Fight Quest IV...

I am currently sporting an ice pack on my shoulder. I have been sporting this for a few days in a bid to stem pain and speed healing. And I think it's working so I'll be back in full training mode sooner than expected. Hurray!

Bizarrely sporting this ice pack has given me a new appreciation of what it's like to be a hunchback, walking around with an odd lump sticking out of my shoulder.

I am also informed that Gillian McKeith suffers with a hunchback affliction so for once I am in sympathy with the whippet-thin, whining, shrew-faced, modern snakeoil saleswoman and fraudulent doctor.

Sadly, apart from McKeith, hunchbacks are not something you see any more and advances in medical science and paedeatric surgery are perhaps reasons for this. Like village idiots they seem to be a dying breed but I reckon the good old-fashioned village idiot is still alive and well somewhere in the UK.

Goole had its own village idiot, of course. He was nicknamed 'Nutty' Graham because his name was Graham and he behaved like a nutter.

These days he'd probably be categorised under the catch-all term 'learning difficulties' but any man who stood at the level crossing on Boothferry Road day-in day-out just in time to see any passing train then proceed to shout abuse at those trains for years on end must have had some method to his madness.

And watching him go to work on unsuspecting train passengers is what used to pass for entertainment in Goole. It was certainly better than watching the football team. Or going to Hull for a shopping trip.

Happy days...

Fight Quest III…

I've been over-training and I’ve picked up a shoulder injury.

Sadly injuries are part and parcel of any martial arts training and I just have to deal with it. But from what I can gather it’s a rotator cuff injury and the way to heal it is with rest and ice.

So instead of cycling in this morning I grabbed the Tube with the Missus and about halfway through my journey she gleefully turned to me and pointed a story out in today’s Metro. It read:

‘A 30-year-old mother of one from Manchester has secured a big-money US television deal as a cage fighter.’

Bollocks! I’ve been unable to train for one day and someone’s sort of nicked my idea already and, even worse, she’s a bloody woman and that makes it a much better story.

Still. She might get seriously injured and have to call it all off…

Fight Quest II...

My quest to become a UFC fighter has begun and I've gone onto their website to find out how I sign up. And, lo and behold, here it is...

Q: How do I get into the UFC?
A: Fighting in the UFC requires years of training and fighting experience. If you think you've got what it takes, send a VIDEO TAPE of your fights and a short bio to:
UFC Fighter Info
Attn:
Sean Shelby
PO Box 26959
Las Vegas, NV
89126

So by my reckoning I need to train for a year, then have a fight and videotape it.

I also need a name as all UFC fighters have a nickname. I sought the Boy's opinion and his answer was 'The Idiot'. I then sought advice from the Missus.
'If you go ahead with this I will divorce you...'

That's quite a rubbish nickname in my estimation...

Fight Quest I...

'It's potentially the most stupid idea you've ever had. And given that you are an absolute idiot who previously thought it was a good idea to insert lit sparklers into the top of his penis that is quite a feat...'

I have just explained my latest wheeze to the Missus. I've told her I want to train and become a UFC fighter for one fight only as it will give me a definite goal and, more importantly, I also think it would make quite a good book idea. My idea is not getting the reaction I anticipated, though, so I try to defend myself.

'I'm already a decent martial artist and if I know I'm fighting I'll train much harder. I'm also boxing and that will help and I reckon if I train seriously I'll be ready within two years, maybe three...'
'You're NOT doing it.'
'The worst that can happen is that I'll get knocked out...'
'...or you could have your neck broken and I'll end up tending to a paraplegic for the rest of my life...'
'It would make a great book. Think about... speccy journalist becomes fighting machine...'
'But you don't even like fighting. You even apologise to your boxing coach when you hit him...'
'But I don't see it as fighting... it's about competition and I may not be overtly aggressive but I am hugely competitive...'
'It's a stupid idea thought up by an idiot. It's the sort of thing young men do not people who are nearly 40 years old with families.'
'Would you do me a favour?'
'You're having a mid-life crisis. That's what this is...'
'Just think about it...'

The Missus pauses. She stares at me like I'm an idiot. But it means she hasn't said a definite no...

Hard News...

Read about this in The Week so I thought I'd share it. The report is taken from website The Register:

'A group of Hungarian tax inspectors is apparently "protesting" at being forced to watch hard-core pornography movies in an attempt to decide if the filmmaker has legitimately claimed £10,000 in allowances for set-dressing his DVD romps.

Northern Hungary tax supremo Maria Nagy bemoaned the probe into Ferenc Hopka, whining: "It's a hard job. Porn movies are known for showing the action, not the bed or the carpet it is happening on.

"Often we just see a lot of flesh and a little bit of silk, and just from that we have to determine whether that piece of silk is really the bedding the producer claimed his money back for."

To give you a taste of what Hungary's finest might be enduring, we suggest a quick shufti at Hopka's 2002 smut masterwork Fallen Angels, which stars the splendidly named Norman Hard and is described thus: "A priest stands accused of 'orgiastic misconduct' in a monastery. Enter a female judge who wants to hear every juicy detail of his blasphemous deeds..."'

Now that's proper news...

Friends Reunited...

One of my old college friends has recently got in touch again after a lengthy absence and I'm very excited. Of all the people I was friends with at college she was one of the few people I genuinely missed when we lost contact.

She was also quite sexy and I confess I had a bit of a crush on her. But she's back in touch and I'm hoping we'll get to catch up in real life rather just in cyberspace before too long. So I am discussing this turn of events with the Missus...

'You remember I told you about Harry?'
'The girl you were friends with at college?'
'Yes... Well she's got in touch with me and invited us down for the weekend to visit her and meet her kids and her fella.'
'I'd be up for that.'
'I always really liked Harry. She liked me too. We were both serious students at college among a sea of people who weren't. We bonded over books.'
'Did you fancy her at all?'
'Yes. I always thought she was quite sexy...'
'You were friends with a lot of girls at college, weren't you?'
'Yes. Which is surprising as I wasn't the catch then that I am now.'
'Well you were their non-threatening straight friend...'
'What do you mean "non-threatening"?'
'Well you weren't a sexual threat. It's like girls having a gay friend. There's no worry you're going to sleep together. So you were their non-threatening straight friend.'
'I wasn't a leper. I had girlfriends at college! They might have done!'
'How many of your friends who were girls that you found 'a bit sexy' did you sleep with at college?'
'Not many...'
'How many exactly?'
'I'm going to watch the football...'

Meat...

I have just had a week off work to finish rewrites on my play Meat. I now have two more days to finish knocking it into shape before it goes off for a big competition. I'll also be sending it out to a few other theatres with a view to getting it read and getting some feedback or, hope beyond hope, getting it staged.

It's going well but who would have thought that a play about selling sex, child prostitution and venereal disease that features rape, mutilation, a dwarf and a few murders could demand so much work.

I'm glad the new play I'm working on only has casual violence and incest. There was a time I used to write comedy. Maybe I am just ill in the head these days...

Home Truths IV...

The Missus is away and I am at home cooking tea for me and the Boy.

I shout him to come downstairs as the food is ready but there is no response. So I venture upstairs and knock on his bedroom door.
'What?' comes the half-grunt, half-annoyed response. So I open the door and decide to play the doting step-father.
'Your ever-loving step-daddy has put tea on the table. So come downstairs and keep me company and we can eat together. Please...'

The Boy looks at me in horror.
'You look and sound like a kiddy-fiddler when you do that...'
'Well if I was a kiddy-fiddler I'd go for better-looking teenagers than you. Downstairs. Food on the table...'

The Boy heads downstairs.
'Well if you did go for the good-looking kids they'd never have you anyway. You're just too ugly...'

Little shit. It's about time he went to university. Far away...

Home Truths III...

The Missus and the Boy are concerned with my current obsession with martial arts. I try to explain this as best I can but after all their bating and sarcasm I eventually run out of patience and declare:
‘Look I’m a fucking Ninja so shut up and leave me alone – or else…’

There is laughter. The Missus and the Boy head downstairs to the living room.

Silence. Then from downstairs the Missus asks:
‘Where’s the lamp?’

Bugger.
‘What lamp?’
‘The white glass lamp that was on the mantlepiece.’
‘I was hoovering and the wires got caught up and I accidentally knocked it over…’

There is a silence. Then comes the put-down…
‘Teach you that in Ninja school, did they?’

Home Truths II...

Me and the Missus are discussing our marriage after I look at one of our wedding pictures and smile affectionately at her.
‘When exactly did we get married?’ she asks breaking my moment of nostalgia.
‘It was September 2001.'
'Yes. I remember it now. The same month and year as the World Trade Centre disaster.'

Many lesser husbands would be offended by this aide memoire but I realise she does not say this with any degree of sarcasm. Her brother was in New York at the time and we married two weeks after this happened and, at a time when flying in the US was considered very dangerous, he took the flight and came to see us marry.

Sadly she decides to extend the analogy and score into the sarcasm open net that is gaping before her. In fairness I would do the same to her...

‘Yeah. I married an idiot the same year as a major disaster…’ she smiles. 'Makes sense...'
'You know, if I'm such an idiot why exactly did you marry me?’ I ask. She gives it some thought then answers.
‘Well it meant I no longer needed a lodger.’

Who says romance is dead? I'm glad I broke her lamp. I may yet break another one out of spite...

Home Truths I...

It is Saturday morning. The Missus has been to her exercise class while I have hoovered and cleaned the house and we have just returned from doing the weekly food shop.

Sadly, during the hoovering process a lamp got caught up in the hoover’s lead and fell to the floor and broke. As I am a martial arts warrior who fears nobody I did what any self-respecting martial arts warrior would do and threw the lamp away in the dustbin and hoped nobody would notice.

So the Missus sits and reads the paper while I read a book on an Israeli fighting system called Krav Maga. The Missus has been into the living room where the lamp used to reside and I realise I am on the verge of getting caught but decide to ride out the storm.

‘Have you noticed this?’ asks the Missus.
I fear it will be some feature on lamps as she hands me a section of the newspaper. Instead it is a column whose headline reads ‘It is my wife’s life purpose to drain my self-esteem at any opportunity’.

I fear it is a trap so I deny any knowledge of having read the article but instead she simply admits the following:
‘See. It’s not just me. Other women do it too!’

I go back to my book. So far so good. The lamp 'restructuring' incident has so far gone unnoticed…