Freshly Spilled Thoughts

You know how some things in your day you just don’t plan?

Like coming face to face with a badger.

I never woke up that particular day thinking to myself, “I hope today I finally have my long awaited badger encounter”

It just wasn’t on my bucket list.

The badger didn’t care though, it was determined to have a rendezvous and it wasn’t taking no for an answer.

That day I happened to be looking out of the kitchen window, staring into space, when all of a sudden I saw something that looked rather powerful coming towards me.

At first I thought it was an escaped dog, until it got closer.

It moved faster than I’d expect a badger to move and it had powerful looking front legs.

It would just be the worst Western ever if we’d met up at high noon. Me at one end and a badger who fancied his chances at the other. Billy the Kid would just piss himself.

Undeterred it covered the whole length of the garden before purposefully darting off into a hedge.

Badgers are much more scary than Harry Hill would have you believe. He called one Tasmin Archer Badger and that made me think they just enjoyed listening to Sleeping Satellite.

I think if a badger jumped out at me from a hedge I’d definitely leg it. You aren’t going to hang around and reason with it are you?

That’s what Timothy Treadwell did with Grizzly Bears and they ate him. He was so deluded about apex predators that he even called them names like “Chocolate”. He used to chat away to them not realising they’d never been arsed to read a copy of the concise Oxford English dictionary.

The same bear ate his girlfriend as well after she hit him on the head with a metal saucepan (I felt more sorry for the girlfriend because Tim probably sold the whole bear thing to her as an ‘experience’). Humans are the meals bears can eat between meals without ruining their appetite.

Me? I prefer Milky Ways ’cause I’m civilised 😉

Before I sound like some kind of part-time Saint, I’m going to begin this entry with a Bukowski quote:

“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
—Charles Bukowski

So with that out of the way, I am going through a phase of trying out alcohol free beer during times the halo hasn’t slipped.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far on my quest:

Leffe 0% – This may be my favourite when the wind is blowing in the right direction. It comes in bottles and it tastes totally different to everything else (they even put cloves in it – nobody does that, not even Ooompa-Loompas). The only downside is it weighs in at more than 100 calories per bottle. It’s a drink you’d have if you had a moustache you enjoyed twizzling, I’d say.

Guinness 0.05% – If you can tell the difference between this and alcohol laden Guinness, you must be of Irish descent. Last time I drank one a leprechaun appeared out of nowhere. Honestly, the most surprising thing for people that try this is that it does actually taste exactly like Guinness. They think it’s wizardry. About 16g of carbs a can and 75 calories.

I told my Aunt it had 0.05% alcohol and she freaked out. “I can’t drink any alcohol“, she said dramatically. “Don’t worry, your body will metabolise that before you’ve even opened the can“, I assured her. She didn’t look convinced.

Ghost Ship 0.5% Ale – Pretty decent with a super cool name. All aboard the ghost ship. It’s not as good as a Bishops Finger, but not many thing are. It flirts with me in Sainsbury’s sometimes.

Side Note: While I’m going down the rabbit hole of suggestive names, here’s a few more I’ve never handled but apparently exist: Lusty Monk, Whiplash IPA and Bare Ass Blond Ale. I don’t know how I’d feel about putting a bare ass blonde ale on the counter and paying for it to be honest. “I just fancied some bare ass this evening” isn’t really something you should ever say to a shopkeeper now is it.

Brewdog Nanny State – It’s super low in calories but I can’t fall in love with it. It does what it says on the tin, but you end up feeling a bit disappointed. A bit like going to a Take That concert I’d imagine 🙂

Brooklyn Special Effects Ale 0.4% – This is right up there taste wise and probably the best ale type out there that has passed my lips. They used to do it in bottles but now it’s in cans. Would go well with a pizza if you wanted to go carb crazy for the evening.

Shipyard Pale Ale 0.5% – Pretty decent again really. They sometimes sell this in pubs (I’m mainly saying that because I drank it in a pub).

Becks Blue – This was the first non alcoholic lager I ever tried. At the time I didn’t think it was that bad, but things have evolved since then.

I’ve tried more, but I can’t remember all the names.

The Top  3 On Dean’s Alcohol Free Podium Are [1]: 

1. Leffe 0%
2. Brooklyn Special Effects 0.4%
3. Guinness 0.05%

Nothing non-alcoholic actually beats alcohol, that’s just a fact of life, so I’d never make such bold claims.

However, if you want to feel bright and breezy the following day, they’re not a bad substitute.

Of course, you can drink water as well if you’re into that sort of thing 😉

Warning: NEVER (never ever ever) drink or buy alcohol free wine. They haven’t got anywhere near perfecting this and it tastes worse than old sock. If you want to drink wine, stick to the real thing. If you ignore these words of wisdom you’ll have to pretend to like it until the bottle runs out.

Wine lovers around the country look at alcohol free wine with levels of contempt usually only reserved for traffic wardens.

[1] I’m classing anything 0.5% ABV or below as alcohol free.

It’s never hump day already.

It is you know…

More humps than a fleet of camels.

If Wednesday was a song it would be Islands In The Stream.

Islands in the stream
That is what we are
No one in between
How can we be wrong?
Sail away with me
To another world
And we rely on each other, ah-ah

Speaking of sailing, I had a soft spot for Nigel & Nippy in A Place In France.

Nippy was a practical, no-nonsense guy grounded in common sense. Nigel was a romantic who had bucket loads of enthusiasm for life and what was possible if you dared to follow your dream.

I always liked Nigel because he threw himself into everything like a kid would, without worrying too much about what could go wrong :). I suspect Nigel never looked up the meaning of the word ‘contingency’ in the dictionary.

Nippy used to just get frustrated with him – very much an A + B = C, type. He didn’t have time for any romanticised notions.

Despite his failings, Nigel was very much so the most likeable of the two and that made you want him to succeed, even when he was chasing after a flying pig.

Somehow these two very different people were friends and they bought a dilapidated place in France together, which they renovated.

Nigel being Nigel, fell in love with the local estate agent about 20 years younger than him (lol).

They did it up and sold it, then Nigel ended up sleeping in a tent and alsorts. Later he set up an Indian restaurant in France, which didn’t work out.

Finally, he sailed off in a boat for about a year with a woman called Susan.

There’s never been anything quite like it on TV, before or since.

The original property they bought and where the dream started, was in Ardèche. These people visited Ardèche and somehow managed to find it:

https://noparticularplacetogo.co.uk/the-ardeche-southern-central-france/

Nigel was a legend, no-doubt no-diggety. His friendship with Nippy was so unlikely it became greater than the sum of its parts as a fly-on-the-wall viewer.

I hoped that wouldn’t be the last we’d have seen of Nigels antics on TV. Sadly he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and left us in 2011 at 58 years of age, which shocked me when I read the news.

Life is a bitch sometimes eh. They never repeated it on TV for years but someone came to the rescue and put the episodes on YouTube (yay).

There’s a book by Ray Bradbury titled, “We’ll Always Have Paris”

That’s a nice thing to be able to say isn’t it…

… you know, in passing:

“Well [insert name here], we’ll always have Paris.”

You can say something like that and do a bit of flouncing. It’s a perfect underline that cannot be topped.

It’s much better than saying, “We’ll always remember the time we shared a Doner Kebab just after the pubs were closed”

Or…

“We’ll always have the time we ran out of petrol on the way back from Stonehenge”

Or…

“We’ll always have that deflated dinghy that we nearly capsized in when we went night fishing in Wales”

Or…

“We’ll always have a spare pair of tights just in case the alternator belt breaks and we need to use it in a makeshift fashion to get home”

Paris has the romance and the intrigue.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is still the perfect Autumn fix because it’s set in Paris.

Strange then, that I’ve never actually been to Paris.

I’ve been all the way through France and Germany. I’ve been on a ski lift in Yugoslavia (as it was known then).

I’ve been to Austria, and spent a day or two in Italy.

But Paris… no.

I can’t say to anyone that, “We’ll Always Have Paris”

So that is something I need to remedy. One of my friends has bought an apartment in Paris, which I guess is what has got me thinking about it.

If you were a starving artist, at one time there would be no better place to be, sipping Absinthe (or “The Green Fairy” as it’s also known) in between paintings as you listened to other raconteurs with arty dispositions.

First though, I suppose I should read that book by Bradbury (I just liked the title to be honest).

A pub near me sells Tera Roja Malbec and it goes so well with steak that it should really be a sin.

And I suppose it is.

So it’s with a heavy heart I’m turning my back on this divine tipple for the next 3 months.

All the best things come with consequences don’t they.

Why is that?

There is no penance for Brussel Sprouts.

Or water that gets filtered through rocks and plonked into plastic bottles.

But enjoyment without sacrifice invariably comes at a price.

You want free dopamine? We’ll have to give you a hangover and make your organs work overtime.

You want it the hard way? You’ll have to run 5km and sweat like an extra cavorting in an Inner Circle music video.

Ah la-la-la-la-long
Ah la-la-la-la-long-long, li-long, long-long
Ooh

There’s a devil on one shoulder and an angel on another.

I’m an angel by day but by night I turn into a creature of indulgence. Keeping the lid on that thing has always been a double edged sword.

Volvic it is then. BORING! 🙂

Or is it? People I know that don’t drink at all seem really happy. This was an alien concept to me.

They had no desire for it. No inclination towards zero cost dopamine, facilitated by an easily filled pint glass.

All these super healthy, high functioning people thriving on H20 as God intended. It didn’t seem very Gen X to me.

How can they not want a bottle of Bud now and again?

Socially I still think it’s a great thing. There’s conversations and times I never would have had without someone pouring that stuff into a glass.

So regret nothing. There’s no need to quit, we just have to take a break from time to time.

And that time for me… is now, with the odd social interlude.

Does anyone remember when chocolate was genuinely orgasmic?

Old Cadbury’s bars were milky units of wonder, so solidly built it was difficult to break them by hand. You had to commit.

I actually used to work in Bournville, back when you could smell chocolate in the air before you even saw the factory.

That was before it was sold off to the highest bidder. Before someone in an ivory tower decided that profit mattered more than the thing itself.

“Our products need more sugar,” they allegedly said.
“What about the milk and cocoa butter?”
“Don’t worry about that. Replace it with palm oil. The hoi polloi will eat whatever we give them and they will jolly well like it.”

And if they had said that, they were right.

It was a quiet turning point, really. Not just for chocolate, but for anything that used to feel indulgent without compromise on quality. Best of luck finding anything as good as that on the supermarket shelves in 2026.

Willy Wonka would need pharmaceutical assistance to get excited about chocolate these days. Even that’s probably been diluted down to the point where consumerss fly at half-mast unless they take two.

Didn’t we all just take Cadbury’s chocolate as it was for granted. The funny thing about human nature is that things like this only feel irreplaceable once they’ve already been replaced with something altogether inferior.

11 years ago, back in 2015, I was minding my own business looking at DVD’s in Sainsbury’s. I was perusing the aisle to see if anything took my viewing fancy.

I don’t recall exactly why, but I was tilting my head, looking at one of the DVD’s on display (probably trying to read something at an angle), when all of a sudden I sensed someone standing next to me with their head tilted as well.

I thought, “Who is this weirdo standing next to me?”

It was one of my friends, who coincidentally happened to be in there. He’d seized the opportunity to take the piss out of my noggin, situated at a 45 degree angle.

“What are you looking for?“, he asked.

“I don’t know exactly. Just seeing if there’s anything good. Are you into sci-fi?”

“Yes I am.”

“Is The Martian worth watching? I haven’t seen that yet?”

“Well it depends. Do you like watching people plant potatoes on Mars?”

“Not really. I don’t mind if there’s an assortment of vegetables, but one foodstuff just isn’t going to hold my attention.”

“Well that’s it basically. A bloke planting tatties on his own and watering them.”

“I think I’ll give that a miss”

“Have you seen Interstellar?”

“No.”

“Well, if you haven’t seen that. Forget everything else, that’s the epic film you need to watch next.”

He actually said it was EPIC. I can think of another four letter word for it.

Now I am a fan of sci-fi. I love the Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury and some sci-fi films so this should have been right up my alley. However, it ended up on my “to watch” list for 11 years until just the other day.

I had high hopes for this film and expected something amazing, so I was fully signed up for some kind of thrill ride into outer space. I rate Matthew McConaughey in films like Gold, but seriously? This guys accent isn’t suited to anyone working officially or unofficially for NASA. It already felt unbelievable to me that a ‘hick from the sticks’ with that kind of drawl would be in a film like this.

No matter, I carried on watching. The next thing I found ridiculous was the manner in which they stumbled into a secret NASA project station where they were planning the next mission, and it just so happened Matthew M was already fully trained up as a pilot to neatly meet this elite requirement . How very convenient – the script must have been written by the same people who make those painting by numbers books.

After a brief appearance from Michael Caine rambling on about how much they needed him to fly off into outer space for years, I was expecting things filled with wonder. Maybe they’d visit other planets and have a chat with other lifeforms or something.

Instead what the viewer is greeted with is an absurd scenario where the crew unexpectedly ages and end up being communicated to in one-way fashion by eternally confused loved ones back home, decades on via the medium of pre-recorded videos that somehow get magically transmitted to a fault. I never worked out why the crew couldn’t just reply and say, “Thanks for your video, I’m having a brilliant time floating around in a tin can“, because the script writers had obviously made the communication a one-way affair. What a load of balls.

It’s like a shit version of Surprise Surprise, but without Cilla Black.

After that it goes from bad to worse, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone other than to say I thought it was about as much fun to watch as being trapped in a lift with Lenny Henry.

For me there were no real redeeming features. I wouldn’t even recommend this to fans of space. It’s one of those films that pretentious critics and me-too movie goers say is brilliant, when it really isn’t all. I actually said out aloud, “I hate this film. Please let it be over soon“, then I cheered when the credits rolled.

The credits were the best thing about it.

Dean’s Verdict:

1 out of 5. 

Interstellar is the most mundane and dreary assembly of space shite I have ever endured. I give this film a mere 1 drinking horn out of 5… and that’s being generous (IMDB don’t know what they’re talking about). I’ve derived more enjoyment from watching Button Moon on TV when I was a kid. I would rather count peas for 2 hours than ever watch this film again. Instead of subjecting yourself to this, check out First Men In The Moon (1964) which is very silly, but at least you’ll have a good laugh at a bloke building a rocket so he can whizz off to the moon and have a jolly good time. And why wouldn’t you?

I quite like semi-ridiculous Horror. Stuff like Severance with Danny Dyer in (I know, you wouldn’t think Horror & Dyer went together would you). A team building weekend that goes bump in the night.

Wrong Turn and The Hills Have Eyes are also in this lane.

The latest one I watched was a foreign one called “Nobody Sleeps In The Woods Tonight”.

Personally, I’ve never slept in the woods on any night (perish the thought). The nearest I got to that was going camping and getting cramp in one leg whilst inside the tent, when I was taking my trousers off. I ended up announcing my sudden affliction before falling onto the sleeping bag in a very unflattering way. One of my friends wore a balaclava and I woke up at one point in the night thinking I was about to be taken hostage by a member of the IRA as he unzipped the tent.

There was someone in our group that thought he was good at comedy. He kept telling us jokes, but his delivery was so bad that every joke fell flat and he came from a part of the UK where humour isn’t a strong point. He was oblivious to all this and seemed to be of the belief that he was a sparkling wit that every good camping weekend/party needed.

So I did end up laughing in the end, but not at his jokes 🙂

I spent 3 days in a tent with a member of the IRA, listening to bad jokes, falling over due to cramp in a confined space and being woken up by a never ending generator. This is why I choose hotels now instead.

Going back to the film…

It was dubbed over with bad accents, which does sometimes make this kind of film more unintentionally comical. The film caught me out with at least two unexpected jump scares.

I can’t say it was a good film as such, but for me it was. I don’t mind them being slightly bad, I know what I’m getting. In these films you know they are all going to get bumped off at some point, but you enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.

The things causing all the mayhem are two brothers who ended up being exposed to some sort of experimental warfare testing. It genetically mutated them, bestowing them with superhuman strength and blood lust. They reminded me of a much darker version of the family that lived in Fraggle Rock.

My favourite character was this teenage kid who had a crush on a girl that had a necklace on with some sort of Terminator type figure attached to it. He cottoned onto this and started doing Arnie impressions to impress her. Which worked and they vibed… bless.

I liked him because he had more personality than the rest of them and was awkwardly geeky, but that just made him more authentic.

In the end the two seemed quite attached to each other, in their own little way, but murder waits for no man and this was a Horror film so you can guess the rest.

I don’t know many drinking horns to give this. It’s an almost 5 on IMDB and was in the top 10 on Netflix for a while.

Objectively I would give it 2.5 drinking horns out of 5.

But for me, I lap this kind of thing up and accept the cheesy nature of it, which bumps it up another half a star to 3 out of 5.

Not a classic, but you know what you are getting and that makes it sorta fun if you’re into that kind of thing.

They did a part 2 of this film, which got much lower scores than its predecessor.

Absolutely pissed it down earlier, but I beat the snow and snuck (is snuck a word? it is now) a session in:

By the time the Summer rolls around I intend to be fitter than I’ve ever been in my life, which isn’t going to be an easy task but I’m mentally signed up for it.

I found one other person in the gym that actually runs like me. The T-Shirt is the big giveaway.

Everyone else walks…

What is that all about? Are people scared of running in 2026? 🙂

At first I couldn’t believe I rushed around seemingly unnecessarily to beat the snow that hadn’t arrived…

Until I looked out of the window less than an hour after I got back (lol)

“Sorry I couldn’t make it to work today. I tried digging my way out of the house to my car but it was all to no avail.”

“What did you do instead?”

“I just ate Hobnobs and milled around the living room.”

“Splendid choice.”

Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Bon Soir.

Soon. To a window cinema near you.

Run errands now before it’s too late.

Tick. Tock.

While I remember…

This one is going back about 15 years. Someone I knew was about to get married and this guy was his best man.

I can’t be any more specific than this and you’ll soon see why…

So let’s get back to this story.

The guy getting married was a regular bloke. He probably ate bran flakes in the morning, went to work and then when the day had finished he no doubt said, “Hi honey, I’m home”, got in the shower and had a normal evening. You know, like most people do in a daily routine.

The other guy, who was the best man at the wedding was not like that. He used to work in a prison and had flashbacks about being attacked in there, which did actually happen. One day someone came up to him from behind to ask him a question and he threw this person over his shoulder (lmao). He was very apologetic about this afterwards.

He was also into Kink/BDSM. Gawd only knows what he got up to. Some of it I can’t write here, but one of them involved mowing the lawns for this couple and then being led around the garden on a chain, whilst wearing a gimp mask. This was normal life to him.

I bet they let the grass get really overgrown as well, then gave him one of those manual lawnmowers just to make it extra hard work.

I guess he was sort of an unpaid gardener that wore kinky outfits or something.

When my mate got married, he said “I wish I had what you’ve got” (what a thing to say to someone on their wedding day)

He was nearly crying about what he was missing out on.

Let’s just analyse this for a second. My mate getting married had a pretty vanilla life. He was getting betrothed to someone, as far as I know, just did regular stuff. He worked a regular job and ate potatoes without adding any sauce.

The best man was one step away from being the gimp in Pulp Fiction.

“Bring out the Gimp.”

“The gimp’s sleeping,”

“Well, I guess you’re gonna have to go wake him up now, won’t you?”.

Not much more to say on this other than it’s made me want to watch Pulp Fiction again now 🙂

Hump day seems to have rolled around fast this week.

But I’m not going to talk about that here…

You know how you assume certain things then something happens that makes you question whether people think or see things the same as you do?

Here’s a case in point. I was speaking to this guy once who said to me, “I can’t visualise faces. I know who someone is when I see them, but I can’t close my eyes and visualise them”.

Until he said that I just assumed everyone could do that, just like I assumed people could replay conversations and moments from years ago in their heads.

Some things that happened years ago seem like yesterday and I can plonk myself right there in that moment if I want to.

I can still go down the garden with my grandfather, picking blackberries and him talking about how badly cultivated his blackberry bush was. I still remember how annoyed he was about it (lol).

I don’t know if that is some kind of ability or it’s the norm when certain things in your life stick with you. I’d love to know how much other people remember and how they recall things because for me it’s like a tape player. When I was younger, my ability to do this was next level shit, but I don’t put as much effort into it these days 🙂

I still remember my first day at school when I was 4 and what I was thinking in the bathroom before I went to school that day. I remember exactly what the bathroom looked like.

Then I talk to someone else and they go, “I don’t remember shit, Dean“. You have to laugh really.

Me and my mate used to jokingly say, “It would be great to be a simpleton because then you wouldn’t have anything on your mind“.

I finished watching Uncut Gems.

A brilliant depiction of a risk taker living on the edge of their emotions as things are unraveling, trying to keep the plates spinning long enough to hit a home run and make everything alright again.

A loser that wants to beat the odds and become the winner that can embrace the good times.

As the Guv’nor once said, “All my life all I’ve had is egg. Where’s the cream?”

I don’t want to say much more about it here. It’s not a relaxing film, but it keeps you wondering how it’s all going to turn out and it’s absolute madness.

I ended up rooting for him because the way he was wired meant he was doing it all the only way he knew how and somewhere in his psyche he wanted to be better.

4.5 drinking horns out of 5 (I kinda loved it).

January 6th is the biggest divorce filing date of the calendar year, so everyone in a rocky marriage will be going home tonight biting their fingernails.

I don’t know where these stats come from but apparently this is a fact.

People spending a lot of time together over the Christmas holidays no doubt plays a part in this decision making as they angrily consume Christmas puddings and pull their crackers through gritted teeth as Wizzard belt out, “I wish it could be Christmas every day” in the background.

Side Note: That song by Wizzard makes 180k per year in royalties which I think is pretty jaw dropping for something written in 1972.

Divorce Roulette is the New Year party game nobody wants to buy in the shops.

Quite some time ago now, I used to mess around making silly videos with a ridiculously grainy webcam (I quite liked the graininess. Who really wants to see themselves in HD anyway?).

I started getting into it, then life sort of got in the way, as it tends to do.

I’ve thought about returning to that kind of thing from time to time because I enjoy randomness, but I usually have more pressing matters to attend to, and this blog is really my only indulgence at present.

Anyway, this is a brief rambling video about flirting on an old dating site called Love @ Lycos during a time when things felt a bit more accidental, innocent and human. The likes of which you don’t really see anymore.

Now it’s all apps, subscriptions, and swiping left or right, which to my way of thinking is basically a casual hookup facilitator with a slick interface. Surely most humans are more nuanced than being funnelled in that manner to a decision about their romantic life and whatever that encompasses.

Back to days of old when knights were bold and paper wasn’t invented…

I seem to recall there being a big TV advertising campaign when Lycos launched, which is probably how I ended up on there in the first place…

I even posted those videos to Facebook at the time. I didn’t give it a second thought back then, until I was at a stag do and people unexpectedly kept coming up to me saying they’d watched them.

When I get time, I might pull some of that old silliness together into a single post. Not as a nostalgia trip exactly, but more as a curated reminder of a time I hit record spontaneously. Doing this stuff was cathartic to a degree, and as I type this now, I realise how easy it is to forget that feeling.

5 days into 2026 already. Will be Christmas again before we know it 😉

My New Years Resolution is not to dream about people I know visiting France (don’t ask).