Sunday, 2. November 2008, 11:16:02
In Modern Western societies, it is difficult not to let the hustle and bustle of day-to-day existence dominate your mental landscape. Staying on top of your daily affairs in a given week usually requires a significant amount of time spent doing, deciding, planning and organising, which makes it very difficult, and therefore extremely important, to give your hard-working little brains time to simply...go where they will. Like any engine if you work it too hard it will, over time, degrade and possibly even fail. For me, walking to and from work is the best time to give my mind the playtime it needs to stay healthy.
Take today, for instance.
Stepping out my door this morning revealed a lovely, bright, crisp November day awaiting my pleasure so, woolly-hatted and leather gloved in the crisp cold air, I begin my walk, falling easily into a speed and rythym ingrained into my muscle memory over countless similar journeys. My mind, easily bored with nothing to distract it, jumped at the chance to wander...
...onto the topic of regret. More accurately, a specific regret.
I'm quite an analytical person, with a good memory, so I'm quite used to little mental sojourns through my past. I tend to be quite critical, too: once this served as a tool for self-improvement, now more often than not it's a purely theoretical exercise that provides fodder for future decision making.
Today we were considering a particular time in my past when I upset someone, leading to the loss of a few people I considered friends. Painful still, but less so each time I revisit it, especially since I've gained a few very helpful insights from it in the years since: this , I believe, is called Learning.
This occupied the whole 45 minutes of my walk as I thought in and around the topic, considering, extrapolating and, yes, even revising - for what would a reminiscence be without at least imagining how the mistake could have been avoided. As soon as I reached my destination, however, my mind very quickly reverted to planning the day ahead of me...though the experience has left an imprint on me, touching on my emotions as it did.
Regrets are funny things, aren't they? Without making mistakes we don't seem to learn as easily (or at all, in my case 
). But without our mistakes, we would be different people. I think I would be a different person (possibly colder, more arrogant, less empathetic...), yet I've learned to love and accept who I am, the person my experiences have helped me become. So shouldn't we really be celebrating them? Those concentrated flashpoints in our lives when we erred, emotions ran high and relations with others changed accordingly? Odd, then, that I should have any regrets at all.
I regret upsetting the person alluded to above. Deeply enough to carry the pain of it for the rest of my life, I fear. But there are other regrets, too, of different kinds. I regret not being bolder when challenges faced me, such as my cringeworthy response to the bullying I suffered througout my school life, or in my early romantic encounters when I responded awkwardly to certain approaches. I regret certain decisions that time proved to be the wrong ones. I regret, I feel bad for those times I failed myself and others...but for me this seems healthy and proper to do so and I can't seem to work out if this contradiction is a good thing or not.
I know the common wisdom is to have No Regrets by the time you reach your death-bed, hell it's practically a mantra these days, but my thought for today is that consdering how important getting things wrong is, what kind of life would it be, what kind of person would you be, if you had no regrets to speak of during your last moments of life?
Friday, 31. October 2008, 21:08:02
Finally! Watch out, World, here I come!
Friday, 31. October 2008, 20:56:32
Ingredients:
- 1 Large Plain Naan Bread
- 1 tin sliced black olives
- 1 tin chopped tomatoes
- Diced onion
- Tomato Puree
- Fresh basil leaves
- Salt
- Pepper
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Half-fat Mozarella Cheese
This recipe is a favourite of mine and takes only 20 minutes to make from start to finish, including preparation time.
Add some olive oil to the pan and heat. Fry onions lightly until soft. Add the chopped tomatoes to the pan and the sliced olives. Heat and stir for a few minutes, adding herbs and seasoning to taste (I added some dried basil for a touch more flavour - you could also add some Tabasco sauce for a piquant bite). Add 1 or 2 tbsps more olive oil, enough to mix through the sauce. Leave to simmer.
Lightly toast the naan in the oven, using a small oven tray.
Once toasted, spread your tomato sauce over the naan, taking care not to spill over the edges. Take your mozarella and tear into small pieces. Scatter over the top of your pizza. Place under the grill until the cheese has melted and the egdes of the Naan are beginning to brown.
Add the fresh basil leaves and any further seasoning you require.
Pour a 250ml glass of your favourite white wine. Enjoy! 
Wednesday, 22. October 2008, 12:24:56
My girlfriend and I are so much in love it is ridiculous.
Compared to my first love affair, way back in my late teens, this has none of the burning, uncontrollable passion or heat that stopped breath or made me feel faint...nevertheless, this odd difference in temperament has not stopped it from changing us into two completely different people than met in that bar six-and-a-half months ago: we have now adjusted so much that we have become...[Warning: nausea-inducing sentiment ahead!]...more than the sum of our two parts.
Discussing it last night - after our customary giggling and, ahem, 'play session' that we're sure had the neighbours upstairs jamming pillows over their ears - we compared and contrasted our state of being at the beginning of the relationship, those wild, exciting days of risk and discovery, with our current solid, happy, eternally frisky relationship. Despite our solitary natures we find ourselves spending more and more time with each other, and wanting to spend time with each other when we're apart. Our three contigous days in York was the first test of this which, we discovered, we passed with flying colours, not wanting to part from each other once during all that time.
Whatever calm rationality we possessed at the start has gone, leaving only the pink, fluffy, soft-focus desire to say horribly gooey things to each other while cuddling and kissing - often in public - as if our lives depended on it. We're sick, I tell you. Possibly terminal cases who should be quarantined for the sake of the wider populace.
For the moment we still maintain a healthy balance of time together and time apart; we both live at separate addresses and there is still a closely observed need for personal time. But we're planning things now. Trips abroad. Xmas & New Year. Heck, in York we were even talking about moving out of Aberdeen together. And I'm thinking of inviting her to come with me when I visit my parents this coming Friday....
It's only a matter of time until we meld into a candy-coloured composite being of two distinct bodies sharing one mind and one heart, and the Grant and Debbie you know are gone forever. Thank God neither of us cares anything for the institution of marriage or I'd hate to think where we'd be now! Please, if you have the cure for this terrifying affliction, or at least ways to mitigate the symptoms, contact me before it is too late!
Monday, 20. October 2008, 14:35:08
'Tis an odd sort of day. I'm having trouble concentrating at work, possibly because of the 12 episodes of Stargate SG1 I watched in a row yesterday: I think I've broken my brain, or at least wedged its motivation needle to 'Sci-fi'. One of my bosses awarded me some gift vouchers for helping avert a major situation one of our business clients set-up for us, so I naturally dived onto Amazon.co.uk and spent the lot on myself practically as soon as I'd finished taking them out fo the envelope.
10 years worth of SG1 in one box? 214 x 45 minute episodes? Yes yes.
PS: For all those thinking of xmas shopping - Free 'Super-saver' Postage on Amazon is now free on purchases of only £5 and above. I will be starting, and finishing, my own shopping in Novemeber. No more of that last-minute rushing around on Dec 24th for this clever boy!
SG1 marathons was how I intended to spend my weekends from now until xmas, but the down-side of that is that it buggers my concentration for the more mundane aspects of life, such as Work and Chores and all those tedious jobs adults are expected to do but not enjoy. Maybe I'll just restrict it to Saturdays leaving Sundays to recover.
Other happenings:
- My interview at the Passport Office on Saturday was very quick and contained no surprises. Hopefully that's the last hoop I have to jump through before it arrives. 4 working days minimum, they said. 10 Maximum. all going well it cuold be here this coming Friday!
- Mum's birthday this friday. Can't think what to get the old gal (She'll be 55): all suggestions welcome.
- Just caught myself having a very gossipy, girly conversation with my gossipy, girly colleagues about Strictly Come Dancing, the 'glitzy' phone-in-and-vote-em-out show the BBC screens on saturdays that my girlfriend forced me to watch this past weekend. Must not let this type of thing continue or my reputation as a Hard, Macho, Ladykiller will suffer. Football. Beer. Notches on bedposts. Falcon Punch!
- Note to self: under no circumstances tell girlfriend of 'strictly' gossiping at work. She may schedule further sessions for you to 'enjoy'.
- Am worried I may not have much more time for blogging. Work and GF commitments have restricted output in recent months and....I want to start something else soon, plus the run-up to xmas and all that. I'll have to find time for a serious think sometime soon.
OK. Am done for today. Be cool, y'all.
Friday, 17. October 2008, 15:42:58
So, having procrastinated for two months over some information that meant my Passport Application couldn't go ahead (silly me forgot to include my parent's passport numbers on the first form I sent out, required for all first time applicants) I finally got the nudge boot in the rectum I needed to provide those details when a letter arrived stating I'd have to pay again if they didn't get what they wanted by the suddenly looming deadline.
This worked a treat: passports aren't cheap, you know. 
They'd sent me another form to fill in so I badgered another mate into countersigning it (cheers, Tony) and took the opportunity to slip the Passport people two more pictures of me, this time without the Muslim-Terrorist beard I'd been growing for that video drama project I was involved with a while back. I've been dreading seeing that goddam beard on my passport for the next ten years, and sincerely hope they've used the new ones.
Anyway, I have one last hurdle to haul myself over before I am granted my passport, a half-hour interview. This, I am informed, will be based on the details I have supplied in my form and, more worryingly, information they've managed to scrape together from legal records searches within the UK (Google?). My exceedingly active imagination is having fun working itself into a froth over the kinds of questions they might conceivably ask me. 
I'm hoping they won't ask me if I have "ever been a spy" like they honestly, genuinely did on my RAF application form all those years ago: my inability to take anything seriously made it incredibly difficult to resist putting down 'yes' and seeing what would happen next.
It's set for first thing tomorrow morning, 8.45am, so I'll be able to come back here and let you know how I got on reasonably quickly. I'm sure it will just be a formality.
Wish me luck.
Thursday, 16. October 2008, 08:19:00
Okay, teeth, it's been 24 hours now. How's about we stop grumbling about what happened yesterday and get on with our lives?
Here, have some paracetemol.
Wednesday, 15. October 2008, 15:57:03
25 minutes. That's how long the torture was going to last.
Today was the dreaded day of my appointment with my new dentist. I don't like dentists. They scare me with their diabolical chairs, little trays full of torture implements and masks obscuring their identities. Never mind the Watchers, who's watching the drillers? That's what I've long wanted to know.
I slept well enough, but not straight through. I awoke at 2am after a nightmare involving drills and much pain. Dentists cause me genuine anxiety, thanks no doubt to a real monster of a man I met when I was five. Mr Brownlow: hands the size of king-kong's (with twice as much hair on them) and that giant ape's bedside manner, too. Liked to shout at little boys and demean them when their mothers weren't around to defend them/prosecute. Seemed a very angry man, whose only outlet was causing pain in small children with mouths too small to fit his huge simian digits. So I've suffered an acute anxiety re: dentists ever since.
I wasn't looking forward to this at all.
At my checkup it had been determined that I required an extended scale and polish, two fillings and a whole bunch of composite patches to shore up the weak enamel in there. "Book a 25 minute appointment", she said. "Come into my parlour", is what I believe I heard in her voice.
I had to walk into a strange and wild part of Aberdeen, too. Such is the shocking quality of NHS dentistry in our part of the world new client registrations are like gold dust, so choosing your practitioner very much depends on how fast you can pick up the phone: you take what you can get, basically. Mine is in an area known as Northfield, notorious city-wide for being one of the most impoverished areas populated by some of the roughest elements humanity is capable of producing. This also caused me some anxiety but I think I dealt with it well. Google Maps gave me a printout so I wouldn't get lost (It didn't work, but that was me being a muppet) and I made it to the surgery with plenty of time to spare.
Plenty of time in which to sit and worry.
All too quickly, my turn arrived.
I sat in The Chair. Two women swiftly crowded either side of me (another watching from the murky distance). They then reclined me, shone a light at me, and held various disturbing tools directly in my line of sight. Was now a good time for me to break into a panic and start begging for my life? Last chance, Mr Bond.
Sitting comfortably, they began.
It started with the Scale & Polish. Drilling and scraping. My favourite (look for the irony, it's there in spades). However...this ended surprisingly quickly. Much to my amazement my tongue reported a completely different topography at the back of my lower front teeth within three minutes. And I didn't have to spit the tartar crap out, either. Woman No.2 was sucking all of that out with a clever implement that also supplied a spray of water to keep my mouth wet. Something new and unexpected crept into my seige-state of mental anguish: admiration. The dentist lady (an Asian woman with an East European name) had wielded her devices with considerable aplomb, certainly with more skill than my fears had allowed her to possess. It didn't even hurt like I recalled, either. My god, I might actually make it through this alive...
But then came the drilling in earnest: the fillings. For those unaware, putting fillings in usually requires drilling out the bad bits of tooth: they make a hole first then fill it. Dentist Lady had started this without even telling me, which took me by surprise as wikipedia, my darling wikipedia, had told me this activity was usually done AFTER a local anaesthetic had been applied. I was expecting (dreading) needles but got absolutely nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkiss. In fact, she'd been at it for a full minute before the alarms started going off in my head. 'Hey, hang on. Is she...?'
A sharp sting of biting pain leapt through my jaw as she reached the nerve cluster within the particular tooth she was working on, one of my rear molars. Mouth invaded, throat busy fending off excess water, all I could do was wince and jerk my head away from her probing. "Sorry" she said, in the clinical manner of someone well used to causing pain on a daily basis, and carried on.
The second filling was worse. She did the painful thing three times in a row, obviously looking to get every last bit of yuck out before putting the filling in. Suddenly, the torture was ended. Woman 2 told me that was it, "The worst is over", which I appreciated more than I could say...what with still having two hands and three implements gudding about in my vocal cavity (I'm sure a thumb had been tasked with holding my tongue down, pro-wrestling style). If I'd have been able to sit up without spearing the back of my throat I might have kissed her. Instead I had to make do with a long lingering look of pure, unrefined gratitude.
After that there was a strange repetitive ritual. Something cold sprayed on an area. Then a heat gun, like a small hair-dryer but with a long thin metal tube for the barrel (1950's raygun) was applied to that area for a small length of time determined by a machine behind woman 2 which beeped to signal when it was done. Woman 2 held an odd orange plastic panel over my mouth while she did this. I couldn't work out what function that fulfilled. Then they moved on to another area, and so on.
Then, just like that, it was over. Dentist Lady sat back, asked me to bite down to check her work wasn't going to cause me any further pain, and told me to rinse out my abused mouth. "Please come back in six months for a check-up, and earlier if you have problems".
I had survived. What's more, I think I have finally conquered my phobia! That was the worst it could possibly be, and I survived. My teeth were clean again, and I survived. There was pain, but I've felt much worse (without dentists present) and I survived.
I survived. 
Saturday, 11. October 2008, 10:40:53
Hello. I did intend to come back here and write about/post pics from my recent York trip but the next day after my return I developed a rotten cold/flu/cough-type thing. Quite how these dreaded lurgies know when I'm on holiday is a mystery to me. 
I've been taking powders, pills and potions to try and beat it but it's proving rather resilient, lodged as it is right in the centre of my chest, with all the shortness of breath and fluidic coughing that comes from that. Amusingly, the lady in the chemist looked rather alarmed and uncomfortable when I dropped my armful of items in front of her, even going so far as to check with her superior that she could sell it all to me! Of course I wasn't going to be taking them all at the same time, I assured her (slightly grumpily due to not being well), I just need enough to cope with this and any minor maladies that may crop up in the near future. Now please ring it through and let me return to the cosy recuperative confines of my comfy double-duvet'd bed.
The upshot of all this sickness, coupled with the fact I'm on holiday and am avoiding work of any kind for the entire week, is that I have very little motivation, will or indeed energy to sit down and pen a novel about my time away, not to mention painstakingly cleaning and formatting all the photos I have ready for upload into MyOpera. If it is any consolation I do at least feel moderately guilty about not keeping in touch, but a couple of episodes of Thundercats or a level or two of Quake 4/Quake 2/C&C: Renegade usually helps push that to the back of my mind where it belongs. 
Not to worry, I'm sure I'll be better just in time to return to work next week.
Friday, 3. October 2008, 14:29:01
I'm on holiday!
After nine long months of hard work, swearing and teeth-shaving frustration (e.g: my normal working day) I have, at long last, decided to spend a portion of my hard-earned holiday allowance on a week being paid to be somewhere other than work. Tomorrow Debbie and I are travelling down to York in deepest Englandshire for four days for fun, frolics, fornication...and some time spent showing the Yorkies (my name for the indigenous population) the glamour and majesty inherent in the Scottish Kilt at a friend's wedding reception.
Long time readers (i.e those bored at work who've exhausted their list of fun bookmarks) may remember that this was one of my goals during my weight loss at the start of the year - for in January I was a portly 16 stone 2 and rapidly running out of clothes that fit, particularly the Kilt that I'd been fitted for 12 years earlier. I didn't make the June target but my eating habits have changed so much this year thanks to Scottish Slimmers that it was child's play to nip back on the plan and lose a few more pounds. This week I've been trying on the full regalia and am delighted to report that although it's still a bit tight around the midriff I am going to look absolutely fabulous, in that stormy, sexy way that only tall, dark Scots with mysterious dark eyes and swirling, flowing heavily-tailored cotton around their legs can. And yes, I will be a TRUE Scotsman*: wearing a Kilt with anything beneath it is as lacking in manliness as buying a pint of lager and asking the barman for a paper umbrella to pop in the top of it.
And knowing my incredibly kinky girlfriend, I imagine she'll be doing something similar. 
Speaking of Debbie, this trip is our first trip away together, and the first time we'll have spent anything more than 24 hours in each other's company. It's kind of a big deal, a litmus test for our future relationship together. Either we're going to have the best time EVER or we'll be doing our best to kill each other by day two, in which case I'll be kind of glad the train tickets we bought for the return journey aren't next to each other (don't ask).
Have I told you I'm in love with this woman? No? Well I am. Deeply. And long may that continue. 
Planning the York trip has been a nightmare, but I am sparing you from all that pissing and moaning for the sake of having you come back. Seriously, you do not want to know, suffice to say that at one point I strongly and earnestly believed the entire universe had been created as an elaborate means of torturing me and me alone (But then I am prone to bouts of Solipsism these days...).
When I come back (Tuesday 7th) I'm going to...well, actually I have no idea what I'm going to do. My mother immediately suggested I tear out my shower and fit the half-bath we bought several months back but, no offence, Mum: FUCK THAT. 'Holiday' != 'Fitting a New Bathroom'. I'm going to...relax, in ways that I shall work out when the moment to do so arrives. Run off and visit someplace nice? Visit friends? Lay on my lounge floor for three days watching DVDs and eating the disparate foodstuffs I have left in my cupboards (Egg noodles with Mint Jelly - mmmmmmm!)?
That's the beautiful thing about holidays: Mine to do with as I please.
I'll be sure to take some pics of my experiences to display here. See you in five.
G xx- - - - - - -
*
No underwear. Go ahead and picture that if you like, ladies, but for the sake of accidents please make sure you are sitting down.
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