Baldyman

Since I last posted back in March, it’s safe to say a lot has happened. The summer sun has arrived, Boris has departed, we have a new King, the most talented man in Britain is a Norwegian in a Hi Vis jacket and Phillip Schofield’s popularity has fallen so low that even Gordon the Gopher is refusing to return his calls. There was a month when celebrities were  dropping like flies, protesters Stop Oil have branched out into stopping horses, snooker, rugby and flower shows and to embrace the never ending gender debate I’ve started identifying as invisible and now use the pronouns who and where.

TV highlights saw the nation gather to watch King Charles’ coronation day in May which was then followed just one week later by the 67^th edition of The Eurovision Song Contest. One was an overly long, outdated affair that featured people wearing an array of ridiculous costumes and the other was held in Liverpool following the outbreak of war in the Ukraine. It was reported that Meghan Markle didn’t receive an invite to the ceremony but in reality she still got a better deal that Prince Harry. Looking awkward throughout, he was seated two rows further back than his paedophile uncle, was upstaged by Princess Anne’s hat and had a view only marginally better than that of Ant & Dec, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie.

Easter has also come and gone, the biggest miracle of which is not religious but how children who usually take 15 minutes to find their shoes are able to find 25 mini eggs meticulously hidden in a garden in less than 4 minutes. What began as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the northern spring equinox, has now somehow evolved into a giant rabbit breaking into people’s homes and the first opportunity since Christmas to get drunk for 4 days and eat overpriced chocolate for breakfast.

As the story is told, a day after a meal out with all his mates, Jesus was betrayed by a close friend, stripped, humiliated, nailed to a wooden cross through his hands and feet and abandoned to die an agonising death. Now I’ve no idea how his weeks would usually pan out, but if this was a ‘Good’ Friday then his usual ones must have been really shit. To be fair this was a sequence of events that I could easily empathise with from my days at University. I would regularly go out with a group for a big night on a Thursday, feel like death on a Friday and then go missing for two days before making a surprise return to the student bar on the Sunday (and I even had similar length hair back then).

Earlier in the year I went to see ‘Back to the Future’ the musical in London which is a brilliant show that I would highly recommend. The film is one of my favourites and follows a teenage boy in 1985 who is transported back 30 years in time to a 1955 world that to him is backward and unrecognisable. If the same scenario were to happen today, we’d only be going back to 1993 which in itself was a realisation that has never made me feel older in my life. You would naturally think that the advancements and progress made between 1955 and 1985 would far outweigh any developments made between 1993 and 2023. Upon further investigation this probably couldn’t be any further from the truth.

So let me take you back to 1993 when the new Ford Mondeo was the flash car turning heads, Meatloaf told us that he’d do anything for love but he wouldn’t do that (the mind boggles what ‘that’ might have been) and the UK had employment and housing unrest whilst being led by an unconvincing Conservative Prime Minister (at least not everything has changed). People marvelled at the special effects as the film ‘Jurassic Park’ was released, the first ever train journey was made through the Channel Tunnel and the chance to buy a skinny latte in the UK was still 5 years away. There was no Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat, no Google, no Netflix and no Spotify. It was therefore a world where people;

• Never took close-up pictures of their own faces (unless they were an elderly relative unwittingly holding the camera the wrong way round).
• Ate their food when it was served to them in restaurants (rather than pausing proceedings by 5 minutes to photograph it from 17 different angles).
• Actually enjoyed time with their family (rather than taking 79 photos documenting themselves ‘enjoying’ time with their family to share with relative strangers as proof that they had enjoyed time with their family).
• Had a handful of good, close ‘friends’ (rather than 2583 pretend ones) and liked them sufficiently to know their individual phone numbers off by heart.

Top of The Pops still kept us up to date with the charts, streaming was an activity exclusive to fishermen and music credibility was determined by the height of your stacking system and your ability to convince others that you understood the science behind graphic equalisers. Movies were not at the touch of a button but had to be borrowed in person like a library book from a Blockbusters store. Watched on a machine heavier than a modern day washing machine, they were then returned by being posted through a letterbox before you’d realise that you’d forgotten to rewind it and would be hit with a 50p fine. Snapchat was a discussion about a card game, Alexa was the foreign exchange student at school and with no Google, you might have to wait weeks before your brain came up with that fact you just couldn’t remember. The only time you swiped left and right was when you were being attacked by a bee, the only DMs being slid into were made of leather and laced up past the ankle and with emojis not yet even invented, aubergines were nothing more significant than a vital ingredient for a wholesome winter stew.

1993 was the year that the UK Government first permitted licenses to allow individuals as well as businesses to hold mobile phone contracts and the concept of text messaging was still in the development stage. When mobile phones did eventually become available they were nothing like today’s ‘smart’ phones, in fact in the most part they were actually quite stupid. The size and weight of the average house brick, they were not only a valuable status symbol, but also doubled as a handy weapon to keep next to your bed if you ever needed to confront an intruder.

These days your phone slips into the back pocket of your trousers and contains a multitude of useful apps and functions that we totally take for granted in our everyday lives. Back in 1993 if I wanted to leave the house with the equivalent tools at my disposal I’d need to take:

• A camera (with an attached ‘safety’ wrist strap and film that took 25 minutes and the steady hands of a skilled heart surgeon to swap over)
• A phone book ( in reality useless unless you knew the exact address and three middle names of the person you wanted to call)
• A calendar (probably a Melinda Messenger one as they were still perfectly acceptable back then)
• A Road Atlas (with overly complicated index and pages missing at crucial points in the journey)
• A torch (with two gigantic batteries yet the brightness of half a birthday cake candle)
• A barometer (to determine if it’s going to rain at 2pm a week on Thursday)
• A solar powered calculator (that would undoubtedly turn itself off a second before you went to press ‘equals’ )
• 37 Volumes of The Encyclopaedia Britannica (being paid off monthly over 63 years)

One thing that has certainly worsened over the last 30 years is my patience. With my levels currently at an all-time low, my most recent grievances surround social media and in particular;

1. People who post an R.I.P to a dead celebrity as if they are breaking the news to the entire world. Accompanied by a heartfelt eulogy which would be fitting for a close friend or family member, the person has never actually even met them. E.g. “R.I.P Paul O’Grady a kind, funny and caring man who I held close to my heart ever since I caught a brief, long distance glimpse of him in the carpark of Asda in Milton Keynes in 2003.”
2. People who post vague sentences followed by ‘if you know you know.’ E.g. “3pm today can’t come quick enough. If you know you know!” I know the idea is to make you appear special, mysterious or part of some exclusive superior intelligence group but in reality the only person who really cares about what you think ‘you know’ is unfortunately you.  
3. People who post unnecessarily in depth social itineraries (usually from the Maldives, Dubai or the most perfect family picnic) before signing off with ‘Making Memories.’ These are nothing more than a self-promotional tool to highlight themselves as either a selfless, caring parent or someone making a real success of their life. If your intention is to make personal memories, why share them with everyone and why are there never any posts about other memories made in perhaps less glamourous circumstances? E.g. “Forgot to get more milk for the kids’ breakfasts, a pigeon did a massive shit on my windscreen, I can’t afford the electricity bill and I’ve been in A &E for 6 hours in my pyjamas after my son got a saucepan stuck on his head for the third time this month. Making memories!”

Apart from being old, grumpy and easily wound up, I also almost certainly have some high level OCD issues (same tins together in kitchen cupboard / towels hung neatly at same lengths, etc.). This can cause some issues when my two sons are staying as unbeknown to me it would appear that they have both been regularly sneaking out to night school to qualify with a first class honours degree in making mess. Their expertise in this field knows no bounds and will usually start first thing in the morning as they make their breakfast.

When initially entering into the kitchen it is not immediately distinguishable whether the preparation of meals has just occurred or the area has in fact just been unceremoniously ransacked by an outside body. I was under the impression (incorrectly it would seem) that the term ‘bowl of cereal’ strongly insinuated that one should be placed inside the other rather than strewn randomly across the floor. There are usually that many Rice Krispies (obviously Aldi knock off as I’m too tight to buy the real ones) under foot that it would be quieter to walk across the tiles if they were coated with a layer of bubble wrap. Butter and jam cross contamination is rife, a topless three quarters full milk carton has been left as a counter top booby trap and you’d see fewer knives on view at a London inner city weapons amnesty. Cups, glasses (at least 4 each a day) and plates are all left abandoned in various places in what I can only assume is the hope that they will somehow magically come to life as in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and sing and dance their own way over to the kitchen sink. A lidless butter tub lies melting, uneaten cereal lays hardening in the bowl and crumb trails have reached levels that even Hansel & Gretel would be envious of. Venturing to the rest of the house, clothes are discarded like a scene from the Full Monty, wet towels are abandoned on beds to ensure a sodden bedtime duvet and pairs of shoes couldn’t find themselves any further apart if they’d accidentally been kicked off in the middle of a particularly energetic rendition of the ‘Can-can’. It takes three days to tidy up after them before they make a triumphant return and the merry go round of destruction can start all over again.

While it’s abundantly clear that I’m quick to criticise the actions of others, I do pride myself in still always reserving sufficient time and energy to fully document my own humiliations. This will be conclusively demonstrated by the following two stories which have quite worryingly both happened to me in just the last few weeks.

First was when I decided to do some well overdue spring cleaning and began in my own bedroom which overlooks a small green with a path that leads to the local park. Opening the window to let in some fresh air, I attempted to maximise my enthusiasm levels by putting on some motivational music and changing into my designated DIY/cleaning vest (yes I do have one and while I feel it makes me look like John McClane in Die Hard the reality is that I bare a far closer resemblance to Onslow from ‘Keeping Up Appearances’). I was soon in full flow but after about 15 minutes I started to have an unerring feeling that I was being watched. Turning to my left I immediately locked eyes with a man standing on the path who was accompanied by a small boy and girl both astride stabilised bicycles. Gazing up at me, the look on their three faces can only be accurately described as a cross between bemusement and repulsion. It then dawned on me that this father’s intention had been to spend some quality time with his children participating in some fun and healthy outdoor pursuits. What he had inadvertently subjected them to however was the spectacle of a middle aged, bald man in an ill-fitting sleeveless top, thrusting to Abba’s ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme a Man after Midnight’ whilst standing on his bed hoovering cobwebs off the ceiling. I sheepishly half smiled and quickly drew the curtains as if this would somehow magically erase these disturbing images from the minds of these poor innocent souls.

Second was an incident that occurred just after I’d finished going for a run, an opening sentence which I fully appreciate will do nothing to dampen people’s suspicions that the remainder of the story might be as equally farfetched. Returning through the back door into the kitchen, I was faced with the washing machine that I had earlier decided to delay starting. The load was not quite full and the clothes I was running in would need to be washed and would perfectly fill it to capacity. Rather than go upstairs to get undressed and then bring them back down, I decided to strip off there and then to get the washing machine full and going as soon as possible. Now the kitchen has a big window which leads directly to two patio doors so the front is almost entirely glass. While you can see straight in from the garden, I wasn’t at all concerned at being spotted as no visitors were due and I am not particularly overlooked by any neighbours. The undress began in earnest with each discarded item in turn added to the machine, in many ways like Nick Kamen’s Levis 501 advert from 1985 but without the involvement of a male model or even a hint of any sex appeal. I was soon down to just my underpants, which were actually received by mistake as a Christmas present many years ago. They were supposed to be David Beckham boxer shorts but by accident had been mixed up with a more snugly fitting pair of his designer briefs. In the end I’d kept them to use specifically for running but while David wore his with style and grace, I looked like one of the fat UK wrestlers that Giant Haystacks used to squash on Saturday afternoon TV in the late 70s. As I stood there liberated in what amounted to a pair of budgie smugglers (budgie might be overly generous) I suddenly heard the lock on the garden gate opening. It was the local Amazon delivery driver, who just happens to be a woman in her mid-twenties, with a package in her hand she was looking to deliver. At this point I quickly decided that I had two options;

1. Answer at the glass patio door and almost certainly be added to the local sex offenders register.
2. Drop to the floor and cowardly hide behind one of the kitchen units.

Obviously choosing option 2, I then realised that this was an important package that was needed that day and that I’d have to sign for. As she knocked for the first time, I blindly rummaged with one hand in the washing machine to locate my t-shirt and shorts before clumsily partially redressing myself at ground level. Then as the second round of knocking began, I managed to adopt a crouching position before suddenly shooting up into view like a demented jack in the box. To say she looked shocked would be an understatement and with no explanation offered, the conversation during the hand over was understandably extremely awkward. As she hurriedly made her exit, in no doubt happy to have survived her encounter with the local weirdo, I was happy in the knowledge that I had done everything in my power to prevent her experiencing a far worse psychologically damaging sequence of events.

I will once again finish with a joke.

A tired and weary traveller approaches a farmhouse in the countryside and knocks on the front door. The farmer answers and the traveller says, “I am a tired and weary traveller and if you give me a bed for the night I will do any work for you on your farm in return.”

The farmer replies, “It’s my Christian duty to take care of people and show kindness so you can stay here but you don’t have to do any work for me.” The next morning when the traveller awakes he says, “I insist to do some work for you to repay your kindness,” but the farmer once again replies, “It is my Christian duty to take care of people so this will not be necessary.”

“Well,” says the traveller, “I have travelled around the world many times and have learnt the skill of talking to animals. So I will go and talk to all your farm animals for you.” The farmer is naturally very sceptical but the traveller disappears to the farm and returns back a while later.

“I spoke to your horses,” says the traveller, “and the horses told me that you recently bought them new square mouth bits and they are not as comfortable as the old round mouth bits so they can’t pull as much weight.” “Oh my goodness,” said the farmer, “I did buy them new mouth bits recently.” “And then I spoke to your cows and they told me that you recently set the milking machine to level 36 instead of 28 and the milk is pumping too hard and fast and it is hurting them.” Again the farmer is amazed and says, “You’re right I did change the setting from 28 to 36.” “And then,” continued the traveller, “I spoke to your sheep and they told me that you recently…” “They’re all liars those sheep” interrupted the farmer quickly, “don’t believe a single word any one of them tells you!”

Thanks again for reading.

In recent news Jeremy Clarkson was cancelled for being rude, insensitive and misogynistic, (hasn’t that been the basis of his whole career?) Nicola Sturgeon resigned as first minister of Scotland (presumably to concentrate on Pantos with the Krankies), Gary Lineker compared the Tories to the Third Reich (an own goal not even VAR could overturn) and S Club 7’s plans to tour again after 25 years were thrown into turmoil when two members put their backs out attempting to ‘Reach for the Stars.’ There were flashbacks to the nightmare of lockdown home schooling as teachers went on strike, salad lovers turned to the black market to score some cucumbers and tomatoes and teens across the country went crazy over the new energy drink ‘Prime’.  With demand exceeding supply, fights broke out in supermarkets and bottles changed hands for over ten times the retail value. This was a lot different to my youth when we were more than happy with a can of Lilt or Top Deck (0.001% alcohol so we could pretend to be drunk) and if we were feeling particularly adventurous, a carton of Um Bongo (“they drink it in the Congo” – probably wouldn’t be allowed to say that anymore).

Sam Smith has also been in the headlines with his ‘flamboyant’ fashion sense called into question during a period in which he;

• Dressed as a red latex devil at the Grammys (as you do).
• Released photos wearing a snug fitting string vest (which bore an uncanny resemblance to a butcher’s tied pork joint).
• Arrived at the Brit Awards in an inflatable outfit (which can be best described as an inexperienced children’s party entertainer’s failed attempt to construct a balloon animal).

Christmas and New Year are now merely a distant memory and January seemed to finish quicker than Prince Harry when he lost his virginity in a field behind a busy pub. Claiming he was treated like a stallion, (I assume this didn’t include being brushed, given fresh straw and fed carrots) his mystery acquaintance was described in his memoirs as ‘an older woman with a love for horses.’ With early contenders including Katie Price, Clare Balding and his step mum Camilla Parker Bowles, there was a degree of disappointment when she was finally revealed as an unknown 40 year-old digger driver from Wiltshire who I would almost certainly lose to in an arm wrestling contest. Other fascinating revelations from everyone’s favourite ginger royal (well at least since Fergie was forced out) were that he took drugs, drank heavily (both of which I suggest he continues with if he has to live with Meghan) and attended his brother’s wedding with a frostbitten penis (ideal if Kate had forgotten to bring anything blue). The backlash from ‘Spare’ saw him evicted by King Charles, with the initial delight of their Frogmore Cottage neighbours soon dampened with the arrival of non-sweating sex pest Prince Andrew.

New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time where I would spend the night playing a number of classic old school board games with my children. But with the world now increasingly running to a different set of rules, the evening was brought to an abrupt end when;

• ‘Mouse Trap’ and ‘Buckaroo’ were stopped due to allegations of animal cruelty.
• ‘Operation’ was delayed due to a nurses’ strike.
•  ‘Monopoly’ ended on the discovery that Old Kent Road had been demolished and replaced with a Starbucks.
• ‘Twister’ was abandoned due to 15 counts of sexual assault in the opening 4 minutes.

Worst of all though was ‘Guess Who’ which used to be a fun, rapid fire game of person identification. It was soon clear though that it would now take considerably longer to complete when my son posed his opening question, “Does he/him, she/her, they/them identify as a wearer of a hat?” I eventually correctly identified the mystery character as Richard but by the time I’d come to this conclusion, he was no longer bald with glasses and a beard but had transitioned into being Maria with a beret, earrings and shoulder length brown hair.

The pronouns that people choose to use is a hot topic of conversation at the moment and I for one believe that everyone should be able to call themselves whatever they want and  live their lives however they wish. I ultimately decide what I do and don’t do and for example have just had a very busy weekend during which I;

• Baked some Gingerbread Them.
• Watched Liverpool play Themchester United.
• Read some chapters of John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Them.’
• Listened to music including,’ I kissed a Them and I liked it’ by Katy Perry and Shania Twain’s classic, ‘Them! I feel like a Them.’
• Remembered to put the recycling out before the BinThem came on Monday.

There have also now been calls to ensure that there is no misgendering of any of our children’s favourite TV characters.  So with this in mind, it has been confirmed that from now on;

• Peter Parker will turn into SpiderThem.
• FireThem Sam will deal with all emergencies in Pontypandy.
• Skeletor will battle ThemThem.
• All letters in Greendale will be delivered by PostThem Pat and his non binary cat.

A New Year is often a time for new beginnings and this year I decided to make a resolution that from January 1^st I would go on a diet and exercise more in order to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. Although from the outside it seemed an admirable plan, it did upon further investigation turn out to have a number of major flaws which included;

1. I have had the same idea for at least the last ten years without it ever having come to fruition (despite the ever mounting statistical evidence that failure is a near certainty, part of my foolhardy self always believes that “this year is going to be different.”)
2. I have little or no willpower when it comes to food  (a fact further cemented on Christmas Eve when I came close to falling into a ‘party snack’ induced coma after consuming a family sized bag of onion ring crisps during the first 20 minutes of ‘Home Alone.’)
3. The ridiculous volumes of snacks bought for Christmas week would almost certainly remain as an unfinished temptation until at least March (boxes of After Eight Mints and Matchmakers were piled so high that edible Jenga was considered and if Jesus fed 5000 with just a few fishes and loaves, I dread to think what he could’ve achieved with my twiglets, chocolate coins and luxury Scottish all butter biscuit shortbread collection.)
4. As the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, this was technically speaking January 1^st and the supposed commencement of my life changing fitness regime (in reality I had a can of Thatchers Cider in each hand, was continuing to try to eat my body weight in cheese and crackers and was plotting an ambitious plan to create a large batch of pigs in blankets, brie and cranberry sauce toasted sandwiches.)

It can also be a time of reflection and a chance to look back at what you have accomplished over the previous 12 months. My biggest achievement by far was completing the Brighton Marathon back in April, a feat made even more remarkable by the fact that just last week I found myself severely out of breath attempting to change a duvet cover (it was a double). I have regularly documented how I always seem to find myself in embarrassing situations and you’ll be pleased to know that my running experiences were no exception to this.

My first misfortune occurred during one of my final long distance training runs only a few weeks before the race. With 18 miles to cover, I had calculated a 4.5 mile route that I could loop 4 times to enable me to sensibly take on water outside my house each time. So for this reason and to ensure I covered the correct overall distance, it was paramount that I didn’t deviate from the course I had planned in advance. Things were all going well until I had covered about a mile and started to make my way along a narrow track through the middle of a local public park. As I turned a corner, in the near distance I could see at least a hundred schoolgirls, who were participating in a hockey tournament, sat in large groups close to either side of the path I had to run through.

Now if I only had to run past them once then it would not have been an issue at all, but as I previously explained, this was not an option. As the park approached again on each loop I prayed that the tournament would have now finished and that the girls would have dispersed. Unfortunately this was not the case and so with every passing lap, due to the physical exertion I was undertaking, I became slower, sweatier, more out of breath and increasingly more recognisable. By the time I got to the fourth time through, I fully expected officers from Operation Yewtree to be waiting for me and I couldn’t have made myself any more conspicuous if I had been wearing a shell suit, smoking a cigar and handing out Jim’ll Fix It badges.

The second incident actually happened during the race itself. From 21 miles onwards I was a broken man, had been passed by a rhino, a Peppa Pig (both of which I assumed were costumes unless I’d started hallucinating) and countless pensioners, and was barely able to break into anything more dynamic than a pedestrian jog. At Brighton the finish is along the beach front so there is a great atmosphere with huge crowds cheering you on. As I approached the final stretch I noticed an inflatable archway in the distance that I recognised as the finishing line. Keen to uphold my macho credentials in front of the public masses, I mustered all my remaining energy to put on a finishing burst reminiscent of the dramatic scenes depicted in 1982’s ‘Chariots of Fire.’

As I soaked up the adulation of people calling out my name (it was printed on my vest, I am not in any way popular) and prepared to duck over the line, I was suddenly hit with a very stark realisation. The previously identified archway was merely for advertising purposes and the actual finish could quite clearly be seen about a quarter of a mile further down the road. Let’s just say that these remaining metres, which were of course lined with countless official photographers, would see me produce a far less dominant, elegant and physically impressive performance.

Fitness levels  can diminish at an alarming rate when neglected and  just 8 months on from running 26.2 miles I have found myself in such situations where;

• I got my forearm and fat fingers stuck in a tube of Hot & Spicy Pringles as I greedily foraged for broken remnants at the bottom.
• I seemingly need the aid of a winch, talcum powder and Big Foot’s shoe horn to successfully manoeuvre myself into any pair of more snugly fitting jeans.
• I suffered a near death experience trying on an old football kit (see below).

I was going to watch the team I support for the first time in many years and thought it only fitting to wear suitable attire to mark the occasion. Searching through my wardrobe I located one of my old team shirts and without a second thought proceeded to start putting it on. It went over my head and shoulders okay (these I later realised don’t tend to enlarge that much throughout adult life) but it then became increasingly apparent that I was likely to have some serious issues. I could barely pull it down any further than my nipples and because of this, my arms were fixed in a slightly raised position that you might more usually associate with a farmer’s scarecrow.

I could make comparisons with attempting to remove a cucumber from its shrink wrapped cellophane but this would not do justice to the close proximity the material was keeping to my skin. Having briefly contemplated the humiliation of having to ask one of my sons to cut me free with scissors, I then began an escape attempt that if successful would be far greater than anything Steve McQueen had ever achieved. My movements closely mimicked those of a wriggling escapologist but while they are usually up against a straitjacket, buckles and padlocks, my nemesis was merely an ill-fitting football shirt.

With all the grace of a caught fish floundering on a riverbank, I somehow managed to contort myself into a position that finally freed my, by now, severely blood starved arms. In my moment of triumph it dawned on me that it had been 18 years since I had last worn the shirt in question and even more ludicrous was the fact that it was a size ‘medium’. Now I’m not quite at the stage just yet where I’m giving Brendan Fraser in ‘The Whale’ a run for his money, but I’ve not been that clothing size for a while. In fact the closest I’ve come to a medium in recent years was when a mysterious old lady grabbed my hand in the frozen aisle at Aldi and told me I was due to come into wealth (in fairness she was correct as I collected my pound back from the trolley soon afterwards).

If you have got this far I can only congratulate you and I will now bring proceedings to an end with a joke.

A man is walking next to a canal with his dog when without warning it suddenly jumps off the side and into the water. Unable to swim and with his four legged friend beginning to struggle to stay afloat, the dog’s owner starts to panic. Luckily on the other side of the canal is a visiting German tourist who, in his broken (but highly commendable and perfectly understandable) English, shouts across, “Don’t vorry I vill save ze dog” before jumping into the water.

He makes his way to the dog, puts it under his arm before completing the rescue by swimming to the opposite side and getting out. Approaching the dog’s owner he says, “If you get ze dog dry, varm and a good meal it vill be fine.” “Thank you so much for your help and advice,” says the man, “Are you a vet?”

“Vet?” replies the German tourist, “I am f**king soaking!”

Thanks again for reading.

It’s that time of year once more when mince pies are back on supermarket shelves (they’ve been there since September), Noddy Holder’s bank account receives a significant boost (£500K – £1M a year in royalties) and we all contemplate the dilemma of whether or not to buy a Lynx gift set for a relative that we’ve not seen or even thought about for 12 months (if you do decide to, send a clear message as to how important they are to you by downgrading them from Voodoo to Africa). Hilarious novelty jumpers (“I only get my baubles out once a year” / “I’m sexy and I snow it”) are located at the bottom of wardrobes, cranberry sauce is added to shopping lists despite nobody liking it (isn’t it just jam?) and dads everywhere prepare to make their annual visit to the place only men are allowed to go (to avoid any confusion this is a reference to the loft and not Stringfellows after the office Christmas party.)

Arctic weather has recently descended on the UK, bringing pavements that even Torvill & Dean would struggle on and the realisation that a Tesco club card not only saves 50p on a meal deal, but is also a decent understudy for the windscreen ice scraper that’s gone AWOL the first time it’s actually been needed. The country is also in the midst of a wave of industrial action to the point where we’ve had more strikes than that friend who suggests you go ten pin bowling and then turns up with his own shoes and ball. They cover a variety of organisations and occupations but as long as you don’t intend on travelling by train, bus or plane, getting seriously ill or at any point needing an ambulance, your baggage handled, your passport checked, your driving test or to receive anything by post in the next month then you should be pretty much unaffected.

The festive period is one where rules, and seemingly common sense, go out of the window and for some inexplicable reason we start to believe that;

1. Perfectly good red wine should be simmered in a saucepan because visitors to our home would much prefer it was served to them at the same temperature as a cup of tea.
2. Turkey, which for twelve months has been behind even fish fingers in the pecking order and that you have the least experience of cooking correctly, is the perfect choice as the centre piece meat for the most anticipated meal of the year.
3. The best condiment to compliment the sumptuous festive feast you have spent hours creating is a sauce whose primary ingredient is liquidised moist bread.
4. It’s a good idea to create a fire hazard in the family home by erecting a fake tree made from highly flammable materials in your lounge and covering it in a multitude of miniature, molten hot light bulbs that have not undergone any safety checks since their purchase in the late 1990s. In the event of a fire breaking out, sufficient measures have been taken to prevent its spread by placing piles of cardboard boxes covered in paper at the base of the tree.

As Christmas approaches, thoughts naturally start to turn to what presents we can buy for our nearest and dearest. Traditionally, and mainly due to the lack of imagination and creativity possessed by the majority of men, wives and girlfriends will start dropping gift hints for a number of weeks prior to the big day. These can take many different forms including;

• Mentioning things in conversations (despite some fortunately timed nodding, we are rarely listening properly.)
• Pointing things out in shop windows (despite appearing to look directly at the item, we are rarely paying full attention.)
• Leaving magazines open on specific pages around the house (along with discarded shoes, nail varnish bottles and long since half-finished cups of tea, these will just be confused with mess and cleared up without receiving the level of attention that was intended for them.)
• Sending phone messages with a direct internet link to the desired item attached (while this has the highest probability of success, there is a possibility it could remain unopened or forgotten, especially if a subsequent message about Fantasy Football is received from Dave from work, as this is likely to be given a far higher priority.)

An old work mate of mine had a somewhat chequered history when it came to buying Christmas presents for his wife, which included a hat trick that not even Sir Geoff Hurst or Kylian Mbappe could replicate. The first year when she told him, “I’d like nothing more than a diamond necklace” he went along with her preference and got her nothing and for the second year he decided on a romantic bombardment in the shape of an ironing board and weighing scales twinset. When it came to the third year and she asked him to surprise her, he duly obliged by ringing her up on Christmas Day from a brothel in Thailand.

There is also the yuletide minefield of being informed of the decision that, “I don’t think we should get each other any presents this year.” Now this has never been suggested by a man (there have been none born either brave or stupid enough) and is a scenario most commonly occurring in an established relationship where the fun, excitement and desire has long since been replaced with tiresome routine. While on the outside it may appear a quite straightforward statement whose message is easy to interpret, it is in fact part of a female only code that not even the top agents at M16 have yet been able to crack. What “I don’t think we should get each other any presents this year” actually means is “I don’t think we should get each other any presents this year but it is Christmas so I fully expect you to get me at least some presents despite using wording that would seem to indicate the contrary.”

Many men throughout history have fallen foul to this booby-trap and a scenario which can result in;

• AT BEST: Twelve months of being constantly reminded of your error until you get a chance to redeem yourself with an overly expensive gift the next Christmas.
• AT WORST: A ‘mistake grenade’ that can be indiscriminately  launched in your direction in the very unlikely event that at any future point in the relationship you find yourself with the upper hand in any argument.

Husbands and boyfriends are happy just to be involved in the festivities and are more than grateful to receive whatever  presents might come their way (character socks, sound effect bottle openers, novelty aprons, ‘Beers of the World’ selection pack). For this reason, they generally don’t feel the need to plant any ideas of their gift preferences in advance. There is the danger however that a totally off-the-cuff comment or action, with absolutely no meaning attached, could be misconceived by your partner as the declaration of a present -worthy new passion or hobby. One minute you’re innocently pointing out what seems to be a rare breed of bird in your back garden and the next  you find yourself in the middle of a farmer’s field wearing an oversized leather glove on a ‘Hawks & Eagles Birds of Prey Weekend’ swinging a slab of raw meat around your head on a piece of string.

My youngest son is now eleven and has recently started High School so the festive fantasy of Santa and Elf on a Shelf sadly no longer exists in my house. This also means that after a number of years, Junior School days and everything that comes with them have finally come to an end for us both. No more shorts and Velcro shoes, no more non-competitive sports days with bean bags, hoops and tennis rackets and no more bemusement that Tyrone from 4B has been awarded ‘Star of the Week’ again because he showed ‘great resilience’ by only attacking 3 classmates with scissors over the last 5 days.

The playground drop offs and pickups are therefore also a thing of the past, which at least means I no longer have to experience the charade and phenomenon of the middle aged school mums dressed like background extras from a Beverly Callard keep fit DVD in their head to toe sports gear. Despite at first glance appearing to make an Olympic athlete look under equipped, upon closer inspection it is clear that their top of the range trainers have in fact seen as much recent action as my Babyliss Deluxe 2000 hairdryer. While their spray on lycra leggings and sports bras create the illusion that it is next stop ‘Jazzercise’, this will almost certainly be preceded by a large full fat Latte and giant slice of coffee cake as part of what is a more than deserved and overdue ‘catch up’.

With the playground demographic predominantly female, I made an early decision not to try and mix and instead keep my distance and make my observations from afar. This makes it sound like I was a pervert up a tree across the road watching them with a pair of binoculars which wasn’t the case (I couldn’t find a big enough ladder). My conclusion was that each of the school mums would fall into one of a number of distinguishable categories which included;

• Mums who turn up in full heavy make-up, high heels and faux leather themed ‘going out’ clothes at 3.15pm (The Kat Slater Mums). My assumption of these was that they were clearly either a) ready early for a big night in Romford that would inevitably finish with a fight in a chicken shop at 3am or b) a working prostitute who would drop her child to Grandma’s house before making her way straight to her next punter.
• Mums who have a responsible full time job as well as simultaneously dealing with childcare (The Karen Brady Mums). These will shoe horn details of how important their responsibilities are and how busy they’ve been into an otherwise unrelated conversation you might be having about the weather or packed lunches. The extreme workload they have undertaken will be further emphasised as they repeatedly check their phones for new emails and criticise their ‘lazy’ husbands presumably in the hope that a stay at home mum will comment “I don’t know how you do it,” and present  them with a superhero cape.
• Mums who have taken the job that nobody else wanted (parent fundraising) and now mistakenly think the power it brings makes them popular (The Liz Truss Mums). These will usually be stood alone holding a clipboard and under no circumstances should you ever let them catch your eye. If you are unlucky enough to see them approaching you, it is highly recommended that you fake a heart attack/stroke rather than take the risk of being lumbered with a seven hour stint supervising the coconut shy at the Summer Fete.
• Mums that are always accompanied by a large, unruly and uncontrollable litter of their other children (The Pied Piper Mums). Whilst their feral offspring terrorise the playground with their fists, bad language and shin shattering metal scooters, she can visibly be seen to move ever closer to what seems an inevitable mental and physical breakdown. Despite the obvious tragedy surrounding this type of school mum, they are my personal favourites as, much like a quick trip to Clacton-On-Sea, they serve to make me feel a lot better about myself and my own personal circumstances.

A trip to the pantomime has always been one my favourite yuletide traditions (oh no it hasn’t) and I will always live with deep regret (oh yes I will) that I failed to make it to Southend Cliffs Pavilion in 2014 to witness the historical moment when Christopher Biggins and David Hasselhoff (the panto equivalent of Messi & Ronaldo) trod the boards together.

I recently read a news article that reported how a particular regional production of Aladdin was cancelled after complaints were received in regards to it being ‘dated and culturally insensitive’. In my opinion this couldn’t be further from the truth with the characters and themes associated with panto probably reflecting the world we live in today more accurately than they ever have.

The principal boy character is traditionally played by a woman who has decided to dress as a man and the roles of Dames and Ugly Sisters are always taken by men who have made the choice to dress and identify as women. Sarah the Cook provides a positive female role model in a world dominated by male chefs, Sleeping Beauty perfectly portrays the laziness of benefits Britain and Goldilocks, in the midst of a cost of living crisis, is forced to break into a stranger’s house just to get a decent meal and find somewhere warm to spend the night. Jack, who sold his mum’s property to buy ‘magic beans’ before claiming to have met a giant and a goose that laid golden eggs, is a prime example of substance abuse amongst teens, while ‘Puss in Boots’ is a specialist form of adult entertainment that I’m told is readily available on the internet.

Aladdin features a long, lost relative with promises of great wealth and riches, which is not too dissimilar to the email I got last week from my Nigerian uncle requesting that  I send my bank details in order to receive my $5M inheritance. If this storyline was to be given a more modern twist however, the Chinese laundry would almost certainly be in lockdown due to another Covid outbreak and the three wishes to be granted by the magic lamp would now probably be;

• Gas
• Electricity
• Trolley full of groceries.

While a princess living in harmony with 7 vertically challenged manual labourers is undoubtedly a great example of a diverse society, Snow White is another production that could do with a slight tweak to bring it more up to date. To more accurately fit the world we all live in today, instead of Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful and Doc, the Dwarves should now be known as;

1. Hungry
2. Chilly
3. Druggy
4. Boozy
5. Vapey
6. Wasteful
7. Strike

Politicians would be perfect to play a number of characters, with Boris Johnson as Widow Twankey (with a silent T), Liz Truss as Fairy Godmother (makes a brief appearance before disappearing in a puff of smoke) and Rishi Sunak as Robin Hood from ‘Babes in the Wood’ (with the robbing the rich to give to the poor theme reversed). And why not also include some members of the Royal Family who could easily fill a number of different roles including;

• Prince Charming. (Prince William)
• Beauty & the Beast. (Zara Phillips & Mike Tindall)
• The Wicked Step Mother. (Camilla)
• The King’s son from Cinderella who risks everything by falling in love with a common scrubber. (Prince Harry)
• Captain Hook from Peter Pan who is a powerful yet dislikeable bully who spends a lot of his time on an island surrounded by underage children. (Prince Andrew)

I will once again sign off with a joke;

An American tourist arrives at an Irish hotel for three days of golf and asks the receptionist if she knows of anyone suitable he could play with. She points him in the direction of Seamus who is in the bar (double stereotype) and after a brief conversation he tells the American, “I’ll meet you here at 9am tomorrow morning but I might be half an hour late.”

Seamus arrives the next morning at 9am carrying a set of left handed golf clubs and plays 18 holes with the American who he beats. They arrange to play again the next day with Seamus once again telling the American, “I’ll meet you here at 9am tomorrow morning but I might be half an hour late.”

Seamus arrives the next morning at 9am this time carrying a set of right handed golf clubs, plays 18 holes and once again beats the American. They arrange to play for a final time on his last day with Seamus once again telling the American, “I’ll meet you here at 9am tomorrow morning but I might be half an hour late.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” enquired the American. “Of course not,” replied Seamus.

“The first day you turn up here with a set of left handed clubs and played with them and the next day you turn up with a set of right handed clubs and played with them. How do you decide which clubs you are going to play with each day?”

“Well,” said Seamus, “It all depends on which side my wife is lying in the bed when I wake up first thing in the morning. If I wake up and she’s lying on her left side I take the left handed clubs and if I wake up and she’s lying on her right side I take the right handed clubs.”

“And what happens if you wake up and she’s lying on her back?” asked the American.

 “I’ll be half an hour late.”

Festive greetings to everyone and if you’re a Dad, make sure you have your black sack ready to assume the vitally important duty of wrapping paper collector on Christmas morning.

Thanks again for reading.

To say it’s been an eventful few months since I last posted a blog would be an understatement. We’ve had 2 different monarchs, 3 different Prime Ministers and Lurpak has now somehow found itself with a street value higher than crack cocaine. It was my youngest son’s favourite (Lurpak not crack cocaine) but due to the recent price hikes I’ve now had to take the necessary steps to gradually wean him off it. I’ve adopted a method similar to that used when addicts are supplied with a cheaper substitute to reduce their dependence, but instead of using methadone, I chose Aldi’s own Nordpak Spreadable.

In what has been a period of great personal loss and turmoil, the Queen died, Neighbours was cancelled and then for a final dagger to my already weakened heart, Bounty bars were unceremoniously dumped from tubs of celebrations. A sequence of such harrowing events would have broken a weaker man but I have managed to stay strong with a stiff upper lip in the knowledge that it’s what the great lady herself (Mrs Mangle) would have wanted.

Neighbours was a cultural sensation that gave acting breaks to Margot Robbie, Russell Crowe and Chris Hemsworth and produced an even higher calibre of pop stars in the shape of Stefan Dennis, Holly Valance and Craig McLachlan (who can forget his timeless classic ‘Mona’). And in 1987, 19.6M UK viewers, which at the time was bigger than Australia’s own population, tuned in to watch Scott take Charlene up the aisle (don’t be disgusting) to the sultry tones of Angry Anderson.

While I appreciate that coconut is not everyone’s cup of tea, Bounties have always been my favourite chocolate bar. By complete coincidence, it was also the nickname given to the less attractive girls who attended the discos in my teenage years. When the lights came on at the end of the night and all the favourite ones had already been taken, you could always guarantee there would be plenty of them left over.

The Queen’s passing sent shockwaves around the world at what was the end of an era for a woman who had been a constant in the lives of so many. People flocked to London for a final chance to pay their respects as she lay in state for a number of days at Westminster. While David Beckham further enhanced his own reputation with a patient 13 hour wait, Phillip Schofield proved that while he’s more than happy to buy any car, he’s not quite so keen to queue in any queue.

The Queen’s funeral was watched by millions, all of which who marvelled at the performance of the young soldiers given responsibility for the transportation of her coffin throughout the ceremony. While it was impossible to imagine what it must have been like for them mentally, I felt I could empathise with them physically having once attempted to get three flat pack wardrobes off a trolley and over the parcel shelf of a Ford Fiesta in an Ikea car park. With the public intrigued to discover what the official cause of death would be, when it was announced that the 96 year-old Queen had died of old age, it was less surprising than when H from steps came out as gay on Big Brother.

If dealing with the death of their monarch wasn’t enough, the British public were also in the midst of the biggest political meltdown since Cherie Blair accidentally left her hair straighteners on for the duration of the Iraq war.

Time was eventually called on Boris Johnson’s ongoing No.10 lock-in and as the shutters came down for the final time, he quickly lost the confidence of his own party members. This was emphatically highlighted when Downing Street received over 60 letters of resignation in a single week, which eclipsed the previous longstanding record which had been held by the ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ fan club.

The next Prime Minister would now be decided from a list of ‘highly skilled and qualified’ candidates, which for the record included a former contestant on a celebrity high diving TV programme which was judged by Jo Brand. The six contenders were then whittled down, one by one, in the most pointless and least entertaining elimination game since Prince Andrew donned fancy dress and joined fellow sex offender Stuart Hall in 1987’s ‘It’s a Royal Knockout’.

With Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss the last two standing, it was the weakest final pair in any contest since Michelle McManus and Mark Rhodes locked horns in series 2 of Pop Idol (a catastrophic downgrade on Will v Gareth from the previous year I’m sure you’ll agree). Despite sounding like they’d been thought up by pre-school children, their respective campaign websites (“Ready for Rishi” & “Liz for Leader”) would actually turn out to be a good indicator as to the inspiration both would provide. It was like asking the public to make a choice between chlamydia and herpes when their first preference would almost certainly be to have neither.

Liz was victorious (for now) and spent her first week creating her very own version of Craig David’s chart hit ‘7 Days’ (thankfully though without the love making bits);

“Voted Tory leader on MONDAY,

Audience with the Monarch on TUESDAY

First PMQs on WEDNESDAY

Monarch died THURSDAY

Met the new one on FRIDAY & SATURDAY

Chilled on SUNDAY”

She did at least deliver on her vow to make history as she achieved the accolade of becoming the shortest serving UK Prime Minister in a tenure during which she;

• Campaigned for longer (54 days) than she stayed in power (44 days).
• Performed more U-turns than a malfunctioning Sat Nav.
• Proved to have a worse grasp of taxation laws than Jimmy Carr.
• Lost a longevity contest to one of the main ingredients of a BLT sandwich.

With removal men now given their own permanent parking space outside and the installation of a revolving door seeming the next logical step, No.10 prepared for yet another occupant in a turnover that would rival the most popular Air B&B.

News then began to circulate that Boris was contemplating a comeback in what would have been a more far-fetched and inconceivable return than those made by both Bobby Ewing and Dirty Den combined. Despite cutting short his 19^th holiday of the year, he fortunately decided to pull out at the last second which, for a man who famously has an indeterminate number of children, is clearly not something he does that often.

With the British public now in desperate need of a leader who could empathise with their ever increasing cost of living struggles, the Conservatives turned to Rishi Sunak, a man twice as wealthy as the new King. As he contemplated his next move during his morning swim in his indoor pool, I gave my sons a well-deserved and overdue treat by saving up for three weeks so I could put the heating on for them for twenty minutes.

And just when you thought things couldn’t get any more bonkers, serving MP Matt Hancock has abandoned his political responsibilities after being tempted to head off into the bush (the last time he did this it cost him his job as Health Secretary). It seems he’d had enough of the House of Commons where he was surrounded by snakes, had been caught in a compromising position by hidden cameras and forced into close proximity with shallow individuals whose future careers were dependant on gaining the votes of the public. So instead he decided to sign up to ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ where he’d live in the Australian jungle surrounded by snakes, be likely to be caught in a compromising position by hidden cameras and forced into close proximity with shallow individuals whose future careers were dependant on gaining the votes of the public. It does seem particularly poetic however that a man who has spent most of his political life speaking bollocks will now soon be forced into eating some.

As is now par for the course, I have once again found myself having some memorable personal experiences of late which as usual I thought I’d share with you. These have included;

• Buying what I believed to be some expensive silver wrapping paper for my son’s birthday only to discover when I began to unravel it that it was in fact the clear, see through wrap people use to cover gift baskets. In short I had paid over the odds for what amounted to glorified cling film which failed to fulfil even the minimum requirement expected of wrapping paper which is to prevent the present’s recipient seeing what it is before they open it. With no time to purchase a replacement, my son began his coming of age 16^th birthday by opening gifts covered in Thomas the Tank paper that I had managed to find in the loft.
• My visit to a Wagamama restaurant once again being tarnished due to their bizarre yet somehow widely accepted service policy. The next time I go there and I’m greeted with the standard question of, “Do you have any allergies?” my reply will be, “Yes, I’m allergic to receiving my courses in the wrong order and my own food arriving twenty minutes after the person I came to enjoy the meal with has been served and finished theirs.”
• Realising at the end of a long and busy journey on the London Underground that I had unknowingly been occupying a place that was marked “Please Offer This Seat.” My guilt soon subsided however when a quick scan of the carriage’s age demographic confirmed that even if I hadn’t been sitting in it, it was likely I would have been  one of the first people it was offered to.
• Having the genius idea of using the scales in the local Post Office when I needed to establish an accurate weight of my son’s current cricket bat. As rain began to lash down, I put up the hood of my coat, zipped it up tight to my face, grabbed the bat and ran from the car park before bursting in through the front doors. At this point, judging from the looks on the faces of both customers and staff inside, I realised that entering a Post Office at speed with your face obscured whilst brandishing what could easily be misconstrued as a weapon, was probably not the best idea I’ve ever had.

As is now customary, I have another joke to share with you.

A burglar broke into a home one night and as he searched for things to steal, he suddenly heard a voice saying, “Jesus is watching you!”

He froze in his tracks, shined his torch and saw a parrot in a cage over in the corner of the room. “Did you say that to me?” asked the burglar.

“Yes I did,” replied the parrot, “I’m just trying to warn you.”

 “Warn me?” said the burglar, “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“My name is Moses,” said the parrot.

“Moses?” laughed the burglar, “What kind of crazy people would name a parrot Moses?” 

To which the reply came, “The same kind of crazy people that would name a 9 stone Rottweiler Jesus.”

If I don’t get the chance to post again in the next month, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I will leave you with 3 last thoughts to contemplate:

1. Why is the word fridge spelt with a ‘d’ but the word refrigerator not?
2. Do people who choose deodorants marketed as having ’72 hour’ protection only shower every 3 days?
3. If a robot is buying sporting or concert tickets on line which box does it tick?

Thanks again for reading.

In the last few weeks the UK was united as neighbours who hadn’t spoken to each other in at least 7 years joined forces for street parties to celebrate the Queen living long enough for them to enjoy a four day weekend. Stars of the music world gathered for a Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace and despite a suspect rendition of ‘Sweet Caroline’, Rod Stewart more than justified his inclusion by the fact that he and the Queen are the only two people in the world to have not changed their hairstyles for the last 50 years. At the box office Top Gun roared back after 36 years away with the ever youthful Tom Cruise still performing all his own death defying stunts at the age of fifty-nine. By direct comparison I am eleven years his junior and my own mission impossible is making it down the stairs without using the hand rail the day after I have played cricket.

Other recent news has seen a wide contrast in its content, with the detailed failings of the Conservatives in the fallout of ‘Partygate’ at one end of the spectrum and the hype surrounding the beginning of the new series of Love Island at the other. One follows a group of shallow, unscrupulous, fame hungry individuals who are detached from reality and spend their days drinking and achieving very little in a responsibility free environment and the other is set in Majorca.

Personally I find it boring that the Love Island contestants are all such perfect physical specimens and think it would be far more interesting to watch if they did a version for people of 60+ years old. Sponsored by Werther’s Original, Stannah Stairlifts and Viagra, current ideas for the series title so far include;

• Saga Island
• Cocoon Island
• Bingo Wing Island
• Afternoon Nap Island
• Underwired Bikini Island

As the next recoupling approaches on Friday, Gladys’ seemingly rock solid relationship with Bob is thrown into chaos with the arrival of 68 year-old retired fish monger Keith from Sheffield. Entering the villa with two good hips, his own teeth and a sizeable pension, his alluring 1980s drawstring speedo trunks, illegible homemade tattoos and tantalising sandal & white socks combination makes him a certainty to turn heads. He now gets to take the lucky Golden Girl of his choice on a hot date that includes a tea dance, crown green bowling and a trip along the coast in a tandem mobility scooter. Despite its obvious appeal, the series would be doomed to fail however as none of the contestants would be capable of opening any of the texts they receive without the assistance of their teenage grandchildren.

When Love Island hits our screens it is a clear indication that both the summer and the holiday season are firmly upon us. All inclusive packages are the increasingly popular choice in a scenario whereby both parents immediately make it their quest to recover the cost of the holiday through levels of alcohol consumption that Oliver Reed would struggle to keep up with. In fact when we go abroad there seems to be a completely new set of rules that quite clearly would not be acceptable or apply in the real world.

• In any other circumstances if someone posted on social media that they were having a pint of Stella and a full fry up in a Wetherspoons at 5.30am questions would almost certainly be asked about their lifestyle choices. In an airport prior to a holiday, this is applauded as perfectly acceptable behaviour.
• If a middle aged man wearing nothing but a pair of spray on budgie smugglers joined a queue of children waiting for an ice cream he would undoubtedly soon be a strong candidate to join the sex offenders register. On a holiday resort nobody even batters an eyelid.
• If a 45 year-old man turned up to a friends’ BBQ wearing salmon pink three-quarter length shorts and fake leather sandals from Next, at best he would be ridiculed, at worst a specific WhatsApp group would be created to rip him to shreds. On holiday however, he is merely one of a plethora of similarly aged men who adopt a far more flamboyant dress sense by wearing clothes that they clearly played absolutely no part in choosing and were bought for them by their wives.
• There is a belief that by placing a book/pair of shorts/ bottle of sun tan lotion on top of a towel on a sunbed that the pool attendant will somehow be fooled that they are currently being used. At no point will they even consider the fact that you may have sneaked down in a lift full of Germans at 6am and in reality have no intention of taking up residency until well after breakfast.
• Despite consuming 3 breakfasts, lunch two hours later, 3 chocolate pancakes, 5 ice creams and enough cocktails to drown Free Willy, a leisurely two length swim of the pool will be sufficient exercise to justify going for dinner in an hours’ time.

Life is all about choices, some of which can be difficult (Monica or Rachael in Friends) and some of which can be a lot easier (fries or carrot sticks with a McDonald’s meal). Boris has clearly made some bad choices in regards to alcohol but (and without wishing to defend his actions in any way whatsoever) he is not the only one to be guilty of such booze related misdemeanours.

Before I begin to recount some (hopefully ) amusing tales of my own inebriated past, I think it’s important to point out that I know a number of people who in recent years have made the decision to give up alcohol altogether. They are living far more productive and meaningful lives as a consequence but unfortunately for someone as shallow and weak as myself, the only really funny personal stories I have is when I have been battered beyond belief.

First I will take you back to about 2003 and a Thursday night out after work in London which at the time was a regular occurrence. On this particular occasion, a new colleague (fresh off the plane from South Africa) had joined the group and was keen to fit in and make a good first impression (I remember that his middle name was ‘Saville’ which I seem to recall was a lot funnier at the time than it would be now). However, at close to kicking out time he had made the dubious decision to purchase 12 Tequilas to cater for his group of new found friends before soon realising that the majority of these had already departed. Not wanting his evening to end is such disappointing fashion, I did what any caring and kind hearted sole would have done and joined him at the bar as we downed 6 shots each one after another. When I soon after exited the establishment and hit the fresh night’s air, it was an almost instant realisation that in hindsight I had almost certainly made the incorrect choice. In honesty I cannot remember the subsequent journey back to Liverpool Street Station, although judging by photos I would discover on my phone weeks later, it would appear that I was wearing my coat as a cape in the belief that I was Superman.

While he had Kryptonite, my own personal weakness and subsequent downfall that evening would come at the hands of a KFC variety meal. As I eagerly tucked in to my feast as the packed train pulled away, my body was soon sending clear signals that this was my second very unwise choice of the evening. With the inevitable now imminent, my natural instinct for damage limitation saw me quickly grab a KFC bag and prepare for the worst. For the context of the remainder of this story, it is important to point out that this was not one of the flimsier bags an individual meal comes in but one of the heavy duty paper bags with handles that is specifically designed to take the weight of a number of take away orders at once.

With bag open on lap and head firmly in bag, it shamefully began and continued on and on for what seemed like an eternity. In this moment of huge public humiliation I could at least take some comfort that I’d acted quickly enough to avoid even further shame… or so I thought. Unbeknown to me however, the bottom of this reinforced bag had long since succumbed to the capacity I was producing and in effect I had been being sick through the bag onto my own lap for a number of minutes. To add insult to even further injury, I was wearing brown, boot cut, corduroy trousers (yes I was a style icon) whose prominent grooves were now acting as a multitude of miniature vomit waterslides. The evening culminated with me (much to the relief of fellow passengers I would imagine) miraculously getting off at the correct stop but then needing the assistance of two strangers to help me out of the train station toilets where I’d decided to take residence.

Next let me take you back to 1998 and a particularly classy establishment by the name of ‘Club Zeus’ which had both a fake stone statue and patterned luminous carpets in the image of the popular Greek God. Student night was infamous for charging just one pound for Kronenbourg and spirits for the whole evening through to the early hours and generally always held the ammunition for a good story. I had just returned from a year long trip to Australia and had shoulder length hair (those were the days), beads (that I ceremoniously cut off on my 30^th birthday) and regularly wore a polo shirt advertising a sky dive I had completed, in an attempt to appear wild, carefree and dangerous to the opposite sex (this is so far from the truth that it makes even me laugh!)

As the clientele gathered outside at closing time I thought it was the perfect opportunity to showcase not only my strength but also my speed and dexterity (I possessed none of these three). What better way to highlight these attributes than offering a lucky lady a piggy back before weaving in and out of a number of concrete bollards on the pavement at full running speed. It was actually going rather well, right up to the point that I suddenly tripped after the final obstacle and found my body tumbling forwards. Now the natural human instinct installed within us when falling over is to put your hands out in front of you to cushion your impact. However when these hands are otherwise occupied by securely holding a young lady’s legs in place, this safety net is well and truly pulled from beneath you. Crashing to the floor with the side of my face acting as a makeshift brake, I then suffered a secondary impact when my piggy back partner landed full force onto my back. She was thankfully unharmed but I had a severely grazed face and a chipped front tooth that still reminds me of my supreme stupidity some twenty four years later. The one saving grace was that the young lady in question was a trainee nurse living in a house full of nurses so I couldn’t have been in better hands to be patched up or cared for. I was due to start my first ever job in London a few days later so for the next two decades the photo on my train ID card clearly showed the battle scars I had acquired on the night in question.

The moral of these stories is that drinking to excess will almost certainly at some point lead to public humiliation and physical harm. On the plus side they do however make for cracking stories to tell in the future but make sure they happen when you are young and have the least responsibilities. Life can move very fast, one minute you’re sleeping through until 3pm on Sunday after a wild, all day drinking session, the next you are driving your son to dance class at 8.30am on Saturday singing a word perfect rendition of Kylie & Jason’s ‘Especially for You’ while listening to Elaine Paige on Radio Two (this is obviously only a hypothetical scenario).

As has become customary I will finish with another joke that I only heard for the first time recently;

A new shop recently opened in London called ‘The Husband Store’ where women can go to buy a husband. The rules of the shop are;

1. There are 6 floors in the shop but you can only visit each floor one time.
2. As you go up each floor the value of the husbands increase.
3. You can choose any husband from any floor but once you’ve decided to go up to the next floor you can’t then go back down to any of the previous ones.

A woman visits the store to buy a husband and when the lift doors open at the 1^st Floor there is a sign saying “These men have jobs.” Continuing up to the 2^nd Floor the sign says “These men have jobs and like kids” and the 3^rd Floor sign says “These men have jobs, like kids and are good looking.”

Although this sounded promising she was compelled to go up to the 4th floor where the sign read “These men have jobs, like kids, are good looking and enjoy helping with the housework” and then again to the 5^th Floor where it said “These men have jobs, like kids, are good looking, enjoy helping with the housework and are extremely romantic.”

Despite all this she felt she just had to continue up to the 6^th and final floor to see what was on offer there. As the lift doors slowly parted for the last time she was greeted with a sign that read “You are customer 30,275,607. There are no men on this floor and it only exists to prove that women are impossible to please.”

Thanks again for reading and keep smiling.

My last post was back in late November so there is a lot that has happened since then that we need to catch up on. However I think it is only correct that I should start this blog by addressing the big news story that has hit the headlines in recent weeks. There had been rumours that it could happen for a while and an increasing inevitability that little could be done to prevent it. Nevertheless we all lived in vain hope that common sense would prevail but alas we are now faced with the reality of the devastating consequences that will affect numerous innocent people from all walks of life. I for one cannot believe that Tesco have increased the price of their Meal Deal up to £3.50! There was little more satisfying in life than picking out the 3 most expensive options on offer (often items you wouldn’t usually choose or in fact even like the taste of) and the accompanying adrenaline rush of mentally calculating how much you have saved from paying the full individual price for each of them.

Christmas Day came and went in a haze of Baileys, sprouts and abandoned Monopoly, bringing the twilight week between Boxing Day and New Year during which nobody knows (or particularly seems to care) what date or day of the week it is. The majority of this period was spent gorging on excess festive treats that had been purchased “Just in case anyone pops in to visit” despite the fact that;

• Nobody was invited to ‘pop in to visit’.
• Nobody ever ‘pops in to visit’.
• Even if the whole 1^st Battalion Scots Guards had ‘popped in to visit’ feeling particular peckish there still would have been plenty of food left over.

This led to a particularly humiliating incident which involved Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a tub of Cadburys Heroes (who the hell eats the Creme Egg ones as a first choice?), a sofa and a scarily accurate impersonation of Jabba the Hutt. As I lay oblivious to the blatant ongoing cross contamination that was occurring between vast vessels of twiglets and mini cheddars, a rattling of the letterbox (very) briefly took my attention. Despite suffering from severe jaw fatigue and being perilously close to succumbing to acute marmite poisoning, I somehow mustered all my remaining strength to investigate further.

On closer examination I immediately appreciated the irony that the delivery had been of a glossy promotional leaflet advertising the local ‘Slimming World’ meetings. Staring from the page were a cheerful gathering of (it has to be said not particularly overweight looking) friends laughing together around a table as they enjoyed a seemingly carefree night out in a restaurant (presumably before they all went home and made themselves sick and were humiliated by Barbara at the next weekly weigh in). To add insult to injury a few days (and a trifle and cheese board) later I made the additional discovery of four more identical leaflets jammed and hanging from the outside of my letterbox. This led me to the conclusion that the person making the delivery that night had either;

1. Been keen to finish quickly so was cutting corners by delivering in multiple amounts.
2. Spied the gluttonous scenes through the lounge window on their approach and made the calculated decision that a minimum of 5 leaflets were required to sufficiently get across what was clearly a much needed message.

New Year’s Eve was a fun night spent playing (increasingly competitive) games on my son’s new Nintendo Switch. I did however feel it necessary to draft a strongly worded letter of complaint to the manufacturers after my borderline professional execution of ‘Footloose’ on Just Dance 22 was inexplicably judged to be only a 2 out of 5 star performance. The end of a year is always a time for reflection and this one was no exception as I found myself once again pondering a number of life’s big unanswered questions which included;

• Why am I annually astonished at how big the lounge looks when the Christmas tree is taken down even though it’s not there for 49 weeks of the year?
• Why do I always pack double the amount of pants I need to go on holiday when I haven’t shit myself for years and am probably unlikely to ever do so on 7 consecutive days?
• Why does Tarzan never have a beard?

It is also a time for resolutions but my ‘New Year, New Me’ pledge was already in crumbled ruins by the first Saturday as I found myself elbow deep in a giant bag of Doritos whilst trying to identify which down on their luck celebrity was singing dressed as a giant traffic cone. I am though going to attempt to curtail the amount of time I spend on social media and in particular Facebook which has a tendency to really wind me up.

Especially irritating are the couples (let’s call them Pete & Janet) who regularly document their picture book perfect lifestyle (scenic brunch by the river followed by a hand in hand family walk through a leaf covered orchard with a sunset bonfire, champagne and marshmallows finale) via the posting of an unfeasibly large amount of photos (any more than 5 then put them in an album and I’ll do my best to pretend to be interested the next time you invite me round). Not only do Pete’s mates constantly take the piss, but in two years’ time when Janet’s run off with her fitness instructor, taken him to the cleaners and he finds himself up a crane dressed as Spiderman in an attempt to get access to his kids, he’ll also have the Timehop function to continually jog his memory of the happier times.

In reality Facebook ‘Friends’ ( I have 250, the majority of which I’ve not seen in over 20 years or in some instances never met at all) are about as much your real friends as your Mum’s mate Maureen, who she used to go to ‘Legs, Bums and Tums’ with on Tuesdays, was your real auntie. I also get infuriated by particular types of Facebook posts, the typical replies these particular posts tend to receive and the replies that I’d love to send to these particular posts that I think they deserve to receive.

Some examples of these are;

The Vague

POST:                    Trust is a virtue that can never be taken for granted!

REPLY:                  Is everything Ok hun? DM me if you need me.

MY REPLY:          This is not a cryptic crossword or a clue from the gameshow ‘3,2,1’ with Dusty Bin. Please specify the exact nature of your problem and under no circumstances DM me.

The Casting of the Rod

POST:                    It’s Alex’s 10^th birthday on Saturday and I haven’t bought anything yet. I am a terrible Mum.

REPLY:                  Don’t be silly Hun. Alex is lucky to have a brilliant Mum like you.

MY REPLY:          Stop fishing for compliments and yes you are. You have prioritised attending the countless coffee morning ‘Catch Ups’ you post about over organising the happiness of your own flesh and blood.

The Lazy Bastard

POST:                    Is the Co-op open yet?

REPLY:                  Opens 7.30am every day.

MY REPLY:          Don’t know, do you want me to jog round there now quickly in my dressing gown to check for you?  Or maybe use the same phone on which you just typed this post to discover this beyond simplistic information for yourself.

The Unrecognisable

POST:                    Out out with the girls. Glam Squad!!

REPLY:                  Stunning picture Hun & the dress looks gorge!

MY REPLY:          This photo has gone through more filters than a coffee percolator, I saw you in Asda last week and you looked nothing like this. P.S Why are you wearing my Nan’s curtains?

January 2022 duly began with the news of Novak Djokovic becoming the first sportsman to be banned for not taking drugs and the realisation that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had attended more parties than Mr Magic and Cheeky Monkey, the most highly sought after children’s birthday entertainment duo in the South East of England. It also saw my first introduction to the online spelling game ‘Wordle’, a challenge so addictive and competitive that its daily completion has now become a far higher priority than ensuring my children have eaten breakfast before they leave for school.

Love was in the air in February and when you hold a sought after eligible bachelor status such as I now do, I’m sure you can appreciate that Valentine’s Day is an extremely busy time. Tasks that I had to undertake in this period included;

1. Organising a ‘Get Well Soon’ card for my postman who was rushed into hospital for an emergency back operation.
2. Purchasing additional furniture for my house in order to have sufficient surface space to adequately display a ridiculously high volume of cards.
3. Alerting the local council recycling depot of the necessity of extra staffing in advance of the next scheduled cardboard collection day.

Unfortunately while I was expecting to be inundated with perfume scented and lipstick embossed envelopes, the only thing to land on my doormat that morning was a menu from the Chinese takeaway advertising their new range of meals for one (ironic). On this occasion Cupid had decided not to draw back his bow, in fact he’d taken it one step further and left his bow, arrows, quiver and all other romantic related equipment at home and decided to take the day off. There’s plenty more fish in the sea as the old phrase says, unless of course they’ve all been illegally caught by the EU boats exceeding their agreed post Brexit (remember that?) fishing quotas.

Later in February the UK was subject to severe weather warnings and was hit by a storm named after a man (Dudley) and then again the next day by one that was considerably more dangerous, vicious, terrifying and destructive that was named after a woman (Eunice). This I am sure was merely just a coincidence although some may put forward further evidence with a comparison between Hurricane Katrina (America’s strongest ever recorded storm that devastated New Orleans in 2005) and Typhoon Keith (that made a Cornwall fisherman’s wheelie bin wobble slightly in 2009).

The world was sickened by the devastation and unnecessary loss of life and livelihoods associated with Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. The vast nightly news coverage provided an in depth insight into both political and geographical aspects of the conflict that I was previously unaware of. None more so though than the truly shocking revelation that for the whole of my life I have apparently been mispronouncing ‘chicken Kiev (Kyiv)’.

March brought with it the unbridled joy associated with an unexpected two day heatwave. In years gone by my first thoughts would have been to get to a beer garden as soon as possible but now my excitement centred solely around the possibility of cutting the lawn and putting washing on the line. In typical British fashion the slightest glimpse of sun would also inevitably lead to;

• The resplendent return of the hypnotic melodies of the local ice cream van outside the back of my house (think the Pied Piper with fewer rats and more flakes and hundreds and thousands).
• A rigorous high pressure hose down of all non-fixed exterior items (fake plastic rattan patio furniture from B&M as priority) in the unfounded belief that the remainder of the year would now be lived entirely in the garden.
• The purchase of a (“It’s definitely worth paying more for a better quality one because if we keep it clean it will last us for years”) paddling pool from Argos for the 5^th year in a row.
• A frantic search of cupboards and wardrobes to locate my Daisy Duke jean shorts, Don Johnson Miami Vice espadrilles and the hilariously printed “I need a 6 month holiday twice a year’ luminous yellow singlet.

Less than a week later however, the barbeques, Ambre Solaire and inflatable beach balls were swiftly swapped for balaclavas, de-icer and hot water bottles as temperatures plummeted with the crazy contrast of a day that saw a brief falling of snow.

In other more personally related breaking news;

• My youngest son’s ‘Science Day’ at his school saw him return with some homemade slime which was moulded into various shapes to demonstrate its malleability before being left on a placemat on the kitchen table overnight. Little did I know, until this placemat was subsequently removed to reveal the full devastation beneath, that one of the slime’s main ingredients seems to have been the acid that flowed through the veins of the creatures battled by Sigourney Weaver in the 1979 Sci-Fi classic ‘Alien’.

• I’ve long since been ridiculed for adding please and thankyou to my requests to Alexa and since living alone have developed a worrying habit of having conversations with inanimate objects (berating jammed washing machine doors and telling cereal boxes to piss off when they fall out of cupboards). I managed to take this one step further recently however after having scanned, packed and paid for some shopping at a supermarket self-service checkout. With the transaction now complete, the computerised voice politely bellowed out “Thank you for shopping at Tesco”, to which I replied in an equally loud voice, “No worries.” I momentarily hoped that I might not have actually said it out loud until the peculiar looks I was getting from the customers either side of me provided sufficient confirmation.

• I took the first firm steps towards my next life chapter beyond middle age when on a particularly cold morning I contemplated and gave more than seriously consideration to tucking my t-shirt into my pants for the purposes of both insulation and added comfort.

After it was well received in the last blog I will finish once more with a joke, again not original but one that I think is funny.

A man has a car accident and wakes up it A&E to realise he now has nothing between his legs. Naturally concerned, he is soon reassured by a doctor who tells him, “You are lucky that you’ve been brought to a hospital that specialises in penis transplants and we currently have 3 on ice that we could offer to you. It would be a private procedure so we have a small one that costs £1000, a medium one that costs £2000 and a large one that costs £3000. Which one would you like?”

“Well”, replies the man, “I always discuss any financial matters with my wife. She’s in a waiting room outside so I’ll speak to her now and let you know.”

Twenty minutes later the doctor returns and asks the man, “Well then, what did you decide to have?”

To which the man replies, “A new kitchen!”

Thanks for reading, take care and keep smiling in these continually crazy times.

The red cups have appeared at Starbucks, the Festive Bake is back on the menu at Greggs, Chris Rea has his key firmly in the ignition and Michael Buble has just popped to the dry cleaners to collect his favourite suit. It’s that time of year when the old Woolworths shop that was boarded up for months has now opened as a ‘Christmas Bazaar’, with the most bizarre thing about it being why anyone would decide to put any of the shit that they sell in their house ( I of course came out loaded with bags). Other tell-tale signs include;

• People that can’t be arsed to send out cards post a family picture on Facebook in front of a Christmas tree claiming they are donating to an unspecified charity this year instead (I’m sure they all do).
• Houses across the country are ransacked as the annual sellotape hunt kicks into action (“I bought 6 rolls last year that I didn’t use and they were definitely in that drawer”).
• Parents forfeiting a half day from their annual leave to watch a severely under rehearsed school play in which their child (having failed to show even a glimpse of dramatic promise in the auditions) has been cast in the non-speaking role of ‘third donkey from the left’.
• The mystery of how to correctly wrap a football is once again contemplated but remains unsolved (it always ends up looking like it’s been done by an untrained chimpanzee wearing oven gloves).
• Decision time arrives as to whether the jar of pickled onions at the back of the cupboard is capable of seeing it through its third festive period on the trot (irrelevant really as no sober person ever eats them).

From a young age we are all taught about the birth of the baby Jesus but personally I have my doubts as to whether Bethlehem was the actual place in which it occurred. What we do know is;

1. Large groups of people converged on this place from miles around.
2. All the rooms were fully booked.
3. An unexplained pregnancy was involved.
4. Donkeys and bright lights were mentioned.
5. There were only a handful of wise men there.

Taking all this evidence into consideration it seems clear to me that the Son of Christ was in fact almost certainly born in Blackpool. This would have given the nativity scene a very different look with the shepherds holding sticks of rock, Joseph with a bucket and spade, Mary wearing a ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hat and the Three Kings joined by Stacy’s hen do fully equipped with veils, L Plates and a large inflatable penis.

We’ve all been through the feeling of receiving underwhelming Christmas presents and I’m sure Jesus was no exception to this either. Receiving gold as your first gift is only really going to leave you with unrealistically high expectations so I can’t help but think  it must have been a huge disappointment to discover that the next two were frankincense (fragrance) and then myrrh (even more fragrance). This is the equivalent of unwrapping your first three packages on Christmas morning to discover that your new PS5 has been swiftly followed by a Lynx Africa gift set and a bottle of ‘Attraction’ aftershave bought from the Avon lady in her Black Friday flash sale ( I’m more of a Voodoo and Blue Stratos man myself).

It is not uncommon for people to give their partners heavy and continuous hints if they have something in particular that they would like to receive. I was in this very scenario many years ago when I started early in October on my quest for a yuletide DVD player (you really feel your age when something you coveted so greatly back then is now basically a redundant item). So I’m sure you can imagine my delight when my plan seemed to have fallen perfectly into place when, as the big day approached, an appropriately sized box appeared wrapped and labelled under the tree. In the same vain I’m sure you can equally imagine my despair when after eagerly ripping off the paper, in front of both my girlfriend’s parents no less, I was faced with a new non-stick frying pan twin set (totally true story).This left me in a situation where;

1. My DVD copy of ‘The Matrix’ that I had already bought in advance had to be reluctantly returned to HMV.
2. My visual requirements remained solely in the hands of my VHS Ferguson Videostar.
3. My fried eggs reached a new level of near perfection.
4. My girlfriend very soon after no longer held that status.

They say that it is the most wonderful time of the year but when it’s approaching midnight on Christmas Eve and you’re only half way through constructing a Fisher-Price children’s deluxe kitchenette, this can take some convincing (especially when they are likely to spend more time playing with the box it came in). Whether it’s drinking Santa’s thankyou drink (“Yes darling I do think he’d prefer a double whisky rather than milk.”) or biting the end off of Rudolf’s carrot ( this is not a euphemism) I’ve always thought it’s important to put the effort into creating a magical and authentic experience for your children. A trail of talcum powder footprints around the house is another classic illusion conjured up by countless parents around the world. Personally I have never been a big fan of this one because in my opinion it;

1. Bears no real resemblance to the texture or consistency of actual fallen snow.
2. Requires the use of a hoover (when only eating & drinking are allowed) on Christmas Day.
3. Calls into question the intelligence of your children when it’s inevitably not actually snowing outside.

In today’s society a trail of white powder is more likely to be seen as evidence that Father Christmas is struggling to control an insatiable cocaine habit which would actually go a long way to explain how he gets around all the countries so quickly and why Rudolf’s nose is the colour it is.

My youngest son is now at an age where this year will almost certainly be the last one when he still believes that Santa Claus is real (spoiler alert he’s not). For most this would be a sad end to the magic but for me it is the long overdue moment that I can finally take full credit for years of expensive presents that were previously credited to a mythical fat, bearded bloke that came down a chimney that we never had. Personally I first started to have my own doubts at the age of about 8 when I came down on Christmas morning to find no presents for me at all under the tree (true story). I remember my Mum’s expression looking almost as shocked as my own but it turned out that the big man was just a bit behind with his deliveries and after I had been ushered away into the kitchen for a few minutes they were all there on my return (it truly was a time for miracles).

When the presents are all finally put together and wrapped I do at least get the luxury of four hours sleep before I’m up again at 5am to put a turkey that feeds 11-15 people into the oven when we are actually only expecting 6. This is a fool proof plan however as it means we then get to enjoy a week of sandwiches, curries and stir fries made from the leftovers of a dry and tasteless meat that I would never even consider buying any time outside of December.

The whole of the festive period is a crazy time in regards to food and starts on the 1^st December with the opening of the first window of the advent calendar. Thus begins a 24 day cycle over which the human body is gradually acclimatised to consuming chocolate first thing in the morning in order for it to be fully prepared when it is required to eat an entire selection box before 9am on Christmas day. In a bid to impress a host of friends and family members (the majority of which you have shown no interest in attempting to catch up with over the previous 12 months) people will find themselves cooking in ways they wouldn’t even contemplate at any other time of the year. As soon as I put on my novelty Xmas apron (“If you jingle my bells I’ll give you a white Christmas”) strange things start to happen and I will suddenly find myself;

• Meticulously wrapping rashers of bacon around sausages as if my life depended on it (when I was a student my housemate told me that ‘pigs in blankets’ were what you’d wake up in bed with on Sunday morning if your Saturday night out hadn’t quite ended as planned).
• Boiling gammon joints in giant vats of Coca-Cola (if Nigella suggests it I’m not refusing).
• Mixing Brussels sprouts with a combination of pancetta and chestnuts (I had to google both of these to even know what they looked like but there’s  a guarantee that gas masks will be required from 4pm onwards).
• Taking perfectly tasty root vegetables and, like a demented arsonist with a petrol can, repeatedly dousing them in pools of honey (the only things that are usually glazed in my house are my sons’ eyes when I start recounting my ‘amusing’ stories from my youth).

Christmas pudding has a taste which immediately explains why its popularity only stretches to one day a year while mince pies have gained a bad reputation for being the Christmas product that feels absolutely no shame at appearing on supermarket shelves as early as mid-October. And with breakfast and lunch swiftly followed by trifle, cheese board, nibbles, sandwiches and half a tub of Cadbury’s heroes, there’s nothing more satisfying than ending the day with a big chocolate log (don’t be so childish).

When the eatathon is finally over we can roll ourselves onto the sofa (with twiglets close at hand just in case of course) and watch the Queen’s Speech about her annus horribilis (spell check was vitally important here), Top of the Pops (the last one I saw was hosted by Jimmy Saville!) and then decide on a suitable Christmas movie. Previous favourites have included Home Alone, Die Hard, It’s a Wonderful Life and Santa Claus the Movie as there’s nothing more festive than sitting down with the family to watch films about child neglect, terrorism, suicide and a tyrant who oversees a giant sweatshop where little people are forced to mass produce toys for long hours in cramped conditions.

First made by the London sweet maker Tom Smith in 1845, there is nothing more synonymous with the festive spirit than the good old Christmas cracker. It gets conversation going as people weigh up who they want to compete against, livens up proceedings with an excitingly loud bang (unless you’re tight with no sense of occasion and buy them for £3.99 from Home Bargains) and then leaves those contesting the pull with the agonising decision of how to best share out its revealed contents. This is made an increasingly difficult task due to the high quality entertainment items that are likely to be found inside which invariably will include;

• A brightly coloured wafer thin tracing paper crown that for reasons unknown people of all ages are put under extreme duress to wear whilst eating (mine always split as they don’t seem to cater for people with turnip sized heads).
• A Christmas themed ‘joke’ of such poor quality that it would not even make it into an episode of ‘Mrs Browns Boys’ (“Who hides in a bakery at Christmas? A mince spy” / “What do you get if you eat Christmas decorations? Tinsillitis”).
• A pair of nail cutters so small that even The Borrowers would struggle to make effective use of them.
• A yo-yo or a net of marbles which will prove invaluable if at any point your children decide to return to a Dickensian lifestyle.
• A plastic fortune telling fish whose specific movements in the palm of your hand will unequivocally clarify whether your current feelings are those of jealousy, passion, indifference, happiness or love.

I will leave you with a Christmas joke that while not original, I wanted to include as I thought it was funny.

Three men die in a car crash on Christmas Eve and find themselves at the gates to heaven where St. Peter tells them that they must present something ‘Christmassy’ if they are to be allowed in.

The first man searches his pocket and finds a piece of mistletoe which he hands over so he is allowed in.

The second man presents some tinsel so he is also allowed in.

The third man then pulls out a matching set of bra and panties. Looking confused at his offering, St. Peter asks, “How do these represent Christmas?”

To which the third man replies, “They’re Carol’s.”

Thanks once again for reading and if you are a Dad on Christmas Day please do your very best to look surprised when you unwrap your pants, socks and ‘Beers from Around the World’ selection pack.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

As my groundbreaking life journey continues at what can only be described as breakneck speed, the highlights of the last few weeks have seen me;

• Spend half an hour frantically searching a pitch black carpark for my mobile before finding it in the pocket of the coat I was wearing (this above all highlighted how smart phones have forced the common torch into redundancy until of course you actually need a torch to try and find the phone that you usually use as your torch).
• Slice my finger open on the lid of a Beef Rib flavoured King Pot Noddle (this is wrong on multiple levels with the nutritional  choice and the chosen volume only trumped by the particularly high level of skill it takes a to get a paper cut from foil).
• Make the cowardly decision to relocate to sleeping downstairs on the sofa for the night when I failed to locate a gigantic spider I had spotted gallivanting across my bedroom floor (it was that big that I fully expected the furniture to be rearranged when I gingerly returned back upstairs the next morning).
• Receive compliments on my Uncle Fester Halloween costume when I wasn’t even dressed up (this is not the first time either).

In recent news, the national calamity of the petrol ‘crisis’ predictably lasted less than a week but was then swiftly replaced by the forecast of a hefty increase in the cost of future household energy bills. While an ‘open door policy’ is seen as a positive practice in the workplace, if you bring it home and extend it to an ‘open door and windows while the heating is on full blast’ policy it can turn out to be quite expensive. A Smart Meter was hastily installed but in reality only really served to confirm my own suspicions that burning piles of £5 notes in the lounge would almost certainly be a cheaper way of heating the house. In fact the last time I saw that much energy wasted was when I ran to the chip shop to arrive before closing only to find it was shut on Tuesdays.

Like an airline passenger desperate to discover their gate number, I quickly became obsessed with checking the screen every few minutes in the hope of an update. I soon realised though that all the Smart Meter really succeeded in doing was to deliver some home truths that despite being painfully accurate, I didn’t necessarily want to hear. It was the equivalent of spending an afternoon eating a whole box of Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers whilst watching old repeats of Wheel of Fortune on Challenge TV (obviously a hypothetical scenario you understand) and then immediately receiving a text message stating “You are wasting your life you fat loser!”

Continuing the theme, the COP26 climate summit saw world representatives gather in Glasgow, with Boris Johnson once again excelling himself by returning to London by private jet rather than train and doing his upmost to kill off national treasure Sir David Attenborough by not bothering to wear a mask when sitting next to him. The coverage has also seen the return of Greta Thunberg, a staunch Swedish environmental activist that spent all her teenage years tirelessly challenging world leaders to take action for climate change mitigation. When I was a teenager my biggest concern was someone bursting into my bedroom at an inappropriate moment during my Saturday night weekly worship of ‘Jet’ from Gladiators (Awooga!).

Far from saving the planet, I would actually find it highly amusing to witness my Step Dad’s exasperated reaction when he returned home from a hard day’s work to find me lounging on the sofa with every light in the house turned on. His annoyance was of course fully justified, but did also lead to some particularly memorable quotes which as I remember included;

• “When was the last time you were upstairs? We’re giving Blackpool Illuminations a run for their money up there.”
• “You could stop boats from hitting rocks with less bulbs than we’re using in this house.”
• “When I was young I was scared of the dark but now I’m paying the electricity bill I’m scared of the lights!”

Many years later my attitude would change considerably however when, with the boot now firmly on the other foot, I myself assumed the role of bill payer. Over time I soon found myself developing the following daily routine that I would go through every night when on my way home from work;

1. On approach to the property assess any visible signs of unnecessary household illumination from distance.
2. Identify the most likely perpetrators and repeatedly curse them under your breath.
3. Mentally formulate a plan of action to most effectively rectify this environmental/financial breach.
4. On entry to the property immediately sweep and neutralise illuminated zones with an SAS like efficiency.
5. Lecture family on the cost of household bills/ turn off heating/ hand out salopettes, gloves & woolly hats.

Also back in the headlines is the singer Adele who, after 6 years away, saw her comeback single ‘Easy On Me’ streamed a record breaking 24 million times in one week (for a man who struggles to change the time on the microwave when the clocks go back this is a somewhat alien concept).  Her albums have always been titled in accordance with her age when writing them, with ‘19’,’21’and ‘25’ soon to joined by ‘30’ which has a launch date in mid-November. With the lyrics of her songs famously inspired by her relationship experiences, it does make you wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t recently got divorced from her husband. Fast forward to 2036 when Adele’s 20^th wedding anniversary co-insides with the much anticipated release of her new album ‘45’ which includes the classic hits;

• Hello (do you ever listen to a bloody word that I say?)
• Someone Like You (keeps leaving pants and wet towels on the bathroom floor and it gets on my tits).
• Rolling In The Deep (pile of plates that you always leave next to the dishwasher but never put inside).
• Rumour Has It (that all my friends’ husbands do a lot more around the house than you do).
• When We Were Young (you used to compliment me and buy me flowers but now all you do is spend every Sunday watching Sky Sports).

Heartbreak seems to have been the catalyst to her success with every romantic break up she has gone through swiftly followed by what has turned out to be a multi -platinum selling album. If only Kerry Katona had chosen to follow a similar career path she would have easily out sold Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Beatles put together.

Watched by 142 million households worldwide, ‘The Squid Games’ is the latest Netflix hit series that everyone has been talking about. The programme follows a group of people who compete against each other in a number of childhood games with grave consequences for any of them that fail to win. This is very similar to Christmas Day in my house when the family battle it out in Buckaroo, Guess Who, Yahtzee and Kerplunk with the only difference being that the losers are faced with a mountain of dirty dishes rather than being executed. Those who choose to participate are so desperate to change their financial fortunes that they are willing to face unfavourable odds and sacrifice their dignity just for a chance to win a large cash prize. So it’s basically the South Korean equivalent of the Peoples’ Postcode Lottery, a competition primarily targeted at frustrated housewives who are more than willing to part with £10 a month for the extremely minimal chance of meeting the immaculately coiffured Jeff Brazier.

 “Someone’s knocking at the door, somebody’s ringing the bell.”

Is it Jeff with a giant cheque? No it’s the bailiffs from ‘Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away!’ who’ve come to repossess your car because you keep spending the monthly repayment money on a series of nonsensical lotteries!

With Daniel Craig confirming that he is stepping away from his role as 007 there has been much speculation in the press as to who might be chosen to succeed him. The producers are apparently open minded as to how the character will now be re-cast, so I thought this might be the perfect opportunity for me to throw my own hat into the ring (unlike Odd Job who menacingly threw his in the direction of Sean Connery).

James Bond is rugged, drinks vodka martinis, has a license to kill and drives an Aston Martin DB10 with rocket launchers. I on the other hand am tired, drink Bovril, have a Blockbusters Video Card and drive a 15 year old Toyota Yaris with a passenger door that doesn’t lock properly. I can’t fight, shoot a gun straight or run for too long without getting out of breath but if a super villain ever tried to cut me in half with a laser beam I could easily deflect it away with my increasingly capacious and reflective forehead. And if we can put the importance of charm, charisma, good looks and physique to one side for a moment, I would also, at  6 years Daniel Craig’s junior, undoubtedly inject some much needed youth and vigour into the franchise.

Whilst on the subject of laser beams, it has always baffled me why the master criminals always choose to conjure up such elaborate ways for James Bond to meet his demise.

“ Mr Bond I expect you to die but rather than just shoot you I will handcuff you to a platform which is slowly lowering into a pool of piranha fish, leave before I see the outcome but then still be surprised when you inexplicably escape and dismantle the bomb with a second to spare.”

Daniel Craig first came to prominence in 2005 when he made his now iconic exit from the waves in a beach scene from his first film Casino Royale. In direct comparison I caused a similar stir in Lanzarote in 2012 when I emerged from the parent and toddler pool wearing a pair of spray on Tom Daley Team GB budgie smugglers that I had acquired in the sale from Sports Direct. Hit by an immediate volley of comments including;

• “It’s obviously colder in there than it looks.”
• “You should have packed more pairs of socks mate.”
• “Who does she think she is?”

It soon became even more apparent that my chosen attire wasn’t to everyone’s liking when poolside cleared considerably quicker than it had done during the fire drill we’d had two days previously. The positive was that it was the only time during the holiday that we got the use of two parasols for the day, the negative was that for the remainder of the fortnight I had the misfortune of being exclusively referred to by everybody on the resort as ‘The Speedophile.’ So I’d like to say that as with most things in life it was a case of swings and roundabouts, but on this occasion it wasn’t  as I was also banned from being allowed anywhere near the children’s’ playground.

I did once go to a James Bond themed work Christmas Party but quickly swapped cocktails for pints of Stella and wore a £16 Asda George tuxedo that was made of such poor quality material that I had to maintain at least a 3 metre distance from any naked flames. The overuse of a  free bar soon had me convinced that I had a ‘license to thrill’ but sadly the only time I ended up ‘shaken not stirred’ was when a bouncer ejected me via a fire escape for allegedly making inappropriately loud comments regarding ‘Pussy Galore’, ‘Miss Funny Fanny’ and ‘ My Special Secret Weapon.’

So with all things considered I think I have a lot of the criteria needed to take Ian Fleming’s literary secret agent successfully into his next era. Although if I were to portray the next 007 they’d probably have to re-work some of the films’ titles to incorporate some of my more noticeable attributes. These could include;

• Dr. No (hair whatsoever).
• The Man with the Golden Gut.
• Coldfinger (he’s the man, the man with arthritic joints).
• Never Say Never (that Custard Creams aren’t suitable for breakfast) Again.
• Live and Let Pie / Golden Pie/ For Your Pies Only / The (chicken & mushroom) Pie Who Loved Me.

Thanks once again for taking the time to read this. I hope to post again before Christmas but if for any reason I don’t, stay safe and enjoy the time with your family and friends.

Since I last posted, summer failed to arrive (no surprise), football didn’t come home (even less of a surprise) and we now find ourselves in the midst of a petrol shortage because octogenarians Alfred & Margret feel the need to fill their tank to the top just in case they run out during their monthly, half a mile round trip to B&Q to buy some cress seeds. So we can’t get anywhere because we can’t get petrol and if you can get petrol you still can’t get anywhere because clowns are sat blocking the roads because they want to insulate Britain (and there was me thinking the loft was a big job!) And then to top it all off, just days ago we were all faced with the apocalyptic crisis of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp all being down simultaneously. This left us with a 7 hour void of not knowing which restaurant the Love Island winners were dining at, not seeing any pictures of our not particularly close friends’ pets sleeping and above all, the beyond  frightening prospect of having to actually speak to people if we wanted to contact them.  I am pleased though that Covid is hopefully on the decline because the last time I went to a drive-through, instead of a Big Mac, fries and milkshake I ended up with a giant cotton bud burrowed half way up my nostril and a sample bag plucked from my grasp by a plastic claw through a centimetre gap in the window as if I were a resident of Chernobyl.

In the popular Channel  4 TV programme ‘SAS: Who Dares Wins’ the penultimate and most demanding phase (Evade & Capture) sees the remaining recruits go on the run before being  tracked down by sniffer dogs, blindfolded and subjected to a gruelling prisoner interrogation process. In the next series, this task will be directly replaced by a new element entitled ‘packing and moving out of a 4 bedroom house on 36 hours notice using only a Luton Transit Van as transport.’  To put the two into context, one is a process that pushes you beyond your physical and mental capabilities, shatters your human resolve and leaves you sleep deprived, broken and with likely long term psychological damage. The other is an exercise commonly used in British specialist military training.

So after what had seemed an eternity, my house sale and subsequent house move finally went through but (and there always seems to be a but) true to form, not without more drama than an evening at the Inside Soap Awards.

With the upcoming Stamp Duty deadline just  five days away and still no sign of an exchange date, my weekend packing plans were halted because, and to directly quote my estate agent, “After all these months your buyers would have to be mad to expect you to organise a move in less than 48 hours.” Fast forward to 3.25pm on Monday when I took the following phone call whilst patiently queuing to fork out a quid for a 2p ice pop from my son’s after school playground charity ice cream stall (all profits go towards new gym equipment which I can only assume will be gold and diamond encrusted!)

ME: Hello (immediately concerned that estate agents calling me rarely brings good news)

ESTATE AGENT: Your buyers want to exchange today and complete on Wednesday.

ME: Which Wednesday?  (my indifference towards overpriced frozen flavoured water suddenly took on far less significance)

ESTATE AGENT: This Wednesday, they want to beat the stamp deadline.

ME: And I want a centre parting but that’s not happening either. They’ve messed me around for months and now somehow expect me to turn this around in 48 hours?

ESTATE AGENT: Yes although it’s probably closer to 40 hours if the completion happens in the morning (clearly not destined for a future career in stress management).

ME: Look I think it’s about time we made a few things clear to my buyers. Firstly you can tell them that I’m not someone who is just going to roll over to their every demand. Secondly you can tell them that I’m not someone who is going to jeopardize my own mental and physical health by creating a stressful situation just to please them. And thirdly you can tell them that I’m not someone who under absolutely any circumstances in this world is going to betray my strong principles, values and beliefs by moving out by Wednesday!

ESTATE AGENT: They’ll pay you an extra £4000 today.

ME: I’ll get the cardboard boxes and packing tape.

And so with the help of an amazing friend, who I now owe a million favours (and probably a lifetime of therapy), we embarked on a mission so impossible that not even Tom Cruise would have shown an interest to participate. A Luton van (with a windscreen entry keypad more difficult to crack than the Enigma Code) was hastily hired and a night of frantic packing ensued in preparation of a two man removal day inspired jointly by both the Chuckle Brothers (To me) and the chimpanzees from the 70’s PG Tips advert (“Dad do you know the piano’s on my foot?”, “You hum it son and I’ll play it”)

Mentally it was going to be a tough day but as a man who has sat on his arse in an office chair for over 20 years and regularly complains about carrying heavy shopping bags from the car, the physical aspect was likely to prove the greatest obstacle. So where better to visit in order to tackle these concerns than the local road side greasy spoon café which would offer me the opportunity to;

1. Fuel up for the day’s work ahead by eating until I was fuller than a panic buyer’s petrol can.
2. Display my side splitting yet timeless comic genius by answering that I was “sweet enough” when offered sugar in my tea.
3. Take inspiration from an alpha male clientele that were so macho that they made Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson look like Alan Carr.

In a carpark awash with white vans, ladders and scaffolding poles, I could only hope that the skills I had demonstrated two years previously in constructing an Ikea bedside table in under three hours would be enough to see me through. My shaven head helped me to initially blend in and I was fortunate that the ongoing Covid handshake ban would at least prevent my limp wrist and baby soft hands from immediately exposing me for the impostor that I was.

Ignoring the glaring contradiction of a 5 Star hygiene certificate hung in an entrance hall with a carpet stickier than Golden Syrup  , I gingerly entered only to be disappointed to discover that nobody was actively smoking behind the counter like I have regularly seen on ‘Minder’ and ‘Only Fools and Horses’. After a fleeting glance of my surroundings, I made an immediate hunch decision that for my own safety and that of others, I should almost certainly avoid asking about any of the following;

• Almond milk.
• A ‘Specials’ board.
• A vegan alternative.
• Lightly poached eggs and smashed avocado served on sourdough bread.

As it turned out, there was a number of alternative gargantuan sized fried breakfasts to choose from, or a ‘build your own’ option which was fundamentally a decision of how high you wanted your cholesterol  levels to rise and whether you had any desire to live past 50 years of age. As I sat there with fried slice in hand listening to a tattooed, paint splattered man tell a loud anecdote about his non-present close friend’s very private sexual misfortunes, I had never felt more manly or capable of heavy lifting.

The collection of the rental property keys was essentially the starting gun for the removal equivalent of a trolley dash to get everything shifted before we were notified that the sale had completed. Anything and everything left unpacked was crudely swept into any container suitable for transportation, leaving most boxes filled with a severe mismatch of items never previously witnessed outside the middle aisle at Aldi.

The strict time restraints saw the majority of the removal items deposited with all the poise and care of a disgruntled airport baggage handler, with the new kitchen left looking like the publicity shots for the new series of ‘Britain’s Biggest Hoarders’. With the ordeal finally over I decided to take some well-deserved rest only to find myself waking at 2.30am in a sweat worthy of Prince Andrew brought on by a  terrifying realisation (and not that I was bald, 47 and no longer a home owner).

After completion the previous evening I had been instructed to post the house keys through the estate agents’ letterbox in order for the new owners to collect them first thing the next morning. While in essence this had been completed successfully, in my clearly mentally drained state, the door through which I had deposited them had in fact belonged to the company from which I was now renting rather than the one that had actually sold my house. So one would start the working day faced with irate owners with no way of entering their new property and the other with the mystery of a set of unidentified keys on their doormat ( to make matters worse the two offices are directly next to each other and I still hadn’t twigged before making this almighty blunder.)

With my phone battery about to die and its charger about as likely to be found as Lord Lucan (there were alternative candidates here but this seemed the least controversial) I hastily fired off some barely comprehensible emails in an attempt to rectify my colossal balls up. An early morning visit to the offices quickly sorted things out and while I soon saw the funny side of it all, some of the younger employees seemed more indifferent as they gave me looks not too dissimilar to those of Clarice Starling when she first set eyes on Hannibal Lector.

The house is working out really well but there will always be things that are different that you need to adjust to when you first move in. It took a month for the Wifi to be installed, the lack of a dishwasher has seen an enforced return to the marigolds but on the flip side there are Indian and Chinese takeaways within two minutes’ walk and the local ice cream van (‘Mrs Soft Whip’ – although she only offers 99s as far as I’m aware) stops right outside my back fence twice a day (as you can imagine the weight loss journey is going from strength to strength).  I also encountered an early conundrum when the tumble dryer I had brought with me could not be installed due to the necessary ventilation and I was awaiting the arrival of a new washer dryer. My son then needed a cricket shirt washed and dried in an extremely quick turnaround with my options to achieve the latter very limited.

I was hoping to provide the local residents with a new neighbour that would be valued, trusted and make a positive contribution to the local community. Unfortunately what they actually got was a middle aged man in an ill-fitting dressing gown flashing his man cleavage as he unwound a ten metre extension lead in order to plug in a noisy kitchen appliance in the middle of his back garden. And while the shirt was successfully dried in time, the public display of eccentricity needed to achieve this will almost certainly cost me any present or future social interaction with anyone living within a three mile radius.

The extensive summer broadcasting of the Tokyo Olympics once again allowed viewers to witness the world’s greatest athletes battle against each other in an attempt to achieve sporting immortality. Or in my case, gave me the opportunity to stay up until 3.30am with a toast, Dorito and chocolate hobnob banquet to watch Montenegro against Kazakhstan in a Preliminary Round Group B encounter  from the Tatsumi Water Polo Centre ( after 4 enthralling quarters, and 3 less enthralling sofa de-crumbings, Montenegro emerged worthy 19-12 winners).

I have always been drawn to watching the more obscure Olympic sports that I know absolutely nothing about, yet after only about 10 minutes of viewing regularly find myself analysing the participants’ performances as if I were a seasoned expert.

• “He’s over rotated a bit before his entry there” (Diving)
• “That dismount wasn’t the smoothest ” (Gymnastics)
• “Why doesn’t she just kick her in the f***ing face!” (Taekwondo)
• “That’s not the cleanest snatch I’ve ever seen” (Weightlifting)

So basically sporting heroes who have trained tirelessly for 4 years being criticised by a man with the personal conditioning of an over fed guinea pig whose own definition of a physical triumph is getting his socks on in the morning in under 3 attempts.

Tokyo also saw the inclusion of skateboarding, BMX riding and climbing which means when I thought I was just wasting my summer holidays with my mates in the 80’s, we were, unbeknown to us, in actual fact on a 6 week intensive training camp to be a potential future Olympic champion. I’m hoping that this trend with pastimes from my youth continues on to the next games in Paris 2024 where I very much look forward to seeing the introduction of;

• Conkers.
• Knock Down Ginger.
• Rubik’s Cube.
• Finding discarded pages from pornographic magazines in hedgerows.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and please make sure you all stay safe and well.

In the midst of an ongoing global pandemic, recent breaking news has included that Boris Johnson is not a big fan of John Lewis (or it would seem fully qualified hairdressers), Premier League football clubs are money driven (bears also shit in the woods) and Colin The Caterpillar has been the victim of identity theft (Penguin’s case against Aldi ‘Seal Bars’ is ongoing).

For most people the 21^st June is pencilled on the calendar as the date for freedom but for me it is a 46 day countdown to the prospect of having to wear something other than elasticated waist tracksuit bottoms. It is usually a specific occurrence (unflattering photo or video /getting out of breath opening a Walkers multipack) that kick starts people into deciding to go on a diet. For me it was a similar scenario but involved two events that happened almost simultaneously.

Firstly while watching two towering  boxers with herculean physiques battle for the Cruiserweight world title on TV, their on screen statistics shamed me into discovering that I weighed more than both of them (individually not combined). My embarrassment was then furtherly heightened in the knowledge that if I ever did decide to don the gloves to take up this noble art I would currently only qualify for the Heavyweight division (at 5’9 with fast developing bingo wings I’m doubting Anthony Joshua would be having many sleepless nights) . Secondly, merely moments later, my son entered the room and totally out of the blue and without even a hint of comedic intent asked me, “How long ago did you first get fat?”

 In a moment of clarity I sat upright on the sofa, pushed the large packet of Doritos, share bag of giant chocolate buttons and litre tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to one side and decided enough was enough. The indulgence had gone on too long and it was time to wake up, draw a line in the sand and make some much needed changes with immediate effect. I then realised that it was Friday so made the rational decision that it was probably better if I started on Monday so not to ruin the weekend too much.

In the old days if you wanted to lose a bit of weight it was quite a simple and straight forward process. Eat a couple of bowls of Special K and do a few morning lunges with the Green Goddess on Breakfast Time and before you knew it you’d dropped a jean size and were being photographed holding out the waist inside a pair of giant trousers.

Modern weight loss however, like with most things these days, has become far more technical and scientific in its research and analysis. And unfortunately in a world where there is Body Mass Index, calories counting and Body Fat Percentages, the facts that emerge don’t always make pleasant reading. These include;

• You need to run for 10 minutes to burn the calories in a packet of Pickled Onion Monster Munch (so presumably if you were to eat them whilst running they would cancel each other out?).
• Despite matching the 2500 recommended calorie intake, a large Dominos Mighty Meaty Pizza and 5 pints of beer doesn’t constitute a balanced daily diet (apparently the recommended ‘5 a day’ refers to vegetables rather than varieties of sausage and bacon).
• A normal sized tin of soup is labelled as containing 2 servings (“I know this is going to sound shocking but for lunch today I’m going to throw caution to the wind, rip up the rule book and have a whole can of tomato soup all to myself!”)

Experts (by this I mean people who mostly wear singlets and drink raw eggs for breakfast) say that in order to lose just one pound of fat you must, through diet and exercise, create a deficit of 3500 calories. To put this into context and more understandable terminology, this constitutes;

1. 1 fourteen piece KFC Bargain Bucket.
2. 6.4 Big Macs.
3. 8.5 Greggs Steak Bakes.
4. 41.6 chocolate digestive biscuits.

Old eating habits can be notoriously hard to break and it takes great mental strength and determination to step forward with a whole new mind-set towards food. Adapting to this new lifestyle was far from an easy task but after just one week of not eating bread, swapping oil for Fry Light and weighing out portions of dry pasta I’d already lost;

• My temper an average of 17 times a day.
• Count of the number of times my stomach has rumbled louder than a clap of thunder.
• My title as the all Essex bourbon biscuit speed eating champion.
• The will to live.

My house is currently in the final stages of being sold so over the past few months I have had a number of dealings with many different estate agents. Smartly dressed with the gift of the gab, this is a profession that with the use of clever camera angles and flamboyant descriptive language can create an illusion that even David Copperfield (showing my age) would be proud of. From the information provided you set off to view what appears to be Park Lane, only to discover in reality it bears a far closer resemblance to Old Kent Road. Below is my beginners guide to estate agents translations;

Estate Agent: Deceptively spacious.

Translation: Small.

Estate Agent: Some original features are retained.

Translation: Most have been stolen.

Estate Agent: Part refurbished.

Translation: The owners ran out of money.

Estate Agent: Low maintenance garden.

Translation: Concrete.

Estate Agent: Easy access to local shops, public transport and motorway links.

Translation: Make sure you wear ear plugs at all times.

Estate Agent: Excellent opportunity offering superb value.

Translation: Please help us we’ve been trying to shift this shithole for months.

When the house was initially put on the market the estate agents also used their powers of persuasion to convince me that I was the best person to do all the viewings because, and I quote, “Nobody knows more about your house than you do.” The fact that I have no sales background and zero property knowledge didn’t seem to be an issue so I can only assume they were confident that knowing bin day was Wednesday and that Tony next door likes to use power tools early on Sunday mornings would be sufficient ammunition to secure a number of near to asking price offers.

One issue that I did encounter was that the majority of viewings were booked for first thing in the morning between 9-10.30 am. While I was happy that this would free up the remainder of the day, these timings unfortunately clashed directly with my body clock’s routine liking for ‘a visit to the toilet.’ This repeatedly left me with a big dilemma which had three possible options;

1. Go as planned but risk leaving an aroma in the house that was less appealing than the recommended ‘ground coffee and freshly baked bread.’
2. Hold on and hope that being shown around by someone with facial expressions like they are about to shit themselves wouldn’t be totally off-putting to potential buyers.
3. Go in the garden and blame it on a family pet that there is clearly no other evidence of me owning.

Miraculously, and despite some particularly poor sales patter (“The kitchen is really good for cooking” – as opposed to the lounge), the house sold and I decided to take a few months off working to sort the move and organise my way forward. I was determined not to waste this opportunity of some free time and make sure that I focused on getting my life on track, accomplishing a number of progressive goals and above all making sure that every day was coordinated, productive and a purposeful stepping stone. In all honesty the first month saw me stray slightly from this pledge and was a period of time where my most significant achievements included;

• An 85% success rate in predicting the verdicts on Judge Rinder.
• The compilation of a new Spotify playlist (Nick’s 90s Bangers).
• Watching 2190 minutes of ‘Line of Duty’.
• Joining the Facebook Group ‘Easy Air Fryer Recipes’ when I don’t even own one.

While some may adopt the blinkered opinion that this has been wasted time, I would argue strongly to the contrary using the evidence that I am now almost certainly a more rounded individual for knowing;

1. The procedural workings of a reality TV arbitration based civil courtroom.
2. The lyrics to ‘Blame it on the Weatherman’ by Bewitched off by heart.
3. That an anti-corruption suspect can only be questioned in interview by an officer at least one rank above their own.
4. That Mary-Lou from Orlando is having trouble crisping chicken wings in her Ninja AF100.

Having never previously followed Line of Duty, I binge watched all the previous episodes and was totally taken in by the iconic characters and complex plots filled with countless twists and turns. I also soon discovered that it has the most extensive use of acronyms known to man to the point that it would often be useful to have a translator to keep up with what everyone is talking about. To summarize a recent plot line;

‘The DI from the MIT who is an AFO was told by a CHIS that the UCO in the OCG had been in an RTC and suffered a GSW. The DCI who is also the SIO got the DCS, ACC and the DCC, joined the ARU,TFC and SFC in a ARV before confirming their TOA and meeting the CSE and FME who arrived in a IRV. On discovering a ED905 with links to the RUC they set up an OP, told the CPS and then the DS, the CC and a WPC all read about ACDC in the NME and went for a KFC.’

Having watched so many episodes in such a short space of time, AC12 and their pursuit of bent coppers started to take over my life and I became convinced that I had witnessed the dealings of a local organised crime gang. Setting up a complex covert surveillance team (me through my son’s bedroom window curtains with a pair of ‘Dora the Explorer’ binoculars) I observed a distinct pattern of suspect packages being delivered by the same person from the same vehicle to the same property over a prolonged period of time. I grabbed my police issue protection vest (North Face body warmer), hi-tech tracking equipment (mini torch from last year’s Home Bargains Christmas cracker) and my official ID (Tesco club card) and moved in to apprehend the suspect. After some intense interrogation (quick chat on the pavement) it turned out that he wasn’t part of a ruthless International drugs cartel that operated on intimidation and violence after all. He was Malcolm, a 68 year old semi-retired Amazon delivery driver who’d been dropping parcels to my neighbour whose online shopping addiction had spiralled out of control during lockdown.

He was however able to give me some interesting information regarding the highly illusive ‘Fourth Man’, telling me that it wasn’t actually Detective Superintendent Ian Buckells after all. In the biggest twist so far, it turns out that the real ‘H’ is not even a police officer but after finishing 7^th on ‘Dancing on Ice’ is currently in final rehearsals for a summer season at Butlins Bognor Regis with the rest of Steps.

Thanks again for reading, keep smiling and by the time of my next blog hopefully the world will be a different place.

I think it is safe to say that as sequels go, the popularity of Lockdown 3 is up there with that of Jaws: The Revenge, Home Alone 3 and Police Academy 7 (Mission to Moscow). Stella has replaced orange juice at breakfast, Weetabix and baked beans are apparently now an acceptable meal combination and the highlight of my weekends has been trying to guess the identity of a singing celebrity dressed up as a giant sausage. Jo Wicks has resurfaced, a trip to Homebase to buy paint is once again classed as ‘essential shopping’ and a return to home schooling has seen NASUWT, The Teachers’ Union, forced to temporarily overturn my previous lifetime ban. At least the recent announcements have given us something to look forward to with the “303 more sleeps until Christmas” countdown now replaced in most households with “46 more sleeps until the pubs reopen”.

The big news I have to bring you is that after 15 years I am once again a single man and I’ve no doubt that your immediate first thoughts on this will be, “He’d better get on Amazon quickly and buy himself a giant stick to beat back the hordes of hysterical women that are more than likely already forming a gigantic queue.” All those women who went into mourning on 28^th April 2014 when George Clooney announced his engagement will undoubtedly rejoice in the knowledge that they will once again have hope and a purpose returned to their lives. It’s a very big responsibility to shoulder but nonetheless a burden I’m willing to selflessly undertake for the happiness of countless others.

Back in my youth the search for love was by far a much simpler and less complicated quest.

• Put on your best lumberjack shirt and administer a generous combination spray of Joop & Lynx Africa.
• Drink Kronenbourg and Sambuca like your life depends on it until the very final seconds of happy hour.
• When Enrique Iglesias signals the beginning of the end of evening ‘Erection Section’, drag the closest unaccompanied girl onto the dancefloor for a slow dance.
• At throwing out time reassess your next move when the lights come on and the true severity of your current predicament is revealed.

The simplicity of it all was epitomised by the then prime time TV dating show ‘Blind Date.’ Cilla would introduce 3 eccentric women with differing personalities, on would come a burly fireman, heavily scripted innuendos would be made about his helmet, large hose and sliding down his pole before one was chosen for a date windsurfing in Torquay. A week later they return to recount details of what was almost certainly a disastrous match up and in the best case scenario, slag each other off. Done and dusted, nice and simple.

The modern day dating game however has changed immeasurably and has now followed the lead of music, banking, shopping and pornography (so I’m told) by moving online. When I was young;

• ‘Match’ was a weekly football magazine.
• ‘Tinder’ was something I used in the cubs to help start a fire.
• And ‘Plenty of Fish’ was just a mandatory requirement for a decent chip shop.

In fact the only time that I’d ever swiped left or right was in 1984 when I had my mum’s white dressing gown belt tied around my head pretending to be Ralph Macchio in the ‘Karate Kid’.

If you do decide to dip your toe into the pool of modern online dating you have to be aware that it is full of strange rules and incomprehensible terminology. One minute you’re downloading a misleading 2 year old profile picture from when you were a lot slimmer, the next you are being ‘ghosted’ by a non-binary, demi-sexual catfish who had previously slid into your DMs (in my day these were shoes?). Apparently ‘Netflix and Chill’ isn’t when you turn off the central heating to counteract the cost of paying for an online streaming service and if someone texts you an aubergine emoji they’re definitely not after a recipe for moussaka.

You might think that looking for love during a pandemic would be a disadvantage but if you have a face like mine, being forced to cover it with a mask in public actually dramatically increases my chances. In what can be a very cutthroat selection process, your only hope is that you encounter someone with far lower standards than Shania Twain, who despite being pursued by a car owning, Brad Pitt lookalike rocket scientist, still wasn’t much impressed.

If you are looking for a compatible online match, they say you should always be as honest as possible when you write down your profile. Unfortunately ‘grumpy, flatulent, pant wearing biscuit addict’ didn’t have the desired affect that I was hoping for so I was forced to go in another direction. I settled for ‘Grant Mitchell lookalike who likes cooking, writing, Abba and musical theatre’ but now having read it back I’m beginning to think that my best chance of success might have been on Grindr?

Women these days are confident to openly state their exact expectations and requirements for a potential partner but this can on occasions lead to contradiction. One wrote “Must be truthful, honest, up front with nothing to hide” when her own profile had no photo, while another declared that she was ‘Sapiosexual’. This means that she is sexually attracted to intelligence rather than looks, with the greatest irony being that I had to look it up because I wasn’t clever enough to know what it meant.

I have also always been intrigued by the ‘and maybe more’ that women often tag onto their profile descriptions. “Fun loving Aquarian seeks smart, funny, generous man for meals out, conversation, long walks and maybe more.” Maybe more what? More long walks? Because if that’s the case I’m not sure I want all my weekends turning into some kind of continuously extended hiking expedition. If I wanted to spend all my free time walking, I might as well try to get in on with Ian Botham. His moustache might tickle a bit but at least we could talk about cricket on the way round and raise some cash for charity at the same time.

All conversations are now on line or done by text with the art of face to face conversation practically extinct. Chat up lines that were once part and parcel of every man’s romantic armoury are now sadly becoming a thing of the past. Although in reality my favourite, “Here’s 10p to ring your Mum and tell her that you’re not coming home tonight” would probably now have limited success because;

1. 95% of people now own a mobile phone.
2. The UK now has less than 40,000 working phone boxes.
3. Given the age bracket of the women I would be likely to try and chat up, a reasonable percentage of their Mum’s are likely to be dead (“lock up your grannies” doesn’t quite have the same ring as “lock up your daughters”).

So I am now looking to modernise my new ‘go to’ romantic icebreaker and after much thought and research have narrowed it down to either;

1. “Do you have the number of the Ordinance Survey offices as I need to report a new site of natural beauty?”
2. “Excuse me is your name Google? Because you’re everything I’ve been searching for.”

…or my personal (but less PC) favourite.

3. “Are you a drill sergeant in the army because you’ve certainly got my privates standing to attention?”

Whilst walking recently with my 9 year-old son, he looked me up and down and confidently commented, “Dad I think you will be single for a long time.” A bit harsh perhaps you may think but it is becoming increasingly difficult to build a convincing case for the contrary. So as I leave you, I find myself somewhere in between “single and ready to mingle” and as a good friend of mine swears by “stay single and your pockets will jingle”.

For those of you interested in my book, it was recently entered into a national competition ‘The Wishing Shelf Book Awards’. Judged by children in a variety of schools it was awarded a 4 Star rating (out of 5), received some really positive feedback and was just one point short of being a finalist in its category. Given that I was competing for the first time against far more established authors, I was both delighted and encouraged by this outcome.  I have also been approached by a school in Northants to do an online reading and Q&A session for this year’s World Book Day which I am really looking forward to.

Stick to the rules, make sure you stay safe and before you know it we’ll all be back in Primark with a new haircut, no mask and a hug for anyone that wants one.

Thanks again for reading.

It’s been over 190 days since lockdown first began and I now live in a world where I’m encouraged to put on a mask before I go into a bank, I’ve forgotten how to use an iron, my Fitbit is missing presumed dead and according to every other TV advert it’s only a matter of time before I develop erectile dysfunction (If it’s good enough for Pele it’s good enough for me).

Just last week the government have taken measures to once again restrict social gatherings to a maximum of 6 people which as a consequence means;

• The S Club 7 reunion is once again on hold.
• Snow White and the Dwarves have some difficult decisions to make.
• I need to find at least 4 new friends before I can break the law.
• There will be a sharp increase in the sales of Barbour jackets, tweed hats and shotguns.

Like the majority of people, I will be glad when coronavirus finally stops controlling our lives. This will boost our mental health, help us return to normality and most importantly prevent me from being subjected to the countless Facebook posts from people boasting about how amazingly well they were coping.

“ After completing my 7am 1,000 daily sit up routine for the 165^th consecutive time, today I single handily ran two FSTE 100 companies from one laptop, home schooled my six children who are now all taking their A levels 4 years early while simultaneously learning fluent  Mandarin, grade 8 ukulele and baking three batches of banana bread.”

I’d never even heard of banana bread before the pandemic hit us, let alone ever felt the compulsion to try and make some of my own. 50% of people I know have at some point had the ingenious idea to buy a bread maker and 90% of these very soon realised this was not the wisest of choices. The romantic notion of waking up to the smell of your own homemade loaf is soon crushed when the time, cost, effort and soggy bottomed results leads to the realisation that nipping to the Co-op to get a sliced one for a quid is by far the better option. This newly purchased, cumbersome contraption is then consigned to the designated ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ kitchen cupboard where it fights for top billing with the Breville sandwich maker, the Soda Stream and the George Foreman  lean, mean grilling machine.

Thankfully the children are now back to school which has allowed them to escape my patience free, Mr. Bronson inspired teaching methods and return to a proper education. In years to come, future generations will probably be taught about this COVID period and I can only imagine what an exam question would be like.

Question 1.

Tony and 11 friends arrive at a public house in the heavily Covid-19 restricted North East of England at 6.30pm, sitting 2 metres apart at 2 tables of 6 before leaving at 9.59pm. On returning home, at 1.37am Tony discovers he has 6 people from 3 families and 2 support bubbles inside his house and 6 people from 2 families and 3 support bubbles in his garden.

Should Tony;

1. Self-isolate for 14 days after ‘Big Len’ told him he loved him and licked his face.
2. Do nothing and wait for the nosey bag from next door to grass him up again.
3. Trigger a loophole by dressing everyone in black and pretending it’s a funeral.
4. Hire a coach for a non- social distancing day trip to Bournemouth beach.
5. Go to his nearest supermarket and panic buy his own bodyweight in pasta and toilet roll.
6. All of the above.

Many people have used their additional lockdown time to take up physical challenges and I have followed with admiration as they have documented their training progress on the NHS ‘Couch to 5K’. I however decided to successfully adopt some alternative versions of this concept which have included;

• Couch to Fridge.
• Couch to Biscuit Tin.
• Couch to front door to collect ridiculously large takeaway order.

I wouldn’t say that my takeaway food consumption is out of control but I now receive more texts from Dominos than I do from my family, could easily navigate my way to ‘Mrs Cod’ blindfolded and consider Stan the delivery driver from ‘Wok U Like’ as one of my closest friends. Eating badly will eventually take its toll however and whilst I don’t hold any formal qualifications in health assessment, I’m pretty confident getting out of breath trying to unhook a shower curtain is probably not the greatest indication that I have a high level of fitness.

 The stay at home lifestyle that lockdown created has allowed my dress sense to lean heavily towards that of the elasticated waist and it has now, I fear, reached the point of no return. A vast increase in alcohol consumption has not helped the cause either with the national ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme largely overlooked in favour of my own ‘Drink In to Pass Out’ campaign. I for one was extremely disappointed when it was decided that the weekly Thursday night ‘Clap for the NHS’ should finally come to an end. The main reason for this being that up until then, I’d use those noisy few minutes as cover for the embarrassingly loud clanking sound of me dragging out an overflowing bottle recycling bin in time for the Friday morning collection.

My working from home day begins at 7.45am when I frantically log in and message the department group chat with a cheery “morning” in an attempt to cast the fool proof illusion that I am wide awake and already hard at work. The reality of course is that less than 90 seconds earlier I was still lying comatose under a double duvet dreaming of Holly Willoughby complimenting my full bodied head of hair as she presented me with my quadruple rollover lottery winner’s cheque. Even when I am physically out of bed, I am now at an age where numerous parts of my body (knees, ankles, back, eyes, brain) seem to require varying warming up periods until they each decide to become fully functional. As a consequence, for the first hour every morning you will usually find me in a state of undress pitifully shuffling my contorted frame around the house like a particularly convincing extra from ‘Shaun of the Dead.’ My only early morning ‘zoom’ conference call turned out to be very short lived when all the other participants thought they had mistakenly been sent the link to the live stream from the orangutan enclosure at London Zoo.

During a recent lunch break I read an online article which stated that the continual isolation experienced by home workers will in the long term almost certainly lead to the development of eccentric behavioural patterns. As I sat there in my wellies and Minions vest and y-fronts twin set, munching my mackerel and brown sauce sandwich and listening to the theme tune from the ‘Littlest Hobo’, Alexa was quick to reassure me that I was unlikely to be affected (“Maybe Tomorrow” by Terry Bush for those of you wondering).

All over the country people have used their time at home to learn new skills such as cooking, painting, languages and playing musical instruments. Personally the only thing I have learnt in this period is that Tesco online shopping is a lot more complicated than it may first appear. My first attempt saw me enthusiastically cram my online basket with 173 items before being unceremoniously informed on check out that the limit was in fact restricted to only 85. Now up against the clock in order to keep my delivery spot, a ruthless ‘X Factor’ style selection process ensued to determine which items would be cast aside and which would make the cut and get through to boot camp. Some choices were simple (Iceberg Lettuce v Steak Slice) whereas some (White Loaf v Cans of Stella) proved more tricky with both candidates putting forward strong arguments for being considered as ‘essential’.

Another aspect which proved a slight stumbling block was that unless you have a good grasp of weights & measures it can be difficult to judge the size of products just from their individual online pictures. This unfortunately proved to be the case when the first ever delivery I received included;

• A jar of Nutella so capacious that it will comfortably see my 9 year old son through his teenage years.
• A tub of margarine that when empty I will use for my first transatlantic crossing.
• Two bags of pasta so large and heavy that they could quite easily replace the ‘Atlas Stones’ in the latter stages of ‘The World’s Strongest Man’ and still prove an insurmountable challenge for  ‘The Viking’ Jon Pall Sigmarsson.

Since its publication in May, the majority of my book sales have been amongst friends, family and the local community. The positive feedback I have received in regards to the book’s message has made me reconsider how I should determine whether it has been a success. While I’d like nothing more than to sell thousands of copies and for writing to be my career, knowing that just one child has gained confidence or reassurance from a story I wrote genuinely feels more satisfying. My new project is to send a personalised copy to every Infant School in the area so it can be part of their libraries and hopefully read by their pupils for many years to come. I am also sending out copies to the bigger publishing houses as if I don’t try now I might never know what could have been. If recent events have taught us anything then it’s that you can certainly never predict what is around the corner.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and have a laugh whenever you can.

We are all currently living in unprecedented and highly serious circumstances but I’d like to think there’s hopefully still room for a bit of attempted humour to help us get through these difficult times. To quote the lyrics of the legendary boy band Blue, “System up with the top down, Got the city on lockdown” (the same song later continues “Girl it’s time to let you know, I’m down if you wanna go” but I think this is possibly less relevant).

Everything we used to take completely for granted has gone and we are all living very different lives. I used to get excited when I’d find a fiver in the pocket of an old pair of jeans, now I get excited when I find some loo roll in an old bag for life in the boot of the car. My watch is now redundant, I’m rationing eggs, the washing basket has never been so empty and the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ has almost certainly lost its magic forever. The pubs are shut, live sport has stopped completely but for the first time in 20 years having absolutely no need to visit a hairdresser sees me with a distinct advantage.

Last Saturday I was forced to stay indoors, avoid social gatherings of any type and do my upmost to keep my distance from other people. This is in stark contrast to one of my normal Saturday nights where I would be staying indoors, avoiding social gatherings of any type and doing my upmost to keep my distance from other people. The new limitations have probably had less effect on me than any other person on the planet. In fact as a general rule I’ve always tried to keep at least a 4 metre gap between myself and other people, so if anything, the new government guidelines have actually forced me to become more sociable.

I have read the rules carefully and it states that you are currently allowed to go out in order to replicate the level of daily exercise that you would normally have undertaken. So with this in mind, at 6.01am every morning I sprint as fast as I can around the corner to the bus stop, swear loudly as the driver speeds past as I am late, before walking dejectedly home whilst out of breath with a stitch (who needs Joe Wicks).

You are also permitted to go out to get essential supplies (Custard Creams, Frazzles & Stella) or to travel to and from your place of work. My commute used to be a 20 minute bus journey followed by a 40 minute train journey and then a 15 minute walk. Now I am working from home all I have to do is roll out of bed and walk about 10 steps to my spare room and I still manged to be late twice last week.

Such laziness was also a driving factor behind my decision to attempt to grow a beard for the very first time whilst in lockdown. My ultimate aim was to achieve a suave/ Pep Guardiola kind of look but to be honest after a month of growing it my appearance more closely resembles tramp/ Mr. Baxter from Grange Hill. I have found myself eating so much food while stuck at home that it has got to a point that when we eventually are allowed to leave the house they may need to remove a supporting wall to create adequate space for me to exit through. I decided to ask my youngest son if he thought I had put on any weight, to which he honestly replied “Yes, quite a bit actually but don’t worry too much because fat people are much harder to kidnap!”

So with abduction now at least one less thing to worry about, the other positive I can grasp from an out of control white beard and expanding waistline is that I should at least make a few quid from some extra shifts down the grotto come December.

With everyone forced to stay at home we will naturally find ourselves watching more TV and everyone has their own individual tastes and preferences. Anyone that knows me well will tell you that I have always been a big fan of any type of reality themed shows since they very first began. Whether it was Nasty Nick’s notes, Will v G..G..Gareth (I used to stutter so I think it’s ok for me to make this joke) or Kerry Katona with a mouth full of testicles, you’ll normally find me on the edge of my seat glued to the action.

Such was my renowned obsession that I was once given a ‘Reality TV Fan’s Kit’ as a ‘Secret Santa’ present at a work’s Christmas party. This consisted of a children’s microphone (X Factor), an inflatable crown (King of the Jungle I’m a Celeb) and a sequinned waist coat (Strictly) for me to dress up in for the evening. Costume based gifts were soon to become commonplace at this annual event, a theme which escalated alarmingly when just two years later I would find myself in the toilets of a London pub being helped into a latex gimp suit by two of my work colleagues (there is photo evidence of this but I would only recommend it to those of you with strong stomachs).

As a rule, my costumes were generally aimed at my baldness (Right Said Fred, Duncan Goodhew, Alf Garnet etc.) but one year I received a battery powered giant inflatable toddler’s suit. Pleased at this apparent change of tact, I eventually tracked down the young lad who had bought it for me. “Out of interest why did you choose that for me?” I enquired, to which he replied without hesitation, “As soon as I drew your name out of the hat I immediately thought of a ‘big, fat, bald baby’.” (Charming)

Another year I remember laughing one morning with a friend at work at how his attempt to get a t-shirt made for his ‘victim’ had been rejected by several printers for being deemed too abusive. My laughter subsided somewhat a week later at the party when I realised this garment was in fact for me. Emblazoned with a large picture of lollipop sucking 70’s cop Kojack, it was accompanied by derogatory wording detailing the limited time it must take for me to have a haircut. The Alf Garnet joke was continued on into the office when a colleague used his company connections to get my name changed on my telephone display which also doubled as a form of identification. A few weeks later some very important Japanese visitors were in the building and looking for directions to a meeting. I suddenly felt a polite tap on the shoulder as I sat at my desk, “Excuse me Mr. Garnet sir but please do you know the way to the boardroom?”

In another attempt to get into the festive spirit, we used to put up a small Christmas tree at the end of our row of desks. For a bit of fun, each of the baubles that were hung on it had small lookalike pictures of colleagues stuck on them (I was regularly the fairy on the top as Richard O’Brien from Rocky Horror Show & Crystal Maze fame). One particular year a good friend grew a beard that inadvertently made him look the spitting image of a particularly infamous individual. As the head of the legal department made her way past one day, she stopped momentarily to observe the tree in its full glory before her expression suddenly changed. “Now I like a bit of fun as much as the next person,” she began (trust me she really didn’t), “but I don’t think it’s appropriate to have the Yorkshire Ripper hanging on a Christmas tree in the office, I’ll have to take it down.” Looking back it was fortunate she hadn’t checked around the other side and discovered what we had chosen for her designated bauble!

So back to the world of reality TV and the wide variety of programmes that are now on offer to the viewing public.

• Britain’s Got Talent (BGT)
• Strictly Come Dancing (SCD)
• Dancing On Ice (DOI)
• The Greatest Dancer (TGD)

I had thought of pitching a new topical show to the BBC called Dancing In Lock Down On Saturdays but then realised that the acronym might not work for a family audience.

There are though still some unanswered questions from these reality shows that continue to play heavily on my mind. Now I am a man with the most simplistic of grooming regimes (shower, Sure, Lynx Voodoo, Mr Sheen) and this will still take around fifteen minutes from start to finish. Yet in The Apprentice house just 5 additional minutes is apparently more than adequate time for all 16 image conscious contestants to wake, shower, hair dry, hair straighten, iron their clothes, apply full make-up, get dressed and presumably eat before the cars arrive? Now either all is not exactly as it seems or generations of women have collaborated to deliberately exaggerate the time it takes them to get ready in order to get some peace and quiet from their other halves.  

Why do Strictly Come Dancing still pretend the results show is recorded on a Sunday, why does Amanda Holden look younger each year on BGT and why is Bafta winning ‘Love Island’ (I have no idea how that happened either) only aired six episodes per week rather than seven? To get an answer to the latter I went to a respected information source (Heat Magazine) and discovered the reason was that once a week all the contestants were given ‘a day off’. To be fair though, sunbathing by a pool at a luxury villa, watching yourself in a mirror lifting weights in tiny shorts and chatting up beautiful women wearing bikinis that would struggle to cover the modesty of a Barbie doll must leave them exhausted and in need of some time to relax.

I used to love Pop Idol when it first came out (Rik Waller gave everyone hope) and even went to the lengths of organising a sweep stake at work when the second series got down to its final 12. On discovering that I had drawn Michelle McManus I quickly made an excuse to call the whole thing null and void and was then taught a valuable life lesson when she went on to triumph weeks later.

The X Factor was always my favourite of these types of shows but that was before we had a major falling out back in 2005. It was the year that gave us the dream final confrontation, the overwhelming favourite versus the underdog, David versus Goliath, Shayne ‘The Popstar’ Ward versus Andy ‘The Binman’ Abraham.

One was a 21 year old boyband prototype who smelt of success and was going places, the other was a middle aged refuse collector who smelt of household waste and was in last chance saloon. Surely this was perfectly set up for the great British public to give him the big break he deserved and help him escape his life ‘on the dust’ forever. With my emotions already running high on finals night, a video montage showing Andy visiting his dying mother during filming then sent me over the edge and led to me spending at least £7 on voting phone calls (for anyone that knows my usual spending habits, this was an uncharacteristically enormous outlay).

When Kate Thornton (remember her) raised Shayne’s hand aloft as the victor, I was inconsolable at this major travesty of justice but equally determined to continue my support for the nation’s favourite dustman. To help him on his way I secretly bought his first album (yes he did have more than one) but naturally this was something I wanted to keep under wraps for fear of ridicule. This hope was soon dashed however when his album somehow made its way onto my IPod (remember those) and his rendition of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ was blasted out on a random shuffle at a barbeque attended by a large number of family and friends. In concrete proof that life isn’t always fair, Shayne would go on to have two Platinum selling albums and a respected acting career while Andy would go on Loose Women and come last in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest.

I’m delighted to say that my book is finally finished and will be officially published on 1^st May. I have already sold a number of copies following a successful school visit and will continue to push its promotion when current events die down and it seems more appropriate to do so.

If any of this has raised a smile, a chuckle or a laugh then it has done its job. Thanks for reading and please all stay safe!

It’s been a long while since I last posted a blog so I thought it was well overdue for me to make a comeback. Over time, history has been littered with a number of high profile unexpected returns with Lazarus, Catchphrase, Take That and Kathy Beale from EastEnders just a few that instantly spring to mind. I have decided though to go back to 1986 and find my inspiration from the legendary Patrick Duffy in the guise of Bobby Ewing. So without further ado, I will step out of my own metaphorical shower, grab a towel and carry on just like I’ve never been away in the first place and hope that nobody notices.

So what has been happening while I’ve been away? UK politics went into meltdown with a General Election where we had to choose between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn (the chocolate box equivalent of being forced to pick either the coffee cream or the strawberry whirl when all the good ones have already gone!) Brexit continued to be extended to the point that it was giving the DFS sale a run for its money (definitely ends Sunday) and has now been upstaged by the Royal scandal that is Megxit. To be fair to Harry, if Prince Andrew was my uncle I’d probably try to leave the family as well. The Queen was quite understanding of their wishes and offered Meghan a chauffeur to drive her to the airport but she declined when she found out that it was Prince Phillip.

The real reason for my break from blogging was that after 6 months off for good behaviour I reluctantly returned to work back in June. I remember thinking that if the time was right to go back that there would be some kind of signal. A sign from above if you like that would clarify things and leave me in no doubt that this was the correct decision to make. The very next day The Jeremy Kyle Show was taken off air and the rest as they say is history.

So no more squirrel spotting through the office window, the end of Monster Munch and Pot Noodle banquets in my pants watching Sky Sports News and alas goodbye to jostling with frail pensioners in the Co-op for ownership of the last reduced stickered tub of egg mayonnaise mix. I’d attended so many successive Friday achievers’ assemblies at my son’s school that I was struggling to sleep on Thursday nights in the nervous anticipation of who would win ‘cleanest classroom of the week’ and the accompanying dustbin trophy. At home I had become unhealthily obsessed with the laundry to the extent that if I was out on a sunny day I would get genuine anxiety that I was missing the opportunity to wash, dry and fold upwards of 3 loads. And on the fitness front things reached an all-time low when I loudly criticised a sculpted Ninja Warrior contestant on TV for taking a slight breather between obstacles whilst I lay on the sofa gorging myself on soon to be out of date Easter eggs.

Once the decision was made I briefly flirted with the possibility of a complete career change and enrolled my 8 year old son for a brain storming session for potential new professions. After contemplating for a while, his eyes lit up as he announced, “I know the perfect job for you!” Waiting in anticipation of a suitably heroic profession such as stuntman, fireman or superhero, his idea turned out to be on a slightly different tangent. “A scarecrow” he said with a joyous grin, “you’d be brilliant at doing that job!” Thinking this might be an unintentional dig at my lack of mobility and less than up to date wardrobe, his reasoning turned out to be more factually based as he continued, “Everyone knows that birds are scared of bald people.”

Now such was the conviction behind his comment that I genuinely thought that this might be a commonly known animal fact that had somehow escaped me whilst I dozed off through numerous episodes of the Blue Planet. In fact I could almost hear the iconic tones of a Sir David Attenborough voiceover in my head;

“With the white-tailed eagle now finally independent in its search for nourishment, its majestic downward swoop towards its chosen prey is suddenly aborted as it spies the terrifying image of Nick’s big, bald, shiny bonce as he makes his way across the drive to the recycling bin with an empty can of spaghetti hoops.”

It turns out that there is no scientific proof that birds have an aversion to the follicly challenged although I must admit that there are a number of overwhelming similarities between my head and the average sized swede or pumpkin.

With my chances of taking Aunt Sally out for a cup of tea and a slice of cake now in ruins, another employment opportunity then dawned on me when some late night channel flicking saw me stumble across a repeat of last year’s Glastonbury Festival. Now I am not really what you would call a real music lover (I’m more Boney M than Bastille) or a festival goer (I once went to ‘V’ but started complaining at 6pm that it was too crowded and my feet were hurting from standing up all day.) With my younger years filled with legendary big hitting rappers such as Vanilla Ice, Coolio and John Barnes, I considered myself more than suitably educated as I began to watch Stormzy doing his headliner spot. Now there is no denying that the man is both a brilliant showman and performer, but despite my admiration there was still a little part of me that watched and thought, “Well…. all he’s really doing is speaking words into a microphone….I reckon I could definitely be good at doing that.”

Therefore I can now announce that in order to stake my claim as the next big internationally acclaimed rap artist (no jokes about a silent C), I have laid down a dope track (which Google Gangster Translate reliably informs me means I’ve written a song). I am usually a real stickler for the correct use of English grammar but for the purposes of authenticity I have gone the extra mile, thrown caution to the wind and have even amended all words ending in ‘ing’ to’ in’.

They say to write about what you know so my track is entitled ‘Commuting’ or for the purposes of being accurate to the genre, ‘Commutin’. So please picture the scene as I enter the Pyramid stage wearing a necklace Mr.T would be proud of, an unconventionally angled baseball cap and a pair of beltless trousers hanging so low that they expose an inexplicably large proportion of my George from Asda boxer shorts. A sick beat kicks in (I know all the lingo) and off I go…………..

“My train’s already late, I’m not feelin’ great, I’m standin’ on the platform and I’m gettin’ in a state.

It’s only Monday morning but my spirit’s already broken,

I’m prayin’ that I’m standin’ where the doors are goin’ to open.

Commutin’ is a lottery you’re never going to win,

The geezer standin’ next to me is lookin’ to push in.

Herded on like cattle, people treddin’ on my feet,

Unless you’ve bought two tickets get your bag down off that seat.”

“Walk the streets of London, there’s nothin’ here I like,

Almost got run over by a speedin’ Boris bike.

Think about the money that is goin’ in my purse,

Goin’ home I’ll have to do the same but in reverse.

Commutin’…. a day can feel like months,

No bus has come for ages but now two turn up at once.

The driver’s in a hurry, not really what I need,

Drivin’ even faster than Sandra Bullock did in Speed.”

“Feelin’ sorry for myself as I’m rushin’ like a nutter,

Then I spy a homeless guy just sittin’ in the gutter.

I bet he’d like to swap with me given any choice,

He wishes me a pleasant day in a humble, quiet voice.

London….not the place I want to be,

But at the end of every day I have my family.

Commutin’, I thought it was a curse,

The real truth of the matter is it could be so much worse.”

One of the main obstacles I think I could face in my quest (apart from a lack of a singing voice, rhythm or any style) is that a middle aged, bald, financial worker who went to Grammar school in Dorset, doesn’t quite fit the usual profile of an urban lyricist from the street. So to counteract this perceived disadvantage I think it’s vital for me to have as convincing a rap persona as possible. After a great deal of thought I have managed to narrow it down to the following possibilities;

• Baldzy.
• Baldie Rascal.
• Iced Bun
• Bald.i.am.
• Notorious B.I.G (Forehead).

Unfortunately at the time of writing I have yet to be snapped up by Eminem or Jay- Z so have reluctantly re-joined the delight of commuting daily to the capital. A combination of middle age and 6 months off had seen my patience levels diminish considerably (they weren’t particularly high before) which I soon discovered isn’t a good mix when you are once again walking the streets of London. If I’m not being brought to a standstill by someone in front of me decelerating like an indecisive sloth as they check their phone, I’m almost losing an eye to a waywardly thrusted umbrella as the pavement traffic attempts to combat the ever glorious excuse for UK weather. And please don’t get me started when it comes to the countless swathes of over enthusiastic international tourists. If my journey home is delayed one more time by a ‘Jack the Ripper’ tour group blocking the way, there’s a distinct possibility that they might get to witness a particularly gruesome murder of their own.

My new route to work has also given me a first-hand insight into the numerous lunatics, who with a blatant disregard for their own well-being, choose to ride a bicycle on the streets of London. They come in all shapes and sizes, from the spray-on Lycra brigade astride machines worth more than my car, through to the fully suited, portly businessmen wobbling along on their recently rented Boris Bikes. Packed in pedal to pedal like a mass of luminous, helmeted sardines, they agitatedly hover at numerous sets of traffic lights waiting for the first faint flicker of green. Joined on the grid by roller bladers, skateboarders, electric scooters and even Segways, the sight is like a cross between the Wacky Races, a Mad Max mob and the start line to the London to Brighton but without the comradery or charitable intent.

These same cyclists have now also been given some official short cuts between adjoining London streets that somehow allows them to legally hurtle across busy pedestrian pavements. Ignorant to this fact, my first day back became close to being my last as I narrowly avoided being  mown down by a hipster who was seemingly attempting to beat the world land speed record on a bright pink 1970’s Grifter. If the wind whistling through his ridiculously large beard hadn’t alerted me to his presence in advance, I probably wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

One distinct benefit of returning to work is that I get to return to the world of public transport and the endless supply of blogging material which it provides. I have a long history of incidents and encounters on buses with the majority of my journeys resembling deleted scenes from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. For some reason I seem to be a magnet for the most ‘eccentric’ fellow passenger on board, and trust me there is often several worthy candidates to choose from.

On this occasion it was on my first week back at work and came in the form of a wonderful old lady who boarded accompanied by her drag along tartan pattern shopping trolley. Sitting snugly next to me (despite the bus being practically empty) she immediately struck up a conversation telling me that it was her 80^th birthday next month but she still felt as fit and alive as she did when she was 14 years old! Before I had a chance to decide whether shaving off 65 years was maybe mildly excessive even for a soon to be octogenarian, she swiftly changed topics to the weather. “Do you think it’s going to rain today?” she enquired, “Yes I think it’s supposed to later” I replied politely. “I hope not” she continued, “My Derek hates wet weather. Whenever it rains he walks around in circles banging his head against the bars.” My immediate conclusion was that Derek was either a crazed husband incarcerated in some kind of Hannibal Lecter type institution or more hopefully a caged family pet.  

“Derek’s my budgie” she explained, “well I say mine, I inherited him from Maud after she was murdered at her care home.” Murdered at the care home!? She suddenly had my full attention. ”They found her dead,” she elaborated, “And the very next day two members of the staff left. You can draw your own conclusions from that!” And indeed I was as her early morning murder mystery conspiracy had got my mind working overtime. Had John Nettles (who having played both Bergerac and DCI Barnaby was in my eyes for all intents and purposes a real detective) turned up to investigate? Was it a crime scene worthy of Midsummer Murders with Maud ritualistically pinned to the lawn with croquet hoops with a Werther’s Original mysteriously placed inside her clenched fist as the murderer’s calling card? Or was this more of a case of classic Care Home Cluedo?  Care Worker Kevin, on the Stannah Stair Lift with the lead piping? But then just before I had a chance to interrogate Miss Marple on any of the finer details she was gone, alighting at the next stop with a wave and a cheery grin. I never did get to unravel the real mystery behind poor Maud’s untimely demise but whenever rain is forecast I do often think about Derek.

After a few delays my children’s book is now in the final stages before publication which is a very exciting time. I hope to have more details to share about this in the near future. And thanks to anyone who has visited the Baldyman Facebook page in the last few months. Seeing these notifications has spurred me on to return to doing something I really enjoy!

This week’s topic is shopping and more to the point my general overall lack of enthusiasm towards it. If I had to make a list of my least favourite activities, shopping would be in a three way battle for top spot alongside washing out peanut butter jars for the purpose of recycling and filling in online tax returns. All of my shopping trips seem to follow a painfully predictable pattern;

Clothes Shopping

1. Pick out clothes items (usually assisted) that I don’t really want for an event that I don’t really want to go to.
2. Attempt to adjust the ill-fitting changing room curtain to prevent any strangers going through the ordeal of glimpsing me in my pants.
3. Experience an unnecessarily candid 360 degree mirror view of my ever increasing waistline and the shop lights reflecting off my baldy bonce (sudden movements can lead to a prism effect and temporary blindness).
4. Realise on the second button (shirts) and just above the knee (trousers) that I haven’t been a ‘medium’ in anything since at least 2010.
5. Conclude that barring a bout of severe food poisoning that there’s more chance of my hair returning than there is my 34 inch waist.

Furniture Shopping

1. Get lured to Ikea by the promise of a cheap breakfast (AM) or a mountain of meatballs (PM).
2. Follow floor arrows around for 2 hours until I reach a state of hypnosis.
3. Lose children in realistic room displays every 15 minutes as my mental strength slowly decreases.
4. Realise that contrary to my belief, we aren’t actually here “just for some wine glasses” when our trolley of choice turns out to be one specifically designed for moving industrial timber.
5. Simultaneously attempt to defy physics and achieve a double hernia by dead lifting a flat packed house into the (clearly not big enough) boot of the car.

(N.B. – DFS can be a less stressful alternative but hurry as I hear the sale ends on Sunday.)

Food Shopping

Now my dislike of this goes well beyond bullet points and was reiterated this week when the lack of a pound coin led to me suffering the traumatic experience of a Saturday afternoon shopping trip to Aldi without the use of a trolley. In truth I have an historical hatred of supermarkets that dates all the way back to 1992 when I made my first ever solo food shop after leaving home to go to university.

It was the year ‘Ebezeener Goode’ was at number one, the first ever text message was sent and most astonishingly I had thick, shoulder length hair and was relatively thin. Strolling through the automatic doors in my Doctor Martin boots and Nirvana t-shirt (I actually liked Take That but was living a lie from day one) my objective was to keep my food costs minimal and my student union beer funds as high as possible. As I made my way around I was therefore delighted to stumble across a gigantic butternut squash in the vegetable aisle (I struggled to lift it such was its size) for the bargain price of 57p. Despite never having seen one before and having no idea what I was supposed to do with it (this would also apply to a lot of other things at university), I was still convinced that this was a masterstroke because;

1. It was cheap.
2. It was huge and would last for a number of different (as yet undetermined squash based) meals.
3. As an unusual and exotic vegetable it was bound to make me stand out as ‘cool & a bit mysterious’ in the shared kitchen at my halls of residence (I had a lot to learn).

As my balanced diet items of Pasta ‘n’ Sauce and Butterscotch Angel Delight (I once ate 3 combined packets in one sitting from a salad bowl with a plastic fork) were being scanned through, I confidently boasted to my fellow shoppers of my upcoming 57p bargain buy. My bravado soon turned to humiliation however when the cashier loudly pointed out that it was in fact priced at 57p per half kilo and that my ‘shrewd’ purchase had actually cost me £3.26 (or in student currency 3.26 pints). To add insult to injury, as I dragged my giant squash back to my shared accommodation I soon discovered that both the fridge and my allocated cupboard space were too small for it to fit in. My aim had been to cast a spell of mystique and irresistibility but after only three days of Freshers’ week I was already being referred to as “the weird guy on the bottom floor with a giant smelly vegetable in his room.”

My fear and trepidation of supermarkets was now clearly transparent and on future visits I would regularly be asked the question, “Would you like some assistance with your packing today?” In normal circumstances I would be grateful to receive such a courteous offer but when you are in the ’10 items or less’ queue with only 4 things in your basket it is not a good sign.

 A move to family life then highlighted my incapability even further with the added responsibility of having to purchase much larger volumes of food under even tighter time constraints. For this reason and the benefit of all involved, I now rarely ever set foot on supermarket premises. Instead I have played to my strengths and now hold what I personally believe to be the pivotal second stage shopping role of ‘bag emptier and puter awayer.’ Unfortunately due to a high level of OCD (that in truth makes the husband from ‘Sleeping With The Enemy’ look laid back) my seemingly simplistic task of filling up the cupboards, fridge and freezer can at times take twice as long as the shopping trip itself.

So with ‘Squashgate’ still a lingering memory in my head, the doors of Aldi parted in front of me just like they had at Tesco all those years ago. Much like Neil Armstrong before me, my first step took me into the unknown as I tentatively entered what looked a harsh, unforgiving and potentially life threatening environment. He had an anti-gravity space suit and the world’s expectations on his shoulders, I had two plastic baskets and an extensive ingredients list for a Year 8 Bolognese Food Tech project. One of these two missions had a high probability of failure and it was unlikely to be the one that included re-entering the earth’s atmosphere at over 24,000 miles per hour.

With customers gridlocked shoulder to shoulder and an ugly standoff developing between a mobility scooter and a double buggy at the stir fry section, there was a sense of unrest and hostility in the air. It resembled the chaos of one of the famous Gladiator battles at the Roman Colosseum but instead of chariots, spears and Russel Crowe we had wonky wheeled trolleys, OAP walking sticks and a David Icke lookalike in a marron shell suit and fluorescent yellow bum bag. As I prepared to walk into this ensuing melee, I was half hoping that a toga clad emperor might pop up from behind the Maris Pipers to give me the thumbs down and put me out of my misery.

My wife showed all her expertise as, with my son in tow, she effortlessly weaved a path through the hordes like an Olympic slalom skier in medal winning form. I on the other hand had fatefully hesitated by the bourbon creams (co-incidentally I assure you) and missed my opportunity to follow suit. Mr Skinny would have struggled to find a sufficient sized gap to squeeze through so as you can imagine Mr Not So Skinny with a basket in each hand stood very little chance.

Like a big, bald, indecisive hedgehog at the side of the motorway, I finally stepped forward, shut my eyes and prayed for a collision free passage. Having rendezvoused with the advance party we now made our way to the relative safe haven of what I like to call the Aldi ‘X Files’ aisle, a collection of unconnected merchandise the likes of which not even the crappiest of car boot sales could conjure up. This week’s randomly assembled delights included;

• 3-in-1 Shower Resistant Dog Coats (available in red/pink/navy blue).
• Peppa Pig Musical Band Set (trumpet / drum / tambourine).
• Deluxe Marine Safety Kit (fire extinguisher / blanket combo).
• 4 Person, Octagon Inflatable Garden Hot Tub (795 litre water capacity).

Then came the shattering bombshell that two key ingredients had somehow slipped through our culinary net and I now faced the apocalyptic prospect of retracing my steps to locate a ‘medium sized’ courgette (what do I gauge this against?) and some tomato paste (which I could only hope would be more flavoursome than the fish variety that for some reason filled sandwiches in the mid-eighties). Composing myself momentarily by the 4HD Home Security CCTV Kits (£149.99 Weekly Special Buy – ‘You can’t put a price on peace of mind’) I unconvincingly set off on my quest for the two missing items. As my wife caught my eye on the way passed, her expression immediately told me that she knew as well as I did that there was more chance of me returning with Lord Lucan and the cure for the common cold.

With my cheeks puffing, my feet shuffling and both baskets scraping close to the floor, I now resembled a particularly poor entrant on the ‘The World’s Strongest Man’ who’d had his pair of giant tractor tyres substituted for some cut priced tins of chunky chopped tomatoes. With a seemingly AWOL packing area and a cashier scanning things through like someone had pressed x32 fast forward on the Sky remote, my chances of survival did not look positive. It was abundantly clear that, much like Tom Cruise wading forwards from the shallow end in a swimming pool, I would very soon be out of my depth and in need of assistance.

An early lapse in concentration saw things escalate at an alarming rate, with my arms soon laden with produce like an overloaded ‘Crackerjack’ contestant complete with a cabbage tightly tucked under my chin (49p from the ‘Super 6’). Luckily my wife’s in built female multi-tasking skills (reading the newspaper whilst on the toilet apparently doesn’t count) instinctively kicked in and the bags for life (newly purchased as the other 17 had obviously been left in the boot) were quickly packed to perfection and my ordeal was finally at an end.

I think it is safe to say that when it comes to the skills, tactics and historic results associated with shopping, that men and women are in completely different leagues. In fact to emphasise this using a footballing analogy;

• Women are FC Barcelona at the top of Spain’s La Liga.
• Men are the Dog & Duck 4^th XI at the bottom of Screwfix Division 9.

• Women play at a ground with a long history of success and drama on the pitch.
• Men play at a ground with a long history of broken glass and dog shit on the pitch.

• The women’s star player is internationally loved, lights up a match with their skills and turns up the pressure on the opposition.
• The men’s star player is electronically tagged, lights up a fag with their match and turns up drunk wearing the same clothes as the night before.

• Women are 5 time European Club Champions.
• Men once reached the 2^nd Round of the Sunday League Cup by virtue of a walkover when the opposition were deliberately given an incorrect postcode.

In other news my book is now at the editing stage with the publishers and following a successful visit to the local infant school I have my first young fan that regularly recognises me in the street. Saying that, I assume he remembers me as the author from the book reading but it’s equally possible that he’s just a fan of EastEnders and thinks that I’m Phil Mitchell.

Thanks again for reading.

Middle age (much like the office sex pest at the Christmas party) can often quickly creep up on you before you have sufficient time to do anything about it. In a few months  I will be 45 (I can almost hear your collective gasps of disbelief) and can remember back to a time when Emmerdale was still a farm, flossing was just something your dentist would recommend and Rolf Harris was actively encouraged to get his digeridoo out in public.

They say that “Age is just a number” but if your birthday cake candles need to be scaled down to fall in line with building fire safety regulations then this is usually a sign you are getting on a bit. Another one that you hear mentioned a lot (unsurprisingly usually by those over forty) is the belief that “Life begins at 40”. It may well do but statistically speaking at this point it’s more than likely that you’ll only have less than half of it left (I think I might ask for a refund on that positive thinking course I went on).

Getting old is no fun and from the moment I turned forty both my mental and physical attributes (yes I did have some once) started going downhill quicker than Gemma Collins in a Ferrari with the handbrake off. I often hear people say that when they get older they walk into a room and forget what they were going in there for. My problem is a slight variation of this whereby I remember what I was going in there for but just keep going into the wrong room.

This kind of behaviour has become increasingly commonplace  (TV remote in the fridge/ car keys in sock drawer) and recently hit a crescendo when, in full public view, I confidently strode through the house and into my front garden with an ironing board under my arm to help me cut a tall hedge (it is stored in the garage up against the step ladder). In an attempt to save face I contemplated either standing on top of it like a surfboard as if this was totally normal behaviour or quickly whipping off my shirt and attempting to iron it with a cordless hedge trimmer. Taking into consideration that this was only days after I had been made redundant and that some were concerned as to how well I was coping, I decided that both options were most probably unsuitable.

Physically speaking, I’d like to report that things are in a far healthier position but unfortunately this is far from the case. My arms and legs now regularly go to sleep before I do, my knees creek louder than a castle door in an episode of ‘Most Haunted’ and I have started finding myself making grunting noises identical to those you might hear from weightlifters competing at the Olympics. Theirs are made as they attempt to muster the strength to lift twice their own body weight above their head, mine are made as I attempt to lift myself out of a seated position in an armchair. My bags for life are under my eyes, I have more hairs in my ears than on my head (we’ll get onto that in a minute) and just yesterday in what turned out to be a real confidence booster my wife said that I smelt (and I quote) “ Like a stinking wet old dog.” In short, whilst my mind is telling me George Clooney, my mirror is telling me George from Asda.

Even when you are having a day when you feel young(er) and attractive (usually coinciding with watching ‘Jeremy Kyle’ or visiting Southend town centre) your children will soon bring you back down to earth as my 7 year-old son did as he was doing some homework the other day.

HIM: Dad how do you spell Epsom?

ME: E.P.S.O.M.

HIM: There’s a famous race course there.

ME: Yes I know. I went to watch the Derby there once when I was younger.

HIM: Really? You might have seen her there then?

ME: Seen who?

HIM: Emily Davison. She was a protestor who threw herself under the horses’ feet.

ME: When was this?

HIM: 1913!

Whilst most people attempt to reverse the ageing process through a healthy lifestyle of balanced diet and exercise, some choose to take the easier and increasingly more utilised route of cosmetic surgery. After years of being questioned, “Does my bum look big in this?” by women seeking reassurance to the contrary, we have now gone a more than confusing  full circle where they are having operations to intentionally make them as big as possible.

The option of going ‘under the knife’ has in recent years been normalized by its popularity amongst celebrities with one of the most notorious offenders being the singer and actress ‘Cher.’ In 1989 she sat scantily clad astride a giant Navy cannon as she belted out “If I could turn back time”, and then ironically spent the next thirty years on an increasingly desperate crusade to try and do exactly that. The only knife I am interested in is usually accompanied by a fork, chips and something covered in pastry which is probably why I find myself in this predicament in the first place.

Time waits for no man (Marty McFly excluded) and it’ll soon be my turn to get on board the ‘Saga Express’ for a one-way ticket towards Velcro shoes , Werther’s Originals, elasticated jeans and the reconsideration that the adverts for walk-in baths in the back of Sunday supplements aren’t quite as ridiculous as I once thought.

Going bald is every man’s worst nightmare (unless of course you’re Duncan Goodhew as it helped him win Olympic gold and saved him a fortune on swimming hats) and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy (unless of course it was Ming the Merciless or Lex Luther as it wouldn’t matter).

In my mid-twenties it appeared that my hairline was beginning to recede and I began to find a succession of long brown hairs in the plughole after showering. Taking this evidence into consideration I came to the conclusion that either;

A. It was actually my forehead that was growing and I was possibly distantly related to Klingons.

B. My flat mate was blatantly flouting the strict ‘no pets’ clause in our contract by secretly harbouring a stolen orangutan in his room that had a liking for taking baths when I was out.

or

C. I was going bald.

The obvious and most likely truth was staring me agonisingly in the face so I took the only rational course of action and;

• Hired a genealogist to scour my family tree for any links to Star Trek related aliens.

• Left bananas on the landing and played a video of ‘Every Which Way but Lose’ loudly on a constant loop in an attempt to flush the fugitive ape out of hiding (Right turn Clyde).

Now desperate to hold onto my once Tarzan-like flowing locks (the loin cloth is another story) I even started frequenting a costly, up market salon (over £10 with sinks, matching towels and National Geographic magazines) in the hope that they could save the day. Despite their extensive training and undoubted scissor skillset, it soon became apparent that unless one of them had graduated from Hogwarts as well as hairdressing school that my beloved barnet was a goner.

Each of their appointments was standardly set to 40 minutes in length but in my case this proved to be beyond excessive (and comparable with allocating 25 minutes from your daily schedule for putting your socks on). At the beginning, the final question they would always ask me was “what would you like on that sir, wax or gel?” By the end, while the majority of the question remained the same the range of products on offer had now changed to a choice of either ‘Pledge’ or ‘Mr Sheen’. Between them they had tried everything within their powers to help my diminishing mop but at the end of the day as the old phrase goes, “You can’t polish a turd” (a bald head on the other hand is a very different matter).

As I sat in the queue at Argos patiently waiting for my BaByliss PowerGlide Hair Clippers to slide down the conveyor belt into ‘Collection Point B’ I was sad but no longer in denial. I was briefly buoyed by the current sex symbol status that at the time was held by Bruce Willis and Jason Statham. It was then brought to my attention that there was a distinct possibility that their prowess was more likely down to their Hollywood standing and capacious bank balances than their close resemblance to a hard-boiled egg.

Despite an unsavoury incident when a fast travelling car-load of teenagers screamed “Baldie!” loudly in unison through their windows at me as I walked home from work (which on top of the humiliation almost made me sh*t myself), I soon learned that living a smooth headed existence was a real double-edged sword.

The negatives include looking a lot older, your friends chasing you around in a snake formation to the theme tune from Benny Hill, people hilariously offering you lollipops, and continually being asked to sing a rendition of “I’m too sexy for my shirt”. The positives are that you are always the first person to know it is raining, Halloween costumes become a lot easier and you never have a bad hair day (or in fact any type of hair day). In time you come to terms with it and even begin to appreciate the humour it can generate in others. In my fortieth birthday card from my work colleagues someone had written, “Congratulations on outliving your hair by 15 years”, this had then been subsequently amended with an arrow that lead to the words, “And the rest!”

So in summary, my body is broken, my belt buckle is bursting, and my bonce is blinding (if caught at a particular angle on a sunny day). Middle age may have eventually caught up with me, but I am determined (possibly with the help of a pair of male Spanx) to make sure that I stop it from overtaking.

In book news I am preparing for my visit to the local school next week on World Book Day and I have approved all the pictures with a brilliant illustrator who will have them completed by the end of March. This will then mean all systems go with the publication stage of things.

Thanks again for reading.

Last week saw the arrival of Valentine’s Day and throughout my house the unmistakable smell of true romance was in the air (actually spelt ‘Tru Romance’ and seemed an absolute bargain at £4.99 from ‘Perfume Pete’ down the market). What better way is there to show that special someone in your life how much you truly love them than a 49p mass produced purchase from ‘Cards Galore’ that you’ve not even been bothered to take the price sticker off of.

Valentine’s Day always reminds me of an old University friend of mine who met his now wife for the first time on 14^th February which was also the day she was born. So in a masterstroke of pure genius (which immediately elevated him to legend status) the Anniversary/ Birthday/ Valentine celebrations were instantly amalgamated into one, for the kind of cost saving triple whammy that most men could only ever dream of (there is definitely a frugal theme emerging here).

The efforts and extravagance for Valentine’s Day tend to peak early in a relationship and then slowly diminish before the arrival of children (throwing Mother’s Day into the mix) leads to its overall ranking plummeting to the depths of ‘marginally more important than Shrove Tuesday.’

It will always start strongly with a complete package (no pun intended) compiled to impress (with a helping hand from wonga.co.uk) as the man pulls out all the stops to woo (get his leg over with) his intended. Once the relationship is established (she’s fallen for it) there will then be a subtle yet deliberate drop through the gears as outlined below.

Gold (Out to Create a False Impression of Wealth) Package

• Weekend Away (4 poster bed, candles around bath & rose petals sprinkled on duvet)
• Card (From Clintons – oversized, padded & presented in its own box)
• Flowers (From a florist- courier delivered to work to express undying love)
• Chocolates (Hand crafted by French chocolatiers – double layered)
• Perfume (Celebrity endorsed – latest range)
• Balloon (Helium that ascends when released from gift box revealing romantic /vomit inducing message e.g. “Be Mine / Mine Forever”).

Silver (Still Out to Impress) Package

• Night Out (Travelodge, free shower gel, double the normal price meal out that includes a budget quality artificial rose in a plastic tube)
• Card (From ‘Card Factory’ – oversized & presented in giant envelope)
• Flowers (From Tesco – hand delivered)
• Chocolates (Machine crafted by Cadburys – single layer)
• Perfume (Anything in a bottle that is reduced).
• Balloon (N/A)

Bronze (Starting to Give Up) Package

• Night In (‘M&S Dine in for Two’reluctantly eaten at the table rather than on the lap watching EastEnders)
• Card (From Garage – standard size & presented in standard envelope) *
• Flowers (From Garage – not delivered – left on the kitchen work surface) *
• Chocolates (From Garage – single bar – preferably from the £1 counter promotion) *
• Perfume (N/A)
• Balloon (N/A)

*Purchased simultaneously which not only provides convenience but also presents the option of using the 5p flimsy carrier bag as a form of cut-price gift wrap.

Zinc (Given Up) Package

• Night In (Chicken Kiev eaten on the lap watching EastEnders)
• Card (From least time-consuming outlet (corner shop/Co-Op) – presented in incorrect sized envelope due to post 5pm purchase)
• Flowers (N/A)
• Chocolates (N/A)
• Perfume (N/A)
• Balloon (N/A)

My wife and I actually took things even one step further this year as I primed myself to secretly purchase her card a whole day before the event (“fail to prepare then prepare to fail” as my old chemistry teacher used to say). “I’m just popping out for a minute” I said to her, undoubtedly throwing her off the real scent of my intentions with a performance Al Pacino would have been jealous of. “I wouldn’t bother if I was you” came her immediate reply, “I haven’t got one for you yet either.” I paused for a moment to muster a suitably romantic ideology, “No you’re right” I said, “We don’t need a card to symbolise the level of love we have for each other.” I won’t print her response.

My 7-year-old son had also jumped on the romantic bandwagon and I was therefore handed the great responsibility of making a stealth delivery on his behalf to a house up our street. In the knowledge that detection and subsequent failure was not an option I made the calculated decision to begin my quest under the cover of darkness (having read ‘Bravo Two Zero’ twice I’m pretty sure this is what Andy McNab would have done).Blending into the shadows like an overweight, middle aged chameleon, my covert operation was up and running as I made my move into the moonlight with the theme tune to ‘Mission Impossible’ playing loudly in my head. Tom Cruise, as I remember, had been wearing a flattering, tight fitting black ensemble as he was elegantly suspended by wires in a daring attempt to extract a secret code. I was dressed in baggy Minion pyjama bottoms and grey slippers as I hobbled up the road like an extra from the Thriller video in a failed attempt to stuff a chocolate rose through a nearby spring loaded letterbox.

With mission accomplished (fingers almost severed and chocolate rose abandoned on the doorstop) I began my escape which in my mind was near identical to James Bond majestically weaving his way at speed through a busy Moroccan marketplace having earlier emerged from the sea wearing a pair of cheeky blue spray on budgie smugglers. In reality it was closer to Wendy Craig than Daniel, as a hunched, out of breath, uncle Fester lookalike who, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be fleeing the scene of a crime, staggered from side to side in some ill-fitting character print nightwear.

In hindsight (it’s a wonderful thing) if I had been spotted in full flow by the local constabulary it could have made for quite an interesting conversation;

POLICE: “And where might you be going in such a hurry Sir?”

ME: “I’m going home.”

POLICE: “And where might you have been coming from Sir?”

ME: “I’ve just been out delivering a Valentine’s card.”

POLICE: “And who might that have been to Sir?”

ME: “The seven-year-old girl that lives on the corner.”

POLICE: “You have the right to remain silent…..”

In other news this week those of you with concerns that I might not be using my free time productively will be pleased to discover that I have finalised the concept for a new sure-fire winner daytime reality game show. It is fundamentally a hybrid of ‘Supermarket Sweep’, ‘Can’t Cook Won’t Cook’ and ‘The Price is Right’ whereby couples are challenged to purchase food ingredients solely from items brandishing a ‘Reduced to Clear’ sticker at 9am in their local shop.

With a current working title of either ‘My Big Fat Cut Priced Breakfast’ (modified slightly to adhere to political correctness laws) or ‘We Eat Any Sh*t .com’, it is aimed at the prime pre-Loose Women time slot and will follow first hand both the highs (Ginsters Peppered Steak Slice & Muller Corner) and the lows (Crème Fresh & Kale) of this culinary rollercoaster. Friday episodes will see an added dramatic twist when items are not available for purchase until after the weekly school assembly with contestants’ emotions pushed to the limit (think S.A.S Who Dares Wins but with Ambrosia Custard Pots).

So when some of you are perhaps reluctantly beginning your working days in this Brexit ravaged, pro vegan Britain we now live in, please feel a little happier in the knowledge that (for the purposes of research)  it is highly likely that I will be in the Co-Op jostling with an octogenarian from local sheltered housing over the ownership of the last half priced family sized pork pie ** (the ones with walking sticks can be particularly vicious).

** To anyone worried that financial constraints might have forced me into these actions, please rest assured that I was extremely tight and prone to this kind of behaviour long before the redundancy ever occurred.

In book news, following my meeting at the local infant school I am now going to be their guest on World Book Day when I will be reading my story and answering questions about writing from the children. For my work to be considered of a suitable quality for this and to take the role of a future author for the first time are both massive boosts for me.

Thanks again for reading.

Firstly I’d like to thank everyone for their positive responses, likes and shares of my debut blog. It can be nerve racking putting something you have written out for others to read but the feedback, messages and encouragement gave me a fantastic boost and was greatly appreciated.

In my latest week of redundancy I had my first experience of watching a cheerleading competition (my son was participating I didn’t just turn up), cooked some chicken wings (failed hangover cure) and attempted to stay up to watch Super Bowl 53 (LIII to any Romans amongst you). In fact I have embraced the American way of life to such an extent that at one point I seriously contemplated;

1. Spraying myself bright orange.
2. Growing an outrageous comb over.
3. Replacing my garden fence with a giant wall to keep the neighbours out (they are originally from Cornwall but I did once see them in Chiquitos).

I have only been to the U.S twice and both visits were to Las Vegas which is a bit crazy even by their own very high standards. Breakfast under the Eiffel Tower (scaled down version – the tower that is, certainly not the breakfast) followed by a Picasso exhibition (failed attempt to look cultured), a gondola ride (indoors) and a Michael Bolton concert (How can we start over when the fighting never ends?) is not the most normal of holiday itineraries. A lot of people say that New York is a fantastic place to go for shopping and I’m sure it is. Unfortunately I don’t even enjoy shopping in my local High Street (the queues at ‘Greggs’ can be unbearable), so travelling across the world to do it in a place where you have to tip someone for opening a door has never really appealed.

As a recognised regular attendee of school events I have now reached the ‘nodding acknowledgement stage’ when I cross paths with the teachers. In my mind this is a clear sign of the mutual respect between us but in reality through their smiles they are more than likely thinking “I can’t believe he’s here AGAIN. Has he still not got a new job yet? “

This week it was cheerleading and you can imagine my disappointment to discover that not only have  pom poms been phased out completely (Toni Basil wouldn’t be best pleased – Hey Mickey) but even the usual pre-routine self-promoting team chants have now fallen victim to political correctness. “2,4,6,8 who do we appreciate? ………. “All the other teams that are taking part, who are all equally talented in their own right and who we really hope perform to the best of their ability despite the clear competitive nature of the event.” (Catchy).

The lady in charge then briefed the audience telling us how she had recently attended a cheerleading festival including a number of teams from the U.S. “Instead of waiting until the end of the routine like we normally do” she informed us “they clap and cheer loudly in the middle whenever they see something good. So today I’d like to see you all act a bit more like an American.”

I thought it was only polite to try and follow her request as closely as possible so with twenty minutes to go before the opening performance;

• I ate half my own body weight in doughnuts.
• I filed a lawsuit against a fellow parent who had earlier accidentally trod on my toe.
• I quickly popped out to Tesco Metro to try and buy a gun.

Next on the list was the ‘Super Bowl’, an event hyped and advertised by Sky TV in its lengthy build up as ‘The Greatest Show on Earth.’ Having witnessed ‘The Cannon and Ball Show’ live at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens in the summer of 1984 I was immediately sceptical as to the validity of this claim (Rock on Tommy). As it turned out, my alcohol related exertions at a 40^th birthday party I had attended the night before (possibly involving the Boney M mega mix) would ultimately prove detrimental to my viewing stamina. I saw the kick off, a snap, tackle and punt (maybe what you get from American Rice Krispies?) and then woke up disorientated at 3.30am to the image of a group of sweaty, burly men wearing shoulder pads and badly applied black eye make-up cuddling each other in a rain of ticker tape (Babestation has really gone downhill recently).

So far in my weeks of redundancy I have made great inroads towards my goal of developing the physique of a professional athlete. Unfortunately the sport in question has turned out to be darts. When you step onto your speaking weighing scales and it answers “one at a time please” (old ones are the best ones) you know it’s maybe time for you to do something about it. For a while my Fitbit had worked as a great source of personal motivation but I then began to call its accuracy into question when it congratulated me on reaching my ten thousand step daily target as I sat on the sofa opening a tube of Pringles.

My wife then suggested that I join her in participating in one of the ‘HIT’ classes that she had subscribed to online ( I now realise this is aptly named, as the next day your body feels like this is what someone has been doing to it with an iron bar). As a student I had regularly woken up with Mr. Motivator after a heavy night out (on G.M.T.V) and therefore considered myself no stranger to what a spandex clad work out might entail.

 As the anticipation grew for it to start, it was gently pointed out that my current attire (t-shirt, pants and slippers) could be wrongly interpreted that I wasn’t taking it 100% seriously. I immediately saw the error of my ways and made a quick change into a more suitable and respectful outfit (t-shirt, pants and trainers).

Basically the premise of this ‘class’ was an overly happy man (who made Jean Claude Van Damme look like Mr Muscle) bouncing around in a spray on vest as he tortured a group of deranged fitness freaks who wouldn’t know a carbohydrate if they were hit in the face with a jacket potato. My initial concerns over an apparent difference between the physical prowess of myself and those participating on screen were fully justified when I was burnt out (forced to take refuge on the pouffe) before the end of the 5 minute ‘gentle warm up’ section. My athletic incapability was then even further highlighted when my 7 year old son was drafted in to take my place and continued for the next 20 minutes with comparable ease.

Although it is hard to believe now (for both you and me), back in 2006 I had completed the London Marathon and at the time had enjoyed all the training involved. So last week I jumped at the chance to take up a friend of mine’s invitation to join him doing some road running (I have so far successfully avoided Wile E Coyote & his array of ACME purchased booby traps). This I thought could be a genuine opportunity to lose a few pounds in an enjoyable way whilst also allowing me to keep my final ace in the weight loss pack (Beverly Callard’s LBT Body Blaster – Rapid Results from the UK’s Favourite Landlady DVD) firmly up my sleeve in case of a future emergency.

 I am not the fastest of runners (think less Mo Farah and more Mo from Eastenders) but slowly got back into it and ended up doing 4-5 mile distances three times in the week.

The after running recovery process can be vital and must be catered to each individual. My own scientifically tested sequence consists of;

1. Stretching. (Slowly rotating ankles while sitting down with a cup of tea)
2. A hot Radox bath. (Actually a quick squirt of Lynx Africa shower gel but probably has the same effect)
3. Rest.( ‘Homes Under the Hammer’ & ‘60 Minute Makeover’ back to back double bill with a bacon sandwich and more tea)

This seemed to be having the desired effect until I foolishly decided to squat down to examine the bottom shelf of the fridge (ironically where both salad and chocolate are kept). At this point I felt a sensation in my legs that I can only imagine is not too dissimilar to that experienced by an escaped zoo animal shortly after its keeper hits them with a tranquiliser dart for the purposes of recapture. Stuck with my head in the fridge and my fingertips agonisingly centimetres short of reaching the top of the work surface, to an outsider it might have appeared that I’d decided to end it all but somehow got my kitchen appliances confused.

Resigned to toppling forward into a half-eaten tub of taste the difference coleslaw at any given moment, (can you drown in extra creamy mayonnaise?) I was only reprieved when a bottle of prosecco and a family size tub of Aldi’s ‘Valley Great Taste Spreadable’ (I can’t believe it’s not I can’t believe it’s not butter) provided sufficient leverage for a dramatic escape of Houdini-sized proportions.

So while my fitness is clearly an ongoing battle, developments with the first book took a promising turn this week. On contacting my local infant school, they have invited me for a meeting to organise a visit to read my story to Year 2 and talk to the children about story creation. Whilst I am no expert, the thought that sharing what I do know could inspire and encourage them with their story writing is very exciting to me. It was always my dream that children would get to listen to and hopefully enjoy the words I had written so I am extremely happy for there to be a chance of this happening even on a small scale.

Thanks for reading.