Retrospectator

Another misinformed, misguided but opinionated individual who feels the need to contribute. Now you too can view the world through the the eyes of a middle-aged man who can't see his toes, let alone the point of it all.

Friday, December 29, 2006


Jump in my car...

Her voice is calm. An educated English accent of indiscernable age. She doesn't talk much, but when she does, I listen intently - she has my undivided attention. Occasionally, I will steal an admiring glance at her slim and attractive features as we drive through the countryside.

In a very short period of time she has become my constant companion. I find myself waiting for her to speak to me......'turn left at the next street - you have now arrived at your destination'.

I think I'm becoming too attached to my new portable satellite navigation system.

Friday, December 22, 2006


White out

Five consecutive days of thick icy fog hasn't just clogged up the airports and roads - it seems to have also had a pretty big impact on the gurgling nasal passages of the man sitting next to me on the train. It's not surprising that half of south-east England has a cold.....today it reached a high of zero celsius.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

It's so much easier to receive...

I read in the newspaper today that there will be over £6 billion spent on Christmas presents in the UK over the next 4 days. It sounds like a few people are leaving it to the last minute.....and I thought I'd be the only one (yeah, right!) rushing from store to store in a desperate, but futile attempt, to purchase that present that says 'I love you' in the appropriate manner.

With four days to go I'm onto the 3rd tier, less desirable items, of the officially sanctioned list of preferred family gifts. 'If you can't get me the grossly over-priced, high profile, brand thingy...then I guess I'll settle for the fashionable, but still pricey and utterly useless fad thingy instead'.

Oh, I'm getting a headache just thinking about it.....I should have started in June.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Ho! Ho! Hic!

This Friday, the last Friday before Christmas, is traditionally the most pissed day of the festive season in the UK. Apparantly, over half the country will have the wobbly boot firmly fastened on the wrong foot as the British public engage in the demonstration sport of binge drinking.

Emergency services around the country are expecting to answer around a call every second between the hours of 8:00pm and 12 midnight as Britain lets down its hair to celebrate Christmas.

Unfortunately, drunk on the festive spirit, they will also loosen their trousers to urinate in public, roll up their sleeves to brawl and lower their inhibitions to snog indiscriminently

Merry Christmas....'tis the season to be jolly (well plastered).

Sunday, December 17, 2006


Concorde 2...

The good news is that my nose is finally functioning well enough to have drained any reservoir of mucus that had not been previously blasted into a soggy tissue prior to our drive to Brighton this weekend. (see photo as proof of pulse).

We went down to the seaside to attend an under-ages gig at the Concorde 2, where The Nines (Ben's son) were featuring their talents in front of a very young crowd - in fact, everytime I dragged my sagging post-illness face into the main hall, I had a multiplying effect on the average age of the crowd.

After the gig we stopped into Fat Leo's for a meal, but while my nose had cleared and I could now breathe without the aid of a foot pump - my taste buds still had some difficulty in identifying the most basic of flavours....I think it was lasagne.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Bless you!

Heavy-headed and with a nose like a coffee perculator, I stood on the wet platform suffering from a bad cold. Not only was my train cancelled, but so dangerously over-crowded was the tube this morning that I had to wait 10 minutes on the main concourse of Victoria Station before they would even let us down the stairs to the barriers leading to the tube.

As the gates were flung open and we charged the barriers like a moving mosh-pit at a Bullet For My Valentine gig, security reigned us in once again. Stalled at the barriers for a further 10 minutes, I peered at the CCTV images of the northbound Victoria line platform - it looked like on of those carnival coin machines you find on Brighton Pier - you now the ones where you insert a coin that rolls out onto a tray stacked with coins, hoping you knock a few off into the tray.

It looked far too dangerous for my liking. All it needed was for someone to trip and the domino affect would surely push someone else onto the tracks. When I finally got onto the plaform there was no alternative for me, but to go with the flow. After 6 consecutive trains arriving and departing - absolutely stuffed with commuters I finally found myself standing trackside of the yellow line that the PA system constantly tells us to stand behind - for our own safety.

Once onboard, I was pressed so tightly against my fellow passengers that there was no need to hold onto anything for support - and as my nose continued to run, my eyes began to water, and I had an uncontrollable sneezing fit. We were packed in so tightly that I couldn't even reach into my pocket for a tissue - all I could do was apologise to the man standing in front of me.

Sunday, December 10, 2006


Bleakberry...

It's sleek. It's metallic and it vibrates.....yes that's right - I have a new Blackberry! Once again a piece of office equipment will run my life. It will let me know who to meet, where to go and what time I should be there. It will ring with a retro tone when someone wants to talk to me....and when I just want to forget about work, sit down and relax with a cold beer - it will send me an email from my boss, who will have arranged a midnight conference call with half a dozen other Blackberry slaves.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Foxtrot, Uniform, Charlie, Kilo - Blue Leader 2...out.

The first paintball whistled past my face and the second splattered against the tree trunk I was cowering behind. I'm 194 cm tall and I was a large, slow moving target trying to hide behind a couple of twigs and assorted low-lying shrubbery. Unfortunately, no amount of green, brown and beige camoflage cloth was going to hide my incompetence.

I couldn't even crouch down properly, because every time I bent over, my ill-fitting overalls would perform a wedgy on me. Anyway, younger, fitter and testosterone-charged individuals were on the frontline, while Ben and I volunteered to fight a rear-guard action - we stood out like.......well, we stood out like two middle-aged fathers accompanying their kids to an afternoon paintball session. We were highly prized targets!

This was my first ever paintball session, so it's not surprising that I was a little apprehensive about getting getting hit by a pellet travelling at 300 mph. Regardless of my trepidation, I had already signed a disclaimer, squeezed into a pair of camoflage overalls (2 and a half sizes too small for me) and loaded my semi-automatic machine gun. I was determined to make the most of it. However, no one was going to take a very large Praying Mantis on Cerapax, wearing a gay looking set of fatigues and fogged up googles seriously....I was going to have to earn some respect.

As I gingerly picked my way through the undergrowth in search of the battlefront, I glanced to my right and a dwarf scurried by (it's true). I enviously looked at his perfectly fitted uniform - how the hell did they kit him out so well when I ended up looking like the lost member of the Village People!

Six minutes into the first round, I'd fired off a dozen paintballs and had been shot in the arm by an unseen sniper. By round two I was rolling through mud puddles and encountering the enemy in close quarters. Half way through round three I'd been hit so many times that my overalls were beginning to look like a Monet - Battlefield at Dusk. The green, brown and beige patterns were now contrasted by bright red, blue and yellow splodges of paint.

Dad's Army wasn't faring very well. Ben raised his hands in surrender, but a couple of kids took this gesture as a sign of aggression and pumped a couple of paintballs into his back from close range. The battle was briefly interupted by a yelp, a couple of expletives and the repeated phrase 'you little tossers'.

Two hours and forty three minutes into our campaign Ben and I charged the enemy base....well, Ben walked at reasonable pace (the dwarf ran a decoy to the left and I cleverly drew enemy fire with my head). As I pranced about the forest like a back-up singer in a Madonna music video, Ben calmy strolled into the middle of the enemy base - incredibly a hail of pellets somehow missed him and he was able to exact his revenge by firing off an entire magazine into everyone under 15 years of age and 5 foot in height - while muttering 'little tossers' under his breath.