The Olympics: Some sports I wish had been / were still included – Part 1

I’ve never really been much of a sportsmen. Of course, at school I played tennis, football, rubgy etc. but really, when you’re 6’3 and have feet large enough to use as a drinks tray, you can call the excercise whatever you like, but really your playing a losing game against gravity.

As such I’m not all that interested in the Olympics. Obviously the wrestling and chasing event was great this year, what with the added enhancements of it involving the Olympic flame and going across so many countries. But it did rather jump the start by going on long before the opening ceremony.

I had intended to write some witty, life-enchancing banter on frivolous sports I think should be included, but then I found some of the sports that have been deomstrated or dropped over the years were much funnier. So…

American Football – Demonstrated 1904 and 1932

Not just put forwards once as an olympic sport, America tried twice to get this one into the end zone. Aside from the obvious advantage of experience that America would have (something Australia tried with trying to introduce Australian rules football in 1956), I’d love to see a China vs America final…

The one in which I don’t get very much sleep and get all grumbly

Firstly, congrats to Rebecca and on a fantastic wedding on Saturday in Southampton.

Sleep, according to Wikicentidia, is ‘a natural state of bodily rest observed throughout the animal kingdom’. Not last night it wasn’t. Not in Southampton. On New Road. Room 126. Probably the first few floors in fact. So probably rooms 101-301.

I’m not good at handling non-sleep. Some people can’t take their drink and become angry-drunks.  Well I become an angry-tired (I’ve only just realised how ironic it is we don’t have a word to describe someone who is tired).

Of course, the body doesn’t actually need sleep. The heart will keep ticking. The stomach will keep churning. The liver will keep… livering. It’s only the brain that needs sleep. I say ‘only’, but it’s actually quite a big thing really. I know this because between 12am and 4:20am-ish this morning I had plenty of time to contemplate this as I stared at the ceiling.

I’m not quite sure how Travel Premier Lodge Inn managed to not notice the half-dozen hippopotamus’ checking in to the room directly above me. I’m guessing they were as bamboozled as I was by their quasi-asian quasi-russian accents as I was and let them in – although I had at least 3 hours of listening material to study. The excellent stereo effect created by some of them being above my room and some of them directly oustide my room in the car park afforded an excellent opportunity to study their words in their natural habitat. A poor opportunity for sleep mind you. Sadly.

These sleep-stealers then set about showering. Constantly. I can only assume they were trying to use the shrivelling effect a super-long shower has in order to fit into some kind of small car. A Daewoo Matiz probably. Yes, that would be the vehicle of choice for hippotomii-sleep-stealers. They were probably lined up taking turns to shrink, prune-like in the shower as it ran CONSTANTLY between 2 and 3:20am. Yes, and the queue would explain the TAP DANCING on that shook through the floor as they jiggled with part-excitement, part-boredom.

Finally, at around 4:30am I heard a car door slam, and off went the hippopotamii with a boot full of my sleep. I assume they were catching an early morning flight. Possibly a train, but I believe trains don’t run anymore unless it’s a Tuesday, there’s a prevailing wind and the humidity conditions are just right.

So, if anyone out there sees some hippopotamii carrying a large cardboard box marked ‘stolen sleep’, please let me know. Don’t approach them, obviously, as they are experienced sleep-stealers who could rob you blind of your sleep before you realise. Just report their whereabouts to me, and I can try to reclaim the sleep that was so cruelly STOLEN from me on August 16th.

Two words people: Be Vigilant.

Picture: What an Eiffel

I’ve been otherwise engaged over the last week or so, so I’ve only had time to process this photo…

Picture: Beach Huts

Southwold Beach Huts

Save the planet – Eat your blusher

“How do I look?”. The four most terrifying words of any relationship. Standing completely without movement, I silently hope that the question is rhetorical because I’m probably going to have prepared a thesis relating Fibonacci’s sequence with Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code before I come up with a peace-prize winning answer to that one.

“You chose the colours. You know, to complement my eyes”. Of course, the eye shadow make-up. But I’m going to have finished a 12,000 word memorised dissertation entitled ‘The social importance of BBC Tv’s Last of the Summer Wine‘ before I understand even the basics of why make-up is needed in the 21st century. I pluck from the air words worthy of Keats and which would leave Byron spitting out a mouthful of recently brewed herbal tea in envy, replying ‘very nice’.

What’s more I’m sure I’m not the only male finding this unfathomable. Walk into any branch of Boots, and you’ll be shown display after display of human colour charts before you get anywhere near the little decanter full of blue liquid on the pharmacist’s counter. What’s more, they can charge £12.95 for a pastel pencil which would cost £1.99 at the artists’ outlet down the road. It’s not just Japan that sees No.7 as lucky I can tell you.

So Gordon Brown is today urging us all to cut down on our food waste. This, we are told will solve the world’s environmental, agricultural, monetary and sociological problems in on go.

Afterall, times are hard at the moment. Most of us need our ‘recommended’ 2.5% pay increase to put towards increased fuel costs, rising food prices, higher interest rates and taxes. Of course, not all of us get our fuel morgage bills paid for on our expense account, but let’s not be picky. I suspect Gordon is a man to lead by example and in 2005 Gordon spent £9k of our money refurbishing our/his kitchen in his taxpayer-supplied home. I’m sure there’ll be a George Foreman grill in there and plenty of tupperware for storing the leftovers.

The ‘green’ argument solves everything these days. We can be charged more for environmentally friendly toothpaste, oranges and car insurance. You can pay an extra few pence per kilowatt on your electricity bill if you want your tv to be powered by sustainable energy. Presumably those wind turbines will be taken off the national grid if Mr Jones at 47 switches back to regular electricity.

Supermarkets do it too. They charge us £5.99 to deliver our shopping to us, to save the carbon footprint of us driving to the supermarket. This of course has the added benefit of a spotty chap called Martin picking us the most ridiculously large turnips half of which, unless you’re having the entire Broadway cast of Cats round for tea, end up in the bin and bananas so passed their best they share a colour with the mud at Glastonbury. He then drives to your house at 80 miles an hour completely unaware that his noisy diesel-powered van is fitted with a second gear and thuds a box of veg down on your doorstep ensuring every bruisable fruit is squashed to the thickness of a five pence peace.

The big sell is, of course, money. And Gordon says the average household can save £8 a week by being more prudent with their shopping. Quite what we can spend that £416 a year on I’m not sure. Flying is out of the question these days. It’ll barely buy you a tank of petrol by Christmas, but then you can’t actually drive anywhere these days because if you are lucky enough to find a patch of road free of congestion you’ll be flashed by a traffic camera. If you want a day out the kids will have to stay at home, as I suspect it’ll barely cover a day-saver to London on the train after you factor-in the necessary physiotherapy bills from Bupa because you had to stand on the roof all the way there because there were no seats.

I suspect he’d recommend putting it into National Savings and Investments accounts.

But I have an idea. A Co-Op insurance survey recently revealed the average 30 year old woman spends £253 a month on beauty products. At least 50% of this must be for the benefit of men – but as I have proved we don’t notice it. The last time men noticed a slightly different shade of lipstick was when the Suffragettes adopted scarlet red in the 1910’s as a way of showing solidarity, and even that only got them part way towards being allowed to vote.

So that’s £126.50 extra saved per month, but I’ve also solved the green argument. Many cosmetics involve the use of Palm Oil at some stage. Friends of the Earth have calculated that 87% of deforestation in Malaysia alone was caused by Palm Oil production between 1950 and the year 2000. Furthermore, primary rainforest converted to palm oil production results in 80-100% of mammals, birds and reptiles living there to be wiped out.

So women of the world – put down your cosmetics and walk slowly away. You could save the rainforests. You could save millions of cute fluffy animals. That £1580 a year could buy you a nice holiday in the tropics – tropics which would still be there, and to which you could fly to safe in the knowledge that your carbon footprint is now only a size 2 instead of a workmen’s welly.

Plus you can ignore PM Gordon and buy as much cake and perishable delicacies as you like. Trust me, if us menfolk don’t notice that you’ve painted green, blue or red bits around your eyes, we’re unlikely to notice much else.

Picture: Clifton Suspension Bridge

I had a great post to put here, honest, but Wimbledon got in the way. So here’s a picture to bridge the gap… get it…?

Please hold the line

I think it was either Sooty or Karl Marx who said that Science and Democracy were the equal halves of the move from the world of necessity to freedom. Now I think about it, Sooty wasn’t much of a talker so it was almost certainly Marx. Or Oprah… I knew that year of Uni Philosophy would come in handy.

Putting democracy to one side for a moment, as appears to be the order of the day around the world, you can certainly see his point when it comes to science and technology.

Anyone who writes a blog probably feels they are excercising their freedom of thoughts. If you log on to Facebook or Twitter every tech-savvy boy and girl in the land gives a 24/7 live-update of their status in concise, 12-word packages the likes of which haven’t been seen since the CIA and Watergate.

Now, I’m no luddite and I’ve embraced all of the above, but please forgive me if you ever try and contact me on the telephone.

There are few things in life that strike a great fear into me. A programme narrated by Janet Street Porter. The thought of watching an episode of Big Brother. Wallpapering. Leek and potato soup. All of these make me weak at the knees and more scared than someone who’s just found out their nextdoor neighbour is a nuclear physicist trialling a new work-at-home scheme.

But for me it’s like finding out Janet Street Porter’s moving in next door with a move to Def Com 3 if my phone rings. Yes I need the latest shiny black gadget-fest phone. Yes it must have a camera capable of taking pictures of Mars, video of braodcast quality, the computing abilities of Nasa and a walkman capable of holding the entire Dylan catalogue. But to be honest I’d be happier if it was incapable of ringing.

It’s not that I don’t want to talk to people, it’s just that very few people contact you out of the blue for good reasons. My email inbox is full everyday of emails telling me of the millions I’ve won in the outer Kazakhstan State lottery, and how many milions of pounds can be put in my account before I finish my bowl of Shreddies courtesy of a crumbling republic just south of North Carolina, but very rarely do these people phone me. Out of the blue phone calls tend to begin, ‘You probably won’t be able to help me, but…’, or ‘Hi, I was given your number by…’.

Of course, I don’t need to answer my phone. And I don’t. I’ve perfected the fine art of how soon to press the button to send people to voicemail. 2 rings is too soon, but 5 is too long to wait. My friends and colleagues must now be completely used to barely finishing recording their messages on my voicemail before I call them back.

It’s not that I don’t want to talk to people, it’s just that I want to be able to answer quickly and helpfully, and this requires a moment’s thought. You remember that awkwardness four year olds have when they are handed the phone to talk to their, slightly deaf and batty Aunty Margaret? That’s me at 29. The caller could be asking me something as simple as, ‘is the sky really blue?’ and it’s like I’m being quized on a Weakest Link Special by Anne Robinson, and if I get this one wrong Janet Street Bloody Porter is going to get all the money.

The lovely Sarah of course finds this hilarious. I say ‘hilarious’. What I actually mean is she finds it incredibly irritating. She tries to calm me with her gentle shouting of ‘WHO IS IT?!?!? ANSWER IT! ANS…’, but I’ve already pressed the ‘reject’ button. And I feel guilty. I feel guilty because I’ve rejected someone who wants to talk to me. And as Carrie Bradshaw says so often, rejection is a bad thing. What I really want is a ‘sorry, I’ll get back to you in a minute button’. Or a ‘just hang on a minute’ button.

But maybe I’m worrying over nothing. Maybe Marx was right, and science is giving me my freedom. If Marx had had a mobile he wouldn’t have answered it. He’d have been thinking…

Left so cold, I’d rather play in the US of A

I’m not an overly fussy person, but let’s get two things straight – I like my latte with a vanilla twist, and I like my rock stars to live fast and die in a massive fireball.

This week one of rocks biggest name caused a stir. Did they throw a tv set out of a hotel window? Pitch up a tent in reception having driven their limo into the swimming pool, in the basement? Did they arrive at a 5 Michelin-starred restaurant after taking a coctail of antihistamines, scotch and enough Valium to subdue a cow for a week?

No they walked out of an interview. A Radio 4 interview. Arguably one of the biggest stars of the moment, Chris Martin stormed out of an interview presumably tucked away in the schedules between Womans’ Hour and some Sandy Toksvig panel show. I say ‘stormed out’, but what he actually did was ask politely if he could leave, because he was bored.

Don’t get me wrong, but in a haunting echo of my reaction to hearing their songs I was found remarking, ‘hasn’t somebody done this before?’. The world was gripped as Sid Vicious and pals descended into a musket of four-letter words on the Bill Grundy show. Even the BeeGees managed to walk out of an inteview without needing to ask permission first.

The thing is, whilst rock stars may have sauntered gently into middle-class seating my view of the US hasn’t.

I still want to live there, but because of everything rock music has put in my head. I want to experience the quiet sleepy town with only a garage and a gun shop. Bruce Springsteen has put it in my head that the US is a nation of ‘Nam Vets being turned down at Oil refineries but overcoming the odds to become ‘rocking daddies’.

Music can be a powerful thing. Whilst men in flat caps try to create the next concorde, whilst men in shiny-white lab coats watch StarTrek reruns to get tips on teleporters, music already has the power to take us across the Atlantic. I’ve been listening to Matchbox Twenty on pretty much a continuous loop since last months’ gig whilst I’m in the car, and the problem is that my car probably now counts as American territory.

I spent 3 months living there, and experienced a traditional summer camp. I’m not sure how much of it is a genuine desire to be there, right now, rather than just hankering after a simpler time. A time when I’d just left university (we held a mock-graduation on the camp’s lawn) and you could travel to America without having to take your eyeballs out of their sockets, fingerprint them and create a papier-mache model just for the records. I want to drive the Route 66 in a big gas-gussling convertible, but 8 years on that’s a) expensive, and 2) sixty polar bears will die and then their polluted carcasses will cause Wales to be submerged under rising sea-levels.

It’s not just the sun and the culture though. It was a time of hard-working bands like Dave Matthews. The world was still feeling the ripples of the Seattle implosion. And, according to the Coldplay Timeline, Chris Martin and Co. were only big enough to headline the Pilton Village Fete, and in their own words, ‘were not too shit’.

Picture: Hold on Tight

I do like to eat beside the Seaside

It started off well. A nice saunter along a beach, a spot of kite flying, then a spot of lunch. Well, in the immortal words of the poet Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad.

A pub lunch on a Sunday afternoon beside the seaside is a fantastic thing. Unless, that is, you forget momentarily that this is the British seaside and that means sharing your space with certain sections of society. Firstly, there’s the hardcore of women who, clearly inspired by a late-night viewing of This is Spinal Tap, had their home sunbed turned up to eleven and now have skin the colour and temperature of molten lava spewing forth from Vesuvius. At the other end of the Dulux spectrum are the brilliant whites. These come in two forms; flashes of white just below the trousers before the sock and sandal combo, or great swathes of chalk-white topless men whose numerous rolls of stomach could well have swallowed entire Poodles if not Labradors to their blubbery deaths. Seriously, I’m sure I heard barking from one of them.

Things didn’t bode much better inside the eatery. It should have been a clear indicator when we were seen but ignored by two waitresses beside a sign clearly reading, in letters 8 inches high, ‘Please wait Here to be Seated’ that service would be slow, but the menu was just too inviting. Clearly asking the waitress for a minute extra to decide was a mistake, as she disappeared for the next 20 as if she were a cameo in an episode of the X-Files. Where she went was a mystery, but clearly it wasn’t to serve others as one man who looked in his sixties but who could quite feasibly have been 50 when he began his dining experience, held a cash card hopefully whilst muttering about the possibility of having his bill.

Clearly we had the amnesiac waitress employed through pity. First she forgot to deliver chips instead of mash and at one point it took so long to clear the plates I began to wonder if she was expecting us to eat them too. Some, and I’m being distinctly British and polite as I want to write ‘Plenty of’, time later she took our desert and coffee order. Where she took it I have no idea as the coffee didn’t materialise, and getting the bill seemed a mountainous task akin to applying for an educational Visa to study joint honours dynamite skills and piloting at an Ivy League University. Our waitress was so forgetful that it’s quite possible she was never actually a waitress, but perhaps a businesswoman with a family in Stoke who’d forgotten where she was going on the morning commute and ended up waiting tables on the South West coast.

I mean, how hard can the restaurant business be? The basic premise of making money should be that the more people you get through their meals the more money you make. Do that politely and efficiently and they’ll come back which means more people through the door and, I refer the honourable gentlemen to the initial hypothesis, that means more profits.

There are a multitude of self-help books on the topic. They all begin with great lines like ‘everyone likes the idea of owning a restaurant’, which is odd as I can’t think of a single friend who’s spoken up about wanting one. The Upstart Guide to Owning and Running a Restaurant opens, whilst using the most liberal use of ‘relatively’ I have ever seen, with the premise, ‘The concept of a restaurant, as we know it, is a relatively recent one’. I’m sorry? Relative to the wheel, maybe. Fire, definitely. But what else?

The great work Is owning a restaurant right for you? says all restaurant owners “thrive on stress. If you can’t handle stress, then don’t even think about opening your own restaurant!”. Whilst I agree it’s no lazy Sunday reading The Guardian’s latest editorial on Mongolian cheese innovation, it’s not taking on The Red Baron in a dogfight over Munich or climbing Everest after heart surgery. An article entitled Five Myths of Owning a Restaurant manages to inadvertently slip a sixth under the door to Mr ill-informed by opening with ”I own a restaurant’: Nothing will conjure up looks of awe and envy faster than those four words’. I can’t help thinking ‘I patented the toaster’, or ‘I’m marrying Penelope Cruz’ would require some kind of official photo-finish with that one.

So perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on the restaurant. It’s like that final round of Children’s TV favourite Knightmare researching the restaurant business with so many books about, teetering on a knife edge of soufflés success or flambes failure as you try to earn your bread and butter. So I’m not bitter about my dining experience, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the hardworking ladies and gentlemen of the restaurant business. As Roy S Alonzo writes in the Upstart Guide, ‘To those of you who may someday become restaurant owners, we [I] wish you a full plate of success and an overflowing cup of happiness as you pursue your goals’.

Bon appetite.