Spooning in the mince meat

Aero Christmas Tree

Hola. Hope you are well.

I’ve had a busy week or should I say a relatively busy week.

First up, I have joined Twitter, that might surprise some people but as it seems everyone and its wife is on Twitter I thought I would join. I know in the past I might have said that if something can be said in 140 characters it’s probably not worth saying, but what can I say, life makes a hypocrite of us all. In the past I’ve slagged off London and now I live there. At this rate I’m going to marry Cheryl Cole and start supporting Man Utd.

Joining Twitter is something I’d been thinking about doing for a while and like most things in my life it wasn’t straight forward. I decided to check out potential user names, including @juliandaniel, @jad (my initials) and even @Prong1 but they had all been taken, some by people who had only tweeted once or twice before giving up. So I did a little market research, (I spoke to two people, ‘Her With One Permanent Job‘ and my friend Zoe) and they suggested I should choose something around the moniker of an unknown comedian. As it happened @unknowncomedian was already taken and I couldn’t do @anunknowncomedian as it had too many letters, so I eventually plumped for @anunknowncomic. Feel free to follow me.

In other news, I’m currently enjoying my Christmas break from working in school. Before breaking up I decided I would get the two boys I work with football magazines, as they are both football fans and it would be a good way of getting them into reading. The only problem was I’d not bought a football mag since I was a kid and so I didn’t realise that they were so expensive. Match magazine were doing a Christmas special and were charging £4:99 for the privilege and the only other football mag on the shelf was the Match Of The Day magazine which were £2:99. As I was contemplating what I should do, I did think about getting them copies of Nuts or Zoo as they are only about £1:50 but even I thought this wouldn’t be suitable for 13 yr old school children. So in the end I went for MOTD magazine. To be fair, the two boys gave me a Christmas card each (and one of them gave me an Aero Christmas tree) and despite both of them knowing my name, both of them wrote them to Mr Daniels. The adding of the ‘s’  to my surname happens a lot, normally I blame Paul Daniels for this, but I don’t think they are old enough to know who Paul Daniels is.

Talking of Christmas, ‘HWOPJ’ wanted to get into the Christmas spirit by making mince pies, I did tell her you can buy them in shops but this didn’t deter her. We started off making the pies together but after I’d made two, I was subtly relegated to the less high-profile role of spooning in the mince meat. ‘HWOPJ’ mentioned something about creating a production line but I knew what was going on.

As well as making mince pies together, we decided to go and see Charlton vs Oldham on Saturday, mainly because it was £10 in. We enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t recommend lower league football on a cold December day as a first date. Also at the game there was a minutes applause for a former Charlton player who had recently died. I think it might have been my first minutes applause but what I did notice is that clapping for a min feels longer than you might think. Why not try it yourself, stand in front of a clock and clap for a minute, why not get the whole office involved. Let me know how it goes.

And Finally… As this is my last blog post of the year, all that remains for me to do is to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2012 and thank you for all your support through out this year, tis appreciated.

Til next time (start of 2012), stay safe!

 

Pull your finger out Mr Daniel

Tracey Cox

Hola. Hope you are well.

I had a realisation this week. Despite going out with ‘Her With One Permanent Job’ for many years, it has only been in the last few days, I’ve kinda worked out what you are supposed to do in relationships. By anyone’s standards that is being slow on the uptake. For the last year I have been working with children who require  a lot of repeated learning before the penny drops and even they would be like, “Pull your finger out Mr Daniel”

I won’t elaborate as to what my realisation was, as you can find it out yourself, plus you probably already now and this blog is not the forum for such a discussion, I will leave that to Miriam Stoppard and Tracey Cox. Talking of the latter, she has an apt sounding surname for the job she does, a sex and relationship expert. Does your name reflect the job you do?

Also last week I went running for the first time in ages. To be honest, since I did the Great North Run, (in August) I have literally dined on it. One of the reasons I went running, last week, was because it was on my things to do list. I think if you have to write down that you need to do exercise, rather than it be part of your routine, it’s probably time to do some exercise.

I also think that training to do the GNR was the nearest thing I’ve experienced to being on a diet. I trained hard and got myself as fit as I could all for one target and since then I’ve mentally and physically given up. I can see how brides balloon after they get married.  It’s not because they’ve trapped their man and then feel they can relax. It’s because they’ve starved themselves for months so they can get down to their ‘ideal dress size’ only to return to eating normally the moment the wedding pics have been taken.

Also last week, whilst doing a little bit of writing in a library, I saw two old guys have an argument about who was sat where. From what I can tell one guy was sat in a seat, then left  but left his bag on the seat and a newspaper open, only for the second guy to come along move the first guy’s bag and start reading the paper. So when the first guy came back he wasn’t too pleased, and vocalised this. At one point the second guy said, “You’re not supposed to leave your bag, it could have had a bomb in it”. Personally, I doubt there is a terrorist group out there targeting libraries (that’s the government’s job) and secondly if he did think there was a bomb in the bag he didn’t move the bag that far away from where he was sat.

In other news, I was speaking to a friend of mine, and mentioned the phrase, ‘Elephant in the room’, to which she said she’d never heard that phrase before. I would have thought everyone reading this, would have heard of this phrase, so with this in mind I thought are there any phrases you’ve recently learnt. I’ll start by saying, it’s only been a few years that I learnt the phrase is ‘Dull as ditch water’ and not, ‘Dull as dish water’. Feel free to let me know any of yours, via the comments button.

And Finally… Last week, I mentioned that people should contact me to let me know of websites they go on. In the week, my colleague directed me to Sabotage Times and my friend gave me two, NewsThump.com and The Daily Mash. I will throw in Poems and Strange Mumblings the blog of a regular contributor to this blog, (hope he doesn’t mind). Feel free to check these sites, but don’t forget little old me. Cheers

Til next week, stay safe!

 

Hissy fits at 2am

Dougie from McFly

Hola. Hope you are well.

On last week’s blog post I mentioned how I had a new phone or I should say a new phone to me. I have to say that it is the best phone I’ve had, although that doesn’t say much for me, what with me not being that fussed with technological things. Having a hand me down phone does pose some issues, for example, without a manual you have to tentatively find your way around it. In that sense it’s like being with a new partner,as is the fact that some things appear to work in a similar manner to the previous one, yet some things are notably different, plus you literally have to learn which buttons to press. Feel free to let me no any similarities between mobile phones and partners. 

Last week I had a day off school due to the strikes, I used it to play around with my website, I think that’s what the strikers would have wanted. Even though I spent a fair bit of time on it, it’s not noticeably different but you can see for yourself, here is the new front page, I also added a page to house the videosI am in, and re-jigged my links page to reflect the websites/twitter pages I currently go on, feel free to have a look around.If you have any sites you’d like to recommend, your own or someone else’s let me know via the comments button.

Last week also saw me have a hissy fit at our flat at 2am in the morning, which involved me downing two mini bottles of beer and then returning to bed. At the time I was doing it to make a point, although even at the time I wasn’t quite sure what the point was, but in a way that’s not the point. Anyway the net result was that I returned to bed feeling bloated having drunk two bottles of beer too quickly. I’m over it now.

I also lost £10 last week, not in the street but in the bookies. I had a double on Mark Wright winning ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ and Misha B being eliminated from the X Factor. The sequence of events went like this, went out for a meal, on the way to the bus stop I put on the bet, ate the meal, came home just in time to see Dougie from McFly being crowned as King of the Jungle, ripped up betting slip.  I’ve always preferred Busted!

And Finally…Tiger Woods won his first golf tournament for more than 2 years, all I will say is watch out the golfing world and watch out cocktail waitresses.

Til next week, (hopefully Monday), stay safe!