Andy's Blog

Life, as the old 80′s song insists, is what you make it.. which is a somewhat sobering thought as I look out over a rain drenched Abington Park.

There are many things that both friends and family will quote at you, in wordishly wise ways, and sometimes with a zen-like look on their face and voice; but however much you shake a stick at it, and this is probably age related (another year, another candle to burn), sometimes you just need to drop back, find your own space, crank up the music that defines your here-and-now and…..

…and?  Well you’ll know what works for you, as for me, I am still mid “and…’ing”.

Is there a difference between Insomnia and just not wanting to go to bed until the wee small hours of the morning?

It’s not that I *can’t* go to sleep, if I was to put head to pillow I would more than probably drop off pretty quickly.  It’s that I don’t feel like putting the head on the pillow in the first place!

I’ve been a ‘Night Owl’ my whole life, ever since the first time I was able to stay up late.  Of course the flip side to this is the morning after… As has been admitted to in previous posts, dragging my carcass from the horizontal to the vertical is nigh on impossible REGARDLESS of the actual numbers of hours slept.

Not sure if this is just a latent psychotic streak on my part or just some sad loner lifestyle.  There is something to be said for seeing the ‘virtual ship in the night’ when you notice others are also up; the sudden appearance of a facebook update and then silence afterwards, the ping of an email, the flickering of someone coming onto MSN (and then off again just as quickly).

More than anything tis just a time to reflect, chill out to some music, update a website, do some coding… and watch others wander darkly through the internet landscape.. See you all tonight?

Somewhat reminded of that scene from Blazing Saddles where Lilly Von Shtup is singing “I’m Tired”, not so much in the sense of being a “Goddess of Desire”, etc, but just the sheer sense of not being able to get the energy up to do anything of much use.

These past few weeks have been a manic blur of competing priorities, unrealistic expectations of what one person can achieve in a relatively short space of time, and this week just gone is something that just doesn’t want repeating.  Headless chicken mode is a thing of wonder and highly amusing… when it ain’t you that’s the nogginless avian!

Won’t go too much into detail, cos… well… I’m too tired to string the relevant words together properly, and in my case that level of in-eloquence isn’t pretty – suffice to say; kids, injuries and a little measure of work.  ’nuff said.

All of which is a rather round-about way of apologising for a lack of posts on my narcissistic little corner of the Internet.  I will try better, honest… just let me chug a few cans of Red Bull whilst chewing coffee beans and Zolpidem!

..Should make the next post an interesting one (at last)!

There’s a mental image running around my head that would speak far more volumes than any number of words could convey in how things are at the moment.  Sometimes, and only sometimes, words are easy

…but not enough.. or way too much.

I’ve spoken before about how a song, a snippet of lyrics taken out of context, an image, or some other medium, provide a far more accurate and personal reflection of self at a point in time.

I won’t try and put into words what the mental image is, inoffensive as it is, as that seems counter intuitive. Maybe later, when I have some personal time, I will search for something that matches it on the big, bad, t’interweb… or, god forbid, put my artistic abilities to the test and actually translate from mental image to physical medium.

Until then I’ll share one of the ‘lyrics out of context’, that I mentioned earlier.  It’s from a song by Madness and perversely it’s probably the one bit that makes the song sound darker than it’s actual intent – which is exactly the opposite;

Standing up in the falling down
In so much rain I could almost drown.

If I ever do manage to scribble the image down I’ll make sure to add it to the blog… maybe.  However now seems a perfect time to plug in some headphones, hit ‘random’ on the playlist, and see if I can either create some new audible monuments or just lose self in the moment.

…not a unique sentiment at the moment!

Safer with a computerless keyboard?

There is a certain laziness that creeps in when riffing off a quick comment. Unfortunately this laziness when armed with a keyboard is where trouble lurks, awaiting its chance to bite you on the unmentionables.

It seems that my writing skills, and its slovenly attributes, change dependant on where I visit when armed with the aforementioned keyboard;

• Blogging: For some reason I can never seem to post a small snippet of what I am upto quite like the talented Mr Fitchett is able to.  A veritable torrent of letters, words, sentences, bullet points and paragraphs gets splurged onto the computer and then gets edited, re-edited, moved around, edited some more, updated, deleted, polished and buffed to within an inch of its life.

The end result is no more eloquent than when it began, but it does probably reflect more what I was trying to get over in my own unique way… most of the time. There being some notable exceptions apparently.

• Twitter: …and in what can only be considered the extreme opposite end of the scale; being forced to voice an experience or thought in 140 characters or less gets you to consider VERY carefully what you want to say and the best way in which to say it.  Of course, as with all things, this can go somewhat awry.

It seems to be in the ‘little’ area between those two extremes that I come unstuck.  The quick reply often done without thought is where unmentionables get the nibble I spoke about at the beginning of this post (way, way back – I did say I tended to splurge on a bit).

Unfortunately, to a greater extent than I should really be doing, you rely on the person reading these unthought out replies to understand what it is you were trying to get across.  Hence, what you thought was a critique of yourself becomes criticism of another which is on the perverse spectrum of where you wanted to be.

Sometimes when a sentence begins with the word “I”, that is where the heart of the sentence lies.

Time to be less flippant online methinks and begin watching, not so much my P’s and Q’s, but my Q’s and M’s and all the combination of letters between the two (look down at your keyboard to understand).

Popularity is always a nice thing, however it’s a little unsettling when the people you’re popular with are only after your blood.  I tried interesting them in my body, but no joy.

It also seems a little strange that being negative is an absolute positive, at least in the minds of the aforementioned Vampires that I appear to be so popular with.

You have to hand it to the National Blood Service, they know exactly which buttons to press to get my full attention, and the lovely female Gaelic lilt on the end of the phone certainly pushed the majority of them; so, on the 9th March, I am off to give my usual armful of red go-go juice.

Truth be told though, I hate needles… Really, really *HATE* needles!  So the thought of voluntarily going to a place where I’ll be jabbed and drained is somewhat of an anathema to me (I think I may have ‘intimated’ in previous posts about my slight squeamishness).

But, seeing as the Blood Services website tells me my blood (O-) is ‘very special indeed‘, it would seem churlish not to gift them some of it for the greater good; especially after such a nice compliment.  Usually when people tell me I’m “special”, I get the distinct feeling it’s not in quite the same way I imagine they mean.

Another reason I go is precisely BECAUSE I hate needles so much!  I am hoping that one day all these visits will finally get me over this little phobia.  It’s this vein hope (get it? get it? vein, rather than vain… forget it!) that I also volunteer to do Kata at each Karate Tournament that comes along.  One day, maybe the one coming up on the 27th February, I won’t be my usual mitigated disaster and complete it without looking like I have swapped feet with my 8 year old son!

It’s a hope, however vein or vain, and until it’s realised I’ll just have to be content with being “special”.

It’s true, I have reached a kind of prolonged brain-fart.  The brain is whirring around, as much as it ever does, the fingers are itchy to put something down in words, but all that comes out is some slightly stale air.

As much as I want to jot down the daily doings of me, in some kind of narcissistic ‘dear diary’, the truth is that not an awful lot of interest happens.  Life certainly isn’t in any shape or form as life-and-death as Ann Frank’s, or as tally-ho-trousers-down-and-up-the-constituents as Alan Clark’s.

So I find myself, during lunchtime at work, again within one of the music pods, sitting in front of this blog wondering what the hell to write down?  Life, as I see it, is pretty much consisting of the following;

1. Work is work.  I work in a Bank designing computer systems, how exactly exciting do you think that can get?   Of course, the slightly annoying element of me being no longer required come 31st December does cause some concern… but 31st DECEMBER?!  That’s like a lifetime away! (feel free to point me in the direction of this post in 2011 and rub my face in it if things don’t entirely work out the way I hope)
2. Karate is still providing the source of me getting beaten up in various, and intriguing, ways by multiple peoples.  Just as an aside a new lesson has been learnt; do NOT do leg exercises at the Gym just before a karate lesson later that evening.  The results are not impressive and the scowling by ones Sensei is something frightening to behold.
3. Home-life is home-life.  Trying to resolve the latest home based dramas; house, heating, repairs, family arguments, money, etc, etc. is starting to feel like work.  In the spirit of holding my hand up though, this is no different than anyone else.  However the feeling of just throwing the arms up in the air with some of the new drama’s and say “Fine, I give up, have it your way!” is just too strong at the moment.
4. Sleep is not sleep.  ‘Nuff said.
5. Go back to step #1

In my actual verbal self I am a person who doesn’t mind not having something to say.  I am completely comfortable, when I have nothing of interest to say, in saying nothing at all.  I don’t have the gift of the gab or have a hundred and one amusing anecdotes with which to regale friends and colleagues alike, and as seen from the above there’s nothing of note to bore the poor person I happen to be with about.

I just wish I had the same control when it came to blogging, although why blog in the first place if that were to be the case?  Here’s as good a place as any to dump any brain-fartage and it’s not as though anyone reads the thing!

There, “ramble” done and dumped onto the t’interweb along with all the other rubbish that inhabit it.  No violence (or at least none seen), or porn (that would be too terrifying a vision to dwell on) or conclusion to this post….

…just a faint stale smell, depending on how long after I posted this you read it, and a slightly relieved feeling on my part to expel it albeit somewhat publicly (which is very rude).

Meh, you know what?  I had sat down with the absolute intention to try and list some resolutions for this year, but after faffing about without typing anything at the keyboard have come to the realisation that I really can’t be bothered to set any.  This is not actually 100% true, I do have some goals that I have set for myself, but these are the same I always have;

• Get better at Karate (at least one grade better this year)
• Get fit (also interpret that as ‘slim’)

But that’s about it.  I also can’t be much bothered to review last years, apart from; I did achieve the two belts, but didn’t get fit.

Ever so slightly uninspired today.  However the cartoon below did brighten the day somewhat…

Buggly Eyed Beasties

I looked at the ‘langostinos’ and rather disturbingly they looked back.  I’ll give most things a try, but not when those ‘things’ are able to look at me, with more than a little recrimination, and have more legs than foodstuffs should have!

“Look Dad! Buggly eyed beasties!” the boys bellowed across the table at me, knowing that the unofficial name that I gave this favoured Spanish dish gets me in more than a little trouble with the natives.

I also can’t help but feel a little queasy when said natives are ripping apart the aforementioned buggly eyed beasties and leave what looks like a slaughter of the cast of fingerbobs.

The Christmas meal just doesn’t seem the same without an obscene amount of roasted turkey and a feeling afterwards that you’ll be pooping feathers for the next few days.

This year I thought that, rather than ask for my usual ‘useful’ gift, I would get something completely impractical and feed the big kid in me.  Santa didn’t disappoint and I am now the proud owner of a mini Apache AH-64 remote controlled helicopter!  The little devil fits in my hand and buzzes around the room menacing all that are within the vicinity… mainly due to my ineptness with the remote and the fact that it’s an absolute bastard to control.

In fact the full danger of me being behind the controls of the helicopter meant that I was banished to the spare room to try and perfect my skills without taking out a family member.  The “you’ll take somebody’s eye out with that!” argument wasn’t won by myself when I pointed out that it *WAS* an attack helicopter.

Push the controls upwards and the helicopter shoots up and nearly hits the roof. Suddenly letting go of the control lever to stop it hitting aforementioned roof and it slams into the floor.  Buggar!  Push controls gently upwards and the helicopter lifts 4 foot off the floor and starts rotating in an annoying circle.  Looking down at the remote control for the “rudder trim”, as I remember the instruction sheet mentioning something about this, and the little bastard exits stage left and out the window onto the balcony.  “Ooooh shit!”

The little helicopter was never designed to fly outside, and it certainly wasn’t designed to hover from 6 floors up a block of flats.  As I run to the balcony it gave me one last look and started its rapid descent downwards.  I think the roadrunner type “meep meep” was of my own imagination.

Lunging over the plant pots that lined the balcony and desperately pointing the remote control at the gravity aided bit of plastic I managed to at least check the descent to a plummet.

I don’t think the shouted “Sorry!” to the bouffant haired old dear, tottering along the street outside, did much to calm her nerves.  I don’t think she appreciated the last desperate act of skill that changed the kamikaze dive bombing into a crash landing into the bush next to her.  I also don’t think the liberal sprinkling of potted plant dirt in her face as she looked up was also much appreciated.

My grasp of Spanish is basic, to say the least, but I got the gist of her feelings.  “Yeah, yeah, and that’s for the armada” I muttered after her angrily retreating frame, and started the long trek down the stairs to retrieve the errant present.

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!