[552] Money-saving tips #1 – advent calendars November 30th, 2007 – 8:38am Posted in Daft No comments

Has the ever-spiralling cost of grain indirectly pushed the price of milk chocolate-based advent calendars out of your reach this Christmas, leaving your children sat sour-faced like three little Olivers? Then why not go for a cheap and healthy option and buy three blister packs of paracetamol. Sellotape each strip of eight together and watch in delight as your kids pop a paracetamol a day, recreating the fun of the festive run-up and keeping the doctor at bay!

[551] Companionship November 29th, 2007 – 3:59pm Posted in Thoughts No comments

Dear God, tempus fugit. It’s a year now since Lois. Tempus fugit indeed. The onset of winter has brought back a few of the memories from that time, the dark days echoing both figuratively and literally the bleak battle that the time was. I’m not interested in dredging up the full set of memories but it’s impossible not to be reminded of certain times by the cold snaps, arching headlights in the evening, fleeting lonely moments walking alone. I have a horrific memory and a lot of the feeling from that time has gone, so I only really recall the absolute lows; the moments when despite all reason you do wonder if that’s your one chance gone, when the silence of four walls is deafening, when you find yourself in the bosom of the first woman who offered solace, when a couple swinging hand in hand across the street may …read more.

[549] Madonna missed the “s” November 13th, 2007 – 10:39pm Posted in Events No comments

You’d have thought that the American excesses of the Eighties would have included international superstar Madonna taking more than one holiday a year. But it seems that the limits of her aspirations are “just one day out of life.” The poor lass. The poor, multi-millionaire lass.

Perhaps then I should be grateful that I’m off on my travels twice now before the end of the year. I was going to the Isle of Man too, originally, but lack of numbers killed that one until next spring. Instead, I’m off on a hush-hush trip in December that I can’t say too much about and, at the end of the month, ten of us are off to Cologne for the New Year. If it’s a patch on Amsterdam last year I’ll be a happy man.

I’ve cleared a few things up since those last miserable posts. I could say “I don’t know …read more.

[547] Antithesis November 4th, 2007 – 2:56am Posted in Bad Things No comments

This is the closest to the end I’ve ever been, and yet I know I won’t do it. It’s been a combination of an absurdly long illness, and… actually, I don’t know what else. Life has otherwise been ticking along as expected, apart from this chaotic stream of consciousness coursing through me. I suppose there are just those among us who live their lives in their heads, poetic souls whose prose relates to a different plane of thought. Even few among my wonderfully thoughtful friends grasp it. And that’s why I was so ashamed to break down in front of John; a pitiful act I only confess to now because he is one of the few I ever dare show this side of me to in person, because I feel he may look at my weeping self not with disdain but memory and regret. And as I read back …read more.

[548] A bit of trek November 4th, 2007 – 2:10am Posted in Thoughts No comments

A proposition, Sir: Star Trek TNG – 2×02 – Where Silence Has Lease is, I suggest, up there with one of the best. There’s a Patrick Stewart masterclass, there’s the Picard-Crusher father-son thing going on, Brent Spiner has a vintage day… all in all, happy days, even to the backset of an ubsurdly-faced massive space alien lecturing them about life. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Does the juxtaposition of this post with the last let you understand a little more?