Freshly Spilled Thoughts

Pretty cool pixel art…

Would you take the Blue Pill or Red Pill?

People can be so specific.

Like the ones that say: “Ooh, if you’re under 6 foot then don’t bother.”

Then a guy rocks up who is 5ft 11 and a half inches.

What do these people do? Get out a tape measure?

“Oh I’m sorry. To the naked eye you seemed perfect, but the tape measure doesn’t lie. If you could go away and spend four weeks on a medieval torture rack getting stretched out, I’ll reconsider.”

The height thing always amuses me, because it’s psychological anyway.

Approximately only 14% of men in the UK are 6ft or over so that means 86% are surplus to requirements based on this criteria.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a comic genius or an expert at Judo, if you are under 6ft you’re running at an 86% filter. The solution of course is to walk around on stilts. You can thank me later.

“Did you meet him?”

“Yes.”

“Was he at least 6ft as per your strict and unswerving criteria?”

“He was 8ft 2″ actually. People kept staring at us. I felt like I was auditioning to be an Oompa-Loompa in Willy Wonka’s factory.”

“Ha ha. Be careful what you wish for I guess”

Don’t get me wrong, I do ‘get’ the whole, “I don’t want to be taller than him when I’m wearing high heels thing“. The easy solution again there is just to get him to wear high heels as well… just seems obvious.

*Chortle*

So I sort of get it, but the 6ft” (conveniently round numbered) cut-off is mercenary just like nature is, except if you’re Tarzan you can swing through the jungle, even when you’re a short-arse.

Here’s a real life example without the height hurdle added:

The person born with brown eyes lets out a big sigh. This was closely followed by the chap with green eyes who was close with no cigar.

At least he can buy a packet of Rolos, get a tattoo and take up hiking just to tick off superficial boxes constructed by whimsy.

People think they know what they want.

Until they meet it.

Or miss it by half an inch.

I’ll do anything for a kebab…

But only if it’s a good one.

Pilic Kebab in pitta bread with salad and a dash of chilli sauce = SOLD!

I don’t do Doner’s though, because I know what triglycerides are.

My favourite fish and chip shop that sold these has gone under.

I am a bit traumatised by this fact, but the world keeps turning.

You can take our trees but you can’t take our pilic kebabs. They will live on.

Sometimes the most terrifying sounding things are not actually that scary.

For example, I’ve been on the world’s fastest zipwire over a quarry at what must have been somewhere near 100 miles per hour.

Scary much?

Only the anticipation/build-up. The actual thing itself is more cinematic than anything else.

The thing I went on before that was actually scarier. It involved running off a blind ledge wearing a harness and then whizzing around on the equivalent of an aero skelter.

To prepare for the zipwire I used to look over an aqueduct bridge above a canal. Climbing up to look over it always gets me.

I understand people that want to feel alive by flirting with potential disaster.

Me?

I can get the same adrenaline rush running up a hill like Kate Bush, so I’ll stick to that.

I used to love theme park rides until I went on an insane Waltzer ride one day at a gypsy fair. It lasted 5 minutes and I thought I was going to have a coronary.

It was so bad I was jealous of people having lovely conversations on the periphery while it was taking place.

I’ll quite happily hold the bags/candy floss and let someone else go on it, thank you.

At the bottom of the perilous ski slope you’ll find me with a glass of Primitivia and a look of contentment. I’ll have already trained for an hour earlier in the day

That’s all I need. People do these things to feel more alive, but I already do. Nothing missing.

I don’t BEEP very often.

When I’m driving in the car I mean.

It takes quite a lot to get a BEEP out of me.

One day I did engage in a bit of beepery, when someone dangerously stopped dead in front of me for no apparent reason.

No signal. No warning. He just stopped.

Then he turned left and parked up on his driveway.

The red mist descended and I BEEPED the shit out of him.

I let it all out, which was nice, then I calmed down and continued onwards.

There was a lag in this guys brain between realising someone had beeped him and responding, so a few seconds later he beeped as well, even though it was his fault.

I looked in my rear view mirror and this looney-tune was sitting on the driveway parked up, facing his own garage. Beeping repeatedly.

“You beeped me so I’ll beep you back,” was his modus operandi.

I laughed at the absurdity of it.

Later I am playing pass the parcel and musical chairs with him. He doesn’t know why he’s playing, but he loves it.

Nicholas Lyndhurst liked one of my posts today.

It’s up there with nearly doing a deal with Shannon Briggs (I got the offer at least). Let’s Go Champ.

I also once almost ran over Alison Hammond when she was crossing the road.  She was oblivious to this peril.

Last but not least, I once saw Gary Newbon standing outside Marks & Spencers in Solihull…

… and a presenter from 5th Gear used to come into my gym every Sunday evening.

Apparently it was also full of famous footballers at one time but I didn’t know that because I know sweet FA about football 🙂

If I was talking to Ronaldo I’d be none the wiser. I was in the same English class as Graham Potter though and he nearly got the England job.

No sign of Christopher Walken yet though and that’s all that counts.

I know someone that went on a blind date…

When the date had finished the bloke got in his car and literally wheelspan out of there. Smoke was coming off his wheels.

“How did the date go?”

“He wore out two car tyres trying to get away”

“Sounds promising. At least it’s an improvement on the four last time”

“Let’s hope the next one rides a unicycle.” 

I think it was AOL IM or MSN Messenger that used to tell people in a chat that the other person was typing.

Seems like a great idea in theory. WhatsApp has it now as well of course.

They added it without asking us if we wanted it…

Have you ever been in a chat, seen someone is typing something, then they stop.

The thought process goes a bit like this:

“Ooh… they’re typing something”

“I wonder what they’re typing about. It must be something really worthwhile because that bubble almost looks like it’s here to stay.”

“So thoughtful writing such a well considered message before pulling the trigger. You can’t put a price on that.”

“They seem to be typing for a long time. Why don’t they just hit send? What are they writing? The Magna Carta?”

“The bubbles have stopped. They must have deleted the thing they were typing. Everyone’s an editor these days”

“What were they going to say? It seems more interesting now it hasn’t materialised”

“Anything? No?”

“Nothing. Hmmmm.”

“It was important enough to start typing it, now they’ve thought better of it”

“Damn them to hell”

“Maybe they just slipped on the keyboard interface. Yes, that will be it. They are just so clumsy aren’t they.”

“But it might not have been?”

“I bet they were going to say something I wouldn’t like and saved themselves at the last moment”

“Absolute bastards. “

“I’m getting carried away”

“It was probably something lovely… or at least flowery”

“They know I don’t like it when they heap too much praise upon me”

“Holding back on all that waxing lyrical stuff to spare my blushes. I respect that”

“Maybe they think they get charged when they send anything. Should I tell them it’s free?”

“When they open their wallet a moth flies out I bet”

“I am going to change their saved name on WhatsApp to “Bubble Typing Tease””

I noticed something the other day…

It’s true what they say: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Allow me to explain…

We’re living in a short attention span economy.

You might blame TikTok/Social Media or it could just be people have so much content vying for their attention that a wall of text just isn’t going to be able to compete with a reel or a photo.

So now I just send pictures of me swinging around a pole instead. It’s going down well so far but the high heels are taking some getting used to.

Speaking of high heels…

There was a normal looking bloke on TV the other day who had a world record for the fastest marathon run completed in high heels. This is no word of a lie.

Imagine that… running over 20 miles wearing them. He must have consumed at least 6 cans or Irn-Bru before attempting such a thing.

If I held that world record I would sign up with Cameo immediately and position myself as the High Heeled Marathon Champion that loves to wish people happy birthday.

The guy in Inbetweeners has made £1.6 Million pounds doing this already. He records most of them lying in bed.

People can say what they like about the internet, but for anyone with a sprinkling of influence, the world is your lobster.

Just ask Arthur Daley.

Zante ’98 (I’m in the middle in the top photo and far left on the bottom one)…

There’s a new piece of kit at my local gym called “The Perfect Squat Machine”.

A bold claim if ever there was one.

Biomechanically it’s surprisingly good, but it’s also hard going.

Stuff rocks in your back pocket, hard.

Half the women in the gym these days are obsessed with anything that targets their glutes.

You know on Deal or No Deal they call it “The Dream Factory”?

Well, my gym should just be renamed to: “The Glute Factory” as that would be pretty accurate.

Even a female personal trainer said to me the other day, “Most of the women training in gyms now are all about THIS”.

She then turned around and pointed at her own ass as some kind of testimonial proof.

As I got on the machine, a woman looked quite disappointed that I was already on it as she rocked up with her water bottle. If anything gets in the way of glute development they do have a tendency to get quite disgruntled.

Turns out she wasn’t after it at all. And I know why – I have big red compression marks across my shoulders today because of the beasting this machine gave me.

I got carried away again, even though I never feel like I am at the time.

24 HOURS later you’re walking around like John Wayne, wondering why you fell for the lure of the Perfect Squat Machine to begin with.

You know you have problems when you hang onto the stair bannister like your life depends upon it 🙂

The only TV show I’ve truly been sad about when it ended was Sopranos.

It sort of kept me company over the years. At first I felt like I had discovered it myself. I turned the TV on late one night in the 90’s and this gangster programme came on. I had no idea what it was but I found it slow-burn compelling viewing. After a couple of series I was hooked.

I used to work with this woman called Kerry, who is the only person I’ve ever met that was as into it as myself.

We’d talk about Sopranos being one of the greatest TV shows ever made.

Indeed it is… and it was.

** Spoiler Alert – I don’t normally do this but Sopranos ended in 2007 so anyone reading this has had nearly 19 years to watch it. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t read any further **

I hated the ending at the time, but it was fiendishly smart of David Chase to let the viewer interpret what happened when everything faded to black.

Some people thought the viewer got whacked and not Tony. Others believed that a hitman took Tony out.

There’s even a school of thought that none of it happened at all and it was some kind of dreamscape.

Discussion forums online love that kind of thing. We’ll never know the actual answer and it doesn’t really matter. Chase intended it to be that way.

In real life mafia you’re here one minute and gone the next. That’s why they are so paranoid. I watched a programme once about one guy that was so on edge, he ended up chasing after a vacuum cleaner salesman down the road and bumping him off. It’s enough to put you off selling Dysons isn’t it. Another one used to sleep in a secret bedroom that he accessed by crawling through an oven (of all things).

Imagine going home and being so shit scared, you think crawling through an oven to go to bed is the way to live your best life (lol). I love the idea of going through a wardrobe into Narnia but you can keep your pizza oven that leads to the main bedroom.

Gandolfini was definitely one of the best actors of that era and probably up there with Brando. I suppose we should be thankful he was here long enough to complete that body of work, but it still seems too fleeting to me.

It takes a lot for me to reach out to someone these days.

I used to do it without really thinking. Some might say even with an edge of excitement.

I used to think it was nice to be spontaneous, but energy has its own vibration and you can’t just fire things off willy-nilly.

Because of this, on the whole, I now believe things that are meant to happen will not pass us by if our minds are open to it anyway.

Do I think certain things are already mapped out for us? Kind of.

I guess I am just a bit more philosophical about life now.

I still think you have to do something for the universe to agree or disagree though.

Nobody ever had a call from Camelot as a result of staring at the wallpaper. Know what I mean.

Anyway… today gave me a bit to think about.

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, “Lord, I just don’t care”
But you’ve got the love I need to see me through

Sometimes I see that the boy is just too rough
And things go wrong no matter what I do
Now it feels like life is just too much
You’ve got the love I need to see me through

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, “Lord, I just don’t care”
But you’ve got the love I need to see me through

Time after time I say, “Oh Lord what’s the use?”
Time after time I say, “This just won’t do”
But sooner or later in life the things you love you lose
Just like before, I know I call on you

Justin Lee Collins was once big news on TV. He had the Friday Night Project with Alan Carr and all those “Bring Back…” shows, where he tried to get the original cast back together at the end.

When he did the Grange Hill one I was hoping he’d be able to get hold of Gonch (my favourite ever Grange Hill character) but alas it was not to be. Nobody can get hold of the actor that played Gonch which makes him even more mysterious and adds to the myth and legend of the man. It’s like trying to find a unicorn out in the wild.

Gonch with Hollo using his mum’s bread in the cupboard, then selling toast to classmates is still stuff of legend as far as I’m concerned…

I can see how some people may have found his energy too much, but I always liked him and thought he was good value.

Then 2010 came along and he was a bit of a tit after a  relationship, and possibly even in it, which instantly villified him and ensured we didn’t really see him on the TV screens ever again.

Which I think is a shame. Everyone deserves at least one chance unless they’ve done something truly terrible and let’s face it, most humans have been a tit in one form of another at some point in their lives.

Cut a long story short, reading his randomness on Twitter is one of the main reasons I even stay on there. I’m not really a social media person, I prefer my own thoughts without things being rammed into my face about where someone parked or the latest boring bit of political news. I only want politicians to stay in if they can do funny things like duck well when shoes are thrown at them by the audience.

Trump is also basically in the comedy business, but he doesn’t like to talk about it and is using politics as a foil. Instead he just does totally insane things after breakfast like deciding he wants to snap up Greenland while it’s available at a discount.

If I do watch the news it’s only to see if there’s been a good murder and even those are hard to come by these days.

Going back to Justin Lee Collins, he has a similar surreal sense of humour to me and looks at the world in a slightly different way.

I should really only follow JLC, Ross Noble and Bob Mortimer, come to think of it.

And he likes the underdog in the form of Wimpy, which is all tongue-in-cheek and a bit silly, but I like that as well.

Bring back JLC and give peace a chance. Everyone loves a good Wimpy.

You know those sleeps you have as a kid that are so good you don’t want to move in the morning. Obviously, that makes you late for whatever you’re doing that day, but you’re a kid at the time so who cares.

As an adult those ‘sleeps you tell people about’ (lol nice segue there Dean) are a bit harder to come by.

Thankfully I’ve never really had too many problems getting to sleep. I just don’t think of anything, (which comes easily to me :)) and I’m off into the land of nod before you can shake a pillow.

So I’m not talking about ‘normal sleep’ here, this is for people that have aspirations of taking it to the next level. If you crack this, you can then plan day trips to the moon and that sort of thing.

So without further ado, here’s what I’ve found so far that makes your sleep so good, you’ll want to show off about it.

1) Exercise – Pretty much a non-negotiable. I tested this out and you have to do some kind of intense exercise that day to set this up (I do running or some kind of cardio + weights on the same day). I think your body goes into a deeper recovery mode and releases growth hormone (something along these lines).

2) L-Tryptophan – 1 x 500mg capsule can be enough. 1000mg is fine as well. If you’re taking one, take it preferably on the evening. L-Tryptophan basically increases melatonin levels and also acts as a mood booster, which will make the postman or the milkman think you’ve either won the lottery or have a new love interest. It’s just an amino acid so you won’t turn into The Incredible Hulk or anything or grow an extra leg.

3) No Alcohol – Either don’t drink any alcohol (the best) or have a very small amount if you have any at all. If you have a glass of wine or something, this still works but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you go mad and drink Oliver Reed under the table, your body won’t go into a deep REM sleep cycle and you’ll have shagged up any hope of a beautiful nights sleep. If you held a gun to my head I would say stick to the Volvic.

Tonight was cold, wet and miserable… but she’s good with the kids.

Chortle… the old gags are the best (don’t blame me for that joke, blame Lee Mac).

The devilishly handsome bloke in the photo is actually me and not an AI doppelganger.

At 12 O’Clock I will turn into a pumpkin. You heard it here first.

A song just came on the radio and it’s sent me back about 25 years even though it’s now over 35 years old…

It’s one of those songs that I always forget all about until the next time I hear it….

There She Goes by The La’s, which is up there with Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne, but for different reasons:

Enjoy your stay in 1990.

Every time I buy a packet of Kallo Organic lightly salted wholegrain low fat rice cakes (JESUS, what a tongue twister that is), I open them and get carried away. They seem so inconsequential that you can just plough through them like a farmer in a field.

LOL it’s absolutely bloody fatal.

“Yeah, I bought these because they are healthy and low in calories?”

“Really? How many in a pack? About 30 or something?”

“Yeah. I guess”

“How many do you eat in one sitting? Two? Three?”

“Erm. 30 in a pack you say?

I have to stop buying them I think. It’s like a cocaine addict saying they’re fine with one line and then ending up with his face buried in a mountain of the stuff like Al Pacino in Scarface.

Excuse me, I just OD’d on Rice cakes. What can I say, I’m living on the edge 😉

Sometimes I miss the old gym crew. It was like Cheers but with weights at the time…

We all look mad in this photo.

So much fun. Hard… but fun.

That gym now costs about £135 a month to be a member so the clientele would be somewhat different.

I’m still a member.