Freshly Spilled Thoughts

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“.

Years ago I used to follow a blog called “Lost Ball in High Weeds”

To be honest with you, the name is what hooked me in originally.

I came for the name and stayed for the insight.

Eventually, as most blogs do, it went the way of the dinosaur and the webmaster of it sailed off into the sunset.

One day, no doubt this blog will go the same way. I will try to keep it online for a few years at least, but nothing lasts forever.

I’ve got a goal to get to 100 posts. While that’s going on in the background I will write updates in the form of latest thoughts.

Part of my reasoning behind doing all this is partly indulgence without any agenda and the other is that it’s an expressive outlet.

I’m not doing this for fame, notoriety or money.

If I wanted that from this, I’d be going where everyone is and uploading videos and shorts, selling things to a hungry crowd.

This place will never be that as I don’t want anything getting in the way of its purity of intention. Some things are more important than money. Here, you can still come up to me and have a chat  on the table without having to barge past a bouncer for the privilege.

As long as I’m here of course.

The alternative would be to do a Kenneth Williams and not let anybody in on my inner thoughts outside of diaries stacked on a shelf, but life is too short to never let anyone in isn’t it, although I do think an offline journal is a worthy endeavour.

Seeing as I learned to touch type in the dark, I will stick with this for now 😉 

So, rather than dance around a kitchen wearing a purple tea cozy on my head, I’m doing this instead.

Once I hit 100 posts, as I’ve alluded to before, I may stop writing posts and just update my thoughts as and when the mood takes me.

Haven’t quite decided yet. In the meantime, thanks for reading. Did you know you’re awesome?

Well, if nobody told you that today, take it from me that you ARE.

They should put a badge on you and always put the word awesome in front of it.

Okay, tone down that awesomeness now, you’ll just end up dazzling passers by and we don’t want any accidents do we 🙂

Only putting this on here for the unintentional (slightly) comedic element with the bag…

I once said to someone after training:

“Sometimes it feels like I’m in a competition”

He replied, “You are. You’re in competition with yourself.”

If he had a mic he should have dropped it, because he provided clarity to something I was already feeling.

This advice doesn’t just apply to training, it applies to LIFE.

We’re all only ever in competition with ourselves. That’s all that matters and it’s your measuring stick.

I love competing with myself. That’s what gets me up in the morning.

He also once said this, “Here we all are, trying to be better.”

Keep showing up. Keep trying. Keep going. It will come.

Never quit on yourself or on life.

As for training, it creates resilience and reward loops in the brain that things can be achieved by application and repetition.

So there is a crossover effect and you will also be less likely to keel over running to the bus stop.

Armchair athletes will never know what that is.

By star sign, I’m almost on the cusp as a Virgo. Apparently Aug 19-25 is the ‘Cusp of Exposure’ (whatever that is).

You wouldn’t want to be on the Cusp of Exposure in Legs Eleven, that’s for sure. Or would you?

Now I do not belief in astrology star sign stuff in the newspapers. You know the type:

• “You’ll get a windfall this Thursday, just after the milkman has arrived.“
• “A chance meeting on Wednesday will open new possibilities.”
• “While you’re out, the wind will change direction and the owner of an everlasting gobstopper will make themselves known.“

None of that rubbish.

BUT I do believe there are some traits inherent in star signs. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I remain convinced of this.

So, in that sense I am a believer.

However, I do have one hard rule: I would never date a fellow Virgo.

I understand them too well. It’d be like dating a hybrid of myself.

LOL.

Big up all the Virgos out there. I love you all, we’re just not meant to be together romantically.

This song always reminds me of my Nan. She’d be amazed at the world around us now, with mobile phones, WhatsApp and all that malarkey. I can just imagine my Nan wielding the power of a mobile phone, she would never be out of touch with anyone.

She used to love to write letters and it seems I’ve carried that love of writing on. She’s the only person I know that wrote to us when we were on holiday in Spain. Most people wait for a postcard, but not my Nan. She was sending letters across Europe, hoping they’d land within the fortnight. God bless her.

I admired her faith in the postal system abroad (lol).

On one job I was in, I used to visit her in my lunch hour. I’d literally have about 15 minutes to talk to her, then I’d have to piss off back to work again. When I changed jobs and couldn’t visit anymore, she took umbrage.

The next time I saw her, she looked at me and said, “Hello Stranger.”

You’re only as good as your last performance, I guess. Even with your Nan 🙂

Yeah, I do miss her sometimes, but I still feel like she’s around. My nan didn’t tell me she loved me all that often, but she didn’t have to. The ones who loved us quietly are the ones we hear the loudest when they’re no longer with us.

She also always used to say to me, “You’ll miss me when I’m gone“. I lost count of how many times she reminded me of this.

She said it so often, though, that I don’t think she ever actually went. I think my Nan is probably watching me type this right now and either chuckling or editing my words and putting them in her own.

Yeah, you never went anywhere, did you Nan? Not really…

So I’m playing this little note out with her favourite song, and one of mine as well.

Fairground by Simply Red…