Buzzing

Not drinking coffee for a week and then having a cup at 5pm is guaranteed to keep you up all night- which is why such things as blogs have been invented so we have something to do while we wait for our eyelids to droop. For me this is actually productive. Usually when confronted with a situation like this I don’t have a mug of hot milk or even listen to a whale song ambience mood cd or whatever. No, I prefer crap telly and chicken and pickle sandwiches, preferably with a large dollop of mayonnaise.   I don’t bother with the shop bought stuff anymore- I really don’t understand why, when you put the stuff in a glass jar, you need  E this and E that and guar gum and God knows what else when, in far less time than it takes to pop down the local supermarket I can whizz up a jug of the stuff with a food blender using only oil, eggs, vinegar and salt. And a bit of garlic, or mustard powder, or a bunch of herbs…whatever.

Having said that, I shouldn’t be eating mayonnaise at all because I have a weight problem with my feet. And those with the Knowledge will know the punchline to that.

The missus´birthday tomorrow, roast goose and trimmings, cake, the full monty. Got her a bottle of single malt as a present. Only fair, seeing as I drank the one I gave to her for Christmas the other night.

As the reason I set up this blog was because of the kids I guess I should mention them too. They don’t have grow up quick. Don’t need me for putting dvds on for them, or for logging on the computer, its all routine for them now. Both of them converse fluently in English now, which is more than can be said for their father. Daisy was really touching today, gave me half of the half of the chocolate bunny she had left over from Easter. We had a bit of a scare with her a few weeks ago when we thought she had diabetes. She had all the tests, all of which were negative thank goodness, but of course her mum explained why. So now she’ll say things like ” I won’t eat all of this because it has too much sugar”.

Enough productivity for one night and on with the crap telly!

The long, dark teatime of the soul

Happy Easter!

As this is the season of rebirth and regeneration then what better way to celebrate than to start writing my blog again. Nothing majorly symbolic, just suffering from what Keith Floyd termed “a creative hangover” without actually drinking hideous amounts of alcohol. Maybe that´s the key. The family is up at my in-laws, eating chocolate eggs and making snowmen. Yes, at Easter, no joke, snowmen. That´s the kind of place I live in. They are there and I’ve been at a training camp for the national teams of iaido (my thing), jodo and kendo. And a lot of fun it was too.

Arrived there at 1pm, started training- I was the instructor around two, about one hour behind schedule which I wasn’t too happy about but made up for it by continuing until 9pm. Then a sauna and liquid refreshment in the form of very cold beer. Lively discussion and a movie called “Balls of Fury” took us to 2am when we decided to call it a night. Didn’t see the end of the movie but if you liked Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” then watch this, fantastic piss-take. “Enter the Dragon” was one of the first martial arts movies I ever watched and the very first one I got out from our newly opened video library and played on our brand, spanking new video recorder. Yes I’m a child of the eighties but its only now in the new millenuium that it looks like I’ll be joining Maggie´s millions. “Always look on the Bright Side of Life” as they sang in one of the movies we also watched on the Ferguson VHS VCR. And the bright side here is that at least now I’ve got plenty of time to keep my blog updated:) Though its not a lack of time that is actually the problem but the lack of verve, get up and go, motivation, whatever you like to call it to park my bum in front of the computer and start tapping away.

Back to the weekend and up at the crack of 7 for breakfast and a full day of training. Competition practice in the morning and a thing called kazunuki in the afternoon. This is basically non-stop training which we managed for three hours. The guys had done 5 hours last summer so this was a walk in the park for them-except that quite a few ducked out as they didn’t have fond memories of that achievement. In the evening we enjoyed the traditional local pleasures of alternately sitting in a small dark and very hot room and throwing ourselves into the very cold water of a lake still covered, for the most part, in ice. And then more beer. We had filmed the competition practice and in the evening we watched ourselves and checked out our performances.  Very educational.  Tried to watch Kurosawa´s “Hidden Fortress” but it was much too high brow for that time of evening so gave up and went off to bed.

Sunday was rather low-key and we headed home after lunch and I went to my mum’s where dinner was waiting. Roast lamb washed down with Jumilla, the taste of the old country and of the Easters of my childhood and youth.

And after all that I’m now sitting in front of the screen, sipping Glenlivet and writing.  Nearly midnight and the family is back tomorrow and our house is a disaster area so the wise thing would be to go to bed and get up bright and early. I will probably finish off the bottle of Glenlivet and watch the first series of the Fast Show- Suits you sir! G´night!

Christmas is coming….

And the goose is getting fat,

Please put a penny in the old man’s hat,

If you haven’t got a penny

A ha´penny will do

And if you haven’t got a ha´penny

Then your windows go through!

Traditional Carol, the Scouse version