Freshly Spilled Thoughts

Dean’s Zoo Chronicles. This time it’s a picture of a majestic primate…

I narrowly lost to this fella in an arm wrestle:

You’d never guess we’re almost in December, would you…

When you’re not even as far into the week as ‘hump day’ yet…

This song was going around in my head earlier…

We’ve only just begun to live
White lace and promises
A kiss for luck and we’re on our way

I’ve always loved Karen Carpenter’s voice.

‘Cause Solitaire’s the only game in town lol.

Anyhoo…

I started watching Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ the other day and I think I LIKE it.

Horror is one of those genres I’ve got more into over time. I remember in my 20’s I had a Playstation and I bought Resident Evil, which is a proper eery game (especially with that clock ticking). I started off very intrigued until the dog smashed through the glass when I was playing it in the dark, at which point I thought, “F*ck that”, switched it off and didn’t go down the yellow brick road of Horror again for quite a while.

I have found that people into Horror are some of the nicest people you could ever meet. Funny how that works isn’t it.

I wonder if the ones into Rom Coms are the ones you have to worry about (lol). One of my friends guilty pleasures is a good old rom com. Me? I am open minded about it all as I like anything with Vince Vaughn in and I’ve seen okay films in this genre with the likes of James Gandolfini and Ben Stiller/Aniston in.

Office Space is one of my favourite comedy films of ALL time and even that does have a rom com’ish element in it, whilst also being a stellar film about working at Initech (Is it good for the company?).

Going back to the Horror genre…

Another one of my mates brothers, went out with one of the actresses that was in Wolf Creek. He just plonked that into a conversation as an incidental thing.

The film Hugh Grant was in most recently is a decent psychological horror, even if it is also very creepy.

The only bit that bothered me in Paranormal activity was the bit where the girlfriend got out of bed and stared at the bloke for several hours before getting back into bed again.

That is wrong on so many different levels. A bit like crime in multi-storey car parks.

The worst though, was the time I watched a horror film on my own, then realised I’d left the back door open at night for the entire duration of the film. Bothered? Put it this way, I checked the wardrobes.

Okay, let’s do Monday. We’ve got this, with a bit of help from the Monster Mash…

A picture I took of a giraffe at Twycross Zoo…

(no further explanation required)

I always used to buy S. Pellegrino mineral water and take it to the gym with me.

Someone said to me, “Blimey Dean, you’re a bit posh with your Pellegrino aren’t you?”

I’d never thought about it until he said that. It was at that moment I stared at the bottle and felt slightly posher…

“Yes, it’s Pellegrino. None of this common Volvic for me thanks.”

All of a sudden, I felt vindicated by my unconscious consumer purchase of Pellegrino. I think I’d take it onto a battlefield with me, as I’m of the opinion it adds a certain something when the life-enhancing properties of mineral water are in a pleasing green bottle.

You can be filled with doubt in conflict, when on Volvic and such like, but who’s going to chance their arm against someone that drinks S. Pellegrino mineral water?

Only the bravest of foes, I should say.

“Don’t mess with him, he drinks S. Pellegrino“, they’d bellow.

News of this would spread far and wide.

All I can say is I’ve never ran into trouble carring a bottle of this stuff with me, so it must be my equivalent of a lucky charm.

I put the bottle down on the treadmill the other day and someone next to me looked at it. Probably in awe (lol).

Anyway, that’s my Silly Sunday update.

Here’s a picture of me without any mineral water…

‘Cause the water in Majorca don’t taste like what it oughta.

A funny thing happened to me last night. I was walking out to my car and I had something resembling a flashback in time (or a feeling) of somewhere I used to go regularly, but haven’t really been that way for many years.

I had no intention of going there of course as I was heading somewhere else. I was also a bit pressed for time, which makes the next bit more unexplicable.

I got in the car, turned on the radio and set off. Without realising it I was in autopilot mode, some 20 minutes later with no recollection of the route for that chunk of time, other than the fact I was automatically half way to the place I had the flashback about.

When I “woke up” again, I actually laughed out loud at my autopilot ineptitude. Took a U-turn and retraced my route like someone coming back from a trance.

Honestly, I totally believe those stories where someone says they went out to get milk and somehow ended up halfway to Scotland.

[Set Scene]: Bloke from Birmingham drives to Scotland after just nipping out to grab some milk from the shop down the road.

“Where you been, hun? I thought you were just getting milk?? Did you go to a farm to do it by hand or something? You’ve been gone 14 hours and now we have no teabags left either. We’re also down 1 bottle of wine, 2 dinners and a whole evening.”

“Erm. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’ve completely lost the plot… *deep breath*… Edinburgh.”

*hyooge exhale*

“Edinburgh!!!??? Who are you? Michael Palin?”

“Yes, I thought I’d brush up on my Scottish. Och aye! The good news is I’m back now and I got the milk. Ta-da!”

*presents quite a lovely 2 litre bottle of semi-skimmed*

“I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a rather fine bottle, if ever there was one.”

“Right, that’s it. From now on we make do with Marvel.”

Might as well grab a haggis while you’re there, that’s what I say.

Have you ever done that? Drive somewhere on autopilot without consciously intending to, I mean…

(Bonus points if you grabbed a haggis en route)

I drove to my old place of work once as well once, instead of going to the supermarket.

Imagine walking in, sitting at your old desk after years away, and just cracking on with your day like nothing happened. There must be people who’ve done that or been very close to it.

It’s somewhat reminiscent of  the old Fools and Horses episode where Del tells Rodney, “Bruv, you don’t live here anymore”. At which point, he snaps back into the land of the living and rushes back to Cassandra (who was no doubt waiting for him with a rolling pin).

Amazing how a memory spark can hijack your entire car journey without asking permission first.

Seeing as it’s cold enough to freeze the blue bits off a blue tit, I think it’s high time I threw in a few ‘cold’ jokes. When I say cold, I don’t mean the audience.

“It’s so cold out I just keyed someone’s car with my nipples by accident.”

“It’s so cold out, the local flasher has resorted to describing himself and leaving the rest to the imagination.”

“It’s so cold out, the cows are farting snowflakes.”

And if you think those are bad, you should see the 100 or so I decided against adding here 🙂

Let’s play out this Saturday update with Roy Orbison’s ‘I Drove All Night’.

In my case, I drove all night just to end up where I should have been in the first place…

I never wrote this but it’s true:

“Your mind is the soil, and your thoughts are the seeds.

Shame about Mani from Stone Roses. RIP. Here’s what is probably my favourite Stone Roses track.

It’s called Fools Gold and it was featured in the series, “This Is England” by Shane Meadows…

Twas a nice Thursday afternoon interlude…

…freezing but sunny.

Hue’s graffiti was still there…

I sometimes see deers run out of here. This is like a local version of Narnia…

Just me today though 🙂

One for the road at the end…

Burn it off tomorrow!

As Ice Cube once said, “Today was a good day.”

Old pic of me with my grandfather. I didn’t know this photo existed for years.

One day I will write about him…

I’m working until lunchtime today, then I am taking the afternoon off.

I quite fancy having a stroll somewhere out in the open, catch a few rays while we got ’em, then grabbing a meal from a pub.

Ideally steak but without Ed Sheeran…

…sounds like a plan, Dean.

I watched a bit of Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here again last night.

Ruby Wax gets a ‘pass’ in the camp because of her comedy. Look how she brings the women together. Hilarious and I remain a fan.  Comedy brings people together.

Jack Osbourne is a surprisingly well sorted bloke, given his background. Very grounded guy, all things considered.

Kelly Brook continues to arrange/display her top shelf at every opportunity, undeterred by the creepy crawlies.

Lisa Riley confessed to routinely drinking 3 bottles of Malbec a night and 40 cigarettes before going cold turkey. Wow, that is insane. I’ve only ever drunk that much once in my life and I never intend on repeating it.

When I got up the next day, the people I was with thought Lazarus had risen and somehow I still managed to eat breakfast.

Imagine drinking 21 bottles of Malbec a week and saying, “I enjoy the odd drink” as 20 odd bottles clink their way into the recycling bin :). She must be in the Malbec drinkers ‘Hall of Fame’.

I don’t know how someone holds down gainful employment with a routine like that. Amazing what stressors the body can deal with just to ensure survival.

I often see a bloke going up the road chuffing away on a cigarette like Andy Capp, on his way to the pub. I get the social aspect, but it’s no way to live is it. In my head he’s a walking cartoon strip.

Martin Kemp – Didn’t realise he’d had two brain tumours in the past. Caused a bit of a shockwave in camp and I don’t think he shared it for attention either. With his hairdo I wasn’t expecting to feel emotional, but there it is. I doff my cap to Mr. Kemp.

The sun has got his hat on hip-hip-hip hooray
The sun has got his hat on
And he’s coming out today

My lyrics aimed at a UK audience would sort of spoil it….

Don’t forget to also carry an umbrella
Because it may well rain, while you’re filled with glee
And if you find yourself getting caught short
You should have written this lyric down, by me.

It’s a toss-up what my favourite red wine is but this one comes pretty close:

It’s an Italian dry red called Valpolicella Ripasso, and I first stumbled across it about three years ago in an Italian restaurant.

If you look in supermarkets there’s usually only one or two brands of it on the shelf.

We’d spent ages trying to find somewhere to eat because everywhere was fully booked, but we walked into this place on a whim and somehow got a table. The food was unreal. One of those nights where everything just lines up.

The waiter was typically Italian and managed to insult most of the table by recommending dessert while pointing at his own belly. He even acted it out, which sent everyone with a bit of waistline anxiety into mild panic.

You know when you go into a restaurant and unexpectedly end up having the perfect evening? The kind where the food lands on the table and you just think, “Yes. This is it.”

I definitely savoured the Valpolicella. Ended up pleasantly three-sheets-to-the-wind by the end of the night. Worth it though.

I once bought a bottle for a mate and accidentally grabbed the most expensive one on the shelf because I was in a rush. I asked him what it was like and he said he didn’t know because his wife drank it.

Typical. I bet it was gorgeous. Is wine-envy a thing? It should be.

Next time we all ended up in another restaurant for steak. Now, it’s hard to get steak wrong, but they somehow managed it. They also played Ed Sheeran all the way through the meal which, in my opinion, is a form of purgatory.

One of us complained and they refunded the entire meal, which was well over £100. I didn’t expect that to happen given that I still ate all of mine. That was the funny part, handing the plates back like the food was sub-par when I’d polished mine off. You didn’t even need to run it through a dishwasher 🙂

Welcome to Hump Day! We made it 🙂

Today it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, isn’t it.

I used to work with a guy who called Wednesdays “Island Day”, because he said it was like being marooned.

“Marooned on an island?”, I asked.

“Yes. Wednesday is like being marooned on an island. The feel-good factor from the last weekend is a fading memory, and the next one coming up is still too far off to get excited about.”

“Island Day, huh?”

Safe to say he lived for weekends.

Sometimes I’d grab him a drink from the canteen. When I asked what he wanted, he always replied, “I don’t care as long as it’s wet.”

(I often wondered if he used the same line walking into a bar.)

“Just something wet then?”

“Yes, that’ll do.”

Unfortunately I could never find any otters in the canteen.

Nothing worth having ever came easily and you only get out what you put in.

Another late session. Trying to get better, one brick at a time…

Life is like a box of chocolates…

12 years layoff from running. 3 year journey through fire to adapt back to it.

Car crash in 2021, which was a write-off that aggravated matters, but I’m
not far off a flow state now.

Nobody will ever know what I went through.

But now I’m back and nothing can stop me.

See ya in the next one.

You know, I was thinking earlier how magical moments can come from the seemingly mundane. The stuff you don’t expect, that just arrives on its own.

Like when you look up into the sky and unexpectedly see a shooting star.

A shared moment that doesn’t need explaining because the other person just gets it.

Or a lit Catherine wheel detaching itself from the fence and enthusiastically spinning down the garden toward everyone in attendance. You can’t tell me a chaotically wayward Catherine wheel isn’t filled with energy and wonder.

Or a fallen penguin picking itself back up without needing a “Penguin Erector” to assist. That hypothetical employee can happily go off and become an archaeologist or zoo keeper now.

Or Rudolph managing to stay above the houses despite being directed by Santa after he’s been on a pub crawl.

All magical in their own ways. I won’t even go into the coin-from-behind-the-ear trick. 🙂

If you ask someone what their dream job is, they’ll often reply with things like astronaut, archaeologist, pilot or zoo keeper.

People choose them because of the high level of satisfaction associated with doing them.

On TV the other day I heard someone say:

“My dream job if I wasn’t doing this would be picking up penguins that have fallen over on the ice”

Ooh! I never thought about that before. The notion that penguins can’t get up by themselves.

I looked it up and it’s just a myth, so we can all relax. There aren’t thousands of stranded penguins needing our help and there’s no such job in real life as a “Penguin Erector”.

That isn’t any kind of double entendre, by the way.

Shame really. I think it would be quite a noble pursuit coming back from work and your other half saying:

“Did you have a good day hun? How many was it today?”

“I helped 54 penguins off their derrieres today, so they can lead an upright and  fulfilled life”

“Well done. There’s a slice of pie waiting in the oven.”

As for my dream job, I’d have liked to have been one of those people who went out looking for treasure on sunken boats. I quite fancy getting hold of a worthwhile chest, if you’ll pardon the turn of phrase.

There’s a good film with Jude Law in where they go out in a delapidated submarine with a motley crew, looking for gold. Search it up!

Have you noticed in shops like the small Sainsbury’s, you have security guards pretending to walk around, looking as if they are minding their own business, but really they are checking to see if you are stealing precious merchandise.

You notice them looking at you, then become conscious of the fact they think you could be a thief.

This is a behaviour modifier, even when you’re doing nothing wrong.

I was looking for porridge oats, but I couldn’t find them. After a while I thought, “If I stay here much longer he’ll think I’m nicking the porridge”

Like that’s the worst thing a human could be doing at 7pm on a Monday evening.

Then I thought, “Hold on, who gives a shit. I’m not actually nicking anything. I’ll stay here as long as I like”

So I stayed there in the aisle for longer on purpose, just to see if he would circle back like a shark in infested waters.

He sort of pretended he wasn’t looking and walked around the back of the aisle before glancing over like a really poor Sherlock Holmes.

In the end I decided to just the buy the porridge I’d found because that’s what I went in for.

I might start wearing a badge that says, “I only steal jars of coffee if the price is unreasonably high. Fair prices for honest shoppers“.