Mudpuddlin Man

The Voice Within

2012-01-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

For every voice there is a countervoice singing dischordantly. And so it is with me, because for as long as I can remember, there has always been an alternative voice speaking to me. It is another Dave, one who treats life very differently.

He is the Dave that gave up 25 years and more ago, the Dave that refused to fight, that buckled under the weight of depression. Very few of you will have met him, some of you will have heard him for occasionally this is the Dave that speaks for both of us, the one who gains the upper hand and control of the host. I feel the need to out him, talk about his background and reason, in case he ever begins to show up more often and with a louder voice.

He is the me that never really got hold of his drinking habit in his twenties and did things to his body that would constitute abuse in any polite society, the me that collapses into tears for no reason at the cruelty of the world. Think of him as the Dave that forgets people love him for who he is, and never want him to be something he cannot or will not be. For him, life is a lonely, bitter struggle against impossible odds, and he simply cannot feel the warmth of the arms that embrace him, metaphorically or in reality.

For all his negativity, I pity him, because he could so easily be me, mental illness is a lifelong fight and there are many times that both voices will speak. I can only ever take one road at a time, and the battle is to stay on the right track. His way is the simpler way, to give up, to admit defeat and let depression wreak its ruin upon me. It is so hard to explain in simple words how much pull that option has sometimes, despite the inevitable bleakness of the outcome, because fighting is tiring, and you can never win the war, only the immediate battle.

Of course, that is why I must never let his voice become my voice. I have to rage against the dying of the light, I have to gird myself and spring into action in every battle, no matter how hopeless or difficult it seems, because it is simply the only option that keeps me whole. I said I pity him, and with good reason, because for him the war is over, and there is only bleakness and despair, his demons cannot be bested and they will take him, piece by piece, until there is nothing left. However low I get, however desperate life seems, I am still fighting. I cannot begin to comprehend the horror of life as my countervoice.

In the short term

2012-01-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

Another of the gifts that depression has given me is a chronic case of short-termism. What do I mean by that? I refer to my inability to focus properly on the longer term aspects of life because the short term keeps getting dominated by the black dog, and any attempt to plan the longer term gets sharply and rudely snapped into the here and now.

Take tonight as an example. For the last few days I have been on something of a high, content in my own way and getting a kick out of existence. That's usually a harbinger of a looming crash. And so here I am, writing my blog becoming more and more aware of an attack of depression settling in. Apart from the process of putting words to thoughts here, my entire concentration is upon depression. How deep are we going this time? How long will I be there? Why is this happening now, what was the trigger? And how do I counter it, what weaponry is to hand? In fact I just stopped writing for a few minutes to think over those very things. So, as you can imagine, this sort of short term thinking wipes out anything longer term. Next month, next year might as well be next century right now.

If I do manage to shake off the immediate long enough to think about the longer term, the black dog has other tricks to pull. The denigration and mockery of dreams. Who do I think I am to dream of this or that? The black dog wants it to be known that he is my sole focus and raison d'etre, the permanent war against depression is all that I need to sustain me. Or so the black dog would have it. The harder I try to dream, the more unreasonable and wicked the counter attack - the certainty of failure is thrown in my face, for so it will always be with me, he says. Why plan for a great romance, I don't love myself so why would she? Is that really the black dog talking, or have I slipped into my old habits of self-doubt? Either way I am thinking of the dog, and even those examples of long term thinking have quickly subsided in the gathering gloom.

It has not always been this way. I used to dream, I used to plan things in 1, 5 and 10 year segments. And then I failed just once to follow through. The black dog never forgets a weakness he can expose, every plan became that plan, the one I didn't follow through. It is repulsive to be this way, I deserve better and, more importantly, the people I care about deserve better. The thing is, if I managed to gain the upper hand and start planning the future again, I honestly don't know what Dave I want to be. Dave the adventurer, Dave the lover, Dave the carer? There is so much untapped potential, but to tell you the truth, the black dog knows, and now you will know, that I am almost as terrified at the prospect of fulfilling potential and I am of never managing to do so. I am just a little bit scared that if I spend too long in the longer term I will lose myself there as a place that will always be better than now.

As I have said before, many many times, depression is a wicked and cruel illness.

Of sorrow

2012-01-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write a little today about one of the facets of depression I find it hardest to deal with (not that any of it is a particular breeze to be fair). Specifically I am talking about sadness. Not the sort of sadness that comes with bidding farewell or anything by Dido, but a deep, underlying and seemingly permanent sadness deep within that seems to afflict everything once depression takes hold.

It can take many forms, one of which is to colour everything black. When in this frame of mind I have no need of the Stones to tell me to paint it black, everything is already there. The world is in a permanent sepia picture from long ago, faces are contorted into false smiles or grimaces, and everything, but everything is forced, false and unsatisfying. I hate it when sadness is this overt, it is a world where the good guy never gets the girl, heroes go unheralded and all of life is conducted under a cloud, a looming threat of disatisfaction, with whispered promises of ruin on the breeze.

For me, when things are overt like this, I find myself seeing sadness all around. The tears of a child that has lost their bear, the hackneyed ending to a drama on the box, whatever it is, it becomes to me a painful sorrow that is hard to take. It is as if the depression within me reaches out to feed on the sadness, I can feel the loss of the bear, it touches me. No, that is not right, actually it assails me, the sadness invades me and sets up camp. In the end I become like a sponge that has taken on too much water. I am drenched in sadness and inevitably it floods back out again in tears or worse in fevered mania, a state of being I desperately try to avoid inflicting on the world or those I love.

However, it is when sadness is not being overt that it is at its most pernicious. There is a core of sadness, hidden within that corrupts all other feelings, perverts normal, natural reactions and mocks the fleeting joys we have in life. It is as if sadness will not permit me to experience other emotional responses in the raw state, and wants all interraction viewed through its prism. So it is that I find myself laughing at a joke, but choking inside that humour is built on misery, or smiling at a photograph and yet within in a world of pain that I can no longer feel the hand I am holding in it or experience that day again. It becomes a second voice within that counters my reactions. The last word on the matter is taken by it, and of course that last word is sorrowful and bitter. I said it was pernicious, and so it is, for when I am under its spell, it will not let me enjoy the simple pleasures of emotional reactions.

Sometimes I read through my blog, and other writings I have jotted down in my life, and there is a thread. I see it everywhere, I see it in almost every poem I have ever written. There is a wistfulness in what I write, a wistfulness for the hope that is shut away behind the sadness, a deep regret that I struggle to feel the emotions I set in poetry, a longing to experience them without taint as I do when depression has subsided. Those poems read very differently when depression is in town and the sadness takes control and I forget what it is like to love and laugh untrammelled, uncorrupted by sadness.

This is why joy experienced outside the confines of depression is so very precious to me. Indeed, if I tell you you have made me happy or make me happy, believe me that you have given me a gift I treasure above all others. You have given me true joy, something that in those dark times of depression I find myself wishing for every single day and yet always feels just out of reach. I couldn't ask you for anything finer.

How she became my muse

2012-01-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

She began as a wondrous composite,
Of all beauty I had seen.
Amongst constructs, the most apposite
To reign as the poet's queen.

And then, on a wistful, wandering day
There stood before a vision.
Such slender grace, head turned away,
My heart felt it's first incision.

As time slipped by, I caught her gaze,
More often than I should.
I fast lost count of all the ways
I'd love her, if I could.

Her face would soften when I came,
Hair framing that sweet smile.
I'd try to grin, but blush with shame,
As I invoked the crocodile.

No other girl leaves me so dumb,
So rooted to the spot.
My beloved muse she has become
My forever to have not.

For thus it is when so inspired,
So totally in awe.
The gods in cruelty have conspired;
Her hand holds another's paw.

The last grin

2012-01-07T07:23:00.000-08:00

Was it a random jibe that made no sense,
Some oh-so-cool inanity?
Perhaps a hug from who knows whence,
When we crumbled, needing sanity?

Did it halt the worldly spin,
As they so often did?
Caress the lonely child within,
Amongst my frailties hid?

It might have come on slow but broad,
It might have lit the night,
It maybe when I struck a chord,
Brought you deserved delight.

I cannot recall the reason why,
As it declines into the past,
That smile remembered with a sigh,
From you, for me the last.

The Lowest Point

2012-01-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get incredibly scared. Scared not only of the world, but of myself as well. It is not an easy place to be, and it makes me reassess what I am doing, where I am going in quite a frenetic and frenzied way.

The world intrudes on life every day, that is only normal and expected, but at times it becomes pervasive, influencing and integrating, harrowing and hassling every action I try to undertake. What do I mean by that? Sometimes I lack the skills or inclination to shut out the world, and I can't make decisions without trying to take into account everyone and everything. I get scared that my actions have a far more dramatic effect than they could ever do, that my actions might set in effect a chain reaction that has a terrible and unforeseen outcome. The nasty trick that my OCD is able to pull is that I also become convinced that inaction would be equally disastrous.

Of course, it is ridiculously easy here in the comfort of a quiet January evening to set out the issue, and explain the mental meaness and trickery behind it, almost brush it off as an affectation, a 'thing' to be owned and ordered. Oh were that the case when I am in the moment though. When it strikes, it is not easy at all, it is terrifying, seemingly inescapable and very, very real. Even the most logical and obstinate part of my mind caves in under the pressure and accepts the gravity of matters. I have to do something and I have to do it right now, but what? What do I do, and how can I live with the consequences if things go awry? The mental gymnastics I go through trying to extrapolate the consequences are exhausting and rapid. It matters not that the downside risks do not appear, I have merely been lucky, once again amd next time I better get it right or there will be a price to be paid.

That's the world, but sometimes it is me that I am scared of. When it gets dark (and by that I mean dark for me), I go to places I don't want to be. This is very hard to write about as the me that is constructing this blog entry barely recognises the me I can become when suffering a severe bout of depression. Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself, unable to accept where I am. I find it a matter of great personal embarassment that I have never married, nor had a family, that it is weakness in my character and my mind that prevents me from finding love again. It hurts to write those words, but not as much as it hurts to feel those emotions. I taunt myself, parading failures like tickertape heroes and holding out unreasonable goals as what should constitute my proper expectations.

Taunting oneself is a terrible place to be in, the last trustworthy champion of the self is the self, and once that goes, it is a rapid and bitter decline into misery and the all-encompassing bleakness. That is when I reach the lowest ebb, the nadir, and where I face my greatest fears. I am not sure I have the strength to write about them openly, nor the desire to. This is the point where reality fades into insignificance and what remains of Dave begins to pose questions that I am too afraid to answer. It is a place where I am utterly alone and nothing can reach me or comfort me. Family, friends, loved ones are so far away that I fear I will never get back to them, and if I do I will be a shell of the man I was before. It is a place I have been to twice and somewhere I would fight any battle, face any demon, do absolutely anything to never have to go to again. There's fear, and then there is this place, beyond fear, beyond despair and I am terrified of it.

Dealing with Christmas

2011-12-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

'Did you have a good Christmas Dave?'
Yes, I did. I always enjoy the holiday, but, as ever, it comes at a cost in terms of different emotions and responses to cope with and accustom myself to. So much so that I thought it appropriate to write a piece today about what it is like to enjoy Christmas whilst combatting the twin dangers of my OCD and the ever present threat of depression.

I spent Christmas with my parents, and the day itself we all went to my Aunts for dinner and to celebrate the day (a direct follow on from my childhood when it was my maternal grandparents who always hosted the actual day). Of course being around those you love the best is in the main beneficial, but there is the thorny issue of how much strain I am under to hold things together and, if so, how much I can let myself show them of this without thinking I am spoiling Christmas for everyone (which in and of itself provides a feedback loop of depression and negativity).

Christmas Eve I actually went out for a few drinks, the first time in a few years I have done so (since we all grew up and the annual mash up and hangover mix became a Christmas tradition that had lapsed). My father and I ventured over the road to the hotel, expecting to find the bar packed full of those who were 'getting away from it all' and letting the professionals handle their celebration. In truth, aside from a young couple who nursed a couple of pints of cider for the evening, it was just the two of us. Strangely, it was quite a comforting evening, if somewhat removed from the reality of the busy party season.

That being said, I didn't drink enough to be suffering on Christmas morning and found myself downstairs at a reasonable hour and pleased to find Santa was aware to forward my haul to the parental home. It was OCD that took the first bite. I have an occasionally strong aversion to odd numbers, and a particular fear of doing things only once in my life. As foolish as it sounds to write it down and express it in words, the feelings that go with it are very real, and very strong. I found myself opening the presents and making sure I touched them all at least twice, and an even number of times. Naturally, I know there is no reason to suppose anything terrible would happen should I not, but that is the rub - the compulsion to follow the directive and to do this was then, and will be again, insurmountable. I feel bad when I am acting on a compulsion, partly because it chalks up a win for OCD and partly because I do not want anyone to be aware that I am doing it. It feeds right into the heart of worry that I will spoil Christmas if my parents became aware that during the joyous activity of exchanging and opening gifts, I am wracked by, and a prisoner of, compulsion.

The other attack by OCD came during Christmas dinner. Another aspect of the illness is that when I say I am going to do something it becomes an imperative that I do so. As a result, I oftern overeat. I might say when someone asks if I have enough, or want some more vegetables, meat etc that 'I might have some more once I have cleared the plate' - this becomes a direct instruction to the part of my brain that acts on compulsion to compel me to follow through on the suggested action. Strangely this doesn't always happen, but when it does I am in its thrall. And so it was during dinner. Does it hurt anyone? No. I just eat more than I might otherwise do so, but it adds to the rumblings of discontent within that I am struggling along and am riddled with imperfection which at any moment will bring the seasonal joy crashing to the ground in smouldering ruin. I am somewhat fortunate that my metabolism is not punishing me severely for it.

Depression is a much more difficult beast to predict, and, in many ways, deal with. I used to 'deal' with depression via drink (and yes the quotation marks whould tell you I know that is not dealing at all) - as a younger man, a fitter man, the punishment that heavy drinking does can be contained. Not that we were without close runs with disaster. Mudpuddlers of a longstanding vintage will remember the end of term that I returned home (actually for Christmas) yellow as my liver stuttered along at stall speed trying to cope with the abuse I was giving it. I report it now merely as a fact of what once was, fortunately for the here and now I had at that time the love of both a great family and a good woman who got me, at length and strain, onto a less destructive path. However, that was then, for now I always fear at times of holiday that depression will strike and leave me incapable of enjoying myself and denying enjoyment to those around me.

I had a bad run in to the holiday - despite a great start to December and a lovely trip up to London, I started struggling around mid month. I was still carrying this bleakness (albeit reduced somewhat) into the time at my parents. Christmas is an awful time to have depression because it comes with a seasonal overdose of guilt - I have no right to be down when so much love and kindness if being shown. My depression will bring down the glee of those I love the best - and so on and so forth in ever increasing strangulation. The flipside is that there are enough distractions around to keep the mind from dwelling too long on its 'state'.

This year was a definite tightrope. I have been having difficulty lately accepting where I am living, I am feeling increasingly isolated and exposed and this was bubbling along in the back of my mind all throughout the holiday. The major problem with the Christmas run in was a feeling of loneliness, even when in a crowded room or general company. This was again a problem over the last few days. It took a very big effort not to succomb to gloominess as I once again found myself surrounded by loved ones and yet at the same time distant and alone, cocooned in misery that I could neither show nor express. The tightrope is not these feelings in and of themselves as I have suffered with depression long enough to know you cannot think your way out of it. No, the tightrope is allowing yourself to experience this without letting it define your moverall mood, or the day. It would be very easy to allow that, but then would come the constant waves of grief and guilt for everyone elses Christmas that you have taken from them with your self-absorbtion. It is not easy to walk the line as it were, because if it is taking too much effort to do so, the mental exhaustion weakens you against renewed assault. It will lift, it is lifting, but nothing I can do will force it to be so.

As it was, I made it to Boxing Day evening without major drama and set off back home. It was in the car on the way home I realised what a struggle it had all actually been and that I should write about it, as I found myself crying or sobbing for much of the journey without really knowing why. It was because I was in a safe place to let go. A place noone else would know, or see. A place where I could cry.

I had a good Christmas. The fight with mental illness is however perennial, and this piece is meant to convey a part of that to those that would read it, or would know me better.

Rejig of The Thirty Second Smile

2011-12-12T08:36:00.001-08:00

Written a while back, an ode to the trickery of memory and the odd things it presents us with

From nowhere leaps a memory
Of she that went before,
With gentle hands I haven't held
For countless years, and more!

So now she comes and dances here
Heralding forgotten charms?
Ah yes! Look, here comes yester-me
And sweeps her in his arms.

Such an oddly perfect pair they make;
Her grace, his mystery.
Fated, though they did not know,
To Love's sad history.

Now I must be content to pause,
And for the duration of their show,
I'll wear the smile of yesterday,
For my love of long ago!

Down down deeper on down

2011-12-10T09:41:00.001-08:00

Last night I got to talk to someone about my illness. It brought home to me how I tend to shy away from discussing it, as if to voice it were to give it life. That being said, I do find it useful to write about it on here, and today I want to talk about depression. Not feeling a little blue, but the will-sapping wickedness that is depression, by whatever name I give it - be that The Black Dog, The Shadow or The Rot.

In truth, there are several different states of depression I find myself in. Different ways for different days I suppose, as if the fact of it itself were not enough. The most pervasive type of depression is when it leaves me feeling utterly bleak. When I say bleak, I should explain myself - it feels as if all the joy has been sucked out of the world. Laughter becomes hollow, tastes dissipate, nothing satisfies. It is as if I am cocooned in a thick mesh of bleakness that nothing good can penetrate. All thoughts, feelings and emotional responses get tangled in the bleakness and distorted by it and love, kindness and compassion from outside, from others cannot reach me, cannot get through the bleakness. The world pulls away and even a warm summers day to me seems grey and hopeless. It can last hours, days and once or twice has dragged on for weeks. And yet there comes a point at which it dissolves and sight, sound, taste and emotions are startlingly clear for a time. Like a man who has lived in a cave blinking at the dawn outside.

Then there is fear depression. I can become convinced that there is no solution to any problem, that whatever path I decide to tread will be the wrong one, will bring about the worst possible result. It makes me feel as if I am incapable of making a decision correctly, that each decision is the wrong one - and I drift from fear of outcomes to the conclusion that events will go against me regardless of what I choose merely by dint of it being the choice I made - my own defective choice making is the root cause of failure.

Talking of failure, another form of fear centres around failure. I become transfixed by all the things I have not done, convincing myself that because I have not done it yet, I will forever fail in the endeavour. Because I have not done X, I will never achieve X, I have failed at X, X has beaten me. It gets very easy to become maudlin and things soon escalate into anger at myself because I could have, or I should have, or I never did. All those might have beens play the fiddle whilst my depression burns on. And oh how it hurts - this borderline self-loathing, the utterly harsh and untenable line I take with myself. Self-reinforcing depression.

All of this is a feedback loop, and I can find myself in a deep depression over my own percevied shortcomings. At its worst, I am utterly convinced that my feelings are inferior, are not worthy of this world. Take as an example love. Love is a beautiful, natural and amazing feeling and yet I will not let myself express it. Is it fear of failure? Yes, partly, but it is also that I feel my love is not worthy, my love is not enough, that I could never give enough love of enough quality to deserve the happiness that comes with its reciprocation. I would not want to burden anyone with my love. And yet there is the counterpoint, the discord in the back of my mind at the howling loneliness, the emptiness of life without love. And now I have made myself cry.

Its a tough old journey, time will tell how far I have come.

The Secret (rewrite)

2011-11-16T09:10:00.001-08:00

No-one knows, as I never talk,
Of my aching love for you.
I keep it bottled, under cork
Where it is safe, and true.

A weakness, or insanity,
That I should fail to act?
It's not for pride, or vanity,
I am mired here with tact.

Oh, I wish I'd told you months ago
Win back the time we've lost,
But,alas, I took it far too slow,
To our detriment, and cost.

And yet, so simple, it should be
To set it out in words;
Paint it for you, lyrically
Like the other bees to birds.

Of course, I fear I'm not enough,
Wrong in a thousand ways.
Too nervous to blag it, off the cuff,
Lost in my nervous haze.

So, tis secretly you hold my heart
And, in sorrow, I stay quiet.
Dreaming that we are not apart,
As I was brave enough to try it.

The Fear

2011-11-13T07:18:00.001-08:00

One of the things I find it hardest to do is to open up about my feelings on a one to one basis. If you're a regular visitor to my blog, you'll know that I have no problem expressing feelings in poems, or in the snippets of short stories I occasionally post here. However, I find writing things down all too easy, and indeed in poems the feelings of the self can be transformed into more generic comment on love itself, or the protagonist can become anyone, and the feelings universal.

How much more terrifying to speak to someone directly and address these issues. Now, I am not necessarily talking here about proclamations of adoration and love, though they would indeed fall into this category, but more generally than that, expressing how I feel in any capacity is extremely hard for me.

It doesn't really help matters that this opening up is exactly what I need to do to help out with my mental health issues. I would dearly love to be able to open up and talk one on one with those closest to me about the things I struggle with, my fears and shame at my own weaknesses. My friends and family will generally know when I am struggling, but I need to be able to convey how and why I am struggling, what I am struggling with. However, as much as I have played out conversations like this time and again in my head, I can never push myself to sit down with someone and have the conversation for real. I'm really not sure if it is fear of uncorking the bottle, or fear that my problems are too small and insignificant to trouble others with, but fear it is, and fear I am stuck with.

The silly thing is, I am not sure where the fear stems from. It is not as if I have a long history of wrongly trusting others with my feelings, I cannot recall any incident in truth where I have trusted someone and had it thrown back in my face. People are not as terrifying with your feelings as I imagine. Yes I have had my heart broken, haven't we all? But no-one has ever gone out of their way to hurt me, it has always been one of the unavoidable by-products of falling in love with at least one constituent out of sync (right time, right place, right person).

While we're on the subject of love.... I don't really find that easy either (unsurprising isn't it!) Have I ever said 'I love you' and meant it? Yes. Have I said those words to every person I have been in love with? No, guilty as charged. That bothers me. There exists, in this universe, undeclared love, and it is my fault it is undeclared. It has never had the chance to fly, because I have stifled it. In fear.

So, there we have it. I am an Old Yellow with my feelings. I need to change that, and (perhaps) writing it on here will serve as a reminder to me to man up and trust people. So, if you ever have me all to yourself, and you are frustrated as I am with my inability to express, remind me about this blog entry and tell me it is time to open up. Who knows? It might just work!

All the things I'd do for you (remix!)

2011-11-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'd call you in the morning,
Because I miss your voice,
Or whisk you without warning
To destinations of your choice.

When I come, I'd bring you flowers,
And a book about Peru,
Y'know we could be there in twelve hours
Give or taking one or two.

On weekends we would wander
Under blue and sun-kissed skies,
Or I'd gaze at you and ponder
The depth and beauty of your eyes.

I'd take you out, carousing,
And wake with cloudy head.
Which is in itself arousing,
An excuse to stay in bed.

Of course I'd very often,
Turn up with a grin,
And watch you laugh and soften
At the foolish mood I'm in.

Oh, if only I could find the way
To tell you to your face,
That when I see you, any day,
My heart begins to race.

Poem - a rejigged Song of Me

2011-10-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

He is reflective, soft and caring,
Bears his burdens heavily.
He’s not prone to natural pairing,
Flies solo all too easily.

He’ll debate on technicalities,
Or chide you with a smile.
But he’ll miss your similarities,
By at least a country mile.

If you show him some compassion
You’ll win a lifelong friend,
Just don’t ask him about fashion,
Or which bouquet to send.

He sees beauty all around the place.
But won’t recognise his own,
Hides tears behind a stony face
For his love, in secret, grown.

And so he never questions why
He wakes each dawn, alone.
A tragedy, for he is I,
And such frailty I’ve shown

The definitive list

2011-10-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have had an epiphany (again, seriously, I am pursued everywhere by epiphanies). With the countdown to 40 now almost at T 1 month, I have spent a lot of time recently getting more and more annoyed at myself for all the things I keep promising myself I will do but never get round to. All that is about to change, however, as I am reconstituting 'the list'. This is the definitive list of things I WILL do, not just want to do.

More importantly, my Mudpuddlin mateys, you have my permission to harangue, hassle and heap opprobrium upon me for failure to act upon these in the future without fear of any come back from me (so sayeth I on this day!)

1) Do a stand-up routine in front of genuine punters
2) Climb Ben Nevis - reaching the top this time, not 'somewhere near the top' (which was actually somewhere near half way)
3) Get the property flipping company up and running
4) Finish writing the damn novel I have been tinkering with for about 5 years
5) Bully my OCD into submission
6) Make the people I care about proud of me
7) Having done 3), leave my current employment
8) Get the mountain bike and make some use of it, as opposed to considering it something I might enjoy 'one day'
9) Return visit to New Zealand
10) Stop hiding from telling people my feelings for them (specifically people of the female persuasion)

There, it has been published, it is all nice and legal

At the margins (a rewrite)

2011-10-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

He stares through the satin darkness,
Straining at each deceitful trick of the eyes.
Minutes, hours, perhaps, have passed
Since her departure forced this armistice,
Their destructive rift brokering uneasy peace.
So many hours lost to spite and bile
For such an innocent little lie.
They are fated to live at the margins of sanity,
Forever tearing at the hearts which bind them,
Hate wearing the seductive cloak of lust,
A parasite feeding on love's husk.
He finds this silence unbearable;
Alone in the darkness he cannot reason,
Reality warped in cruel mockery
Without her rage to bring focus and
Clarity, heralding the descent into the bliss of violent ruin.
She will come, she must come,
And in the fire that consumes them,
His heart will beat again.

Proto-Dave and the meaning of life

2011-10-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

It's all about finding the right Mudpuddle for the right time. By that I mean there are so many different mes that it is quite the challenge to find the right me for right now. Why do I need to find the right me for right now? Well, my 40th is approaching like a steam train - out of control and hurtling along the tracks looking for the wrong sort of leaves. What I need to work out is what I want a forty (say it quietly) something Mudpuddlin Man to look like. Which Dave should it be?

I could stagger onwards as a more dessicated version of the Thirties model - but that Dave was far too introverted and took some bizarre decisions regarding hiding from the world and losing nearly a decade of adventure in the process, so really I am ruling out November 25 2011 and the days that follow it being business as usual. What then of Twenties Dave? What facets of that glorious decade can I carry into the halflife of my forties?

Of course, that all depends. In my early twenties I was like a newly born planet in some fledgling solar system - raging, hot, fiery, restless - every day was an eruption - it would begin with fire and end dowsed in alcohol fuelled forgetfulness. It was electric, life literally made the hairs stand up on my arm. Friends, lovers were all integral to the Proto-Dave - I surrounded myself with those that complimented the eruption - fire stokers and fire soothers both as important as each other.

Later, things settled a little. There was still fire, but it was contained. I had learned how to be. Life coalesced somewhat - routines of entertainment set in, comrades began to take on functional dimensions, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow began to have relevance. Life was less abstract and extended beyond the prism of today. Looking back, this is where I made the big mistake - as tomorrows take on relevance and you comfort yourself with familiarity, it is all too easy to let that overcome you - in other words, whilst the later twenties were about finding how to be me, the thirties were about getting stuck as me, and unable to take on the changes that took all those around me onto new vectors. Thus you end up screaming in an aging void. But, back in the twenties, life was sweet. I often wonder now if I'll ever love again the way I did in my twenties - so wholly, and rawly, and intensely? Much of me fondly hopes so, as terrifying as the troughs were to those magnificent peaks.

Such a quandry, which Dave to be. Of course, in truth I can be neither of those Daves, nor (thankfully) can I go on forever as Thirties Dave (Meta-Dave) - what is needed is a new paradigm, but why come to that conclusion without a wordy deliberation? I want the best of all my previous worlds in a brand new one - I want to rage like a new planet, love so deeply I can barely breathe and keep myself sane, whole and true. I want to fulfil all the promise that has come before in fits and starts as a complete picture. I want to grow up without growing up, the best of me has always been just that bit more childish than my age should allow.

I'm not going to go quietly into that good night, I'm coming back, baby. Watch yourselves.

Bizarre lurch to the funny side

2011-10-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Greetings Mudpuddlees, and apologies for not regaling you somewhat sooner with musings, mutterings and mastery. However, I hope today's update will somewhat make up for that as I am now a Mudpuddler with a goal, a determination, even a destiny....

Back in the dim mists of January, resolutions were made - I resolved, you resolved, he/she/it resolved. Many of these promises were straws in the wind, some were wishful thinking and some, dare I say it, were outright pisstakes designed to enchant and delight, but with no discernable possibility of coming to be.

Having said that, one of my resolutions has nagged and pawed at the recesses of my febrile mind. It has, quite literally, kept me awake at night with its sheer wonderment and cunning, and it will not allow itself to be cast into the murky depths of might-have-beens and never-weres. On New Year's Day 2011 I promised myself I would take to the stage and perform stand-up in front of an audience. Now before the chuffing and guffawing commences, let me just say I mean this, and in earnest! I am determined to do this very thing.

There we have it - Mudpuddling with giggles, the next exciting divergence for a Mudpuddler who has drifted far too long between ludicrous dreams. To assure you further of my intent, I have begun (and indeed got most of the way through) writing a routine. This was rather harder than expected, whats funny in the mouth is not such a riot on paper - however, through a process of linking to a relevant earlier comment (keeping me awake at night), I have found the right approach. I perform to myself at night in my bed and write down what works in the morning. Furthermore I promise to try and include the phrase 'I perform to myself at night in bed' in the routine, which is based in part around my famous romantic shortcomings. Oh what a tangled medpuddle we weave..

Needless to say, once I have found a relevant open mic night I shall provide details to interested Mudpuddlers that they might come and rescue me from myself with some charity titters.

Joke on, friends.

For the world is hollow

2011-09-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, on days like today, the world passes by outside my window and I barely notice it. I find myself locked, deep in thought, a Chinese finger trap for the self, whilst images of supposed failures replay themselves over and over in my mind.

This is just one part of suffering from depression, or at least it is just one part of my experience of it. Of course, there is no intention on my part for things to proceed thus, it just sort of happens. The most innocent of thoughts can set the thing in motion. I might wonder why I had not watered the plants, or posted that package I meant to, but at the moment of thinking it, I can almost feel myself slap on the brakes, cast out the anchor and everything around me ceases to have much significance.

I have cranked the starting handle on another day of disappointment in myself. All those things I wish I had done, or promised to have done, or intended to do. All the dreams unfulfilled, all the difficult choices avoided come flooding out in a torrent. I become transfixed on all the things I haven't done, and wracked with grief and shame that I have let people down. It is the cruelest of illnesses that eats away at your self-confidence like this, but it is what I find myself fighting, week after week, month after month.

Nothing I tell myself can shift the guilt pangs and borderline self-loathing that accompany this part of depression. Worse than that, I am hopeless at sharing this (outside the safety zone of my blog) - I don't feel my issues are worth airing, or I don't want anyone to worry about me, about what I am thinking, feeling or suffering. Internalisation sets in, and is just as rotten and ruinous as the doubt and the guilt. Everything is crammed down, held in the very pit of my stomach. No-one need know I am unhappy, no-one need see or share in it. As hopeless as I am at dealing with the thought cycles, I am determined they shall not bring a moment of darkness to anyone's day.

Sitting here now and typing this, it all seems so easy - just let your loved ones in, just talk, just accept the innocence of forgetting to post a package. If only depression were not so cruel, did not take away from me moments of sharing and compassion I constantly deny myself. If only I could let myself collapse in someone's company and let them put me back together again. If only.... if only depression were not such a cruel master or I such a compromised servant. And yet it is, and so here I sit on another silent evening, a single fat tear running down my cheek as the only testament to the torture within.

Twitter ye not

2011-08-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings Mudpuddlees, I am posting today with news of a diversion from the norm for me. I have decided to document the world and my life in verse - well, technically, in Haiku. I have converted my twitter account to now be a dumping ground for my thoughts on life, the universe and nothing at all in a Haiku format. For those of you that do not know Haikus, it is a short form of poetry, with many ridiculous rules, but fortunately the modern English version of this Japanese artform is 3 lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively. For example;

The air that I breathe,
Though supporting endeavour,
Is thick with failure.

The twitterati amongst you will be able to follow me on @Haikusareus.

The reason for this diversion? I have been a lazy little Mudpuddler and have let the habit of writing slip over the past two or three months. Its not good enough! I am hoping this will keep me in the habit of forming my ideas and thoughts into words - which will, in turn, force out the classic idea I have had - the novel that encompasses a single moment in two people's lives, but darts back and forth filling in blanks you never even realised were there.... trust me on this, its a doozy.

My life in people - one for each year since I was born (1971)

2011-08-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Giovanni Leone 71
Bobby Fischer 72
Ted Heath 73
Richard Nixon 74
Bill Gates 75
Jimmy Carter 76
Elizabeth 2nd 77
Anwar Sadat 78
Margaret Thatcher 79
Ronald Reagan 80
Bobby Sands 81
Leopoldo Galtieri 82
Michael Foot 83
Carl Lewis 84
Michail Gorbachev 85
John McCarthy 86
Rudolf Hess 87
George HW Bush 88
Salman Rushdie 89
Nelson Mandela 90
Tim Berners-Lee 91
John Major 92
Bill Clinton 93
Lorena Bobbitt 94
Nick Leeson 95
Boris Yeltsin 96
Tony Blair 97
Augusto Pinochet 98
Lance Armstrong 99
Steve Redgrave 00
George Bush 01
Ronaldo 02
Dr David Kelly 03
Kelly Holmes 04
Pope John Paul II 05
Kevin Pietersen 06
Gordon Brown 07
Chris Hoy 08
Michael Jackson 09
David Cameron 10
Muamar Ghadaffi 11

A letter to my 18 year old self

2011-08-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Dave,
I guess right about now you're thinking about going to University, whereas for me it was 21 years ago. Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil the surprises in store for you, let's not go destroying the space-time continuum before you've even set out on your journey. To tell you the truth, I just felt like dropping you a line, to tell you to hang in there. It is all going somewhere, I promise. At least that's what it said in my letter.

Listen, you've got some fights ahead of you, mate, and you're gonna need to toughen up a bit. Not so soon that you can't go nuts for a few years, though. It's all good, just promise me you'll remember when it's time to put away childish things, OK? It's very hard to do this without giving the game away, but its important. There are times you are going to feel totally helpless - you're not. Whatever happens, however overwhelming it seems, you're bigger than it, Dave, you are so much bigger than it.

All those questions that are gnawing away in your head right now, you are going to find the answer to some very soon, and some of them are still questions I ask myself today. I'm just older, I'm not perfect, nor do I have all the answers! It's hard for me to find the words, there's a deep crevice between you and me, when you're there no words will come from the future, or the past, and it's the hardest things will be. Just remember one thing - 39 year old yous cannot write unless they make it out. You do make it out, I did make it out.

I won't tell you to do things differently. As funny as it may sound and despite everything that you will come across, I wouldn't have done a thing differently. Not one moment. Even the pain goes towards making me the man that is writing this letter to you. And like I said, your bigger than it all, you never make the wrong choice, you just make a choice.

What else can I tell you? Not much, but in the late nineties there's a reason it feels too good to be true. It is. Other than that, you already know the people you love, they are the people you'll always love, and you'll meet a few more along the way, I've never known us to pick a dud as a friend. You might tell them a bit more often, though, however clumsy you are with emotions. Ahhh, you'll do great, it's been good chatting to you.

Cheers Dave,
Dave

P.S. 'Do you fancy getting some chips?' - trust me on this ;)

Reworked, The Statue

2011-07-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

The statue of the lovers wrapped,
In warm embrace endures.
Their features worn, and indistinct,
As time young love matures.

He holds and looks upon her,
Sweet angel in his arms.
She looks back at him, adoring,
Held captive by his charms.

This gaze, held for the ages,
Was to put doubt in its place,
But the fading years betray them,
They cannot recall each other's face.

The trial and conviction of Romeo Mudpuddle

2011-06-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

First of all, apologies to Mudpuddlers that I have been quiet the last couple of weeks. To tell you the truth I have had a bout of nothing to sayitis, and felt it best to keep quiet and be a possible fool than open my mouth and leave no doubt at all.

Being a single Mudpuddler, and, as I have lamented on here before, a somewhat lonely one, I have taken to internet dating sites as a means to an end. I am starting to regret it. I have always found the dating scene hard enough as it is, being completely oblivious to being given the come on whether that be with a subtle flash of beautiful eyes, or a rather more obvious statement of intent. Internet dating isn't supposed to be harder! And yet, and yet it most certainly seems to be.

Now, I am no oil painting I'll grant you, but I always fancied I had a certain whimsical attraction, a raspy, rascally smile and such, but over the last few weeks of internet dating (which ought to be known as known as internet humiliation), I am starting to feel like I have a second head that everyone but me can see, or have had some supper from months ago welded to my face without my realising.

I have been meticulous in only trying to engage in conversation those lasses that write a good summary of themselves and seem to want to meet people exactly as I would like to think I am - kind, considerate, warm, amusing and adventurous. Can I get most of them to reply to my missives? Can I bollocks (excuse the French)! I am honestly at a loss to explain why anyone would sign up to a dating website, write all of that and then just ignore someone introducing themselves. 'No thanks' would do, or 'Sorry, I don't like bald guys' or something - but no, I get the cold shoulder from most and the occasional reply seems to consist of 'Sorry, you are not my type' - How do you know?! Seriously, how the hell can you tell without even saying hello to me? I guess 'not my type' equates to 'receeding hairline and no obviously a muscular himbo. So, I get to feel like the Elephant man or some creepy stalker in the shadows on a daily basis. Go me.

It's not supposed to be like this. I am one of the world's good guys - I am supposed to get the girl! And on those occasions when my mask slips and I am clearly not one of the world's good guys but a slightly roguish character - well, hell, I am still supposed to get the girl..... by dint of irresistable roguishness.

It's all a mystery to me, it really is. I am not getting any younger, but I seem to be getting ever more naive. And yet I have come to the realisation that the one thing I don't want to carry through my forties is the loneliness I have taken through a great deal of my thirties.
C'est l'amour, c'est la guerre.

Le Rant

2011-06-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

I thought I might come on here today and talk a little bit about the world, and how I see it. I will, of course, be careful not to let my view become a fully head-steamed rantathon. After all, what could I possibly find to rant about?

Why, indeed, when the world is such a fulfilling place? Why rant when ambition, that used to be cloaked as a fireman, nurse or train driver, has been replaced with the utterly vapid and senseless desire 'to be a celebrity'? It's not as if anyone is seeking celebrity for achievement, but merely to be famous for fame's sake - the lofty ambition of Man reduced to a burning desire to be the talk of gossip magazines. That's one small step for man, one giant leap on the red carpet. Take back your medals, forget your discoveries. Rush not into danger, practice at nothing for now you have made it when they corner off a piece of a tacky city club for you and yours. And there may you sit, consuming the jealous glances of lesser mortals and hoping, against all hope, that none of us can see you are hollow inside.

Why would I rant when the world of politics is in the care of such giants as now bestride the world stage? Small men, with small dreams fiddling round the margins of Rome as it burns - a little bit of stimulus here, a little bailout there. Why don't you leave it alone, we've built ourselves so many false idols that the altar table is buckling, and the whole lot is about to come crashing down. Infantile changes on the micro scale, and even they are constantly reviewed, renewed or cancelled. It's like nobody is able to function anymore without focus groups and the weight of public opinion on side. What happened to the orators, what happened to men and women of vision? Even the ones I don't agree with, at least I could admire for having the courage of their convictions. What do we have instead? Faceless goons, careerist poiticos, reprehensible, idiotic and forgettable. Even America cannot produce the goods any more. Barack Obama a great orator? Please, he has the most turgid and stilted voice, I tune out every time he is on.

And why would I want to rant at a world that is so perfectly fair in every way? A wonderful world where you rise and fall based on the effort you put in, and everybody gets a fair crack of the whip. No, sorry, that must be a different world I am thinking of. This world is skewed in favour of the crooked, feckless and lazy, all endeavour is punishable by taxation, all achievement to be glossed over, the State has become the overbearing, all-consuming monster. Everything is the State, the State is everything. Tax you, fine you, instruct you, warn you, target you, measure you, punish you, watch you, record you, appraise you and judge you. There is nothing left for the individual, the outcast, the maverick. You must comply, you will comply with the State. Eat the requisite amount of fruit and vegetable, have the same number of children, avoid the foods you are told are bad, even the ones that taste good, exercise in the prescribed fashion, get angry when instructed to do so, fear outsiders, report deviation from the norm, judge your neighbours as you yourself shall be judged. Give up your hopes, retire your dreams, this is the age of the bland, the age of the State, the age after you ceased to matter. All is celebrity, mediocrity and grey.

That was fun. Let's do it again next week.

I am the instigator

2011-05-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

I'm really not the nicest guy
When it comes to playing fair,
I'd rather your woes multiply
Than take my honest share.

Whilst you are sat there, weeping
I'll look through you like you're hollow,
My insidiousness is creeping,
Makes this hard for you to swallow.

It was always going to end like this
And I was always set to win,
You fell for my deceitful kiss,
Which made you blind to constant sin.

I found the lying easiest,
When I wore a gormless smile
That's when I'm at my sleaziest,
Playing happy families for a while.

So, I'm leaving now, because I'm free;
Take a good, long look and then,
No sight, no sound, no hint of me
Will come your way again.

The me of me

2011-05-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

He is reflective, soft and caring,
Bears his burdens heavily.
He’s not prone to easy pairing,
Flies solo all too cleverly.

He’ll debate on technicalities,
Or chide you with a smile.
But he’ll miss your similarities,
By at least a country mile.

If you show him some compassion
You’ll win a loyal friend,
Just don’t ask him about fashion,
Or which bouquet to send.

He sees beauty all around the place.
But won’t recognise his own,
Hides tears behind a stony face
For his love, in secret, grown.

And so he never questions why
He wakes each dawn, alone.
A tragedy, for he is I,
And such frailty I’ve shown

Setbacks

2011-05-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Unfortuantely, the doctor has signed me off work again due to a renewed bout of my OCD flaring up. It is incredibly frustrating to feel like some really good progress is being made only to find myself locked into another cycle of pressure and reaction whilst the OCD fires up on all cylinders and catches me at my weakest.

It's not that I can't beat it, I know I can. No, scratch that, I know I will. It's not the fight at all, it is the knowledge that this impacts so much on all the other boxes that make up my life. I find myself wondering if the way to beat it longer term is not to feed it - take myself out of situations that might precipitate a decline. But why should I?! Am I really reaching a position where I write off types of career as inappropriate to my condition? Is that where it all leads - postponing or cancelling my aspirations for the good of the outcome of the fight? It seems wrong to be thinking this way, and yet... how to put it? And yet I cannot be someone I am not, anymore than the slowest can run the fastet or the youngest have the most memories. Perhaps winning the war long term means thinking laterally - make a strength of weakness, earn my crust a different way. Clearly I cannot go on the way I am.

Then there is the effect of this on my life goals and hopes. This gets in the way, forms a giant roadblock I can't detour around. Fighting this illness full time only serves to make everything else seem unimportant and bleak. There are times I feel terribly lonely, and I have realised (as I have said here before) that I want to share my little life with someone, but how can I possibly hope to do that when all my energies are focussed on this? More to the point, once I beat this outbreak, I meet someone and two weeks in the wheels come off again. I am already feeling guilty about letting someone down that I haven't even met yet. This is what it does to you, it yanks away the certainties you rely on, it weakens everything you are and forces you to spend your energy 'winning'.

I just wonder at the cost of victory. I don't want this being my everything, there are other fights I want to fight. I want to be giving of my energy to someone really special to me and I want my hopes to be for them, and not just my own medicine. I want my shoulder to be there for my family and friends, for everyone that I love. I want the decks cleared and the diary empty ready to be filled with someone who makes my jaw drop just by her smile. I want all these things, all these normal, credible, reasonable and laudable things. Yet they are on hiatus, once again, as I wearily go into battle one more time.

OCD is wicked. OCD stands no chance against me, but it is the price of my victory that makes me hate it the most. It is robbing me of time, and energy, and of someone's adorable smile.

The secret

2011-05-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

No-one knows, as I never talk,
Of my aching love for you.
I keep it bottled, under cork
Where it is safe, and true.

A weakness, or insanity,
That I should fail to act?
It's not for pride, or vanity,
I am mired here with tact.

Oh, I wish I'd told you months ago
Win back the time we've lost,
But I'm forever taking it too slow,
To my detriment, and cost.

And yet, so simple, it should be
To set it out in words;
Paint it for you, lyrically
Like the other bees to birds.

Of course, I fear I'm not enough,
Wrong in a thousand ways.
Too nervous to blag it, off the cuff,
Lost in my nervous haze.

So, tis secretly you hold my heart
And, in sorrow, I stay quiet.
Dreaming that we are not apart
As I was brave enough to try it.

Love

2011-04-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

Some days are impossible to escape without an epiphany. Today is one of those days. I have realised that things simply have to change for me. I've never been good at expressing my feelings to someone, not to their face in any case. Sure, I can write a bit and occasionally find the words in a poem to say how I feel, but I find it almost impossible to translate that into telling someone, to their face, that I adore them.

I'm not sure why it is, I don't know where the reticence comes from, but I have allowed myself to get too comfortable with being single. However, now beset by the epiphany, I no longer have the luxury of hiding from the truth. I enjoy every moment I spend with friends, family, loved ones and all of them, in their unique way, are treasures to me. However, time with loved ones passes, you cannot bask in their joy every moment of every day, and once the time has gone I am left alone. There is something unwholsome about returning to my house and closing the door - an ominous emptiness overwhlems me sometimes. This is not to say I don't love where I live, or my fabulous little house, but more the sense of longing there to be a light shining out when I return in the dark, a kettle on the boil and arms to wrap around me and welcome me home. As daft as it is, occasionally I am disappointed when none of it is there.

I have seen the committment my parents have to one another, and the strange, but magical love of my grandparents. I watched my sister marry with teenage eyes and over the years I have seen dear friends commit themselves to one another at beautiful ceremonies. I am in awe of them all - to find that spark in each other, and to reach out and hold on to it is something wonderful. I cannot explain why I have never thought, even for a moment, of my own nuptials, a day when I do this. It has always just been something other people do, albeit a truly magnificent thing.

I wish I could tell you it was just that I have never met the right girl, at the right time, but that would be rather too glib. The truth is, I do fall in love, I fall in love rather easily as it happens, but I lock myself into a spiral of self-doubt about it. Oh the times I have cursed myself that not a few hours before my jaw had been upon the floor as my heart erupted in joy at the sight of someone and yet I could only smile awkwardly, make a terrible joke and slip away, muttering and mumbling about it not being the time. After a while, you stop trying, because the disappointment gets too crushing.

So, here we are, I am as self-aware as I have been in a very long time and the situation has become untenable. I have to make the change, I have to start taking the risk. Life is a terribly long journey to try and tackle alone, it stretches out before me, off into an unseen land and every step I take alone becomes heavier. I don't mind admitting too, I am just a little bit scared of taking the journey alone, there is so much to share and so little to appreciate properly as an individual. I'll reach out and find a hand to hold mine. At least, in theory, that would be the next move.

All the things I'd do for you

2011-04-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'd call you in the morning,
Because I miss your voice,
Or whisk you without warning
To destinations of your choice.

When I come, I'd bring you flowers,
And a book about Peru,
We could be there in twelve hours
Give or taking one or two.

And if you need collecting
At all hours of the night
You won't stand around expecting,
Cos I'm always early, right?

On weekends we would wander
Under blue and sun-kissed skies,
Or I'd gaze at you and ponder
The depth and beauty of your eyes.

I'd take you out, carousing,
And wake with cloudy head
Which is in itself arousing,
An excuse to stay in bed.

Oh, if only I could find the way
To tell you to your face,
That when I see you, any day,
My heart begins to race.

The unwritten rules and unanswered questions of life, baby

2011-04-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

Mudpuddlin my way through a scorching April afternoon, I found myself pondering the inanities of life. More specifically, the bizarre, grotesque and ridiculous. For so is my wont. It seems to me, in my pondering Pooh Bearish way, that there are unwritten laws in life that need exposing (not to mention, writing). On top of that, there are unanswered questions that require answering. Here are just a few of them.

1) All men in adverts who are involved in a relationship must be facile, gormless and incompetent.
2) Decades become progressively worse from whichever one you were born in, in an even and endless cascade.
3) When someone in a bar or cafe drops glassware, or crockery, then all people forming the subset 'morons' within earshot of the event must cheer, ironically.
4) If you are under 25, you are no more able to appreciate the eighties than I am the sixties.
5) Similarly, if you are under 25 you have no basis whatsoever on which you can blame Thatcher.
6) If I build it, will they come?
7) If you need to ask how it was for her, well that's an epic fail my friend.
8) Where are all the smokin hot single, ready to mingle, thirty somethings I was promised?
9) When it feels tacky and you are inebriated, then start praying for hungover forgetfullness
10) You put bread in a toaster and two minutes later toast appears - where does the bread go to?
11) Why would you be so cruel as to damn me with the label 'cute'?
12) When I look sorry, I usually am. It's a more reliable guide than my tricksy mouth.
13) I don't need you to worry for me cos I'm alright. I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home. I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life, rizz off with your own life and leave me alone.
14) Tomatos should never be in the fridge, seriously.
15) Come again? Is better as an instruction

Two steps forward, two steps back

2011-04-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a piece today about the last few days and how I have been under the menacing gaze of the black dog, suffering a bout of the dreaded depression. However, I find the words are too bleak, the sentences too confused and my mood insufficiently recovered to do it the injustice it so richly deserves. So instead, a limerick.

The first thing I spotted in you
Was making me smile when I'm blue.
You make my heart leap,
That's the secret I keep,
And, oh, my love if only you knew!

10 facts that need stating on the record

2011-04-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

1) My alcohol tolerance is inversely proportional to my distance in space and time from South Stoneham House (fl 1990-93)

2) I am an appallingly bad liar - I want to get caught, it's fun

3) You can trust me with most things, exceptions include reminding you of something that you are worried you'll forget and if asking me for directions, I am prone to making it up as I go along.

4) I take after my grandfather. He was an enormous wind up merchant. these are facts.

5) There are plans for scientists to probe me and all women in an attempt to find out who is worse at taking a compliment. Odds are shortening on it being me.

6) Greens, roots, carrots, spuds, meat, yorkshires. If you eat your roast in any order other than that, you are one freaky mazumba.

7) You can caveat the question 'which is your favourite reality show' with anything you like up to and including personal injury, my answer will still be 'none of them'

8) Wood beats metal beats plastic. Always.

9) I'll forgive most things once and almost nothing twice.

10) If I'm smiling, that's the time to start worrying.

Tale of the smitten

2011-03-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

Greetings Mudpuddlees, I trust the day finds you well? I have been thinking today, which is always a good start for a blog entry. I've been thinking about love, or more specifically, about that particular type of rare and cherished love that goes beyond the Sid James smuttery that accompanies the activity of lust. I am talking about being completely smitten. Rather than just thinking about it however (nice though as that is), I have given some thought to how difficult it is to put into words that particular feeling. So it seemed only fair to give it a go, a blogual celebration of smittenness.

The eyes..... oh, the difference when smitten in how you look at someone! There are times when I could quite happily have drowned in a pair of eyes - just to catch the way the light plays on them, or to wait, breath baited, for that flash of playfulness when you share a joke. When you fall, you fall into the eyes, and you can see deeper into them, even behind them than anyone else. They sparkle for you like they do for no other and you can gauge in one glance the mood of your beloved. There is something trult beautiful about the eyes, and something remarkable about love that makes them react differently, look different than in the normal course of events.

Another thing I have noticed is how ludicrous it feels to try and explain ahy you are smitten to anyone else. I have found myself looking at someone and been totally lost for words. How can you not love this girl?! How is it that you are not, as I am, lost in the most tantalising dream whenever she is around? There are, of course, no words, that is the point. The feeling of total devotion cannot be explained in words, it is a statement painted in your actions, it is demonstrated by the person you are whenever they are around you. If you can see that I love her, then no words are necessary.

Sometimes, early in a realtionship especially, you think what would be a romantic gesture, what might be something to show them you think they are quite the catch. The difference when smitten is that you stop thinking of what you'll do and start doing things you know they will love, and why they will love them. Rereading that it is a ridiculously obvious thing to say, but in truth it's an enormous change in a relationship - it is the point you go from trying to impress to doing the things that make the person you love happy. It all links back to the eyes, who wouldn't want to see those eyes melt into an adoring smile, all for you?

The most important differnce though is the difference in how it feels inside to what you could ever describe. As I said, it is so difficult to describe to someone else that is not in the relationship what you feel and why you feel it, and even if you wanted to, the best we can often manage is a lame description which often tails off into embarassment and introversion. How different to the voice inside you though! The voice within that screams at the same time - because her eyes make me melt, because she smells of summer, because I adore her terrible jokes and the shape of her feet makes me giddy inside. Every time I wake up I can't stop grinning when she is next to me, we fit together as spoons better than anyone I have ever known. She makes awful spaghetti bolognaise, so she makes it just for us to laugh at. She understands me, I understand her, we make perfect sense. There is nothing about her I don't fancy totally. Sometimes I stand outside when she is due home because the sight of her coming down the road makes me want to cry with happiness. It's safe to be soft with her, she never teases me for it, and she has my back, always.

Inside, the voices are screaming that. That's when you know you're smitten.

Rock the heartbreak

2011-03-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

It started with flirting, quite random
The way your twenties-self does with abandon.
Lunch morphed into date with no pause,
Had me falling for her in one course.

Of all loves that now lie in past tense,
This was the one that made the least sense.
I was wearing another man's style,
Fooling her I was all that for a while.

Of course, it came to a juddering halt,
Somehow everything was dead, and my fault.
It was all nonsense, a mistake, filthy lies
Yet I'd still drown myself in those eyes.

So remembering brings nought but profanity,
For our love was a raging insanity.
Possessed by regret and the harsh lessons learned,
Tormented, demented, lamented and spurned.

Shadow Boxing

2011-03-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've come to the uncomfortable realisation that I spend far too much time shadow boxing. When there are some fairly hefty bad guys to wade in to (figuratively speaking you understand), there you'll not find me. I'll be the dude working out and warming up at the back and I'll probably still be there when the trouble has come, gone and mostly been forgotten.

What I am saying, of course, is that I am great at working out what I need to do, how I should proceed, and I am equally good at planning it all out. I am dreadful however at actually facing the problem and implementing the solution, however entertainingly bizarre the solution I have cooked up.

Shadow boxing Dave would no doubt be quite happy with those two paragraphs, they neatly sum up the problem - no need to get all messy sorting it out now is there? However, even I am not lame enough to QED myself on my own blog. Why am I a shadow boxer? For what reason do I not make it past the planning stage and into Last Action Mudpuddling?

Truthfully, I am terrified of starting and not being able to stop. Having one of those addictive personalities and being held captive by the OCD stazi, I tend to get hooked on things, used to them, comfortable with them, in need of them. So, if I implement a plan, do I end up taking it too far for fear of letting it go? If your toenails need cutting (First Floor Stoneham 1990 - talons, I tell you they were talons), you don't cut the leg off. You don't - but it's the sort of stupid thing (some on, still figurative here!) I do in the pursuit of addiciton satience.

So therein lies the rub - how do I go from the comfortable planning stage, to the terrifying action stage and out the other side without loitering? Tis a puzzlement. In any case, a cadre of angry bad men just turned up at my front door, so I need to go and warm up...

If anyone has a solution, would be grateful to hear. Alternatively, fix me up with a gorgeous girl and I'll stop whinging ;) (and no, I don't shadow box in the bedroom, fnarr)

The strange case of the generous Genie

2011-03-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

So, Mudpuddlees, I was doing a little preparatory work for a day's decorating - in the sense that I was in the thinking about it phase, when the glint of something caught my wandering eye. What else would it be but a golden lamp? Rubbing it as fervently as a man who hasn't had any in far too long, I was greeted by a friendly looking sprite. He told me his name was Gene, and that David Bowie was a filthy abuser of his name, but that is beside the point, we got into the whole wish thing.

I wasn't really satisfied with 3 wishes (his opening offer), seemed rather trite and hackneyed to me, and he quickly dismissed any possibility of me wishing for infinite wishes, so we got down to some hard bargaining. I wanted twenty minimum, but he was a hard bargainer and seemed set on 'no more than 5'. Now, those of you that have a real life experience of the Mudpuddler himself will know that I can spin the occasional curve ball, so I waxed all too lyrical about there not being enough silliness in the world. It must have touched his spritely heart, because he relented and gave me ten wishes.... on condition they were rather silly. In hindsight, I should have taken the three and gone for the money, sex and fame triumvirate, but what the heckfire, here are ten wishes, coated thinly with silliness.

1) I wish I could dance, in a modern equivalence, like Shakin' Stevens.
2) I wish I could remember 90% of the events that happened after 10pm and before dawn on any given night from Oct 1990-July 1993.
3) I wish that all my friend's cereal packets would mystically refill to the top tonight.
4) I wish I could call 'Raedwald' out of the door and the cat I plan to get and call Raedwald would come running.
5) I wish grey slip-ons with tassles would come back into fashion
6) I wish I was well known for my decorative curtains
7) I wish it could be Christmas every other day
8) I wish the singulsr of sheep was shoop
9) I wish PMQs featured a highly sarcastic talking bear
10) I wish this wish to be left open for Mudpuddlee silliness

A hopeless case

2011-03-12T09:41:00.000-08:00

He mumbles idle chatter, and hides from those three words,
He understands the bees alright, but knows nothing of the birds.
His endearing lack of confidence makes him play the waiting game,
Panicking his voice will crack next time he calls her name.
She is everything he admires, her heart as soft as his
And yet he cannot vocalise how magnificent she is.
On it will go, this foxtrot, until, at last, he breaks;
Just tell the girl you're in love with her, for both your wondrous sakes!

The Rise Of The Anti-Dream

2011-03-10T11:28:00.001-08:00

We have all, in our time, had dreams. Everyone has a goal they aim for, or burning ambition inside that will never be quelled. Whether mini Mudpuddler or Augustus Gloop in stature, 'tis good to dream.

Today, however, I have given some thought to the antithesis of dreams - that which I shall call (very originally) the anti-dream. Anti-dreams are all the things you absolutely do not want to do or experience in your life. Had I just had a shocker of a holiday in Clacton-On-Sea (a very possible possible), I might vow never to return there. I would have the anti-dream of going to Clacton. You can see what I am doing here - I'm using English, badly, but I have started now and I intend to finish. I have an anti-dream to bin things that I have begun you see.

Anti-Dreams, I insist, can tell us just as much about a person as their positive dreams. For example, the anti-dream I have to get my heart broken again tells you where my fear lies and why I am reticent on occasion in pursuit of my dream of attracting a mate. Perhaps behind every dream there lurks a cadre of anti-dreams to pervert your course and fustigate.

Anti-Dreams can also be instructive in how I relate to the anti-dreamer. I can tell little when informed that someone has the dream of meeting the Queen, however were they also to let slip their anti-dream is to meet Megan Fox, well then I know they are a tasteless buffoon with whom I shall have no truck. For my anti-dream is to not meet her.

Finally, and in all seriousness, what a person dislikes tells us so much more than what they like. To quote Montgomery C. Burns I may not know much about art, but I know what I hate. And I don't hate this.

Forty Year shuffle

2011-03-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

I've been having another of those 'eek 40!' days today. It's creeping up awfully fast, the thirties are already busy packing up the case and wondering where it might be nice to have a holiday to, once all the work of being in the them is done with, meanwhile we have the forties measuring up for curtains and muttering about 'change, and not a moment too soon'.

Even in our longer lived world, 40 still feels a bit halfway house, in the middlish, the top of a hill, or at least somewhere near the summit. Such places are always good to pause and have a long, hard think about this for one and that for another. Talking of this and that, I got to thinking what would I like to be able to say, conclusively, once the 3 at the start of my age has the op and becomes a 4?

I'd like to think that my hardest grafting sporting days are behind me, and that future sports will be a far more sedate affair. Bowling 12 over spells of medium pace shennanigans into the wind on 40 fags a day is no mean feat, and even without the smoking these days, not one I'd care to go back to in a hurry. Worry not though, for the 5-13 in 12 overs at Belton, the 6 saucy Overstranders sent back to the hutch on one of my feistier days, and especially the portly local legend who declared 'he can't bowl for toffee' shortly before having his off stump cartwheeled are well and truly banked. From now on I can be the guy that used to be a bit handy on occasion with the new ball and now just enjoys a bit of sloggerific batting, a plateful of sandwiches and cake and one or two more beers than he used to. The summer game, on wistful days, carries all the glory of old England.

I'd also like to think there has been a fair amount of rascally behaviour in my time. Not through any malcontent, but because the best people are rogues. That is to say, the people I get on the easiest with have a rascally stripe to them. Once again though, I don't think I have too much to worry about on this score. There is, somewhere deep within the memory banks, evidence aplenty of 'stuff what I plum got away with' - all of course perfectly harmless and whimsical. At least, it is now looking back at it ;) In any case, you can't make an omelette without sneaking off for egg and chips and a few jars whilst the stage arrives and you're in charge of putting it up and ensuring a few hundred people have a thoroughly good time. That's the correct proverb, right?! Pick your favourite Dave moment and picture me, grinning. That's pretty much the moment summed up.

What is this post all about though, really? It's really a long-winded and Mudpuddled way of me coming to the point I really want to make. I want, when I am 40, and indeed when I am 80 or 120 for the people I love to know that they are loved. Those I have loved intimately to know I treasure the memories we share, those I love in my family to know how dear they are to me, and how much I am always speechless at the patience, kindness and love they have given me, never failingly, for my whole life. Even in the coldest times, it has been toasty in my family, for that I am lucky, and blessed. To my friends, I want them to know how much I love them for their friendship, each different, each with their own wonder. Everybody I count as a friend is so for a reason, and it is because of the thing that makes you 'you' to me - it's different for every single one of you, but it's what makes me love you and why I'll always be here for you, should you require a slightly battered old nut for any reason. You get that for life. Thank you for the things you have done to make me smile, dry my eyes or simply wrap me in a warm embrace. Even when you didn't know you were doing it, but it was everything I needed right then.

What's next?

The drinker

2011-03-05T07:07:00.000-08:00

Messy mind, it tortures him, thoughts stretched to ruin on the rack,
Hopes, contentment crucified, the future hides in black.
Just live for now, or perish here, comprehend your fate;
Mortal man, undignified, breathes spite and rage and hate.

Back over shoulder, mesmerised, the lies of years ago,
Downfall brought to memory, reliving blow by blow.
Trapped mind will wilt in feedback loop, the shattered mirror falls,
In pieces for another night, ‘To Oblivion!’ he calls.

And grasping now the bottle neck, to incapacity he’ll sink,
Swill it back, erase the pain, become one with the drink.
And so to wake another day, regretful and ashamed,
On shadow men, and broken heart, is all his folly blamed.

Eco Dave versus suburbia

2011-03-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

Thought I might update the blog with the latest progress report on my conversion to the full bumpkin in my alter ego (fast becoming my actua-ego) Eco Dave the land-owning, produce-growing, sheep-worrying hero of stage and screen. In other words, how's it going in the new house, Dave?

I have ordered and will soon take delivery of a new shed. This is a fairly standard thing for someone with a largish garden to do, and, I'll wager, isn't making anyone tremble with delight. Except, for some strange reason, me. It's a Pent Shed, it's shiplap, and I am a little bit in love with it - moreover the good folks at Scott Sheds and Fencing (Costessey and Horsford) having quoted 4 weeks for delivery are doing it in one week, much kudos to them.

The shed is HQ, main base, Ice Station Alpha, the epicentre of all things produce. It is a haven from where my taming of and cherished victory over nature will be planned. It is a logistics centre, an armory, a bunker and storage facility. It is everything an outbuilding can be, or should be. The shed, I put it to you, is the dog's dangly bits. Like I said, I'm just a little bit in love with it.

That's not all, however. I have staked out some beds - I now know where the strawberries shall be found, from whence I shall retrieve potato, the location of salads and, most importantly of all, the mini orchard/fruitery has taken shape in my rather excited little mind. I have found the ideal sunlit upland for my greenhouse. It's all starting to take shape, rather nicely.

I have also been making friends. The cows in the top field came down to have a nose at what I was doing today. We traded comments on our respective cup of tea and fresh grass and agreed, in an unexcitable and respectful way, that life is quite sweet really.

And so it is.

The River

2011-02-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

How swiftly she forgot that once pledged to stay,
Referencing some illusory change as she
Slowly withdrew;
Her lips betraying an
Uncertainty her words kept hidden in
That final goodnight.
There could be no change worthy of such an
Ending in me, as an eyot I hold fast
In the stream, water passing by.
All those immersed are curious to see
One so grounded and unchanging,
That all my meetings seem as the river’s slick embrace.
It was her who let go, and me that was
Left to watch as she melted into the
Current and slowly, so slowly became
Indistinct, a part of the flow that
I must watch decline from me
To some fate the unmoving never understand.
So here I shall remain, and strain my eyes
Downstream, hoping to catch a glimpse of
Her, distinct, once again and
Wondering what events could ever uproot
Me and send me cascading in the waters
To the places I long to know.

Turning points

2011-02-25T09:45:00.000-08:00

Being a moss-gathering kind of Mudpuddler, it takes a lot to get me changing direction in life. Not just because I dislike anything which impinges, even temporarily, on my rock-like reliability (no, seriously) but also because it is far to go, and there is much to recommend here and now, why else would I be here, now? Besides, I was not just a rolling stone over the 3 years of my university degree, I was positively rocket-powered. A period, indeed a lifetime of moss-gathering was essential fayre after that.

That being said, there have been occasions on which I have volte-faced or spun a tricksy 90 degrees to evade the pursuing past or the big, fat arse of the future rearing ahead of me (puntacular stuff). I was thinking, what is it that has caused me, on those rare occasions, to change direction? What is the common theme?

Sad as I am to admit it, I was a very heavy smoker for 20 years - probably chuffing, on average, 30 a day for the 20 years. I stopped, very suddenly, 4 years ago this Wednesday coming. I had failed to quit so many times I can't even count, and usually not gone beyond a few hours before caving in. What was different this time? In hindsight, I woke up out of breath one morning, reached out and sparked up a ciggie (always had a smoke before anything, regardless) and coughed my way through the whole thing before almost falling downstairs I felt so dizzy and craptacular (tis the day of made up -tacular words... deal with it). The future seemed not so rosy. Just add at this point - have not smoked, taken a puff, held a ciggie or anything similar ever since giving up.

I left my first full-time job the morning after I had my heart broken. The truth is, I had been miserable in the job from pretty much the first day. The job wasnot fulfilling, did not give me any chance of flexing my brainicus maximus and lacked opportunity. My dis-enjoyment of course fed into this, meaning I was forever getting 'into twouble' and it was only the diversionary entertainment of social life which kept me going. Looking back, it wasn't the heart break so much as the broken heart made everything else which was wrong seem raw, immediate and very dangerous. A lance which required instant boiling, or something like that.

Right now I am planning to switch track from a suburban life to a much more rural one. To take my pleasures from the simple agrarian world, and dabble only with purpose in the concrete reality of the city. Over the course of a few years, things have felt increasingly 'wrong' in life - as if I was forcing myself to keep both feet on concrete and occasionally roll in the grass. There has, however, been a gorwing realisation of future misery and unfulfilment from that life. So, I tentatively put my house on the market and made a bid for a house with loads of potential but limited immediate 'appeal' - the offer was accepted and I accepted an offer on my house on the first day on the market from the first viewer for not far short of the asking price. Things happen for a reason.

And that, really, is the point of this - things happen for a reason, and that reason is to give you the chance to view what life is like further down your particular path - a little bit of crystal balling, a free palm read. That's the time to volte-face, bend it like someone or other or plough on, happy with your lot. Events, dear boy, events. Or rather, events, and how well you use them to your advantage.

Poem - The Streets

2011-02-21T12:39:00.001-08:00

He drifts through the streets, their eerie calm
Punctuated by the occasional screams of intoxicated youth,
To whom he is purposefully oblivious.
He barely notices the heated smell rising from
Rain spattered tarmac, nor the
Drops themselves, marking an increasing beat
As the shower begins its cascade, washing
Away another summer’s day in the city.
His face, at once appearing as a hollow mask,
Twists at times into a contorted grotesque,
As the demons that drove him here tonight
Play out their torture and
Force him to the endgame.
Who can tell what pain he carries,
He is here, burdened by sorrow and loss,
His slow, mournful strides bearing him
Into the gloom.
Another soul lost to the city night
There to join it’s choral wail
And fade to all-consuming black.

The Smile

2011-02-19T11:32:00.001-08:00

Was it a chance comment that made no sense,
Some of my stylish inanity?
Perhaps a hug from who knows whence,
When we crumbled, needing sanity.

It might have come on slow but broad,
It might have lit the night,
It maybe when I struck a chord,
Brought you deserved delight.

I cannot recall the reason why,
As it dwindles in the past,
That smile remembered with a sigh,
From you for me, the last.

Out in the wilds

2011-02-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

Firstly, apologies to all dedicated and loyal mudpuddlers who have wondered where I could possibly be since the last update. Of course, I have merely moved and been spending a little time getting used to my new surroundings. I am currently waiting for broadband to reengage itself into my mainframe, up to 3 weeks from now being the latest prognosis. Hence I am taking the opportunity to post from a well signalled area of the county, my new home being in something of a zone of uncertainty where the wonders of donglage are concerned. Indeed this is one of many things I have had to adjust to with some haste, which leads me on to the core of today’s musings.

As well as the remarkable inertness of signals hereabouts, I have suddenly realised the number of stars in the sky may be somewhat more than the 4 readily visible in the skies above Dereham, partially obscured by the glare of street lights. There are, not to put too fine a point on it, flippin millions. The night sky has become a wonderment again - something truly awe inspiring that restores one’s spirituality a touch (just a touch, mind you). The reason, as I am sure rural mudpuddlers have already identified, is the lack of street lighting, and the difference that makes to what you see above you.

Looking up in awe is all well and good, but it comes with it’s own perils. The absence of street lighting, combined with my slack jawed appreciation of the firmament has already led to forced interaction with a rubbish bin, and in putting out my own rubbish for collection, has taught me how to guesstimate where the path is - one, twp miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred appears to be the easiest logical methodology.

My back garden is, if I do say so myself, impressive. It stretches for a good long wandering. Additionally my O2 signal becomes magically active towards the open ground at the far end. Whilst I have grabbed the exciting opportunities that bondage to Vodaphone for 24 months and a signal indoors has to offer, I have a rolling contract of some value with the good folks at O2 so will not be abandoning it totally. Have I mentioned that at the end of my very long garden, where the signal is it’s strongest, is a pond? By now, you will be forming the same conclusions I have come to. As Rolf Harris would opine ‘can you tell what it is yet?’. Let’s review the evidence - No lighting, a long garden promising a signal at it’s far end, an unwillingness and stubborness making the ditching of O2 nigh on impossible, a fascination with the stars and a proven clumsiness under the cloak of the rural night.

How long, dear mudpuddlers, before I am knee deep in the pond, trying to listen to a crackly voicemail message whilst looking up and thinking how beautiful the heavens look when you are cold and wet.

Ladbrokes, I am told, have stopped taking bets on it.

unmentionable

2011-02-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

Some days are difficult to describe. Today was one of those days. In every way I should be content. I have bought a new house, and have now got it just about how I want it looking. I have some land, finally, in which to spread my dreams out and a house that is big enough (just) to contain me and my odd and errant ways. I have a fabulous family who have helped me immensely this week to get things moved without breaking the bank (or my back) and life, as it stands on record as stated, is great. I should be content, but I am not.

That's the trouble with depression, it robs you of even the most basic enjoyment. It hides in the shadows waiting for when you are at your weakest - in this instance, happy, carefree and with a new house to focus my mind. It hides there, serpentine, and waits for the optimum moment to strike, to lash out and sink fangs into your joy and suck it all out replacing it with poison, angst and regret.

Sometimes it feels like there is no answer, that depression poses an impossible question and demands an immediate response, knowing I have none to give. Most of all though, it feeds on positives and sours them. It takes my pride and love for my family and turns it to regret and guilt that I am not happier today, this week, right now having been helped and loved so obviously and wonderfully by those closest to me. How can I not be happy today? The new house, my pride and joy, my little piece of England becomes a permanent worry, obsessing (as we OCDers love to so very much) about every little detail or thing that might go wrong and robbing me of the enjoyment I want to have.

Depression is filth, it is a wretched, wicked and unwelcome blight and I am damned if I will let it win. This is not me, this is not the way my life will go. Maybe, just maybe, this is the day it pushed me too far and now it reaps the whirlwind. Maybe.

Finding contentment

2011-01-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

I've always struggled to understand exactly what I want to do with my life. As a boy, I had the usual dreams of playing football for England, but I never had the desire, as so many young boys seem to, to be a fireman or a train driver or any other cliche you care to imagine. Just to clarify here, I was one of those picked last every lunchtime and so my football dreams were always going to be unrealised!

This situation has never really changed now I have (relatively speaking of course) grown up. The jobs I have had have been interesting and occasionally challenging and I have not gone short of a bob or two, but none of it has been fulfilling. Nothing really screams 'contentment'.

It is time to change all that. I am moving house on this coming Friday to a place in a quiet little North Norfolk village. A nice victorian cottage with a very long and useful back garden backing on to fields. The back garden is what has got me thinking about the future, as I will be out of my current position in the months ahead and needing a new challenge.

I've done the hellraiser bit in my teens and twenties - anyone reading this who knew me then will be able to testify to that, and I think I did it pretty well actually, but with 40 approaching hedonism seems an urealistic goal in life. If nothing else, it makes me ache. No, now is the time for something much more relaxing, something fulfilling and peaceful and gentle. Something that matches the new place.

What do I like? I like good food. What do I like most about good food? Knowing where it came from and that it isn't mass produced, over packaged and with all the flavour and character taken out by dint of travelling too far, for too long in artificial conditions. I've got enough space to grow loads of my own food. Even on the tiny plot I have at the moment I managed to get a fair bit grown, so on the huge plot basic maths has me excited. Not only that, it's big enough comfortably for a few chickens (at least two who will be called Doris and Enid but hopefully 6). You see where we are going here? That's right! Contentmentville.

The hope is this sedentary lifestyle of self-provision will inspire me in my more artistic bent and thaty housed in a nice little office space at the tail end of the garden I can write to my heart (and wallet's) content. Theoretically, this is a barnstormingly good move for me. I also have my eyes on the field to the rear of the property - now that really would be snapped up if I get the chance. Stage two of 'permanent smile' is a small flock of sheep. Well looked after, happy sheep who provide top quality organic meat from a recognised quality upbringing (that's me). If not that field, then one of the farms on the opposite side of the road might have some spare room to rent.

So, there we have it. Retired hellraiser goes pastoral. I'm looking forward to the move immensely. Just one thing missing from the happy picture - I'll tell you her name when I find her.

The Black Veil

2011-01-20T09:34:00.000-08:00

Suffocating it descends from the firmament above,
It's wonders ashamed behind the veil.
A sick caress turns to constriction,
The black deposit a chrysallis
Within which I become bleak despair.
Shielded from joy, from hope,
Even my touch carries no sensation
Here in my lonely tomb.
Here all things are but null,
Beneath the veil where daylight
Never comes,
And to this place I will return
When the sudden bitterness brings
It down as ruin upon the fallen.
I must cherish that which milks a smile
All the more, for those times
When the veil descends,
And I forget, and the world is numb.

All the things I find it hard to do

2011-01-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

Leaving the house, crying in front of you, expressing the maelstrom inside, asking for help, moving on, passing by on the other side, saying no to a pretty face, saying yes to a sour one, falling in love, doing today what I can put off until tomorrow, being serious when I can hide in laughter, telling the damn girl I think she makes the sun rise in the morning, letting my heart break visibly, watching someone elses heart shatter, taking a compliment, giving a realistic answer when hyperbolae are a billion times better, having small dreams, forgetting past pain, finishing what I start, starting something I know I'll finish, accepting injustice, keeping my anger reined in, being who I should be, holding it together, holding it together, holding it together......

Pros 'n' Cons

2011-01-16T06:11:00.000-08:00

A debate is raging in my enfeebled old mind Mudpuddlees. Due to some recent reconnective activity with Uni comrades and the looming threat of 40 hanging like a damp and slightly musty teacloth over this November, I am having a crisis of age acceptance. I am raging against the dying of my hair (c'est le mort, pas de colour). At night I wake in a sweat, panicking about pensions and having no issue with which to carry on my legend and subject the world to another round of Mudpuddlage. Oh, and how I yearn yearn yearn for the days of yore.

As we know though, this could surely be a mere bagatelle and in fact I am much better off in my stoically heroic guise. There is only one thing for it, Decade War! Pros 'n Cons just under 20 versus just under 40, Gunfight at the OK I'm Bored etcetera etcetera.

20 Pro
Phenomenal alcohol tolerance
Sordid sexual congress
Confidence of youth
Hair! Good hair!
Uni life, no responsibilities

However, 20 Con
Took all night to get plastered and cost a bomb
Can't remember much of the congress
Arrogance of youth
Financial ruin brought on by hair product procurement
Irresponsible wretch
No money
No house
No f*cking clue!

40 Pro
Cheap date, wussy tolerance level
Cash £££ in the bank
Own my own little piece of England
The wisdom of middle age
Used to look old for my age, now not so much ;)
Have already achieved a lot, don't have the weight of expectation
Sex not so much, Love is the beer!

40 Con
Things ache unexpectedly
Sordid sexual congress = arrestable offence at my age
Have used up more years than I'd like

Yeah, 20 wasn't so damn wonderful when you compare it to now. Basically, I am grumpy because my legs ache a bit today and I got tired lumping stuff about and don't have a wee lassie here to give me a cuddle and make me a cuppa. Good excuse for a blog entry though ;) !

Moonlit Stroll

2011-01-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

She shimmers in the moonlight,
As I watch her from afar.
Her gentle contemplation soothes
Beneath my evening star.

Her hair cascades and tumbles
Yet none seem out of place,
An impossible perfection
Which frames the softest face.

Her figure graced the evening
Each curve a wave of joy.
Unparalelled in beauty,
Demure, reserved and coy.

I wish that I could tell her of
The love that burns inside,
But hope must linger, dwindling,
As it stands against the tide.

Time will take her from me,
And leave me as before,
Half a wistful melody
On an uncompleted score.

Through the decades

2011-01-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

I might as well say, before I start, today's entry isn't going to be light reading. I have hit the buffers somewhat, as I often do just after Christmas. Maybe its the inevitable comedown after the highs of the festive season, but it is what it is, and I feel how I feel.

I've been watching Every Number One Of The Eighties on MTV classic, and it made me wistful for that decade, as if transporting myself there would be the solution to all of life's problems - a decade when my memory would have it that I had no responsibilities (or responsibility) and everything was relaxed and fun. Of course, being who I am, and having the reflective nature I do, I couldn't let it lie there, and now find myself disecting the past and reflecting that it wasn't all I crack it up to be.

I look at things through the prism of what I shall charitably call 'my mental issues'. In truth, they are not some recent phenomenon (indeed I don't think I ever thought they were) - but of course, back there in the past they had no name. I was just Dave, not understanding why my mind worked the way it did.

I've spent a great deal of my life trying to hide parts of myself away. Always terrified of being questioned or probed about why I am doing something or what I feel the need to say. As a teenager it is not east to explain why you have to walk the same way to a location, and it was torture trying to undertake one of my little rituals without being seen and mocked. Looking back I cannot begin to really recall how much stress I was under, but there was always that numb sensation at the back of the mind that the floodgates will not hold out forever, at some point the world will burst into my bubble and I would be lost in it, unable to cope amidst the noise and the chaos when all I ever wanted then was peace and order. That's the thing with OCD, everything needs to be in order, just so. I used to physically recoil at, for example, a car backfiring. I was so wound into stress at coping that I was a ticking timebomb. It amazes me to this day that I held out so long before everything disintegrated.

As a young adult in the late eighties and through the nineties, again I suppose life was not as rosy as daydreaming about it suggests. Perhaps this was when I was first truly aware that everything was wrong. I've never been good at sharing pain, especially so to people I feel closest to. How do you tell someone you love that everything is wrong? How can you face up to them when you are blue and explain that it is not them, it really is not them, but that you cannot be anything but blue? Then of course I was still hiding rituals away to get me through. I must have appeared so distant at times as I tried to cope with it all in secret.

I tried different ways around the problems back then. Drink was one way, something I relied on very heavily until I was about 30. Drink suppressed the immediate feelings, and offered temporary reprieve, as well as being a handy cover for my occasionally bizarre behaviour, but of course it is a depressant itself and only served to add to the spiral. It also has the side effect of making you act like an arse to the people you love the most sometimes. If that's you, just know that I am sorry now and I was back then too. It wasn't jsut drink though, I detested myself, or rather, I detested being ill and being permanently stressed and I tried so many ways to numb the feelings. There were so many ways I tried to be different so that I was no longer ashamed of being different, so that 'different' became my norm. What do you do when you cannot share the whirlwind inside? I actually feel tense at this moment thinking about it. How the breakdown of 2009 was the culmnation of (literally) decades of denial, hiding, transferral and stress.

Of course now the truth is out, my family and friends know I have been unwell, and I know the signs to look out for. However, still, in the back of my mind I know how hard it is to share the feelings, the rawness of OCD and Depression and I feel guilty at the thought of burdening anyone else with it. It's lonely, and the weird thing is, loneliness is the thing I am most scared of now. I don't want to be alone. So I have to find a way of sharing and it not causing consternation, or we are headed back to square one and I've been there before. It's not somewhere I'd recommend to anyone.

Under the veil

2011-01-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

He glanced at the clock on the mantle, it was shortly after midday but he had no clear idea on which day, not since the fear had taken him. In his mind he positioned all the players in his life, where they might be, what they would be doing at such a time on any given day. Familiar faces brought some temporary repreive as did the thought of their everyday activity; so warm and usual, so comforting and normal. As briefly as he was comforted, however, he became painfully aware he was, in truth, home alone.

There was a strange stillness in the room, and he fancied he heard a muffled sound from the corner. A giggle? No, the sound was harsher. A cackle. Unmistakable, they were laughing at him again. Always the same, they mock him, they hide in the shadows and laugh at his pain. He had been terrified of them coming today. In truth, he had found it harder to suppress the sounds these past few days, or perhaps it was weeks? He couldn't recall. He used to be able to reason with them, to get some peace until she returned.

At the thought of her, the cackling stopped. She was his angel, the girl he had fallen for years before. She loved him despite the weakness of his mind, maybe because of it. The whirlwind abated when she drew near, her voice was soothing and her touch gentle. How could he tell her he felt so much weaker? How could he burden her further? No, she had a life to lead too, it wouldn't be fair to tell her about the fear. The cackling was back, this time there were more voices laughing, but the laughter was different, there was all of a sudden a heaviness to the air and a feeling of genuine menace. The air began to chance hue. He closed his eyes and promised himself this could not be, it was all a trick, their trick. The air could not change hue.

He slowly opened his eyes, but already everything was different. The air was tight around him, like a gauze wrapping. Every breath was a struggle. He was still in the room, but it had changed somehow. He could make out furniture, tables, the walls but it was through a haze. The edges of things had become soft, and the centre sharp and painful. 'It's all wrong' he whispered, and caught through the fog shapes moving. Children perhaps? No, they were cackling, they were here too, inside the fog, behind the veil, laughing and pointing.

He couldn't hope to survive in a world like this, he could trust nothing and hear no-one. Laughter and haze were all he could reason. The cackling swirled about his head like a furious drumming and shapes moved in the mists about him. He dropped to his knees. 'I can't see her face, I can't hear her voice', he cried out. 'He can't see her face, he can't hear her voice!' came a chorus in reply.

He curled into a ball and wept for what felt like hours. Slowly he realised the room was back as it was before. At least, it seemed so to him. He staggered to the chair and glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was shortly after midday, but he was not entirely sure which day. He was terrified.

and he resolved to do different

2010-12-31T09:45:00.000-08:00

Resolutions for the coming year

1) Continue to not smoke tobacco

2) Stop swearing at the boxes of stuff I have to move in a couple of weeks, it really isn't the boxes fault.

3) Mudpuddlers world tour 2011 is game on

4) Write a pissyourpants funny stand up routine and perform it at an open mic session

5) Finish the following things
a) The Pete and Lizzie novel
b) The short stories I have mapped in my noggin
c) The campaign for the restoration of the first floor caning team

6) Activate Fitness Dave '11!

7) Grow a set and tell 'someone' if it transpires I am crazy about them

8) Further demolition of depression and coping with OCD admirably

9) Laugh, regularly, and in a contagious fashion

10) Stop doing lists of 10 things which we all know is because the OCD hates irregular numbers

11) ha! Up yours, mental illness

For her

2010-12-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

Lovely, in such a way only true beauty can be,
As if she were a daisy in a fairy glade
Caressed by the breeze to catch my eye.
How I would wish for no love-me-not,
Wandering, lost, within a dream.
The star that shone so bright,
It pierced the curtain above and
Bathed me in the softening light of our beginnings,
Calling me back, back to the start,
There to wonder at the fabric of her creation.
Of the many times she smiled for me,
I treasure each and consider, wistfully,
If there is any way such an earthen soul
Could match her simple grace.

Chance encounters

2010-12-27T09:56:00.000-08:00

Just for a little light relief this festive season, I have been giving some thought to those odd moments in life when you are reminded of, jogged by or face to face with an ex. Depending on the nature of the break up and any subsequent maintenenace of cordiality/friendship this can range from a pleasant distraction to one of those past-invading-present mind bombs that throw you out of step for a period.

For today however, I am concentrating solely on those realtionships which ended abruptly and that you have lingering issues over. These are the most terrifying of exes to come into contact with, sometimes with an almost supernatural ability to put you off your Whisky Mac. Encounters of this type need to be classified, so that you can tell exactly what manner of encounter you may have had.

Chance encounter of the first kind
The least frightening and most common of encounters with this particular class of Ex, first kinds are much more widespread than you might think. They involve the past ex being brought into the present via the grapevine. You will not experience the Ex directly in these encounters, but will learn of them by word of mouth. An example would be a friend telling you they saw your ex (who for the purposes of this entry will hereafter be known as Psycho) at their Salsa class, or that they have started working at the local supermarket/school/etc. First kinds are largely harmless and nearly always brushed under the carpet after a few wistful memories and (perhaps) a glance at old photographs.

Chance encounter of the second kind
Rather less common than first kinds, second kinds involve a sighting of Psycho without any direct contact being initiated or made. Examples might include seeing them in a shop or the street, or perhaps coming into or out of a pub or club. The degree of effect a second kind will have will depend on the precise nature of the sighting. A sighting of them in the street, alone and with several shopping bags, might have no more effect than a first kind as above. However, seeing Psycho with someone else can lead to unecessary periods of reflection into the nature of this relationship - is this the new girlfriend/boyfriend/significant other. Did they look happy? Even more damaging is this sort of encounter in a place you associate with Psycho - your pub, your club and such like - this can lead to inward turmoil at the audacity of such actions and anger overflowing. On the other hand, a second kind involving Pyscho looking slightly haggard, slightly unhappy or rather fatter than you remember can initiate a mood bounce due to the righteousness of Karma. Second kinds can bring out the worst in all of us ;)

Chance encounter of the third kind
We are really starting to find ourselves through the looking glass here. Third kinds are much rarer, but much more significant than the previous types discussed. They involve a face to face encounter and actual verbal contact with Psycho. They are also the hardest to determine the effect of, as this will depend entirely upon the content of the conversation. However, at minimum, it will involve the necessity of phoining a close friend to tell them all about it, require the opinion of several friends and possibly family members and need to be risk assessed against future plans - will you need to amend your routine to avoid any chance of a repitition, did you tell them anything slightly untrue which needs covering up via the friend network, how current and accurate is your assessment of being 'well over Psycho'? Maintenance of diginity is the trickiest stunt to pull in the hardest and deepest third kinds. However, there are worse things....

Chance encounter of the fourth kind
Truly terrifying, the prospect of a fourth kind has been known to turn the knees of bold men to jelly. Fourth kinds are extremely rare, extremely turbulent and always bizarre. They involve unresolved issues from the relationship being inserted, by you or by Psycho, into a third kind. This can involve any of the following; arguing loudly in a pub in front of friends/new partners/family/amused onlookers, slanging matches in the street, post-argument collapses in the arms of a caring friend, weeks of torturous self-doubt, massive bouts of anger at how unfair the world is or a visit from Psycho's new partner to 'have a chat'. Fourth kinds have the disconcerting effect of bringing out everything you hate about yourself and everything that blights the memory of your time with Psycho. They are almost the worst of a bad set of circumstances, however....

Chance encounter of the fifth kind
You wake, hungover, with only the vaguest memory of last night. From the bathroom comes an unexpected noise of 'someone else', and then into the bedroom comes Psycho, looking immaculate to your rough-as-Beardsley and demanding you immediately discuss how you both ended up here...
My friend, you are on your own on this one!

Take care out there.

Beautiful Places

2010-12-22T10:09:00.000-08:00

Thought I might dedicate a post today to those places in the world which have made (or still make) my heart melt when I have been there. Some places will just pass me by barely making an impression on me, but just occasionally I will stop and feel my heart pound at just how beautiful a sight I have stumbled upon. So, here they are, in no particular order!

1) Loch Ness.
I have been to the Loch Ness area several times, and intend to go there many times more in my life. The entire loch has an enchanting beauty about it, and it looks as good on it looking out as it does on the edges looking in. Maybe it is the legends associated with it, maybe it is fondness for time spent there, but driving the A82 alongside it makes me very content, and there is always an air of magic about it. The very first view I had of the Loch was on a crystal clear and hot July day some years ago, it was utterly still and reflecting the white clouds above and the hills flanking it on the far side. My jaw actually dropped. Short of adequate words, this is a picture I took at the time and was my very first view of the Loch.

2) Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand
Milford sound is not easy to get to - we took a long drive from Te Anau where we were staying, over the mountains, where we climbed to the snowline, before going through a hand hewn (by convicts) tunnel to the Sound itself. Mitre Peak pokes out of the fjord and looks thoroughly majestic, but even better when you follow the wooden path and trail and come out to view the most magnificent waterfall. I remember running towards it and feeling the spray and it's raw power. Simply a lovely place, so isolated and yet so interesting. You have to go out of your way to see Milford Sound, you don't get there otherwise, and it was worth it. I left a little bit of my soul there that day so that one day I would have to return to collect it again.

3) New York
New York has so many different monuments, buildings and sights, it would be hard to pick one of them. Fortunately, I do not need to. When I flew to New York for the first time, I was flabbdergasted at the sheer size and majesty of it when the plane was approaching to land. I am no fan of cities in particular, but there is something about the sheer expanse you see twinkling in lights below you that is astonishing. I suppose it is perhaps a visualisation of what Man has achieved in terms of civilisation. Another jaw dropping moment for me.

4) Dublin
I said above, I am no fan of cities, but were I to pick a capital city I had to live in, I would plump for Dublin. Dublin has charm in buckets, from the statues on O'Connell Street to the fun and adventure of Temple Bar I loved my time working there. There is a sense of history about Dublin without it feeling too cheesey (for want of a better word). Twas a good craic.

5) Kaiteriteri and Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand
Joint award here as I saw them both at the same time. I loved them both for different reasons. Tasman because it had a really stark beauty about it, If I were to discover a new continent (yes yes, not likely I know), Abel Tasman national park is how I imagine it would look - unspoilt, slightly dangerous and stretching on forever. Kaiteriteri on the other hand, is simoply the best beach I have ever been to - quiet, hot, golden with yachts moored out in the bay. Caves and rockpools to investigate further along, and no screaming, shouting, commericalisation or hassle. Yeah, that worked for me.

6) A887/A87
Perhaps a little odd to pick a road as a beautiful place, but the road running from Invermoriston on Loch Ness to the Kyle of Lochalsh and the bridge to Skye is, without exception, the most beautiful drive I have ever taken. It runs through Glen Shiel and beneath the Five Sisters which often seem to hang with mist and cloud - the lochs look cold but inviting and there are a myriad of little and bigger waterfalls cascading down the mountainsides. I imagine I could spend years investigating just the countryside along that route. One time I saw a house being built along the road with no other houses for what seemed miles either side and a direct cview of a triplet of waterfalls running down the rock face opposite. If I could pick any house to live in, that's it!

7) Blakeney/Morston in North Norfolk.
The North Norfolk coastline is lovely. I am biased because I am a Norfolk lad through and through, but Blakeney and Morston are my favourite places to go in the summer and autumn - there are so many walks to take and inlets to look over. The walk from Blakeney to Cley is really bracing when the wind comes in off the sea and everything seems so much smaller there - small, comfortable and unthreatening. There is wildlife aplenty to look at and space to find to look out over the salt marshes and dream. If anyone I speak to is in Norfolk for the first time, or for a short time, it is Blakeney and Morston I would classify as the must see places. The epitomy of gentle.

So, there we have it. An eclectic mix, but those are the seven places I have been which I treasure the most.

Life at the margins

2010-12-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

He stares through the satin blackness,
Straining at each deceit playing with his eyes.
Minutes, or hours, perhaps, have passed
Since her departure forced this armistice.
Such warcraft in brokering uneasy peace,
So many hours lost to rack and ruin
For such an innocent little lie.
They are fated to live at the margins of sanity,
Forever tearing at the hearts which bind them,
Hate wearing the seductive cloak of lust
And professing itself the very yardstick of love.
The silence is unbearable;
Alone in the darkness he cannot reason,
Reality warped in cruel mockery
Without her rage to bring focus,
Clarity and a moment’s loving rest.
She will come, she must come,
And in the fire that consumes them,
His heart will beat again.

Christmas, the joys, shames and traditions thereof

2010-12-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

One thing I will happily admit to is being a Christmasaholic. Can't get enough of the seasonal joys, absolutely love the feast from start to finish. Basically, I am a big kid at heart and Christmas is the best time for that little trait to burst forth and assert itself. With that in mind, I have been thinking about Christmas and it occurs to me that there are things that my Christmas would not be complete without, but also the way my 'traditions' of Christmas have shifted over the years.

Being preoccupied with my stomach, and keeping it full, Christmas is a very important part of this. I need to lay down some good fat for the coming winter lest I shiver and wither in the cold. I have favourites that stretch from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day and would feel hard done by were I to miss out on any of them. Christmas Eve supper has to be sea food, although the precise nature of it is negotiable. Often however, I will prepare moules and devour them with some crusty bread to mop up the juices. Marinere with an extra hit of chilli works very nicely, but I have also had Scallops or Bass for my big day Eve supper. Christmas Day itself is very easy - it has to start with one of Mum's fry ups and a vat of tea, the fry up must have the works with it too as it has to stretch the barren seas of 8am till Christmas Lunch. Lunch was always at my maternal grandparents, but since they passed away, we spend it at my Aunt's usually and dinner is as you would expect - Turkey and the trimmings, although I would happily swap for Goose! Cold cuts, pickles and salad for Christmas tea and back to the parents for a good hit of the ginger lady (single malt) and a bit of Five Live for the MCG Boxing Day test match - even better in an Ashes year such as this. Boxing Day isn't Boxing Day without another fry up (including fried slices of Christmas Pudding!), cold meats and pickles and bubble and squeak. The rest of the holiday I like to have some particular breakfast favourites - smoked haddock and crusty bread, a gammon based breakfast and of course smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, the breakfast of champions!

I mentioned the single malt above, this is usually the first drink I get to have on Christmas Day as I usually drive, but a good drink is another essential part of the whole period! In the days when we went to my grandparents, and I did not tend to drive, we always used to go for a Christmas Day lunchtime drink at the Volunteer, a pub my Grandfather drank in his whole life, and which has sadly now closed down and been converted into houses (which it ironically was originally, him being born in one of them). Its something we seldom do now, but I do miss it - a stomach stretching drink or two before a stiff walk back to find lunch being served.... what could be finer?!

Another tradition that has lapsed is Christmas Eve drinkies. For the most part, my peers have married and have children of their own, so it is not appropriate anymore, but it was always fun nonetheless. In the days before employers got ridiculously squinky about lunchtime beverages, I used to enjoy working Christmas Eve. We would do an hour or so's work before breaking out the homemade mince pies, sausage rolls and such and head for the pub at approximately 11.01 (pub opening hours were 11am-11pm) where a 'few' pints would whet the appetite. Back to the office for a temporary giggle before management would send everyone home at 2ish. That would give a chance for a snooze on the bus home or at home before getting ready for the night out. Of course, before 24 hour licensing, Christmas Eve was one of those special nights that pubs could get an extension to midnight to see Christmas in. Over the years, the Roundwell (now a medical centre), the Reindeer, the Ten Bells and the Belle Vue have played host. After a good drink, back home on the late bus or a sneakily arranged taxi to stay over at Mum and Dad's (or, at the time, lived there anyway!) to raid Mum's selection of sausage rolls and other treats. Important to soak up that excess alcohol! Oh the Christmas Day's I spent hungover like a dog, desperate for the hair of the same dog at lunchtime to get me through. The things we do for fun!

Happy times, but I thought I'd wrap up (see what I did there? wrap?!) with a few potted memories I treasure, or where the record needs setting straight. There was the night over Christmas I walked through the snow and cold to meet friends Suzanne and Heather for drinks. This was back in the days I had a full on quiff up top - a quiff which froze in the frigid Norfolk air. Hairspray? pah! Then there was the year of the adopted pussy cat. Having got totally plastered and walking back through the 'nest' we came upon a friendly cat. Unfortunately, so friendly was he, he decided to follow us all the way home (ahem, with some drunken coaxing) and we had to explain to Simon's father why he had to go out at 1am on Christmas Morning to put a cat back where we first found it. Of less note was the dodgy taxi the same Simon and I managed to hail late one Christmas Eve/Morning who turned out to be totally incapable of driving, including a bizarre reversing manouvere back along a dual carriageway as he had missed the right turn before it. To say I was glad to get out is an understatement. Finally though, I need to set a record straight here. Edinburghgate. We were all going to go to Edinburgh for New Year and Christmas Eve (or perhaps it was the eve of the Eve), I cooked a roast for everyone. Now, completely coincidentally, after Christmas everyone who was at the meal got sick (except me!) and we had to call off the Edinburgh plans. Indeed, only I made it out New Year's Eve. The facts here are that no-one got ill until 5 days after the meal, the symptoms everyone had were flu-like and I did not get ill although I ate the same food. However, I have ever since been blamed for poisoning everyone. Therefore, I am taking this opportunity to refute these scurrilous lies. The food was good, the grubby diners just needed to stop getting off with each other/living together down Cardiff Road. And with that, the little episode is hereby closed!

A good airing

2010-12-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

I had intended to write the short story today that I have mentioned in a previous post (the excellent idea), however as on so many other days, time has slipped through my fingers and I have found myself completely preoccupied with other thoughts.

'Preoccupied with other thoughts' is, as you might guess reading my earlier entries, my euphemism for depression. Depression is a rotten, sneaky and thoroughly wicked disease. I hate it as a whole, I loathe every aspect of it, but one of the things that most angers and upsets me is the way depression makes me feel, the havoc it wreaks on my emotions.

Sometimes I can stand looking at a winter wonderland and feel snowflakes gently land on my skin and slowly melt and I, in turn, will melt at the sheer beauty of the world even in the depths of winter; at how the snowy landscape, in it's own way, is every bit as beautiful as a cornfield playfully kissed by summer breezes on a sun-drenched July afternoon. Then there are depression days and I look at the same scenery and there is nothing, nothing but a yawning chasm where joy should be and a lingering and inescapable feeling of sadness for myself that I cannot feel as I should feel.

The sadness that depression imparts is not like the feelings one gets at the end of a tear-jerker, or watching the news show the world finding another thousand ways to let itself down. Depression sadness is destructive and long-lasting (indeed in the depths of it, it feels perennial), it absorbs anything positive around it and turns it into emptiness. When I am like this, I yearn to feel something, anything, to break the hold sadness has over me, but everything that would normally work will not - it either has no effect, or depression turns it negative, I become even sadder that something I love has not made me better, hasn't seen off the demons.

Then there is the guilt, the awful self-loathing and guilt that I cannot respond appropriately to loved ones or friends. Guilt that I don't speak up or cry for help and guilt when I do, burdening a happy spirit with my decline. This is all depression's doing too, a further twist of the knife and a tightening of it's hold on me. An ever-decreasing circle of sadness and guilt, a maelstrom in the water of life dragging me down and down and down. I would find it hard, perhaps impossible, to describe the blackness of the furthest depths or the bleakness of being there.

Why am I writing about this today? Last night I went out for Christmas dinner with my friends. It was a fabulous night, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it is always wonderful to have reason to remember why you love the friends you love. At one point I talked, very briefly, about being ill this year and I caught my hand shaking. My hand has never been a shaker, not even when I was a heavy drinker in my youth. It scared me a little to be honest, especially as I had left my medication at home and knew I had missed taking it and would not take any until today. In and of itself neither I suppose are terribly dramatic, but the seed of doubt had been planted in my head, and that is all depression needs sometimes.

Today I have been fretting about it, thinking about it, obsessing over it. I have already gone through a cycle of terrible guilt. I had a great night last night with 5 wonderful people and I hate that I have spent today musing on my illness. I hate the amount of medication I take and I hate how long I have been on it and will remain on it. Of course, when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too, and Professor Yaffle, my OCD, has taken the oppurtunity to seize on my weakened resolve and state and I have found myself stuck in some weird little routines today. All part of the spiral.

I know it, I name it, I can write about it and I can hold on to yesterday and tomorrow as places where it has no hold. Right now though, in this moment, here, its not where I wanted to be today. It never is.

Last Christmas - a musical mystery

2010-12-14T10:41:00.000-08:00

Something troubles me, Mudpuddlees. Given that its the time of year VH1 have their annual 'play Christmas music until you vomit' 2 month extravaganza, I have had plenty of opportunity to revisit that Eighties chestnut of note, Last Christmas. The remarkable thing about this video and song is just how many things about it bother me. Bother me enough to write some nonsense in my blog. A notable irritation.

Let's ignore, for the sake of my sanity, the elephant in the room. That being, George's later coming out. Even without this monstrous pachyderm trumpeting it's presence, the damn song has no end of things wrong with it.

Firstly, when George and friends arrive in their 4x4s at the cable car, some of their group are already present and waiting. They all wave at each other like imbeciles (except George who looks casually cool throughout). Nobody in the wide wide world of sports waves like that at people they already know in greeting. You might, if a little bit simple, wave like that in parting, but not when meeting up. Especially when there is no-one else there that you need to distinguish yourself from in identification of travelling companions.

George has a new girlfriend this Christmas - a sultry blonde vixen who gets far too little camera time herself in the video. Why, therefore, is he singing about a woman he was with the year before? Is he not satisfied with the blonde? If not, he should let her go, for to do otherwise is ignoble of the Whamster. I know her not, but I deem she deserves better.

As for this temptress of the previous Noel, it occurs to me that George only gave her his heart on Christmas Day, and she gave it away the very next day. Is a year not long enough to get over this intense 24 hour relationship? You gotta let it go buddy, she has moved on.

Talking of which, she is with Andrew Ridgley - you know, the talented one from Wham - not only are you moping after a girl who had your heart for 24 hours a year ago George, she is now with your musical partner. There is something seemy, borderline incestuous and not a little creepy about this whole arrangement.

Now, the gang of winter cabin holidaymakers all go outside for a snowball fight. George is shown standing aside from the action looking wisftful and afraid. He looks, in fact, like a small boy who's mother has told him he is not to play in the snow with the other boys. What the hell?! Get a grip man, you are not alone with your former one day love out there, indeed your new girlfriend might appreicate your company. What is so terrible about larking in the snow that wasn't a factor five minutes ago when you were laughing and joking with Pepsi and Shirley?

Then we have the whole incident with the brooch - the video intimates that George gave his ex-lover a brooch the previous Christmas and her hand is seen stroking it this year. But, wait a moment, the glittery brooch is on Andrew Ridgley's jacket!?!! So, she not only has with her the brooch given to her by her ex-lover, she gives this (rather effeminate) brooch to his musical partner and her current beau to wear to a dinner they are all attending.

On top of all this, there is the whole issue of timescales. From what I can gather a large group of people meet, get a cable car into the mountains to a cabin they have rented. They decorate the cabin, including a Christmas tree, have a snowball fight and then dinner and having kipped overnight, go back down the mountain the next day! Frivolous wasting of money and a rather poor holiday if you ask me.

So, there we have it. Last Christmas irks me. It makes no sense and is more replete with plot holes than the Bobby in the shower Dallas episode.

Discuss! ;p

Ten things

2010-12-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

Having spent much the last year feeling like the sword of Damocles is not only hanging, but actively fraying it's support, above my head, I decided today was a day for fututre ponderage. What, however, can a little numpkin so rooted in the now find in the as-yet-undone to excite and entrance?

I have given it plenty of thought and the key is in the words as-yet-undone. Yes, it's time for the ocassionally flabtastic, always magnificent Mudpuddler to set out his dreams unfulfilled. The following ten things are things I want to do with a certain degree of urgency. In other words, the sooner, the better.

1) The sporting grand slam. I have score goals in football, I have kicked conversions and scored tries in Rugby, cleared from the break in Pool, bagged many five-fors and even managed a half-century in the noble game of cricket. So what is left? A 180 in darts and a 50 break at snooker - notch off those two and I will content myself that I have at least temporarily excelled in all Britain's favourite sports. I would go for a sub-80 round of golf, but I am a golfing spanner and therefore I am ruling it out as a sport of note.

2) Climb Ben Nevis. Stop turning round half way up! In my regular sojourns in the Highlands, I have often started up Ben Nevis, but time, lack of fitness or arsingly inappropriate conditions have conspired against me. I even once pledged to get the whole way with a kiwi I fell in with - however I was unwell that day (! no, really) and he left me halfway up with the immortal phrase 'Shit Dave, you're not very fit are you?'. Man will return to the mountain.

3) Move to the Highlands. There is nowhere that makes me happier (with the possible exception of the North Norfolk coast) - the move after this one is likely to be there. I cannot imagine ever being unhappy waking up to the stunning vistas on offer.

4) Take up mountain biking. I really am a lazy little ratkin at times, and yet I have always fancied a bit of rough track riding on a decent bike. the aim is to kill two birds with one stone - something to do and getting fitter.

5) Finish the bloody novels and short stories I have half-written, noted down, stored in my head etc. Updating this blog is all well and good, but the whole idea was to unblock the writer's block, keep my hand in and help me move all those little projects forward. I have a little folder now though, so surely thingsmust be on the up?!

6) Do a night of stand up somewhere. Speaks for itself - I'm quick enough when out and about, let's see what it tastes like when the pressure is on. I'll feel less guilty about my rapier wit (lollers) once I have fronted up to a crowd of unknowns. Besides, I did it when off my head at the Stoneham talent show many years ago!

7) Return to New Zealand. I had a fantastic month there in 1996 after my friends Dom and Jenny emigrated and I have wanted to go back ever since. In addition to seeing them again, my old drinking buddy of University legend fame Lee is there as is first floor caning teamer Shads. Therefore I am called, and must adhere.

8) Bag the Munroes. Unrealistic, long term aim. However, I want to at least make a dent in the Munroes of Scotland (all peaks over 3000 feet) - its another of those things I love doing (walking/climbing etc) but need to have some focus on to keep me doing it!

9) Learn to paint. I have always painted with words. Whilst I live writing poetry and prose, I would love to be able to draw and paint. Have always been rubbish at it, but as time to myself grows and work becomes less of an issue, I'd like to at least be able to capture an interpretation of my own of some of the beautiful places I hang out in.

10) Fall in love again. Been too long. Nuff said ;)

The Muse

2010-12-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

She glides with grace, this uncommon beauty,
From whom I cannot avert my gaze.
Each step she makes seems choreographed
As a tantalising dance takes shape.
In my mind I am Astaire,
Ready to whisk her round the room,
Light-footed, light-hearted,
A whimsical coupling free from care.
Each hair behaves to perfection,
Waving and wafting, on day release,
Framing a whole new study in wonderment.
Her eyes sparkle when they set upon me,
As if interacting with the joy such attentions bring.
They draw my glance to her mouth,
Quickly upturned in a reassuring grin,
Before I retreat back to drown in those eyes
Joyous, sad, deep, flirtacious all at once.
I should content myself with that smile,
But as she turns to the pressing matters of the day;
A cup of coffee, or passing friend,
I am wracked in grief that I know not how
To tell her I am in love.
She is as beautiful to me
As words can convey,
And yet I cannot bring myself to speak,
Lest my love be spurned and a veil be ever drawn
Between me and my matchless joy.

That all important letter to Santa Claus

2010-12-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Sir,
I write with reference to the upcoming appraisal of my behaviour over the last twelve months. I hope that you will find time to consider the following points before assigning me my final grading for the year. I must also reiterate the concerns I raised last year over the rather arbitary nature of only having two grades for which I can be considered, these being Naughty and Nice.

I would like to say, firstly, that incidents within the car should not be considered. With all due respect to your good self , you are able to travel around unburdened by other sleigh-riders, and cannot possibly understand the hurt and upset caused by the thoughtless actions of other drivers. Additionally, due to the sound-dampening effects of the metal casing, hand gestures are the only right and proper means of communication with other motorists.

Taking the first point then as fully covered off, I turn to the unfortunate incident in the pub. Yes, I did spill his pint and, to be fair, I was also rather transfixed by his wife’s assets (not that he noticed, being preoccupied with the deliquification of his glass). I consider his actions thereafter to be a gross infringement on my liberty from assault, but mostly I am hopeful that whilst he will clearly be rated Naughty, the minor infringements on my part leading up to this will not also penalise me on a knock for knock basis.

I am led to believe that you do not have mind reading powers, or that if you do, you have agreed with my union that these will not be utilised in my appraisal. As such, I would like you to note that all slights, mickey takes and insults thrown on my part are always projected from a position of general affection and fondness and do not reflect negative emotional behaviour by me.

Similarly with what are rather unkindly called ‘lies’ (such an ugly term I think you will agree), I do not have a detailed list to hand, but can assure you that on each of the occasions I appear to have ‘lied’, I either believed what I was saying, felt it was kinder to say what I did than the truth or, frankly, totally got away with it and no harm was done.

I could provide you with thousands of instances of my being Nice this year, but as you know from previous years, I am not good at blowing my own trumpet. I prefer to let the details speak for themselves, but in the interests of even-handedness in the letter I would cite my driving quite slowly near schools and holding doors open sometimes as key examples, and would in fact consider the ‘creative accounting’ of telling some of the girls I know that they look great a kindness, not a naughtiness. I am also a gentle and considerate lover. Or at least I would be, had I anyone to be gentle and considerate to. Most of the time. Probably.

Finally, I would conclude by pointing out I have served no time in prison this year and have no convictions, and no court cases due. I have not caused physical injury to anyone important and I am usually on time for work. I hope you and the delightfully buxom Mrs Claus are well (will she be attending my appraisal too?) and have the seasonal workload planned as ever.

Yours Nicely
Mudpuddlin Man

Blogging the things I find it hard to say

2010-12-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

One of the advantages of regularly updating a blog which your loved ones often drop by to read is that it gives me an outlet to say some of the things it is hardest to say. I have never been good at opening up as anyone who knows me well could attest to, and its a trend that has got deeper as life has gone on. It is the price of living alone I guess that I have got used to bottling things up, or dealing with them here where no-one can see.

There are often so many things I want to talk about, but I can't find the right time, or the right words to do it, I am much more comfortable making people laugh and smile than letting them worry about me and how I am. Yet, in the cold light of day, all I am doing is hiding myself and postponing dealing with what troubles me which in itself has led to some of the problems of the last year and a half. Having said that, I don't want anyone to think I am constantly in turmoil, at least 95% of the time when I say I am fine, I really am, but there are always the other times, when I am really not. So, here in the sanctuary of the blog, is a taste of what I sometimes want to say.

Since the meltdown of last year, I have had to get used to some new realities pretty sharpish. For example, it worries me how long I am going to be on medication, I don't like my mental health being dependant on it. The tablets sometimes make me tired, not tired as in having a disturbed night's sleep, but weary, knackered, worn out. It makes me feel older suddenly, not something I enjoy. In fact, it terrifies me; I want to feel young and full of energy, otherwise I am hurtling in the wrong direction. I know the medication is doing a job, I just wish I didn't need it anymore.

Of course, I do need it, and that is why I have had to come to the hardest state of affairs to accept. Emotionally, mentally, I am vulnerable. I suffer from mental illness, I cannot rely on my emotional state to get me through. There were times over the last few months that I wasn't sure I could trust my responses at all. I have spent years building up a hard outer shell, almost impervious to outside influences without realising the real attacks were coming from the inside. There were so many times I could, I should have let people in, and I am so sorry now that I didn't. It has been a tough transition to begin viewing things emotionally through the prism of OCD and depression but perhaps now I can understand better some of the stranger reactions I have had over the years to people, and events.

The biggest mistake I have made was a few years ago accepting it was my lot (and considering it the best option for me) to live alone, that I would make a poor life partner for anyone. If I have a biggest regret in life, this is it. It's not the best option, and as 'easy' as I might find it on a day to day basis, it really isn't. It's not so much that I am currently single, it is that I have somehow deleted the files in my databank that deal with communicating love and romance. Sabotage of the self. It eats at me, it really does. I hate that I have become petrified of confessing to feelings. It annoys me that I just referred to discussing my feelings as 'confessing'. I can write poetry, but I can't tell someone I think they are fantastic and they make my heart skip a beat or ten? I come home at night to darkness and silence. What sort of fool am I to have decided that was best for me?

So, there we have it. Some of the things I wish I had said years ago, months ago or weeks ago on those occasions when 'I'm fine' is a bare-faced lie. I really should have said more, more often. I am sorry I was too foolish to do so. Love you all.

The day before you left

2010-12-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

I didn't spend a moment yesterday indulging
In the haven we set against the gathering gloom.
Not for a single one of your flowers did I stop and take
Glory in it's heady scent, nor spend a solitary moment
Before that crazy painting you bought from an unknown
A lifetime and more ago.
You fell for it's simple charm and I loved you
For such a wonderful, and gentle appreciation.
Our song played on the lunchtime hour, I meant
To call you through so we could smile and
Remember just how it became ours, but
Something held me back.
Perhaps it was weariness, perhaps complacency,
And maybe it was these twins that for too long
Have kept me silent on the matter of my
Adoration of you.
Now though we stand upon the further shore,
Yesterday evening a fact, and not a looming
Cloud on our horizon.
Now it is too late for me
To smell your flowers, and our song is dischordant.
My eyes and ears are full of all the places
You are not, and yet should be.
A cruel epiphany, but well earned.

Inspiration

2010-12-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

I had the most entertaining idea for a short story yesterday, one which fermented overnight in between bouts of waking up and hitting 5live for the cricket update and strange dreams which seemed to involve me wagering large sums of money which were supposed to be for cat food (don't ask!)
By the time I got up this morning I was fairly excited by the whole prospect, and it is not something I have seen done before in the way I intend to. I would be drawing on various other styles and blending them somewhat but essentially, a top drawer idea which I think will fly. So far, so good and then it hit me....

I cannot for the life of me work out the mechanics of writing this down. I know the plot, I know the subtle twist/theme I am working in as the story proceeds, I know the hook that gets the reader intrigued and I know how it ends (or rather doesn't, but that is for another time!). However, I am really struggling to comprehend how I tie it all together.

This is an immensely frustrating situation, and one I am finding even worse than the complete writer's logjam I suffered from earlier in the year. It is all there for the taking, the entire thing is clear in my head and yet I can't work out how to get it on paper. I don't know if it is actually feasible to do what I want to do in words. I am going to be so angry if I can't pull this one off, it really is a doozy!

I though blogging about it might provide the spark of inspiration, but alas, answers, as yet, come there none. A case of watch this space. I do hope I haven't just massively overhyped this ;)

The Trap

2010-12-05T10:02:00.001-08:00

Trapped, he cannot escape memories caught
In endless loop. The relentless drumming of
Shame, regret and agony pounding a beat
In the otherwise still and frozen night
Accompany his memorial dirge.
A baleful tribute to everything that
Has ripped him apart and left him
Ragged, defenceless and bereft of hope.
His clenched fist taps along in rhythm to
This torture, hammering on his temple,
As if pleading for rage to be let inside
To decimate and desecrate his broken mind.
He long since lost the sense of pain from nails
Dug into his palms, fists now combing hair
He would rip from his scalp if only he could
Unclench. What began as tears has become
A torrent, glottal fire at the back of his throat
As he fights for every breath, taking in the raw
Untrustworthy air.
So often he has been here, the past played
On loop, constant variations on a theme,
All roads leading to ruin.
As he rocks and feels himself subside,
Shattered, he is taken by the fear that
This time he may not make it back.

Descent

2010-12-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

In the heat of our dance we are aflame,
Blazing trail crackling as we descend,
Two voices sing of one insanity.
You refute the man I am,
Tethered by the memory of yesterday‘s rage.
For my part, I cannot contain your passion,
Which sends me reeling against the wall,
Lustful for the exquisite pain you deliver.
We boil with hate and love, despair and desire.
And can never give enough, one to the other.
I want to wear all of you, but you just don’t fit,
You want to make me new,
But my rot is set too deep.
We burn in the heat of our dance,
Smouldering in the night.
I can no more quench this inferno than rip
Out my racing heart and feed your ravenous hunger.
I bear your brand and bear the pain for
I am nothing without you, and you are
Everywhere without me, exposed and alone.
We are each other’s last hope,
We are the coming storm.

All about your legacy, man

2010-11-30T10:48:00.000-08:00

This is one of those posts that springs from an oddly random thought. I happened to be thinking about politicians continually fretting about their legacy. Now, fear not, I am not going to launch into a discourse on the relative merits (or lack thereof) of the current crop of career politicians, but I did decide fretting about this seemed an excellent waste of thought power, time and personal energy. Here, therefore, I am, about to ponder the greatest of mysteries. What is my legacy?

We can certainly rule out progeny at this stage of the game. As I reported in last night's entry, the whole arena of romance is a minefield for me at the moment, so there is unlikely to be the immediate patter of tiny feet, nor an army of Daves and Davinas upon whom I can impress my world vision.

Similarly, there are no great inventions to which I can lay claim. Notwithstanding the Dave's F***** cocktail which I have mentioned before, this having no official status and indeed, just being a means to a particular favourite end du temps. I could try and backdate a patent on the 'running on the spot' dance which I have perfected I suppose. Or maybe not.

So, no kids and no inventions. Sporting greatness? To be fair, there can be few heavier smokers (long since quit now) that could bowl 12 overs of fast-medium (then medium by and by slow-medium) every Saturday without falling apart. Nor indeed have many found such an array of ludicrously inappropriate shots with which to gift one's wicket to the opposition. However, now that we come to it, I'd really rather my legacy were not as a chain-smoking bowler with a penchant for the slog. My other sporting achievements boil down to a few games of badminton and the inanity of school rubgy and hockey.

Hmmmm, not easy is it? This, I guess, is the point - you don't get to pick and choose your legacy, it just sort of happens to you along the way. What you can do is try and skew things to a favourable outcome and one day in the distant future, friends and loved ones will miss certain somethings when I am not around. That's it! The things people miss about you when you are not around. That's my legacy - the stuff only I can get away with saying, or only I would do. Being just the right man for a particular thingymajig.

Who needs the wing of a hospital named after them when you can have a legacy that involves people thinking of you and smiling?

Turkey Shoot

2010-11-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd try a little experiment today. Some time ago I decided to stay single. I wonder, in hindsight, if that were not just a convenient excuse not to have to play the singles game any more. So I promised myself I would come on here and make a post, and I wouldn't think about it in advance. It would just be me, thinking and typing about romance in the sass-filled teenies (or whatever decade this now is) and I wouldn't hold back, or obfuscate. So here we are, and here I go, look away now if you have a weak constitution. This is what I believe they call in the politics trade, a 'courageous' choice.

When I left love and romance behind, for a while I felt like a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders, you see truthfully I never really 'got' the whole thing. Now I don't mean by that relationships in and of themselves, I have had some truly fantastic relationships (and some truly hideous ones), and I can recognise the little voice inside me telling me I am nicely loved up. No, it's the ridiculous posturing and peacockery that precedes love that I cannot abide or understand.

Do I tell you that I think you are beautiful, or do I give some sort of masonic nod and a wink across the crowded bar? Am I supposed to fall in love with you before I disclose my feelings or is that a negotiable part of the whole relationship package? Would you rather not know about my feelings after all? You begin to see the picture.... total and utter neurosis. Let's hang an enormous negative around my neck before I even start. Dave went into administration at the end of his last relationship, he starts the love chase on -15 points. Or something like that anyway.

Notwithstanding all of that, I found it a relief not to be in the game anymore because I am petrified of rejection. I completely understand that there are people out there who don't want to jump my bones for some odd and personal reason, but within the bubble of singledom I can count that as a curio, a weird malfunction in someone that does not swoon at my feet. In reality, I imagine being laughed at, I imagine that my feelings, deeply held and framed in just the right words are greeted with derision, scorn or a simple dismissal out of hand. Feelings deserve better than that, and it would only take one occurance and I'd never have the stomach to brave it again. So I don't, I stay quiet and safe and let the years slip away.

I'm hiding. I have allowed the very thought of the romance game become fraught. It really is a bind, part of me wants to draw a line, start again, have fun learning how to play the game all over again, but then there is the part of me that is just disappointed in myself, angry that I am denying myself a fundamental part of happiness in the human condition. It's a mess, frankly, and I guess I hoped that writing about it on here would be a first step - to where, I am not sure, but somewhere is better than nowhere. Somewhere would be different, different right now would be good.

I'll finish by saying it's not like I have been able (or ever wanted) to give up feeling and falling. That still happens, but I stand back, terrified and full of my neuroses and despite my heart wanting to burst I stay silent. Love is a feeling that deserves to be spoken, and it breaks my heart when I betray it like that.

New poetry piece - In Exile

2010-11-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

I live beyond love’s pale,
A traveller, a tinker, surviving at the barren margins.
Me, who once knew the warmth within,
But withdrew to the sanctuary of exile.
Seldom chance will draw me back inside
The shrinking bounds. For here I am a mere visitor,
Offering nought but a mockery of the familiar
Devotion I see with wistful envy all around.
At times I cannot sleep and fancy that I
Will make my triumphant return.
I would throw up a floral tribute in my footfall
And cast myself on the tenderness of a beloved Dulcinea,
For whom I will endure, endlessly, all trials.
Then comes the dawn and my fantasy dissipates,
For I can see her before me. I long to drown
In her eyes, in her arms, in her care,
But silence has lease and no words will come.
Struggle as I might, I am scared to speak or move and
Rooted, I wait for the veil to fall and hide her
Away, unknown forever in wholesome depth,
Another to come and take her blessing.
I live beyond love’s pale,
And yet I cannot bear the cold.

Under the affluence of incohol

2010-11-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended our work's Christmas party. Rather early, but conveniently the day after my birthday. Nice of them to consider me in planning it I thought. Now alcohol was available for consumption at the do, a service which I took advantage of. With maximum prejudice.

At this point, you might think I am about to swing off into a description of horrific behaviour and cringingly embarassing activities, but you would be wrong. Firstly, I would probably not be looking to dob myself in on the very next day (excepting the need to spike stories about to hit the tabloids, but there are none of those), and secondly I was the very model of intoxicated eloquence. OK, perhaps not, but I was well behaved. Or, at least I was better behaved than ~~most~~ some.

However, the unpleasant hum that has accompanied me all day and rattled around my noggin like an angry bee with a hammer has set me thinking. For you see, I have not always been so well-behaved under the influence of the gift called alcohol. For your amusement, these are some of the all-time cringes of all-time committed by a Mudpuddler sans sobriety.

1) The now infamous attempt to utilise a weepeing willow to swing, tarzanesque, across the river Wensum in Norwich. I made it far enough across to get wet to the knees.

2) The bottom end of Burgess Road in Southampton is quite steeply downhill. Well it is when you are drunk and on your way home from the girlfriends, and not paying attention, and on a bike, and then on the floor. Twice that I can remember.

3) Trying to attract the attention of beautiful young fillies in the Waterfront is a noble endeavour. However I can confirm that being sexually suggestive with a curtain and then dancing the dance of the Curtain veil does not work.

4) In a former life as a financial adviser, I used to enjoy our annual sales conferences which were really an excuse to get plastered. However, calling the national sales manager an unforgivably rude word is never a good idea. Worse is having it pointed out he is right behind you. Worse than that is replying with 'I don't care, he is still a ****'

5) The 5am walk home from university balls, every time.

6) Agreeing with your fairly new girlfriend who you are quite keen on that you'll have seperate nights out, and then running into her and her friends when 'tired and emotional' and (I quote) making her sorry she had ever met you.

7) 'Feeling the rhythm' and expressing it through the medium of dance.

8) Winning a cheap stuffed toy at Monte's all day event and presenting it to the girlfriend in Stoneham dining room by 'making it talk and introduce itself'

9) Orgainse an event for several hundred people and announce the headline band when hammered. That one worked well.

10) The curious case of the missing three hours. You know what, let's leave that one unsaid!

The song of thirty nine

2010-11-25T11:59:00.000-08:00

So, I'm 39 today. One more year until the big one, the start of life, the dimmening, the big shazam. All that jazz. That's not to belittle the 3 and 9. It's the last chance I have to celebrate a birthday without a 4 or greater at the start of my age. In the (slightly meddled with) words of one of my favourite series 'I was a bastard when I was younger, a bastard when I got older, now I am just an old bastard'. In honour of 39, here are 39 things I know through my 39 years of shizziness..

1) Yorkshire puddings are my spinach.
2) Oranges are not the only fruit, but they are the worst opal fruit
3) My general funky sexiness has escalated in direct opposing correlation to my declining youthful vigour.
4) Therefore God is a woman.
5) A very funny one.
6) Despite messers Potter, Ottaway, Scarborough and myself coming up with the idea of reality TV about 2 years before it took off, it is all complete crap. I just wish we'd cashed in on it ;)
7) Football is a strange and useless game.
8) I was born 2500 years too late, I would make a splendid Greek thinker with a cadre of men to do manual work for me.
9) I love my friends very much, even if I don't tell them often enough.
10) Pickled red cabbage.... really?!
11) Cats>Dogs
12) Love can really screw you up
13) It can also make the world turn
14) Every time I have said it, I have meant it
15) If I jump in a hole with you, its because I have been there before, and I know the way out.
16) Tubby men who have had their off stump cartwheeled by your medium pacers are very sore losers.
17) Jam sandwiches with a lump of cheddar on the side. Teenage tea of champions.
18) Those chunky chipsticks? Dip the ready salted ones into a cup of sweet tea and eat them. You'll thank me for it later.
19) East 17's video to stay another day - comedy gold.
20) Rubber necking winds me up more than anything else on the road.
21) I used to believe in things too.
22) Whisky>Beer>Cider>All other alcoholic beverages
23) If I ever go missing, look for me in the Highlands.
24) Mental illness is simply not understood by enough people, and it's not until I started to deal with mine that I realised how little it is understood.
25) I look freaking awesome in formal attire.
26) The Harry Potter look did not suit me however.
27) Laughter gets you through.
28) You can't hide anything from my Mum, ANYTHING.
29) Therefore my Dad is both a wise and a very open man.
30) I am 150% more affectionate than you think I am.
31) I have cried 450% more times than you'd guess.
32) Sometimes I am not at all sure how deep things go with me.
33) I am terrified of finding out.
34) The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
35) You learn so much if you just listen.
36) Je ne regret rien
37) If I truly love somthing or someone, a little bit of my heart stays with them always.
38) That is far more useful than you realise, as some of you will discover
39) It's a funny little life for a funny little guy, but I'll do my best with it.

Fear

2010-11-22T12:10:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you have too much time to think. I think I have had too much time to think lately because I have been thinking about fear. Fear is very sneaky in that it uses being thought about as a way to get a toehold and start that niggling, nurdling and burrowing it does into the subconcious and suddenly from thinking about fear, I am afraid.

I've never been scared of things, or people. I have always been most scared of myself, of what I am or what I might be, of the things I could do, or would do or even sometimes will do. Fear of myself is my nemesis, it is the antithesis of everything in me that smiles, and makes those around me smile, it is selfish and introverted and deceptive. It feeds off every perceived weakness and provokes weaknesses that were never there before. Fear is, quite literally, the thing that has driven me to just about every poor choice I have made, it is the source of my mistakes and many of my regrets.

Yesterday I wasn't afraid, and the world was as it always is for me; soft, slow moving, friendly and entertaining. However, somewhere between falling asleep last night and typing this blog entry this evening, fear got in and started causing mayhem. Every thought I am having as I write these lines, or in moments of contemplation between paragraphs, it is there, just off to the right, just out of eyeshot but brooding, laughing and plotting. I can't blank it or ignore it, all I can do is beat it, send it away, not be scared any more. That is the rub, however, what do you do to beat fear? Today's answer might not be the same as yesterday's, or last month's.

For all the time it sits there, wallowing in it's own insipidness, it will cheapen everything I am. All my plans will be worthless or doomed to failure, all choices will be fraught with danger, every decision will be the wrong one - even when it is the right one. ESPECIALLY when it is the right one. I find it terribly difficult to put into words what it is to be scared, I am trying here, but it isn't easy. Giving fear physicality and a location at least helps me to start to understand a little better and I will find the right response. I will find, at some point, what set fear running and I will deal with it, dissipating the presence off to my right and setting me back on my merry way. The usual Dave with the usual jokes and the usual smile.

Right now, however, I am scared and I don't know why, and I hate feeling like this.

New Poem - The decay of the lonely

2010-11-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

He sits in silent exile
Captive of his own disintegration.
Every sound mocks his strangled pleas,
Screaming in this void, devoid of human comfort
As the relentless chatter of the clock
Marks the irresistable march of time.
He fancies he can hear his decay,
Crackling like fire as he submits and burns,
Thrashing violently to break the bonds of
A voice that cannot carry outside this cell
And tears that will remain unknown
In the terrifying freedom forever lost.
His loneliness is betrayed by another voice,
He has become hollow, perfect acoustics for
The returning echos of yesterday's scorn.
Imprisonment is sanctuary,
Here it is safe to crumble,
Here reality ends.

The strange transformation of farmer Dave

2010-11-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

I was thinking the other day about my life. This is a preposterously stupid thing to do as it inevitably leads to one of two things - turmoil or one of 'those' conclusions. On this particular pondering I came to a conclusion; that being my goals in life have shifted, dramatically and, I am pretty sure, conclusively.

When I was a stripling studying for a degree in the useful and ever so vocational subject of philosophy I was possessed of a terrribly cityish vision of the future. I had thoughts of a pied a terre a few steps from the trendiest clubs and bars and a larger and more imposing pad, quite possibly Georgian, in one of the better 'burbs of the big smoke.

If we fast forward that desire to here and now it becomes utterly incongruous - I can't bear being in a city for more than an occasional night of drinking and a curry, and the city I would go to remains Norwich, that parochial backwater watching over the Kingdom of East Anglia. My visits to London are restricted to a very occasional meeting with old friends. On that basis, I declare the desire for a pied a terre not only null but decidedly void as well.

Rewinding once again to my twenties self, I anticipated a stressful but ultimately rewarding job in the city with most of my food taken away or eaten in some bistro or other, I had no desire or compulsion to actually think about what I was eating, or where it had come from. This is dimaterically opposed to the here and now! Whilst I still enjoy a take away, I want quality ingredients for which I know the original source, and in terms of work, the driving ambitions are dissipating fast in the face of the good life. I honestly now feel uneasy if I cook for myself and do not know where the ingredients have come from, or that the meat (if it is meat I am preparing) had a respectful rearing.

I think it is my upcoming move that has made me take stock, the house I am planning the move to is typically 'county' and not a bit 'city', it feels rustic and it would be totally out of place in a city or even a town, but I love it. It encapsulates everything that is important to me at the moment - my immediate surrounding being peaceful, the food I eat being home grown or locally sourced, life being all about pleasure in my time, not trying to wedge moments of pleasure into a crowded working day.

Whilst many of my desires have become opposites of past desires, I was struggling to come up with a catch-all description of the change, but whilst typing this I think I have it - I want everything slower, sedentary, and relaxed. Why run anywhere when you will miss all the wonder on the way?

Back in the dim mists of time....

2010-11-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, in a land far, far from here (actually Southampton so not THAT far) I was a wee strip of a lad embarking upon a great missive of learning. I was a student of philosophy, studying for my B.A. I say studying, I mean drinking, playing pool and sharking - the triumvirate of joy that kept me going for three years.

There are many fine tales that I could tell you of those times. I could reveal the secret behind cartoning, the blight of many a Stonehamite, I could get into a deep discussion about the health benefits of a diet of kit kats and ready salted crisps. I might even, with a somewhat winsome grin, talk about my behaviour, or lack of it, towards the fairer sex on occasion.

However, today is not the time for such tales, as appealing as the telling might be. Perhaps future blog spots might offer an opportunity to give you some insight into the specifics, but in general think about me, with hair and 2 stone lighter, permanently drunk and getting away with moider and you're getting warmer.

No, it is a particular memory that has stirred me to post today, and indeed to plan an expansion of Mudpuddlin to another outlet. For you see, back in those days, Student Dave had a friend, Student Len. Dave and Len were more foresighted than anyone at the time knew, and committed to the ages their thoughts and general flimflam to a book, an orange book. The Orange Book is, contrary to the legends, extant, and provides a fascinating and terrifying testimony to the raw power of alcohol. Portions of the original Orange Book may indeed find their way into open web publication, but in the meantime be aware that the Orange Book will return! Following extensive negotiations, and an attractive offer of co-authorship (that I am sure alcohol had nothing to do with), look out very soon for the Orange Blog, and be swept away by it's majesty.

It is, as they say, on, and quite seriously out of order.

Mudpuddler's gourmet guide, Toad in the Hole

2010-11-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

A treat today if you are peckish, the full on belly busting, diet denying, tum-expansion inducing carb and fat fest that is the good old English Toad in the Hole. Get in mah belly!!!!

Batter for the pudding
100g plain flour, 2 medium (always free range) eggs, third of a pint of milk, salt and pepper. Sift the flour into a bowl (air, darling, air) and crack in the 2 eggs and add the milk and seasoning. Whisk briskly and combine into a thickish emulsion. Leave to rest for at least an hour before use.

Preparation
Pre-heat oven to 200c (450f). Cut a selection of seasonal vegetables into equal sized chunks - I would suggest carrot, potato and parsnip for a winter treat, alongside perhaps turnip or sweet potato and red onion and place these in a roasting tray in the oven to roast off for 45 mins. Once cooked, remove to serve and deglaze the roasting tn with beef stock, a glass of red wine and a tablespoon of redcurrant jelly to make the gravy.

For the toad
When you begin roasting the vegetables, put a round pyrex dish in the oven with some lard or odourless fat to become smoking hot and brown the outsides of 3 quality butcher's sausages (Powters or similar are very good)
then with 40 mins cooking time remaining, transfer to the pyrex dish and pour in the batter mix to cover the sausages (do this immediately and return quickly to the oven). The sausages will be the 'toads' hidden in the yorkshire pudding.

To serve
If the fat was nice and hot, the pudding should come out whole and sit nicely on a dinner plate. Place the roasted veg inside the pudding and smother the lot with the gravy you have prepared. Eat and save the regret for hotter, more whimsical days. This is all about feeling well-fed and contented!

Variations on a theme
Try italian sausage and/or Chorizo instead of pork sausages. A small amount of English mustard powder in the pudding mix adds a kick to a Yorkshire pudding as well.

Enjoy!

Love, that weird game we once played

2010-11-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it isn't until you sit down and analyse yourself that you realise where you are falling short. I've been a confirmed bachelor for what, 15 years now? I can't remember what it is like to share life with someone, so I am not entirely sure why I suddenly expect it to happen.

Of course, it is not just about remembering what it is like to share life with someone, it is remembering how to be, or seem, in that situation. I'm not good at 'getting' it - I consistently fail to pick up subtext and I am useless at reading between the lines. There are games played in the world of romance that I don't even begin to understand the rules of. Having said all of that, I miss it. I miss it like crazy. That giddy helter-skelter ride that whisks you away from the first moment and dumps you, months later, on your head and completely at a loss to explain any of the time just passed.

Every time I have said those three words, I have meant them, truly and from somewhere I didn't even realise I had. But it is always different, always a new feeling, always at odds with my previous understanding of love. Each time I fall, I fall differently - normally head first, always at pace. So why does this all feel like something that used to happen, but won't again? Where exactly did I stop falling and start learning to stay afloat regardless?

In truth, that is why I am missing it now. Because it feels like a story I have been part of, but my part in it has ended. I still feel affection, I still feel longing and boy do I ever still feel desire, but that leap of faith from longing to love seems an impossible transition. Right now I have an image in my head of the last girl I loved. I can see her in perfect clarity, as if she were here right now. I remember how I would feel waiting for her to come to my flat, the joy of hearing her footfalls on the stairs, the way she would smile and kiss me as we met and how proud I was to be part of something really good. She was magnificent, and I'd give anything to feel that way again. It can't ever truly be game over, can it?

The Mudpuddler's guide to food, part the third, Thai broth and Mussels

2010-10-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd treat you this week to an extremely low fat, and very fragrant dish that you can have for a light dinner or supper, or as a starter to a formal meal. It features mussels steamed open and served with a fragrant thai broth and is exceptionally easy to prepare.

For the broth

Set a small amount of water to boil and add in a thinly chopped shallot (or two), a finely sliced chilli and julienne ginger alongside a couple of minced garlic cloves. Add thinly sliced spring onions. Allow these to infuse for a bit before adding a handful of chopped kaffir lime leaves and some fish sauce (Nam Pla) along with a glass of dry sherry or rice wine vinegar.

Meanwhile

Prepare the Mussels by washing and 'debearding' them, discarding any which remain open after a sharp tap. The mussels should be added to the broth and allowed to steam open, any which do not open should be thrown out. The mussel liquor will add bulk and flavour to the broth.

And to finish

Chop a good handful of coriander which should be added at the end for garnish and flavour. Whilst this broth is an excellent slimming supper or starter, it can easily be bulked out to main portion size with the addition of vermicelli or rice noodles.

The Mudpuddler's guide to food, Sea Bass Supper

2010-10-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

Thought I would share another of my favourite recipes with you, this one is perfect for a supper dish, or a light evening meal or luncheon, and is pan fried Sea Bass fillets with a chunky salsa side.

For the Salsa side (serves 2 good portions)

Put 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil into a mixing bowl and dice a red onion and add. Dice a red pepper into the same size of dice and the same with a half cucumber (cut the cucmber lengthways and scrape out the watery seeds first leaving just the outer flesh). Add to this mixture a half teaspoon of dried chilli flakes and a chopped chilli of your preferred heat and the juice of half a lemon (or the whole lemon to taste) and mix well, seasoning with sea salt and black pepper until the flavour is balanced to your liking. Serve as a side with halved cherry or plum tomatos added.

For the Sea Bass Fillets (2 per portion)

Heat a non-stick pan on high and ensure that you oil the fish and NOT the pan, fry the fillets skin side down for 3 minutes until the skin is crispy (crispy skin is delicious, if you prefer not to eat the skin, 2 minutes here will suffice). Remove the pan from the heat and flip the fillets over, squeezing the juice of half a lime into the pan and allowing the flesh to cook off in the residual heat for 2 minutes (3 if thicker fillets and on the hob for the first minute).

Serve with the remaining half of lime as garnish/condiment.

For a more substantial early summer meal, delicious served with Jersey royal potatos and butter.

Heard on Norfolk cricket pitches

2010-10-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

A certain one-time acquaintance of mine, now exiled in Japan, one Oliver Kinghorn recently asked me if I was going to post a blog entry about cricket, which has, it must be said, played a large part in my life thus far. Not being one to let down such a fine fellow as the Kinghorn, I gave some thought as to what I could write about - certainly cricket is not a sport that appeals to all, there are even some daft types that consider it a bit snooty and aloof. They are types, naturally, that have never got roaringly drunk in Norfolk pubs after bad-mannered games of low to medium-division cricket, nor spent an entire weekend being larruped to all corners in a losing cause yet loving every moment of it.

Having thought long and hard, I decided the best approach would be to post some quotes heard on Norfolk Cricket pitches down the years, with a little explanation to each - hopefully, even the cricket uninitiated will appreciate the humour in some of these. I make no apology for being the butt of many of them by the way, as for them to be heard, I naturally had to be present!

I think we'll declare there and have a bowl at you - captain of Kirkley Sports in a hilarious freezing April mismatch with Costessey as they reached 312-3 in 29 overs (of a possible 40). Costessey were dismissed for 22 in front of jeering rugby players still in the bar from the morning match.

How much did you beat this lot by? - Thetford first teamers returning to their club bar where we had played a cup match against their 'A' team - we had won in unlikely fashion (taking advantage of some extreme swing conditions pre-thunderstorm). I have never witnessed such shame on the faces of relatively good cricketers. By now you should be realising that Costessey (pronounced Cossy) are not, always, that good.

That's it Carlos, give him a hernia reaching for it - Bob Ottaway to bowler Carl Ward, putting down his third wide in a row against an immovable opener.

What would your figures be like if you were any f*cking good?? Immortal words uttered to me by a drunken opponent in a Yarmouth bar after I had taken 5-13 in 12 overs.

On another day, we would have easily beaten you - Immortal words uttered by a drunken me to the captain of Ashmanhaugh after losing my first game as captain by 180 runs or so.

Treat yourself to a test match field, you'll never have a better chance - advice of the inestimable Mr Kinghorn to me as we played the Reindeer PH in a friendly. 4 Slips and a gully, sumptuous!

There it is!! - Costessey spinner as the batsman (on 100 plus) put one skywards.

There it goes! - At least 4 members of the team as the same ball disappeared for six over the pavillion.

You have to come back, he dropped it - out of breath Costessey batsman running after his partner, who had nobly walked for a thin edge to the keeper, not realising said keeper had pan-handed it straight to the floor.

You can't bowl that fast to me, I'm in my sixties! - Eaton number 11 trying any old trick to try and survive the inevitable.

Try and win for f.... sake! an exasperated Simon Ottaway at the Costessey tail, tamely surrendering a winning position.

He's such a rabbit I could see his ears dragging over the boundary as he arrived at the square - cruel and unecessary taunting of Carl Ward by an unscrupulous Costessey umpire (who looks a lot like me)

You have 22 yards to land the ball, bloody use them! - Oliver Kinghorn proving he had not lost his charm out at Cantley as a young oaf put down a full bunger.

Some of them were OK, but the rest were pure filth - Young master Kinghorn's eloquent appraisal of a group of girls that had turned up to watch a game.

That's my whole day f***** ruined, then - Jeremy Scarborough having gone for a duck at 2.03 (game commencing at 2pm) and facing 44 and a half overs of sitting about and 45 in the field.

Welcome back, Dave - Mark Rymarz umpiring this year as I played my first game in 3 years (for Rackheath) and launched the first ball bowled at me for four back past the bowler.

How gay is that? - standard Costessey appeal, begun by Chris Gardiner, I believe as a protest at the campness of our appealing.

Good slower ball, Dave - various members of the Ottaway, Rymarz and Scarborough families after I try and bend my back on a delivery - never fails to amuse.

We've got one guy who bats a bit, the rest of the rabbits make a good game pie between them - Optimistic appraisal of our chances at the toss many moons ago.

He's smoking! - Rob Lowe (not that one) with the understatement of the century to Simon Ottaway as Gressenhall's Raven tore us apart on a blistering August day.

Don't bother asking this guy, he gives nothing - Hardingham bowler suggesting to his wicket keeper that my umpiring was frugal and stingy (after rattling our players pads in front of middle)

You don't ask, you don't get - my sage like response

Alright, how was that then?????! - Bowler and keeper decide to appeal

Not Out! - *chuckle*

Away from quotes, a special mention here for some of the silent wonders of cricket-gone-by - from the hypnotic bouncing of the Rymarz twins going out to bat together to younger brother Andy Rymarz's 100 yard run up (including a full stop, vertical leap and delivery). Oliver Kinghorn's gardening at the crease to the extent you could quarry granite out of the wicket after he finished and not forgetting the memorable trips to youth cricket matches in my mashed up old Austin Maxi. Special mentions for Chris Gardiner's car (without which 8 people and the kit would never have made it to games) and the good burghers of Hales and Wrenningham for having amusingly small boundaries.

Happy, happy days.

And the flipside is unchecked mania

2010-10-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

Thought it was time for another piece all about what is is to be me. The deconstruction of a legend, or something similar. I have written previously on my blog about the OCD I suffer from and the depression it has caused over the years. On the other side of depression though, and just as troublesome, is what I call mania.

Mania is the emotional opposite of depression, but they are definitely siblings. It is the state I find myself in when the emotion is pulsating and forcing its way out of me, everything needs urgent evacuation or it will fry me from the inside. There are times when I just have to react, dramatically, to events around me - whether that be to shout at the TV news or to laugh outwardly, loudly and embarassingly at a sub-par joke, as if the laughter were the vocalisation of anger at the paucity of the material.

It is not, however, just the big and outward gestures and signs of mania that are troublesome to me. Mania is the little man with the stick who pokes and pokes and won't let up at every opportunity. The force that makes me go that little bit too far, further than my comfort zone in what I say or do. I find myself telling lurid tales just that little bit too lurid for polite company, I am telling tales to shock and I know it. It makes me crave the reaction, sate myself with other's raised eyebrows or disapproving looks. Mania gets off on disapproval, mania is typing these words right now.

I want people to be shocked, I want them to recoil, I want the damn mania (and just who do you think made me type that? poke, bloody poke). It feeds the depression, it is fuel, it is a diaretic for the soul, the two of them are so in cahoots, it is surprising I have ever managed to present a sober and level headed front. At least, that is how it feels when I am manic. Of course it subsides and of course I then find my level.

Why write about it? Well, the mania has coloured parts of my life just as much as the OCD and the depressive episodes have. Every time I have fallen in love I have committed myself to it (at least to my internal satisfaction) completely, the buzz from it is narcotic and I feel it's withdrawal for a long time after the details of her face have faded from memory. In that sense it is helpful - when I get withdrawal pangs when someone goes away, I am normally already starting to fall. Mania is what made Friday and Saturday big nights out in the nineties - hang it all out there and let the weekend blow your mind. It felt like the only option - be out of control and let the emotions rip their moorings.

Mania makes me write poems that illiterate - lest the words miss out on a welcoming world of wonder. Every word I write or say has a purpose when I am manic - it is crystal clarity to depression's haze. This whole piece, by the way, was conceived in a flash on the A47 - one moment's complete overreaction to undimmed headlights and I was writing the why all the way home in my head.

When I am depressed, I don't know how to know myself, when I am manic I HAVE to know myself - a different type of raw necessity - evacuate those emotions and ride the wake behind them waiting until it all subsides into the crushing lows in the immediate aftermath. There's truth, there's truth without reason and there's reason without truth, and I spend my life juggling all three.

I am Dave, and I am manic. And this is an evacuation in words.

Dave's Friday night curry feast - a taste of Dave in your home!

2010-10-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Bet you didn't think you were coming here for cooking tips did you? Well, my fine band of Mudpuddlees, I am thinking of your culinary as well as your cerebral wellbeing.

Today's recipe is for the curry I usually treat myself to on a Thursday or Friday night, it packs a punch but is ideal for the hearty appetite and asbestos lined tums.

Start by sweating off a chopped white onion, a clove of garlic and a thumb of grated fresh ginger in a large, flat bottomed pan, adding in a chopped red chilli of your favourite heat.

Beforehand you will have prepared your curry paste/garam masala. Use a pestle and mortar (or a spice grinder) to grind together half a teaspoon of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and a few peppercorns and add a half teaspoon of turmeric and mild chilli powder. Finish with a sprinkle of sea salt, a quarter teaspoon of chilli flakes, a chopped chilli as above, the zest of a lemon, the juice of half a lemon, 2 cloves of crushed garlic and a teaspoon of coriander paste. Mix together well with a little stock to form a paste.

Add as much diced chicken breast as you desire and turn in the pan to ensure the outside is well sealed before adding whole small mushrooms or quatered large mushrooms to the pan. Once these have mingled together with the base ingredients, add the paste/garam masala and mix well together adding a splash of stock to keep the dish moist.

Allow the ingredients to mingle and marry for about 10 minutes before adding a handful of cherry tomatos and then a dash of double cream to blend into a creamy curry sauce. Once mixed in, the dish is ready, but can be left to simmer until you are ready.

Add a handful of chopped fresh coriander to the finished dish and serve with your choice of rice, or a warm Naan. Hot, spicy and very Mudpuddle.

Next week - Thai broth and mussels

The Ultimate 80s Mixtape

2010-10-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

Now thats what I call a Mudpuddlin mixtape!
Yes, friends, it is time for the first in yet another series of one, some or many threads. This time I am looking at the ultimate mix tape - what tape would I play to keep myself happy, were I to be denied access to the 80s forever? We have already seen in an earlier thread that the 80s rule, bar none, so whar are the biggest hits of that decade, and just why do they make it into my list? Read on, and soak up the cloying nostalgia!

1) Footloose, Kenny Loggins - Not only a rip-snorter of an 80s movie, but also has the fantastic Lori Singer in it - puppy love revisited!

2) Life In A Northern Town, Dream Academy - fantastic recurring riff and thoughtful lyrics, sums up the mood of the decade perfectly.

3) Personal Jesus, Depeche Mode - serious outbreak of cool going on iin the video to this, the lover as saviour. Reach Out And Touch Faith! Depeche Mode undoubtedly my band of the decade.

4) Killing Moon, Echo and the Bunnymen - One of the first songs I can remember giving me a real sense of alternative music. Sits beautifully outside the usual genres of the decade.

5) Prince Charming, Adam and the Ants - Has to be included if only for the brilliant video. Especially as it was one of the last appearances of Diana Dors on our screens. That's before we accept that its a severely catchy number. Ridicule? Nothing to be scared of!

6) Life's What You Make It, Talk Talk - another of the hits that first got me interested in the Indie/alternative music of the 80s, great for drumming along to!

7) Ride On Time, Black Box - fantastic beat and rhythm and one of the most dancable tunes of the later 80s - the sort of song you were guaranteed to dance to at the Saturday Night Hall of Residence disco.

8) Vienna, Ultravox - noone should be comdemned to be forever the number 2 behind Joe Dolce and 'shuddupya face'. To be fair, Midge Ure would make it with If I Was as well, but this one has mood and atmosphere to carry it into the compilation easily!

9) She Bangs the Drums, Stone Roses - you weren't anyone at uni back then if you didn't get into a little Stone Roses, and this one is the pick of their 1989 album. Seriously cool.

10) Red Red Wine, UB40 - it's not often a Birmingham Reggae band can add to a Neil Diamond classic, but Ali Campbell and co definitely achieve it with this one. Completely brilliant version.

11) Purple Rain, Prince - Has to be the guitar players choice - wonderful guitar accompaniament to this one, as well as a fabulous bassline.

12) Drive, The Cars - Is my favourite 80s hit. Great song to listen to at the end of the night, but also because of the video. Paulina Porizkova absolutely nails mental illness in the video and even now when I watch it I get a chill down my spine. Awesome song to end the compilation with!

Desert Island Mudpuddler

2010-10-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon, Mudpuddlees. Today, all those things you wanted to know about me but were afraid to ask can finally be answered! What exactly makes a Mudpuddler tick? What escapism does he use? What are his musical must haves? Yes, it is time to abandon me on the Desert Island, and find out what I would take into exile with me!

What book would you take to a desert island with you? - There is only one choice. Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkein. not only is it long enough to keep me occupied for several weeks, it is deep enough to keep you fantasising about the untold stories for long afterwards. The ultimate Desert Island read.

What music would you take with you? - I would take 3 albums with me. Firstly Automatic For the People by REM and secondly OK Computer by Radiohead - both of which I can comfortably listen to right through without any tracks grating on me. My third album would be a compilation of alternative 80s classics - Personal Jesus, Life's what you make it, Love will tear us apart again, that sort of thing.

What single gadget would you find indespensible? - I'd have to take my swiss army knife with me - covers just about every urgent eventuality, although my laptop would be a useful addition as well!

You can take one complete TV series with you - Not the Nine O'Clock News! Simply the funniest thing to have been on TV in 30 years, could happily watch it over again and again.

Finally, you can take any one feature film with you - This is a close run thing, I am tempted by Dogma for it's humour, but I will plump for Once Upon A Time In The West - brilliant score, dramatic, gritty and eminently watchable!

The shame of Mudpuddlin Dave

2010-10-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

I thought it best to update the blog tonight as who knows what carnage will be visited upon it with Wednesday's Comprehensive Buggaring About With Us Review? I might find there are 33% cutbacks in my lucidity and humour, and that simply won't do. Come the revolution, Mudpuddlin will be a 24/7 exercise, the Pravda of the East (of England) However, I digress. I thought tonight I would give some thought to those times in my life I have been ashamed of my actions, and yes, there have been many, and look to set the record straight, or at least give you a good chuckle at some of my recurring and all-too-frequent misadventures.

First, I must address the issue of intellectual copyright theft. The business of my 14 hear old self, one DMTronics, was a cheap rip off of my good friend Simon's Simclair and indeed, the only programme it created, Ronnie Rat, was Simclair's Sam's Scrapyard with a slightly altered UDG for the main character. This is not news to the boards of either DMTronics (me) or Simclair (Simon) however it seems an appropriate time to publically fess up.

To the good burghars of South Stoneham House in Southampton I can say only this - you managed to have me with you for the three years of my life which I chose to indluge in rampant alcohol abuse. I remain grateful for the sumptuous breakfasts prepared solely to bring me out of another hangover and to my beloved bar, sadly long since bankrupted, for putting up with night after night of buffoonery. As to my shame, let's settle upon being found asleep outside my room on the floor by the cleaner having been unable to complete the tricky key/lock interface in my stupour. Shame, but not a little dose of legend.

I'd also like to mention here that not all shame is through appalling behaviour. For example, my first employers had a dumbwaiter style delivery system for post over the different floors. Now the room containing it on my floor had a loose cover and underneath were some fierce looking metal components. A long running debate in the office was whether this was safe, or indeed we risked electrocution whilst awaiting the repair (which arrived several months later). Now, I am not one to let a debate rage on unanswered, so I found out via the 'touch with your finger' route. Yes, we risked electrocution.

There is so much more I could go into, but even I have limits to my candour. Pretending not to know where the condoms are to get out of hangover sex, being rescued on Millenium Eve by a giant mohican bearing punk having slid down Castle Mound on my backside. Pants down dancing on the table in the St Andrews Tavern, knocking myself out in Norwich Arts Centre by leaping into a beam. How about that, I guess there are no limits to my candour after all!

I am legend, it shames me.

Introduction to a new novel

2010-10-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Pete drew the floor length curtains across the lounge window and shut out the late autumn night. He paced about the room impatiently and sighed as he looked over at the phone, still steadfastly refusing to ring. He was waiting to hear from Lizzie, to hear whether she wanted him to visit the next weekend. He realised he spent an inordinate amount of time waiting to hear from Lizzie, nonetheless he turned on the laptop and logged in to his mail account. You have (0) new messages. Pete rested his head on one propped arm and hit refresh lazily, just to be sure.

He lived in a small village in North Norfolk, far enough away from civilisation to be peaceful but near enough to the sea he felt he could escape if he needed. The practicality of this was a side issue and not the point as Pete was a dreamer, so the concept of it was enough. In autumn and winter it could be perishingly cold in this exposed part of the country and Northerly winds would whip the North Sea into a frenzy bringing a surprising amount of snow this far south. It all added to the starkness of these seasons against the mellow warmth and pleasant bounty of spring and summer. However, this was late autumn and Pete had lit a fire which was crackling and trying to be heard above the occasional whistle of wind down the chimney.

Pete was in his thirties, tall and evidently slim in his youth. Age had filled him out somewhat however and his hair was flecked with stray grey hairs he was now too used to to become frantic over. He had a rather far away look and to anyone meeting him for the first time he often seemed to gaze beyond them whilst looking at them, as if he was always straining into the distance. Lizzie would chide him for dreaming again when he did this, but he didn't mind, being chided by Lizzie was akin to punishment from a favoured childhood Teddy Bear.

She was of the same vintage as Pete, although she lived a fair distance away. They had first met on the internet, in that haphazard and random way people have become used to. He tried to describe her to a friend shortly after they had first met, remarking about her natural and unfussy hairstyle, how she was a brilliant height (he had no idea what he meant by that), that she was perfectly at ease with herself, smiling more than not and most of all that her eyes were bluer and deeper than any he had ever seen, hiding a multitude of past tragedies and triumphs, eyes in which he would quite willingly drown himself in seeking to understand her. He hated that he could describe her this way to a friend but was only ever able to tell her she had 'great eyes'.

The phone was still not ringing, but Lizzie had no idea how impatient Pete was for a call. In fact, there were many things Lizzie was unaware of. She was oblivious to how Pete described her eyes to anyone who would listen and she was completely unaware that he was head over heels in love with her. He had, in fact, been in love with her since before they first met. He had begun to fall madly and desperately in love with her as they got to know each other online. Everything she said interested him, the way she saw the world was exciting and vibrant and infectiously engaging. She was naughty without malice and funny without pretention. He would never say she was everything he ever wanted (to himself, of course) as she was more to him than anything he had ever imagined prior to their meeting. However, Pete was Pete and he felt no words he said to her could explain his feelings or do justice to them, or to her and so he stayed silent, hopelessly in love and frantic for every moment with her.

Lizzie knew none of this as she phoned him, tears rolling down her face, no clue of the feelings burning so deeply at the other end of the phone. She had no knowledge of his love as her life imploded around her and as the phone finally rang in Norfolk, neither of them could begin to guess what was about to happen and where it would lead them, against all odds. This was the very last moment the world was normal, as Pete noted Lizzie's number and grabbed the phone to his ear. Then everything changed.

Monochrome World

2010-10-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

One thing you might notice if you stop by my blog regularly is that I try not to take life too seriously. I've always used humour and I'll be very honest here, it is a useful shield. That is what makes the contrast with my illness and depression so stark and painful.

Humour is levity and light and I can find little wrong with the world when I am laughing with it, or at it. However, when a bout of depression strikes, it is like a shadow descends over everything and emotion is drawn out of the world as if it were a poison. It is worse than sadness, it is the absence of sadness or happiness, an empty yearning for some sort of emotional response, but the emotion will not come. I have sat and stared blankly at the TV screen when a comedy I would always enjoy is showing, but even classic gags that would have me rolling on normal days wash over me without registering. My face will contort into a phantasm of a grin, a cruel mockery of real enjoyment. Or I will catch something sad on the news, or a moving film and watch dispassionately. At times I have felt a tear run down my face but inside I have no feeling of it - it is merely condensation.

People seem unfamiliar and drab as I desperately scramble to build a cocoon to hide in, they have no impact and are empty shells, vessels drained of all content. A collection of words and movements I long to hide from. Open the window and everything is coming at me through a muffler, the clarity of individual sounds rolled into a constant dull hum, even noise cannot escape the bleakness, it is being strangled. My surroundings are the same, but the colour and vibrancy have fled, leached out by the depression, a pencil sketch of what was a magnificent watercolour.

That is how it is, day after day, living a film noir, forcing myself to do a bad impression of emotional investment into conversations and all the time feeling hollowed out, ruinous. The irony is, I can't even get angry about it as emotions are stuck on the event horizon, inaccessible. In the world but not of it, distant and utterly alone. Then it passes, and I wake one morning as if the previous days hadn't happened and the colour, sound and laughter flood back with the tears.

So, that's really why I use humour - self-diagnosis. If I can laugh, then I'm OK for today at least. That's something I guess.

Management Bullhooey Bingo part 2

2010-10-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

Thought I might update today with a second helpful helping of translations of those tricksy phrases management love to grace the office with. Taking a keen interest as I do in phooey, I anticipate more helpful information coming from me in future. Look out for the guide to polite commentary and the Mudppuddlers introduction to the stuff what the other half says and the stuff what they mean, innit? I digress, thus will proceed without delay to today's translations.

See your line manager in the first instance - don't come sniffing round me with your problems, I am far too grand and important, bother someone lower down the food chain.

Let me come back to you on that - you've just made me look like an idiot in front of my underlings. I won't forget.

A significant uptick in business - Help, oh my God help me, I laid off too many staff and we can't cope.

Multi-skilling - Think doing more, more often, for less. Now double it.

Seamless transition - months of chaos with things going missing, deliveries going awry, complaints sky rocketing and at least four versions of the compoany name in use.

A difficult transition - Yeah, we got that one wrong, we're going back to how it was before.

Customer facing role - You talk to them, I can't stand our customers. Is it lunch already?

Each and every one of you has contributed to our success - except me, and I get the bonus, isn't life wonderful?!

This is just the sort of thing that looks great when it comes to reviewing your year - I should know, I've already taken credit for it in my review.

Your name instantly sprang to mind for this project - Here, this is a total mess, do something with it.

Your name is known in high places - Just wait till you see what I have lined up for you, teacher's pet!

Four items on my Birthday and Christmas Lists

2010-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Listen up, Mudpuddlees, this is important. I have come to a shocking realisation over the weekend. I have realised that I have not fulfilled my destiny, my ultimate dream. I am not, yet, an Olympic gold medallist. Now, bear with me, I have good reasons for feeling this is my dream and destiny, I am just too shy to share them with you at this stage.

This begs the quesion, in which disciplines will I concentrate my efforts in order to secure Gold at the London Olympics in a mere 2 years from now? The obvious choice would have been cricket, the one sporting activity at which I have a degree of skill. Two problems exist with this choice however. I do not have quite enough skill (one would think) and cricket is not an Olympic sport. Hmmmmm, this is already proving a tiring quest.

With even my most optimistic hat on, I fancy I would struggle at running events, given that the last time I tried to race someone over 200 metres, I had to stop after about 40 with a pounding heart and dizzy spells. This does not sound like the sort of physique or condition that will pull off a shock over Usain Bolt or one of the other champions. For similar reasons of lack of conditioning I am ruling out endurance equipment events like rowing or cycling and their many derivatives.

I could look at swimming or diving as an option. Certainly it's a good excuse to go for that kinky silky smooth look, match the body to the head and all. Actually, my baldness might be the trick that gets me over the line - look at Duncan Goodhew. There is a minor problem with both of these though, I can't really swim well and I am afraid of going out of my depth in water. Diving in 5 foot of water is (I am led to believe) foolish in the extreme and I have checked and the Olympics committees will not allow water wings or a float in competition. Blast.

The same lack of buoyancy rules out the sailing events, not worth drowing in the Channel for a Gold after all. I am a wide-eyed dreamer, I never said I was brave. Horses? Can't really have two enormous beasts between my legs ;)! We are starting to run short of options here - I think we have to rule out anything involving water, physical exertion and the like as I will be 40 come the games and therefore not in the most prime condition of an admittedly fairly laid back (literally) history of non-exercise. We can therefore also discount badminton and tennis.

What I really require is a discipline that the older gentleman can compete in on equal terms which does not require excessive fitness. I believe, therefore, that it is my destiny to become Olympic gold medallist in Archery, or possible a gun shooting discipline - clay pigeon looks a whizzo laugh but the pistol is lighter and probably less tiring. Two of the items on this year's lists therefore are pne of those competition bows and a sporting pistol to allow me to start practising. I have even compensated for the only weakness I can think of which is my appallngly bad eyesight. Also on the list for this year is laser eye surgery!

So, there we have it - planning for my Olympic glory by asking for the right presents. What's that? The fourth item? Ah, yes, just in case there is a lucky contestant who damns me with a Silver, a set of bowls. They don't have those in the Olympics, but they do in the Commonwealth and they are way easier to strike gold in. Plus I can play that until I am extremely dessicated. Thanks in advance as ever for your generosity....

A Night Of A Thousand Daves

2010-10-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Dangerous as it is, I have spent a lot of my two weeks leave in contemplation. In other words, I have come down with a bad dose of the introspection infection. Fortunately, writing about it would appear to be the right antedote (as well as the right anecdote), so I guess that worked out fairly well. In particular, I have been giving some thought to which of the many Daves you might know. Yes, I realise the irony of someone who suffers from a mental illness writing about multiple personalities, but I mean which part of me it is that you know, or even better, which parts.

You may know quick-witted Dave. I admit to having a relatively sharp and quick mind, and the cheek to use it as a weapon of mass mirth. I like to make people laugh, laughter is comfortable, an audible acceptance of your presence, a confirmation of your value to the gathering. You may or may not know of course, that it is also a very effective shield, an outer shell, protection.

Perhaps you know windmill Dave, the lanky opening bowler with the strange action who week in and out would bowl 12 overs straight through and puff his way through 20 fags (not touched them for 4 years now!), half the time frustrated the batsman can't find the edge, and the rest of the time pretending the long hop that took the wicket was 'all part of the plan'. I'd hesitate to suggest you know his accomplice, slogger Dave. Sadly he usually spent too little time at the crease to make his mark, or indeed take guard.

You could be one of the fairer sex and have some intimate knowledge of Romeo Dave. If so, lucky you! In love, I am changed, aren't we all? Being part of a unique sort of team, a duo, it is a remarkable state to be in, and it is a place I have visited on occasion. It has always been to my benefit, although just afterwards it is sometimes too raw to realise that, but even I (everyDave) notice the difference in myself. If you know Romeo Dave, you have a rare advantage over other Dave collectors, and somewhere I carry a warmth that is the memory of those times when we were aflame.

Then there is irresponsible Dave. Why have one pint when you can have ten? Why go to lectures when you can lay in bed watching countdown on your black and white telly? Why listen to reason when it is far more fun to push the limits? I have a daft streak as long as you like and I find it very hard to resist the most ridiculous, unlikely, risky or silly option. I'm willing to bet a number of you know this part of me, but far fewer the sullen and regretful me, wishing he had just once taken the safe option.

There are so many others that I would not have a hope of naming them all here - from poet Dave who takes comfort in the beauty of language to political Dave with his set in stone views (none of which are as set in stone as he would have you believe). There is dreamer Dave, mind wandering into fantasies he'll never realise to the me that is always there and will always listen. My point is, if you are reading this, the likelihood is that you know one, some or many Daves, and the more of them you know, the less surprising each new addition you come across. I just hope you are happy with the collection you have, because I know them all and as EveryDave it really does matter to me that you are. You might even know a Dave that I had almost forgotten about, it's always nice to remember the Daves that were.

I want a word with the chef

2010-10-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

The other day I was busily preparing some supper for myself and I have to say I was having a whale of a time. It led me to think about when it was that cooking went from being a chore to something I truly love doing, a hobby as well as an essential part of life.

It was not always something I enjoyed, or indeed had the remotest skill in. During childhood I never really got into it as a fun thing to do, although I do recall 'helping' on occasion (generally only on times when some spoon and bowl-licking would be involved). Indeed, I think I was into my teens before I learned how to boil a kettle and make hot drinks (note to self - learned? or was given permission to use said dangerous item?), not as easy as it sounds as the kettle was a stove topper from memory. At university I survived on a diet of kit kats and ready salted crisps with occasional visits to the canteen between liquid intakes, so even here I did not really utilise much cuisinery. For anyone who knew me in those halcyon days, I dimly recall drunken misadventures with omelettes, Smash mashed potato and cubes of steak the Dog would have turned its nose up at. In my defence, I was and remain, a legend.

After University and twixt periods of pampering at the parental home, I rented/shared. Now, as any of my sharers will tell you (this means you, Tacon) I was not threatening to break into the world of TV cheffery then either - I had learned Cooking 101: basic vegetable boiling, and could do pasket pasta 'n sauce like a pro. Indeed, one such packet pasta and some washed and prepped Sainsbury salad alongside some leftover chicken from a Mum roast got me into the exes good books. Not exactly Delia-esque though. I did, however, become the 'go to' guy for a fry up the morning after the night before. This, I think, was where the love of cooking actually began. Around the same time I also picked up the interesting habit of sleeping in the communal kitchen of a friend I would visit still at Reading Uni (that's you, S Bear, if you read this :D) - bizarre, but seems tenuously relevant.

Fast forward to the purchase of the chateau and life chez moi is all about the cooking. From perfecting Moules recipes to cooking myself into curry heaven, baking soda bread, cakes, casseroles, roasting game, I want to do it all. It's not just the cooking, it's how I use what I have in the eternal quest to fill one belly and one belly alone that gets me excited. I am just not sure when it became such a wonderful way to spend my time. I think it may have been when I gave up on following recipes slavishly. Once you know how to 'do' things, you can work it all out for yourself. It's my supper, I should put what I want in it, after all! Living on my own probably helps too, if something doesn't work, I am the only one that suffers for it. I do cook for others, too, of course.

So, that's where I am, in love with cooking from nowhere, entirely self-taught and, I should add, a cuisine maverick. I really wish I had discovered it as a passion sooner, and done something with it, but, to be fair, I'll settle for a belly full of the good stuff when I want it.

Familiarity

2010-10-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

The past year has been a fair emotional roller-coaster for me and I found I have had periods of reflection on a rather lengthier and perhaps deeper basis than some of those helter-skelter, no-time-to-breathe years that have gone before it.

In particular, I think a lot about those people that have come into my life from outside, that is to say without the bonds of family, but have become inportant to me as friends, comrades or even as lovers. Why is it that from some people you crave more? More time, more meetings, more love, more moments - some people you simply have not had enough of in one chance meeting, whereas others will come and go, pleasant, but not memorable enough to you to imprint themselves onto you.

I have come to the conclusion that everyone who remains in your life does so because they have a hook which happens to latch on to you very readily and easily. There is at least one thing (and often many) about them that you instantly associate with them on thinking of them which you identify with them alone and as a comfort to want 'more'. Now this is hardly earth-shattering insight into the nature of human relationships, but that is not the point. The point is, I have had time to think about the people in my life and understand a little better why they are there.

For example, I recently met up with some friends from University whom I haven't seen in a decade and a half. It was a very pleasant evening, and I particularly thought to myself how there was no real awkwardness or 'estrangement' there. Of course, our respective lives have gone off in very different directions and with different goals and priorities, but at the heart of it all, all those little indicators that kept these people as friends all that time ago were still there - from the bizarre like the way a pool cue is held to the way words and phrases are spoken. I like the way these guys do those things, it feels comfortable and familiar and brings to mind misadventures of long ago. Enjoyable misadventures.

People who do not remain leave no imprint. There is nothing about the way they do things that gels with you. It is neither their, nor your fault, they just can't latch on to you, and so you will never be close to them. When I have fallen in love, it was never about the way someone looks - that just means you want to sweet talk them in the first place. No, the things that make you fall in love are a whole suite of familiarities and comforts. I like the way you breathe when you sleep, I like how you brush toast crumbs from your chin. I like how you flash with anger.

Why am I posting about this today? Because I am feeling reflective, because I love my friends very much and I don't tell them that enough and because I feel the need to tell people more often WHY I love them. So if you know me, and I happen to mention how I like the way you bob your head when you are talking, take it as it is meant, as a confirmation of why I love you.

Let down and hanging around

2010-10-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

I have lived for nearly 39 years and, much as it may shock, not everything I have encountered in that time has impressed me. Indeed, truth be told, some things have left me downright cold. I don't know what possesses me to speak of failure this evening, perhaps the lacklustre European performace thus far in the Ryder Cup, or the pitiful remnants in my vegetable garden slowly rotting away into winter. Maybe I am just a grumpy wumpy (with thanks to Lulu Bear from Bananas in Pyjamas). It is of no matter, the decision is made and tonight I will showcase things which are not all that, the suckiest of the succubuses, the dross of the ages. A place in HTML eternity wherein the damned can find a home. The trashcan.... you get the idea.

The sound system of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K - Now, to be fair, a command in BASIC called 'Beep' was never likely to set the world alight, but the Beep command was not even particularly basic, or user friendly. You had to specify two numbers, separated by a comma, one indicating pitch and the other duration. There was no standard muscial notation to number guide. On one occasion I spent half a day programming 'In The Bleak Midwinter' via trial and error only to be greeted by what amounted to a single cat with it's delicates caught in a Bulldog's teeth. If Sir Clive Sinclair's music be the food of love, play off!

The Ghost Train - As a child I was terrified of the whole concept of the ghost train and refused to be taken on to such a fearful thing. I was convinced that real ghosts and demons were hidden in that netherworld behind the doors - the frightening face painted on indicated that it was so. When I was finally convinced that I would be quite safe and that my father would accompany me so nothing bad could poissibly happen, I plucked up the courage to ride into Hell itself. Within two minutes, an easily frightened, slightly deluded young boy found the whole concept of fear risible. Thanks a lot Ghost Train, you numbed me to fear of the exquisite horrors of this world.

Reality TV - Every single bit of it is drivel. There are no exceptions to this rule. If reality is a series of faded celebrities slightly out of their comfort zone, members of the public who can sing in tune or juggle a bit and the lining on Simon Cowell's pockets as he dehumanises us all further and creates a vacuum where once went talent then I look forward to the remainder of my days in boggle-eyed escapism locked in the prism of my own mind. Reality TV, get a grip people, get a damn grip!

Costa Del Sol - There are simply no words to describe the awfulness of the Costa Del Sol. There is no expression grim enough to capture the hollow banality of holidaying in this accursed place. It is hot and crowded and you can get egg and chips there, or all day fried breakfasts. It is a motorway service station with sunshine and an excess of violent drunks, syphillic lotharios and shaggamuffins. If we bring back Transportation, I would have criminals sent there. Well, the ones that didn't flee there in the 70s anyway. Ugh, just ugh.

Telling people your degree is in Philosophy - No, this does not mean I can tell you 'what's life all about then hey?'. I am also aware, painfully, of the limitations it has for employment purposes. I do not need you to observe that it's not much use in the real world. I do not point out that your partner would be of no use in a beauty contest or that your children are a quite a bit thicker than other children their age, I expect the same respect for my life. I worked hard for that degree. OK, that is not strictly true, I did very little work and got drunk using the taxpayer funded student grant available at the time rather a lot. This isn't about that, though, it's about YOU and your shoddy attitude to my degree. So there!

Hangovers - Possibly the most convincing evidence not only of God, but of one who loves to rip the piss. I mean, OK, drinking leads you into mischief a lot of the time, but does the punishment really meet the crime? And what's the deal with them getting worse the older I get and on much less alcohol?! I am much more reserved and sensible these days and yet I suffer on what appears to be an exponential curve of hangoverage. It is most unfair.

The world's most inappropriate ad agency.

2010-09-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the dynamic world of Out Of Order Adverts. Our aim is to increase your profit margin by appealing to the lowest common denominator and basest instincts of your proto-human client bases. To achieve this, we propose to find new, exciting and offensive ways of poking your product directly into the eyes of the audience, possibly coated in salt or a harsh abrasive. Below are a selection of innovative ideas that our crack team of ~~crack heads~~ advertising gurus have come up with, and if you are interested in our services, we will send a man in a gorilla suit to discuss this further at your convenience. Do not feed him. Seriously.

Danny Baker and the washing powder challenge - Danny Baker goes to the doorstep of random housewives and punches them in the face, repeatedly then chases them around the garden for an hour throwing a variety of breakfast and dinner dishes at them. Danny will then prove your powder really can tackle blood, sweat, gravy and eggs.

Alcocopops campaign - We propose to plagiarise the concept of Coco the monkey (he lives in the jungle, not in a zoo you know) and have him inform young adolescents of the joys of alcopops - this will be a slightly more grown up Coco (complete with wicked trainers and a generally crap attitude) who will probably still appeal to younger children, however we don't really care, and nor does Coco, you gotta start boozin' some time.

Gordon Brown advertises Twiglets - Former PM and all round idiot Gordon Brown will march along a line up of sweet old ladies and declare before each one 'You're a bigot' - at the end of the line he will come across a a Twiglet and do that rictus grin thing before declaring 'and you're a Twiglet!' Tagline - know your Twiglets from your bigots.

John Terry's The Smell of Cuckolds - John Terry launches a new fragrance for men called the Smell of Cuckolds and is shown in the bedroom of a man spraying himself with the Eau De Cologne doing his wife from behind whilst she wears his Chelsea shirt.

The inverse coffee campaign - A new take on the will they won't they coffee ads of the past. Our unattractive couple will refuse to drink your brand and over a number of months and years the campaign will show how their lives disintegrate in graphic and sometimes frightening detail. Tagline 'Losers don't drink xxxxxx'

Management Speak

2010-09-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

Having spent some time in the Blue Sky world of management, I feel it my solemn duty to impart what knowledge I can of the curious language which has embedded itself into the lexicon of man management. I see this as an organic task, to which individualised generics can be added. That said, this potato is burning my fingers, so I must proceed, with dispatch, to the glossary of terms and their true meaning which I hope you find of use.

Put that on the back burner - your idea is crap, it will die and be forgotten and you can forget any thoughts of a pay rise or promotion whilst I am your boss.

More bang for your buck - the only thing that matters is profit. Trample on who you need to, destroy hopes, lives and loves in the interest of ££££££££ gain.

Firstly let me say thank you for your interest in this position - yeah, you haven't got the job.

Let's retrofit that solution to our existing portfoilo - For God's sake help me cover my arse.

Let me worry about approval, you concentrate on the mechanics - Let me take all the credit, you concentrate on doing all the work.

It's been a challenging year - I am getting a bonus, none of you are. Some of you are getting P45s though.

I have to think of our client base - This idea does not appear to further my career or line my pocket in any way.

I've carefully considered everything you have had to say on this - And ignored it.

Our customers want one stop service - Keep the unwashed masses out of my hair or you're for it.

Work smarter - I am going to lay a few people off.

Go back to what we do best - I am going to lay a lot of people off.

You had a tough start to the year - I decided you were not getting a bonus this year in February.

Use the secrets wisely my friends.