GOING OUT

Well, where are we…? Back deep inside enemy territory, I fear. Back in the dark place where the “enemy” is chiefly myself. Lurking in a strange world where I’m trying to think of new and novel things to tell you about and yet things in this humble little life are being very static, still and uneventful.

On the positive side, it is, however, a time of year when the “holiday season” means that, professionally at least, the unexpected can come along thankfully far less often than when everyone is available to make their demands upon your time and so you can actually get along with some of the things that you really need to be getting on with and have far fewer distractions. The working day therefore seems, from the point of view of external influences, remarkably quiet (although I’m sure that having said that, it won’t be now...) and so I am able to take some time to experiment in those shiny new software packages that I have remained unfamiliar with and take my time over my projects instead of blundering my way through a huge pile of the stuff in my “in” tray…

Which gives me time to think...

To think things like: Do people (real people, you know...? People who have “grown-up” jobs) even have things like in trays any more...?

Or have they gone the way of the briefcase...? That once ubiquitous prop of the “businessperson” that you seldom see nowadays and which seems to have been consigned to the bin of history alongside the bowler hat and the stripy trousers...

Which, rather naturally, brings me around to thinking about the successes and failures of my current everyday life…

In the “failures” column of life, I have failed to attend plays which I probably should have done in order to remain supportive of certain chums (although to be fair I was on holiday at the time…), and failed to unwrap and read my subscription magazines (so that’s money well spent), although I finally notice that one was overdue and rang my subscription service only to be told it had lapsed. Now, as the whole point of taking out subscription services is to “never miss a copy” I wasn’t best pleased to have not been sent a reminder and told them so in few uncertain terms before dashing off to the supermarket to get a copy.

Failure to communicate is still failure, is it not, but so is a failure to keep calm abut such things...

However, whilst perhaps not at first glance an obvious contender for the “successes” column, I have successfully managed to break one of my favourite mugs which I left at the top of the stairs in order not to forget to take it downstairs later. As I left the bathroom, my toe just clipped it enough to send it sailing in a perfect arc and I was able to watch the whole flight as it soared through the air and then plummeted towards the bottom of the stairs.

Now, I’ve never excelled at things like “footballing” but even I was able to admire the perfection of that perfectly timed arc that was the path my drinking vessel took as it flew towards its date with its own ultimate destiny. If I had purposely managed to be so deft with my right foot during my younger years, my life could, no doubt, have been very different, but, like the time I took one shot at a basketball hoop and the ball went into it first time without touching the sides, these things are sadly just flukes and one-offs and could never be repeated successfully.

Meanwhile, the mug itself did not shatter into pieces as I expected it to, and I thought I’d got away with it until I tried to make tea in it later and the liquid was dripping out through an almost invisible hairline crack that reluctantly consigned it to history.

Other “successes” include the fact that I have also successfully booked a restaurant for an evening out some time soon. I’d had one of those emails from a pub we once spent a pleasant enough evening eating in, and after which I foolishly filled in one of those “customer satisfaction” forms that ask for your email address. Ever since, I have, naturally enough, found myself on an “e-mailing list” which tells me about upcoming events which they think that I might “enjoy” because they know me so little.

Whilst all of the “Elvis” and “ABBA” nights generally fail to appeal, the “taster menu” nights from their rather high-quality restaurant always get my attention, so, when one promoting their “fish tasting night” popped in I dutifully ignored it. When it popped in again about a week and a half later, I felt that it was safe enough to mention it out loud at home now because it was likely to be fully booked.

In this way, the offer of a “night out” would have been made without any of that tricky nonsense of actually having to go anywhere. Cunning, eh...?

Unfortunately, the fates were conspiring against me because, not only was my suggestion greeted by alarming levels of enthusiasm, but my subsequent tentative enquiry of the venue itself discovered that not only were tables still available, but that they had provisionally booked one for us, and so now all that I had to do was drop in and pay the deposit sometime... That and, of course, attend the evening itself.

This all means, of course, that another evening of “going out” needs to be trickily anticipated and negotiated through which, for an unsociable git like I am, is always going to be a it of an ordeal, and not only that, but one that I will also have put my hand into my pocket and actually (knife and) fork out for…

Still, there’s no reason to stay in at the moment anyway.

There’s nothing at all on the telly because of the “Jumparunathon” thing that’s going on in Londinium, although that does mean that things like “The Bridge” and the shiny disc rentals are getting turned around far more frequently. I did sit down for some “news” the other night, but there was, it seemed, only “sports news” to be found in the world, and it seemed that they were mostly sports that wouldn’t have looked out of place on “Kid’s TV” or the grand old days of “It’s A Knockout” which might, at the very least, explain why my country seems to be better at them.

So there was no “real” news, not at least that is, until Huw turned on his “serious face” as the camera angle changed to an angle that did not include the big happy sports stadium as his background image. “Real” news, “serious” news, “proper” news, it seems, cannot have a great big bowl dedicated to “fun and games” as its backdrop, but it’s also strange how quickly the newscaster’s face can make that all important switch from levity to gravitas at the flick of a switch that jumps between between camera outputs.

A bit like me when I got that reply to my email.