Post 310 – Happy Birthday ‘Everyone’s An Idiot’
The blog is 2. I am 37.
Ah, happy birthday to me. Well, not to me, that’s a month away, but happy birthday to my stupid blog. It’s two years ago today that I finally put metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper and started this time wasting, stat-obsessed nonsense. I had the idea a few weeks before hand and thought I probably wouldn’t bother because I didn’t have the time. I still don’t have the time, but I still appear to be doing it, two years later. I wonder how much further I’d have got in my life if I’d decided not to bother.
But here we are, two years, over three hundred posts, well over a quarter of a million words words and tens of thousands of hits later, having achieved little more than giving a handful of people something to do whilst having a shit in the morning. Oh well. It doesn’t even make me happy. Why do I fucking bother?
Anyway, here’s my first ever post. Actually, it’s my second ever post, from the next day, but the first one (you can check if you want, it’s all right here in front of you) was just one of those stupid “I’m writing a blog” type posts. This post sums up the very reason I started it, back in the day, in 2010, when life was oh so simple… Read more 
Post 309 – When tea goes bad…
Put it in the bin.
And when I say “when tea goes bad”, I don’t mean what happened to me yesterday, when I lovingly brewed a cup and poured what amounted to yoghurt into it, turning it a very strange and lumpy orange colour, and making me gag slightly. That’s not what I’m referring to at all. Before we begin, I urge you all to read yesterday’s nonsense written about tea drinking. This may or may not make sense without reading that. (I say ‘may or may not’ because I haven’t got a clue what I’m about to write).
Tea. Made from the tea plant. Well, strictly speaking it’s made from the Camellia Sinensis plant, but that’s known to us as a tea plant. Perhaps it’s not known to us as that, because most of us probably don’t make reference to it – we don’t have to make reference to it unless we’re writing pointless blogs about it. It’s vital that we understand this. Shall I make it a little clearer? According to Wikipedia:
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world. It has a cooling, slightly bitter, astringent flavour which many people enjoy. Read more
Post 308 – Tea
Yum.
“What shall I write about tomorrow?” I pointlessly asked Mrs. F last night. Pointless because I don’t need help in writing it and would struggle to write about a topic at length which someone else has thrown at me. I think I just wanted her to ghost write it for me, but she has enough to write about at the moment. ”Tea”, she said. “Crap”, I thought. She then gave me the abstract, but again I just wanted her to write it for me. I am lazy. Oh well, here goes.
I love tea. It’s a major part of my life and anyone who doesn’t love tea is an idiot. This is fact. I’m a coffee lover and there are times when only coffee will do. I grind my own beans (poncey) and drink it black. This is the only way to drink it. Certainly don’t get bogged down in where your beans are coming from and how freshly ground they are if you’re then going to throw a load of frothy milk and vanilla syrup into it.
Coffee isn’t always the answer though. It’s too caffeinated as well. “Tea has the same amount of caffeine as coffee”. Well, that’s a nonsense as all non idiots know. They’re not the same, there’s about double the amount in coffee as there is in tea, which is why after a while coffee sends me a bit mental. However, I’m not here to explain in detail how and when I drink various caffeinated drinks. I realise this blog can be dull but that would be taking things a bit far. Read more
Post 307 – Miserablist
I am not a grump.
I’m often described as moody or grumpy. To be honest, I’m a bit grumpy that I’ve made two typos within that first sentence (and another two since writing that) but I’d blame that on it being early in the morning.
OK, let’s start again. I’m often described as moody or grumpy. Miserable some would say. I don’t really think I am. I’m incredibly positive in many ways, and in many ways strive to find the positive in situations. I’m definitely not a negative person, though I suppose you can be positive and grumpy. Generally, I like things to be right, but of course that could be misconstrued as meaning I want my own way. Of course I want my own way – the opposite doesn’t make any sense! Why would I want things to be not how I want them? It’s a nonsense.
My level of ‘anger’ on this blog is, of course, a little bit pantomime and I don’t usually care significantly about the things I go on about to do anything more than write about them and to be honest once they’re written about I generally forget all about them. So I’m not angry, and I’m not negative, but again that doesn’t mean I can’t be moody or grumpy. We’re all moody in that we have moods, but I suppose I’m picking it apart in the wrong way. I get upset about things and frustrated by things, but that’s just because I’m passionate about what I do. I don’t often get upset by things that are nothing to do with me. In those situations I would normally just shrug uncaringly and do a ‘meh’ face, if you know what I mean. Read more
Post 306 – Benefits
I don't know where this is.
There’s good reason, as I’ve spoken about before, that I don’t normally involve myself in politics. It’s mostly because I don’t really care, and partly because I’m ill informed. I’d argue that I’m as informed as most people, but I personally don’t think you should write on a public forum such as this without a very well read point of view and solidly founded arguments. The point the I ‘don’t care’ is harder to agree with, but I find (most) politicians abhorrent and find the way the parties bicker like children in a school playground so frustrating and counter productive that it pushes me away from any involvement or interest. Whether this is right or wrong, I simply don’t care.
However (well, you’d never have guessed there was going to be a however, did you?) sometimes I feel compelled to write something. The last time I did it got me into all sorts of heated debates with complete strangers and called all sorts of awful things from now blocked idiots on the twitters. Oh well, here goes another shallow commentary on something I know little about… If it gets silly, I’ll just close all comments on the site till it stops. I suspect it won’t get that far and people won’t care much.
On the drive in, I found out about something which I had a vague idea about but hadn’t thought much about. The government are trying to push through some benefit reform. Of course they are; the country is broke, and needs to save money and presently we haemorrhage tens of billions of pounds on benefits and something probably has to be done. The thing which pricked up my tired ears was hearing that the plans are to cap benefits at £26,000 for families, which equates to a salary of £35,000 before tax. My immediate thoughts were that it was rather a lot of money. I then realised that without that, and by that I mean the current situation, is that families can be given somewhere around the £50,000, which must roughly equate to £65,000 before tax. That is a staggering amount of money to me, and if you don’t feel the same, then I’m very pleased for you that you can earn so much. Read more
Post 305 – Old music (and a big word)
His Master's Voice. Old people know what this is...
Well, it would appear to be Monday again and I appear to be way too short of time to write this, but I realise there are some people who will shortly be ready to go to the toilet and seem incapable of doing that most simple of tasks without this nonsense to read. It’s small comfort to know that what I write makes people’s bowels move, but I suppose I should be grateful they’re reading at all.
Quite often I hear something on the radio in the morning which makes me angry and reminds me how many idiots there are out there, and it doesn’t seem to matter what channel I listen to either. It’s mostly because I’m quite grumpy in the mornings, I’m unhappy about sitting in traffic because I’ve left so early to avoid it. I’m unhappy because I don’t like getting up in the mornings, and wish I didn’t have to, and don’t think I ought to, but then I’m reminded that I need the money which makes me even more grumpy. Sometimes listening to the radio makes me less grumpy, but all too often that’s not the case.
This morning, like many, I was reminded of “the masses”, and how ignorant they are. I’m not really sure who “the masses” are, or how often I have to deal with them, or whether any of my friends are “the masses”. I hope not. Yes, I realise it’s a stupid generalisation that arrogant people like me make to lump together everyone who doesn’t share my view on the world, but it’s also true. There are way too many idiots out there, and it’s as apparent when talking about music as it is at any time. Read more
Post 304 – A piece of new music theatre
Silly Paddy and silly Jonny.
OK, I’ll be honest, I’ve not really thought this through, but it stems from the way my working week has panned out. This week I’ve spent most days working on the early rehearsal process for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! (the exclamation mark is not my own and is simply part of the title) and my evenings working on Panto’s On Strike! at the Regent Theatre in Stoke (I think the exclamation mark is mine, though it’s probably more warranted here).
For those who don’t know, Panto’s On Strike is a relatively new show, conceived and starring Jonathan Wilkes and Paddy McGuinness, and written by expert panto writer Eric Potts. It’s a bit like panto with swearing, I suppose. It’s what’s described as an ‘adult panto’, which essentially means it’s all the same stuff but with all the innuendo turned into swears. Normally these things are based on regular panto stories (such as “Sinderella” – do you see what they did there?) but this is slightly different in that all the regular panto characters have gone on strike to protest at the kidnapping of Princess Crystal by the evil King Fu, who is holding her to ransom because he wants all the baddies to win in panto this year. Panto hero Jonny Wilkes is called upon to rescue her and takes the reluctant Paddy with him. Then lots of people swear, a dwarf gets naked, girls dance and everybody lives happily ever after. I might be underselling it a little, but that’s the general jist of it. Either that appeals to you or not, but if it doesn’t, then it ought to; for things like this, if you leave your highbrow artistic ideals at the door, it’s a brilliantly written, well performed pacey show, full of nonsense and lots of fun. Read more
