The day before the day before the day after

You know what day I'm looking forward to?

Of course you don't. If you did I'd be slightly perturbed to discover you all had some form of collective, long distance psychic ability that would presumably render this blog, and any form of news reporting utterly redundant. Though if you did have such a great power, why the hell would you be wasting it on me? Perhaps some of you do have this power, but are using it for a greater cause. Or perhaps for evil, I can't presume you are all potential superheroes in the making. 

I digress.

The day I'm looking forward to is not tomorrow, but the day after, which, for those of you reading this after the fact (where were you?) is Thursday the 23rd May 2013. 

What's so special about this day? Well, actually, it's pay day, and that would be ample reason to celebrate its arrival. The replenishment of the old bank account is always a cause for spending all my money immediately  celebration, because it means I'm no longer facing imminent poverty for a few more weeks. But it's not why I'm looking forward to Thursday. 

So why, you ask, am I looking forward to Thursday? Those of you without psychic abilities do anyway. The rest of you, well, I'm suspicious of you now. I mean, if you have these invasive mind drilling powers, just peering at your own whim into peoples minds, who's monitoring you? I demand answers, once I'm done blogging I'm writing to Patrick Stewart to demand he explains himself.

I digress.

I'll tell you why I'm looking forward to Thursday. Hurrah you cry. Perhaps huzzah. It may only be an internal cheer. An inner leap of delight. Whatever form it takes, it will be a relief I'm sure; a release from the infernal torture of pointless side-bar conversation that brings no added value whatsoever to the point in hand. 

Today, being Tuesday, is the day before adorable wife's endometriosis operation, making Thursday the day after that. Therefore today is the day before the day before the day after. Perhaps there is a cleverer, more concise way of stating that fact, but there you go, I've made my choice and there's nothing you can do about it, even if you are psychic, because that's predicting before, not changing after, so ha ha ha.

Today is bowel prep day. Which is never a fun day for those involved. It's considered an extreme method of bowel cleansing, compared to an enema, which is the quick and easy option, as far as I can tell. The pre-op nurse even noted that the hospital was considering removing the citramag bowel prep and replacing it with an enema on the day of the operation itself. Why she bothered mentioning this when it isn't the case as yet I don't know. 

So adorable wife is in the process of rushing to the loo frequently and I am doing my best not to be openly hungry or eat when in view. 

That's Tuesday.

Wednesday, will therefore, be an early start, the drive to the hospital, the prepping, seeing adorable wife carted off on a trolley, and the long wait for her return. Then she'll be back, all tubed and drugged up. Then I'll drive home alone.

That'll be Wednesday.

Thus, my hope for Thursday is a drive back to the hospital, to see adorable wife happier and more awake and ready to return home in the afternoon. 

Bring on the day after the day before the day before.

What does it take to become one of the 'sorted'?

Does everyone else really know what they're doing? It sometimes seems like life consists less of the haves and the have nots and more of the sorted and the unsorted.

Sure the haves, those lucky enough to be well off and who don't have to worry too much about money seem pretty sorted, leaving the have nots to flounder and struggle and so be the unsorted. But I don't think it's a simple as that.

I see some people and they're getting on with life, happy with where they are and apparently knowing where they've been, where they are now and where they're heading. These people are not always rich, in monetary terms, but they are usually rich with joy, love and life. I think this is a blissful state to be in, because it means you are living in contentment and happiness, which surely is all we can ever ask for.

The rest of us fall into the unsorted category. We're not where we thought we'd be, or we still have unachieved goals and aims and with no clue as to how they can be achieved.

But is it all an illusion? You can only know your own mind and experience your own life. I'm sure there are a few blessed individuals who have hit upon the success in the very field they wanted and have found a wonderful person to share this success with, but just as the super rich are not even 1% of the population, I suspect these are in the great minority. And how can we know how happy they are with this supposed success? If you possess the drive to gain success in any field of expertise, you are often the type to never be content with what you have done so far, you always want more.

The reason I'm pondering this is because I would love to be a successful film maker, a screenwriter, a novelist. But I am not, and I know this is because I have not made the prerequisite effort to achieve this goal. I know there's advice galore out there, and if you're truly talented and try hard enough, some degree of success must be possible. But I constantly battle with my inner self and my lack of nerve to push myself in front of the right people and say hi there, here I am and this is what I can do. All that easily accessible advice is from people who have managed to get so far in the same goals, so are these people are genuinely content with what they have achieved, are they better for it? Are they the 'sorted'? The ones who understood what needed to be done and just did it?

Are the unsorted the ones who are chaotic, unfocused or easily distracted? Or is it all a matter of perspective? Do others look at my happy marriage with adorable wife and think I am one of the sorted? Am I looking at the success of others in envy, unaware of the elements of their life that they feel has failed.

I suppose that is the universal truth; you can only know your own thoughts. To say you envy another is to presume they see things the same way as you. But who really does see everything exactly as you do? I don't think anyone does. Perhaps the genuine truth is that no one is every truly a member of the 'sorted'. Perhaps the happiest people are the ones who spend their life trying to achieve more, gain more knowledge and do more. That is why they are sorted, because they believe there's more to life than what they have right now.

Perhaps I am more sorted than I first believed...

Adorable wife gets a date

Aeons ago, in a time long forgotten by the annals of history, adorable wife underwent leeching to deal with the accursed affliction endometriosis.

But these denizens of the medical establishment opted not to offer a full and extensive removal of the endomonster and its evil sidekick adhesions, instead leaving the cruel and unforgiving beast within to cause further chaos in her inner sanctum.

Through the mists of time, adorable wife forged on, despite the internal strife caused by endo and adhesions. Many a sonnet were sung about her trials and tribulations, her brave struggles to defy the pain that throbbed, stabbed and tore within. It has passed into legend, her efforts at work, oft whispered in dark corners by women who know, who have also been touched by the dark spirited creature know as endo.

It was foretold in the old legends that time would come that adorable wife would once again rise up and bring herself forth to the medicals, offering her flesh to their mercy for the final and ultimate battle against endo and adhesions. Legend spoke of a master surgeon, of a sacred prepping of the bowel. It spoke of a long, arduous journey deep into the shire of Oxford. The lesser known, but curiously brave charioteer Michael would tame the mighty Vauxhallian steed to take adorable wife on this treacherous, yet essential expedition.

And lo, friends and brethren, this time is shortly nigh. A snail did deliver not one, nay, but two scriptures to verify not only the date of the before-op, but also the op itself.

Oh what joy there was in the household that day. Laughter and music did surely spill out into the town air that very night and, tis true I swear, made the very sun himself rise to see what glorious wonder had occurred. Oh yes, merriment and happiness was known that day.

By an extraordinary twist of fate, unseen even by the scribes of legend, the date for this op fell on the very day of Michael's birth, itself a most triumphant and momentous moment, still echoing through the corridors of time and space, its final impact unknown by even the most powerful soothsayers.

May was to be the month when wrongs were righted. When endo and adhesions met their maker and adorable wife was freed from the evil tyranny that had ruled over her every breathing moment for time immemorial.

Pray, readers, friends, brothers and sisters, that by June, the recovery is a swift and contended one. That adorable wife may, once again, be a free woman. 

Where have all the heroes gone?

I recently signed up to a well known online streaming service who will get no free advertising via this very, massively influential blog. This aforementioned service, had many delights, but one guilty pleasure I stumbled upon was the classic 80's action adventure show MacGyver.

I loved that show as a kid! I mean I wanted to be MacGyver; solving problems with a penknife, duct tape and whatever was lying around at the time. Saving the world one cunning, duct taped device at a time.

Of course, nostalgia is often a tricky and deceptive beast. My previous efforts to enjoy such treasures of my youth as Knight Rider, The A-Team and He-Man, have always ended in tragedy. There's nothing more upsetting as an adult than the realisation you enjoyed, nay, loved, absolute trash. TV of the 80's was quite the cheese-fest it seems, and we're not talking Blacksticks Blue, or even good old Brie. No no, we are talking hot, sticky fondue cheesy.

So it was with some trepidation that I clicked on the pilot episode of MacGyver.

It started off promisingly enough, with a voiceover heavy rescue mission that was actually well filmed and reasonably witty.

After that we had the rousing and fun theme tune that I remember and love humming to this day. The title sequence is something I do miss in our more lean, gritty times. It's not the same just having the name of show appear and disappear subtly as the show itself starts, which seems to be the standard method these days. There's something comforting about the montage of top moments from the show, a catchy theme tune, and the bit where the main character, or characters, look at someone (or sometimes at the screen) and smiles.

Titles over and suddenly it quickly looked a uncomfortably 80's, though worringly I have noticed that much of the fashion is coming back, just slightly modified of course. There was a definite and very poor attempt to make MacGyver quirky by having him live in an observatory. There was also a forced and hideous attempt to prove his nice guy credentials by making him have a 'little brother', which I believe was (is?) a scheme where poor kids get to hang out with responsible adults who act as their surrogate big brother. Anyway it was trite and heavy handed.

Rather worringly, I also noted that the director was credited as one Alan Smithee. Mr Smithee, for those who don't know, was the alias any director could choose if they felt the resulting product of their efforts was not to their standard, and had been changed by external choices out of their control. Alan Smithee has since been retired, after 'directing' a vast array of turkeys, because he apparently became too well known and a more subtle alias was picked for the same purpose.

I brushed my concerns aside by suggesting that a big name director may have directed the episode, but didn't want anyone to know. Bear in mind, TV was not a prestigious place to be back then.

Regardless the episode got started in earnest when a bomb is set off inside an impressively hi-tech underground laboratory. At last 'Mac' is called into service to rescue two potential Nobel prize nominees, trapped at the deepest level.

And at lo and behold, the quick thinking, calm attitude, and amazing ability to improvise his way around a disaster zone leads MacGyver to save the day in an impressively entertaining and non cheesy manor. Indeed I have seen more recently made disaster style movies that were less entertaining.

So I got a little hooked and started ploughing head first into more episodes. MacGyver saves villagers in Burma, helps a crusading a journalist in central America, helps fight against an army of ants, helps steal back some diamonds, helps his friends put out an oil fire and is targeted by an evil hitman. They even ditched the observatory and little brother. Result. The only duff episode was one where they 'borrowed' a whole chunk of the chase scenes from The Italian Job, to very distracting levels!

And you know what? Yeah it's dated and a little cheesy in places, but overall it's great fun and what keeps me coming back is the ingenuity and general likeability of the lead. And it got me to thinking about the purpose of entertainment and the role TV can play in our lives.

I'm not sure there is an equivalent to the more family friendly action/adventure shows of old. I believe I am right in saying these have been replaced by my least favoured form of 'entertainment', the reality TV show. These are the shows on at prime time and these are the shows influence the families, and therefore, more specifically, the children of today.

Without going off on a ranting tangent about why I don't like reality TV, my argument would be that something like MacGyver is surely a better, more worthy influence on young minds and is something we lack on TV these days. Dramas and action shows are more adult oriented these days, I'm sure you'd agree. Dr Who and a few BBC efforts aside, most of the offerings, certainly from the US, are all morally complex shows with flawed antagonists and a high level of violence. I'm not suggesting many of these shows aren't superb; they are, and I think TV as an art is probably at an all time high. But the 'heroes' of these shows can be brutal and dark. They reflect our cynical times, our fears of terrorism or financial meltdown. But kids can't get down with that. Kids don't need deep reflection upon the nature of the human soul. They love action, adventure and excitement, and will be learning from what they see, whether you realise it or not.

Sometimes, even as an adult, I like a hero who is a hero because he (or she) happens to be a good person and who you know will act with the best intentions. I love that MacGyver is generous to a fault, will put his life on the line for others at the drop of a hat, and dives into danger with a wisecrack. But I love that he isn't smug and he isn't cocky, just confident. Hell with the fact that may not be like any real person, I quite like the thought that it could be. It's an aspiration right? To be good, to be strong at the right time, to have the brains to outwit those who wish harm upon others.

But more than that I love that he triumphs not with brawn or firepower, but with brains, ingenuity and knowledge. He outsmarts people. He takes the time to think and finds a way; he is the personification of the phrase, where there's a will there's a way. What greater message to teach a growing mind than to seek a solution no matter what the problem? Determination, thought and knowledge.

And of course, being a family friendly show he shunned weapons, always tossing them aside. He does fight, but only when forced to, not as a first resort. So again, if the message is that violence doesn't have to be the answer to your woes, is that not a positive influence?

All that and it's based in reality, so even if his attributes make him somewhat idealistic, the world is recognisable and believable. Unlike a sci-fi show, perhaps like Dr Who of present, which is certainly aimed at families and does attempt to be moral in its messages, it has the grounding of the real world to make a child believe they could really be like that. No one can truly watch a sci-fi or fantasy character and hope to emulate their hero in the same way, because you are already removed from the reality of your own world.

In short, where are todays aspirational heroes? Where are the good guys that kids growing up now want to be? I would much rather live in a world of aspiring MacGyvers than a world of aspiring Katie Prices.

How about you?

The passion of the food...

Food is important. We're all agreed on that point right? I mean, without it we'd not be doing very well, indeed, we'd not be at all, so it's essential. But it's more than that to me. I think what is really important is good food. Look, I went and used the bold text and everything, just to highlight the sheer importance of the good. That's how darn important it is!

Sure, if you're starving, facing certain death and the only way to survive is to eat a scotch egg, by all means scoff that sucker down. Okay, that might be your perfect meal, I don't know and I'm not hear to judge (you weirdo), but when I say I love my food, I mean it. Sorry, I used the bold again, it's getting a little out of hand I know.

I love to eat great tasting food that pleasures my tastes buds. Simply re-fuelling is not an option. I want flavours to burst on my tongue, linger in my mouth, and pleasure my throat. Crikey, does that sound filthy to you too?

This is why I think being able to cook is so important. Because you need to be able to pleasure yourself (oh please behave, I'm talking about food still) with any culinary delight that takes your fancy. I have had the absolute pleasure of being with adorable wife long enough to have learned some of her tricks. I always enjoyed having a fumble in the kitchen, even when I lived alone, but that moved to the next level once I was happily thrust into coupledom with little Miss adorable cook. 

Delicious, simple, homemade food! Yum!

Whereas before I used cheats and shortcuts, I learnt the trick to good food starts with the basics; good ingredients, a mix of flavours and actually tossing the measuring out the window and going with your own judgement. Honestly, when I stopped checking level teaspoons and tablespoons and just went with a splash, a dash and the occasional toss, the food started to taste that much better.

I do think you need to have passion in the kitchen. It helps, I admit to have a passion for the person or people you are cooking for. Be it for the love of your life, or for loved relations or great friends, having someone you truly care for soon to taste your efforts does push you to make a great effort. 

I know this can sometimes mean that when you are living alone you lack this drive and passion. If you are making all that effort, and frankly, sometimes it can be a real effort, and the only person who is going to benefit is you, it can seem somewhat of a dud. But I think of all the people you cook well for, you should be the most important. Only you can truly judge what your taste buds love; what sends fireworks off as you crunch, chew and yes, you naughty people, swallow. And who knows how often, and when you will find yourself alone, facing random food in the fridge, and a craving for more than a microwave pasta? If you can take on the mantle of chef de noir and whip yourself up a mighty feast, worthy of a king, then you can be guaranteed you can always cheer yourself up. You can always take care of yourself and you can always give pleasure to others. And that my friends is not to be sniffed at.

I actually feel a little sorry for anyone who eats out to eat better than they do at home. Adorable wife and I do eat out, we all like a break from DIY and to try something we wouldn't knock up at home. But I will always maintain that the best food is the food we make at home. Because at home it is made with love, whereas eating out, it is made for business. Sure, if our budget was a bit more grandiose, I'm sure we'd have our taste buds tantalised sufficiently. But at a certain level, I'm sure the food is made with passion and love. Though, I would still always go back to the food made with the passion and love of adorable wife, over that of a stranger. 

So the moral of this blog is, learn to cook, because food is not just fuel it is a beautiful bounty of double entendrés. 

Dark side of the mind

Do we all have dark sides to our personalities? 

Let's face it most of us present a certain image of ourselves, intentionally or not, which becomes the public perception of who we are. But there's always more to us than is shown right? 

The iceberg analogy is commonly cited; what you see on the surface is only the tip and beneath the surface, hides our true selves. 

The only person who has seen the furthest below my tip (steady now ladies) is adorable wife. I act the clown, do impressions, stupid voices and comedy skits at home that no one else in my life has ever been privy to. I retreat into that irritating shy shell when I'm around others, and I don't think wild horses could tear that goofy imp out of me. Okay, wild horses would just tear me apart, but I can't think of a theological equivalent of wild horses. 

But that's not my dark side, obviously, that's my playful, carefree, side actually letting loose, rather than sitting in the dingy repressed recesses of my mind.

But...

I know within me there are definitely dark thoughts that don't really sit with how I am, how I act and how I want to be.

I don't know where they come from and why they are there. It's not like they're there all the time and it's not like I don't tell them to bugger off. But that doesn't mean they do. Because they stemmed from me. Is it the primal, human animal still alive and well somewhere deep, nestled in my, well, where, in my mind? In my soul? Is he in there waiting for the moment when my survival instinct is required and I have to do anything to protect myself and my kin? Will it really unleash all hell like it promises? Or is it just all talk and no action?

Some people may deny the existence of having such a dark side. I'm pretty sure I'm perceived as a 'nice guy' by pretty much everyone who meets me, and I've yet to hurt anything much more than a wasp (and frankly I felt pretty guilty about it afterwards), but I'm confident there's something unpleasant hiding within me like a troll under the bridge. 

I read the following story a friend shared on Facebook Marina Abramović, “Rhythm 0,” 1974 which, in a nutshell, was an experiment in human behaviour. It showed that when presented with someone who simply did not fight back, the vicious, bullying side of people was quickly revealed. The article notes other, more extreme experiments that showed what happens when people are given power over others. 

Having said I have a dark side, I'm not saying I believe I would soon turn to acts of violence upon a stranger, just because I supposedly had the power. I genuinely believe I don't have it in me to inflict suffering upon another. But it's that very discrepancy that I can't reconcile in my mind. If I am adamant I cannot be nasty to someone, why is that dark side, with those odd thoughts still present?

Also, is it a bad thing? Should you not embrace who you are in total? Because to repress any part of yourself if to actually give it strength. Repressing emotions causing stress and illness, I know this all too well because I used to make myself sick with stress all the time when I was younger.

I'll give you an example of a curious urge that surely shows some sort of pent up side to me; whenever I am in a shop full of china, glass or crockery, there's a part of me that just wants to smash it all up. Just go utterly ape in there! Clearly I would never do it, because my rational side reminds me it would be a bad idea for many reasons. So I don't. And I won't. But what is that urge? Where does it stem from and why should I even be thinking it, and reminding myself that it's just not what one does in a civilised world? 

Here, this clip from High Fidelity is a perfect example of what I mean. Let's face it, most of us must've been in this situation; your mind is thinking one thing, but you do another.

But to think the bad thoughts, there must be a bad little person sitting inside us right? I guess the question is; is that a bad thing?

Perhaps it actually serves as a vent for our frustrations. Perhaps the thoughts, the rants, the fantasy, like in the clip, help us clear our mind first, before actually thinking about the situation more rationally and hopefully actually doing the sensible thing. 

Or maybe we're all just crazies fit to explode at any moment...

The tale of the procrastinator and adorable wife

I met adorable wife online. We had both, for very different reasons, signed up for a website called Love@Lycos. It was in many ways a precursor to Facebook. You had your profile, your 'guestbook', which was basically your wall, and you had a chat facility. You could also join group chats, though the few times I attempted this it was like visiting a meeting of monosyllabics anonymous. Indeed, most of the conversations I had with people were life draining marathons of dullness and ineptitude. 

I would type something akin to the length of this sentence, as an example.

I would get by way of response, lol.

So I would muster up something else suitably amusing and/or interesting.

I would get, lol.

For a brief, wonderful, moment, I presumed I must be the most hilarious man in all of humanity. However that glory soon dissipated when I merely concluded that the people I was 'talking' to were simply incapable of worthwhile conversation and/or were managing multiple conversation and could not multitask effectively. I did briefly meet a most verbose Dutch girl who was commendably capable of decent discourse. Though she was a slightly strange, dark minded individual who seemed a little too found of the misery in life. A little too much for an optimist such as me.

When I stumbled upon adorable wife's profile, it was, to be honest, a mistake. You see, when you browsed the profiles, you put in your filters. Sex, minimum age, maximum age and the like. Well, I was a tender twenty three at this stage and so I would just pick the 20-30 age range. That made sense to me, no one too young, nor too old. But fate clearly had something else in mind. How or why I ended up on the page of a thirty four year Malaysian I don't really know. I have always assumed I just picked the higher age bracket by sheer ineptitude. 

Nice one fate!

So I'm reading the best written, most engrossing profile I'd ever had the pleasure of reading. There was no picture, just words, magnificent words that reached into my soul and spoke to me. I had to leave a message, just to tell this woman that she was a wonderful human being. I believe my words were something like this; you are proof that just because something seems too good to be true, doesn't mean it isn't. You will make someone very happy one day.

And that was that. I moved on and thought nothing more of it.

Until, that is, I got a response. We began sending messages back and forth with more and more regularity. At the time she was somewhat involved, for want of a better word, with another member of the community. Essentially our initial in-depth conversations involved me giving advice on what this chap was saying and doing, and giving adorable wife hints and tips. Our relationship started out as a great friendship, because at the beginning neither of us had pictured being with either the older, or younger, person. However I started to realise that this whole age malarkey was piffle. What we had going here was a true connection. 

I'd fallen in love with her before I'd even seen how she looked.

Goodness only knows what act of greatness I must have done in a past life. When I finally received the image of this beautiful woman smiling out at me I was awestruck. Big brown eyes, full, plump lips, a knockout smile, and pitch black, silky hair. My word. My good God. My good golly God goodness gracious by golly gee gosh!

Now really. There was no way this woman would not be mine! 

We typed. A lot. I mean, we spent hours and hours in front of our computers, tapping away in ever escalating ways. First it was basically via email. Then we used the Love@Lycos chat, until that proved insufficient. We then started using Yahoo chat, before settling on MSN Messenger because you could see when the other person was typing. That was extremely handy because we both typed fast.

It was only later that adorable wife admitted she kept a dictionary handy to keep up with my writing. Bless her cotton socks.

Finally we progressed to the phone. That was the biggie. Actual sound communication. This was, I have to say, before the invention of Skype and video chat, so we didn't have such a luxury. How amazing to finally hear the voice of this person who for all intents and purposes I had fallen deeply in love with without ever even meeting or speaking. 

We could talk for hours. And once we were on the phone, the keyboard conversation felt antique. It was too slow, lacking the immediacy and intimacy of the spoken word, of hearing the other person breathing between words or when we, for a moment, fell silent. What we talked about I can't even recall. But we could be on the phone for five to eight hours on average.

It was inevitable we'd arrange to meet, despite me being in Sheffield and her in Cardiff. 

December the 8th 2001. Something of a landmark then. Adorable wife has gone on record to say that when she first saw me come off the train she almost changed her mind and left the station. I was not the suave, savvy dresser I am now, shall we say. Nor was I free of the tyranny that is acne.

But it was worse than that. Much worse. I had nervously checked my train tickets were present and correct approximately three thousand times whilst waiting for the train. What I had not checked even once was whether I still had my wallet in my pocket when I boarded the train. 

When I finally realised the wallet was gone, the train was well on its merry way to Cardiff. I searched high and low for the damn thing before realising it had undoubtedly come out of my pocket at the station. Probably when I was pulling the tickets in and out incessantly. 

Imagine how mortified I was. Heading off to meet the love of my life, with no money, no cards, nothing. Lucky for me I had a mobile phone by this stage. I spent the majority of my journey, not worried about the meeting with adorable wife, but cancelling cards and calling my mum to come up with a monetary solution!

So bless my dear, not yet wife, when I rolled up looking like a zitty teenager, and told her I'd lost my wallet and I needed to go to a Post Office so my mum could wire some money to me!

How I managed to end up married to the woman I'll never know....