Andy's Blog

In a particularly low point at the moment, so have decided to wallow in some self pity and retrospective angst.  I think I’m turning into a Goth, or worse, my sister when she was a teenager!  (..that particular joke will have some severe repercussions).

My karate, as with other things, has stalled.  Despite putting in what I feel is 100%, the execution seems to fall far short of the expected standard and the appearance of going backwards more than forwards is somewhat disheartening.

Maybe it’s just a recurrence of what a good friend once called “Blue belt blues”.

T’would seem my old managers favourite dictum, muttered every pay and bonus review time, has come back to haunt; “Remember, Andy, that 100% of nothing is still nothing”.

Wallowing, angst and other inglorious forms of self pity will of course be accompanied by some very loud music, in the Marilyn Mansun and Iron Maiden flavours methinks, and occassionally interspersed with some comedy genius.

…buggar!  Still not sorted this out either!

Trying to make decisions whilst listening to a late ’70s punk band’s only number one track is not the cleverest thing to do.  It’s certainly not providing any answers, only verbalising the question in a rather more tuneful way… I am beginning to think I am looking for answers in all the wrong places!

Methinks I will need to seek some guidance from my learned colleagues on this one, in a discrete but painfully embarrassing (for me anyways) manner.

….and no, this is not anything serious, just cause-n-effect mitigation!

When I was younger, as is the want of small boys, I could be found doing mock ninja battles or showing off my martial arts skills in homage to my heroes on TV, more often than not this would usually be “Monkey“.

Although I started karate, a few years back, for very noble reasons; the pursuit of fitness, control, the learning of ancient japanese martial arts, and of course to not be beaten up by my own kids… a little part of me was also the young boy playing Monkey in the playground.

I think it’s fair to say that, at no point in time, did my playground playing include hideously drunk idiots taking wild pot-shots at me.

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It seems ages since we had all gathered for a proper Sunday roast, but the Stewart’s (and accompanying brood) once more descended and wreaked merry havoc at my Parent’s house.

Stuffed ourselves silly with Roast Pork & Beef, roast spuds, mashed spuds, Peas (maybe not), cabbage (definitely not!), yorkshire pud, crackling and lashings and lashings of rich gravy… Yum!

Quick trip to the park to shiver for a wee while whilst kids throw soggy wet leaves at one another, and of course challenging young Felix to a swinging contest.  The winner is fiercely debated, and yes.. pictures do exist, but I ain’t telling where!

All in all, a cracking day out, topped off with an excellent memento of the day

The Brady Bunch or The Hill's Have Eyes?

Bravery Award

“Hmmmm, we have two options” explained the Doctor as he prodded and poked my thumb.

“Number one; we inject here and here”, he pointed to either side of my thumb, “wait for the anaesthetic to kick in and manipulate your thumb back into place.  Of course it will mean your whole hand will be numb for a while which’ll affect your driving, etc.”

OK, so option #1 wasn’t too clever; I needed to drive back to work and then do my usually tappity-tappity-tapping on the computer.  Time for me to ask the obvious..

“So what’s optio…” *CRACK!*

“AAAaaarrrggghhh….

…”

“Finished?” the Doctor asked as he peeled me from the ceiling and sat back into his chair.

“Sorry about that, but I tend to find the surprise approach works best in these situations” he continued.

“Fuuuuu….” I whimpered. “So why did you jump back too?” I asked.

The doctor laughed.  “I’m on rotation with the Army, you try that move with a Soldier and his first reaction is to deck you.  Seeing as this is a martial arts injury, I thought it best to give you the same wide berth”.

I had to laugh at that as he put a support on my wrist and hand area.

“All done, you can go now”

“What no lollipop?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any, but you can have an m&m for being brave.”

I of course had to take it, I rather felt I deserved it.  As I got up and made my way to the door the Doctor did have one last question.

“Spunk monkey? I’ve not heard that expletive before, that’s really rather good although I’m not sure it’s something I can fit into a conversation very easily”

I left, hastily…

Another night out doing karate, another bloggable post about conversations had outside afterwards, and some before we’d even left the hall!

Now I’ve sat here trying to put into words the double-entendre’s, shocking  invites and phallic’ising of an innocent wireless card.. but, frankly, even I can’t put *THAT* into words, so I won’t

Some things, as the title suggests, are just better left unsaid.

“It’s dislocated”

…and with that proclamation the Nurse confirmed my latest Karate related injury, from a tournament 3 weeks back, and then went on to put the fear of God into me;

“Do you want to know how it’s fixed?”

She knows me well.  Now this is something that I have freely admitted to in the past, and is the source of much amusement amongst certain most Senseis within GKR Region 33 (and as it turns out most of the Senseis of Region 55 too!), that I am not the most ‘unsqueamish’ of people.

Although, truth be told, I have a fairly good idea, I answered “Probably best I don’t know”.  There’s plenty of scope within my life for self denial.  And with that I have an appointment with the Doctor to “fix” me, a sense of foreboding and a growing appreciation of the opposable thumb;

• Great for gripping liquid containers such as tea mugs and more importantly PINTS OF BEER!
• Writing or drawing becomes somewhat easier with this appendage.  My writing was never the neatest in the world, now it’s damn near unintelligible (even a Doctor would be embarrassed).
• Stops you from shaking other peoples hands like a wet fish, and also pulling this funny kind of face when they insist on pulling some sort of Vulcan death grip on your hand.
  

  Nice to meet Yoooooeeeoow!

“You’ve been here a few times with Karate related injuries haven’t you Andy?  Are you any good?”

..and with those parting words from the Nurse I sloped out of the Surgery somewhat more depressed than I entered.

Tis always the case, I start listening to a new album and my next few blog posts contain references, links and other sundry musings based on the content of that.

Postings have been a little thin on the ground lately, largely due to me being in a kind of cruise control;  I go to work, I come home, I go to Karate (and generally get battered; my right hand thumb is somewhat suspect at the moment), I eat, I sleep and re-start the process the next day.

Not the most exciting post you’d ever read, not that I am suggesting that any of my previous blog posts could be categorised as such, but you get the picture.

Now this track by Nickelback, music and lyrics below, has gotten me wondering and cogitating on the question it poses.  I don’t have a full answer as yet, or nothing that could fill a blog post, but I think at some point I will have to answer it and try and kickstart life a little.

…and very possibly ‘develop some’ as my trusty Glaswegian friend has told me on many an occassion.

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“Someday” indeed..

“You have to do a blog post when you get home!”

Unfortunately, and almost bizarrely,  NOTHING had happened at the point of exiting my usual Tuesday visit to Senior Karate Class.  There has been a couple of Incidents within the carpark, after the Senior class had finished, which almost makes me sound like some kind of pervert hanging around dark car parks at night.. not helped by the fact that both incidents seemed to involve at least two female colleagues from Karate.

“Tart” as a friend called me, and no matter how much you protest your innocence; it only seems to make you seem more.. more… something-or-other!

However, it was incident free.  Nothing extraordinary had happened, apart from me not making some kind of arse of myself as usual, and no unintended double-entendre’s had been uttered.  How uneventful.

I was just musing on how quickly a holiday can fade into memory, and even more on how much you get out of shape during said hols!!  The evidence m’learned colleages;

• First karate lesson after coming back from hols and I managed to completely destroy my hard man of karate persona (self delusion is a wonderful thing); Shouting Ichi! Ni! San! Shi!… and then squeaking like mickey mouse on helium “Go”, “Roku”…
• The Alfa Romeo has decided to act all Alfa Romeo’y and decide it wanted 450 of my finest english pounds to be spent on its lower regions (brakes, disks and bearings)
• My sunburnt head has now turned to a peeling head.. I look like a “shoulda used head-n-shoulders” disaster advert.
• 563 work emails on the first day back is never a fun thing to behold.
• The holidays are not even a week old and I feel like I need another one.

Ah well, there was always Senior Karate?  Unfortunately I was bloody awful!  I felt like somebody had strapped lead weights to the ends of my arms, which wasn’t clever as Sensei was not in a very forgiving mood today.  I think I caused at least one of the press-ups that were metered out as punishments, but not all the others.  I was sweating, heaving and panting by the end of the lesson.  Nice!

I wouldn’t mind all that, but it didn’t look like I had even BEEN on holiday.  I stood next to Libs and looked all wan and pale next to her gorgeously tanned self.. Even Sarah looked more tanned than me, and as far as I am aware she spent the past two weeks in rainy England.  *sigh*

Chewy condom anyone?

..and then to top it all off, as I stand in line at a BP Station to purchase some much needed cold beverage to throw down my parched throat, I hear from the two young teenage girls standing behind me; “Eeeerrgh! You’d think he’d be too old to need those!”.  I look down at the pack of chewing gum I have also decided to impulse buy.

I look up at the two girls, who look back at me like I’m the perv as described in the first paragraph of this blog post.

“Whoah, hang on…”

But it’s too late, they wander off.  So now it’s official, I am now too old for chewing gum, or worse.  I woulda given them a reverse shuto to the heads, but I was feeling my age and couldn’t even if I wanted to.

*double sigh* time to check the calendar and figure out when the next holiday is…