Shrink Wrap

People shrink with age, it’s a fact. I know this because it says so here in the New York Times, so it must be true. And this is a worry, because a few days ago I got a whole year older.

I’m not too scared, because at 6’3 I can afford to lose a little bit of height but height’s something you’re born with (genetically I mean, otherwise I’m sure ladies would be less inclined to have babies), and it doesn’t seem fair that time could just steal some away. And where does all that stolen height go? Do they use it to make anything useful? I blame some government conspiracy. But I digress…

Don’t get me wrong, I had some absolutely amazing presents from some lovely people, but birthday presents do seem to get smaller as you get older.

Remember back to some of the birthdays you had as a kid, running downstairs to find a massive parcel. Everyone had a bike at some point. You may have had computers, dolls houses, scalextric, train sets, maybe even a television. All big presents.

Now think back to your last birthday. What did you get? Some trendy little gadget? A day out? A gift voucher? All fantastic presents, and very generous, but they don’t need a great deal of wrapping paper (unless Apple have become so keen to sell Ipods that every one comes with a free life-size model of Steve Jobs).

So what’s the idea here? Do presents shrink with age too? Are the NY Times scientists wrong? Do we actually continue to grow with age?

Next time you’re buying a present, put it in a massive box – whether they’re 5 or 55 the recipiant will appreciate the big box and reams of wrapping paper.

Is it a bird? No, it’s a plane

A large number of people across the world are worried. Many are unsure if it’s a natural phenomenon, or how long it will last.

I can exclusively reveal that those white streaks across the previously clear blue skies and sightings of metal objects in the skies are the result of a new invention: the aeroplane.

The aeroplane, or ‘airplane’ as it will marketed in the US, is a method of transport allowing everbody immediate access routes to every country around the world.

Initially developed with the business user in mind, as with all technologies there will be side uses. For example, over-weight chain-smokers in tracksuits will be able to reach tacky beaches around the world to top up their orange tans.

The environment was always important during development. For this reason, a revolutionary seating design was developed with seats just a little too small for the human body. Based on a simple cattle truck, passenger sit almost on top of one another, which also adds an important cushioning factor in case of accidents.

The aeroplanes will take off from special shopping centres called ‘airports’ – there is no special noun for the European market at present. As well as selling travel essentials such as large quantities of alcohol, celebrity-endorsed fragrances and giant Toblerones, there will also be caterers selling low quality food stuffs at high prices.

Further details about this new revolution are still emerging. However, airlines realise that it may take time for the public to be convinced that air travel is safe. For this reason, all flights will begin with onboard staff illustrating the onboard safety devices. Should a plane plummet from 30,000ft there are several doors you can jump from. Every passenger also gets a large water wing, complete with a light and a whistle.

We will keep you updated with more details as we get them.

Never fear, the shed men are here

The world wide web. Emails. Twitter. Conference calls. All useful inventions that make the world smaller. A ‘global community’ if you will.

All created in university computer labs, or air-conditioned trendy open-plan offices with stress coaches and Warhol prints on the wall.

All the best inventions come from sheds in the countryside. The car wasn’t invented on a Mac. Nor was the phone. Or the telly. Or the plane. They were drawn up on beer mats and scraps of paper before being made by men called Nigel or Graham, fuelled solely on weak tea and digestives.

So when Mother Nature decides to remind us who’s in charge by setting of a volcano or two it’s back to the drawing board.

The thing is, so far Twitter and the web have found hire cars for a few Tarquins and Hectors so they can get to their conferences in soulless Munich hotels, but it’s the hardy boatists and drivers who are really getting people home.

So it’s computer modelling vs the ingenious shed men. I know who my money’s on to get more people home by tea time.

Leave the music, take the teddy bear

“Goo morning adie and gentumen, and weckum abored thees Fybe fight to Bristow”* garbled the stewardess, who clearly had been mugged by the producers of Sesame Street preparing a special episode brought to you by her letters ‘L’ and ‘S’, and possibly the number ‘2’.

Waiting for today’s flight from Jersey, it appears Flybe have dispensed with music whilst passengers are boarding. This meant I couldn’t play my usual game of ‘inappropriate songs to play on a plane before take-off’. For those of you wondering, my current top five are: 5) Status Quo ‘Down down, deeper and down’; 4) Tom Petty ‘Free Fallin”; 3) Van Morrisson ‘Brown-eyed Girl’ (because, unless you a fifty-something dancing at a wedding, there is never an appropriate time for this song); 2) Foo Fighters ‘Learning to Fly’; 1)  Jerry Lee Lewis ‘Great Balls of Fire’.

‘We wie shortey be commenssing tha in-fight duty free survise’*. The stewardess’ voice brough the inflight trawl of my cd collection to a halt. Why was this stewardess doing the announcements? There was another stewardess who had a very plummy Joanna Lumley accent who not only had a full 26 letters in her alphabet, but if you closed your eyes you could imagine you were John Steed battling some evil nemesis.

What is the obsession with selling us stuff on a plane? I mean, we’ve just had to check-in twenty-eight days before flying, and there’s really only two things to do in an airport: eat and shop. Once you’ve eaten the all-day breakfast which seems to cost more than a London semi-detached house and has probably been gently simmering on the hot-plate longer than it would take to build one, you’re left with shopping. The problem here is that they cash in on our fear of flying. Even the most seasoned flyer will ‘treat’ themselves to a magazine, or a new book – afterall, where else are you constantly reminded that life’s too short to save for a rainy day and you may not get another chance to buy anything? What if the plane crashed? At least that’s the only reason I can think of to explain the ghastly mismatch of colours you find in airport TieRacks.

If it’s not enough that I’ve driven my bank manager to Chinese worry-balls with the amount I’ve spent on breakfast and a Mickey Mouse tie in the terminal, now the stewardess is trying to grasp the last pennies out of my sweaty and over-airconditioned hands.

As they push the trolley down the aisle, my attention is drawn to the teddy on top. My instant reaction is that this is some slick marketing ploy to get kids nagging their parents to buy it for them, but the more I look at the bear’s facial expression the more I begin to think that he is not sad but embarassed – I actually think the bear is a regular employee of the airline, who clocks-in at work daily and just does this to raise money to put his bear cubs through college. As jobs for teddy bears go, this has to be one of the most degrading. He auditioned for the role of Pudsy you know…

And then we land, and Captain Roger (they’re all called Roger, or Rick, or some other popular skin-flick name, aren’t they?) comes back on with that silky-smooth ‘I’m the captain’ voice that ouses seventies sex-appeal and hints that every airline pilot is a direct descendent of Roger Moore.

‘Take the gun, leave the cannoli’, mumbles Clemenza in a line that steals the entire film in the Godfather. My advice for Flybe would be this: ‘Leave the music, take the teddy bear’.

*NB No letters were harmed in the making of this post.

My favourite places: Part 4 – Times Square

Finally – for now anyway – everyone’s favourite place.

It has an amazing mesmerising quality – we spent hours people-watching, coffee-drinking, pizza-eating. A great thing to do in a milienium year…

Click here to be there now…

My favourite places: Part 3 – Niagara Falls

Student travels again. And, as you can probably guess the lovely Sarah and I really like to cover a lot of ground when we’re away.

10 days – that was all it took to do a loop: Boston, Toronto, Montreal and New York. Oh yes, and Niagara.

Behind the falls in the tunnels, and on a boat in the middle of them – both of which, trust me on this, get you very wet.

Still, click here and you can take the 360 tour.

My favourite places: Part 2 – Jokulsarlon

7 days in Iceland – how much can you see?

If you have a Toyota Yaris, it would appear you can see quite a lot.

Quite easily the most fantastic site / sight on Earth, the ice simply falls off the glacier, floats across the lake and out into the sea.

Click this link, and it’s the first photo in my gallery.

My favourite places: Part 1 – Pike Place Market

After a summer of working at a US Summer Camp, the lovely Sarah and I took a plane to Seattle. I say we took a plane to Seattle, what we actually did was take a plane to Dallas (over some serious wild fires), and then on to Seattle. We were students – it was cheaper that way.

So, there we are. The home of grunge. The home of coffee. The home of memorials to Cobain and Hendrix.

But by far the most striking memory of the place was Pike Place Market. If you’ve seen ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, and let’s face it, if you didn’t mean to a female friend will have made you see it at some point, it’s where Tom goes to talk through things with his builder friends.

Flying fish, amazing clothing and music stalls, and every vegetable you could dream of.

Click this link, and you to could be there…

Wearing my episcopal socks

It’s not every day you sit around chatting to a Bishop. And Good Friday seemed as good a day as any.

No, I haven’t been seeking out members of the clergy and pestering them with questions of an ecumenical nature, before you ask. And you were going to, weren’t you.

When you spend the days around Easter at a vicarage, it’s one of those things that’s just bound to happen. Having not gone to church on Good Friday (or technically for the last 30 or so Good Fridays), the last thing I was expecting was someone bursting through the door exclaiming ‘quick, the Bish is coming!’. And ten minutes later, there I was chatting to a Bishop.

As is the way on Good Friday, conversation between a Rev Canon and a Bishop quickly turned to typically clergy subjects: trains. Then there was astronomy, music and a brief skirting around evolution. All to the accompaniment of scones, cake and freshly-brewed tea. Seriously, I’m not making this up. But there was something a little odd.

The Bishop looked at my socks, which were a mixture of faded and black a effeminate pink, and said, ‘may I congratulate you on your episcopal socks – did you wear them specially?’. What’s the correct reply to such a question from a senior cleric you’ve known for only minutes? I chuckled, trying desperately to make it sound reassuring and confident rather than masking a somewhat nervous reaction, and said ‘I’d like to be able to say yes’. This in many respects covered every possibility – to be honest, I’d love to be able to say anything in answer to that question, but my mostly secular upbringing left me with a small vocabulary problem in this exchange.

But, do you know what? I was wearing episcopal socks – I looked it up…

Do you eat them raw, like fruit?

Isn’t technology great. You can find out information about anything you like in a second (which may or may not be true). You can buy a cheap item of electronic equipment (which may or may not be genuine). And you can chat to someone you’ve never met in a foreign country (who may or may not be who they say they are).

But before I’m accused of being negative about technology, or ‘tech‘ as irritating people in odd-looking spectacles would say, it does make the world a better place. We’re all connected. We’re all within easy reach of each other. Information passes more easily and freely (unless you happen to live somewhere beginning with ‘C’ and ending in ‘hina’). Life is easier.

And most importantly, I don’t have to go shopping for food in supermarkets and deal with the surprises I usually encounter.

A few little clicks, and a chatty man arrives at my door the next day with all of my food in boxes. Okay, some items may be larger/smaller than I intended, or more squashed than I might have anticipated, but then I can replace those when I pop to the greengrocers or the butchers or the bakers (sadly Chipping Sodbury has, so far as I can tell, no candle-makers).

But I have been too busy lately to click, and had to venture in this morning. On my own. On a Sunday.

‘Do you need help with your packing?’ asked the boy operating the till, who I noted had the chair as high as it could go so he could reach the buttons.
‘No, I’ll be okay. Just go slowly’, I cordially replied.
This, the till-boy must have taken to mean, ‘Hi, that’s fine. Please talk to me instead. I want you to be my friend’.
‘That’s okay. I can’t do anything quick today. Bit of a night of it last night…’, he continued, but at this point my ears were temporarily bombarded by till-boy’s attempts to inhale deeply through a nose filled with enough snot to paint the Severn Bridge.
‘Oh dear’, I reply… desperately aware that I’m sounding like Hugh Grant.
‘Got a coffee machine have ya?’, he asks manboy-handling my coffee.
‘No. Just a jug with a plunger’, I reply deciding now is not the best time to explain the concept of a cafetiere.
‘Oh right… is it just smaller granules? I s’pose I should know that working here’, he chuckled.
He then continued to scan the items, being genuinely helpful and slow.
‘What do you do with these?’, he asked holding up by bag of red chillies, ‘do you eat them raw, like fruit?’
I think at this point I may have choked, making a similar noise to someone who has just tried eating a hot red chilly raw, like a fruit.
‘Nah, it’s for putting in curries and stuff’, I reply in my new found role as the product of morphing Delia Smith with Jamie Oliver. Please note, in my split-second reaction I made a conscious decision not to say ‘curries and chilli’.
‘Oh right. I think we used the in school once… my teachers were great, never minded be bunking off and stuff…’ he tailed off shortly after, before offering me the vouchers the supermarket encourage parents to collect to enhance their child’s education.

And as I left the store and it’s warm orangey glow, I was determined to make sure I stick to the clicking and the cheery delivery guy, but now, a few hours later, I’m not so sure. It’s given me something to talk about today, and normally, buying Shreddies, Wheetabix and washing liquid doesn’t offer much to talk about…