Another Big Milestone, Astronomical French Tax & This Is England ...

I've just realised it's now less than 200 days before I become a dad! Another milestone passes and the time draws ever nearer to the next stage in my life, and probably the biggest change I'll ever experience (people tell me the second child onwards is far easier). It'll be amazing, and I'll be so happy it'll equal the joy I felt on the last day I left France for good in 2004 (I'd worked there for nearly 4 years, and all I had to show for it was a bloody good French accent and a bloody huge French tax bill ...

When I was in France, I was told that because at the time I was single and so far childless, then I would pay a massive tax bill ... unless of course I could get married, have three children and have my (exhausted) wife not go out to work. I asked if I could buy ready-made families at the supermarket, which didn't go down too well with my humoristically-bereft French colleagues.

This Is England

There's something about home-grown English cinema that really excites me. From the likes of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach to London-esque flickmeisters like Guy Ritchie and Nick Love. But recently one film seems to be soaring above anything that those guys have put out, and that film is This Is England by Shane Meadows. Now I knew Shane back in the early 1990s through his friendship with the actor Paddy Considine, who I was at school with. As I remember I wasn't all that keen on Shane, because to me back then he seemed a little too arrogant, with too much to say for himself ... but maybe that was just me.

What I can say now though is that this new film I hope will push him to the zenith he deserves. About 1980s skinheads in England around the time of The Falklands (not Malvinas), for me this film responds to everything I look for in a film ... action, strong characters, realism and that all-important coming-of-age story that gives even the harshest of tales that injection of believability. Miss it at your peril ... here's a short clip ...

Dave Gorman, Danny Wallace & Crapston Villas, I Salute You ...

I am coming to the end of one of the most rewarding not to mention funniest books I think I've ever read ... if not for the sheer lunacy of it, then for the witty, punching style in which it's been put together. "Are You Dave Gorman?" is a must read for everyone in my opinion. I'd been eyeing the book up for ages, and never actually got around to buying it, but a friend lent me it a few weeks ago and I've been reading it small chunks, so as to delay getting to the end of it (which I wholeheartedly do not want to do).

There's just something about the book's "following (moreover sticking religiously to) a bet" background, it reminds me a lot of "'Round Ireland with a Fridge" by Tony Hawks (one of my all-time personal favourites) and even "French Revolutions" by Tim Moore. I guess it's that zany streak that Dave and Danny have that makes me wish I'd got the wherewithal and freedom to be able to just bugger off on a whim and do something crazy like look solely for people that share my name!

Now I'm after their follow-ups ...

• Join Me (Danny Wallace),
• Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, and
• Yes Man (Danny Wallace).

But before I do, watch this hilarious excerpt from the Are You Dave Gorman? show ...



Crapston Villas

I also found this on YouTube, it's from probably my favourite animated "adult" comedy show, Crapston Villas. It's based on some rotten bedsits in a filthy part of South London. I look everywhere for it on DVD, but to no avail. Such a shame ...

Il Divo, U2 & Alan Partridge ... do I ramble?

Well, yesterday Becky and I went to see Il Divo in concert at the Hallam Arena in Sheffield. We saw them last year at the NEC in Birmingham, but we were sat in the main floor area and - lo and be-f***ing-hold - the "possessor of Birmingham's largest head" sat right in front of me so I couldn't see a thing. I still have nightmares ...

So this concert was for me a sort of putting old ghosts to rest, of no longer having the Pavlovian response of thinking of the backs of sizeable crania every time I hear Il Divo. As it happened we were sat quite high up and got a top view ... bit far back, but the sound was amazing. For Becky, I'm sure the concert was all about going to see Sébastien Izambard, the French singer in Il Divo (who the women go crackers for, despite him being French).

I'd been to the then Sheffield Arena in 1992 to see U2 on the European leg of their ZooTV tour, and I remember it very well that on May 2nd that year we'd queued for about 6 hours waiting to buy tickets ... it was the day my maternal grandfather died as when I got home there was just my dad there looking quite solemn.

We had a little drive through Sheffield before we arrived, with Becky driving her VW Beetle I had the opportunity to take some photos of the area, because as I'd worked a lot in Sheffield between 2004 and 2006 I wanted to capture some of the areas that I remembered (I've uploaded the photos to Flickr.com).

We stopped by at my old Liberata workplace in Attercliffe and took a couple of shots, before going on to the Holiday Inn Victoria Hotel near to the centre of the city. What a grand old building it is! We surmised that in its heyday it must have been one of the main hotels in the city, and sure enough there were lots of old photos of it from early last century with chaps in top hats and tailcoats proudly on their way to the train station (which I take was right next door, but has long since been demolished).

It seems such a shame that such a grand old place has become a Holiday Inn. Well that's progress for you, I guess!

It could have been worse, we could have stayed at a Travel Tavern, Alan Partridge style ("It's 3-star") ...

A wet weekend of work work work ...

Why is it that every UK bank holiday weekend it has to rain? Yesterday it was threatening a few spots throughout the day, although I managed to put up two trellises (I love that word) for the climbers I've planted and the grape vines.

To make matters worse, I've had some emergency work this weekend for a customer, and it's just added salt to the wound of the weekend's dubious meteorological conditions.

Still, we've got tomorrow to look forward to, as we're going up to Sheffield to see Il Divo in concert at the Sheffield Hallam Arena. It was a Christmas gift for Becky. We'll take a leisurely drive up over the Peak District, I think - even that place looks beautiful on a rainy day.

I'm just going outside to admire my trellises (sounds like a euphemism) ... actually I wonder what the plural for trellis is ... trellae, perchance?

Oh and another good book recommendation I got from a friend of mine in London is The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Again, I'm really looking forward to this book, the synopsis really firing me up ...

Dawkins contends that belief in a supernatural creator qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's observation that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

I guess that even though I go to church and consider myself Christian, I had to read this book. After all, we're all allowed the freedom to think what we like. Well, we will be again after the "Labour" government are crushed at the next election. I just can't wait for Cherie Blair to do us all a favour, and forget to brake as she hurtles towards a brick wall.

As you were.

Black daleks & earthly damnation secured ...

I looked out of the window yesterday and got the shock of my life ... what looked to all purposes like a black dalek was sat in our garden! For that one split second I was like "What the fffffff ... ?!" Then I remembered, I'd order a compost bin, and it'd arrived far more quickly than recyclenow.com had stated. It only cost me £9 (with free delivery too).

So now I'm the very proud owner of one very black compost bin, and the only thing I've got to do is find somewhere for it. The base of it is open, to allow worms and other creatures to help break down the contents of the bin, otherwise I'd have put it on some hardstanding at this end of the garden ... as it happens, it'll have to go 30 metres down the garden into the back corner where it can work its magic before feeding my vegetable patch next year.

On another note, we met a group of friends last night as we do every Thursday evening more or less at one of their houses a couple of streets away, and I got a really good tip-off for a book by CS Lewis (not my favourite author) called "The Screwtape Letters". Its story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood, so as to advise him on methods of securing the damnation of an earthly man, known only as "the Patient." (who was an ordinary man living in war-time England).

What I didn't realise was that Bono's characters "MacPhisto" and "The Fly", as seen in U2's Zoo TV Tour, were inspired by Screwtape. I'm really looking forward to reading it!

Scan date confirmed ...

Well, we've been given the scan date by the hospital ... it's Tuesday, June 12th - the day after Becky's birthday. We did ask if they could change it to the Monday, but they can't unfortunately.

Now it's all getting very real!

On another note (mild rant here) I had to do a Myers Brigg Personality Type Indicator Questionnaire today for our team meeting in a few weeks. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind doing a bit of pre-work, I even quite enjoy it, but these questionnaires I just fail to see the value of.

The questionnaire I had asked you things like "You're at a party. Do you A) talk to everyone and be outgoing, or B) talk only to those people you know?" ... and someone you'll never meet deciphers your personality type from that?! What they should ask is "You're at a party, and someone makes a move on your girlfriend. Do you A) tw*t him, and drag him by the hair kicking and screaming to give him a pasting outside, or B) congratulate him on his first-class choice of lady to pester?"

Do me a favour!

Names ... who'd 'ave 'em?

Well it's been quite an uneventful week all told, taken up mostly by work. Becky remarked only this morning how it'd already been a week since we saw the midwife.

I had a first-time, small-scale emergency exercise for a group of individuals on Monday, which went very well , although the sheer amount of work required to put one of these things together is not reflected in the two hours it takes to do the things! More's the pity. It's like spending all day preparing a Christmas dinner then having everyone devour it in 30 minutes flat. Fat gits.

So I was down in Guildford on Sunday to avoid any complications trying to travel on Monday morning, which didn't go down at all well with Becky ... maybe more than 48 hours' warning would be better! Although I have to say, a leisurely (or as Americans would say "leezhurlee") drive down the M40 on a Sunday afternoon isn't all that bad ... certainly beats the early morning traffic I usually have to contend with.

We were looking at a names book for the baby this weekend. Some of the names people give their offspring these days, it's verging on the immoral. Get these ...

• Girls
• Semirami (meaning "half a savoury pork sausuage snack")
  
• Sharlott (meaning "related to onions")
  
• Sinead (kitsch, shortened form of "skinhead")
• Vidula (some medical term, probably vulgar)
• Xylophila (hates foreigners whilst at the same time appreciating the sonorofic qualities of the xylophone)

• Boys
• Conan (after the Barbarian / Cimmerian)
• St John (pron. "sin-jun", a name exclusively reserved for children of middle-class tw*t parentage ... same goes for Hugo, Rupert and Angus)
• Sachaverell (compound version of Sacha Distel)
• Saladin (diminutive term for"salad", a name favoured by left-wing vegetarian tree huggers)
• Thierry (after the Arsenal striker & French international)
  
• Henry (after the Arsenal striker & French international)

Worse than those names, my cousin on the Isle of Man mentioned last week that her daughter went to school with a girl called Destiny who had a sister called Harmony ... I still think the winner was the Shaniqua, the name I heard in London that day, which our book kindly describes as:

a blend of Shan and Monique or Monica, popular among Afro-Americans. Other forms: Shanika.

I feel like watching tattooed, toothless low-life batter each other on the Jeremy Kyle show now. Fare thee well.

MAAAAAATRON ... I mean Midwife ...

Well we had our first midwife visit this morning at the Winshill Medical Centre. The building it's in used to be the Winshill Community Centre (it's far nicer now, no thugs fighting or vandalism anywhere near it). And I couldn't believe how quiet and empty the place was - is no-one ill this week? My surgery on Gordon Street is on the other side of the town, and on a "quiet" day is like a bustling street market in Islamabad.

I don't really know what I was expecting from the midwife, but it turned out to be all about filling out forms, asking lots of questions about history of dementia, insanity or syphilis in the family, and looking at a chart suspiciously similar to an astrology chart to ascertain a due date, which for us is December 16th. I was really pleased because that was my late maternal grandfather's birthday as well. Would be nice to have him / her born on that day.

We'll have our first scan in the next month or so, so I'm really looking forward to that! My mate Simon and his wife Helen showed me the first scan of their baby in March, and I remember wondering what that must feel like to see that and know it's your kiddie ... well now it's our turn!

The midwife told us about the two choices we have for birth location.

1. Burton Queen's Hospital, or
2. Samuel Johnson Clinic, Lichfield.

We were sold, Lichfield it is :-) ... you see, the Lichfield clinic is all about water births and all manner of therapies to help relax expectant mothers before birth, and the midwife assured us that it is a far nicer experience all 'round. Thing is, why've they chosen Samuel Johnson as the name? I mean, I know he was born in Lichfield and all that but he doesn't seem to have much affinity with childbirth. It'd be like calling one in Nuneaton the "Larry Grayson Maternity Hospital" or one in Windsor called the "Henry VIII Maternity Clinic". They just don't seem to go.

I suppose if you were really sad in looking for a tenuous link, you could always say that Johnson "gave birth" to the English dictionary ... I'll get my coat.

Norman Collier, as I live & breathe ...

I was reminded today of a great old English comedian from the 1980s, who I've not thought about in years, and yet who used to have me laughing my head off whenever he was on the telly.

Trying to speak on a conference call this morning, the 'phone my colleagues were using suddenly decided it was only going to relay about 50% of what they were saying, interspersed with annoying breaks. So instead of hearing "So we need to understand what the client's requirements are", all I heard was "... we need to ...hand ... the ... lion ... mints" - or something like that.

I piped up "This is like listening to that bloke who used to only say like half of what he was saying on telly" (I'm so articulate sometimes), and from that one of my colleagues said "Ah, you mean Norman Collier". Fantastic! Not only had someone managed to decode the drivel I was spouting, but had in fact reminded me of his name. I've tried to find some footage on YouTube of his "faulty microphone" routine, but alas to no avail. Maybe he's stuck in the 80s?

Why blogs are so important ...

The person whose blog inspired me to start this one's latest entry has hit the nail squarely on the head as to why these blogs can be so important ... they're a true, frank and honest account of the tumult that can come about through massive personal and life change.

Good on you, mate! Here's to you and your family settling Down Under, and all the luck in the world to you.

A few days at home, and too much pregnancy awareness ...

We've got a midwife appointment on Wednesday this week at the star-studded Winshill Medical Centre, whose timing because it cuts the week in two, means I have a few days at home and don't travel until either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday.

For some reason I'm worried about the appointment, I don't know why really. Becky says there's nothing to worry about ... so I guess if she's happy then so should I be!

I keep seeing pregnant women everywhere I go now though. We went to IKEA in Nottingham last Saturday, and counted up to 15 expectant mothers ... everywhere we looked there were lumps and bumps, and people measuring up cots and changing tables!

Then last week when I was walking beside the Thames between, and I just kept noticing pregnant women. I couldn't help but stare at their shall we say "impending motherhood" for want of a better term, but was also extremely conscious of appearing to have a pregnancy kink. Last thing I need is my collar felt by the local gendarmes down there.

One thing I did see, that made me laugh, was on the way back to my car a small coloured girl ran across in front of me and onto this little pier by the Thames. I suddenly heard this South London caterwaul of "SHANIQUA!! SHANIQUA!! Don't go onto tha' f***ing pier, or you'll ge' a slap." I looked to my right and there was this vile, tenement-dwelling, chav teenage mum, smoking endless cigarettes between talon-like red nails, and surrounded by another 3 kids all under 3 years of age by the looks of it.

The names these pikeys give their kids ... Shaniqua, for goodness' sake! They make the names up, I'm willing to put money on it. I once saw on Ricki Lake (when I was a student) some great big vile beast called LaSheeba, who was on there it seemed to tell some scrawny little bloke with a mullet and bum-fluff moustache that "I got my own car, I got a job, and you ain't all that motherf***er". LaSheeba - is that not a make of cat food?

Eurovision Rubbish!

I don't usually watch the Eurovision, on the simple grounds that it's a big pile of steaming crap. I do, however, watch the rounds of voting and laugh my socks off at the "tactical" regional voting that goes on, especially amongst the former Soviet states, the Balkans and the former Eastern bloc countries.

So imagine my disgust when last night we watched the entire spectacle from Helsinki from beginning to end, hearing some of the tacky shite that countries with unpronounceable names put out, and had to watch Serbia take this year's crown with a song so dull it could make even the happiest amongst us feel low and depressed. And the "woman" who won it - less of a bull dyke I've never seen. Terry Wogan put it beautifully (and very sarcastically) ... "It just goes to prove that you don't need looks to make it in Eurovision".

Well the UK's Scooch didn't win, and for a time it looked like we'd be going out on nul points, but we did get something at least. What did piss me off was some girl in a pink dress "interviewing" entrants in the green room out back during breaks in voting, saying "And now here we are with England" ... bitch! It's the UK. Reminds me of the Stereophonics once saying "When we win awards, we're known as a British band, when we don't win we're known as a Welsh band".

A big hats off though to the Ukraine, who presented the funniest thing I think I've seen in years! Check it out in the link (Ukraine are right at the bottom) ... Eurovision Contestants.

London Cab? More like Smash & Grab!

Demi-rant.

Went from South Bank to the top end of Whitehall yesterday for a meeting (it's 0.6 miles as the crow flies, ordinarily you can walk it in 15 minutes, but it was raining very heavily and I had no umbrella). So we got a cab from right outside our offices.

Get this ... the cabbie charged us £7.20.

The evil, thieving, cockerney (sic) b***ard.

Oh deer ...

What a morning I've had already, and I only started this blog less than 24 hours ago.

I left my hotel in East Horsley at about 06h05 this morning, and was happily driving up to the A3 north of Guildford. Beautiful clear morning, bit windy, and the roads were clear (very rare for Surrey). There were lots of birds on the road, crows, pigeons, sparrows, magpies and so on, and I had to keep braking to avoid them.

I spotted a rabbit running across from right to left, so I slowed right down and suddenly! out of the corner of my eye I spot a small deer and for that one split second I make eye contact with it before it decides it's going to have a go at crossing. I'm less than 50 feet from it, doing about 30mph ... and across it goes. I slammed the anchors on, and turned to the right (there was nothing oncoming) and BANG! (well, more a THUD! really) it hits my left front wing.

There was no panic, I just pulled over up the road and walked back down. I was gutted that I'd hit it of course, and had images of having to lift it, flaying its legs and panicking, into my car. There was no way I was going to just leave. But if I did find it, injured, then where would I take it?! There was a deep ditch at the side of the road, lots of nettles and bushes, and I could see nothing. I scanned the field in front of me ... nothing. Where was it? A car passed, the driver looking oddly at me in my bright shirt and tie. Must have thought local authority workmen had some bizarre new "dress smartly" directive (I certainly wouldn't put it past local authorities).

Then, suddenly, I heard a huge rustle in the bushes, and the deer leapt up from right next to where I'd hit it, bounced like a beachball about 3 feet over a barbed wire fence and bounded at speed across the neighbouring field. Not even a limp! It stopped, looked back at me as if to say "I'm fine, but no thanks to you", and away it went. I was absolutely delighted, thanked God for his good will, got back in my car, drove to Southwark and walked along the Thames to our South Bank office with a real "spring in my step".

Just the beginning ...

There comes a time in most people's lives where massive, total and life-altering changes manifest themselves all at once, like three big manifesting things ... collectively they're known as pregnancy, and they're all stalking me right now.

It all started in the middle of April this year. My wife Rebecca had made a passing comment about being pregnant and I, in my usual ignorance, brushed over the subject as if she was joking. There's something unnerving though about a woman who isn't joking - she just stared at me. "D'you think I'm joking" she asked. "Oh don't muck about" I replied. All she did was stand there, arms folded, one eyebrow raised, and I knew I was buggered.

Me? A dad? Noooooo ... only when I saw that word PREGNANT on the home testing kit did it begin to sink in. I mean, at first I was mortified, but the idea quickly grew on me. I'm going to thoroughly enjoy this.

An old colleague of mine has put together a blog of his move to Australia, which got me thinking what a wonderful way to record your thoughts and emotions as they happen. So here it is, my blog for impending fatherhood.