In Between Holidays

Just a quick update before I shoot off for my next holiday.

At home my pet fish which seem to have been pregnant for ever have finaly had their eggs turn into tiny baby fish. I have only seen a couple, but there might be more and also they are still so smal and almost transparent that its hard to tell.

My poem "The Bravest of Men" has now also been confirmed for publication, which I am very glad about as many of my friends considered this to be my finest piece so far.

In the end only two results out of 14 did not come in on my world cup
accumlator bet, which would have been a wonderful pay out of over £200,000. The Czech Republic losing was a very bitter pill to swallow as this was he only result that I have not covered with an almost identical bet excluding this result.

A lesson to all gamblers, even a novice like me can guess correctly 85% right and still come off with nothing!

Its back to work for a couple of days and then off to somewhere hot, relaxing and of latin culture.

World Cup Fever 2006 Begins Now

I'm having a lot of fun with mini bets on the World Cup at the moment.

I was doing fine except I had my biggest bet of £15 on Sweden to beat the minnows Trinidad & Tobago. T&T were odds 1001:1 to win whole thing vs Swedes at 41:1, so I figures with the odds stacked heavily against them it was almost a guaranteed result.

30 Seconds after half time when T&T lost a man for a harsh second yellow card offence I thought "pity, but that secured my bet"...but no, and i have never been more glad to lose a bet in my life. The Soca Warriors lived up to their name and fought on with a passion and belief that is pure caribbean magic. In fact, in my opinion, T&T looked like the better team, not only holding on for a draw but still attacking and going for a win, in the process gaining a richly deserved point.

After this heroic performance, and being this years World Cup Underdogs, I would love them to go on and gain even more respect and recognition, especially while the bigger named teams struggle to perform.

In fact if they were in any other group I would now be routing for them whole hearted, but as they are Englands next opponents I can't really. However, it would be fantastic if they could tie against us and then beat Paraguay to go through the group in second place.

Especially as I feel they would do well against either Germany or Ecuador. With their passion and belief I could see them reach the quarters and face the mighty Argentines.

Coté D'Ivory (Ivory Coast) are another outside team that played well in their first game against the Argentines, but failed to secure a point. With Holland also in their group its very hard for them to take this defeat and still progress in the competition.

I'm still waiting for my personal favourite foreign teams of Brazil, Spain, Czech Republic & South Korea to play. Each World Cup this list grows and although I don't follow any league team I can't help but love the flair and differing styles that the different nations bring to the game.

Bright Sunshining Day

I met up with my old friend Bob the other weekend, and it was one of those weekends where I just let the good life wash over me and forget everything.

About a decade ago I was Bob's lodger and also DJ roadie, and it was without doubt the best time of my life. I owe a lot of my confidence, control and beliefs thanks to him, though I doubt he realises or aknowledges this fact.

At a time when I was losing friends, had just lost my failed male role model ( due my step-father drinking himself into an early grave ) and had been forced to leave college early, I could easily have drifted into any number of kinds of life.

Despite being a smoker who was also a bit of a womaniser, he was - and still is - a great man. Highly intelligence, he is also an ex paratrooper, who is fiercely loyal to his friends, enjoys a challenge, is well read and with as much life experience as you could expect from three normal people.

He has also got a cunning and evil streak in him a mile wide if the mood takes him.

I know that I am drifting a bit here, but this blog might be the basis of any future biography if I ever do enough for people to want to read about me, and as its my blog then why the fark not, eh?

So anyhoo, Bob is a very good mate and so when he was a little down last weekend it was a pleasure, and an honour or sorts, for us to meet up with him.

Firstly we just went to my local pub and began doing a little maintenance on his DJ music equipment, which took me back about ten years in a single instant.

Then after a little chat we went on to a pub quiz down our old pool team stomping grounds, which brought back even more happy memories. We didn't see many old faces that were around when we used to play for their pool team, but the place itself was still largely unchanged.

Around 11pm, after we came forth in the quiz, and I had won a new
England Football Shirt, he mentioned did I want to go with him and his family down to the beach at Lydd for a Sunday afternoon barbeque.

At first I said no, but but then he pointed out that I had to accept his arguement that I had nothing planned to really come back home for, thus despite having to crash on his sofa for the night I accepted.

Being woken up now by Bobs younger kids is a lot more peaceful than it was all those years ago by being woken up by his older kids when they were little. These ones do not fly across the bedroom with large inflatable hammers and jump up and down on your head as part of an early weekend alarm-clock game.

After a brief snacked breakfast, we all piled into the car and headed on down to the beach through an hours worth of rolling countryside.

This took me even further back and it was almost as if I was back as a child myself, crammed in the back with my brothers and sisters heading on down to Cornwall for our annual holiday.

The only real difference is that instead of singing camp fire songs like "goodbye horse" and "ten green bottles", or having my stepfather sing "Jerry and the pacemaker" songs, we was listening to Bobs latest trance demo CD.

The road leading up to the beach was totally amazing and fitted the idylic postcard photos you often get see but wonder where on earth they were actually taken! Only a few were B&B's and most parts would not have been out of place on the set of the Jim Carey film "The Truman Show".

Once down on the beach itself I was taken back to some of my earliest memories. Of barbeques, sand castles and getting sunburned so badly that I could not wear a t-shirt for several days.

The beach barbeque was more than nice, even if a few grains of sand did blow on the food ( and everywhere else as well ) and the bread tolls were too dry. By the end the flood of emotions that I was feeling was so strong that Bobs wife even had to tell me to stop being mushy and act grown up.

After about four hours on the beach, and me getting only slightly burned despite having some suncream protection, it was time to come home again. Their eldest had done a little beachside stroll while we were sunbathing so we had to go look for her, but to their credit they did not mane her feel too bad for going off, even if she was close to tears.

It started out with me trying to be supportive and helping out my friend, but in the end I cannot say who got the most out of the whole weekend. I will certainly not forget last weekend in a long time and its put me back in touch with a part of my life that even the family photo album could not.

Five mad weekends of travelling fun

On a shoe-string budget, and largely due to Ryan Air for giving away flights for 0.01 plus airport taxed I am happy to announce that I am going on five short holidays this year.

This will bring my tally up to about 17 countries, complete my tour of the complete British Isles, and might even leave me with something serious to write about.

In June

Saturday 17th to Tuesday 20th - Scotland – Glasgow ( Loch Ness )

Friday 23rd to Friday 30th - Dominican Republic – Sosua ( Snorkling, Horse Riding, Quad Biking AND on the Magic Isle - dream holiday or what?)

In July

Friday 21st to Tuesday 25th - Sweden – Gotenborg ( Always wanted to go there )

In August

Friday 18th to Tuesday 22nd - Hungary – Budapest ( Jethro Tull song “Hot Night in Budapest” )

Friday 25th to Tuesday 29th - Norway – Oslo ( Viking museums )

I will update this later with the results and of course if anyone out there is wanting to join me or meet up with me whilst I'm travelling than I'm pretty much game for anything.

Life after thirty is like Marijuana

There is a classic line from my favourite comic, sadly long deceased, that "Marijuana makes you unmotivated ... LIE ... when your high, you can do everything just as good you just realise that its not worth the f*****g effort ... there IS a difference".

Well ever since I turned 30 a few weeks back, I have begun to re-evaluate a lot of things in my life and its both liberating and slightly dissapointing that I can replace the M word for just about anything and it still often makes sense in as much as nothing is ever worth the effort.

Working hard, saving money, making friends or keeping them, housework, dressing smart or neat to impress, abstaining from sex, alcohol or anything else that you feel could be bad for you.

From looking at my close circle of friends, family, neighbours and work colleagues, I would not willingly trade places with anyone and all of them are screwed up in one way or another. Be it financially, emotionally, sexualy, religiously or whatever ... everyone has a few tales of their own uniquely fecked up childhood, past glories, dismal failures and heartbreaking woes.

Having tried hard to be positive, clean living, honest, reliable, faithful and everything else that I am still single, childless and with even most of my closest friends thinking that I am a complete loser or waste of time every now and again.

I tried to explain this to one of them recently, only for them to completely misunderstand me and came out with a few choice insults and putdowns that has pretty much killed off the last of our flagging friendship, and the surprising ( or not ) thing is that I dont really care any more.

I won't say that I have too many friends, cos only a fool or a saint could get away with that kind of comment, but right here and right now our usefulness to each other has ended, we never seem to have any good times together any more and its a rare occasion where I haven't walked away ( or been driven home ) shaking my head and thinking "why the hell did I even bother going to see them that night".

Likewise there are a number of other, previously considered good friends, who for no particular reason we have drifted apart and these days getting together is more an extremelly rare treat rather than a regular or irregular meeting of bodies and minds.

My powers of predictions have not been able to prevent me from losing yet another lodger for no fault of my own, and this is ony worse as I think she is hot as hell but sees me as more a friendly uncle that anything of a romantic nature.

Now it was this kind of comment that had my former friend saying that I only look on the downside, which is far from the truth. I am certainly looking forward to a lot of good things to come not only this year but this very month. However what is wrong with me feeling a little disappointed when bad, or sad, events occur that I have tried hard to prevent?

In my opinion not a lot.

Anyhoo ... despite my passion for reading, it is my desire to try and keep this blog reasonaly easy for all to read, or at least for all who can be bothered to try that is. Thus it might not be the most gramatically correct in places, and I will keep it relatively simple when other people might chose to go off on a very strange tangent or flood it with such obscure references that the only person who would really and truly understand all of it is themselves ( possibly that is ).

I used to spend hours each week writing and building up friendships across the world. However I was powerless to stop most of them finding partners in due course, and despite their numerous previous reassurances that "this wont change anything and I will still write just as often" more often than not a once or twice a week update of their lives has fell into only a handful of times a year IF I am lucky.

Others for no reason at all just completely stop writing with no logic or given reason. This happened to me first over Christmas a few years back and I thought that I must have done something wrong.

But then as it has happened a few more times I just guess that in life all promises given actually have an unwritten and invisible "best before date" and after which time even with the best intentions and from the most reliable source a promise can be broken, or possibly more simply just forgotten that it was ever made or to whom it was made.

Well I had better leave this here or else it wont be a blog entry but a mini book.

But from now on, no more Mr Nice Guy ... life and its denizens just don't appreciate or respond favourably to eternal kindness.