First Impressions

Can you get a better first date than a black tie Ball?

Can you know instantly this could be it?

Can you really fall in love at first sight?

Can you set yourself up for a fall time and time again?

1,2,3...,10

PTSD. It has to be. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If it isn't, then I must be completely immune and should be studied by medical scientists for a cure for all manner of mental health disorders.

Car trouble can lead some people to the edge. Staff shortages and lack of support at work during the busiest period of the year could do it for some. Complete devastation and deconstruction of the house might tip the brink for others. All 3 together, continuously for the last 4 months, would be pretty strong mitigation for any major crime.

Add in 3 weddings on consecutive weekends ( one of which I didn't actually make although I'd have enjoyed the most), a car journey from Northest Lincolnshire to deepest London via Taunton, Tiverton, Bideford and Bude with only a short break for dinner and dancing and back again in little over 24 hours, and one could be forgiven for behaving like a Jack Nicholson character.

Top it off with a morning spent walking around Earls Court at The Baby F*cking Show* and then tell me I should spend more time visiting blogs.

Would you really want this woman near your friends and family? Would you? Huh? Huh?

*(that's a show of all things kiddie related, nothing whatsoever to do with paedophilia)

Devon and Hell

I'm driving the 330 miles to my brother's wedding in Devon after work this evening.

This evening.

Black Friday.

The Routeplanner tells me it will take 7hrs and 6 mins. This does not allow for collecting my sister ( the real one, not the step one) from Tiverton train station.

My mother and every news reader in the media tells me I will be lucky to get there before dawn. On Tuesday.

I am happy to do this. He is my only brother, albeit a step one. We are the same age. We were in the same class at school for a year. He is tall, handsome, blonde, surfs, snowboards, plays water polo and is likely to have similar friends.

If he doesn't have a telly, there is likely to be a serious family dispute at 8pm tomorrow night.

SETI

I wished you'd spoken

all those years ago.

Perhaps you tried

I didn't hear you.

I'm listening now -

like a scientist

searching the sky -

with lightyears' less hope.

Corny Acorns

Unnamed Female: Do you think maybe, on a safe night when things are going really well, or maybe not then but on a poor night when things couldn't get any worse, it might be ok if, and say if you think it's a terrible idea, but maybe that, perhaps I could do the occasional link? Just to get used to being up there.

Jon: Yes, sure. But why don't you write yourself 10 minutes of material and do a proper slot?

Unnamed Female: No. I could never do that. I'd be terrible.

Jon: No you wouldn't. Give it a try.

Unnamed Female: No. Definitely not.

The telephone goes dead. Unnamed Female picks up a pen and chews the end. She starts scribbling furiously into a notebook.

The End

Nothing Comperes

I felt sick. My heart pounded. An invisible band pulled tight around my head. My palms threatened to drip sweat as my fists continually clenched and unclenched. My vision began to swim and for one moment I thought I might be about to have a heart attack. Or a baby. Or both.

I swallowed nothing as the lump in my throat threatened to block my windpipe. My tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth whilst my stomach turned somersaults and did the moonwalk.

There were 80 of them. I'd greeted each one individually, some by name. They hadn't looked this ugly, or menacing then. They hadn't stared at me then.

My world had shrunk to a bubble no wider than a metre in diameter. The sound had been sucked out of it.

I panicked. My mind emptied instantly to be filled with a backwash of more nothingness.

I made my debut, and quite probably my finale, as a compere at the comedy club.

It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I want to wind it back and try it again.

Je Ne Regrette Rien

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
Helen Rowland, A Guide to Men, 1922(1876 - 1950)

I hope this works just as well for women or else I'm gonna feel proper daft in the morning.

Think of me at 8.15pm tonight.

I'm going in without a safety net.

I shall fly or I shall die.

Either way, I won't be wondering ' What if...' in years to come.

Maybe Hockey wasn't so bad after all

We have a balanced approach to luck in our family.

Jack has all the good kind.

I have the bad.

Jack got a promotion and a pay rise on his second night at the Wild Coyote bar. He also got 2 assistants. Last night, he got up and danced. Today his grandma bought him a car.

I got to work to find yet another secretary off sick. I'm down to 1, the rottweiler. I still haven't got a car but I do have a crashing headache.

I don't need much. Just a break. If I'd enjoyed being hit by a big stick, I would never have given up hockey.