I'll tell you why I don't like Mondays.

I very nearly lost my faith in humanity yesterday. Why? Let me tell you.

My day starts early, I generally leave the flat at about six, I ride my bike to the station and have a bit of a play on the way. The city centre is mostly empty at that time so you can get away with things like jumps off the library steps without bothering anyone. Then I can get to the station in good time for the 6:35 train to Northwich.

On Monday the train was running late, in fact a lot of trains were running late, a lot of trains were being cancelled. I asked one of the conductors what was going on. To use his words, it was down to "a bunch of thieving scallies" who had stolen a load of copper wire out of the signals at the rail depot. Already by 6:30 am they were in chaos with only 5 of 46 scheduled trains having been able to leave the depot. But he assured me my train was on the way and only delayed by about 5 minutes. He was a nice helpful man who was obviously feeling put upon with complaints that morning but was still helpful and professional so I thanked him for his time and went back to waiting for the train.

Sure enough, it turned up 5 minutes late so I wasn't overly annoyed with the bunch of thieving scallies. Then the train didn't move. It continued not to move for some time then it was announced that it had been cancelled because of a shortage of drivers, but it was all right because they were very sorry for any inconvenience. This was about 6:50, the next train is at 7:39. This was not good, but I decided to make the best of it. After all this was very nearly an hour to spend playing on my bike.

Well I'm back at the station and I'm feeling quite good considering I'm running over an hour late, I'm sweaty and tired, but the 7:39 train was bang on time. Then it didn't move. It continued not to move for some considerable time. We were told this was because they were waiting for some extra staff to join the train from another train that had been delayed. So 2 hours after I left the flat I was on a moving train on my way to work. I was starting to lose my temper with the bunch of thieving scallies.

Then it comes to the time to get off. Running very late, and my bag is gone. Hmm. I suspect thieving scallies. This is turning into a very bad morning. My bag is gone with my clothes for the day, my bike lock and my wallet. At work it didn't get better. A lot of the jobs I was working on were delayed, waiting for data, so I was pretty much finished by 2. I cleared it with my boss to have Tuesday off and left early to try and sort things out.

I've spent my time since then ringing help-lines and visiting offices to report my missing cards and this is what saved my view of people. Everyone has been really helpful and understanding and yes, I know it's part of their job, but still, for the most part everyone went above and beyond to help me out. So thank you for Tuesdays army of good souls that helped me forget the low down thieving scum of Monday.

It's him again

Hello again,

How are you? What have you been up to? Anything nice? Been busy?

I have. I've been up to my eyeballs in all sorts of things. Some of them interesting, some of them hectic, all of them overlapping. Whenever I thought the chaos was over and I'd have a few days peace, bang, another thing blows onto the scene. I even got tempted to write the odd blog entry every now and then but by the time I got the chance I forgot that I was even going to do it.

So here it is, the readers digest version of where I've been the last few months rather than pestering you all over the intermaweb.

First off I suppose was the getting fit again. I used to be very fit. Uber fit. I could put marines to shame in the fitness stakes. This changed a few years ago when a doctor advised me to take a year off and rest or I would likely need major surgery on my knee. The knee problem is an old thing, lets add it to the pile of things I'll talk about later. Well a year off exercise easily becomes a habit that easily becomes two years, then three, then I'm thirty and fat. Not Good. But losing weight, especially at 30 is not as easy as putting it on, this is a design flaw in the universe and if I ever find out who's in charge I'll lodge a complaint.

Now however, I had a target, a cause if you will, the Greater Manchester Run. This is a 10 km run, about a quarter marathon for the non metrics. I ran this in the respectable time of 55 min 23 sec. I was proud of that. I've never been a distance runner and I wasn't expecting to get under an hour. The next 10 k is on Saturday (amusingly called the Moonraker 10k run for some reason) and there are some half marathons planned for the end of the year. I've really caught the runners bug.

The problem I'm having with the running is the uneven effect on my body. My legs are now totally buff. woo-hoo! I have a runners toned arms and even my man boobs have receded and actually look good. Unfortunately my beer gut is very slow on the uptake and lagging behind. If you've ever seen a frog at full stretch you'll get the idea.

Fitness leads on to my next endeavours, new toys! I've recently treated myself to quite a few retail therapies. A new bike, I've not rode on a bike since I was about 17. Over the last week it's starting to rival the skates as the most fun way to get to work. The Wii Fit, this is perhaps the reason computers were invented. It's awesome fun, if you get the chance try it. The new camera, an Olympus E-500 along with aperture, I'm still learning to play with them properly but I am loving it. Oh and a PS3. I do so love the bonus time of year.

This has been an upbeat bit of a tale so far and it's getting long so i won't bring up any of the down side of the hectic. Maybe some other blog, maybe it will mean I post again before i forget how.

For now I'm off to sit in the afternoon sunshine and take reality off the hook for a couple of hours with a good book and have some quiet time.
Speak to you soon I hope. with any luck things will calm enough now for me to infest the net again and pester you all on forums and social nets.

What's been occuring

Well it’s been yet another age and here we are again. I’ve had high and lows and been a bit to preoccupied to write, sorry, then I get out of the habit, then I wonder if there’s any point in writing a blog since in all likelihood nobody out there is actually reading it. Aren’t the occasional bouts of depression and paranoia that come with chronic insomnia fun.

So what makes me put digit to keyboard after all this time. You can all thank a conversation I had today with my latest favourite super hero, the Fabulous Laura. She saves cute dogs for fun. Anyway, the long and short of it was after a too brief chat when I should have been working I decided it was time to break the silence and let you know what’s been going on. I’m going to stick to the highs since I’m in no mood to analyse the lows and I won’t remember them all since the last blog so you’re just getting some highlights.

So middle things first, as some of you know I’ve been a bit, how can I put it, dissatisfied, with my current employer for a while. There where a number of reasons for this and to be fair to them they are doing things to help put things right. Their latest efforts a few weeks ago involved giving me a very generous pay rise, it takes effect this month so I’m planning on treating myself with some new toys, I’m planning on getting aperture for my mac. Has anyone tried it? More slowly but apparently just as surely I’m getting more of the work I want rather than the jobs no one else does and even more slowly I’m getting aimed towards some of the training I’ve been after for a goodly while. So things are looking up in the professional stakes. If anyone is interested in what I do, ask, otherwise I wont bore you.

Speaking of new toys I bought myself a new pocket camera recently. I like to have two cameras. A big “proper” camera for planned trips and events when I know I’ll need a few good memories and a compact camera to keep in my pocket. Just in case I see something I’d like to snap. My old sony cybershot has been on the fritz and getting worse for some time so I decided on a shiny new olympus mju, yes, like the ones of the advert with the annoying child and the dog, I got the new version as my first treat to myself over the pay thing. I’m a big fan of tech that bounces. And yes it does take pictures under water. I’ve not tried to freeze it yet but it did survive Newcastle weather and my two year old niece last weekend so it must be tough. Next to replace is my proper camera and I’m thinking I might go all out with my first D-SLR. Wait and see what turns up on ebay I suppose.

There’s more to tell but I’m tired of typing and you’re probably tired of reading (be honest). I’ve not talked about my latest trip home to Newcastle when I got to dance with Wiley Kit from the thundercats and cement my place as favourite uncle with the cutest blonde bundle of trouble I’ve ever met. I’ve not mentioned my latest exercise regime and why I’m off the booze and ice cream for a month. I didn’t even get close to why I shaved my beard off.

This is what happens when I don’t write things down regularly. Ah well. I’m a rotter. Hopefully someone out there is reading this and specially for you I hope to talk to you again soon.

That was the week that was.

Yes that was an event filled and for the most part funderfull week. A lot of it's still jumbled up in my mind so I'm not going to talk about it yet. I'm just back here to sift through the pieces and try and make some sense of it all by finding the one event that started it all. It's quite important to me that I do because it set off an avalanche of events that led to me being a happy chap once again.

Where to start, at the beginning I suppose but where is that. Real life stories don't have starts and ends. They constantly intertwine. A tantrum becomes a rest, a fight becomes a reconciliation. A week last Thursday I think is a good place. That'd be the 7th. I was in the office naked. Erm hang on, maybe I should start a little earlier and explain that.

I've been increasingly worried about my mental state of late. I've been getting angry a lot. First because there was a lot to be angry about then it was just like a habit I'd picked up. I was blowing up over tiny, inconsequential things. This is not like me. One of the things that was really winding me up was an ongoing situation at work which I won't bore you with so when the weather picked up to the point when I could skate to work again I jumped at it. As long time readers know I'm a big fan of my rollerblades and treat them like a kind of moving meditation. There's very little that can upset me after a good hard skate. When I got to the office I was a bit ripe so I had a shower and the thought suddenly popped into my head, "You are at work naked!". I burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it. I've had showers at work tons of times and it never even occurred to me. Anyway it put me in a great frame of mind to deal with the day. Find the silly and rather than let it upset me laugh at it. I'm sure I got a few odd looks that day for my strange little giggles but there is so much in the world to laugh at.

Now stop picturing me naked in the shower and find something else to laugh at. The water was very cold ok.

A lot of the rest of the time between then and now has been spent back up in Cumbria. Yes that hellish surveying job has started again. I haven't got the battery power to talk about it now. Maybe some other time, but I wanted to share a few pics with you of what I consider to be one of the most beautiful parts of the world. To use the now famous Pratchet footnote, "For Americans and other aliens reading this" If you get the chance to visit our little island don't do the London thing. It's not that nice a place. Hire a car, go to the lake district. Here's some of the reasons why.

What I did on my holidays

I've been away for a little bit thanks to either a shortage of time or a shortage of wit with which to write. You know how this bit goes, I say sorry and promise to write more often, you say yes, that would be nice and shrug your shoulders in a believe it when I see it kind of way then wait for the next random event to inspire me to actually type something, anything. Well lets just skip that bit and pretend we did it eh. You really want to read about the random.

Not technically what I did on my hols, just this weekend. I went to a barbecue which turned into a party then escalated to a shindig. Thankfully it died down before we had a full blown hootanany on our hands. No you read right, I said barbecue, yes in Salford, yes in winter. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm glad it did.

There was of course a reason given. It was arranged by my good friend Hannah, who is a visitor to our shores from the merry old land of Oz, in honour of Australia Day. This is a day when Australians celebrate Australia and, I'm told, Barbecues are cooked on and beer is drunk. Thanks to the way the planet works they have their summer over the Christmas period (crazy I know) so the timing of their national day is quite clever and conducive to barbies.

Salford is approximately 15000km or 9400miles or 1.59684e-9 ly from Australia. If you drill a hole straight through the Earth from Salford you would come out, well actually in the Pacific Ocean a little bit South East of New Zealand, but it's quite close to being the opposite side of the planet. So yes the idea sounds crazy. And it was. This is exactly why it worked. Winter can be a dull and dreary old affair. Especially now with storms and rain rather than good proper snow. I'm not knocking it, it keeps me in a job, but it used to be fun to model snow melt. Back to the point. Winter can be depressing. Especially towards the end of January when the holidays are wearing of and the sniffles are setting in and to be stood huddled round a barbecue gathering for warmth off the charcoal and talking nonsense while waiting for snags (that means sausages, we were practicing our lingo quite a bit), it was a fantastic occasion. The planet either agreed with the bizareness or felt we deserved points for effort because it gave us a mild clear night to enjoy it in.

Later it got colder and we moved the party indoors and a game called cereal box was played. There was also a good old fashioned sing song where everyone chipped in with any Oz songs we knew. The home and away and Neighbours theme tunes featured prominantly with some of Rolf classics thrown in for good measure and the crowning glory of the whole first verse of the Australian national anthem.

It anyone else wants to celebrate their national day outside their nation, I suggest the UK. We seem to have a knack for adopting the mildly insane. We call it quirky and eccentric and accept it for the fun it is.

It's true, It really is!

What's true? A change is as good as a Holiday.

Having said that, I'm enjoying my holiday immensely so far. Not so much the Christmas bit, obviously, or the evil act of shopping, but once all the tinsel and gaudiness is out of the way this trip home is doing me a power of good.

I'm not at work, I'm spending time with old friends and family, I'm getting up late. It's fantastic and it's bringing back chilled out Paul who everyone used to know and giggle at.

So rather than the bitching and moaning of the last few posts lets try and get back to the crazy, some insane rant about rollerblading down the motorway perhaps. Sorry can't help you I'm afraid. I'm on holiday. i may have mentioned. It's wonderful thank you.

Yes thank you. That's a good one to talk about. Thank you to everyone who does work so that I don't have to. While I'm on holiday, thanks to all the people who still beaver away and make the world tick over. Especial thanks to those who work to make my life a bit easier. The shop keepers, the chefs (I'm looking at you Rooster, I bet your working like a dog this time of year, thank you, it's appreciated) the nurses and doctors, thank you very much to the mams and dads who welcome home a 30 year old child and insist on doing his washing and cooking while he treats the house like a hotel, and everyone else who thinks they deserve it, hell even the estate agents can have a piece of this one, Thank you very much.

Now I'm on holiday so I'm going back to my lie in. I hope you all have a good holiday in the near future. It may well be on a par with change, but holidays come with a fried breakfast and in my book that's a winner.

My wretched mood

As some observant types have noticed I've not been my usual relaxed self of late. I'll be honest I've been a miserable, angry little sod. Not at all fun to be around and there are a million and three different reasons. Some justified and if I talked about them you'd say, "you're actually holding up really well". Others are petty and small and if it wasn't a case of all things at once I wouldn't even notice them.

First off, some thank yous to those who offered kind words and offers of comfort, shoulders and ears. I may yet take you up on those offers, be afraid. I do appreciate it and I don't express that enough.

And now into some of the reasons for status messages like "P*s*ed Off!" and "Just bloody sick of the lot of it.". Well one reason actually I won't go into them all. Worst of all, it's going to sound like one of those second kind of problems, the petty ones, and it really isn't. I suppose, like most things, a problem is always larger and more impressive when you're close to it. However I know I'm not alone in this so I expect to strike a chord with some.

You see dear reader one of the things that has been bothering me so much at this time of year is this time of year. I'm not a Christmas person. I don't like the so called festive season and I find nothing more depressing than someone telling me I should be merry. They can rarely offer a good reason why, an increasing amount don't even relate Christmas to a Christian celebration, not necessarily a bad thing. However my innate dislike of organised religion is not the main reason I don't like this time of year. It isn't even the short days (insomnia makes for some very long nights all year round) or the weather (though I do occasionally miss a proper snow filled winter from my youth rather than a wet overcast one from today, anyone still not convinced by climate change?) or the thousands of other reasons that statisticians and psychologists give for the suicide rates always spiking at this most wonderful time of the year.

I don't like birthdays either and try to celebrate mine on as low a key as possible. This is connected, trust me. You see my birthday is quite near Christmas, very near in fact and like many people with birthdays next to old pagan holidays I was put off both Christmas and birthdays as a very young child by one short simple phrase, said to me at least once a formative year after formative year by some well meaning relative or another,

"This is your combined Christmas and birthday present"

What?

Why do people think they can get away with this to a child? They wouldn't consider it for someone with a birthday in June. The usual excuse given for the evil "This is your combined Christmas and birthday present" is It's a big one so... here's your combined Christmas and birthday present, I'm not a parent but as a former child I beg you all, get the 2 smaller presents. Always in that order as well, combined Christmas, then Birthday present. I promise you to a small child their birthday is more important than Christmas. It's personal. It's their day. It should be all about them. Not some Christian festival borrowed from the Pagans and stolen by the corporations.

There are other reasons I don't enjoy this time of year too numerous to mention here but one more is connected to my deep emotional scars and the present thing so I'll make a quick note of it. I hate the idea of being obligated to buy presents for people. This is not how generosity is meant to work. I prefer, if I'm out and about and see a little something one of my friends will love, I'll get it for them. If I have something I don't use that I know someone needs I'll make it a gift. If you've never done this, try it sometime in the new year. get someone a present out of the blue. It doesn't have to be large or extravagant, just personal and for no other reason than you thought they'd like it. The look on their face is worth it, gratitude mixed with true surprise, not the Christmas present surprise of "oh look, you got me the thing I was dropping hints for". That look is very addictive. If your lucky it also comes with hugs.