Swans, Sherbet and Coathangers

Bonjour.

I have spent most of the morning feel wound up, because I am a numpty.

Being a fan of leaving things until the very last minute, the time had unavoidably come for me to pay my car tax. This involves finding various documents including my car insurance certificate. Of course I always keep it in a safe place. so I always know where it is... I went to my safe place this morning, and was it there? NO. What a surprise. I scrabbled around my bedroom for quite a long time. In fact, when I checked the clock it was 9.15, and I had to make a very hasty call to my boss to explain what was going on, and why I wasn't in the office. Eventually I did find it, in my desk draw at work. What on earth was it doing there?!

I reckon I would be in favour of scrapping the pound and moving over to Euro currency. Most of the time I love the ££, until it comes to going abroad. It's at times like this when I wish I didn't have to fart around buying currency from the post office!

Last night I found myself attaching hot cross buns to pieces of string. A typical mid-week activity by anyone's standards, of course. The idea was to play a game at Kids Club where the young'uns had to eat the dangling buns without using their hands. It was amazing that even at this young age, cheating was quite prolific. Out came shoulders, elbows, or anything else that would make a good hand substitute (and in a couple of cases when they thought we weren't looking... a hand). I suppose I should credit them with initiative. But when does initiative officially become dirty rotten cheating?

I'm off to Preston tomorrow to meet a small army of Fiona's friends and family. I've already got the hardest one, the (thankfully lovely) mother, out of the way, but it still feels daunting knowing that you are going to be questioned to death all weekend. Bring it on!

The new series of The Apprentice began last night, and already I think it could be a good one. There are plenty of massive egos in there, ripe for a-puncturing. Stay tuned!

Custard. It's wrong, wrong, wrong.

No, it is! Although, I think my opinion has be warped slightly by experiences from my childhood. Back at primary school we all had school dinners, without exception. There were always vegetables, and a total lack of deep fried food (you see, Jamie Oliver didn't really need to conduct an extensive media campaign, he just needed to say "go back to what you were doing 18 years ago".) Anyway, despite being a huge fan of food, when placed in a school setting I became a gastronomic wimp. I'd cower before the enormous bulk of the dinnerladies (quadruple chins a compulsory requirement of the job), and meekly ask for small portions of everything. It'd take me several days to get through a plate of sweet and sour pork (for 'sweet and sour', read 'sour'. And for 'pork', read 'dog'.) Consequently I'd rarely make it as far as pudding - sometimes a kindly teacher would fetch one for me, but despite protestations it would arrive drenched in the dreaded custard. I'd be forced to eat the lot. That's why custard sucks. Oh, it was a hard life!

In other news, I'm feeling much better today and had a good night's sleep. Perhaps I can pass on the last remenants of my cold to the children at kids club?

I am full of snot. Not just a little bit either, but that really full amount of snot which makes you feel dreadful and groggy. Several times during the night I woke up with my face stuck to the pillow, which was delightful, but it somewhat limited my sleep.

Other that that, things have been pretty manic in my small but happy world. I spent the weekend doing youth work with Fiona in deepest darkest mid-wales. She'd been 'hired' by one of the big churches in Cardiff based on her reputation, and so it was that we spent the weekend literally running round after a group of fun but insane 4-7 year olds. Thank goodness for childrens DVDs, is all I can say.

Back at the office yesterday I spent my lunch break doing something top secret, instead of the usual tippy-tap typing on here. More on that later in the week, I expect.

Last night, we met a prospective new housemate, and I gave him my best Paxman. "What are your hobbies? Come on!" Then I just asked him the same question repeatedly, until he left.

Learning to love sport has been a painstaking and difficult process.

A long time ago, way before my teenage years, P.E. lessons would be characterised by being freezing cold and not being picked for teams. Like many boys whose natural aptitude was not for kicking, throwing or catching, the sixty minutes where you had to stand and shiver in defence (or if playing cricket, somewhere out towards the boundary) would be the worst minutes of the week.

Heading into my teenage years, things improved slightly when I began to turn 'being bad' into an artform. I even relished a short stint as the school's Best-Worst Goalkeeper Ever.

Nowadays, with no constraints being placed on my sporting activities, I can finds things that I enjoy doing, regardless of how well I do them. Climbing. Badminton. Even skiing, although my bum gets used as a third ski a bit too often.

And that's what I'll be doing, in just under a fortnight's time - strapping planks to my feet and whizzing downhill really quickly. I love it. I also suck, of course, but I really love it.

The Sony Playstaion 3 is released in this country at midnight tonight, and already gamers are queueing up outside shops to try and get their hands on one. The price? £425!! Ouch! Surely by anyone's standards this is too much money for an entertainment machine. It's not like you're buying something essential. It's all just a bit of fun, and at that price I'd much rather have 42.7 'all you can eat' chinese buffets, I think.

I currently own a Nintendo Wii, and love its sense of fun. It doesn't have much processing power, so the emphasis is all on the entertainment value of the games. Many people of course would argue that playing on a games console equates to not having much of a life. So on that note, I'll leave the last word of the day to a Mr Stuart S, who posted a reply on a BBC games forum.

Andrew W: "Girlfriends are much more fun than PS3s."
Stuart S: "I agree. Your girlfriend was great fun."

When I was younger, so much younger than today...

I had a lovely pair of Caterpillar boots. They were my pride and joy, one of the few items of clothing I ever got any positive comments about. They went over hills and valleys. They went round Europe with me. They were fantastic.

Being a boarding school pupil, these boots were kept on a little shelf below my workspace (those under the age of 16 were allocated a desk/set of drawers in a massive room downstairs in one of the boarding houses, where you were expected to do all your homework). One terrible evening, I rummaged under the desk to find that the boots had gone!

Deeply upset, I turned the school upside down, to no avail. Now, in the same boarding house as me there was an older chap (let's call him Percy Plonker) who, in an uncharacteristically sympathetic moment, sought me out to tell me he thought that the theft of my boots was disgusting. "They should be shot!", he may have proclaimed. What he didn't know though was that most of the rest of the house had sought me out to grass him up! He'd taken them, to impress a girl.

I think that was my first memorable experience of shameless, bare-faced lying. It's something I have to thank Percy for though, because now when governments and people in power do it to me I can cope a lot better!

I've discovered something worse than big, greedy, soulless, business-stealing supermarkets. It's local branches of big, greedy, soulless, business-stealing supermarkets. At least their full size cousins can provide you with all your needs. These little ones have nothing you want on their sparse shelves. I understand that they are collectively known as convenience stores.

It's now approaching that time of the year when I will traditionally start to panic about where I will be living after June, as that's usually when most 12 month housing contracts come to an end and it's time to sign a new one. Luckily, I'm not expecting a major headache on this occasion (last year was just awful), but there's always a nagging doubt, imposible to shift, that it will all go wrong and you'll end up squatting in a dustbin with nowhere to re-charge your electric shaver. Or is that just me...

On a more exciting note, it's almost time to move over to British summertime! Hurrah! Longer evenings, and the promise (if not the actual delivery) of warmer weather. Unfortunately it does mean losing an hour of precious sleep, but I'm looking forward to erecting a deckchair next to my dustbin and soaking up the sun.

Why is it always the restaurants with the biggest reputations that manage to be the most disappointing?

Trattoria Pulcinella is an Italian in Cardiff that has been quietly building a reputation for quality over many years, and finally on Saturday I got the chance to try it. It's housed in an obscenely pink building tucked away down a side street, and it has one of those small menus that screams 'home-made cooking' at you. Sadly, my ravioli could have quite easily come out of a Heinz tin. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you wouldn't pay a tenner for it would you. One of the other people with me was so disappointed with his food that he took his complaint to the manager. He'd cleaned his plate as he had been very hungry, so the manager took this as a sign that in fact he had 'secretly enjoyed' the food, and just wanted to wriggle out of paying. Well, after that it all kicked off, and I don't think we'll be going back. I'm expecting to wake up with a horse's head in my bed any day now.

Here were go again, then! A night of 'hilarious' television to try and prise money out of our padlocked, bombproof wallets. Admittedly it's all far preferable to Children In Need, but I hope the entertainment is a lot better than it was two years ago, otherwise I may be forced to shout "Bah humbug" and throw coal at the television. I haven't pledged any money yet, but I may decide to later.

FEELING GENEROUS?

Speaking of generous, how much has the cost of the London Olympics gone up by?! What would £9 billion buy you these days? 22 billion Mars Bars, that's what! It's all a matter of priorities.

I am a fool.

Those who know me well will attest to this I'm sure, but sometimes I really excel myself. Last night I went out for Tapas with a group of friends, driving straight into town from Kids Club (at which Becky did an amazing job of getting the kids to concentrate just long enough to make choc-chip cookies!). Somewhere along the line I panicked and threw my car into the first car park I came across, which was in a ludicrously inappropriate place, in relation to where the restaurant was. It was flippin' expensive parking too, so I had a long walk intstead of a short stroll, and I paid through the nose instead of taking time to hunt out a free space! So far, so good.

On my (long) return to the car, I went to pay, got in the car, and had completely failed to notice that the barriers were up. I could have had free parking! I also snubbed a beggar, nearly stepping on him in my attempt to escape the poor chap (I have to say that I really do not appreciate their tactic of staking out cash machines and carpark pay-stations).

You see! I rest my case.

My head, it pounds! This is due in no small part to the mammoth meeting I have just sat through, on the subject of statutory funding. We are a charity that, historically, finds it incredibly hard to extract money from the government and local authorities, and so people were looking (in excruciating detail) at how we could be better at it. Yes my day has been that exciting!

Hopefully I'll be out for a nice meal later. Or maybe not. It depends on how tired various people are. I'll be quite snoozy myself, because it's that time of the week again - time to organise a group of 10 year old kids and get them to do something fun and productive. Today we shall be cooking (but with no heat involved. That might be dangerous!)

Well, these pages stayed a little quiet yesterday, for reasons of being over-tired and not quite being able to remember who I was or what I was supposed to be doing. Thanks to our great British road network, a journey from London to Cardiff that should have taken 3 hours actually took more than 8!! Thank goodness I wasn't driving, but I had to keep awake in order to keep my friend behind the wheel awake. It took us three and a half hours to travel the first 10 miles out of London due to a crash, and then we met another major queue because of lovely roadworks.

By the time we'd stopped for a snack (£8 for a sausage, a second mortgage for scrambled eggs...) there were many furious people milling around the service station. Unfortunately they were all knackered and unable to vocalise their anger, so there was a lot of half-hearted fist shaking going on.

Why is it that whenever traffic grinds to a halt on the motorway, people in a hurry suddenly decide that it's okay to use the hard shoulder? They whack their hazard lights on and bomb down it. It's insane, because they weren't the only people using the hard shoulder. Men with weak bladders were getting out of cars in their droves. Imagine if that's how you spent the last two minutes of your life:
a) relieving yourself on the hard shoulder, and then
b) getting run over.
What a way to go!

Up until 6.30 on Sunday evening, I'd been having a fantastic time. Madame Butterfly was great, and it was nice to see Mel for a long leisurely Sunday lunch. But I don't think that's why I will remember this particular weekend!

Ah, popcorn. What a wonderful invention. I wonder who first thought to dry out and then 'explode' a bucketful of sweetcorn kernels? Even more stunning of course was the idea to combine them with a film, to create the perfect synergy of visual entertainment and snacking. Unfortunately we don't have any films showing here at work, but we have had two massive bowl-fuls of popcorn to share around. So light, crunchy and warm! Aaaah!

It really doesn't take too much to get me excited on a Friday. So, anyway...

You think you've heard it all... #421
Thieves who get caught, as has been noted in this blog before, tend to come out with a myriad of astonishing excuses to try and explain their behaviour. Never before though have I heard of one who thought that "I am an Elf" would do the trick! The really genius part of this story is the fact that he was trying to steal knickers. At knifepoint. I'm sure there's potential for a film here! I'll get the popcorn.

Last night's kids club featured cocktail making. Sadly, we weren't allowed to bring along any spirits and do it properly, we had to stick to fruit juice. We gave them about six different types and told the kids to be creative, but unfortunately they all threw everything into their glasses and so we had to judge a load of identical cocktails in the 'Best Drink' competition. I felt very ill after the fourth 'Orange Apple Pineapple Raspberry Cranberry Fizz' I sampled.

It's nearly time for my yearly dose of Opera! One a year is about all I can manage, and this time it's going to be Madame Butterfly. Not a cheerful one, I fear, but the music is fantastic. As long as there's a great set to stare at during lulls in the action, I'll be a happy boy.

"Are you free, Mr. Humphries?"
"Er... no."

What a dreadful morning. I'm grumbling to myself because I feel under attack from all sides on the issue of staff accommodation.

Whenever one of my jolly colleagues heads off to exotic foreign locations (e.g. Grimsby), it's my job to find a hotel room for them. Now, I have a budget and I stick to it. I do my best to find rooms that are clean, comfortable and en-suite. Anything else, frankly, is a bonus. Over the past few months there have been mumblings, growing louder and more persistent, about the accommodation being booked. Suddenly, it's all expected to be opulent and luxurious, when really it should just be somewhere to lay your head at the end of the day. Come on, we're a charity! It's lovely to aspire to having a suite at the Hilton, but if your room comes with a kettle then I think you're doing quite well.

Okay, grumble over.

In other news, I see that a German brother and sister are trying to get the law changed, so that they can get themselves recognised as a proper couple. They have already had four children together. Eeeeeurgh!! I'm sorry, but I really struggle with this one. My tolerance level, rightly or wrongly, is being severely tested here. Scientists would point to the fact that the offspring of siblings have about a 50% chance of suffering from genetic abnormalities. The German 'couple' don't agree. However, their first child has epilepsy, and one of their daughters has severe learning difficulties. What conclusions would you draw?

It seems like one of those too-good-to-be-true phenomenons of our modern technological lifestyle, but I've just been looking into it and yes, it is true! Skype means that I can actually make free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has Skype. My question: why on earth isn't everyone using this? What's the catch? Surely with the age of broadband, and with the internet in the vast majority of homes around the country, it would make sense for everyone to get Skype? No more paying for home telephone calls, ever! So without further ado, I shall get On. This. Thing!

(I'm not a Skype salesman. Honest. I'm just slightly bowled over by what I've just read, as well as being annoyed that I haven't cottoned on sooner.)

Anyway, in other far less technological news, I have been marvelling at how quickly little people grow into bigger people. I went with Fiona to Em's house last night to cook dinner for her, as her husband Matt was working late (or rather Fiona did most of the cooking... but I warmed the fudge sauce. Yes I did.), and I was amazed at how her baby daughter Amy is getting on. In the space of a few weeks, or so it feels, she's gone from hesitant crawling to fast crawling to almost standing, and last night she was making a number of noises that were recognisably syllables! It's all rather exciting. She just needs to put them in the right order now.

Southampton didn't seem to be a particularly attractive city, as I drove through it on Thursday morning. Perhaps it was just too early, and I was trying to judge Southampton on an empty stomach. Never a good idea. Anyway, we arrived at the venue and found that we had to take all our props, resources and technical equipment up to the auditorium via a lift. A very small lift.

It was therefore with unrestrained joy that we set up for the first wave of punters (we were doing two 'marriage' events in one day), but I was genuinely happy once the lunch buffet arrived! A michelin star might count for a lot in the world of food, but I reckon that you still can't beat a small sausage on a stick.

All in all the events ran very smoothly, and we had lots of nice comments at the end (and a few bad ones). It really wore me out though. I blame the onset of man-death (an acute attack of man-flu) for my exhaustion. The whole weekend was required to recover properly... plus an extravagent lunch in a great pub in Caerleon.