Boing! That's The Sound Of Spring Having Sprung

This weekend the clocks finally changed, marking the official start of spring. I have to admit to breathing an enormous sigh of relief when this seemingly innocuous event rolls around each year. The problem is that I pretty much hate everything about winter. I'm sure in other parts of the world, winter is a mystical magical time of the year with happy jolly piles of snow everywhere or maybe even just a mild dip in the usual comfortably warm temperatures. In the UK though, it's six or seven months of unrelenting crushing miserable grey drabness. There is only a limited amount of patience I have for muddy grey midday skies and the constant threat of chilly drizzle. I am definitely a summer person. My brain tends to shut down in winter, and despite the fact that there are the same number of hours in the day, most of them aren't really useful in winter, because I'm too busy falling asleep early, waking up late and feeling that there is no point doing anything with my evenings because it has already been dark for hours, so must be nearly bed time by now.

This is why I am so excited by the changing of the clocks. Last night, it wasn't dark until about 7.30pm. By my estimate, that's about two hours of useful time after work. I don't necessarily need to use that time doing constructive gardening or DIY type things. I just need that time to be able to get on with life, and go for walks or even to simply look out of the window and know that the world isn't hibernating. And from here on in, it just gets better and better. In just a couple of months, the part of the day which is allotted as 'day time' will go on for hours after I clock off from work. The world will be my lobster. I will be chirpier, happier and more downright lovely then ever before.

Many of my friends hail from the north of England, and they don't like summer so much, particularly if it's hot. Their physiology is accustomed to bone-chilling frigidity and constant sideways rain. In the heat, they wilt and evaporate. I, on the other hand, cannot survive in low temperatures without the aid of seven jumpers and at least one winter coat. Roasting heat is a doddle though. Crank that business up to anything above 30 degrees celsius and I will start running at peak efficiency.

When Spring finally springs, I know I have all of this to look forward to, and it makes me happy. All I need now is for Britain's notoriously fickle climate to deliver. If it doesn't, I'm moving to the equator where I will set up an iron smelting factory and run a sideline in modelling thermal undergarments and massive padded coats.

Daily Tourettes: Frottage

I 'ave bin poorly

I have been laid up with a horrible throat and also floppy limbs. Ergo I have not thought of much to post. I'm sure I can come up with something soon though.

Because you won't want to see photos of me being ill (despite that fact my camera is now operational again) I have drawn a picture instead.

FEEL MY PAIN!

Daily Tourettes: Butt-rot

I Am An All Terrain Vehicle

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go mountain biking in Sherwood Forest, at the insistence of Girlfriend. We hired a couple of swish looking cycles and headed off into the wild green yonder, after only a mildly wobbly start.

I should say now that I spent an impressive proportion of my formative years stuck firmly on a saddle. Me and my peers would think nothing of heading off for hours and hours at a time, exploring the highways and byways of Kent (my spawning ground) with nothing but a bag of crisps and a Twix for sustenance, and our severely misinformed sense of local geography to guide us. I was at home on a bike. Travelling extremely fast on two wheels was fun, and didn't seem dangerous in the slightest. A bumpy hill was a wonderful opportunity and not a threatening force of nature, presumably set with the explicit task of killing me.

As such, it came as some surprise to me that I was pretty shaky when we started out. I haven't ridden a bike in about 2 years, and haven't ridden on anything other than tarmac for about a decade. I soon got into it though, and had all manner of fun swooping down muddy gorges, hopping over exposed roots and splashing through filthy great puddles. Despite her earlier insistence at how fun it would be, Girlfriend unfortunately did not relish the experience quite as much as I had, and the look on her face as she struggled up yet another impassable slope of damp mud said only one word: Ordeal.

Nevertheless, we pressed on and finished the six mile route in a little over an hour, muddy and exhausted. I found it almost as fun as snowboarding, so I'm anxious to try it again soon. I may even get my own bike if the fancy takes me. I'm going to have to come up with a pretty slick argument if I'm going to have any company for the ride though.

PS - I swear that one of these days I will post some photos. They make blog digestion, or 'Blogestion' so much more pleasurable. Sadly my camera ran out of batteries on the first shot yesterday. Soon though, you shall see me at play in full technicolour.

Daily Tourettes - Fistula

The Hotly Anticipated Comeback Post

So what now? Post number two. That's way harder to write than post number one. That's like when a band releases its second album. It's like you've had so long to prepare your first album that it is a finely honed work of art when it comes out, and you raise the bar so high that when your second album is a hastily prepared mishmash of songs you write whilst sleep deprived out on the road, everyone dismisses you as a flop. Well, I suppose that might be going too far. I've never written an album, and frankly comparing my first post to an overnight musical sensation is something of a stretch. Instead, here is a list of interesting facts about me:

I'm a Pretend Rock Star!
I tell people I play the guitar, when in fact I do so very rarely these days. My heady days of rocking and rolling are unfortunately slipping away. All of my bands are defunct, and all of the musicians I know now live too far away or are too busy to play. One of these days though, I'll slap on some Gene Simmons make-up, crank it up to 11 and give my hamster the show of its life. "Helloooo Richard's Living Room! Are you ready to rock?..."

[Silence]

I don't believe in soul mates, but I have great faith in beneficial coincidence
I stumbled across my girlfriend of five years, who shall henceforth be known as "Girlfriend" (at least until she lets me write her name on the old blogeroo) when I least expected or wanted a new love in my life. Following the sputtering and life-crushing demise of a previous relationship with a student who was younger than me and lived far away, I vowed never again to go for a student who was younger than me and lived far away. And with that I went to a party and met Girlfriend, who was not only a student, but also younger than me by a margin of five whole years, and lived even further away. Somehow my criteria seemed less important in the face of meeting someone so well suited to me in every other way though. Thus we moved all over the country together, bought a house together, and may even get hitched one of these days.

The Mountain Is a Harsh Mistress!
Is that the name of some classical novel or something? I have no idea. Anyhow, I love to snowboard. I generally only get away for a week a year, but I try to make the best of it. Whilst I love the thrill of riding my board very fast over unspoiled terrain with a group of likeminded peers, my honest to goodness real reason for subjecting myself to the Annual Painfest is because nothing in my life has ever struck so much of a chord with me as standing at the top of a snow-covered mountain and seeing forever. It may be a sentiment which reeks of camembert, but I have rarely felt more content than in the rare moments when I can see the world from such a picturesque vantage point. And then I strap myself in and destroy some countryside.

I like to 'boldly go' as opposed to the grammatically correct 'going boldly'
I have now watched so much Star Trek, old and new, that it has ceased to register as a fictional show, and is now an accurate premonition of what the future will be like. If we can all stop shooting each other and trying to earn more money than the next bod, we might find the time to make the odd starship. Our pay-off will be undoubtedly be intimate relations with as many green Orion slave girls as we can stand. Provided Kirk doesn't beat us all to it.

If I believed in Heaven, it would look exactly like Wii Sports Resort
I would play frisbee golf each day with Moses and Raul Julia (Gomez, from the Addams Family movies, for the uninitiated).

I'm a guilty tourist
I think it is a cruel irony that the nicest places to visit in the world are so far away that in order to get there, you need to go in a plane, which will splooj out so many toxic gases that the nice areas will probably all get flooded in the forthcoming waterocalypse when the icebergs all melt.

That'll do for today. I'll be back soon. Hopefully with pictures!

Daily Tourettes - Jizzwipe

This is the first post of the rest of my blog!

Wow! What an amazing new blog I'm writing. Welcome and thank you for either:

a) Following my musings from the get-go
b) Reading through all my old posts (if this is now some time in the future)
c) Randomly pressing buttons and coming across this page

I have been meaning to set up a new blog for a while now, and having seen the impeccable quality of some of the other blogs I have been following recently (big props to the The Sassy Curmudgeon and Hyperbole And A Half) I have been inspired to shift my derriere and start writing. My problem with previous blog attempts is that I have often blogged myself into a corner with existential musings, or blogged myself to sleep with inane ramblings about the tedious details of my daily life. Ergo, I feel some sort of manifesto is in order. Here is the content I will aim for:

1) Only revisit particularly significant events from my life, thereby ignoring all of the daily chaff that occupies my tiny world
2) All ideas to be discussed to their conclusion, because nothing is worse than reading a half-formed illegible musing
3) No destructive existentialism, because frankly it can be depressing, and nobody likes a whiner
4) Free cake for everyone*

(*Please note that free cake may or may not be forthcoming - this item is not contractually binding)

I look forward to bending your ears with tales of what I have been up to, what I want to do, and what I think of stuff. I've got a few ideas in mind to get me started, but I guess the point of a good blog is to develop it's scope over time. I'll start with a couple of excellent life lessons...

1) Eat like nobody's watching
2) Poop like nobody is in the cubicle next to you

Brace yourselves for post number two

Daily Tourettes: Clam-lapper