Too Many Books Spoil The ?

Sadly and much to my dismay I couldn't think of a witty and clever rhyming word to chuck in the title. If I was prone to dressing in dark clothes and listening to Joy Division a lot I could have used the word "goth" and you'd have no doubt chuckled at my wordy dexterity. Nor am I a moth. or a cloth even, so we're left with a question mark. Feel free to submit a suggestion if you have one.

Reading is one of my most enjoyed activities. I do it voraciously and have done for many years. I read all sorts of things; books, both fiction and that other boring type, magazines, blogs and just about anything else you can think of that displays the written or the virtual word. There's rarely a point in my life when I don't have at least one fictional book, one non fictional one and a couple of magazines on the go.

My Kindle has been one of the best presents I've ever received, enabling me to carry around a huge volume of books wherever I go. Currently it has forty one of the virtual books on board and, according to those nice Amazon people, that means it will hold another thousand or more before it gives up the ghost.

Yet lately, say in the last month or so, I've been struggling to find that enthusiasm to read. I've munched my way through a few decent novels, Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby and Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh are two that were particularly memorable, but am now failing to feel that attraction, that can't put it down because I NEED to find out what happens next feeling that a good book instills.

As well as the Kindle I've got more than twenty proper books, those ones made out of paper, wood and the environment, waiting patiently on the shelves for me. The Chinaman is firmly placed at number one in that group, yet all I've done so far is read a couple of pages and thought that it sounds as fantastic as all you lot say it is.

I've been wondering why I've failed to find the big motivation to read. I don't think that lack of time is a viable excuse as I often read in bed or in those in between moments and I do get quite a lot of time alone, when C or the girls aren't around.

Earlier today I discovered something on the Kindle that I didn't realise it could do; collections. Yes I can make a collection, give it a name and then chuck books into it. Until my discovery I thought that all the books had to be listed individually, though I knew that they could be sorted in several different ways.

I played around with the feature for a bit, making a Terry Pratchett collection and bunging the TP books in there. Then, getting a bit more confident and serious about things, I made two more collections. One is called "Fiction Read" and the other called "Currently Reading". Why I called it "Fiction Read" instead of "Read Fiction" I'm not sure about, but it made sense at the time.

As time marches on I reckon I'll categorise a bit more, perhaps making a management collection, though I might call it "Mgmt" or even "Mgmnt" and maybe a self help section. I might throw in a "Fiction not read" and might get rid of the Terry P section as the principle of filing by author runs in contradiction to that of filing by genre. It seems that each book can only go in one collection so the five TP books I have, though read, nay devoured, are in the TP collection rather than the "Fiction read" one. I'm a rebel like that.

The thing is though, the "Currently Reading" collection has eleven, yes eleven titles in it. Four of them I'd class as self help, three I consider "Mgmnt" and four are firmly in the fiction category.

As I look at them I realise that there are too many, that's the crux of my problem, I'm spreading myself too thinly, with the result that I can't focus on one book. Compounding the problem is the fact that I'm quite enjoying every single one of them and therefore reluctant to put any on the back burner.

Do I persevere with the magnificent eleven, knowing that I may well end up not remembering any of them that well, or do I choose a few to put on the back burner and come back to later?

Vut too doo?

Some Friday Fear

And you thought your commute was tough!

Of Passion, Creativity, Work and Muse

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is these people who follow a passion and are lucky enough to do it for their livelihood.

As I watched the truly stunning performance by Muse at Wembley Stadium the other night I felt conscious that I was seeing three talented beyond belief musicians at the very top of their game doing something they love and gettting paid hugely for it in every way possible.

There are musicians, artistes, writers and vocational types like Doctors and teachers, many of whom have chosen to pursue the thing they love to make a living. Some of them succeed and become the Muses, the de Niros, the JK Rowlings and the, well, Gregory Houses of the world, making fortunes, gaining wordlwide recognition and of course doing lots of work for charity, though not talking about it.

Others, the vast majority, play in bands in pubs and clubs after work (something I know quite a lot about), write books and blogs or act in fringe theatre and spend most of their money to do it. We dream of that big break, yes even at my age, yet know it's unlikely to come.

Here in the UK the music scene is so stark that the only musicians making any money are the ones who suddenly wake up to find themselves in a famous band, often talented but rarely the most gifted and brilliant musicians around. A couple of rungs down the ladder we find the world of the top quality session guy. There are ten, perhaps twenty, amazingly good drummers here who get most of the work going.

They're the best around, hard working, with interpersonal skills that Bill Clinton would admire and they have the respect and admiration of all their fellow musicians. Despite all that, despite the fact they probably earn a "comfortable" living, few of them are truly well off in financial terms. Perhaps their richness is measured in their job satisfaction, perhaps they're less motivated by money than the guy playing drums in the Manic Street Preachers is.

So, excepting the rare millionaires, it does seem that for the rest of us we have to decide between following our passion and making some money. In my case I didn't even find my passion until I was thirty one. Until then I hadn't even sat behind a drum kit, let alone found out that I might be able to play a bit.

I often look at people who've been playing since they were young kids and feel a sense of envy. There are teenagers who've been playing the drums for longer than I have now, who are much better players at that young age than I will ever be. But then I realise that I've made that trade with the devil, I've tried to build a business, to make some money and live a certain kind of materialistic lifestyle. One that I do enjoy.

Had I found my passion when I was a kid I feel sure I would have tried to pursue it professionally. Then the chances are that I would have ended up as one of the thousands of penniless musos here. I'd have loved every single split second of my work, I'd have got more satisfaction out of it then a nymphomaniac porn star gets out of his job.

And I'd be struggling to pay the rent. I'd probably only have two or three pairs of designer jeans, maybe even a smaller engined BMW 3 series, that's how bad things would be.

But would I be happier?

I really think not.

But I admire the passion following chaps, I really do.

What about you?

Music, Excitement and Eid

Firstly I'd like to wish Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim readers. May it be a happy one.

I'm all excitement here, that butterfly in the stomach, there's too many good things happening to be excited about kind of thing.

Last night's Solskala gig was good, though the audience was small, and I don't mean that in a Sri Lankan average height was less than five foot sort of way. It was a club night in a highly trendy central London bar, with three other bands and a crowd who mostly looked like they'd just strolled in from a photoshoot for an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue.

We were first on, always a precarious position, but we went down well and grooved hard and deeply. My first lesson last week with my new drum teacher has made me concentrate much harder when I play. Concentrate on the issue he pointed out to me about my groove. This is a slight bummer, my playing is better already but I'm at the conscious competence stage, during which I'm thinking about things, not yet flowing gracefully and naturally.

The relaxed and flow stage will come, as I practice more, I've just got to get through it. Still, the outward result is that my playing is better, even now.

The thing about these club gigs for originals bands, is the interesting variety of other music I get to see and hear. Some are great, some are terrible but, as a musician, albeit a drummer, they're always stimulating in some way or other.

Following us was a duo; a straight looking nerdy guy with glasses and the full Clark Kent look and a camper than a campsite singer with make up, effeminate clothing and dance moves that would have had Freddie Mercury and all the blokes in Village People drooling with admiration.

Clark played acoustic guitar, sang backing vox and took charge of all the effects while Freddie sang lead, danced like his life depended on it and rubbed his lycra at appropriate moments. They were like a cabaret act, with backing tapes and souped up versions of already well known songs. But they were fun.

One of the other bands was a bunch of well spoken posh Brit indi kids. They played slightly angsty indi rock and had a feel of well educated yet have no money, but only at the moment because we've all got loaded parents and are just pretending we don't have, about them. They were the kind of kids I'd quite like A or K to date, full of politeness, introducing themselves, shaking hands and being good eggs. Their music and vibe was fun and energetic, in a Coldplay on acid way, just not the sort of thing I'd opt to listen to.

I didn't hang around to watch the other band, for my need to get back was great.

The excitement builds as C is arriving tonight. I've tidied RD Towers, well P the cleaner has, and all is ready. And then tomorrow it's, yes, it's Muse at Wembley Stadium.

Oh lordy lord, things don't get much better for me. I'm going to Muse, at Wembley Stadium, with C, with A and with K.

So my weekend will be a top one.

Et vous?

Been A Long Time, Been A Long Time, Long Time...

Since those early days when I started blogging I don't think I've ever left a gap like this, during which I've had loads going on and just not felt like telling you about it. I apologise. Profusely and sincerely.

But it's made me see how these fellows blog daily for a long time and then suddenly stop, getting out of the habit and fading into the obscurity of real life and all that goes with it. I have no excuses, just that things have been going on, it's been busy at home, at work and at play. Yet strangely there's also been nothing going on and I've been bored too. How can that be? I don't know.

This week is a mental music one, mental in a busy way, not mental in a ranting about "a treason" and spitting while I rant way. The Breaks had a gig last Saturday, Solskala had a band practice on Sunday, to be followed by a gig tomorrow and on Saturday I'll be off to Wembley Stadium with the girls to see Muse. On top of those things I've started lessons with a new drum teacher, so have been hard at work practicing the things he gave me to do.

I decided that I needed to put my faith in a good teacher, to go to someone, tell him my objectives and aims, then let the person guide me and get me there. So I found a fairly well known teacher whose reputation came before him and am trying him out. The first lesson was a nerve wracking affair as he tested and appraised me to see where I am and if I was suitable for his instruction. Things look good thus far.

And while things in Lanka are going mental with the proposed 18th amendment I've been falling in love. Falling in love with my new phone that is. For some time I've observed iPhone users and felt nothing but scorn and derision as they bleat on about their latest apps and the way that their phone can remotely wipe the arse of their next neighbour just by pressing these two buttons.

I've seen people have their lives possessed by their phones, like an episode of Star Trek, as the phone starts to control them and run their day to day existence, from where they eat to where they shop to programming their TV to record episodes of the Gadget Show.

But my new HTC Desire is different. This one's got the weather on it, it's got apps, a torch and I've managed to get it to carry my diary. Hopefully my days of the old fashioned paper diary are numbered, not in a one to three hundred and sixty five way either. I've even managed to download a carrom app, though one plays with virtual cues rather than virtual fingers. No, I don't know.

The wedding last Friday was good. My gamble on the suit paid off. I looked good, even if I say it myself, but I failed dismally in my target of making the two mothers cry with my speech. It turned into less of a speech, more of a quick toast. It was okay though.

The Chinaman sits on my shelf waiting to be read, I must get a move on but books have become my latest best friend and worst enemy. I can't get enough of them and I can't get through them quickly enough. The Kindle proudly carries more than I care to count and the good old fashioned wooden shelves continue to fill, mostly with Sri Lankan books.

Is there a chance that the proposed 18th amendment won't get passed?

We'll see. We doubt it though.

Speak soon.

Getting Married In The Morning

Gosh it's been a long time since I last wrote a post, sorry about that. There's been a lot going on, not that that's any excuse of course.

So what's been happening in these parts?

I must confess, for I know I can trust you, that I found it quite hard to be back in London after the holiday in the motherland. The two weeks (almost) spent there, with C and the girls, was full of joyous laughter, fun and frolics. When we returned, without C, who stayed on and is now busily filming elephants in the jungles, I dropped the girls back at their place quite literally on the way back from the airport, then arrived at RD Towers entirely on my own.

The silence hit me like a herd of elephants flying out of a belfry in the dark stillness of a dodgy old horror film. No girls, no noise, no swans except for real ones, and no arguments. It took some getting used to. The hugely positive side is that the time together seems to have really helped my relationship with A. We're closer then before the holiday but I don't want to overthink it or get carried away.

After a couple of weeks life took over. There were the exam results, some band practices and a gig and there's more to come. Life has lapsed back into the regular things and, like all men, my search for the perfect pair of jeans and the ultimate pair of trainers continues with earnest.

Also there's a marriage happening, but calm down and panic not girls, it's not mine. It is Academic Bro's and, by the time you read this, I'll most probably be trying to put on my pristine new CK white shirt and tie and desperately trying to think of words and phrases to throw into the toast I've been asked to make.

Of course it's a toast that my Mum has asked me to make, not Academic Bro, so I hope he doesn't decide to have a read of my blog before his "I do" bit. I'll take the Monica Geller approach and aim to make people cry, that always keeps it in the memory. It's going to be a small wedding with just family present and my most important objectives are to make both mothers cry and to look good in the photographs.

As in any Sri Lankan parents' house there are some wedding pictures of the children on display and the one of Music Biz bro's wedding, that has been up for about ten years and will I'm sure be there for many more, shows me in what was not my best dressed day. At the time I'm sure I must have thought I looked good, something that astounds me now. Each time I look at the picture, placed proudly on top of my parents' TV, I see a baggy suit, a me who looks like a twat and I feel embarrassed.

For this wedding I'm determined to make amends. I want to look good in the pictures and I want fellows to look at the one that will surely be framed and displayed and gasp with admiration at my style and panache. So the suit is a la mode, the shirt is classic and the tie is trendy yet timeless. I'm taking a risk with the suit, it being thin, slim and black whereas I'm round, roundish and brown, but I reckon I'll pull it off.

There's lots more to tell you. I have a new phone, one of these HTC Desire android ones, and it's the dog's bollocks. It connects to Facebook, it has spirit levels, mail and maps. It's got Twitter and the net and all sorts of shiny things that you younger types take for granted. I reckon I'll just about have figured out how to work it by the time it's due for an upgrade. The main thing is that I no longer have iPhone envy. I can hold my weapon with pride, as long as I don't press the wrong part of the screen whilst doing so.

Oooh, ooooh, the other thing is I can read my blog on it. Which would be nice if I liked reading my blog, only I don't.

Happy birthday too to two of my favourite bloggers. Did you like the little "too to two" there? I think it was wholly grammatically correct. Today it's the birthday of Mr Kottu himself as well as good old, well even older now, DramaQueen, the funniest blogger by far. She's given us some valuable words of advice on the grand occasion here.

Happy birthday to them both, may their years and days be full of good things, perhaps a few rude ones too.

Bye then.

The Results Are In

Monday's was a restless tossing and turning type of night for me. There aren't many things that get me nervous these days but I can tell you that I went to bed shitting some majorly large bricks.

Why?

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning was the day for A to get her GCSE results and I thought I'd take it calmly in my stride, being all que sera sera about it and mellow. Instead I spent the evening feeling more preoccupied than a Samurdhi officer turning up at Mervyn Silva's office for a meeting only to realise that I'd forgotten to light my mosquito coils the night before. I kept waking up in the night and thinking

"Oh shit it's A's results tomorrow"

A's a bright kid but far brighter in the realms of performance, drama and art than she is in the more academic lines of maths, English and the sciences. The education system here does baffle me somewhat in that she was trying to get into college to study drama and arts and things yet needed to get sufficient grades in the sciences and more academic fields in order to do that.

And she's not really one of those swotty kinds like Dinidu or The Auf, fellows who I can imagine never even needed to swot for an exam because they'd worked so hard during the course in the first place.

The parent teacher evenings I've been to for A in the last couple of years have mostly comprised of each teacher telling me very diplomatically how A is a great kid, full of life and always trying to be funny (can you imagine that??) but that she needs to concentrate more on the work to get the grade she should.

Strangely enough my reports at the same age were pretty similar.

My trepidation was because A never really seemed to knuckle down and work. Had there been an exam on Facebook or MSN or how to convert one sort of music file into an iTunes file I'm sure she'd have passed with flying colours. There wasn't, well apart from ICT, and I worried about the consequences, about A getting into college and that I might have to send her to work in a mine or sweeping chimneys in Dickensian times.

A was going to school yesterday morning and under strict instructions to call both her mother and myself. I was as anxious as could be, jittery and drunk with nerves and starting the most weirdly inane conversations with people as an excuse to just talk.

At about nine in the morning I called her to see what was happening, she sighed and told me that she was going to school in about forty five minutes. She promised to call me and I hung up, wondered what to do and decided to continue being nervous.

About an hour later I got a call.

"It's your daughter" said my person, you know, the one who put the call through.

"Hi A" I said.

She was crying, something all men are fundamentally afraid of, something that didn't bode well.

"You won't believe it Dad" she said and my heart broke a little bit.

"I got As and Bs. I've done really well, I've got the grades for college and everything" she said through the tears.

"Wow, seriously?" I asked, possibly not my most sensible of replies but it seemed to do the job. I was filled with a sense of relief and relaxation, like the Samurdhi officer who gets a call from his wife as he's going into the meeting to say that she lit the coils even though he forgot.

She read them all out again, I think for both of us to be sure.

I asked for the exact grades. She got two As, five Bs, two Cs and a couple of Ds. Then she said, still through the tears, that she had to go, to see what all her friends had got. I congratulated her and told her nice things.

I'm stunned, in the best possible way.

I'm so, so proud.

Just thought I'd tell you.

Ride A White Swan

I can't recall exactly how long these swan boat things have been prowling on Beira lake but it must be over a year, maybe closer to two years. Either way I've had a strange fascination with them since I first set eyes on the chaps.

Each time I've been past the lake I've gazed at them and harboured a growing desire to go out on one. The very first time I spotted them I immediately thought that some bright spark had found a use for old VW Beetle bodies, they looked so similar in shape. I developed a need to prove or disprove the Beetle theory, to find out if they were old Beetle bodies or if the shape was just a similar one. You can see what I mean can't you?

On top of that I wanted to go out on one, to drift around the clean (?) waters of the lake while listening to the backdrop of the Colombo traffic and to feel slightly weird riding around in such a tacky and artificial creation with the beauty of Geoffrey Bawa's temple in the background. The idiosyncratically Sri Lankan juxtaposition of the two things has captured me for a while.

My problem was one of how to engineer a ride. My visual research indicated that they're usually out on the lake during the late afternoon before sundown and occupied by people with young kids or young romancing couples.

What to do? Young children I don't have and, with the best will in the world, I don't think myself and C would win any prizes if we were to attempt to portray a young and romantic holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes type of couple. Besides, I'd mentioned the swans to C several times and she never quite shared my enthusiasm. That's women for you I guess.

If I were to go out on my own I'd attract lots of those stares, the kind I often get here when I go out to eat on my own, and probably get arrested, so that option was eliminated. Therefore I was left with A and K as my main hope, well, my only hope.

It was a gamble. At their current ages of fourteen and sixteen I never know if they'll be bored stiff because something's too childish for them or because it's too adult for their liking. It's always one or the other, except when it's not.

We were staying on Slave Island so passed the swans a few times a day during our travels and I pointed them out to the girls at the first opportunity. To my surprise they weren't totally averse to the concept and, after about a week or continual enthusiasm nurturing and the most unsubtle of hinting, we grabbed a tri shaw and found ourselves standing by the lake late one afternoon.

It was just myself and the two girls and it becamse apparent that I was by far the most excited about the whole idea. To be fair the girls were quite into the concept too and we paid our fee and boarded the huge and rather lifelike swan.

Until that point I didn't know what type of propulsion was involved and I saw straight away that they're those pedelo things. There's a steering wheel in the middle of the thing and a seat on each side with pedals. So two people pedal and one sits in the middle and steers.

We were told quite sternly that we had half an hour out on the lake and so set off. K and I were doing the pedalling and A steered. The plan was to do ten minutes of steering each. As K and me pedalled A steered our particular swan (no 9 I think) towards the island. We went round the island in an anti clockwise direction, waving to a few other swan people and heading towards the pedestrian bridge thing.

As all of this was going on I was trying to examine the swan's body to figure out if the resemblance to a Beetle was just a similarity or if it was far more sinister than that. You'll be interested to know that I've concluded it's just coincidence, the swan's body is bigger and shaped just a bit differently. Shame though.

As we approached the bridge I had a last minute nervous thought; that it would be typically Lankan if they had made the swan's neck too tall to fit under the lowest section of the bridge. I envisaged a resounding smack as the poor swan's head hit the underside of the bridge, then I'd have to try to explain it to the staff and god knows how the lack of head might affect the swan's sea lakeworthiness.

It was a nerve tingling few minutes as we made it under the bridge and I realised my fears were unfounded. In my defence I think the clearance between the top of Mr Swan's head and the bridge was only about three or four feet, pretty close by some people's standards.

K and I were a bit knackered from the pedalling, it was hot, not because I'm unfit or anything, and I thought that, in the excitement and fervour, I might have overlooked the time and we were probably near the end of our half hour. I checked my watch to find that we'd only been pedalling for five minutes.

We pedalled on, swapping around at the pre agreed ten minute point. My excitement stayed up at dangerously high levels and the girls ended up loving it too. There was something liberating and childish about it.

At one point we raced against another swan, losing the race but only because I let it happen. K also figured out that we could go backwards so we spent some time experimenting with that, cruising around and attempting to steer while looking out of the back window.

Our time was up and we headed back to shore, disembarked and left, all three of us were tired and happy.

It's a funny old thing you know. The whole holiday was a highlight for me, to spend time with the girls in Sri Lanka with C as well is more or less my idea of perfection, only missing a drum kit or two. But this swan trip is something that makes me smile a bit extra every time I think of it. It was the three of us regressing a bit, forgetting about work, school, angst and stress and just being kids having pure and unadulterated fun.

Since we got back I've made the girls promise that we go on a swan next time too.

They'll probably hate it.

But I'll love it!

What Would You Have Done?

Every time I go to Sri Lanka, something that happens a lot these days, I fly with Sri Lankan Airlines.

Is it because of the fantastic customer service RD?

Is it because of the modern, clean and efficient fleet of aircraft RD?

Is it because they offer such brilliant value for money oh Rhythmic one?

Or is it due to the airline's amazing ability to always take off and land within twenty four hours of the stated take off and landing time?

No, piss off. It's none of those. It's because they are currently the only airline to fly direct from London to Colombo, despite the fact that an almost one hour stop at Male, which adds about two or three hours to the journey, is still strangely called direct.

My need to be highly efficient with my annual leave and maximise my time there it's become advantageous to get there in as short a time as possible. So it's my choice, but there's hardly an extensive menu from which to choose.

Since the divorce, that of Sri Lankan airlines and Emirates rather than my own one, things on the national carrier have got worse, in its weirdly idiosyncratic way. The in flight entertainment system is now a hit and miss affair, it's just stupid to expect one that works and even more stupid to expect anything to be done about a broken one should you encounter such. For most passengers mealtime would be far simpler if the printed menus actually said

"You'll get whatever we've got left"

instead of the delicious sounding descriptions of the meal choices that they tempt us with only to continually disappoint.

There are other gripes I have, but this post wasn't to talk about them, though one of my biggest feelings is one of having nowhere to go, no one to complain to on Sri Lankan, as there seems to be not a soul that actually cares.

I'd like to ask you what you would have done if you'd been faced with the situ I met last week. I was returning to London with A and K, my daughters. If you're good at maths you'd already have worked out that there were three of us.

These days I know that the only way to get the seating arrangement you want, though far from guaranteed, is to go online and reserve it. Waiting until you turn up at the airport to check in is pointless unless you're the type who has outriders and the power to stop Colombo traffic when you nip down to the shops for a new Aston Martin.

So, some weeks ago I'd reserved our seats online, for both the outbound and the return journeys. For the girls I'd booked a window seat with the accompanying aisle seat and for myself the window seat behind them, something we're all happy with. They like to sit together and watch movies and sleep and I get to be close to them, though that's far more for my peace of mind than it is for them.

When we checked in I was told that the seat next to me had been blocked, a good result especially considering the flight was almost full, and I looked forward to some space and some sleep, all aided by my trusty inflatable pillow.

We got on the plane, took our seats, then put them back and sat down. Things were looking good. Then I heard some angry voices, well one actually and it was coming from an Indian woman. I joined in with the rest of the aircraft (we had no choice) and listened to the conversation.

It seemed that she was travelling with her husband and two young kids of about three and seven and they had been allocated seats that weren't all together. The husband was with one child and she was with another one with a considerable distance between each pair. She was protesting that she needed to be seated with both the kids, as they were young and needed to be with their mother, for the whole flight.

I must admit that this somewhat irked me. I was brought up in an environment that had some roles of the sexes but was largely mixed and I've brought my kids up, as has their mother, in a situation in which either parent does what's necessary at the time. When they were young I changed nappies, fed them, stayed up in the night with them and generally did whatever I could.

When the Indian lady was shouting and huffing that both her kids needed to be with her I found that I had sympathy for a situation, that of her kids not getting what they were used to, but I didn't agree with the fundamentals of it.

Then it became apparent that they hadn't reserved any seats, they had just gone to check in and only at that stage asked about getting seats together. I, the smartarse regular Sri Lankan airlines flyer, still felt sympathy but now it was mixed with smugness and annoyance.

The crew were trying to help her, using their best attempts at extrapolating logic to figure out who they could ask to move in order to give the lady what she wanted. K, sitting in front of me, was about fourteen steps ahead of all the adults with her logic and had already worked out the easiest solution. She shared this with me and I told her to keep quiet, as it involved me moving to South Africa or something.

Some minutes elapsed and then the stewardess looked at me. I tried my best to avoid eye contact, something that she seemed to be very good at whenever anyone tried to get her attention later in the flight, but I failed with a level of success that was simply astounding.

"Excuse me sir but would you mind sitting over there and then this lady could have these two seats?"

She pointed to a seat that was a bit of a distance away. It was easily within sight of my kids but would have eliminated any possibility of conversation with them without a journey involving asking several other people to move. As K still suffers from travel sickness I was concerned about this.

Meanwhile in the background the Indian lady was creating merry hell, shouting all sorts of rubbish about splitting up families, telling them at the check in desk and then issuing the ultimate threat, that of never flying with Sri Lankan Airlines again. Surprisingly the crew didn't appear bothered about it.

Fortunately K's earlier comment to me had alerted me to the possibility of being asked to move and I had rehearsed my answer. My thinking, that is to say the answer in my head if it were wholly unedited, would have gone something like this:

"No, fuck off. I reserved my seats months ago and the facts that the lady didn't and that her beliefs/culture/lifestyle choices mean that her husband is incapable of looking after a child for a mere eleven hours or so do not make this my problem. And I don't get to spend as much time with my kids as I'd like to so I treasure times like this anyhow. And I want a window seat, I love this country and like to say goodbye to it when I leave."

Of course, being the polite Englishman when faced with a situation like this, the actual words that came out were:

"Look, I'd like to help the lady, but I reserved the seats a long time ago, so I'd rather not move as I want to be near my kids (pointing a whispy hand in the direction of A and K (whispy because I didn't want them to see or hear and then announce that they would be fine if I moved)) (I like brackets you know)"

I'd figured that my answer, without committing to a firm yes or no, would leave the onus on the stewardess. And genuinely I felt some sympathy for the Indian mother, not to be confused with an Indian mother.

The stewardess looked at me and I could hear her brain working, trying to figure out if I'd agreed to her request or not. It became apparent that she'd taken my retort as a negative one when she sloped off and thanked me. I felt all manly and assertive, like an American or a Sri Lankan in a queue, not British at all, and I found it distinctly uncomfortable. I just managed to suppress my desire to shout after her and tell her that it would be fine, that I'd sit on the wing if it helped, as long as I could have a blanket or something when it got cold.

Guilt was flooding all over me. I was swimming in the stuff. Splitting up families, having two seats to myself, it wasn't the Indian lady's fault that she didn't know to check in online, A and K would be more than happy to sit by themselves, call yourself a drummer. All these things were rushing through my mind. The call yourself a drummer bit wasn't to do with the situation at hand, it just occurs to me at regular intervals anyway, I just thought it's better to tell you the details.

Then I saw it, heading towards me. It was a gangly Indian youth, or perhaps I should say ganguly. Everything about him was floppy. His hair, his limbs, his clothes and even his bumfluff, of which there was a fair amount. He looked as though he'd just dipped his face in the glue vat at the Post It note factory then walked past a barber's shop at the end of a quiet day as they were sweeping the hair onto the pavement at the front.

He brought some things, settled himself in the seat next to me and said something to his mother a few seats away. There was that hint of BO, BO covered up by cheap deodorant. It took some investigation but eventually I confirmed that it was from him, not me. I breathed a sigh of relief, a shallow one.

That was the solution, to move the lad next to me and rearrange things so that the irate Indian lady finally got her three seats together.

As you'll have realised if you've read this far, these things play on me. Was I too selfish or was I just asserting myself to get what I was entitled to? Should I have let the lady have my seat or were my feelings about her attitude towards parental roles getting in the way?

So, my favourite reader.

What would you have done?

Colombo Pub Quiz - The Crak Squad Arrives

Many moons ago a bunch of people were sent to their bedrooms for a crime they didn't commit. Years later a few of them left their parents homes, the rest aren't allowed yet . Today, still hounded and harangued by their mothers, they survive in the depths of Colombo 7 as ad men, businessmen, documentary makers and, well kids.

I had a problem. No one else could help me and I knew I could find them.

I put the call out.

They came from far and wide. A band of mercenaries, nameless (apart from David Blacker) and answering to no one (except their wives, bosses, parents and people they felt a bit intimidated by) their mission was to win the Colombo pub quiz. A and K had insisted we went, even though we were flying back to London later that night.

I did a dummy run the previous week, entering a team that deliberately did badly, just to recce the scene, spot the weak areas and analyse the other teams. This time we meant business. We were the Crak Squad. There was:

Me, RD. - The "Hannibal" of the team. I made the calls, got people together, then largely sat in the background, pretending that I didn't know the answers to anything. My specialist subjects of drums, drummers and Superdry clothing are yet to come up I admit, but I'm ready.

C - Her. She kind of shouts when needed, when not needed, and scowls a lot. Useful in arguments and disputes. Her specialist subject is the workings of a woman's mind.

A and K - Deadly with their wit, intelligence and knowledge, after spending many of their recent years sitting in front of a TV honing their minds, particularly where things like cartoons and Hannah Monfuckingtana are concerned. K had spent much of the day "revising" by reading that day's newspapers. She was taking things seriously. They're particularly fond of David Blacker, a matter of some concern to me.

David Blacker - Brad Pitt regularly asks him for fashion and womanising advice, Errol Brown from Hot Chocolate often seeks his hair advice and The Stig goes to him for driving lessons. He was the first choice to play John McClane in Die Hard but, on his way to the first day's filming, the dashboard in his car melted so they got in Bruce Willis instead. Oh, and he's good in quizzes as he knows lots of stuff.

The Chinaman - No one knows why he's called this but he's definitely not Chinese. A mine of information on useless things, useless unless you want to enter a pub quiz or something. He plays bass, likes The Police and, with all those facts floating around in his head, should really write a book or two sometime.

RW - A friend of David Blacker's with a certified IQ of 327, though he maintains that the test was fixed and it should be 329. RW played that saxophone solo on Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty but forgot to fill in the form as he as leaving and so gets no royalties.

The others - There were more people, floating around and offering vital information at crucial times. They must not be forgotten. But I've kind of forgotten their names.

The quizmasters arrived and announced the week's categories. For the second week in a row my specialist subject hadn't come up but I remained quietly confident. There was a section called "cartoons" and, with A and K in the team, this was like having a section called "tattoos, football and what Posh Spice ate for breakfast" then remembering that David Beckham was a team member.

We started the quiz with the history section, a cornucopia of titillating puzzlers leaning towards the historic among us. I kept quiet, preferring to let others have some of the limelight for a change. The Chinaman was able to tell us that King George III was the King in charge when the Brits arrived in Sri Lanka and said it with a certain air of confidence that made me feel he looked good in the glowing evening light of the Barefoot garden.

The science round was a good opportunity for RW and K to prove their prowess in areas scientific. And that they did. There were questions about iron filings and magnets, about Moby Dick, the size of planets and the periodic table. It will surprise you but I wasn't so strong on this round. It mattered not as RW and K did their thing. K proving that she pays attention at school and RW proving that he should probably get out more.

The round entitled "buildings" was another goodish one for us. They showed us pictures of famous buildings around the world and had to identify them. I feigned dumbness here and pretended that I only knew the Petronas Towers picture. It seemed fair on the others.

There was a section called "Mervyn" with questions on Dr Mervyn Silva. I was rather pleased that I knew that the chap who had been had asked if the other people would tie him against a tree as punishment was a Samurdhi officer. If someone can tell me what that actually means I'd be grateful though.

After some debate we decided to play our joker in the cartoon section. I was confident on this, the others didn't share my feelings but went with it. They weren't to know about A and K's expertise in this area, not to mention my own, and we triumphed, scoring a complete ten points, which was doubled to twenty. I knew Johnny Bravo and Dexter's Laboratory myself even. That's how strong we were.

Things looked good as we entered the final round, that of movies, in the lead.

Well bugger me. The movies round showed us a bunch of screenshots of "foreign" language films and we had to name the film. I thought we were doomed but hadn't counted on David Blacker and RW's knowledge of obscure subtitled flicks. I was hoping that Christiane F would make an appearance but it didn't. Of course the definition of "foreign" is slightly subjective and there was some shouting when one of the answers was announced and one team thought that the particular film was in English and therefore not "foreign". I guess it all depends where you come from.

As the final round's scores were announced our team's were left until last. We needed to get more than two points to win the competition and walk off with the grand prize of several million of your Sri Lankan Rupees. The announcement came:

"Crak Squad..........






Seven points"

Yes!

There was whooping and ahollering aplenty as we ended up taking the prize, not to mention the esteem, honour and sheer prestige. A and K were seriously delighted and now think David Blacker's even more cool than before.

Like one of those boxers, or Murali even, retiring at their peak we paid our bills, accepted the congratulations and cheering and headed off into the night. Some hours later myself and A and K were on the Sri Lankan Airlines plane, trying to get the entertainment system to work and getting annoyed that there was no service from the aircrew.

Was it a dream? Were we really there?

No. Yes.

If you've got a quiz and if you know how to find them......

"Shit! I forgot to wear pants again"

'tis the Season To Be.......

All Rambutaned up.

A Warning About The Colombo Pub Quiz

The week has been dreamily good so far. Mostly. There have been a few mood swings, temper tantrums, hissy fits and hormonal issues, but overall I've managed to keep things under control. By and large the girls, A, K and C that is, have behaved themselves too.

It's nice for the girls to see people who they haven't seen for a couple of years and there has been the usual plethora of the "my how you've grown" noises hitting all their ears at frequent intervals.

Last night I persuaded them that it would be fun to enter a team in the Colombo Pub Quiz at Barefoot. I thought that the four of us would cover a few bases and the addition of a few more chaps, the kind who read newspapers, we might stand a vague chance.

As the quiz began I realised that it's a falsity, a word I'm not even sure exists. I'd expected a decent mix of questions about drums and drummers, perhaps a section on Kottu or the Sri Lankan blogging community, maybe a chunk of questions on rock and/or funk music and possibly, though unlikely, some qs on the current Superdry range of clothing. Simple ones like the price of T shirts and polo shirts, nothing too complicated. I'd even had a glance at the day's papers, well the headlines, in case weird things like current affairs and politics came up.

But bugger me. The first surprise was that there were other teams there. How unfair is that? There was no mention at all in the ads and blog posts about this quiz of competition against other people. Then, these people were serious. The type who read newspapers rather than just look at the pictures of people being tied against a tree by leading politicians. The sort of people who can identify black and white pictures of dead people. The sort who read The Economist and know proper stuff.

We kicked off and promptly lost the first round. We may have come second in it, but the details aren't really important. There wasn't a single, no, not even one, question about drummers, Superdry or blogging. It was specialist stuff like general knowledge, science, sports and whatnot.

As we progressed through the night our team didn't. We stayed bottom of the table until David Blacker turned up with his brain. The combination of him, A and K gained us quite a few points. I caught him and K discussing things earnestly and ignoring the rest of our team at one point. It was a prudent move of theirs.

K came up with the idea of writing little love notes to Jehan at the bottom of our set of answers to each round. It was hard work but effective, gaining us an extra point at one stage. I like to think I contributed significantly, in particular when one question involved naming the missing Teletubby and I knew the answer immediately.

We delayed playing our joker until the anagram round, thinking that we'd do well in it. But in another cruel twist they made them hard ones, names of Hollywood stars and a couple of directors all jumbled up. Bloody ridiculous, jumbling up the letters in a round like that.

The end result?

Well we didn't come last, missing it by two points. I reckon a team of David Blacker with A and K would do better and myself and C could just hover in the background, getting them drinks and food, maybe massaging their brains every now and again to keep things going.

But, the barbecue chicken wings on the Barefoot menu are pretty damn fab, the Lion lager was cold, the atmosphere was balmy, chilled and fun and the night was a fun one.

Tomorrow we hit the hill country for a few days. I'm looking forward to leaving the hustle and bustle and seeing all those greens, feeling that smokiness and the slightly cooler air. Then we'll be back for a few days and off to Londinium again.

It's nice coming from a country like this, really it is.

Auf Wiedersehen Machan

Tonight I'll be Serendib bound. That is assuming I manage to get the girls on time, with their baggage, emotional and physical, both of which teenage girls have bagfuls of.

So, in the next couple of weeks, if you see a middle aged sort of bloke dressed in clothes he shouldn't be wearing being bullied and humiliated by two teenage girls then you've either borrowed one of those dodgy films that DD watches or bumped into us. Please say hello, buy me a drink and pretend you like and/or respect me. My daughters might just be impressed.

I expect LLD will go quiet for a couple of weeks, but one never knows. I just might have plenty of time to sit and write meaningless bits and pieces.

We'll see

Out for now.

RD

Advice

I read something earlier that made me think. I'd like to ask you, my esteemed reader, what you think of it. Your opinion will be valued.

"only take advice from people with lives you like"

I'm not sure about it, as I think we often learn from other people's mistakes.

Or do we?

Gaydar, Drums and Sri Lankan Mothers

This is a slightly awkward but necessary thing to confess. You might know me and think I'm talking rubbish, you might not know me and think that I'm being boastful or you might just think I'm talking a load of tosh.

The fact is that, since I was about sixteen, I've often found that gay chaps like me. And by "like" I mean "like" not just 'like'. I don't know why this is. Perhaps they like the cute little Asian boy thing, maybe I flirt when I talk or it might be my collection of George Michael T shirts and penchant for dressing up like a fireman when I go to nightclubs.

The details aren't important. What matters is that this is the case and some time ago I accepted the baton and now carry it with the responsibility it deserves. I've found myself wishing I were gay sometimes too, purely for the way in which gay chaps can befriend women and make them want to spend all their time with them.

All women want a gay best friend, the negative also being the positive; that said fellow won't be trying to jump the woman at every available opportunity and so the woman can relax without feeling threatened. My knowledge of women is limited, I'm a man after all, but I suspect that all of them secretly harbour a desire to be the one to convert their gay friend, to make him finally realise that women are the real thing.

Often though I've found myself being chatted up by a bloke, something that, truth be told, I quite like. Thinking about it, it's probably because I never get chatted up by women. But, when the man chat starts I tend to go along with it for a while before revealing that I'm almost entirely heterosexual. It's fun and harmless and I reckon my gaydar is fairly well tuned and able to spot the difference between casual chat between hetero men and a chat up scenario from a good distance.

As far as sexuality is concerned I think I'd be classed as anti homophobic. I must stress that to you now.

Last Sunday I went to a local pub where I'd agreed to meet my parents. It's a fantastic riverside pub that, on a Sunday evening, has truly world class musicians playing a relatively low key jazz session. I go fairly often as it gives me the opportunity to watch some of the best drummers in the country if not the world (really I'm not exaggerating there) in a close setting.

This week I saw Ian Thomas play. Unless you're a drummer you probably haven't heard of him but he's one of the first call guys that many big name artistes use all the time. I've seen him play on TV with Eric Clapton more times than I can recall, with Tom Jones and with just about everyone you can think of, so to watch him close up, to chat about drum stuff with him and see his every move is truly a privilege.

My 'rents, who go to this jazz session almost every week, have built up a little circle of likeminded friends there. Oldish people who like music and all look like trainspotters (retired).

There we were on Sunday. The band had finished the first set and I was enduring another round of a game me and my Mum play. The game is called "name the drums" and involves her asking me what the various drums in a drum kit are called. It always starts the same way

"Rhythmic, tell me one more time, what's the drum to his right called again?"

"That's the floor tom, Mum."

"Right, got it, and what are those ones in front of him?"

"Well those are toms too, but not called floor toms as they're usually mounted from a rack."

"What's a rack?"

I then explain that.

"But I can't see one"

"Well there isn't one, but they're still called rack toms, or mounted toms"

"So which are the tom toms then?"

"Those are" say I pointing to the toms.

"But you said they're toms"

"They are, the full name is tom toms but we usually just say toms"

"Right, got it."

We play this game every time me, my Mum and a drum kit are in the same room. As you can imagine, what with my love of all things drummy and the fact that my mother is of the Sri Lankan variety, which fundamentally means that she stalks her children and rarely listens to them, that also means we play the game a hell of a lot.

I wouldn't mind if we had the conversation once or twice but it gets taxing after a certain point, particularly when I know that if the specific drum kit had been dressed in a Liverpool football kit then she would have remembered every last detail about it. The worst thing a chap can do, faced with one of these situations, is to confront the Lankan mother. That's stupid, pointless and akin to taking on a herd of wild elephants protecting a baby when you're armed with only a flimsy bikini and a Dairylea triangle.

I confronted her.

"Mum who plays left back for Liverpo...?"

Before I could finish the sentence she'd answered and told me the name of the bloke before.

"So why is it that you can remember things like that, but not details about drum kits?"

I'd prehandled her usual response; that with getting older she has trouble remembering things and I shouldn't get angry with her for it. I was on the verge of a resounding victory, by using a tactic I'd never used before. Things were looking good. She was stumped but couldn't resist trying to win.

"If you asked me a question about ----------(insert medical term here) would you remember the answer?" she responded.

"Well yes, if I was interested enough to ask you I think I would actually." I returned with confidence.

I looked at her and saw the glint of a tear in her eye. Oh shit I thought, she's going to do the half crying emotional blackmail thing again. There is no way to beat that, it's like playing Civil Aircraft Top Trumps when I was a kid and having the 747. You just say "490 passengers and you've won". These days I guess the A380 would beat that but that's another story.

Everyone knows it, once a Sri Lankan mother turns on the tears you've lost. And it's a loss without honour.

Then, as victory was about to be declared, which usually involves my Dad wondering why my Mum is crying and what I've done to upset her, a bloke who looked like he was Freddie Mercury trying to act a bit camp dressed in cycling gear strolled flounced into the picture. It was apparent that the chap was not only a friend of Dorothy but also a friend of my Mum.

They chatted for a bit, then she introduced him to me.

"T, this is my son Rhythmic. Rhythmic this is T" said she. The tears had entirely disappeared.

T and I shook hands. I swear I caught him lick his lips, just for a split second. He glanced at my left hand and I clocked him as he clocked the lack of ring on it. We conversed for a while. T was as camp as a good few rows of tents. I know that campness doesn't necessarily equal gayness but I'd have bet large amounts of money on this one.

I suppose I was a little bit flirty with him, exchanging stories of where we live, when I was going on holiday, my favourite Scissor Sisters costume, the usual stuff. I deliberately didn't mention that I have a girlfriend or even my kids, just for a bit of a laugh. Then, some way into the conversation, I got cold feet. Then I quickly said something like

"I'mgoingwithmykidsandmygirlfriendwillbetheretooandIlikewomen" to make sure he got the message. Confidence and strength are all well and good but, when you break you break. A chap can hold out without peeing for so long but once he's passed the tipping point there's no turning back. And I'd tipped. Or turned. I hadn't peed though.

He ambled off into the distance as he lost interest in me quicker than my lead guitarist did the last time I tried to tell him about the wood that my snare drum is made of. He'd made some utterings about it being nice to meet me but I could sense his disappointment and felt a little bit bad for him.

My Mum turned to me and whispered. She whispered in that voice that people only use when they talk about other people having cancer, that strange very open mouthed whisper that that can be both lip read and heard from about half a mile.

"I think he's gay you know. I was trying to warn you, I was trying to send you ESP messages to let you know. I think he was trying to chat you up."

I looked at her, I felt a bit guilty about the drum thing and the tears.

Yes. I know Mum. I was just having some fun.

Secretly I tutted and rolled my eyes. The second set was fabulous.

Crap Shoot

It was Thursday, the day that Perestroika, my East European cleaner, the one I introduced you to here, does her thing. Her name's not really Perestroika but C came up with it and it's stuck. She is, after all, East European and her real name begins with P so what could be better? These people with foreign names deserve it anyhow.

I drove home as I usually do on nights when I go home, which is pretty much every one. The car cruised into the underground car park and I cleverly manoeuvred into my parking space. Why is it that Sri Lankan drivers just don't do reversing? Here we do it all the time, parallel parking, reversing into diagonal spaces, down narrow lanes and all sorts. You guys just don't. It's as if you don't believe in it, like it's only something to be done when absolutely every other possibility involving forward gears has been exhausted.

On the rare occasions when you do reverse, it's always with a random bloke in a dodgy ill fitting uniform warning the approaching traffic and directing you with those special Sri Lankan hand signals, the ones that involve only the tiniest of imperceptible hand movements, or finger movements to be precise.

I like entering my apartment, it feels, well kind of homely. So I went in and did what I always have to do on a Thursday evening; rearrange the furniture. It's a mystery to me how it happened but I managed to employ the only cleaner in the world who fails to understand the principle of putting furniture and objects back in the place they were in to start with.

You may well think it sounds a bit obsessive when I tell you this but you're wrong. Frankly. It's not that I'm one of those fellows who measures the position of his furniture to the nearest millimeter and demands that things are placed accordingly. No, but I like the glass coffee table to be positioned parallel to the TV, which is always in the same place, and I like the settee to be parallel to the coffee table. Think of it as simple and rough alignment and you'll be on the right lines, as long as they're parallel ones.

Perestroika appears to either disagree with me or disregard me with the result being that every Thursday I spend a couple of minutes, for that's all it takes with a wooden floor and easily move aroundable furniture, rearranging things to my liking. One day I'll tell her about it instead of writing about it, but then might be faced with one less thing to write about.

Anyhow, I did the rearranging, grabbed a Cadbury's Flake out of the newly designated RD Towers chocolate drawer, which doesn't mean a drawer made out of chocolate, and bumbled around for a few minutes eating the Flake. After the Flake feast I put away some sheets in the bedroom drawers, mooched around a bit then finally sat down on the sofa.

Rather I went to sit down but noticed something on the floor; a little patch of mud. I rolled my eyes. By that I don't mean that I took them out of their sockets and bowled them underarm across the floor, that would be stupid and how would I aim in the right direction anyhow? I mean I did that eye rolling thing, the one women do when a man makes a funny and smart comment that mysteriously only he thinks is smart and funny.

The last thing Perestroika does is to mop the wooden floor and, as this patch of mud was just under the settee, I'd eye rolled because it was an indication that she hadn't bothered to do the mopping thoroughly. I made a half stride in the direction of the kitchen to get a wet wipe to get rid of the offending murk, then noticed another smaller mud patch nearby. Weird, I thought. Even Perestroika would have mopped that bit.

I know what you're thinking, it's just that I wasn't thinking it at the time, which was part of the problem.

I put my finger in the "mud", which can now take its rightful place between some inverted commas. I raised my finger to my nose and inhaled.

It smelled of dog shit.

Several things hit my mind, but it's fair to say they all pissed me off. First there was the fact that Perestroika had managed to bring dog shit into the apartment. Next was the fact that she hadn't cleaned properly, followed by the one that I'd just put my finger in it. It had seemed like a good plan, you know, check that the mud really was mud by smelling it, but I hadn't thought it through.

David Blacker would probably have shot and killed the thing, Dominic Sansoni would have photographed it in a colourful but arty and tasteful manner, Pradeep Jeganathan would no doubt have made a aromatic and delicious starter out of it with red wine and beef stock and Cerno would have written a post involving google maps and LOITDMM (lots of initials that don't mean much).

As you now know I chose option five; the stick your finger in it and see if it's mud or shit one. It wasn't one of my better choices. I like to find the positives in life and I did find one here; the fact that I hadn't actually tasted it. A fact that I suspect won't make its way into the book of the ten thousand best positive facts of all time.

How useless is a cleaner who manages to bring dog shit into the apartment and then clean the floor without noticing it? That was the question going through my mind when the answer hit me; more useless than is humanly possible. Therefore it couldn't have been her and the only person to have been there since she left was.........................................moi.

I looked down, in the general direction of my designer trainers, the ones I'd bought in Barcelona. Alarm bells started going off everywhere. I went and turned them off so I could carry on thinking. I looked at the bottom of one trainer to find nothing. The other trainer, the right one, told a different story, a pretty shitty one.

It wasn't covered in dog shit, for that might have been good news, suggesting that it was mostly still on the trainer. It just had a bit of poo present and that meant one of two things; that I'd only trod in a little bit or that that I'd trod in a lot and then deposited it everywhere. The latter proved to be the case.

Mentally I retraced my steps. It hurt as the realisation hit me that I'd been all around the apartment, that the presence of the underground car park meant that I must have picked up my passenger much earlier in the day and it must be all over the pedals in my car and underneath my desk, the one I sit at now as I tell you this painful story.

I took off the offending trainer and stomped sulkily round the apartment assessing the damage. There was dog poo in about three places in the front room, in about another three or four places on the bedroom carpet and a few scatterings in the kitchen. I winced, and still do, when I think of the fact that I ate a bar of chocolate with the dog shit germs wafting up from my trainer, probably hitting the Cadbury's Flake too. I was concerned that it would harm my lifelong relationship with Cadbury's milk chocolate but evidence since then has proved this to be untrue. I'm sure you can understand my worry though.

In an ideal world, one in which I have pots and pots of money, I'd have walked out of my apartment, locked the door and moved into another one after destroying all the clothes that had been involved in the episode. Well, come to think of it in an ideal world I'd never have trod in the stuff in the first place. The world is far from ideal, as we know.

If I'd been wearing some old trainers I'd have just thrown them away, but these were my cool Barcelona ones so they had to be saved, something I chose to do that early. I took them into the girls' bathroom and showered the guilty trainer with steaming hot water to within an inch of its life. It was the least it deserved. Then it was left out to dry and I told it to think carefully about exactly what it had done. It said nothing whatsoever. I knew it felt bad.

Next was the easy part, cleaning the wooden floor. Wet wipes and some water did the job and I felt reassured to know that Perestroika would do her mopping thing in a week to finish things off properly. Realigning the furniture was a small price to pay, as was twelve of the Queen's English pounds per hour.

The bedroom, with its light brown carpet and sporadic splatterings of excrement, was an entirely different matter, one that makes me feel a bit dodgy to think about. I went at it with the enthusiasm and fervour of a UN inspector being told to go and find those weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad and then after that to go and see if there were any war crimes or human rights violations committed in that small island near India.

I've tried to block out the memory but I know there was water, a washing up scouring pad, wet wipes and kitchen roll involved. I recall feeling that I was merely getting rid of the crap from the surface and actually rubbing it more deeply into the carpet, which I was. It was a pretty shitty situation all round.

The end result was a bedroom carpet with stains, stains caused by dog turd. It wasn't my ideal outcome but I couldn't think what else to do at the time. Plus I was hungry and, for obvious reasons, didn't feel like eating. I put away my equipment. Fortunately the washing up scouring thing was quite new, meaning that it did a good job on the poo and also that I could get another few weeks of use out of it on the pots and pans, proving yet again that there are positives everywhere if you look for them.

I strolled off to the local Indian, got myself a curry and brought it home to be eaten with trepidation, feeling like a chap who's just had a car accident and needs to get back into the driving seat as soon as possible to avoid losing his confidence altogether.

As the days wore on the pain eased. It's now a couple of weeks after the incident and I can say with some confidence that not only am I over it but also that the place is cleaner than before it happened, even in the bedroom.

You see I felt the need to buy some proper carpet cleaning stuff and gave all the affected areas a good going over with it. I now have some patches that, in the light, are actually whiter than the rest of the carpet, showing that they're even cleaner than the darker areas. On top of that Perestroika had mopped and hoovered in the bedroom a few times since then.

The Barcelona trainer? I hear you ask. Well it dried off, resumed duties and is back in normal service, even playing two gigs and doing a fine job on the bass drum.

Things are looking better, though I shall forgive but never forget.

PS - Just in case you're ever invited round here, or perhaps you're thinking about coming, I was only joking about getting another few weeks of use from the washing up scouring pad. No, I reckon at the most I'll only get a few days before it'll have to go!

uǝɯ ɹoɟ uoıʇsǝnb ɐ

In recent months I've noticed something.

It's about belts, the ones we wear on our trousers, or on a trouser, for the Sri Lankans among you. I'm right handed, one of the eighty five to ninety two per cent of people according the Wikipedia.

The way I prefer to wear a belt, actually the way I must wear one, is to have the long piece on the left side of my body, my left that is, and the buckle or fastener piece on my right side. Sadly I thought about this for some time before writing this post and figured out why this is.

It's because the easier skill involved in doing up a belt is to grasp hold of the long bit, while the more complicated part of the process is to hold the buckle, putting the pin through the hole and what have you, not that it's up there as a particularly complex set of skills of course.

But whenever I buy a belt, one with a logo or some writing on it, I find that it's made the "wrong" way round. The result of this is that I have to wear the thing with the writing upside down, which somewhat negates the point of a logo, or face a big struggle to do up the thing each time, making both my hands do things that each of them thinks the other one ought to be doing.

As an example right now I'm wearing a nice brown leather Ted Baker belt. On the straight bit it's got "Ted Baker" embossed in the leather. It's quite subtle and tasteful in my opinion, as branding should be.

However, it you were standing in front of me you'd actually see "ɹǝʞɐq pǝʇ" on my belt as I have to wear it upside down.

So I want to know if this is a problem that affects all of us men or if the rest of you are more dexterous with the left hand than myself. I want to know if it's only me that's noticed this, or if the beltmakers are conspiring against right handed people.

Why have I addressed the question to men?

Simple. Because only men will understand the importance of issues like this. Women just won't care.

Spitting Games

As the founder member of the We hate Snow Patrol apart from Spitting Games club I feel that the title is entirely appropriate. Though I quite like that other one, Take Back the City, as well.

Picture the scene. I was out on a pleasant dinner last week. There was me, kind of obvious really, there was the Auf, rather The Auf and there was a friend of his who I'd met a couple of times before as well as her twin sister.

Things could get confusing here as both of the twins have similar names and they begin with the letter C. If I was to go off on a coded name thing, as first invented and utilised by Darwin back in the day, chaos may well ensue, what with C being the original C, that one that, well, you know, the one that is my, well, you know, ahem, girlfriend.

So I figure it's best to refer to the twins as T1 and T2. T1 is the one that The Auf knew first, T2 is the newer one, who's also the older one, albeit by only two minutes. I must tell you that I found it most amusing that T1 calls T2 Akki when there's only two minutes between them. They just looked at me weirdly and laughed in that "he's a bit creepy but let's be polite" way when I mentioned this though.

We were in a restaurant in the heart of the West End, it was a gorgeous sunny summer evening and I was excited to be meeting new diasporic Sri Lankans. If you imagine our table to be a rectangle, which most tables apart from the non rectangular ones are, then I was sitting in the bottom right segment of the rectangle.

The Auf was occupying territory in his majestic way in the top right, T1 was in the bottom left and T2 was in the top left. That just about sets the scene for you. Oh, and the tablecloth was white.

It's an interesting thing when you go for a meal with people you don't know very well n'est-ce pas? When I'm familiar with them there's rarely any awkwardness about bill paying. It's either split equally between all parties or someone picks up the tab knowing that another fellow will pick it up next time, but not really being bothered about it anyhow.

Were I alone with The Auf I'd have had no hesitation in buying dinner or letting him buy me dinner, feeling quite fluid about it, but this was a new group and things were different. As we perused the menu I found myself going through that mental stuff, wondering what people would order, if we'd split the bill equally and therefore if it would be bad if I ordered more than the others and all those permutational things.

I'm not sure if other people have all of these complicated issues going through their mind or if they just read the menu and order what they want. How can I know this stuff when I rarely understand what's going on in my head alone?

I did a bit of asking around and established that everyone was going for a noodle type of dish, perhaps each person was waiting for someone to say the words on the tip of my tongue:

"I think I'll have the spicy lamb curry, the mixed fried rice and just some vegetables. Oh and a small salad as I like to be healthy."

I didn't. The words remained on the tongue and I held back and ordered pad thai. I followed the lead of T2 and asked for some extra chilli.

We carried on with our chat and the food arrived. And this is where it gets interesting.

I did that thing of mixing chilli sauce and peanuts and all sorts of random crap into the pad thai to make it taste better and commenced on the eating, interspersed with nuggets of good quality conversation.

You know when you're with someone, happily chatting away and enjoying things with not a care in the world and then inadvertently something solid comes flying out of their mouth and lands nearby? Something like a chewed up bit of food and it always lands in the most awkward of places like in an eye, on your face or in your food.

Well that's exactly what happened. I turned to T1 and saw the object out of the corner of my eye as it exited the mouth at the same time as a word. I'm sorry but I can't recall the precise word. The missile landed about an inch from T1's plate of uneaten food.

Ever the gent, I continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. The little lump of chewed food sat next to the plate looking totally massive but doing nothing whatsoever. I'm pretty sure The Auf and T2 had also spotted the episode but no one said a word. It was all very British as we deliberately ignored the incident and carried on as if nothing had happened, ironic considering not one of us had an ounce of British blood running through our veins.

The worst thing was that I'd caught it in my peripheral vision as it was launched. I knew exactly who'd been the spitter and where it landed and I so didn't want to be the culprit.

But I was.

That's how I remember that the tablecloth was white. For I spent every available second glancing at the remnant hoping that it would evaporate or dissolve. It didn't. It just sat there looking like a Maldivian atoll in that bright blue water. I felt sorry for T1 but what's a chap supposed to do in these situations?

I couldn't be sure that anyone else had seen it happen so a confession followed by a quick wipe might well have seen me confess to a crime that no one knew had taken place. We weren't familiar enough with each other for one person to go

"Euurrrgh look what he did" and make a joke.

T1, had she seen it, which I'm sure she did, probably didn't feel comfortable to wipe the thing away, risking embarrassing me.

We carried on eating but I'd been so put off my stride that I couldn't finish my food. I had to go to make a phone call and, when I returned, T1 had placed her napkin on the table covering the offending object. I don't know if it was deliberate or just because she'd finished her meal but I cared not, the thing was concealed, that was the important issue.

When the bill came I resisted the urge to ask to pay less as I'd spat so much of my food out and we split it four ways. The maths was complicated but when you hang with The Auf you know there's a chap present with the brain to handle it.

What was it my Mum used to say about not talking with your mouth full?

And T1 occasionally reads my blog I believe. So if she didn't spot it happen at the time she probably knows now.

Apart from all of that it was a damn fine evening. At least no one spat at me.

The Sandwich Is Missing, Long Live The Queen

Remember that Sandwich lady, the one who we all read? The one who won prestigious awards and was a bit mad?

Well she stopped blogging and I'm one of the many who've missed her and her random ramblings. Apparently she's been off discovering new avenues and rebranding herself, doing paradigm shifts and other specialised gear changing techniques.

Why am I telling you all of this?

No reason really, but I discovered a new blog yesterday. It's called "In the Lost Queen's Eyes" and it has a warming familiar and comfortable ring to it, a bit like a favourite old mobile phone that's been left in an airing cupboard a bit too long.

Check it out. There's a link on the left too, one of those ones reserved for special people with special blogs.