One thing I omitted from my previous Christmas post…
Although it can be appreciated, loved and enjoyed on your own, Christmas is so much better when it’s shared.
About Me
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Monday, 22 December 2008
Tis the season...
So the season of good will is upon us once again. The one time of the year when we can all be the people we would like to be for the rest of the year. The chance to release that inner child caged within us all and let them out to play, we start thinking about others more, we dance more, we kiss more, and we celebrate life in a manner so often foreign to us throughout the proceeding months.
We not only decorate our houses but our streets, our towns, villages and cities. For a few days of the year life is covered in glitter and sparkles and for most of us the darker, shadowy areas of life are tucked away out of site and ignored.
We all aim for that Hollywood movie Christmas that floods our cinemas and TV screens this time of year. For the glitz and glamour, the happy families, the miracles and magic, the wonder and spectacle of a Christmas adorned with every person’s fulfilled dreams and aspirations.
I adore this time of year and am sucked into the full spectacle. I love the songs on the radio, the Santa’s on the street collecting for charities, the traditions, the carol singers moving from door to door, hot mince pies, naff novelty Christmas ties and jumpers, I have even been known to roast a chestnut or two on an open fire. I love getting dressed for the cold, wrapping up in numerous jumpers, scarves, woolly hats and gloves and should we be lucky enough go and play in the snow. There is something very special about being the first to walk across pure virginal snow, the gentle crush under foot, the sound each step makes as you cross the white blanket laid so delicately in front of you. What’s even better is then returning home and defrosting by a roaring log fire. With a hot glass of mulled wine and a mince pie as the outside chill retreats from you once more.
This is the time of year when you can’t help but make life that little bit more special. It is a time of memories old and anew, a time to be spent with those that you love, a time to be enjoyed and cherished and a time to also remember those that may no longer be with us. Savour every moment, moments that will become new memories and keepsakes for years to come. One day when times are not so bright, warm and cheery you can look back and warm your heart on the coals of your reminiscences.
I even like to go shopping at this time of the year, which is unheard of; I normally avoid busy shopping centres. We should all stop and smell the roses during the year, but at Christmas we should stop and smell the roasting chestnuts, listen to the songs being sung by a choir, don’t just hustle passed them in your quest to obtain the latest must have for little Timmy, stop for a minute or two. Breathe in the Christmas spirit that hangs in the air like a crisp misty morn. We can all too easily become excessively occupied and fail to recognise those special moments we are all searching for that help to create this magical time. On Christmas morning take the time out amongst all the excitement, hustle and bustle to just stop and watch your family and loved ones. Watch your children’s faces as they open their gifts or when they find that the mince pie, carrot and glass of Sherry left out for Santa have been eaten and drunk. These are the precious times in our lives that we need to cherish and protect from the evils of this world. These precious times must be locked away in the vaults of our minds, more valued than gold and silver, safe from the pollution of the world’s propaganda and villainy. True wealth should be measured in the smiles we have put on other peoples faces and in those that we have received.
So to one and all, may the season bring you the wealth you truly deserve. May your heart be warmed by the wonder of the hour and the magic of the moment.
Merry Christmas.
We not only decorate our houses but our streets, our towns, villages and cities. For a few days of the year life is covered in glitter and sparkles and for most of us the darker, shadowy areas of life are tucked away out of site and ignored.
We all aim for that Hollywood movie Christmas that floods our cinemas and TV screens this time of year. For the glitz and glamour, the happy families, the miracles and magic, the wonder and spectacle of a Christmas adorned with every person’s fulfilled dreams and aspirations.
I adore this time of year and am sucked into the full spectacle. I love the songs on the radio, the Santa’s on the street collecting for charities, the traditions, the carol singers moving from door to door, hot mince pies, naff novelty Christmas ties and jumpers, I have even been known to roast a chestnut or two on an open fire. I love getting dressed for the cold, wrapping up in numerous jumpers, scarves, woolly hats and gloves and should we be lucky enough go and play in the snow. There is something very special about being the first to walk across pure virginal snow, the gentle crush under foot, the sound each step makes as you cross the white blanket laid so delicately in front of you. What’s even better is then returning home and defrosting by a roaring log fire. With a hot glass of mulled wine and a mince pie as the outside chill retreats from you once more.
This is the time of year when you can’t help but make life that little bit more special. It is a time of memories old and anew, a time to be spent with those that you love, a time to be enjoyed and cherished and a time to also remember those that may no longer be with us. Savour every moment, moments that will become new memories and keepsakes for years to come. One day when times are not so bright, warm and cheery you can look back and warm your heart on the coals of your reminiscences.
I even like to go shopping at this time of the year, which is unheard of; I normally avoid busy shopping centres. We should all stop and smell the roses during the year, but at Christmas we should stop and smell the roasting chestnuts, listen to the songs being sung by a choir, don’t just hustle passed them in your quest to obtain the latest must have for little Timmy, stop for a minute or two. Breathe in the Christmas spirit that hangs in the air like a crisp misty morn. We can all too easily become excessively occupied and fail to recognise those special moments we are all searching for that help to create this magical time. On Christmas morning take the time out amongst all the excitement, hustle and bustle to just stop and watch your family and loved ones. Watch your children’s faces as they open their gifts or when they find that the mince pie, carrot and glass of Sherry left out for Santa have been eaten and drunk. These are the precious times in our lives that we need to cherish and protect from the evils of this world. These precious times must be locked away in the vaults of our minds, more valued than gold and silver, safe from the pollution of the world’s propaganda and villainy. True wealth should be measured in the smiles we have put on other peoples faces and in those that we have received.
So to one and all, may the season bring you the wealth you truly deserve. May your heart be warmed by the wonder of the hour and the magic of the moment.
Merry Christmas.
Friday, 19 December 2008
The unsupervised male and the world wide web
Men and the internet is a bad thing.
We shouldn’t be allowed unsupervised access to so much information. It’s not good for us and inevitably will cost us a lot of money.
For example, before the internet came along a man caught what a woman would call a bit of a sniffle, where as we all know it to be a very serious case of man flu which should never be underplayed or taken any less seriously than a bout of bubonic plaque, we would be sat down for five minutes given a hot Lemsip and a Locket and told to get on with it. Within a couple of days of complaining, lying on the sofa gently moaning and trying to impress upon anyone that would listen the seriousness of man flu and that you may in fact drop dead at any moment, you would, eventually recover and return to normal health, primarily due to your super human immune system and nothing to do with honey flavoured sweets.
However…
Now with the internet within easy reach of most people a man coughs or sneezes and suddenly it’s out with the lap top and inputting your symptoms into Google. This is all very well and good when done in a sane frame of mind; however you need to understand how the male brain works. I have lost count of the amount of times I have contracted Capillary venous leptomeningeal angiomatosis, or had a nasty bout of Yemenite deaf-blind hypopigmentation syndrome.
For some strange reason, unknown to any living being, every man, even if he won’t admit it to himself or anyone else, wants to be ill.
It’s true.
Everything a man wants he gets when he is ill:
Relaxation
Attention
Food
His beloved TV
Playstation
No work
And if he is really lucky and seriously ill a pretty nurse in uniform taking care of him.
Within moments of opening the first page of Google results we will have convinced ourselves that we are on the brink of death, that we have contracted a very serious, probably a very rare disease and should be getting our house in order ready for the big off. We all have the ability now to research our symptoms and self diagnose ourselves all in approximately five minutes of powering up our computers. This is all very well and good except we don’t do that, we don’t do the research bit, we let Google do it and unfortunately the search engine tends not to list the common cold anywhere near the top and if it did we would assume it was a computer error and re-enter our symptoms. We then find the most destroying illness known to man, only to ever infect one in a billion people and yet we have it because we sneezed.
Final.
No ifs or buts’. The all knowing internet says that if I sneeze and when doing so have a slight sensation of light headiness that my internal organs are about to self combust and liquidise themselves, we then skip the rest of the symptoms that should go along with it and rush out to the local GP’s office.
Doctors must hate the internet. They have gone away and trained very hard for ten years for us to walk into their surgery and tell them
“I was looking on the internet and…”
at which point a groan goes out across the collective brotherhood of medical professionals,
“Another internet doctor has crossed my path and will proceed in telling me I’m wrong and how to do my job because the internet says so”
The good doctor knows now that there will be no end to this microchip terror sitting in his or her surgery, no appeasing the “patient” with an asprin, so does the only thing within their power…
They send you off for more tests.
Which just pampers to mans craving of attention and gives him more ammunition to prove he is in fact on the verge of a medical tsunami destroying anything that might foolishly cross him.
The wave of destruction will continue with test after test until one of two things happen.
One: Something is actually found and you discover you really are ill. (at which point life will stand still and you will break down into a puddle on the floor)
or
Two: You will have wasted a small fortune on private doctors, medicines and tests until the money runs out along with your wife, children and family mutt, only to find out that it was in fact just a bit of a sniffle in the first place.
The second problem with the internet, man and losing a vast proportion of his hard earned wages are gadgets. A mans love for all things shiny, flashy, beepy and new knows no bounds.
And now we can purchase the latest must have straight over the airwaves without even venturing outside and even worse without feeling the crisp new notes leave our hand and enter the shop keepers till. This of course is the biggest problem. Most men can be some what unwilling to open there wallet and spend money. So to be able to do it without feeling like you are spending “cash” but instead some kind of cyber currency is an argument with the good lady wife just waiting to happen as soon as the postman is spotted staggering down the drive, burdened by some obscurely shaped parcel.
We can pre order the new thingy so it arrives on our doormat the very day it is released guaranteeing that we are one of the first to try said new thingy, this is very important to man and inherits with it huge bragging rights the following day in the office or at the bar when you can ever so nonchantly produce your latest piece of technological wizardry and watch as your friends eyes fall from their sockets and their jaws drop to the floor. Only to find out the next day that a new thingy has been made which makes our old thingy look like a square next to a wheel. The circle repeats itself over and over again until we have more gadgets on Ebay than Dixons has batteries. It’s soon a race against time for our once top of the range thingy to arrive in the post before it is superseded by another new thingy. If a gadget comes out that has just one more flashing light on it than the one we already own a small voice starts whispering to us… “it must be mine, oh yes, it must be mine”
So to any loving wife, girlfriend or partner out there, do not let your man near an internet capable computer without adequate supervision or you will soon find your home is about to be repossessed, every cabinet full of vitamins and pills, gadgets and enough plastic packaging to send Greenpeace into a coma.
We shouldn’t be allowed unsupervised access to so much information. It’s not good for us and inevitably will cost us a lot of money.
For example, before the internet came along a man caught what a woman would call a bit of a sniffle, where as we all know it to be a very serious case of man flu which should never be underplayed or taken any less seriously than a bout of bubonic plaque, we would be sat down for five minutes given a hot Lemsip and a Locket and told to get on with it. Within a couple of days of complaining, lying on the sofa gently moaning and trying to impress upon anyone that would listen the seriousness of man flu and that you may in fact drop dead at any moment, you would, eventually recover and return to normal health, primarily due to your super human immune system and nothing to do with honey flavoured sweets.
However…
Now with the internet within easy reach of most people a man coughs or sneezes and suddenly it’s out with the lap top and inputting your symptoms into Google. This is all very well and good when done in a sane frame of mind; however you need to understand how the male brain works. I have lost count of the amount of times I have contracted Capillary venous leptomeningeal angiomatosis, or had a nasty bout of Yemenite deaf-blind hypopigmentation syndrome.
For some strange reason, unknown to any living being, every man, even if he won’t admit it to himself or anyone else, wants to be ill.
It’s true.
Everything a man wants he gets when he is ill:
Relaxation
Attention
Food
His beloved TV
Playstation
No work
And if he is really lucky and seriously ill a pretty nurse in uniform taking care of him.
Within moments of opening the first page of Google results we will have convinced ourselves that we are on the brink of death, that we have contracted a very serious, probably a very rare disease and should be getting our house in order ready for the big off. We all have the ability now to research our symptoms and self diagnose ourselves all in approximately five minutes of powering up our computers. This is all very well and good except we don’t do that, we don’t do the research bit, we let Google do it and unfortunately the search engine tends not to list the common cold anywhere near the top and if it did we would assume it was a computer error and re-enter our symptoms. We then find the most destroying illness known to man, only to ever infect one in a billion people and yet we have it because we sneezed.
Final.
No ifs or buts’. The all knowing internet says that if I sneeze and when doing so have a slight sensation of light headiness that my internal organs are about to self combust and liquidise themselves, we then skip the rest of the symptoms that should go along with it and rush out to the local GP’s office.
Doctors must hate the internet. They have gone away and trained very hard for ten years for us to walk into their surgery and tell them
“I was looking on the internet and…”
at which point a groan goes out across the collective brotherhood of medical professionals,
“Another internet doctor has crossed my path and will proceed in telling me I’m wrong and how to do my job because the internet says so”
The good doctor knows now that there will be no end to this microchip terror sitting in his or her surgery, no appeasing the “patient” with an asprin, so does the only thing within their power…
They send you off for more tests.
Which just pampers to mans craving of attention and gives him more ammunition to prove he is in fact on the verge of a medical tsunami destroying anything that might foolishly cross him.
The wave of destruction will continue with test after test until one of two things happen.
One: Something is actually found and you discover you really are ill. (at which point life will stand still and you will break down into a puddle on the floor)
or
Two: You will have wasted a small fortune on private doctors, medicines and tests until the money runs out along with your wife, children and family mutt, only to find out that it was in fact just a bit of a sniffle in the first place.
The second problem with the internet, man and losing a vast proportion of his hard earned wages are gadgets. A mans love for all things shiny, flashy, beepy and new knows no bounds.
And now we can purchase the latest must have straight over the airwaves without even venturing outside and even worse without feeling the crisp new notes leave our hand and enter the shop keepers till. This of course is the biggest problem. Most men can be some what unwilling to open there wallet and spend money. So to be able to do it without feeling like you are spending “cash” but instead some kind of cyber currency is an argument with the good lady wife just waiting to happen as soon as the postman is spotted staggering down the drive, burdened by some obscurely shaped parcel.
We can pre order the new thingy so it arrives on our doormat the very day it is released guaranteeing that we are one of the first to try said new thingy, this is very important to man and inherits with it huge bragging rights the following day in the office or at the bar when you can ever so nonchantly produce your latest piece of technological wizardry and watch as your friends eyes fall from their sockets and their jaws drop to the floor. Only to find out the next day that a new thingy has been made which makes our old thingy look like a square next to a wheel. The circle repeats itself over and over again until we have more gadgets on Ebay than Dixons has batteries. It’s soon a race against time for our once top of the range thingy to arrive in the post before it is superseded by another new thingy. If a gadget comes out that has just one more flashing light on it than the one we already own a small voice starts whispering to us… “it must be mine, oh yes, it must be mine”
So to any loving wife, girlfriend or partner out there, do not let your man near an internet capable computer without adequate supervision or you will soon find your home is about to be repossessed, every cabinet full of vitamins and pills, gadgets and enough plastic packaging to send Greenpeace into a coma.
Life Changes
Where does the time go?
I can’t remember how it came about, but somebody at work brought in a picture of themselves aged around 18, we all had a good giggle at the outrageous clothing and terrible haircuts and everyone said they’d bring their own photos in for people to see. So I dug around in some old photos and found a picture of me shortly after I turned 18 and brought it into work. We collected all the photos together and handed them around to each other in turn and tried to guess who each one was.
Nobody, and I mean nobody could pick me out. Apparently I have changed, some people even point blankly refused to believe it was me…
Me? I didn’t see that much difference, a bit more hair, alright a lot more hair, slightly chubbier face but that was about it.
It just goes to show that life changes us. At some point when I wasn’t looking age has crept up on me and run me over. The various falls, misadventures, hiccups and inevitable unforeseen wrong turns and right turns have all left their marks on us, good and bad and changed us from the naive youngsters we once were into the wisdom burdened adults that face us every morning in the mirror.
I have seen things, done things and been in situations that I will carry with me forever. And if you were ever to look deep into my eyes, into the darkest realms hidden behind all the amazing and beautiful things that I have also been privileged to see and witness you may just catch a glimpse of the dark reality we all live in but are so often blinkered to. Those along with various relationship heart aches and illnesses seem to have taken their toll on the once youthful boy stood in the picture clasped in my hand. Friends often think and joke about the fact that I look a lot older than I actually am, maybe that’s down to me not partaking in the whole male beauty regime that is engulfing the once Neanderthal British male, or maybe it’s life showing through me. That boy I once new so well is now gone and can never return. He has grown up and, no matter how alien it sounds in my mind has become the “adult” looking back down at his own juvenile self. I wonder, if I were to bump into an old college friend that I have not seen since we all departed that wonderful place of study that brought us together, if they would even recognise me. Am I so far departed from the person I once was that I have become completely unrecognisable to somebody I would once have called a close friend?
I wonder…
I wonder if I were to bump into my own 18 year old self if I would recognise myself?
What words of wisdom could I possibly pass onto me? What words of warning? Would I say anything? Telling myself something then would change the person I am now.
Life takes its toll on people in different ways, life changes us whether we want it to or not. But through it all, surely life makes us a better person? I am better for the experiences I have had, for the things I have seen and done. If at the age of 33 I was still the same as the young idiolistic 18 year old in the picture that would be a terrible tragedy. Change has to happen for us to move forward. For us to become the person we are meant to be. Will I look back on a photo of a young 33 year old adult in years to come and think how different I was then? Life continues to happen and change will inevitably follow hand in hand, so I’m sure as far removed as I feel from my adolescent self now I will feel the same in years to come about me now.
Who knows what is around the next corner?
What surprises has life got waiting for us in the shadows?
Whatever it is will transpire no matter what we do to try and avoid it. No matter how wise we think we have become, life always knows better. So why waste the energy trying to fight it? Ride the wave and enjoy the transition from the you now to the you to be…
We are all heading for the person we were destined to be. From that initial lump of clay, each and everyone of us will be moulded by life into a very individual masterpiece.
I can’t remember how it came about, but somebody at work brought in a picture of themselves aged around 18, we all had a good giggle at the outrageous clothing and terrible haircuts and everyone said they’d bring their own photos in for people to see. So I dug around in some old photos and found a picture of me shortly after I turned 18 and brought it into work. We collected all the photos together and handed them around to each other in turn and tried to guess who each one was.
Nobody, and I mean nobody could pick me out. Apparently I have changed, some people even point blankly refused to believe it was me…
Me? I didn’t see that much difference, a bit more hair, alright a lot more hair, slightly chubbier face but that was about it.
It just goes to show that life changes us. At some point when I wasn’t looking age has crept up on me and run me over. The various falls, misadventures, hiccups and inevitable unforeseen wrong turns and right turns have all left their marks on us, good and bad and changed us from the naive youngsters we once were into the wisdom burdened adults that face us every morning in the mirror.
I have seen things, done things and been in situations that I will carry with me forever. And if you were ever to look deep into my eyes, into the darkest realms hidden behind all the amazing and beautiful things that I have also been privileged to see and witness you may just catch a glimpse of the dark reality we all live in but are so often blinkered to. Those along with various relationship heart aches and illnesses seem to have taken their toll on the once youthful boy stood in the picture clasped in my hand. Friends often think and joke about the fact that I look a lot older than I actually am, maybe that’s down to me not partaking in the whole male beauty regime that is engulfing the once Neanderthal British male, or maybe it’s life showing through me. That boy I once new so well is now gone and can never return. He has grown up and, no matter how alien it sounds in my mind has become the “adult” looking back down at his own juvenile self. I wonder, if I were to bump into an old college friend that I have not seen since we all departed that wonderful place of study that brought us together, if they would even recognise me. Am I so far departed from the person I once was that I have become completely unrecognisable to somebody I would once have called a close friend?
I wonder…
I wonder if I were to bump into my own 18 year old self if I would recognise myself?
What words of wisdom could I possibly pass onto me? What words of warning? Would I say anything? Telling myself something then would change the person I am now.
Life takes its toll on people in different ways, life changes us whether we want it to or not. But through it all, surely life makes us a better person? I am better for the experiences I have had, for the things I have seen and done. If at the age of 33 I was still the same as the young idiolistic 18 year old in the picture that would be a terrible tragedy. Change has to happen for us to move forward. For us to become the person we are meant to be. Will I look back on a photo of a young 33 year old adult in years to come and think how different I was then? Life continues to happen and change will inevitably follow hand in hand, so I’m sure as far removed as I feel from my adolescent self now I will feel the same in years to come about me now.
Who knows what is around the next corner?
What surprises has life got waiting for us in the shadows?
Whatever it is will transpire no matter what we do to try and avoid it. No matter how wise we think we have become, life always knows better. So why waste the energy trying to fight it? Ride the wave and enjoy the transition from the you now to the you to be…
We are all heading for the person we were destined to be. From that initial lump of clay, each and everyone of us will be moulded by life into a very individual masterpiece.
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