Your feet’s too big

There are many things in life that you can do to make things difficult. Like trying to perform brain surgery wearing oven gloves. Or paint a copy of The Last Supper using a 3 inch brush and Dulux paint.

There are also things in life that are made more difficult because of things beyond your control. Like wanting to be a trapeze artist but you have vertigo. Or wanting to be a Bobby Davro impersonator, but you have a cracking sense of humour and speak in received pronunciation.

Or you try to do something sporty but are 6′3 and have size 13 feet.

I’m sorry, but I’m just too far away from my feet to make most sports workable. The broadband that you are using to read this will be slower the further your router is from the wall socket. Similarly, the response of my feet and legs is slower as my head is further away than with the average person.

Cycling works well for me. I can jump, go for miles without hands (including cornering) and do all the tricks the average 12 year old can do on a mountain bike. This is where my feet work perfectly. They just take it in turns to push down. And they only occasionally rub against the front wheel going round corners because they’re so stupidly long.

As a result of all of the feet I have, it’s very rare that I’ve owned a set of trainers. Walking shoes: yes. Trainers: no.

But it’s been sales time in the shop – the happy time for all us clothing freaks. The tall, the short, the fat, the thin – all of the extremes of body shapes can proudly approach the sale rail and find an Aladdins cave of great deals. So too those of us with big feet.

It was the end of the trainer sale in the sports department. Only the shoes on display were left, with only single sizes left over. As a result, the sales assistant seemed surprised to see someone trying trainers on – there were only size 7s and 12/13s left.

And now I own some running trainers. I am going to run. I shall be a runnist. I only mention this because, if you happen to see someone moving fast with legs flailing around, with an expression on his face like he’s trying to do really hard maths and an army assault course at the same time – it’s probably just a 6′3 person with size 13 feet trying to make his feet do something they haven’t done since he was 16.

Be nice to the freak feets.

Snow? Balderdash!

As the country comes to a shuddering (or should that be shivering?) halt, with everyone housebound by snow with only ‘Cash in the Attic’ on TV, there will be an inevitable temptation to start a board game involving the entire family. Whatever you do people, don’t do it.

The problem with playing board games with the entire family is that you’ve already reached rock-bottom before it’s suggested. You’ve listened to everything on your Ipod 10 times in a row. You’ve searched every tv channel, discovered the QVC shopping channel hour-long special ’scrap-booking with Candice’ is the best television has to offer and are now watching it again on QVC+1. Perhaps the batteries have run out in every present you’ve been given, and you’ve done every square foot of carpet in the house with a lint-roller. Traditionally there is nothing else to do but break out the boardgames.

The thing is, when you’ve hit rock bottom, board games are the only thing that can unlock another level to sink to.

There’s the inevitable build-up. One person has a brilliant idea to play one, and then chirpily encourages everyone else to join in. A little flicker of hope out the boredom lights in every eye.

Everyone rushes around the house. Drinks are got. Biscuits and Quality Street opened and put on the coffee table – the next couple of hours are going to be action-packed, and there won’t be time to go and make a sandwich…

One person, normally the one who owns the most number of pocket calculators, explains the rules to everyone. Then they explain it two more times for granny or grandad, before granny or grandad exclaim ‘I’m sure I’ll pick it up as we go along’. We know they won’t.

For the next 10 minutes there is action. Everyone’s scrutinising the role of the dice, the spinning of the spinney thing on the board. You’re all planning a winning strategy. The living room is filled with people taking on the mindset of the illegitimate offspring of Alan Sugar, Bruce Willis and the guy who invented the electric can-opener. It’s just like the advert. Who’ll be the first one to break?

Of course, the first one to break won’t be the loser in this situation. Far from it in fact. Since the dawn of time, no attempt to play a board game has ever lasted more than 20 minutes before one person cracks. They get bored. They start taking their turn slowly. The inevitable line, ’sorry… who’s go is it? Oh, it’s mine’, is uttered from stage-left. The phrases ‘is this game nearly finished’, or ’shall we just say x won?’ signal the end is nigh.

Within 30 minutes the living room has gone from all the thrill of the fair to the closing moments of The Italian Job. I know this – I’ve played ‘Absolute Balderdash’.

And in many respects the ’snow event’ (didn’t it used to just be called weather?) is exactly same. The news of oncoming snow creates a little flicker of hope in peoples’ eyes that we’ll be taken out of our routine. We sit around for a few days marvelling in its snow-white glory. We have good, childish fun. Everyone pitching in together with a real sense of community spirit. And then the doubters start: ‘Productivity down’, ‘feeble Britain beaten by snow’. And people want out.

I’m always sad when the board games is put away having not reached its true potential. And right now, I’m sitting watching the snow melt realising that pretty soon everything will be back to normal – the grumbling downers will have us back out of our British Blitz spirit and packing away the sledge boxes in no time.

House

I’ve been busy lately doing DIY (more to come on that later). But I did have time to try out an HDR version of my French Chauteau…

Snow!

Some Christmassy scenes…

Posting in the name of

Firstly, let me congratulate you all. Yes, you. All of you. Every single one of you. Well, every single one of you who bought ‘Killing in the name of’. Not only have you reaffirmed my faith in music – as a musician, it’s important to feel there are people out there who want to hear real music rather than the plastic pre-packed string-cheese variety pedalled by Simon Cowell, possible the only organ-grinder to also play the role of monkey – but you’ve given me opportunity to feel like I’m 15 and standing in the crowd at Reading watching RATM at their heights.

But where was I? Ah yes, Christmas cards.

Living in a small close, it’s inevitable that you’re going to get someone else’s post from time to time. It’s not the postman’s fault. The fact that most streets are now laid out using such unfathomable mathematics with even numbers on the left, odds to the right, and prime numbers down a separate lane unless they add up to 30, mean that you need Rain Man to find a specific house in less than 30 minutes.

This means that every now and then you’ll see people nipping across the road a few minutes after the postman’s gone and putting a letter or two into the correct house.

But then there are the nomadic letters. The ones that seem to zig-zag their way down the street like a drunk on his way home on New Year’s eve. Every step of the way gets a new little note scribbled on the front in different shades of black and blue and a myriad of calligraphy as the list of attempted deliveries grows.

Then, all of a sudden the music to this game of pass-the-parcel stops and it lands on your doorstep.

I looked over the front of the letter. It had made a kamikaze trip to end up on my doorstep, via numbers 44, 42, 49, and now some helpful person had written ‘try 46′. This letter hadn’t just arrived here by accident, someone had suggested it was for me.

Then I noticed the names, ‘Morris and Vicky’. At first I thought they must have noticed that two people live here, and that was that. But then the thought occurred, do they think we look like a Morris and a Vicky? The lovely Sarah doesn’t come off too bad in that deal, ‘Vicky’s a perfectly acceptable name. But I’m Morris? Morris suggests I blunder around in a Leyland Princess like Terry Scott in Terry and June. Morris suggests I’m on the committee at the bowls club. Morris suggests I spend my Saturday afternoons shouting, ‘jolly good show’ at the cricket. It suggests I’m on the planning committee of some society or another. Or that I have an interest in collectible corn flake packets from the years 1972-76, excluding special editions.

I know no one is ever going to guess my name, but still…

Let it snow, nothing goes, it’s all woe

In the last 24 hours you’d be forgiven for thinking the world was coming to an end. British Airways cabin crews planned reworking of the twelve days of Christmas was declared illegal by the High Court. As a result it is now against the law for bleach blonde men and women wearing enough make-up to paint an elephant to complain about their working conditions and take Christmas off.

In the world of the wireless, Sir Terry Wogan will make his final breakfast show tomorrow morning ending his 17-year run creating the country’s most listened-to radio programme. As Sir Terry ended his penultimate show, sister-station FiveLive decided to try and steal some thunder by bringing Rage Against The Machine live and then being surprised when they didn’t cut the 15 F words from their song. Someone please tell the show’s producer that the clue was in the words – ‘F you I won’t do whatcha tell me’.

Simon Cowell may not get the Christmas number 1. He’s been in newspapers with a certain quiver in his lip saying that everyone’s ruining things and is out to get him – someone forgot to tell everyone that the official prize for the X-Factor was the Christmas Number 1 slot.

And now it’s snowing. Canada may get enough of the stuff in an average year to bury the Chrysler building and still get to work in time to harvest a few moose. But we’re going to get a couple of inches by the morning, with only 4 days of warnings which means we’ll be using the opening lines of W H Auden’s ‘Stop the Clocks’ as a guide on how to cope a temperature of -3.

Let’s see if I’m right…