this little group and when I came along he just moved up the pecking order and I think he struggled with it for a while; but I'm making it sound like we were rivals or something; we got on really well, I just was never in his room as often as I was in others.

One day during the height of summer 1981, we decided to go on a field trip to St Albans, in Gerty's VW Beetle; a bright orange collector's item with CND and bright sunflower stickers all over it. It looked like a hippy mobile. Five of us went to the old Roman town; three of them had proper shopping to do and Shelley and I were left to wander around the town centre and cause mischief. Shelley was a keen badminton player and we were looking in the window of the local sports equipment shop (which has probably been long replaced by a chain store or a Starbucks) and I had a devilishly stupid idea, which I put to Shelley and he squealed like a girl. We walked into the shop, separately and I started browsing the badminton rackets. Shelley was lurking by the football shirts, looking a bit shifty.

Before long a sales assistant wanders over and asks Shelley if he needed any help, but he said he was just looking, so he turned his attention to me. "Can I help you mate?" I was much younger than him.

"Yeah, I'm looking for a Happenklanger badminton racket." A big smile appeared on the salesman's face.

"Never heard of it, mate. Someone's winding you up."

"No. I'm pretty sure they exist."

"No mate; no one called that makes any kind of racquet, now if you'll excuse me," and he makes to the door to show me out!

"Look, I read it in the paper, Happenklanger, I've not got the name wrong, I'm sure of it." The sales assistant was now looking slightly exasperated and annoyed.

"It doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a Happenbangle badminton racket!"

"Did you say Happenklanger?" Asks Shelley. The assistant almost whirled round. "The new carbon fibre rackets that Gillian Gilkes has been testing in Germany?"

"Yes, that's the one. I knew I hadn't misheard it."

"No, there was an article about it in the Express last weekend." The sales assistant is just standing there with his mouth agape. "They're bloody expensive!" Says Shelley and I just shrugged.

"Price isn't an issue; I can spend what I like on a new racket; I play county badminton." With this the assistant changed his entire body shape and instead of being tall and upstanding, he became almost Fagin like.

"Perhaps I can look through our stock books and see if I can order you one?"

"Yeah, why not?" I said, trying desperately not to start corpsing.

He obviously couldn't find one, but filled out a request form, which he assured me, would be sent to head office that evening and if they could get this new Happenklanger badminton racket then they'd move heaven and Earth for me. Was I really a county badminton player? What sort of price was I prepared to go up to? £100? Really? I'm surprised I wasn't offered coffee and a blowjob by the time I walked out and joined Shelley on the pavement where we both burst out laughing and continued to replay the joke between us to the bemusement of Gerty, Ricky and Ruth.

Once they'd finished their shopping, we headed off to a country pub on the outskirts of the town called The Barley Mow, a place which, rather astoundingly served a selection of real ales, despite this being 1981. This was a bad thing, mainly because we all liked a pint or 8 and despite Gert's best intentions, he ended up on the Owd Rodger - an 8% brew that was only served in ½ pints. He decided that half of that mixed with half of a pale ale would suffice and he ended up having five. Back in 1981 the drink driving crusade was well in swing and there were a lot more people willing to defy it then than now. We were young and reckless, so Gerty got behind the wheel and decided to drive us all home. By the time we'd driven a couple of miles, he pulled over and was sick. After the sick came the wanting to curl up in the back of the car and go to sleep for a while to sober up. We had stopped in London Colney and fortunately right in front of a pub. The four of us left Gerty to sleep it off and we headed to the pub for a couple more pints. On return, Gerty was still asleep and not making any moves to suggest he would do anything other than punch the person who woke him. It was now gone 11pm and we were six miles from home.

Now, as you may be aware, classic beetles are essentially like minis but with a bit more headroom. They're not big and squeezing 5 people into one when you're sober isn't a particularly brilliant idea. When you have a monster of a man sprawled over the back seat and four of you left outside, you start to have seriously stupid ideas. By this time we were all very, very, drunk. Shelley devised a plan. Ruth would squeeze into the back with Gerty and put his legs over her. I would sit in the front with slight little Ricky on my lap and Shelley would drive the VW back to the hospital and park it in the social club car park so as to not have to negotiate the front gate of the hospital, where Old Bill sometimes stopped for a chat or used the entrance to park and have a coffee - from a Thermos flask, none of this coffee shop nonsense.

Shelley was blind drunk and somehow managed to get lost and we ended up in Radlett, almost as far away from the hospital as we had originally been. I was falling in and out of sleep, Ruth was chatting in the back to someone, maybe me, and we had to negotiate a very steep hill and a windy road to get to where the car park was. It was now about 1am in the morning and I think Ricky had livened up proceedings with a big spliff, which would just about drive Shelley over the edge - literally and metaphorically. We negotiated the splendid housing of Shenley Hill; the almost 90 degree bend at the golf course and we were just about home and dry, we took the next right hand bend with ease and all that was left was a slow left hand bend and then a final right before the straight to the social club's car park. The slow left should have been easy, but Shelley obviously either shut his eyes and went to sleep or just forgot to turn the steering wheel. We crashed straight into the fence and then through it and onto the golf course. I was suddenly very awake as we drove through a border of trees without crashing into any of them and onto one of the fairways. Shelley looked around startled and then seemed to have a great idea. He pointed into the distance and said, "That's our cricket pavilion, I can drive to that!" And he actually put his foot down. We must have looked like something out of a Herbie film; this bright orange beetle hurtling down one of the nicest fairways you've ever seen. We had just about reached the bottom of the slope when I suddenly had a terrible feeling.

"Shelley! The stream!!" There was a stream which was effectively the dividing line between the golf course and the hospital; except it wasn't so much a stream as a little brook running between a small, and perfectly formed, valley and we were going to hit it doing about 40mph; there was a good chance we would all die.

Shelley hit the breaks, but we were on wet grass, so we just slid for about 100 yards, slowing down, but not enough; we hit the golf side of the ten foot drop doing about 5mph and the car just tottered forwards and fell nose first down the side. The bumper caught on some mud, dug itself in and the momentum we had made the beetle just topple forward onto its roof and wedged perfectly in the gully. It made a unique, post modern bridge. We all toppled into the ceiling; debris flying everywhere and bodies and limbs stuck in all manner of places. I managed to open the door after several attempts and pushing the handle the wrong way and Ricky carefully escaped the mess. I followed him, but not before I fell into the stream - the only one of us who did - and Shelley scrambled out followed by Ruth and a dazed and bemused Gerty, who was just muttering, 'My car' to himself.

All I know is that Shelley launched the keys somewhere and we all headed back to our relevant places of sleep. The most damage done - a cut on the back of Shelley's arm; a sore neck for Ruth and a saturated Phill. We discovered that the police had a call about 2am that morning saying that Gerty had had his car stolen; a simple alibi was constructed - it was never needed - and the police put it down to someone stealing Gerty's car from the car park while he had been down the club and I think that's about all that happened. The car was retrieved, it barely had a scratch on it, but sat in the car park of the social club for weeks before Gerty did anything with it. He had been unconscious for most of the trip, but I think he realised more than all of us how close we came to dying; all he had was his imagination and that can be a frightening thing.

We, of course, never spoke of it again...

I have so many stories from that period of my life; so many adventures and it's hard to believe that it was all condensed into less than eighteen months. I think that's what I miss about being young more than anything - cramming days full of different memories - when 24 hours was an entire universe to play in, instead just a brief tick on the clock as it has become...

The fact that the group I was such a big part of disbanded, went their own ways and some eventually died is just life; but Shelley was one of those guys who did too much in excess and I suppose it caught up with him. He was one of those guys who often got what he wanted - he had the best looking girlfriend of the group and was the early 1980s equivalent of a gadget nerd - which probably explained the cover image on Wired.

Spacer Fun

I am still far from happy. I'm into day 5 of my very bad cold and while that initial wobbly and ill feeling is subsiding, I'm now suffering in many other ways and it just isn't fair. Not fair. NOT FAIR. NOT FAIR!!!

Over the last 5 days I have kept the Lemsip Corporation in business; I am glad that tissue paper isn't rationed because apart from the fact the bin in my office looks like I've been continually wanking for a month, it's quite expensive, especially if you want the stuff that doesn't make your poor nose sore. I've missed my quiz this week (although from the sounds of things I wouldn't have made much difference) and my plans for today and tomorrow are up in the air - as I wait to slip into nice hot bath, the contents of my chest are beginning to show - Andrex must love people like me (and compulsive wankers) - and trust me when I say that you don't want a description of it.

Yes, you could argue that I might not have done much in the last week anyhow, meaning that I should have 'enjoyed' this bout of illness. But, I would have preferred a choice in the matter. It's a good job I got my shopping at the end of November because I would have been doubly fucked had I not. In fact, is it me, or does this Christmas seem to be... late? I know I haven't been out for days, but I don't feel even the slightest festive; my growing disdain for Christmas has even abated. This year seems a bit meh - but that might be me.

The worst thing about this heavy cold is that two days ago, when I was streaming (snot rather than music videos), I said to the wife that I could live with the cold if it just went at the end like it had never been there. But not the good old British cold; it has to stick around in the form of phlegm, catarrh and various other maladies. In my case, my lungs are so fucked from years of abuse that I have to go through a scary ritual of persuading my lungs to breath again, especially when I get an asthma spasm from the congested airways. An inhaler doesn't always work (unless you use a spacer), so calming yourself down and relaxing while simultaneously struggling to take a breath has become something of an art form. I'm also acutely aware of how crazy/mad that sounds and that after all of this shit cold business, my chest is now a prime target for some kind of bronchial infection. Jesus Harry Christ, somebody just put me out of my misery now!

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Amazingly, when I was unemployed, I found all manner of bollocks to ramble on about. The same can't be said for this last week. The above section is the closest I've got to appraising the week and it just sounds like the latest offering from the fair weather hypochondriac. It's been a bit of a dead week. I'm sure there are people out there having a really good time. If there are, I hope you all get my cold, you bastards!

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Facebook now has 800million users; or in real terms about 250million users all with at least two, maybe more, accounts. 250m is still impressive; but in my days as a comics journo, the magazine I worked for once sold 25,000 a month and that was equally impressive. It started to get a little questionable when that figure got inflated to 75,000 because you took into account the 'casual' readers who would pick up a copy off of a coffee table or in a comic shop. I'm not suggesting that Facebook massages its figures, just that it isn't anywhere near accurate.

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It's been about 6 hours since I wrote the above and I'm beginning to feel human again. Chest feels like its in a vice, which means no beerage tonight; which is a great shame as I haven't had a beer for over a week now. Still, means I'll get drunk quicker on Sunday, eh?

Kim's Ill Dong

What I'm really unhappy about is manflu and the body's ability to decide when it wants to be ill. Finished work on Friday and by the evening I felt dreadful; I fully expected to wake up Saturday feeling like hostile pooh in a lavatory world, but instead I woke up and felt remarkable well. Perhaps I wasn't ill after all.

Hah!

Sunday arrived and I was ill. Really not very good. Quite poorly. Probably full of the cold I forecast for a few days. Today I feel even worse and it isn't fair. It is buggering up my plans big time and my plans were very few and far between... The bright spot is that I'm now filling up with snot; that usually means it's breaking. Usually.

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Watched Bag of Bones the other night; it was a bag of shite. I shouldn't have expected better. Stephen King TV adaptations, especially ones with Mick Garris's name attached, tend to be really crap; this was no exception.

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Blogger has been acting up recently (see last entry) and I no longer seem able to get basic instructions - bold, italic, etc - and that's a pain.

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I don't have much else to moan about, yet...

Burn Them, But Burn Their Faces First

Everything seems a bit wonky this morning. The PC is running slow; the Internet is dragging its sorry arse around like a sulking teenager and I've been having a morning of wigging out to The Tubes (who at times were a seriously excellent band) while hoovering! It's like the past. WPOD!

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"Sir, is Michael Jackson 55?"
"Michael Jackson's dead."
"What? Still?"

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I'm now on just over two weeks holiday and this is good because I like time off work, it gives me time to think about doing all the things I've not managed to do since I've been at work. I won't do any of them, but thinking about them makes that acceptable.

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The snow didn't arrive in Northampton. It did snow about 6:00am on Friday, but by the time I dragged myself out of bed at 7:05 it had gone. So I'm sticking with my forecast as still being on target.

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Tonight is a extended family gathering. We shall be spending a few hours in the company of cousins and second cousins in Milton Keynes; which might sound more like a punishment than a pleasure, but I expect it will be a very pleasant visit. I've not seen my cousin Frankie for a couple of years, nor his daughter. I have seen his son Daniel recently and him and his partner Hayley have an extra special Christmas ahead of them - the last without the patter of tiny (human) feet. Next year they'll have a baby Simpson to go with the two exquisite puppies they obtained in November.

Now, the Simpsons are actually pretty much the closest family I have outside of immediate now. Daniel's grandparents are my godparents and while we won't see them today - the trip from Mablethorpe is too much at this time of the year for a couple in their 80s - they'll be there in spirit.

The Godparent Simpsons used to live in Springfield which is quite strange, especially as they were there long before Homer, Marge and co were even dreamt of. Oddly enough the next two generations of Simpson also live in Springfield, so it's their own fault they're perpetuating a joke!

My godparents are also called Frank and Tina, which Jay Eales still finds quite hilarious...

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The boy - Murray - is suffering at the moment. He has weak claws and for the last couple of months he's been regularly breaking them, by jumping up at the bloody front door when we get home from one of our rare forays out at night.

It's really quite pout-inducing seeing the poor little fella limping around and looking sorry for himself and as the wife said, it's a shame he can't equate the fact his jumping up at the door with the breaking of his toenails. But as we all know, dogs are stupid.

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Right, two weeks of copious blogging to follow; hold onto your stomachs!