Goth News...

Me and the Missus are visiting Barry Stir, an old friend who is in the legal profession.

He lives in Nottingham and when he's not donning a wig and gowns to be in court he's a concert-going Goth with a penchant for the Sisters of Mercy and Killing Joke. So when we're out and about and and he's taking us to his fave pubs we inevitably end up in the goth/rock pub in town.

It's a place of wonder and I want to stay there for ever and take pictures of all the weird and wonderful people on display. I tell the Missus these are my people and this could very well be my new spiritual home.

She tells me I am a nearly fortysomething man wearing jeans and a jacket and in no way look like one of them. I try to explain that the tribe of Goth is about internal as well as external attributes but she doesn't listen and talks to Barry Stir instead.

The next day we are out and about in town and we chance upon the two Goth/punk/S&M shops in Nottingham – and the Missus wants to go in. Result! So I encourage this and she gets into a discussion about tribal-style earrings with the woman who owns the shop. Even better, she buys some of them and toys with the idea of buying more.

The Missus is slowly turning Goth from the ears out...

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman has broken her arm in two places when she landed awkwardly during a falling drill that involves jumping over people then going into a breakfall.

It was a freak accident and there were operations involved and she subsequently has a heavily bandaged and swollen arm that now has steel plates in it to knit the bones back together. Ouch...

But with a Halloween party coming up she's decided not to let her swollen arm get her down or stop her planned festivities. In fact she's decided to utilise the fact that one of her arms is twice the size of the other one and go to her Halloween party as... Hellboy.

I think she's a genius. Well, a genius who's about to coated in red body paint...

Rambo...

I have to confess I love Sylvester Stallone. I genuinely think he's a very clever bloke and I still think First Blood and Rocky are pretty good films so I was rather pleased when the Rambo DVD arrived through our letterbox.

The plot of Rambo is hardly Chekhovian: former Vietnam vet John Rambo is now a boatman who's hired to take several religious do-gooders into Burma where they hope to dish out Bibles and provide some medical care. But they're captured by nasty Burmese army types and he has to return to rescue them with a bunch of mercenaries.

It's pretty standard Rambo fayre but at just over 80 minutes there's not too much time for character development. There is shedloads of bloody violence, though, as everyone's favourite former Green Beret cuts his way through swathes of nasty Burmese soldiers and saves the day.

The Missus watched the movie with me and she claimed it was the worst film she'd ever seen. I argued, however, that it was a telling critique of US foreign policy and the morality of the peace movement because the only way anything got done was through violence and warfare – even though it fundamentally didn't change anything (apart from Rambo himself, who returns home to his family in America).

I said I saw this latter development in particular as another analogy of what US foreign policy should be and that the US should follow Rambo's idea and get out of troubled areas and head home to sort out their own problems first.

The Missus told me I was an idiot. I, however, think I may be a foreign policy expert-in-waiting.

Picture Perfect...

One of my work colleagues showed me a mobile phone picture of the baby she's currently carrying.

You could tell it was a baby's face in the womb and it was quite cute in a black-and-white baby-in-the-womb kind of way.

She didn't seem too happy, however, when I asked how she got the phone in situ to take the photo. Girls, eh...

Hot Stuff!

I am out with the Missus and we are having a curry with the Other Woman, the Other Woman's Real Fella and the Other Woman Who Loves Other Women.

The conversation is pretty convivial, the food is good and all is going well – until the discussion gets onto Leon and I happen to mention that I thought Natalie Portman was very attractive in the film. There is a moment of silence then the Other Woman's Fella points out that she was about 13 when that movie was filmed and suddenly the entire table looks at me as though I should be on some type of register.

I try to defend myself by explaining the film is not just about the central character played by Jean Reno but also about the sexual awakening and maturing of a young girl heading towards womanhood but it doesn't work. I may as well have been Peter Sutcliffe or Fred West for the rest of the evening...

The next day I am at a county pool match and I relate the discussion to my county team-mate the Web Guru And Antique Cue Expert and he ponders the situation and gives his opinion.
'There are people that it's OK to like in your head but you should never talk to anyone about them...'

That's probably very good advice. Or maybe he thinks I'm some type of pervert too...

Wise Words...

'You've got to take pleasure in small things because there aren't enough big things in life to make you truly happy.'

I thought this was a truly fantastic quote and is a philosophy very close to my own. Then I realised Nigella Lawson had said it and, sadly, I'm not too keen on Mrs Curvy-Food-Is-Sex-Cook-Who's-Shacked-Up-With-The-Architect-Of-Bringing-Thatcher-To-Power.

So if anyone asks I'm going to pretend it was William Blake. Or Hitler...

Bruce Almighty...

The Missus has a potential new entry on her allowed list and she's even considering removing Johnny Depp to make room for him.

So who is this sexual behemoth? Well, actually, it's Bruce Parry.

For those who've never come across the delightful Mr Parry, he's an adventurer whose current series, Bruce Parry’s Amazon, sees him travel up the Amazon River to explore this region and meet the tribes and people who work there.

It's a truly fabulous series and in the episodes I've seen he's already made himself violently vomit for several mornings in order to purge his body in the same way that the tribe he's visiting do. On top of this he's also imbibed hallucinogenic potions, joined a criminal gang making cocaine in the jungle and joined a small family logging firm chopping down part of a rainforest.

But the thing that makes this such a must-see show is the fact that Parry is such a fabulous presenter who's genuinely open to new experiences and really enthusiastic when it comes to finding out about the people and their lives as he journeys down the river. No po-faced Western ideas of superiority here... only genuine interest and genuine compassion.

He's wonderful and the show is fab. And he's also a former Royal Marines Physical Training Instructor so he can probably bonk for bloody hours too. Consequently I may have to increase my exercise regime to compete with my wife's newest addition to the allowed list – unless, of course, Parry has a go at crocodile wrestling in the next episode and comes a cropper.

Sadly I love myself so I'd probably mourn too and also lament the fact the wife can't shag him. He's that bloody nice...

Happy Anniversary...

Last week I celebrated five years of martial arts training at hapkido and with it came a bit of a breakthrough as far as my mental approach was concerned.

For much of this year I've had no grading to prepare for so I've been watching other people spar during class and paying attention to what they were doing and working out how I could counter it. In fact in my head I'd turned sparring into something of a competition and worked out how I could get inside and utilise my slowly evolving boxing skills.

Then the penny finally dropped on Thursday and I realised if I want to pass my next grading then I should really be focusing on myself and polishing my skills and not worrying about any other bugger's.

On the plus side, however, I have nicked a couple of nifty fighting techniques from other martial arts to act as defences/weapons in sparring so it's not been a total waste of time. One is a Muay Thai kick called a 'teep' which involves kicking the thigh of an opponent's kicking leg, while the other is a double elbow strike borrowed from a Cambodian martial art called Bogatar.

But I now need to stop worrying about that and get my arse into gear as it's eight weeks and counting until I grade for my black stripe, which is the belt before black. And it could be a tough few months to get up to speed...

Martial Lore...

I attended an intensive hapkido course this weekend.

The Other Woman and the Other Woman Who Loves Other Women were there too and I can honestly say that, after two days of kicking and punching and throwing and joint-locking and wrestling and ground-fighting, my body has never ached so much from any form of exercise...

The weekend basically happened because the chief instructor from the main academy was over from the US for a week as she's good friends with our instructor and so they ran an intensive weekend-course-cum-bootcamp for a group of academy students.

And it was spectacularly fab with really good teaching and lots of eager students learning new techniques or refining old ones. It was particularly good from a personal point of view because it provided an injection of enthusiasm when I needed it most and it reminded me that, even though I still have much to learn and refine, I can actually do some of this stuff. In fact I'm even half-decent at some of it.

I could make black belt yet. Maybe...