Day 34 - Rain

I used to say that the difference between Czech Republic and Wales was the rain. In Wales it rains all day, all week, all fortnight, when the rain sets in it's in. It’s like a distant family member who has cone to stay - it invades your life, hogs the remote control, eats all your food; there is no budging it.

Czech rain on the other hand was more violent, sudden downpours that cleared as quickly as they came. It was like a visit from the Jehovah Witnesses - always annoying, usually inconvenient, sometimes staying around too long and messing up your hair but usually easy enough to get rid of, eventually.

But these days the Czech rain has taken on a Welsh accent, and started humming Calon Lan to itself. The clouds are lower, the rain finer and more persistent, it’s not quite in for a fortnight but it certainly gets under your skin.  

Today I was going to go on a bike ride but the rain put pay to that, there’s nothing worse for me than a wet bike ride with water splashing off the tire up your back no thank you. Then I was meant to go to watch the first game of the Czech Rugby season. I still did that but it left me damp to the core, with the holidaying Welsh rain running down my face.

Day 33 - Regain our sense of perspective.

Switch on the BBC at any given time and you are likely to find someone lying in a hospital bed moaning or someone blubbering that their soufflé hasn’t risen. The schedules seem to be full of hospital dramas or cookery competitions. In my imagination those in the hospital beds are suffering from severe food poisoning caused by an undercooked prawn risotto that a distinctly unmasterchef has rustled up, while claiming it was his life long dream to appear on a programme that has only been running about 5 years. (Maybe the crying chef is just a very precocious 4-year old with a beard. I don’t know.)

Anyway this week has seen a scandal on the Great British Cry Off, sorry Bake off.

With one contestant being the subject of death threats on twitter for alledgedly taking another crier’s sorry baker’s baked Alaska out from the freezer making the dessert inedible and meaning the poor, emotionally challenged wannabe chef got eliminated from the show that had been his ambition to appear on not only in this life but in all his previous incarnations too. Let me just repeat that. Death threats! On Twitter! Headlines on the Guardian website! 800 complaints to the BBC! It’s a cookery competition! Let me just repeat that – a cookery competition. It’s not an invasion of a sovereign nation or a trade treaty that will place power even more firmly in the hands of big business but a cookery show.

Are you a fan of the Great British Bake off? If you are, answer this easy question but don’t Google it. Who won the first series? See you don’t know, because it doesn’t matter, it is irrelevant. So this publicity stunt for the BBC has obviously worked, but we really do need to regain our sense of perspective.

Don’t forget if you like these rants you might enjoy my short stories or even my novel Maggie’s Milkman

Day 32 Ageism

Look at what I just found on Facebook –

‘Do you know someone who would love to lead the Cardiff Blues out on to the field for the first competitive home match of the 2014/15 season?’

Yes I thought, yes I know someone, me. I’d love to lead the Blues out. I love the Blues, they have been a constant in my life, with me through thick and thin. They’ve outlasted any girlfriend, even the ones that wanted me to stop seeing them, they’ve not minded my infidelity when I have gone to see Wasps, Swansea or Praga, not minded when I’d deserted them for entire summers to watch cricket. And now I could repay their faith by proudly leading out my favourite rugby team.

 I read on eagerly.

‘Here is your chance to get them involved on the big day!’

Wow, my chance, the chance I’d been waiting for all my life. It was a dream about to come true.  All I had to do was fill in the application form and send it off and I would be in with a shot. But then I fell down to earth with a bump of such force that I bounced a few times along the tarmac before coming to rest in the hedgerow of disappointment, the ditch of broken dreams. You see in my haste to act, in my excitement, I had missed one important line in the advert.

‘We are looking for a young Cardiff Blues supporter, aged between 5 and 12, who has always dreamed of being our match day mascot.’ Why? Why? Why? Why? it’s so unfair? Back in my day there were no mascots and now there are, they slap an age limit on them, it’s age discrimination.

Now recently my doctor questioned the year on my medical records, I thought he was going to say I looked younger, born in 1975 perhaps, but no, he thought I must have been born in 1965. So I am a 43-year-old man who can get away with being 48 but I doubt I’d convince them I had just turned 12. 

Anyway I guess all this means I should write to them again and withdraw my application.

Day 31 Two Moons

I wouldn’t like to say I am a conspiracy theorist - I think that is a bit extreme but I do take a lot of convincing that something is true. I like to see evidence and even then I tend to take things with a pinch of salt. I guess I am not one of life’s accepters. I’m not a believer, there’s a trace of doubt in my mind, I suppose I’m a doubter. 

I’m forever warning others that internet memes like world book day, tell me the colour of your bra day, throw a bucket of water on your head day are hoaxes. Thinking about it, this whole blog started because I doubter 100 days of happiness would really make you happy.

So imagine my chagrin when I got caught out by a hoax.

I spent last night gazing at the night sky, (the real one and my app), madly looking for Mars, which was supposed to appear as a second moon-like disc in the sky.  All day I had been telling people about this amazing astronomical phenomenon, not just anyone either but important people like the OUP author we have here at the moment. But there was nothing. It was a cloudless sky but there weren’t two moons. So this morning I look online to discover the root of my disappointment and I see

The "Mars Close to Earth" hoax strikes again!

God! I’d fallen for it. Not checked my facts, not done the research just been taken in. How will I ever be able to face myself in the mirror again?

Day 30 - Spelling test

(It might be best to read this one allowed).

Gosh my spelling depresses me, I consider myself a righter but what kind of righter can’t spell? I think I can tell interesting storeys and spin fascinating tails but my problem is I really can’t spell and my punctuation isn’t sew hot either. Sometimes I no it is the speed at which I am tiepin that leads me to make silly errors. Sometimes my brain works faster than my fingers and that means I type homophones of the words eye mean two right. Other thymes it is my fat figners that hit the worng quays meaning words just look all wnorg. But often it is just utter stupidity. When it comes to writing longer words like etiquette or psychology I sometimes spell them so wrong that even the wonder that is Microsoft word has know suggestions on how to correct them.  I’m forty three years old, (I know I don’t look it,) and I still can’t spell.