From Nought to Sixty

The pond is finished to coincide with being married to Marcia for 17 years.

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Finally a home for my Gargoyle.

These are the people it is all about

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So following my "Gentleman's op" (estimated recovery time 4-6 weeks, actual recovery time - still not quite right now) I had about 3 months off the bike. This was particularly galling as, having cycled all through the winter I was on target to do the planned London to Cambridge run at the end of July.

Luckily, instead of having to fork out my registration fee under the risk of failing at the task I am now attending a friend's 40th birthday that weekend because it wall be better to celebrate that than killing myself in a vain attempt to pretend I'm not already too old to undertake such tasks. There is always next year.

Having said all that back on the bike is a good thing, I am currently doing over 60 miles a week and trying to up this all the time. It isn't affecting my "impressive" body (although the head on photo looks ok the profile shot is still worrying) but I'm feeling much much fitter. Just wish it wasn't so warm - I'm missing the snow.

Sent from my phone, please excuse typos

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Something I used to do, but don't do now so often, is Limerick writing. This is odd as it is something I enjoy and therefore should do more of

The other day, someone I follow on twitter due to some politicalopinions, posted about trying to rhyme "orange" Which caused me to tweet the following 2 updates:

When you are writing a rhyme,
there's no point in wasting your time
  finding forced rhymes for orange,
  Will just make us all cringe,
and are considered a linguistic crime

Then today Dave Gibbons posted that it was Limerick day and wondered if anyone could tweet one in less than 140 characters:

and was then gracious enough to retweet my effort:

limericks ought 2B rude,
& civil language eschewed,
  but the letter limit,
  allowed per twit,
still lets you be fucking crude

As with most Limericks, there's a certain advantage to hearing them rather than seeing them written down, but its still fun

So, new TYSIC goal, more Limericks as they amuse me and an amused me is an improved me :)

Make sure you vote:

It is important to vote, if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about anything governmental for the next 5 years and for TYSIC, and enjoying life I need to be able to complain. If that isn't reason enough, if less than 1% more of the population had voted for any other party (even Tory, if you must) in the European elections, the BNP would not have won their seats. Withholding your vote is not a defendable stance, if you want to protest the choice, vote for a minority candidate who is closest to your own ideology, but vote.

From Richard Herring's blog today:

And don't forget everyone, Friday this week is Charlie Chaplin's 121st birthday and the first every "Charlie Chaplin Day for Democracy". I am hoping that some of you might join me and wear a real or false toothbrush moustache for the day (or at least part of it) in order to remind people of the importance of our vote and to help fight fascism and the BNP. I see this very much as an underground movement and there will be no official publicity for it (feel free to plug the idea if you have an outlet to do so). I want to see if we can make this grow organically. It would be great and appropriate if it became a yearly fixture, but it would still be something if it only happened once. If you want to use it as an opportunity to raise money for charity (SCOPE perhaps) then that is up to you, but I would be very grateful if you marked the occasion in some way. Even if that was only by drawing a moustache on a poster or putting one on a statue or whatever you think would help (don't cause damage to anything of any actual value of course). After all these months of being almost the only idiot with this ludicrous face furniture, it would be good to know that a handful of other fools had joined me.

So, for one day only, Al & Spidey go toothbrush:

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Busy few weeks

Firstly my last proper post got my first comment, although not as a comment on the blog, but Mr H did me the honour of an email reply:

Most of my fans are too lazy and fat to be effective stalkers. There are a few pricks out there but most people understand the boundaries and are a pleasure to know.
Try and stay in the latter group!

I'm trying, I'm trying :)

Secondly, as part of a general "improve life" attitude, we replaced our 10 year old mattress. Joy I can now wake up less knackered than when I went to bed and my wife doesn't end under me (not in a good way) due to roll together. I am amazed how much better I feel about all sorts of things since getting it

Then last week my wife and I had a couple of days in Norwich, the kids stayed with Grandma & Granddad and we got a super room deal in a bog standard hotel. The reason for this was we were going to see Chris Addison at the Norwich Playhouse. He was absolutely hilarious, one of my favourite comedians, although I didn't really expect to end up telling the whole theatre about my painful trampolining accident. Highly recommended, also if you've never seen it, see Lab Rats the 1st "grown up" comedy I ever showed my kids, they loved it, I love it, it is a wonderful blend of silly, clever and funny.

Spending a couple of days just wandering around Norwich was nice too, normally we go there with a list of stuff to do/buy but it was genuinely pleasant to just meander, visiting old haunts and hang outs (mainly cake shops and restaurants). TYSIC additional: must spend more time doing things like this, both with my wonderful wife and even, sometimes, with the kids :)

I failed to get "Joy Division Oven Gloves" to no6 despite getting my employees to make it available on the site, but No56 is (I think) HMHB's highest ever chart position

I then got a bit fed up at the prospect of the general election and the results, but am enough of a political nerd to override that and once again get interested. I genuinely fret that the Tories seem likely to win, but am also pissed off with Labour's lack of ambition and it is hard to remember than amid the shit they've thrown at us (War, DEbill, Civil liberty erosions, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. ) they have done some cool stuff it is just very hard to remember what.

Finally, Mark's latest blog entry reminded me that I've never seen the northern lights, more specifically I've never taken my wife to see the Northern Lights, something I have promised and will add now to my TYSIC goals

Oh and I found this and laughed like a drain for far too long:

Three years ago I had to change my ringtone. . . . .

I've got this friend, Richard. He's about my age and we share a similar sense of humour. I've known him for about 15 years, he used to hang about with a guy called Stewart and they were an entertaining couple. I still see Stewart occasionally if he's in the area and these meetings are always enjoyable but it is Rich who always seemed to be more on my wavelength.

About 8 years ago he started writing on a daily basis, keeping me updated with his thoughts and feelings for the day and when we'd meet up he'd usually do a hilarious monologue about the frustrations he faces with his life, often these are things I have found similarly frustrating and the humorous way he deals with them usually makes me feel better about my foibles, irritations and failings.

A couple of years ago we started meeting up on a more or less weekly basis with his friend Andrew. I don't know Andrew very well, (although I have sneaked a read of his personal diaries) but he sometimes says hello when he's at work, at these meetings the two of them sit there chatting away about anything that goes through their head, it difficult to join in and they tend to ignore anything anyone else says unless bribed with small offerings of sweets, biscuits or freebie coffees.

Recently Richard's career has gone from strength to strength and his personal life has settled down and It was good to hear that he was soon to be back with one of his previous employees its only a one off project, but he should do well there.

However I'm always a little embarrassed about my input to the friendship, he provides a constant source of amusement in my life but I add little to his. I think I ought to leave the guy alone for a bit, I'm sure he doesn't need me hanging around, and anyway I'm joining this new thing "Tysic" with my new friend Mark (who likes football a bit too much for my taste, but maybe I can cure him of that) and Michael has just retold one of my corny jokes, I think maybe he fancies me.

The above is, of course, me being silly. I do fully understand the difference between a real friend and a comedian I happen to have followed (not in the stalker sense) for a long time and who (finally) acknowledged my existence but it does make me wonder what sort of a risk people who blog so openly really run. I know RH often blogs "in character" but I suspect a certain amount of real Herring gets through I hope that never causes him problems

The ring tone thing? Apart from Comedy, my other main nerditry is around Doctor Who, I love it. Its a TV series, I know, and now days my main reason for enjoying it is how excited it gets my kids (actually, that's a lie, but one I can live with) but it doesn't alter the fact that I used to have a "TARDIS materialising" sound for my ringtone until the night I got a 2am callout from work and so awoke to that sound not thinking "oh bugger the systems have gone down again" but more worryingly "At last, the Doctor's here, where will he take me too?"

Mr Herring, I suspect you should spend your HIGNFY fee on increased security.

Recording.amr

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Morning

This is a stripped down, posted from my phone entry, so excuse boy typos please.

Last night was a Half Man Half Biscuit gig at the junction, Cambridge. If you don't know who HMHB are, then in some ways I am envious, as there's a wonderful discovery process to be under taken, simply go to http://www.hmhb.co.uk and purchase the back catalogue. Of course If you don't know who HMHB are you've also wasted a lot of time when you could have been listening to them.

All that preamble aside, the gig was great, a good mix of old and new(ish - must nearly be time for a new album) songs. I had a very very mild sense of disappointment at the lack of a custom 'Paintball' but a rousing 'Joy Division Oven Gloves' encore eradicated that feeling. If any of you Tysic-ers have happiness or music related goals, check this came out.

This ties in nicely with my final point. As you may know, the BBC is planning on axing 6music, and there is a campaign to protest this by getting 'Joy Division Oven Gloves' into the charts (http://bit.ly/ovengloves) take the chance to add some biscuity goodness to your life.

Below is a recording I took on my phone, it is probably unlistenable, but it was an experiment to see if it would work

Recording.amr

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Recording.amr (296 KB)

Morning

This is a stripped down, posted from my phone entry, so excuse boy typos please.

Last night was a Half Man Half Biscuit gig at the junction, Cambridge. If you don't know who HMHB are, then in some ways I am envious, as there's a wonderful discovery process to be under taken, simply go to http://www.hmhb.co.uk and purchase the back catalogue. Of course If you don't know who HMHB are you've also wasted a lot of time when you could have been listening to them.

All that preamble aside, the gig was great, a good mix of old and new(ish - must nearly be time for a new album) songs. I had a very very mild sense of disappointment at the lack of a custom 'Paintball' but a rousing 'Joy Division Oven Gloves' encore eradicated that feeling. If any of you Tysic-ers have happiness or music related goals, check this came out.

This ties in nicely with my final point. As you may know, the BBC is planning on axing 6music, and there is a campaign to protest this by getting 'Joy Division Oven Gloves' into the charts (http://bit.ly/ovengloves) take the chance to add some biscuity goodness to your life.

Below is a recording I took on my phone, it is probably unlistenable, but it was an experiment to see if it would work

So there I was last week, recovering from the Vasectomy. I worked from home on Thursday and even went into the Office on Friday. All was well and as part of my new “enjoying it” attitude I had put the week off to good use

Well, I watched some DVDs J:

• Time Gentlemen Please: Fab in places, good in the rest, you can smell the Herring
• Milton Jones: Live Universe Tour - Part 1: Earth: Superb, I love comedy I can watch with my kids and this was great, just a series of jokes.  But funny, very very funny.
• Robin Ince is as Dumb as you: very very good, I really warmed to Mr Ince seeing this

And read some books:

• "Day By Day Armageddon" by J L Bourne: An enjoyable Zombie end of the world journal, will seek out the sequel when it arrives
• "Fear The Worst" by Linwood Barclay: a so so thriller read as part of my work's book club (full review to come as part of the deal)

What I wasn't able to was concentrate on my daily blog, or walk anywhere, or have any personal dignity.

It was OK,

Uncomfortable

but OK

Saturday I awoke in pain which got worse and worse and it soon became apparent I had an infection of one of the bits you really don’t want to get infected after a vasectomy.

Still at least it was only one of them and the swelling was impressive.  The emergency out of hours Doc put me on horsepill antibiotics & painkillers and am now again in a position to go back to work tomorrow.

Luckily the pain didn’t driven me to guy-who-did-my-vasectomy-cide and all seems well now

Hey ho

Don't know why I think this is worth a post, but at least I'm back writing