Home Rule...

The new From Beer To Paternity Towers is quite wonderful. The Missus is happy, I am happy, even the Boy is quite impressed when he visits from university... although I suspect he still hasn't forgiven us for moving away from London and all his mates.

The cats, however, are having territory issues.

Our new neighbours (who are very nice) have two older, bigger cats who apparently used to be regular visitors in our new home as they were on friendly with the previous owners' cats. But now they are persona pussy non grata and they are having trouble getting the message.

What they are getting, however, is right on our bloody nerves by pouncing on our cats every time they venture into the garden, so much so that they now only venture out when me or the Missus go into the garden with them.

This is slowly starting to annoy me as I am increasingly acting cat bouncer in our garden so I am considering marking territory in the only way cats understand. I initially thought about spraying the places the neighbours' cats sit with lemon as cats hate citrus. But the Missus thought that wouldn't be strong enough. So I asked her if I should mark territory the way cats mark territory.

'So you want to wee on the wall where the neighbours' cats sit?'
'It's an idea...'

The Missus shakes her head then stops and smiles.
'Actually that's a really good idea. You should do it when the school that our garden backs onto is open and all the school children are on the playing field too. That will help the process...'

Sometimes she’s just not supportive.

Chris Sievey: RIP...

Comedian Chris Sievey (aka Frank Sidebottom) died last week.

With his outsized, cartoon, papier mache head and his whimsical flights of fancy, Chris's creation Frank Sidebottom was a real one-off. Frank was a showman and singer who never hit the big time but believed he sort of had; think of a slightly angrier and more ridiculous and frustrated John Shuttleworth and you're sort of there.

It was a truly fantastic comic creation.

Author Jon Ronson, who in the early days used to play keyboards in Frank's backing band, was on the radio at the weekend lamenting the passing of his former mate and told a great story.

Apparently Chris (with full Sidebottom head on) and Ronson were touring and driving down Edgware Road in London on the way to a gig when Chris demanded that he pull the van over and briefly park up. Ronson duly obliged and Chris in Frank persona and head rolled down the window and buttonholed one bemused passerby.
'Excuse me, mate. Is this London?'
'Yes,' replied the slightly confused fella.
'Well can you tell me where you want this wood?' asked Chris in Sidebottom mode.

I don't think I've heard anything more ridiculous or funnier. Ever.

Dream Lover...

I am having a dream. The Missus is having an affair with a photographer and I have tracked them both to his very swish place and confronted her. He is in the bedroom and she will not let me confront him so I give her the option to leave him and come home with me.

But the total cow decides to stay another night and tells me she'll be home in the morning. I leave upset...

I tell the Missus about the dream when I wake up. Does she offer succour for my night-time distress? No. Instead she offers the following words of comfort.
'It's highly unlikely to happen. I'm far too lazy to have an affair with anyone...'

Thanks.

Team Talk...

Come on England! Come on you over-paid, over-hyped, over-exposed, affair-adoring, self-obsessed, roasting-loving, disgraceful set of human beings.

For once remember you are football players with a job to do and a nation behind you...

DISCLAIMER 1: This was written three hours before kick-off. The management reserves the right to edit any posts and change its opinion in the event England get an utter booting.

DISCLAIMER 2: At least were not the French.

Charity...

The Missus is back from a press trip. I am filling her in on my activities during her absence and I mention I took one of the bags of clothes the Boy had sorted out for charity to the drop-off point.
'Which bag would that be?'
'The smaller of the two bags...'
'The bag with the Boy's old boxer shorts?'
'Yes...'
'The bag I told you not to take because they don't want old boxer shorts with the crotch worn through?'
'You never said that...'
'I did. You just chose to ignore me...'
'But they do want stuff like that.'
'Why would they want old boxer shorts with worn-through crotches?'
'To recycle as rags...'
'Rags?'
'...to stuff children's toys with.'
'So in your world children's toys are stuffed with the old boxer shorts of teenage boys? Boxer shorts with the crotches worn through?'
'It's eco-friendly.'
'It's not particularly hygienic, is it?'
'It helps children build up resistance to disease...'
'You're an idiot...'

It's good to have her home.

Media Careers Advice: Part III...

Job title: fashion mag girlies

Job description: Who cares? It's a soul-less and pointless profession in an even more vacuous world populated by the intellectually challenged, the vain and the inept. Sadly in the wonderful world that is the media at some point you will run into a gaggle of these dead-behind-the-eyes, stick-thin, air-headed bints... and if you possess any trace of concern for humanity it will be all you can do to stop yourself unloading with a Malcolm Tucker-esque tirade. Or shotgun. Particularly if you end up stuck in a lift with these tweeting and chattering air thieves as they bitch about some totaly inane nonsense to do with shoes.

I hate them all with a passion that gives me energy and, although some people would call my solution to their existence genocide, I prefer the term gene-pool-cleansing.

I think we’d survive without them...

Salary: Pay them in buttons and tell them it's a new style of money. They're all too stupid to discover you are lying...

The Zen Of Pool: Conclusions...

An article I wrote for my martial arts school's magazine...

‘From one thing know ten thousand things…’
Miyamoto Musashi

Some facts… I’m good at eightball pool. At 16 I was invited to play for my senior county team and some 25 years, two trials for the England team and one national title later I’m still playing at county level. So I’m still good.

The problem with being good at something, though, is that it’s a constant battle to maintain standards. When you can do something to a high level it’s frustrating when you struggle to maintain that level. So being good at something does carry problems.

Fortunately at hapkido I never experienced these issues. Having no martial arts experience and limited ability any minor success in class was a triumph rather than a failure. And as much as it annoyed me to pretty much get everything wrong for the first two years I didn’t beat myself up about it. After all Hapkido was something I did for fun.

Some seven years later and with a black belt grading looming, however, and that’s not an excuse I can use any more. I’m no longer quite so useless and the desire to maintain a standard is now as necessary in my martial arts studies as it is when I grab my cue and head off to a match.

So inspired by the above Musashi quote I decided to apply the lessons I’d learnt from my cue sports discipline and apply them to the martial arts one and see where I went…

Stance
The bedrock of any cue sport is the stance. The theory is that if you have a balanced stance you are much less likely to move on a shot, which is a common cause of missing a shot. In short the more solid your base the better chance you have of lining up correctly behind the shot to deliver a smooth stroke to hit the white ball.

In hapkido the stance is also a vital factor. A solid base and distribution of your weight allows you to unbalance and throw an opponent, to launch kick and punch combinations, and to torque your hips to generate additional power without losing balance or leaving yourself vulnerable. In both disciplines a stable connection to the floor is vital and a good stance is quite literally the foundation of everything.

Delivery
In pool how you ‘deliver’ the cue is a key factor. Beginners struggle to maintain a smooth stroke when holding a cue. Their legs, bodies and arms move so when they aim at the white ball they often tend to stab at it from a variety of angles because they haven’t mastered the ‘delivery’ of the cue. To ‘deliver’ a cue through a shot requires a fluid motion that starts with a backswing then accelerates the tip towards the white ball until it strikes it before it returns to a starting position. It is a simple and elegant motion that is neither dramatic nor exciting but consistent and smooth.

To my mind delivering a kick or a punch requires a similar understanding of the mechanics involved. Punches and kicks are fluid motions that have a definite start point at their initial chambering and a definite contact point as they strike their target before reverting back to a guard position.

Both disciplines have ‘delivery’ systems that rely on repeating simple, fluid mechanical actions. But such simplicity in both disciplines in only based on hours of practice.

Focus
Maintaining focus when playing in tournaments can be a demanding experience. Most individual matches last about an hour and if you get to the later stages of the event you’ll have won four or five matches and will have spent up to nine hours in the venue. To help retain focus during matches I have mental routines I go through before getting down to play the shot to ensure I’ve analysed the situation and worked out my best option.

I adapted some of these habits into hapkido so now if I’m sparring I try to maintain a certain body shape. It helps by programming my body and mind into understanding that I’m sparring… in much the same way that touching my watch when it’s my turn to take a key shot at pool reminds me to take the time to check my options.

Interestingly the issue of focus is one area where the study of hapkido has influenced my pool game. I realised a while ago that it’s no accident that my best hapkido lessons usually follow a ki class. And that’s because my body is relaxed and my mind is clear so I can easily tune into what I’m doing. So if I’m struggling with a technique instead of getting annoyed I mentally step back from myself and analyse what’s wrong.

And this is something I’ve brought into my pool game a lot in the last year because if you make a mistake at pool it’s often tempting to try to rescue the situation by playing a high-risk but low-percentage shot. And in my youth I was able to get away with that approach but these days I no longer have that same on-the-table aggression so I’ve borrowed a lesson from my hapkido and I step out of the situation, analyse and find a smarter option.

Conclusion
The main truth I’ve rediscovered, though, is if I want to keep playing pool at a high level then I have to put the hours in on the practice table. And that means running drills to keep my basics consistent. And the same lessons apply at hapkido.

To quote Musashi: ‘The key is training. One must continue to train.’

Media Careers Advice: Part II...

Job description: art department

Duties: In the 1970s it was easy to spot potential kiddy-fiddlers or other sexual deviants. They were usually men with glasses who wore long coats and spoke in soft voices. They were also kind to their mothers. If they hadn't killed them.

But in this age of cyber-space wizardry and cultural homogeneity it's much more difficult to know what you're dealing with. And it's the same with art department people. Like paedophiles they come in all shapes and sizes and they're generally pretty tough to spot and it's even more difficult to understand the amount of utter bilge they come out with.

So here's a test to help you spot them and also see if it's the career path for you.

1) Do you understand the concept of a deadline?
a) Yes.
b) Does it have to be a deadline? And does it have to be in that colour? If we had a few more days we could make it a really aesthetically pleasing deadline. We go to press today? How about I get it to you next week? With new pictures? And a new design?

2) You have a problem to solve that has a straightforward solution. Do you?
a) Solve it in a systematic and intelligent way that ensures your deadline is met?
b) Throw a huge hissy fit like a pre-menstrual teenager, go cry in the toilets for an hour, refuse to do any work until everyone accepts you are 'creative' and have a right to be temperamental, then consult some feng shui manual before begrudgingly completing the task with a face like a slapped arse.

If you've answered 'a' then you are probably quite sane and should never consider a career in the media. Go learn a proper trade. If you answered 'b' start learning the latest design package now. You're destined to be an art desk diva. Well done.

Salary: You deserve every penny. Not.

Nightmare...

It is hot so I am sleeping with no clothes on and the duvet is on the floor. This is not an attempt to paint an alluring picture. It is just a fact. Stay with it...

Sadly the little cat has recently got into the habit of waking me and the Missus up at 5am by dive-bombing the bed to demand food. Fortunately we have now become quite hardened to her demands so we can ignore her and sleep through.

Now the dive-bombing approach has failed, however, the cat's latest trick is scratch at one of my exposed bollocks until I wake up. Sadly she has yet to figure out that me screaming in pain is no way to guarantee her being fed. Or remaining alive.

Stupid cat. Poor bollock.

Hotel Joke...

A vicar is booking into a hotel and says: 'I hope the porn channel in my room is disabled.'

'No. It's just normal porn like every room you sick f***er!' replies the receptionist.

Media Careers Advice: Part I...

Job description: chief sub-editor

Duties: Imagine you are a monkey in a zoo in a cage with other monkeys. As the opening time for the zoo approaches it is your job to tidy the cage but the other monkeys insist on throwing shit at each other and have now started eating their own shit and other people's shit too. It is your job to sort all this shit out and when the other monkeys sod off to sleep in the back of the cage you just end up standing there, covered in shit, being stared at by the visitors who want to know why you are covered in shit.

You could explain it to them but you know it's pointless. After all they are visitors to a zoo and you are a monkey and they'd just never understand how the other monkeys can get so much pleasure out of throwing shit about and eating their own shit.

So you stand there, covered in shit, hoping it will be better tomorrow. But it won't be. Ever...

Salary: Probably not enough.

Pret A Manger...

I've just been into Pret A Manger and several of the serving girls are wearing caps with the logo 'Just roasted!'

That's surely not a good thing to advertise...

Statistics...

Apparently statistics show that only one in seven dwarves is happy.

Back To Black...

I have learnt all the techniques for my black belt grading so now begins the real work to ensure they are all up to scratch so it's been training, training, training whenever I can. I am, however, struggling with the first set of the two sets of techniques I need to master to successfuly grade.

These are essentially attacking techniques where there is no momentum coming at you so you have to generate the momentum from your opponent who is in a standing position by utilising correct posture and maintaining a firm base while taking then disrupting your opponent's balance. And it's hard work.

When an oponent's momentum is coming towards you it's much easier to merge with it and redirect it because he's essentialy jeopardising his base to begin with. But when he's not it's much harder.

Fortunately I was playing pool one night this week and I'd left myself a virtually impossible shot to dislodge a ball and a penny suddenly dropped after I'd played the shot. The ball was an easy enough pot but it was a one in a hundred shot to generate the angle or the position needed off the pot to move my last ball off the cushion to make it pottable.

But instead of getting annoyed I relaxed and just committed to the shot and cued it so well that I actually managed to do it. Even my watching colleague, a player and a peer of many years experience, couldn't believe the shot I'd played.

So the lessons for hapkido are to commit to the shot (or the attack) and rely on and trust the technique. After all I only managaed to cue the ball so well because everything was aligned correctly. This type of alignment also applies to hapkido.

Martial arts, like pool, starts with a firm base from the floor then ends with well-executed movements elsewhere. It also relies on a mental commitment to each and every shot. After all laziness on easy shots usually results in missed shots.

It sort of makes sense to me. To paraphrase Musashi, if you can the find the way once you can find it ten thousand times and when it comes to pool I know the way so I need to copy the lessons.

Hell's Kitchen...

Both myself and the Missus work hard for our money and while I generally spend mine on stuff I want she tends to feel guilty about doing the same.

We are in town shopping and she is umm-ing and ahh-ing about treating herself so I give her a pep talk.

'Look. We work really hard for our money so we shouldn't feel guilty about spending it on stuff we want,' are the words of wisdom I offer.

A pensive look comes over her face then she smiles.
'Yes. You're right,' she says.

Three days later she shows me the quote for the new kitchen.
'How fucking much!?' This is my initial reaction.
'But you said we shouldn't feel guilty about spending money on stuff we want...'
'I thought you were going to buy a handbag or a dress. I didn't mean a designer kitchen that I'll also be paying for!'
'But it will be a lovely kitchen...'

She smiles again. I have already lost the argument. It's a good job she can do the sex stuff...

The Singing Detective...

My chances of turning into the Singing Detective (pre-medication and pre-stint-in-hospital) may be receding after a trip to see my new doctor.

My new doctor is lovely. Sadly she away when I last visited the surgery so I got a less attractive locum inserting a digit into an orifice. This is a shame as I wouldn't mind my proper new doctor sticking her finger up my arse at any time.

Sadly she only asked me to drop my trousers so she got a glimpse of my superhero underpants but I could tell she was impressed by my smalls fashion sense as she gave me a new prescription of anti-hystamine tablets, a tube of steroid cream and some other lotion to rub on the affected bits.

Applying the cream wasn't pleaseant and it wasn't pretty and if there are two unsexier words in the English language than 'steroid cream' I have yet to read them. And I have read a huge amount of filth.

Having a body plagued by unsightly rashes made training very interesting, though, and rather than opt for the explain-to-everyone-I'm-not-contagious line I decided to cover up by wearing a base layer under my do-bok.

This was great as it meant I had no more skin eruptions but it was really hot and I sweated buckets. So it was a week of steroid cream and sweat. Nice...

On the plus side I had a cracking birthday and I also came across this brilliant quote by Ancient Greek poet and soldier Archilochus:
'We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.'

I reckon that's on the money.

PS. I also got the new iPod.

Happy Birthday...

I am 41 in a few days and I'm looking forward to having a quiet day at work then spending the evening with the Missus and the Boy.

But what do you get the 41-year-old who has everything? Simple. An eczema-like skin condition caused by a brand new allergy to something.

Great. What I really wanted was a new iPod...

Fashion News...

It is Bank Holiday Monday and me, the Boy and the Missus are heading into town to do some shopping.

I am about to head through the front door when the Boy stops me.
'You're not going out like that, are you?'
'I'm not shaving the 'tashe. We've had this discussion. The 'tache stays.'

The 'tache has been a constant source of amusement to the Boy ever since I grew it at the behest of the Missus, who claimed that growing a drooping Dirty Sanchez 'tache would soften my 'severe face'. I decided to give this a go as it meant the Missus was happy and it also meant I could pretend I was Chuck Liddel when I was sparring at martial arts.

Sadly I have recently realised that the 'tache combined with the sideburns make me look more Seth Armstrong (played by the late, great Stan Richards) from Emmerdale than hardened UFC warrior.

The 'tache, however, still stayed.

'I'm not worried about the tache,' adds the Boy.
'What is it then?'
'It's them...' says the Boy pointing to my jogging bottoms.
'And what's wrong with them?'
'You're about to go out in your pyjamas.'
'They're jogging bottoms...'
'They're pyjamas. I have a pair upstairs...'

I turn to the Missus for support.
'Are these pyjamas or jogging bottoms?'
'They're pyjamas...'
'But I've been going out in these for months!'

The Boy laughs, before adding:
'It's a good job that people have been too busy staring at your stupid facial hair to notice then, isn't it?'

Drive Me Crazy...

The Boy is back from university for a few weeks and he has spent several days brushing up on his driving lessons.

So he is in the kitchen talking to the Missus and explaining how his instructor complimented him on not stalling the car and several other technical feats which washed straight over my non-driver head.

I decide to enter the conversation.
'So... you're an excellent driver?'

The Missus bursts out laughing and the boy immediately cottons onto the Rain Man reference.
'You're an idiot.'

It's good to have him home...

Lexicon News...

Fugly: An adjective meaning not particularly attractive. Ungendered so it can apply to both sexes.
Origin: A contraction of the two words 'fucking' and 'ugly'.
Example: 'I really wanted to have a little go on that but on closer inspection I realised it was fugly beyond belief.'