Watching you, Watching me...

Being a fairly pleasant day I decided to take a stroll into town and partake in one of the worlds favourite pastimes of people watching. Oh how we love it, you only have to see how many reality TV shows are forced into our living rooms to see how much we love to eavesdrop on the everyday acts of the stranger around us. Whether its your average Joe or so called Celebrity we love nothing more than glimpsing a snapshot of supposed reality and how the other half live, now all from within the comfort of our own lounge we can snoop into the lives of others being paraded, dirty washing and all on prime time television.
The sun was shinning and with barely a cloud in the sky walking along the prom to town seemed the perfect route. There are not many things in this world more comical than the great British public on seeing a slight glimmer of sunshine. With the smallest of rays of sun breaking free from behind a cloud you will find countless individuals stripped to a near naked presence, present themselves on the beach to try and get a head start on the famed British tan. With what can only be described as an Oscar winning performance they lay there refusing to show that they are in fact freezing, their arms adorned with countless goose bumps as they fight back shivers from the biting sea breeze, with various catalogue poses which have surely been practiced in front of bedroom mirrors making every effort to find comfort amongst the pebbled shores. I have never been one to enjoy sitting on a beach, especially ones as uncomfortable as those found along our beautiful south coast. It rates up there with walking on hot coals and sitting on one of those car abacuses made popular in the 80’s. Whomever came up with the concept that driving a car whilst sitting on a mat made of beads is good for you must certainly now be sitting in the biggest, softest armchair laughing at the poor fools who still believe that the ability to add up your tax returns with the flexing of left and right butt cheek whilst driving is doing your posture good. If anything should be banned whilst driving it’s those things. Trying to remove a bead from some deep dark crevice has got to be more distracting than ordering your pizza on the way home from work with your mobile phone.
Progressing past the frozen sun worshipers I come across a parade of yummy mummy’s out for a stroll and a gossip. Walking six deep they take up the width of the prom, each pushing the latest in Land Rover off road buggies, who’s biggest challenging obstacle is a slightly raised drain cover or a cracked paving slab. With wheels that wouldn’t seem out of place on Big Foot they approach dauntingly in a pushchair drag race knowing no obstacle is too great for the mighty off roaders. Taking drastic, evasive action so as not to end up as road kill I move out into the path of oncoming cars and practice the less challenging danger of speeding motorists who are trying to remove beads from places best left alone.
Finally I make it into town, having survived the joggers with their lycra clad legs, cyclists who don’t seem to understand what cycle paths are for and quad bike beach patrols who, from what I can tell spend their days driving up and down the beach throwing up pebbles in their wake and generally destroying the poetic sounds of waves breaking along the shoreline. I make my way to a coffee shop where upon I am forced into ordering what I am sure is just a milky coffee but given some indulgent, mysterious Italian name. When all this happened I am not quite sure, some politically correct paper pushing terrorist that has never left the safety of his own four walls has decided that somebody somewhere may just take offence should I decide to order a black coffee and deemed it necessary that from now on we must indulge our caffeine addiction in various guises, under the different Italian pseudonyms so that no one, other than maybe every Italian on hearing our poor mispronunciation of their delightful language will take offence.
I take my “Latte”, milky coffee and find my seat outside whereupon I can watch the world go by. No sooner said than done a motorized driven super gran tears along the pavement. Peering over the top of her wire rimmed spectacles with a glint in her eye, her lips pursed as if sucking on a lemon, she travels at speed on her retro fitted chair boasting more gadgets than Bond’s latest Aston Martin and not looking out of place in the Wacky Racers, she finds her target, a small group of hoodies loitering outside a shop minding their own business, she depresses the turbo boost and with a flick of a switch walking sticks protrude from the wheels she mows down the innocent youths. Scattering the group who have found themselves having to dive for cover and slipping on the oil slick of Murray mints left in her wake she steams off to find her next unknowing target.
As the lunch hour descends upon us I am soon joined by various office folk eager to escape the dreary fluorescent-lit offices and savour a few moments of freedom. Young men forced into a suit and tie, polished shoes and manicured nails, they take their seats and unwrap some factory made lunch offering. I have never really done fashion, I’ve always worn what I found comfortable and never became a slave to the latest must have designer jeans or shirts, mainly because I have a very rare talent of making the most expensive designer garment look like sack cloth. There seems to be a new trend at the moment, which I just don’t get. It appears that Big Ben has been slightly sized down and wrapped around peoples wrists. What is it with the huge watches at the moment? Is people’s eyesight so bad that they need something that big? You could have left your watch at home on your bedside table and still see what the time is. Heaven forbid that they come with night-lights and you get sat next to one at the cinema. You could send SOS messages into the eternal universe with one of them. Leaving the boys in suits alone and their enormous timepieces, I am drawn to the very comical stage show now being paraded in front of me. There is a new challenge of finding somewhere, anywhere to indulge in the near prohibited act of smoking. People emerge from various hidden doorways and endeavour to light up in a place free from accusation and disgust. Cowering in doorways, behind bushes and in small American Football huddles these poor addicted fools partake in a lungful or two of smoke hoping that the anti-fag police are not looking on ready to pounce with fire extinguishers and leaflets showing damaged lungs.
Soon after this various school children break away from the confines of the classroom and descend on the town. Consuming as much sugar, artificial colours and calories as their lunch hour enables they swarm from shop to shop. Each of them trying in some small way to personalise the uniformed appearance forced upon them by their school. Ties tied short, back to front or tucked into the shirt soon after the top button, bending the rules ever so slightly by wearing a non conforming school jumper or trousers tight enough to count the small change in your pocket they endeavour to free themselves from the restraints of rules and regulations. Unknowingly this is their time of true freedom, soon enough they will be forced into suits and polished shoes and required to order Italian coffees paying three times the amount for a cup large enough to go paddling in so that we can feel European for a brief moment and dream of sitting in the sun by a fountain watching the colourful world go by whilst devouring a Ciabatta.
What has happened to our own identity? Why do we try to be anything but British?
Give me a good old-fashioned ploughman’s lunch and the hot beverage of my choice served from a thermos flask any day. Why is it we all want to leave this fine and glorious land but everyone else wants to get in? We flock in our hundreds and thousands to distant shores and far-flung places to establish our own versions of Britain on foreign soil and for those of us unable to we are offered the briefest of glimpses of this escape during our lunch breaks in every high street of our fair towns and cities. For a country once famed for its proud traditions and way of life we have slipped onto a very steep slope and have started to slide into a mixed gene pool of fashion and forced beliefs served to us on a silver platter of promises and dreams of a better life. Historians of the future will barely be able to distinguish one country from another as we all mix and lose our own customs. Soon the rainbow of diversity in all of us will be washed down into a very dull grey, as we all slowly but surely become the same as the person next to us. Rejoice in our differences and eccentricities, cherish them, for very soon if we listen to the glossy magazines and the spotty professionals paraded in front of us who have barely started living yet and keep telling us what to wear and how to act we will soon be just another mass produced human being of no distinguishable characteristics lost in the very glamour and cultures we longed for in the first place. Be yourself and not what somebody else tells you, you should be, for I fear if we all conform the very act of people watching will cease to be and our TV screens will be inundated with home makeovers and gardening programmes once more

It's a Small World After All

I know this has been around for quite some time, there is even an application on here, but I absolutely love the whole consept, theory, idea, whatever you want to call it of Six Degrees Of Seperation.
For anyone that doesn’t know the theory, which is what I will call it for now, it states that every single person on this fine and beautiful planet of ours is only ever six people away from each other. That we are all connected to a degree, by friends, relatives, husbands, wives etc; not that we are related but that we all know someone who knows someone else who knows someone else and so on until you get to the sixth person.
I am probably not the best to try and describe the theory being the uneducated rag a muffin that I am. Never the less, the idea that I am only six people away from my true sweet heart and love of my life, the wonderful, beautiful, heavenly soul that is Claudia Schiffer makes me love and believe in the theory.
I just need to find the second person in that chain of four others that will lead me to the sixth person who will be the radiant Mrs Schiffer. Yes I know she is happily married, but hey if I can find that chain of six people I’m damn certain I can find another chain of six people that will lead me to somebody who owns a time machine, preferably shaped like a De Lorean.
But digressing from my infatuation with blonde German super models, and 80’s flux compacitor driven time machines lets get back to the theory at hand.
It’s not really that difficult to comprehend or to believe in. How many people do we meet in our time? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Billions? Squillions??? OK maybe not Squillions, thats just ridiculous… And out of all those people that we meet, they go on to meet there millions of people, who go on to meet theres. So somewhere along the line we all know someone who knows someone else and so on. So that every soul on this planet is only six people away from each other. Somehow I am connected to The President of the United States, to a farmer in Mexico, to Buzz Aldrin, to a homeless person sleeping in the door of a shop in London, to the lonely sheep herder in Tunisa, to an Eskimo on some barren wilderness, to you…
So I beg you, whoever you are that I know, who thinks that they maybe the person who knows someone else, who knows someone else, who knows someone else, who knows someone else, who knows Claudia Schiffer to stand up and make themselves know.

Sell by Date

I ask you to bear with me on this one, this will probably sound like I have finally lost the last marble in my bag and slipped into an alternate reality filled with padded wallpaper and men in long white coats and clipboards.

Over recent weeks and months a few people around me have sadly slipped off this mortal coil and passed onto whatever awaits us on the other side of Death’s door. There have also been a number of deaths or terminal illness reported in the News of various celebrities and famous faces, all of which has made me ponder the thought of how we live our lives and what we would do differently if we knew the exact date and time of our own flames being extinguished.

Now this is where you will need to unshackle your beliefs and understanding of this life and just go with me on this. What if, and I realise it’s a big WHAT IF, but what if when each of us were born we came with a “sell by date” if you like printed on us?
A date and time that our life would end.
A definite.
Not a “well it might be around the mid 50’s”. No “ums” or “ers”. No scratching of chins in ponderment. But a clear cut, absolute, this is exactly when you will be leaving us. No other details. Nothing detailing how or where you will die. Just a date and time.

What would we do?

What wouldn’t we do?

Would you now live life to its fullest, cherish every moment, stop all the arsing about at the weekend with the lads and find that perfect partner and settle down to have kids? Live the whole two point four children modern family that we supposedly live now or, would you go the other way? Carry on arsing about at the weekend, knowing you have plenty of time to settle down. Would you take more risks? You would know that if it wasn’t your date and time you could hurl yourself off the Sydney harbour bridge with only a piece of bungee between you and a possible very messy death or do we only do that because of the risk? The risky options are endless.
There would be no more “Heros” in this world. The lone soldier that returns to his wounded colleague in the midst of a terrifying fire fight would no longer receive a medal for his actions. He would have known there was no risk to him if it hadn’t been his date. He could have stood up in a bright pink tu-tu with a target emblazoned on it to retrieve his friend if he had known it was not his time.
I imagine life would not be all that different to what it is now. You would still have crime, drugs, murder and the various other evils in this life. Why wouldn’t you? People would still take drugs. Without the risk of death to make them stop and think that may have made them think twice before. Murder would still take place for the right person at the right time and date. Crime is generally committed to obtain financial gain which would still be an influence to some. None of that would change.
Wars would still take place. Terrorist atrocities would still be a part of our lives.
But what would the average Joe do. What would I have done differently or do differently? What would you do? Would you have grasped every opportunity? Would you be more open to the ones you love? Not holding back for fear of embarrassment or lose of face? Would you in essence, live life to its fullest?
Inhibitions would be lost on one hand but on the other recluses would still exist. Not wanting to get close to others for fear of losing them the next day. When you found the perfect someone would you check their sell by date before committing to them?
The list of what ifs is endless. Just scratching the darker realms of ones mind would people of the same date arrange to meet at their given times? Would there be record attempts to see if they could be the largest groups of dates and in fact deaths in one spot? But let’s not scratch that itch any further though…

I guess we are better of not knowing. Knowing that death is the only definite in this life is more than enough and not knowing where or when is for the best. But it does make you stop and think, or at least it did me. I guess it’s much the same as asking what you would do differently if you knew then what you know now?

Maybe I will cross this bridge again at some point but for now I will leave you with your thoughts and my mad ramblings rattling through your brains and the little voice in some dark recess that’s saying to you “Why did you start reading this, or more importantly why did you finish reading this?”

Every Little Helps

When I was growing up if you wanted to go out on “The Pull” you would don your best denim, shirt and jacket, maybe roll up the sleeves a little bit, bath in Old Spice or in my case my prefered scent of “HERO” aftershave and make your way to the nearest disco.
This always seemed rather odd to me. Your ability to attract a member of the opposite sex is surely at a lose in such places. You have various pros and cons. The dance floors and bar areas are so poorly lit that should you be the very next Tom Cruise, (edit: Please replace with whomever is the latest swoon these days???) you immediatly lose the advantage of your looks. Then you fall back onto your wit and intellect and try amaze your new rose with the banter and gift of the gab only ever found spilling from the vocal cords of such great comics as Lee Evans, Billy Connelly or Peter Kay, but again this falls into a shouting and volume competion between you and “Ah-Ha” being played by the DJ which results in the fair maiden beliving she has stumbled across the local village idiot, (which in my case was true)...
This just left you with the two other things you did in such venues, dancing and drinking. Again I fell at the first hurdle, unless you were impressed with me throwing shaps on the dance floor that can only be described as a man recieving a very high voltage electric shock it didn’t bode well. That left me with the good old trusty and faithful Beer Googles… But again this tended to fail, instead of waking up next to a beautiful lady I would normally be awoken by the smell of vomit and a thick carpet of fur on my tongue that would need removing with a fly-mo.

Things progressed slightly in the 90’s. You now covered yourself in Lynx Africa, had a slightly better dress sense and instead of going to Disco’s you went to nightclubs, which as far as I can tell is exactly the same as a disco but with a better budget. You still had the poor lighting, albeit now filled with multi-coloured laser shows, the volume of the music had increased to an ear damaging level, I still couldn’t dance although the whole electric shock thing did pass quite well during the rave era and come the morning I would still find myself waking up in a pool of my own vomit and a half eaten kebab. Some took refuge in the taking of various illegal substances to increase their dancing and pulling abilities but as far as I can tell this only resulted into people standing motionless next to the night cubs largest Bass bin dribbling from the corner of a lop sided mouth or laughing maronically at a pigeon that happend to cross their path on their crawl to the nearest kebab shop.

Towards the end of the 90’s and progressig into the naughties nightclubs were still in vogue but you now had the option of going to a nightclub pub, you are now dripping in the latest aftershave and potions promoted by some footballer and his wife and you are back to wearing what was once considered cool in the 80’s. Much more of the same takes place in the nightclub-pub but with a smaller dance floor and more of an inclination towads the drinking aspect of finding a mate for the evening, beer googles are handed out at the door and alcho pops are all the rage.
The lonely walk through town at the end of the night to the local kebab shop is still much the same except now every door in town seems to be adorned by two gorrilas in tuxcedos, only too willing to explain to you in their own subtle way that throwing up on the pavement and their shiny shoes is not the done thing.

I am told that now should you wish to find a lovely lady you are better off popping down to your local supermarket and and picking up a few essential groceries rather than crawling through the endless neon lit bars, taverns and clubs filling every available corner in our fair towns and cities.
More people these days seem to find their perfect partner whilst deciding if it really matters if their chicken is corn fed, organic or left to their own devices on a 100 acre plot of land in the northern regions of France. This in reflection does seem to be the perfect place. The lighting is far better, the only competion for your vocal chords is the spillage being announced in ailse seven, should you still need some dutch courage, various alcoholic beverages can be purchased and unless you are the local village idiot there will be no requirement to show of your dancing skills.

So to all those singletons out there pop down to Tesco’s where it seems that Every Little Helps and find your perfect partner…

Lost Horizons

Having just recently found myself in bachelordom once more, for those of you who don’t know it’s a lovely little village, stream flowing through it, ducks, willow tree romantically leaning over the waterside, daffodils merrily staring at the sun along every grassed bank, the sound of the church bell singing in the hours, and a population of one. Me.
This at the moment is just the way I like it. All bitter and twisted, treading on the daffodils, pushing shopping trolleys into the clear blue waters and stealing the clanger from the church bell.

Having found myself living in “paradise” again, I thought I would escape it and take a holiday in search of an ever mythical and elusive Shangri-La to see if I can find a lost horizon or two.
A journey for one.
An adventure.
Go out and see the world.
Take the path less travelled and see where it takes me etc…
Where o where to begin then? Having only ever travelled over the seas twice in my many years on this earth it really is a case of stick a pin in the map and see where the wind blows me.
Out with the trusty lap top, a quick search on Google is surely the way to start?
The W-O-R-L-D W-I-D-E WEB?
Perfect for finding my very own Shangri-La.
And what to my amazement do I find? Going somewhere, anywhere on your Jack Jones increases the burden on your wallet by ten fold and worries your bank manager into sleepless nights and calling you at stupid o’clock in the morning screaming obscenities at you. Why on Gods green earth does it suddenly cost more for ONE than it does for TWO? I don’t understand it to be honest. But then like I said my experience in such matters is not massive, in fact I would struggle filling the back of a postage stamp with everything I know about travelling to distant shores, or nearby shores for that matter. So not wanting to question the powers at be I will leave it at that and just assume this is the way it is, they obviously know what they are doing and this is for the best.

And so my quest begins…