The Burning Question Is......

....should I make an attempt to continue with the chart for the Dear 16 tag or not? Earlier in the week I tried to add connection onto a print of it with handwritten lines and the result looks like a web weaved by a drunken apprentice spider.

Will the satisfaction of the final achievement be worth the effort, will I get lost in a sea of blog titles, links and open tabs on my PC? Is anyone interested anyhow?

Thoughts?

Everybody Wants To Be A Cow

Lately I've become aware of a bit of a happening over here in Blighty. It's a happening to do with fashion, with leather specifically. Or without leather, to be even more specific.

As the biting chilly air and dark grey evenings of a London winter really start to set in, I've noticed that the shops are full to the brim of leather jackets. They're beautifully soft to the touch, some are given the worn and faded look and others and shiny and black. Some have those white fur collars, the ones that make your neck feel warm just by looking at them, others have built in hoodies to make it look as though you're wearing a hoodie underneath.

There are biker style jackets, bought by people who've never dreamed of riding a motorbike, there are world war two fighter pilot's ones, bought by people whose knowledge is gleaned entirely from watching Airplane and there are trench coats, worn by fellows who haven't even watched Blackadder goes forth.

And all these jackets, as different as they are, have one thing in common; they're all not made from leather, which kind of reminds me of the old joke, you know the one.

Chap A says: What have Attila the Hun, Winnie the Pooh and Henry VIII got in common?

Fellow M says: I don't know, what have they got in common?

Chap A: They've all got the same middle name. Badumtish.

Luckily I'm a drummer so I can chuck in the "badumtish" with relative ease.

It seems that fake leather has reached a new level of sophistication. In these days of iPhones, Satnav, ereaders and the tiniest of remote control helicopters, ( hard to believe I know but I own one for office use) one would think that fake leather would have been an easy thing to perfect some time ago.

But no, for so many years fake leather has looked as shiny as a black bin bag dipped in varnish, felt about as authentic as Celine Dion playing drums with James Brown's band and smelt like Jerry's underpants after the elephant incident. Around these parts the only people wearing them were fellows going to a fancy dress party dressed as the Fonz. Or poor people.

Then bang, the boffins went and perfected the stuff. They've probably got to a stage where everything else has been invented, apart from time travel and a PC operating system that actually works of course. I've heard that time travel is close though.

These current versions really do feel like leather, they look like leather and they cost about a quarter of the price. The odour isn't authentic just yet, but at least it's not as repugnant as it used to be (sorry Jerry). As I've been casually browsing through racks of the things more often than not I have to look at the label to figure out if they're real or fake.

Naturally, as the metrosexual man about town whom you know so well, I had to buy one. It's got that brown and faded look going on, is softer to the touch than a kitten wearing a velvet waistcoat and looks even better.

And it was so cheap inexpensive that, when it goes out of fashion in about four hours time, I can afford to get the latest thing. That's the problem with real leather jackets. You spend a fortune on one but, if you go for the highly trendy type, then it will be out of vogue before you can say "the fashion Police are coming". Only the minted, top business people, film stars, NGOs and the like can afford to live like this.

Normal people like us have to wear the latest thing for one season and then face about four or five years of wearing it and looking like a person who doesn't even know what ANTM stands for.

As far as I'm concerned fake leather is the new real.

And cows are happier too.

Ooops Dad Did It Again!

It was about eight forty five in the morning, that's quarter to nine for the less advanced amongst you, and I was busily pretending to do some work at my desk. My mobile rang, that's a cell for the Lankans among you. I glanced at the display and it said "A calling", A being the fifteen year old daughter, not A the carpet cleaner.

I had that momentary feeling of worry that most parents can probably relate to. Her class should have started so I wondered if she might be at home sick or if there might have been some sort of emergency going on. After some fumbling around with the new sexy phone, that old man's fumbling that involves staring at the thing and wondering how the hell I answer a call, I managed to figure which virtual button to press.

It was one of those calls that people make by mistake, those annoying but interesting ones when they've left their phone in a pocket or a bag and somehow they or the phone have managed to make a call that they're unaware of.

They're annoying because the receiver usually rolls an eye or two, makes that tutting noise and feels slightly angry at the interruption. They're not that annoying though are they? We always listen, realise what's happened and then keep listening for far longer than is really needed, just to satisfy our curiosity and be a bit of a peeping tom, perhaps an eavesdropping Dad in this case.

True to form I listened and heard a cacophony of voices. It was evident that A was in her class, probably with her phone in her bag. I could just about pick out her voice but the main sound was that horrible clutterred mix of schoolkids, girls at that. It sounded as if it was the class get together thing before the teacher had turned up, all excitedly showing off and laughing and shouting. I did that "Hello, hello, A are you there?" thing that we all do too. There was no response.

After the most brief of listens, perhaps only staying on the line for about ten minutes, I hung up and thought that it would be good to call her back, to let her know that she's left her phone on, which is a serious offence in her school. I did so.

The phone rang then was answered by A. But, before she said anything I heard another adult voice saying "you're year 11 now, you're now getting away with this".

I heard A say something quite meekly to the adult voice, along the lines of "sorry" and then the line went dead. As I write this post I'm waiting to hear the consequences. In all likelihood her phone has been confiscated and I'll be public enemy number one. My pleas of only calling her to tell her that the phone was on and such will be met with the wrath.

Vut too doo?

Dear 16 - The Audit Trail

The Dear 16 year old me has been, it's fair to say, quite a success. Of course success is relative and I mean that it's been a success if one judges it by the volume of posts that have resulted and the general "interest" factor.

If you'll let me be honest with you I'll inform you that I feel quite the proud father about this. I mean to say, I sort of started it. And, while there's a small dose of honesty going around here I should share the fact that I so nearly lied to you in that original post. You see I was so close to pretending that the topic itself was my idea when the truth was that I'd seen it on Jonathan Ross' Twitter. I'm not sure on the apostrophe situation with the name "Ross" either.

My initial post tagged the Gypsy and DD, some wise choices I had thought. If one wants a tag to take off and spread like wildfire (the fires that are wild not the band, who are no longer I think) then these two bloggers appeared perfect. The Gypsy, though prone to strange hand movements, can always be relied upon to come out with an eloquent and elegant bit of wordcraft. We waited for a few days and then she did her stuff. Ever the rebel though, she went and tagged three people, that's a whole fifty per cent more than was allowed in the rules. The cheek of the girl!

DD responded and tagged the Blacker Bros, a risky and dangerous move. These ad people are generally too cool for school and it was always a gamble as to whether the bros Blacker would respond. I played a gig the other night to a room full of ad people and they stood there, arms crossed, with a look on their faces as if we'd just told them that they could do with dressing a bit more trendily when they go to work. Yes, they're a tough crowd.

But TKRP responded pretty quickly with this post and, some days later DB kicked out this beauty. It started a minor spat about the exact period in which DD and DB actually met as well, always a bonus. The bros done well.

About this time I thought I might try and do a chart of sorts, just to see how things had, and would progress. After some deliberation I settled on Word as the software of choice. For a bloke with my knowledge there wasn't a lot of deliberation to be done and Word was the only I have a passing knowledge of that might have done the job. I proceeded and drew lines, arrows and added in links and all sorts of things that I hadn't the slightest clue could be done.

The chart is rapidly becoming an indecipherable scrawl of blue and black ink, but I hope, if you decide to click and enlarge it, that you'll be able to follow the story so far. So far up until Friday morning that is. I'm at home and it's Sunday evening as I write this, you'll most likely be reading the post on Monday and the chart outlines the position as at Friday morning. If your first name is Dr and your surname is Who then you might just understand that last sentence.

My last foray into the Lankanosphere showed that there have been a few more people writing their Dear 16 post. I wonder if it will continue or if it will get too boring soon. Surely there must come a point at which we all get bored of hearing how we were all desperately trying to have sex at 16, how none of us actually had done and how much wiser we are at this age. It's interesting to observe that we all think we've learned loads between 16 and now, whatever now is, yet we talk as if we know it all now.

I wonder if I'll write a letter to the 43 year old me when I'm 70 and think that I knew nothing when I was 43. It's also a damn scary thought that the gap between 16 and now is that same as that between now and being 70, if my maths is correct of course.

Many of the Dear 16s have been poignant, touching and quite revealing. Dinidu's is one such example, though he had the audacity to tag me. If he'd been within striking distance I'd have attempted to give him a cuff round the ear. Instead I sent him a copy of the chart with a note saying that I started it. Sometimes these kids have to be told.

I'm still waiting for Hissyfits' one, pretty much guaranteed to be funnier than a jar full of Stephen Fry's Tweets on acid, and I've discovered a bunch of blogs that I had never read before, always a good thing.

I'll keep on trying to update the chart but I fear it won't be long before I drown in the scrawl, or at least need to go on to a second page, which could be way beyond me. In the meantime if anyone wants an emailed copy of it just ask, leave a comment or whatever and I'll chuck it across.

Happy Monday all.

Random Things I've Been Randomly Doing

1. Seeing Muse

2. Gigging

3. Trying to work out a drum solo for gigs using paradiddles and Kandyan rhythms.

4. Having quite a few headaches.

5. Pondering on why the steering wheel is one of my most important things in choosing a car.

6. Learning about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Not to be confused with a grandmother standing on a stepladder. That's a higher Archchi.

7. Hearing a slightly disconcerting noise coming from within the bowels of my MacBook.

8. Eating a breakfast, one a day actually.

9. Trying to keep track of the Dear 16 year old me tag.

Et vous?

Photo Of The Moment

It's by Dinidu.

It's brilliant.

Some Rare RD Wisdom

Once in a while, I estimate it more accurately to be about once in every forty three years I come up with a piece of wisdom, a little nugget of wise behaviour. Yesterday such a thing happened. It took me by surprise. Here's the story.

We had a bit of a flood at work last week. It wasn't one of biblical proportions, there weren't fellows sailing around on arks with lots of animals on board, but in terms of my work and my office it was quite big. We had to find the source of the water leak, a job that's still ongoing, and deal with the aftermath. The biggest bit of damage was of the water type to the carpet in our meeting room. We needed to get a carpet cleaner out to, well carpet clean, not unsurprisingly for the more astute among you, those ones sitting at the front.

And, if I may take you back to when I was about DD's age, one of my very first jobs was to sell carpet cleaning services door to door for a chap, we'll call him A, who I'm still friendly with about twenty years later. I use the word "friendly" in quite a loose manner. He's a bit of a division four chum, someone who I see once in a while, go out for a beer or a meal with, then wonder why on earth I did that as he's such a pain.

To be fair, it's probably his longevity more than his intrinsic quality that gains him membership into the very exclusive club that is known as the RD circle of friends. In fact it's more of a dot than a circle.

These days he still cleans carpets. Frankly, from what he has told me his business doesn't appear to be doing very well and so, last week, when finding myself in need of a carpet cleaner I called him for what I thought was a quite urgent job. I left messages, I sent him texts and tried several different numbers, some of them his. After about thirty six hours he got back to me.

I was in meetings and explained to A that I needed some stuff done and while he was there would he clean another couple of offices and leave the invoice on my desk for me when he was done. As I know about the price of carpet cleaning, as I used to sell it for A, I felt that I had sufficient knowledge and also that I trusted him enough to just get the job done and charge accordingly. It was a job that most carpet cleaning companies would have charged about £200 for.

The morning after he'd done what was a superb job I came into work and saw his invoice on my desk. He had handwritten a box in which he said that he had to do lots of extra cleaning as the carpet was so dirty but, if there were any queries, just to call him. The invoice was for £450. I had fourteen heart attacks and farted quite a bit. £450 was extortionate and I knew what A had done, or tried to do. He'd looked around at the office, he thinks (wrongly) that I've got a few quid in my pocket and reckoned that we, as a company, could afford it and would pay the amount without question.

The "call me if you have a query" bit was also a clear indication that he was trying it on. Most people, if they're charging what they really think is a fair price, don't go into the scenario thinking that their customer is going to baulk, or fart. I did both.

I don't mind telling you, my reader, that I was extremely disappointed with the situation. Here was an old friend, someone who I've been kind to over the years, someone who I was trying to help by giving him the business, trying to rip me off. It wasn't on. I called him.

I started by thanking him for a job well done and telling him how pleased I was. Then, like a Leopard pouncing on a carpet cleaner who had tried to overcharge, I told him that I was a bit surprised and disappointed about the high bill.

What followed was a half hour comedy conversation. A tried to squirm his way out of it, but not in any way that satisfied me. He attempted to justify the high cost through logic that only a Sri Lankan personnel manager on an efficiency course would possibly understand. At every junction and each turn he contradicted himself and made things worse. He told me that it was because the square yardage he had cleaned was so great, then couldn't remember what the size of the area was. He told me that the job took such a long time, then said that it wasn't about the number of hours taken. I realised that he should have been employed as a digger of holes, big and deep ones.

The gist of it was that he continued to try to justify the price when I knew that he had come to a figure of "about £500" simply because he thought he could get away with it. All too early in the conversation he offered to reduce the bill by £100, which didn't really help. I still felt that the price was too high and that he'd attempted to take advantage of me. We ended in a stalemate.

A asked me what I wanted and what he could do. I told him that I didn't know, that in reality I just wished he hadn't tried to charge the amount in the first place and that now the damage was done. It was an awkwardly dodgy situation. He offered a reduced amount yet still claimed that the original price was fair. I said that I'd pay the £450 if he was so adamant that it was appropriate, though I knew that I'd never ask him to clean a carpet for me again.

We had a stifled "friend's" conversation after that and parted. Neither of us was happy but I knew in my heart that I was in the right and my conscience was clear. A clear conscience is one thing, but I was left with the invoice to pay. I sat on it, the matter not the invoice. The fact was that it was wrong to pay the amount and it would have been wrong not to.

Then, yesterday morning I had my flash of inspiration. It has made me smile and feel that, were someone writing a bible right now, they'd look at me and consider using this as a parable or a stable or whatever they're called.

I gave the invoice to the woman who never pays for her lunch and asked her to write a cheque made payable to A for £350. Then I also asked her to do another cheque for £100 but to leave the payee blank. I sent them both in the same envelope to A, with a compliment slip. I wrote a message on the compliment slip and asked him to do whatever he felt was correct with the £100 cheque, to make it payable to himself, give it to charity or rip it up.

I have a feeling that I'll never find out what A decides to do with the cheque. I'll let you know if I do.

I'm quite chuffed with myself though, just thought I'd tell you. I can't wait until I'm eighty six.