My body makes a funny sound

I’ve got to the devastating age when you have to start paying a bit closer attention to the weird sounds your body is making. No, not those ones. Like a few years ago when we were in Strasbourg for a few days and I was stretching my arms out behind me in a languid fashion and heard a rssssht sound like velcro come from somewhere near my right ear.

It wasn’t immediately painful, I wasn’t tempted to roll around on the floor or anything, but any sudden movement from my arm would result in a temporarily demobilising pain. Turned out I’d torn my RSJ. No, that’s the living room one. The shoulder one is the rotator cuff. Still hurts a little occasionally, even now, but I suppose I have to accept that I am simply getting old and need to warm up thoroughly before I stretch in the morning.

Just now I sort of puffed my cheeks out as if I was blowing up a balloon and there was a fizzing sound in the back of my jaw, like I’d tipped over a bottle of lemonade by accident. Random bodily function or minor life impacting ailment? Well, that’s the fun these days, when so many exciting alternatives are the preserve of much younger folk than me.

I brush my teeth

I was brushing my teeth just now at a motorway hotel in southern Germany, on my way back from a really rather fun drive to Italy. I gave my tongue a little once over with my tongue scraper – not a massively regular weapon in my toiletry arsenal, but when you need it you need it.

I put it down on sink next to my toothbrush to dry off while I prepared to pop down to breakfast and charge the car. The thought struck me, what if I died while I was out of the room? I had a vision of an investigating police officer spotting the tongue scraper and asking his forensics colleague if my tongue really was clean. ‘Sieht sehr gut aus,’ she would say – looks great.

I dried it quickly and put it back in my bag.

Don’t mind me…

Don’t mind me, I’m procrastinating.

I’m supposed to be doing something else, and once I exhausted all other methods of putting off the relatively minor but incredibly dull other thing that I’m supposed to be doing, I thought to myself ‘Samuel, why don’t you write something fascinating for that blog you started and never put anything on?’

And I replied ‘Me, that’s a great idea. I have after all exhausted all other methods of putting off this relatively minor but incredibly dull other thing.’ Doesn’t that make you feel special? I really should just get on and do it, but it’s impossible to muster the motivation within my fickle brain. It’s fickle like that.

I’ve got no leverage, nothing to hold over myself as a worthy threat – I know that I won’t follow I through. (Follow through, incidentally, is the literal translation of the German Durchfallj, or diarrhoea. Though you could more amusingly translate it as ‘fall through’. Who says the Germans don’t have a sense of humour? Not me.) I really should get cracking on that other thing. 

The slow boat to Belfast

17:16, Thursday: I’m on a train. Well, I’m waiting for a train. Hopefully the train isn’t going to be late. A train to catch a boat. I’ve already been on one train to get here, had to run down the street dragging my case behind me, fling myself across a level crossing as the train went past and then jam my shoulders in the doors as the thing tried to leave without me. Our local train station is great for dramatic last gasp do or die efforts to make the next train to London. This next one should be more sedate.

17:40, Thursday: Actually on the train now. It’s going to Liverpool, where we’ll swap for the overnight ferry to Belfast. It’s been ages since I went on a long distance train in the UK. This one’s got plugs and big winged headrests on the seats that block out the rest of the carriage. Which means it’s been a delightful surprise each of the three times already that I’ve been hit in the head with a roller bag trying to find where it’s reserved a space.

19:03, Thursday: The carriage is full of people complaining about how awful London is in Scouse accents. Can’t say I’m inclined to defend the place if I’m honest. Plus fewer tourists means I can get around quicker. The train was 17 minutes late before we even departed because of ‘signalling’ issues. The issue presumably being that the light didn’t turn green when it should have. Fortunately my wife being my wife we have a buffer of over an hour that wouldn’t have been there if I’d have been the one to book the tickets.

20:33, Thursday: There’s something delightful about a train-based picnic. I brought some homemade hummus with me, chopped carrots and some boiled eggs. A delightful repast. I added some sandwiches that I bought at the newsagents in Euston (not to draw any attention to the brand, but it rhymes with WH Smith). Modest little numbers, but nevertheless they cost the same as an all-inclusive holiday in a North African coastal resort. We’re now running 39 minutes late. Apparently being a little bit late makes you a lot late because they give your bit of track to another train. I’d just overtake all the slow people if it was me.

21:33, Thursday: On a bus. Took a taxi from the station that smelled of sick and checked in for the boat. I’ve never been a foot passenger on a boat before, you just have to guess what you’re supposed to do next and where you’re supposed to go. Now we’re sitting outside the terminal on a freezing cold bus while a man watches videos on his phone at full volume, watching people in their cozy cars drive onboard. I’m ready for my bed. Well, a bed. I think we’ve booked something down near the bilge pumps.

22:31, Thursday: Seeing what’s on the ship takes about four minutes. Some good offers in the little shop, people gathering around the bar and others staking their claim to a patch of soft seating they’re going to try and call home tonight. We’ve booked a cabin, which has fold out bunk beds, a tiny television and an en-suite bathroom pumping sewage smells back up through the plug hole. It’s surprisingly comfortable. Time for bed, after we’ve spent a few minutes watching all the truck drivers say hello to the lady on the welcome desk. Easy to forget this sort of thing is a regular part of work for some.

05:51, Friday: Never has a crackling tannoy been less welcome. Don’t know if the speaker in our cabin is broken, but the bim-boom opening jingle sounds like someone’s about to murder the US national anthem on an electric guitar that’s just been run over by a van. ‘Goodmoooorningleddiesngennlemen’ – anything is too perky at this time of the morning. Short of it is that we arrive in Belfast at half six and have to be out of our cabins by quarter past. What I hear is ‘Plenty of time to jump in the shower’. It’s quite lovely and warm.

08:51, Friday: Missed the bus connection from the ferry into Belfast, would have been three hours to the next one. Felt a bit strange just sitting around on the boat while all the important people with their cars went back to warm up. It’s a four-mile walk through the picturesque industrial heartland of Belfast’s docks to get to the centre. We have found a hipster cafe down an alleyway to get the feeling back. The rest of our weekend adventures beckon. We’re flying back to London – would I do this boat route again? Maybe, if I was driving.

One door temporarily closes, another door opens

My supermarket constantly makes me furious – I had to stop shopping there for a few months when they introduced new trolleys that needed a pound coin to unlock them. I felt criminalised, it goes against all the principles of innocent until proven guilty that underpin the fundamentals of our legal system. It shook my relationship with Sainsbury’s – how can they even want me as a customer if they suspect I’m only there to pilfer the wheels? Plus I never have any loose change on me. Mrs Burnett got me a little token to put in the trolleys, but I keep forgetting it.

I spent those few months shopping at another local branch of Sainsbury’s, but it was a different class of customer (far more likely to steal trolleys in that one, and yet they still managed to dish them out for free) and I couldn’t find anything anywhere. To be fair, I can never find anything in my regular supermarket because they keep moving things round. Either they’re massively indecisive or they do it deliberately so you can’t shop too quickly. Either way it’s intensely irritating.

Smash cut to this afternoon, where I park in my usual spot (otherwise I lose the car, I can never remember where I’ve left it) and make my way inside. The door does not open. I spy a sign, which says ‘This door is temporarily closed’. Well of course, it’s a door. All doors are temporarily closed, otherwise they would be walls. Indeed the whole point and essential nature of a door is that it closes temporarily.

What they needed to communicate was that this door would be closed for slightly longer than you might expect, to the extent that it would be more expeditious to use the next door several metres down. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to explain that this door is temporarily not opening. But why even bother with a sign? How long is anyone going to stand in front of an automatic door before giving up? If I didn’t know any better I’d assume it was some sort of retail-based psyop. To what end? To make me furious. A genius move, because I’m still thinking about Sainsbury’s hours later.

Heat me baby one more time

I love the heat. I genuinely think I must be cold blooded, like a reptile. I need the heat, I lament the lack of heat in the winter months. And the spring and autumn months. Occasionally during the summer months too.

And yet the other evening as I floated in my own sweat, trying to drift off to sleep, I thought that perhaps the heat was even too much for me. The duvet might have been a bit much in retrospect, but I like the reassurance of being covered while I snooze. The cat can’t get me while I’m swaddled.

I immediately rejected the thought that the heat was too much – in fact I came around to the opposite way of thinking. I lay there in the dark, my face glistening in the moonlight, and considered how much it will cost me in a mere month or two to get the house back to its current temperature. Now I’m just trying to absorb as much of this free Celsius as I can.

RE: You've left a hole in my garden

Hello – I've had a hole in my garden since May (that you dug, for context) and I've spoken to the leakage team (whatever you call them) a few times since then and every time someone says they'll find out what's going on and get back to me, but they never do. I'm sure it's not their fault, they're always very polite and helpful.

I'd quite like for there not to be a hole in my garden (I have to lift the cat over the yellow cover after it rains because she doesn't like getting her paws wet, it's quite annoying) – could you tell me when it will get filled in or whether there's a particular reason for it still being there? I'm half tempted to fill the whole in myself and put your blue barrier and yellow hole cover on eBay, but I imagine that would be a sub-optimal result all round (how much are they worth?).

Yours,

(I had to email Thames Water last week because there’s a six-month-old hole in my garden. I’ll let you know if I ever hear back.)

It was a good day

It was a good day, I was right. The bins augured well. Good day at the office, lots of sunshine, managed to bag myself a chicken triple sandwich from Boots. After work I headed to a networking event. I know, but it was more fun than it sounds. It was for creative people. I’ve not been to a networking event in about 13 years, so I was dreading it, but it’s important to put yourself out there a bit, isn’t it. Challenge yourself. Try something… not new, but try something old that you haven’t done for ages. Should’ve started with taking cross-stitching back up or something like that. Met some lovely people, chatted with them about what they do. It was actually very inspiring. I’ve got irons in the fire, so to speak, but it’s hard to tell whether I’m more lazy or scared. A mix of the two, I think. Rather holds you back. But other people are lazy or scared or lacking the confidence to do their thing too. It’s nice to have the opportunity to share what you’re excited about and have someone do a bit of cheerleading for you. Even if it is just about getting the bins out in the morning.