Observations

So I had an email in my inbox today from Friends Reunited. It said "there has been recent activity on Friends Reunited". My first thought was actually...i bet there hasn't.

Anyway, halfway between bored and intrigued I end up at Friends Reunited, only to confirm that not only has there not been any new activity, but there's actually just nothing there except for some virtual tumbleweed that I'm 93% certain I saw blow across the screen.

I say 93% certain, because I've run out of my tea bags and am experiencing increasing levels of paranoia and delusions. Before you get worried, please rest assured that my tea is not brewed from illegal compounds - there isn't even any caffeine in it. It's called White Tea (not to be mistaken with tea that has milk in it) and to bore anyone pitiful enough to be reading this, it's from the same plants as black tea (eg pg tips, typhoo* etc) only the tea leaves are picked from the young bud before it caffeinates or becomes bitter.

So, to summarise, my tea is weak and looks like pee but it makes me happy. Interestingly (and please understand that I've taken poetic license with the use of the word 'interestingly') on the box of a more expensive brand of White Tea there is the text: Tea drinking is a celebration of earth's bounty and various other new-age messages that led some of my so-called friends to accuse me of drinking (and I Quote Liz Brown) "Wicken Tea"and "Devil Water" and even went so far as to suggest I shouldn't drink it in church.

Anyone seeing any virtual tumbleweed across this screen?

My 9 month old girl is a bit of a wimp. And I'm not allowed to call her a wimp, so I will use the word 'sensitive'. She is terrified of unexpected noises, including (but not limited to) laughter, coughs, sneezes and loud clapping. If I laugh while she's in the room and it takes her by surprise she will look up at me, pause for 4-6 seconds and then the bottom lip quivers quickly followed by crying and genuine streaming tears.

The only way to stop the onset of crying once the bottom lip has started to quiver is to break into song, the most effective song being about a polar bear, with a song about some monkeys coming in a close second.

That was until yesterday when my singing actually escalated the crying up a phase to wailing (only two phases below hysteria) and the only thing that comforted her in the end was her mum.

This is a bit embarrassing but I got scammed on Tuesday. I was walking back from the shop when two guys and a girl approached me and said they were filming the new series of The Real Hustle, for BBC5. Not wanting to look stupid I pretended I had heard of BBC5 and said I was looking forward to the new show. They pointed out the "hidden" cameraman in a nearby shop window and said I should act like I was an innocent victim and go ahead with whatever happened to make good footage and ensure others don't fall for the same scams.

Always wanting the opportunity to be on television I agreed and they walked away as explained and re-appeared 30 seconds later. They told me they were selling diamonds worth £3000 for £800 and all i had to do was withdraw £800 cash then I would get the certified diamond. We went to the ATM and i withdrew the £800 at which point the girl punched me in the face and they ran away.

Once I'd stopped my nosebleed I went to complain to the "hidden" cameraman but he was a cardboard cutout.

You live and learn.

*Incidentally typhoo is a funny word, it sounds like a sneeze and in my marketing classes at university we were always told not to name brands after bodily functions

Turns out the Houndsfresh wasn’t a unanimous success. Comments ranged from “want a Smint?” to the slightly more hurtful “your breath smells like Ghandi’s flip-flop” and “did the bad-breath fairy do a whoopsie in your mouth?”
I’m just thankful it wasn’t date night with my wife.

Today I went to comparethemeerkat.com and as a result am feeling quite despondent. There are no factsheets on meerkats to be found. There is no information on the Lesser-Spotted Meer. In fact, the only Meerkat to feature on the entire website is called Alexander and I’m not even convinced he’s a real Meerkat. It has all been a publicity stunt – the website takes you to a slightly modified version of comparethemarket.com, a mediocre car insurance price comparison website. Charming meerkat Alexander aside, this was a waste of time as my car insurance isn’t due for 10 months, and got me no closer to completing new years resolution number 3 on my list.

1. Learn to raise one eyebrow. A facial expression made famous by Wrestler-Actor Dwayne Johnson (A.K.A. The Rock) who dubbed it The People’s Eyebrow. Don’t ask me how I know this or why I want to achieve it more than anything else this year.

2. Lose the Love Handles. Admittedly not the most original of resolutions, and one that actually goes against my exercise philosophy “don’t do it”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Nike, I just never ‘got’ why people would choose to exercise. It stands to reason, if you never play sports you will never get sports injuries. And to those gym-members / sado-masochists who say No Pain = No Gain I argue No Pain = No Pain. It’s a philosophy that I’ll live and die by and because of it I’ll probably die 12 years earlier than the gym monkeys, but at least I’ll die happy and my grandchildren wont be scared that if they hug me I’ll snap like a breadstick. I digress. The real reason for needing to lose a few lbs is not vanity but thrift. If I lose the Christmas weight I’m still carrying I wont have to shell out on a new pair of jeans.

3. Learn stuff about Meerkats.

Last night I was babysitting as my wife was out, and I was put off watching repeats of CSI by a really pungent smell in the house. I checked that it wasn’t me or the baby and then went about the mammoth task of eliminating every possible odour source.

Armed with a bottle of Febreeze I began lightly spritzing any and all items in our house that have ever smelled bad. After one hour and one litre of Febreeze I could still detect the sour smell, so I got out the Febreeze+ (with added ammonia) and systematically Febreezed the whole house.

I don’t remember much else about the evening. Apparantly, when my wife got home I was passed out near the kitchen bin, which must be true, because it’s not on my list of approved places to take a nap.

After an overnight stay at the local A&E I was discharged, but not before a counsellor from the hospital rehab programme gave me her card and suggested I get help.

I looked on Google and there are no reported cases of Febreeze poisoning, so it looks like I’m the first!
Not really sure how I feel about that.

simplicity

We went to DFS at the weekend. Our old sofa was beginning to decompose and we happened to receive a personal invitation to a DFS ‘pre-sale party’ through the door. The invitation waxed lyrical about the spectacular party; champagne on arrival, double discounts throughout the store, live entertainment…

As we hadn’t been to a party since December 31st we decided to make an appearance but as we parked the car I desperately hoped we hadn’t made an error of judgement in getting dressed up.

We walked up to the front door just in time to see the DFS Sale sign on the pavement get knocked over by an obese lady with poor spatial awareness. This set the tone for the remainder of the party:

· The warm champagne (in Styrofoam cups) was being served by the same person who was single-handedly tackling all customer enquiries and answering the phone
· The double discounts applied to six of the seventy sofas on display, all of which were grossly overpriced to start with, or just plain gross
· Finally, the live entertainment was a clown, whose repertoire was limited to juggling three balls and falling over his own shoes.

It was about as sensational as fish fingers.

Which is fine, as long as you’re 6 years old or ever so slightly simple.

If I’m honest, I’m worried that my 7 month old daughter might be a bit on the simple side. I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s just that last night during her bed-time story she started laughing every time we turned the page. There was nothing theatrical about the page turning and there were no accompanying sound effects. It wasn’t a good book (who writes a children’s story about bees?) and even the pictures were lacklustre. But there she was hur-hurring away to herself at something which ranks about as funny as a nosebleed.

So in a bit of a panic this morning I reached for the yellow pages (the internet connection was down) and started searching for a child development helpline, only to find that I was so accustomed to using Google for just about everything that I didn’t actually know how to find information from a book any more. I considered calling 118, but resent the idea of being charged considerable sums of money to slowly spell the word ‘development’ to a Geordie on the other end of the line:

Geordie: Got Your Numbah!
Me: Child development helpline please.
Geordie: “What’s that man? Child De-what?
Me: Child Development helpline.
Geordie: Um…ahhh…ah canney find it man…Spell it f’rus like
Me: D-E-V…
Geordie: Slow down like...

Money well spent.

I knew it didn’t really classify as an emergency so I refrained from calling 999 and tried NHS Direct instead. To cut a long story short, they asked me a series of unrelated, randomly selected questions for 8 minutes and then finally asked when the baby was due and if I needed an ambulance. At this point I hung up and assumed the person on the other end of the phone was on drugs or ever so slightly simple…

My Tesco shop got delivered last night, and for some unknown reason they substituted my usual tube of Aquafresh with a tube of ‘Houndsfresh’ chicken flavoured toothpaste for dogs. As we had run right out of the mint variety I was forced to take the plunge before leaving for work this morning and go with the Houndsfresh.

Once you get over the initial taste and texture (which I can only liken to a foamy chicken mousse) it really wasn’t that bad. That being said I haven’t actually spoken to any of my colleagues whilst standing any closer than 1 metre away from them yet, so I guess the jury’s still out for now.