Got wood?

This year my home folly is having a wood burning stove fitted. Not because I care about the environment. Not to save money, or even for the cosy glow that only real flames can give you.

It's because I like to burn things.

Wood mainly, and possibly a Euro 2012 wall chart when England get knocked out in the quarter finals.

Today it was the joy of quotes from installers. An endless parade of air sucked through teeth, of hushed mutterings about "building regs", of opinions delivered in a firm voice that totally contradicted what the previous guy had to say.

• You have to insulate your flue mate
• You don't have to insulate.

• You HAVE to have a liner mate
• I ALWAYS fit a liner, even though you don't have to
• I recommend a liner
• Fuck lining your chimney. You got a baby's bedroom mate? I'll just vent the stove into that

One guy made a great play about having to use scaffolding to get up the two storeys to the roof.

Another guy was blase about it - "just a ladder job mate".

Someone else is coming this afternoon - I'm guessing he'll favour some kind of circus based trampoline system to get up there.

I've set aside the whole of tomorrow morning to have a good mull.

• Which guy made the most sense?
• Who seemed the most knowledgeable?
• Do I go with the young and dynamic but slightly wide boy, or the more solid older guy?

And then I'll pick the lowest quote.

Out for a run

"Oy! You!"

The cry went from the yellow Saxo.

"Yeah, you. You run like a Springer Spaniel!"

It was already pulling away, so time only to smile and give a thumbs up.

The car slowed.

"Like a Spaniel with its legs broke!"

The mocking sound of tyres screeching as it sped away.

But he showed them how he ran, and he only fell over once before he caught them at the lights.

Then they showed him how they could open all four doors simulataneously when someone shouts, "Hey, dickheads!"

They showed him how well they could loom.

They all watched him for a while, before agreeing he had more the lolloping gait of a Golden Retriever about him.

I like fish

So I'm in Tesco and this guy who sort of looks like a guy I went to school with is on the fresh fish counter.

What do I do?

Where once we were equals now here I am filling my trolley with fresh olives and parma ham, and he goes home smelling of haddock.

Should I roll on over there and just pretend like I don't recognise him?

Fifth time around, and this could be a little awkward.

I could just roll on by, but I really want some Swordfish loin, and God, I've not had any dressed crab for two days.

Three circuits of the store later I come up with my genius plan - he's a jobbing actor. He's making his way to the top by taking any old crappy job in between acting gigs. This isn't a dead end, it's a mere stepping stone to a brighter life.

Full of gay abandon I march back to the fish counter, only Possibly Stuart is gone. There's some old lady serving there now, and that's okay - she's on the wind down path of her career, pulling a few shifts to buy Christmas presents for the grand kids.

Making a mental note to not say this kind of thing out loud I pick my fish up from the floor and head for the checkout.

It's a lovely sunny day. Birds are singing, and I have seared yellow fin tuna for tea.

In the car park Could Be Colin is collecting the trolleys.

Think of the children - save the planet!

I'm doing my bit with my car. It's not a Prius, it doesn't run on chip fat. And it's old, 13 years, and with a road tax pushing £200 but small engine you know it's from the era of cancer spewing death cars.

The way I look at it - there's enough C02 pumped out by building me my all new cool-mobile, and crushing the old one, to choke a fair sized Panda. By sticking to the car from the last century I'm actually saving lives. 

But now, like a couple of hippies on Grand Designs who want all natural and no concrete until they see the price, I'm starting to waver.

Four days in a shiny new rental car and I'm sorry animals, but you're all screwed. Lights that come on when it's dark - that's worth a baby meerkat or two. And crikey - wipers that sense the rainwater - sorry baby hippopotamous, you're just not that cute.

Coming back to the old jalopy the worst part wasn't leaning across to adjust the side mirror, and it wasn't the leaden feel of feet on pedals. Not even the inside fog mist that's like cataracts.

No, none of that. It was the smell.

Not a bad smell. Not the smell of endless coffee cups spilled in the side pocket, or that cucumber that rolled under the back seat.

It was the smell of memories. Of petrol and damp. Of hats slipping down over eyes, of grim reversings where no matter the kerb was two feet high and not a kerb at all, but dang it I will make it over despite all the crying from us kids in the back. The triumphant waving of disabled badges that means it's okay to park in the middle of a roundabout or up on that man's foot. 

My car reminds me of an elderly relative, long since passed. That's right, I have an old man's car.

No wonder the net curtains twitch when I drive past that retirement home two streets over.

How I shop for clothes

So there I am, loaded down with like fifty shirts from the sale rack and I go up to the blonde hair extension with smile at the cash desk.

Fix my best charm smile, and I say to her: "Do you know how many on sale fashion free polo shirts I can buy for the price of a single Ben Sherman top?"
She didn't, and she wasn't free for a date.

Too busy washing her hair extension I guess.

How I shop for cars

The guy comes over to me - white shirt stretched tight over belly, big bushy moustache, but he has a kindly smile.

"Can I help you sir?" he says.

It's a total reflex, and I tell him no, I'm just browsing.

In this car showroom two miles out of time. The place I had to drive to. In that piece of shit car he can see from the window.

He looks at the piece of shit, and he looks at me.

"Are you in the market for a new car?" he says.

I look at the piece of shit, and I look at him.

It's a total reflex, but I tell him no, not really.

He gets the message and I get to wander, all by myself.

I silently curse, wondering how I find out what ABS means without looking like a tit.

It'll go the same way most of my purchases do. A couple of weeks making the decision - whether to actually buy a car or not. Then a good few months of in depth research - working out whether I want 18V or 16V, do I want alloys, can I save myself £2.37 by getting the generic floor mats rather than the ones they make specifically for that model.

Followed by a single day of mad, carefree abandon as I decide to bloody do it, throw all my careful research out the window and buy something totally different because that's what they had in stock.

All you have is floor mats made of Madagascan Spider Silk, edged with gold and you can't get them wet? Gimme, gimme, gimme!

I like clean

Strange as it may seem to people who who come to my house - I like things clean.

Those piles of dust, the sixteen copies of Watchtower on the foot of the stairs, the red marks on the wall from where I kicked the pommegranate that time, all there because I haven't found the right tool.

It's not through wont of trying. I have so many gadgets for cleaning, all promise to make my life easier, but none have the wow factor to overcome laziness. I have a higher ratio of cleaning devices to dirt than an NHS hospital ward.

Until now.

Because now I finally have my handheld Dyson DC31.

I've wanted one of these babies for a while, always holding off because of the price tag. Can a handheld vacuum that costs over one hundred pounds really be worth it? I still don't know, but before you write me off as having more money than sense...

It looks like a gun.

It comes out of the box and you have to click things together like a sniper rifle. I'm tempted to get it a silver case filled with black foam inserts to fit the sleek form.

It also has a button that transforms it from a mere 38W of suck into a virtual hurricane of 60W. In layman's terms that's enough to take a wig off a bald man at forty paces. I'm also hoping it'll be enough to suck out those three apple cores that have glued themselves to the inside of my car's ash tray.

The DC31 is small and light, great for sneaking into the hospital with you when that guy with the comb over resents your little moment of fun.

I bet this would totally suck if it was real

He didn't love the girl. How could he love someone after just two dates? That was a sure fire ticket to Loserville. But he did really like her. Then one mistimed comment and boom, all gone.

They had this single perfect date together. The kind of first date you get in movies, when the both of them clicked, right at the same time. They drank Mojitos in the bar at the end of the bay. Somehow they talked about kids. One hour after meeting they were onto children, and neither of them was leaving.

They shared their first kiss before the hour was up, waiting for a table in Demarcos. His impulse, her surprise, but they both kinda liked it. And they both kinda liked the guy who sang like Dean Martin, who held the note, until the guy leaned over the table and kissed the girl again.

In the downstairs bar they drank beer. They held each other close, they kissed some more. The drink was flowing well and with hands clasped this new couple made so many new friends that night.

No one could believe that it was their first date.

They rode the carousel even though it was all tucked in for the night, laughing on the same pony until the man came and shouted at them.

Their second date a film, a movie that she liked but he didn't. That wasn't why it felt flat - who outside of Romeo and Juliet could top that first date?

He still did not know how he fucked things up, only that his sole memory of her - a contact on his phone that said: "Imogen?" - victim of a pissed off number deletion followed by frantic fumbling to get it back. Going months without calling her, and it wasn't until he was back in that downstairs bar for the first time since, on another first date, that he thought to himself, "Fuck".

He was there with this new girl, and she was nice, and he was having fun, but she was no Imogen. He started to think - with a first date like that, it was meant to be.

Perhaps it made him a dick, but he didn't care. Text her, and ask her - "That Imogen? Remember me?".

Scrolling through the contacts on his phone, looking for her name. Slowly, the horror growing, remembering that message, just two nights before:

Warning! Upgrading to the latest version of Android will erase all local data on your phone. Including contact details of your one, true love.

He said fuck once more, out loud. Didn't care that everyone was staring.

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourius

Well, that's one way to describe it.

Another way is the phrase "total borefest".

It's a war film about a group of Nazi hunters going around killing Nazis, and somehow I was actually rooting for the Germans.

They're Nazi hunters and when they find a Nazi they kill him. Only they don't just kill the evil, nasty Nazis, like the SS, they go find some poor German conscript - a guy only fighting because he's been told to fight -and they bash his head with a baseball bat.

In typical Tarantino style scene after "cool" scene happens. People sit around talking. They discuss German cinema, their favourite directors. There's a curious scene when a British agent who's also an expert on German cinema is briefed by an officer and another man I suspect was Winston Churchill. They meet in a large, almost totally empty room yet for some reason they all choose to stand in opposite corners and shout across the empty space at each other.

This might be the point (fifteen hours in I think) when all three people in the room said together as one: "This is crap."

But we lasted, all the way to the end.

Through the forty seven hours of scenes where people chatted about German cinema.

Through a two hour scene in a bar where a British agent was exposed because he said he grew up in Krimml in a house with Sky Blue window shutters, when in fact any native of Krimml knows that due to local planning laws all window shutters must be painted Topaz Blue. (In fact there's special dispensation for houses built between 1921 and 1926 to allow them to have Mirage Blue shutters, a shade very close to Sky Blue, so it's possible the agent could have been mistaken about the precise shade of blue, but since he was a boy at the start of the Great War, the house he grew up in can't have been built between 1921 and 1926). ***

Lots of people get shot.

Brad Pitt didn't get shot. Perhaps the German soldiers were confused by how American he was looking, or how many times he said, "Mama mia!". (He was disguised as an Italian you see).

Hitler may have got shot, or maybe it was blown up, or burned to death. I missed most of the frantic climax because I was spluttering with incredulity that the Hitler, the leader of the German people, the Fuhrer, the most important man in Nazi Germany, the guy you'd think the Germans would be keen on protecting, they'd given him two guards.

In Paris. The captial of France. A city, filled with Frenchmen. Who hate Germans. With Brad Pitt dressed as an Italian and his crack team of Nazi hunters on the loose.

---

*** Okay, so the scene didn't quite get to this level of banality, but watch it - it skirts damn close to it

Fly me to the moon

"You only get one shot kid. Just one."


As I lined up the target, my finger quite literally on the trigger, and I took that final  breath that would serve me through the hit those words came back to me.
Close your eyes. Breathe. And do it.


So I took the shot.


Before I left my last job I spent the summer as the fly killing king. My badminton racquet was my weapon. My panacea the tink of the connection between string and fly, then head going one way, body in the opposite direction. On those hot, sweaty days when the air seems to pool around you and the flies are buzzing, on those days I was a king. Making double figures most days, easy.

My signature move was the lateral aerial bisecting shot (LAB for short). Man, I could pull off a LAB with a flick of my wrist, and boom, seventh heaven. Seeing the body fly, in two directions. And sometimes the added bonus; the cry of a desk mate - "I felt wet splash on me!"

Now that I work from home I don't quite have the room to swing and pull off a LAB any longer. I've had to get more sophisticated. I've had to invest in my armoury.

Introducing....the http://www.amazingflygun.com/

This thing is fabulous. Okay, if you use the string to hold the projectile to the gun then it has a tendency to swing back and whack you in the balls, but it's fab nonetheless! Not for me the random wavings of a piece of sports equipment, instead I hunt, and I go for the kill.

And did I make the hit?

Of course I did.

That fragment of fruit cake, with the current in - never moved a millimetre after I was done.