Category: Anything Else

A Mad Five Minutes

We were later getting out of work than we had intended, the plan had been to nip in to town and do a couple of bits and pieces. However after a day at work, it was a case of can’t be arsed. So it was straight home instead.

But there was a need to get some dog food, so I said I’d nip up to the shops.

And so it began.

The main manager of McColl’s was outside her shop having a cigarette, and a white van had just pulled in to the disabled parking space outside the shop. Words had been exchanged between the driver and herself and they were shouting at each other.

He was shouting the same thing over and over “are ya parking there ya self” in a fairly broad Irish accent (possibly pikey). She was shouting back, “What are you saying, I can’t understand you, speak English”.

I nipped into BestOne, it was no better in there. There was a weaselly looked bloke in there running around with a bag of flour in one hand (leaving a trail of flour behind him, like an older version of Hansel and Gretel), whilst randomly picking up items from the shelves and throwing them on the floor. All whilst an ever increasingly annoyed looking member of staff chased the man to get him to stop, and to get him out of the shop. It took two or three minutes before the weasel man was shepherded out of the shop.

I could hear an Irish accent shout “What’s wrong with the word dyke?” and the response “I know who you are” whilst the door was opened.

When I got out of the shop, the bloke was back in his van, still shouting, “you don’t know me, but I know where you work you fat bitch.” The reply as I was leaving was, “Jog on, take your tiny dick and find a hole to stick it in, that’s all you can do isn’t it”.

Out of earshot of that, I thought it was the end of it, but as I turned back into our close, I could hear another bout of shouting, but I could only see one person. He was yelling at someone, “It’s not like that, she’s just a nice person you dick. No, she isn’t a fucking whore, she’s a nice person. Fuck off you dick, I’m not fucking her.” Followed by an constant stream of “Shut Up, shut up, shut up……..”

I’m not sure who he was talking to, I assumed it was to someone on a phone, but the volume suggested that he might not have needed a phone and was speaking to someone a couple of streets away.

Never a dull moment around here.

Obsessed With Snatch

Stop sniggering at the front there, and get your minds out of the gutter, I’m not talking about that. I am talking about the film called “Snatch”, and a long time obsession with it.

For a start it isn’t my favourite film, it would be in my top ten I suppose, but wouldn’t be in my top five. You really don’t want to know what’s there. Such a collection of random (and mainly critically savaged) films you are less likely to see.

I had seen Guy Richie’s previous comedy / crime classic “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” when it came out. It got a lot of airplay on video (remember them?) and was quite quotable. I even saw the TV stories “Lock, Stock and…”, which weren’t bad (and certainly not as shocking as the recent “Snatch” TV series inflicted on us by Ron Weasley.) But for some reason I’d totally missed “Snatch” when it was released, and it was two years before I first saw it.

“Snatch” is funny and very entertaining; but it is violent, sweary, and definitely not PC, and followed on from “Lock Stock” in keeping with the London underworld theme. It just expanded to bring in a more global set of players. Guy Richie had kept Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Alan Ford and Vinnie Jones from “Lock Stock”, but added Hollywood clout with Brad Pitt as the pikey bare knuckle boxing champion, Dennis Farina and Benicio Del Toro as American gangsters, and Rade Sherbdgia as ex KGB and the almost impossible to kill “sneaky effing Russian”. It plays on some well-established stereotypes that it gets away with due to the pacing not allowing the watcher to pause long enough for it to sink in. You got all that years later with his absolute stinker “Revolver”.

By the time I got to see “Snatch”, my life had changed beyond recognition and I’d found myself washed up in Manchester, leading a faux student lifestyle in and around Fallowfield. It was the Christmas and New Year period of 2001-02 when I was introduced to the film by Mike. It is probably something he regrets doing as further commentary will show. From then on I would watch it at every opportunity. A lot of which were at 3am on stumbling back from a club. There were a lot of times that I woke on the sofa in the morning light with Klint’s “Diamond” playing on loop from the DVD’s main menu.

The obsession came from the fact that it is so eminently quotable. Eighteen years on, there is barely a day where I don’t slip a quote from “Snatch” into a conversation. Watching a film so many times during my Manchester years when I spent most of my time in an alcoholic haze seems to have embedded the script into my mind. I rarely break the DVD out to watch it now, but if there happens to be a live showing on any channel, then it is highly likely that I will dip in and watch it. The only thing I can’t promise is to keep my mouth shut during it.

By the summer of 2002, Mike had moved into the shared house I was in, bringing with him his PlayStation 2 and the DVD, and therefore a way to watch the film at home. This led to an increase in screenings. By the time he had broken his leg and was bed-bound in the room next to the living room, Mark had also moved in.

He got tired of us stumbling home and putting “Snatch” on, so he hid the DVD, putting it in the case of one of the other DVD cases. This didn’t deter me. I went out and bought my own copy (well I actually bought two, just in case the first went missing). The next day whilst we were out, Mike hobbled through to the living room and removed his PlayStation 2. I went to Argos and bought a DVD player the same day.

When I started writing my first e-zine – Surerandomality – I littered it with quotes from “Snatch” and kept a running total. By the end of issue eighty when I stopped writing it; the running total was over two thousand.

By then we had been through another shared house, and there was the day I got up on a Saturday morning and spoken in pikey all day. To everyone. Not just my housemates, but to those who served in the Co-op. Barmaids in pubs, doormen in clubs, bus drivers, taxi drivers and the all-important server of the kebab at three in the morning. How I didn’t die that day is one of life’s little mysteries.

When that shared house broke up I moved in with Mark when he bought a flat. His girlfriend Amanda moved in not long afterwards, and pretty soon bought a kitten. Somehow we managed to persuade her to call it Pikey. This obviously led to a lot of quoting “I effing hate Pikey” whenever it did something. One day it escaped, it got out the flat door, and down to the ground level and outside. When I got home, Amanda (and Mark to an extent) were looking for it. My immediate response to this was to quote from the film, “You won’t find a pikey that doesn’t want to be found. He could be in a campsite in Kampu-effing-chea by now.” This went down like the proverbial lead balloon. Her frantic searching got Mark a letter reminding him that the covenant to the flat prohibited the keeping of pets. Pikey turned up a day later, and it wasn’t long before I moved out.

At the outset my most used quote from the film would have been “Nothing, it’s tip top, I’m just not sure about the colour”, where colour would get replaced by whatever was relevant at the time. Now that I’m driving again, “it was at a funny angle” probably gets used the most, followed by “You can help me out, by showing me out.”

I must have been an annoying SOB for years with the “Snatch” obsession (I was bad enough before it). Yet when it gets triggered I can’t stop myself. One of the guys I went to school with, Dino, posted about watching the film on Friday night, and I had to jump into the chat quoting from the film. Nearly eighteen years on from the first viewing it’s a part of me. Other films may be better known, or be more obviously quotable than “Snatch”, just not by me.

Lonely Luggage

Have you ever noticed that when you are waiting for your luggage at an airport carousel, there is always that one piece of luggage that has been abandoned? It glides around the meandering track of the conveyor belt almost screaming out “Please retrieve me. Why have I been deserted?”

And as we wait for our luggage to make its way from our flight to the terminal at Tegel, there it was. That lonely suitcase. Doing endless laps around the carousel, like a brightly painted horse on a fairground ride. A pale red hard cased midsized suitcase, with definite signs of wear and tear. Scuff marks, a small dent, various stickers from previous journeys, and the little tag for its current one.

It was a remnant from an earlier flight from Istanbul. A poor lost lonely wanderer, forgotten by its owner, or discarded like a piece of paper in the wind. The number of laps it had made in unknown, but by the time our own bags turned up it had done well over twenty.

It had been turned around, and turned over, as people either looked to see if it might be theirs (despite one person who then picked up a black cloth bag instead), or nudging it out of the way as they struggled to drag their own heavy bags from the carousel.

We left with it still going around unclaimed. Had it even turned up to the correct airport? Was there a poor soul stood at Schiphol or Dubai waiting for their trusty pale red case to pop out onto the carousel there? The last person standing forlornly looking at the now empty carousel willing their bag to pop out so they can go to that meeting, or catch up with those long lost relatives. Only to find they now have a long lost case instead.

Will the case and the owner ever be reunited, or will they be doomed to circle luggage carousels for the rest of their days? Or when the airport closes for the night, will the suitcase be packed off to a lost and found, only to be auctioned off months later and only for the excited winning bidder to find it is full of now decidedly green Twinkies. What goes around comes around I suppose.

St Kevin

St. Kevin
St. Kevin

Hard as it may be to believe, there is actually a St. Kevin. If you can manage to get your head around that fact then it probably won’t surprise you to learn that St Kevin was from Irish stock. Records about his life are a bit sketchy, and they would have us believe he lived a very long life that spanned across three centuries. Granted it’s not as long as some of the ridiculousness of the ages quoted in the old testament (i.e. Methuselah at 969 years old etc.), but for someone to live to the supposed age of 120 in the fifth, sixth or seventh centuries is stretching the bounds of credulity.

He was born on an unspecified date in the year 498 and died on June 3rd 618. His name was Coemgen in Old Irish, which means “Fair begotten” or “Of noble birth” and is anglicised to Kevin. It took nearly thirteen hundred years from his death for him to be made a saint, but he eventually was in 1903 by Pope Pius X.

He spent most of his life in south east Ireland, mainly in Wicklow, and founded the Glendalough abbey c540. Glendalough meaning the “glen of the two lakes”. Having founded the abbey he spent most of his life being a hermit, trying to avoid those who would become his followers. He took refuge in a bronze-age tomb in the Wicklow Mountains, which is now known as St. Kevin’s Bed.

He was immortalised in the Seamus Heaney poem “St Kevin and the Blackbird”, as St Kevin is the patron saint of Blackbirds. Who knew? Blackbirds have their own patron saint. He also features several times in James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”, and made it into song in The Dubliners “The Glendalough Saint”.

I was born in the right month for it as well, though still a fair few days off of his saint’s day on the 3rd June. A day that seems to delight in being the saint’s day for other numerous obscure saints – Charles Lwanga, Clotilde, Ovidius and Vladimirskaya to name a few. But falling as it does it gets somewhat overshadowed in the ecclesiastical calendar by the heavyweight St. Peter and St Paul’s day on the first of the month.

There are a few churches named for St Kevin, two in Dublin, one Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland, two in Glendalough and then others in Kilkenny and Kildare. He doesn’t seem to have made it to the UK or USA, but there are colleges named after him in both Australia and New Zealand.

It’s so much easier nowadays to find this kind of information out. When I was a kid growing up in Leicester with the name Kevin, the only saint Kevin that would have been mentioned would have been the saint Kevin of Keegan as celebrated by Liverpool fans. Well right up until the moment he buggered off to Germany to play for SV Hamburg, and they inherited King Kenny instead.

Now you can track all the information down in the internet. There is no being stuck in a Catholic school where everyone had obvious saint’s names like Andrew, Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Adverts ridiculed the name as well. There was the advertising slogan (for a now forgotten company), “So simple even Kevin could use it”, then the “Kev, Bev, Bev, Kev” adverts that came at the start of recent Oscar winner’s Olivia Coleman’s career, plus Aldi’s ridiculous Kevin the Carrot. And don’t get me started on Roland Rat’s sidekick Kevin the Gerbil.

Despite all this I do like the name and I now use it as a badge of honour, especially in its shortened version (as can be seen from the website etc.)

I was named after a saint, despite what many people seem to think. I’m not sure personally about the whole blackbird thing, but I can say there are churches (and colleges) bearing my name.

Shoot That Poison Arrow

For a lot of people there are big birthdays, the ones that most people recognise as milestones. The 16th, 18th, 21st, 30th, 40th, 50th etc. These are the ones that have parties and gatherings and are memorable. Not many people however, celebrate their upcoming 35th birthday as a biggie though.

Which is where Liam comes in. To commemorate the turn from his early thirties to his late thirties he did the only thing appropriate to mark such an occasion. He hired a room in a social club and organised a darts tournament.

Indeed!

So, on a Friday night in late January, sixteen of Sussex’s worst ever darts players made their way to Hove and the legendary darts venue that is The Goldstone Club.

What do you mean you’ve never heard of it? Tucked away in a side street near to Hove train station, crammed in to the middle of a row of terraced houses, it is a surprise that anyone has ever heard of it. It’s a throwback to when these little social clubs used to be all over the place. Yet so many of them have been destroyed over the years. The reduction in numbers of people using them have often meant they have been destroyed to make way for more soulless housing. It’s good to see one like this surviving, with it’s little bar area, then the good sized function room tagged on to the side at the back, so that it would be behind one of the terraced houses, and with it’s smaller meeting and function rooms upstairs. The kind of place where you would be taken as a kid, given a bottle of pop and packet of crisps and be told to sit quietly in the corner.

The bonus of this type of club still being around and available to hire rooms from is that the booze is cheap. Which is exactly why all the dart players go there.

Oh yes, the darts. Now Liam is a big fan of the darts, and he goes a few times a year to watch it, mainly I think because he loves the fancy dress bit. Therefore for his birthday, he wanted his own darts tournament. The first ever LBM Birthday Trophy Event.

Everyone who turned up was expected to play. Not only were they expected to play, but they also had to come up with their own dart player nickname. For those who couldn’t manage to do this for themselves, Liam provided a link to a dart player’s random name generator. Those playing weren’t even finished at that point. They also had to come up with some walk on music. Something that for twelve of the sixteen players was a waste of time, as the walk on music was disregarded until the semi-final stage.

There was fierce competition to be crowned the least worst of worst. One competitor even failed to make it to the oche, with a nick name of “The Rabbit”, he must have taken one look at the nick name of his opposition – “The Hyena” and done a runner.

Some of the games took quite a long time. They were only playing the one leg of 301 for the first two rounds, but some of those legs lasted longer than some televised matches. More darts were thrown at double one, Annie’s room, the mad house, or whatever else you want to call it, than would be thrown at it in a dozen World Championships. Not that it got hit very often. So much so that some games got to the stage where the players wouldn’t have hit a double if they played until Christmas, and so did a “highest score wins” to decide the games instead.

The host and organiser of the event didn’t manage to make it through to the later stages of the tournament, crashing to defeat against “Macca Crackers” in the second round.

After over three hours of low quality darts it got to the final, where the aforementioned “Macca Crackers” played “Magic Mike” in what turned out to be a bit of a mismatch as “Macca Crackers” ran out a straight legs winner, and was crowned as the first ever winner of the LBM Birthday Trophy. There has been the possibility of a stewards inquiry into the winner’s previous darting form, as it looked suspiciously like he could actually play a bit and had therefore been faking it to make it in to the final sixteen of the worst of the worst.

It was amazing that over four hours worth of darts went by in the blink of an eye. It was even more amazing that no one ended up with a dart in the eye, such was the standard of the arrows being thrown.

If this lot had been on the battlefield in the Battle of Hastings on the Norman side (keeping the Sussex connection going), then Harold would have kept his eye, and probably his throne, and there wouldn’t have been the multitude of 11th and 12th century castle building. So it’s probably a good thing they weren’t.

Then it was time for the final checkout, before we were all chucked out, and the competitors headed off in various directions to all corners of the county.

Overall it was a well organised and run tournament, which gives us just a little bit of hope that Liam can pull off the organisation of the proposed Brighton Pub Crawl later in the year.

The Birdwoman of Atlantic House

I’m sure that most people have heard of the “Birdman of Alcatraz”, but here in Crawley we have the “Birdwoman of Atlantic House”.

Despite the fact that we have been told not to eat at our desks in our office because we may drop crumbs and those crumbs attract mice, our local lunatic cleaner had thrown out all sorts of bread, what appeared to be mini chicken kievs and god knows what else for the local creatures. Squirrels, mice, rats, pigeons, crows, they were all out there on the grass feeding themselves. Coexisting very nicely thank you. Until the seagulls arrived and started muscling in on the food source.

At which point the maddest and biggest bird of them all, blue with purple plumage on top, comes flying out from who knows where, waving her arms and squawking with more decibels output than the passing cars, trains and planes could muster. So loud that it could clearly be heard inside the building through the triple glazed windows.

This mad old bird then pulled a wheelie bin all the way down the car park with one arm, whilst waving the other frantically and still squawking at top volume. Once she had exchanged the wheelie bin for another, she back up the other side of the car park doing the same thing but with the other arm, only finally stopping squawking once she was back in the building.

Noe, this is by no means her first mad five minutes: sleeping stood up in the corner of a meeting room, eating leftover curled up sandwiches from the day before, and sweeping all the way down to the main road (well outside of the office grounds). Yet despite it all she has the cheek to moan about other people going about their normal business.

Only ten minutes after doing her birdwoman impression, she spent a couple of minutes tutting and sighing theatrically because someone happened to be having a telephone conversation on the landing near her cleaning supplies cupboard. When this huffing and puffing along side intense glaring didn’t stop the telephone call, she slammed the cleaning supplies cupboard door and angrily stomped off down the stairs muttering curses in some language no one else understands.

There’s nowt as queer as folk.

Cat Lick


I twas an expression that was well used back when I was child, but I didn’t think I would ever actually get around to having a cat-lick wash.

As is well documented, the pets in our house aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the box. Speaking of boxes it would be fair to say they are as mad as a box of frogs, yet there seems there is always a new height they can take their lunacy to.

It was the turn of Willow this time. The skittiest kittie on the block. No rustle of paper is too small not to send her running for the door. Yet at the same time, she’s more than happy to swipe the dog across his muzzle if he inadvertently walks by her.

She often comes and takes over the pouffe of an evening and will resort to licking feet in order for you to move them off her pouffe. However, things look a bit different in the living room this weekend. The pouffe is now coverless and a different colour as Helen uses it as a practical work for her upholstery course. Then there is the newly arrived Christmas tree and its decorations. The room looks a little different and is obviously confusing the poor cat.

So much so that she decided her new spot to lounge around would be on the back of the sofa just behind my head. Sat there she turned on the purring machine, generating more decibels than a 747. It’s a good job I don’t need to listen to the TV to know what’s happening in the American Football.

And then it started. It would appear Willow had mistaken the back of my thick head for a kitten, and she proceeded to start licking. The whole of the back of my head. The little rough tongue sandpapering the short hairs with great gusto. Five minutes it lasted, with Willow even turning around so she could do the far side of my head that she couldn’t reach from her original position.

It was the strangest sensation, ended only because there was movement to leave the room from Helen (who was pissing herself laughing) and therefore the possibility of food. I’m not convinced I want a cat-lick wash again.

Just Imagine They’re All Naked

It’s well known that I’m not the most sociable person in the world most of the time. I have a limit of sociability for any given time period. So going to a trade conference for three days, and giving a presentation during it would be pushing the limits.

To make matters worse, the conference was in Birmingham. I hate that city. And my normal bog-standard hatred was made worse by the fact that I was doing an updated version of a presentation that one of my colleagues had done the previous year at a similar conference. In Oslo. Norway. Fucking excellent, three days in Birmingham, doesn’t even start to compare with any days in Oslo.

Then to put the cheery on top of the icing on top of the cake was the fact that the conference started on a Sunday. My mid-sized wheelie case had already gone elsewhere in the country so I was mixing and matching with bags, and slogging through on the train journey up.

The journey up wasn’t too bad, but then getting from Birmingham New Street to the ICC meant walking through the never changing building site around Broad Street.It didn’t look like they’d actually finished doing anything in the five months since I’d last had the misfortune to come to this hell-hole.

Being on time for when registration started, because I’m like that, meant that I was nearly the first person there. By the time the first of the various sessions started, there were a few more there. The Sunday afternoon sessions were an hour and a half long, and not long into the first one, I was thankful that my session was only going to be half of that. The room wasn’t very big, and there were a handful of people in the session. Session two only had five people in there. I could cope with similar numbers for my session the day after.

Then it was time to hit the exhibition hall, seventy-eight companies trying to get you interested in their shit, sorry, software. All with little freebies on their stands, and a good number with prize draws for all sorts of goodies. I wandered the hall and recognised a few brands. The sales forces were out in force, getting me to talk to them while I hoped it didn’t show my eyes were glazing over.

Then the fateful moment when someone scans our conference badge for their leads. Being observant I noticed that the name flashed up incorrect, they had missed a letter out of my surname on their scanning app. Furthermore, it followed through into the e-mail address, they had a misspelling there as well. Woo and hoo, if the e-mail address was incorrect that meant they can’t pester me after the event. Full on scoop up the freebies with impunity followed.

In a couple of hours I had quite a few items in a reasonable sized tote bag, and I headed off to the hotel.

There is a special place in hell for hotels like the Hyatt Regency in Birmingham. Supposed high end hotels with staff that look down their noses at you are just shit. Forcing you to give them a credit card imprint on entry before they would check you in – Cunts. Leaving mini bar items out on the desk and bedside cabinet hiding the fact that they weren’t complimentary – Cunts. Changing the way the room was set up, and moving all my property between night 1 and 2 – Cunts. Being all indignant when you asked them to cancel the imprint of your credit card when leaving – Cunts. Granted, someone else picked up the bill, so it eases the sting somewhat, but in two days they annoyed me enough that I will never stay at a Hyatt hotel ever again.

Monday morning came with bonus added illness. A dry and sore throat, a temperature and being able to shit through the eye of a needle is not what you need when you are doing a presentation. After finally having enough time between toilet breaks to get a shower and dressed I made my way over to the ICC. The morning was keynote speakers, so armed with water bottles, and finding the end of a row I sat down. With the lights dimmed there was the potential to drop off, but I managed to stay awake long enough to make it through to the end of the morning session.

Some more freebie gathering followed over an extended lunch before doing the final mental prep required to speak to whatever audience there would be. Sat outside the session there was the opportunity to try and persuade others waiting to go in that they would be far better off trying to go to another session instead. They weren’t listening.

There were technical issues with the slides. The laptop with them on wouldn’t connect to the big screen. Something to do with dodgy German connections. And then it was time to start. As I looked out at the audience I was reminded of the saying, “if you are worried about presenting to an audience, just imagine them sat there all naked.” Trust me, that’s not an image you want imprinting in your mind. Twenty-odd (very odd) payroll managers and IT professionals naked is not an image you want to have.

I think the presentation went OK, better than I was expecting. I hadn’t presented at a SAP related conference before, and it had been ten years since I’d done any kind of presenting. But I managed to get 99% of my words out in the right order, I didn’t speak at 78rpm, and judging by the questions at the end, most of the people in the room had understood what had come out of my mouth.

Time for a soft drink and to collapse in a heap. But no, I got drawn back into the freebie zone for another couple of hours before heading back to the hotel to try and rest and recuperate.

The highlight of the conference was supposed to be SUGfest, and evening of free food and drink based on an eighties theme as they were celebrating their 30th anniversary. Now me and free food and drink are normally quite good friends and a recipe for disaster. It was a testament to just how ill I was feeling that the food was limited and the drinks were soft. I had a wander around to see the various things that had been set up.

Some nice retro arcade games were by the bar and food area. A little gig room at one end, a comedy club, a casino, and a disco were all there as well. I popped my head in them all, only to be collared by someone who had been to my presentation. He was also the only person there from his company, and he happened to be in the same industry as me, so by this logic he thought it meant we would have to be SUGfest best buddies. I only managed to get back to my hotel alone by faking my own death.

Tuesday morning saw little improvement to my health, but it was the last day. There were prize draws today. Exhibitors were looking at shifting stuff so they didn’t have to take it home with them. Two big prize wins and a multitude of “yeah, just take one” meant by the time lunch had finished and we were all lining up to head to the afternoon keynote speeches I had three large tote bags of stuff. It was at this point I suddenly became relived that I wasn’t flying back from Oslo or anywhere else. Granted, I’d have been more relieved if I’d have been driving. They were going to be fun to take back on the train.

The final inspirational speaker was Ant Middleton. Who until the previous week when I saw a trailer for something he was in on the TV, I had had no idea who he was.

After listening to him for nearly an hour, I don’t really care who he is, and I’m not sure I want to be watching anything on TV with him in it.

Then it was time to go, a bunfight at the cloakroom, and then sardines on the train to London. Playing dodge the abusive tramps getting across London and then back to Crawley and sanity.

I could go back to work for a rest, safe in the knowledge that I could go another few weeks without having to be sociable to anyone.

So Called Experts

The experts were out again, after the long hot summer we were told that it had been so hot for so long and so dry that autumn wouldn’t happen as it normally did. We wouldn’t get that wonderful cavalcade of glorious colours on the leaves. Everything would go from green to brown and dead on the ground in the blink of an eye.

 

Yeah, right, do these experts try and outdo each other on just how wrong their predictions will be?

 

If anything, autumn is more colourful than ever. Such a glorious array of yellows, oranges, reds and browns, all mixed in with every shade of green possible. The weather is still great now, so the backdrop to this amazing colour palette is lovely blue skies, with little wisps of fluffy white clouds.

 

The fall of the leaves hasn’t even started in earnest, only a few float their way to the ground. The acorns and conkers aren’t as timid as the leaves. Rapidly throwing themselves to the floor hoping against hope to be fertilised and planted to grow up to be the magnificent trees they have fallen from.

 

It won’t be long before all the leaves that are going to fall have fallen, and the barren branches, sticks and twigs weave their way up to the sky. And then the leaf blanket will cover the ground making it slippery. But in the meantime stop and take time to look around at the wonderful colours on display, or even take a picture like I did. It will last longer.

 

 

 

Sporclelitis

How many of you have heard of Sporcle?

 

Of those of you who haven’t heard of it, how many of you are into quizzes? Any sort of quiz about anything you can imagine? If you are, then what the hell are you still doing here reading this rubbish? Get yourself over to the Sporcle website and start clicking and typing and answering away to your heart’s content. Even have a go at creating your own quiz for everyone else to have a go at.

 

I was introduced to Sporcle back in the day when I actually spoke to people at work. I was sat on a bank of desks with a couple of newly recruited and under-employed recruitment agents who were into football quizzes. Now I love a good quiz, I’ve been involved in enough of them over the years, taking part in them or setting them, but I hadn’t heard of Sporcle before.

 

They showed me the app and I tried a couple of games on it, but when I got home to the flat where I was living by myself at that time, I found the website. And that was when the obsession started. Hundreds of thousands of quizzes of different types, and different time limits on them, anything from fifteen seconds up to twenty minutes allowed per quiz. And anything from a single answer being required up to multiple hundreds.

 

They had leader boards, badges to collect, and challenges to be made. I was in wonderland. For the first six months I was like a junkie, playing for hours on end, making it to number one on most quizzes played in the last week and month for a while. It was ludicrous, playing hundreds of quizzes every day, staying up until stupid o’clock every night.

 

Things have calmed down since then, but I’ve been picking it back up a bit recently. With three new badges released every week I’d let a backlog develop. Nearly two hundred that needed completing had stacked up. So I’ve been whittling them down again. There are only sixty left now.

 

There are some I won’t get, over thirty relate to the creation of quizzes, something which I haven’t really embraced yet. Then there are the two that rely on typing speed, I’m never going to finish them, I can’t get to anywhere near the fifty words in a minute that are needed to complete the quizzes that make up those two badges.

 

It leaves only twenty-six, whoops, and twenty-nine as there are the three new ones today. As they are mainly cumulative volume badges these will get chipped away at over the next couple of months.

 

Gone are the days where I would do three to four hundred quizzes, twenty to thirty is more manageable now, but it’s still a drain on time. When I get back up to date I’ll do the new ones each week to keep my hand in.

 

However if you are trying to get hold of me and there isn’t an answer it is likely that I’m in the middle of a quiz and I’ll get back to you when the time has run out. Unless I click on the next quiz that is, so it might be tomorrow, or next week.