Smithy’s Rant

This is funny, partly because I know how much certain people hate James Corden, and partly because it is always good to see celebs taken down a peg.

Part of the Sports Relief show on Saturday night was a sketch done by James Corden, where he is pretending to be “Smithy”, who receives the Coach of the Year Award at Sports Personality. This then turns into a rant at the nations best athletes, well mainly rant, except for the flirting with Victoria Pendleton.

Some of them took it a lot better than others, Dame Kelly Holmes and Paula Radcliffe looked like they were going to cry / kill him. Freddie (I mean Andrew, but who cares?) Flintoff had a similar reaction, but from the work they have been doing together recently on Sky One he is either in on the gag and knew it was coming, or can’t have minded that much.

Nice timing on the Pendleton piece, she currently has a spot on our living room wall, she is the FHM calendar girl for March.

Thoughts?

Time to try out this ’sleep’ thing

OK, so last night we watched ‘Glee’, then tidied up and went to bed. I read for maybe 10 minutes before sleep hit and that was that.

For about half an hour.

WTF?

For 30 minutes I was out of it and then suddenly I was wide awake and nothing was going to get me back off again.

So I got up, grabbed my book and bathrobe and came downstairs where I read, internetted and generally annoyed the hell out of fellow insomniac and all-round nice person, Ali Booker.

But while all this was going on I was also working on a cunning plan.

And I was smirking a great big smirk as I worked.

At 3am the fruits of my labouring (and smirking) were harvested, right up until the point where Sophie came, blinking, downstairs and asked ‘Are you singing?’

I may have looked sheepish.

I had indeed been singing.

Now you may sit there and ask yourself why I had been singing at 3am. Because that’s a good question. And a fair one to ask.

I am sitting here smirking some more because I have the answer.

And so shall you, if you listen to future episodes of This Reality Podcast. Because that’s where my cunning plan, the source of my smirkage and the reason for my 3am singing will be…

Revealed!

Oh yes.

It is good.

And funny.

Well, he hedged slightly, it is funny to me. And I have just unveiled my cunning plan to Soph and she’s gone upstairs to bed laughing loudly as she went.

So I’m going to say, in an authoritative tone that yes, this is a good *and* a funny idea!

Umm…

Can you make sure that the podcast has your skype address/phone number? Because if we call you up you can:

a) take part

b) win free prizes (T-Shirts, mostly!)

c) join in with the new feature that is the source of such 3am mirth and singing.

Just email your skype address or phone number to ‘thisrealitypodcast@gmail.com’ or, if you’ve got skype, just add ‘thisrealitypodcast’ to your address book.

Thank you.

You won’t regret it.

Umm…

Actually you may regret it, but just a little, and at least you’ll be smirking as you regret it! 

p.s. You really should listen to the most recent podcast (#105), the musical content is possibly the richest we’ve ever produced – and that’s not an idle boast!

To stream just that one episode of the podcast to your desktop just click here or you can right-click on that link and save it to your computer and listen to it later. Or why not add it to your iTunes and listen to it on your iPhone or iPod or mp3 player wherever you go? Better than radio!

Difficult decisions

I know I’ve been quiet lately, and here’s the reason…

I’ve spent the last few days mulling a very difficult issue, spent so much time thinking about it that at times my brain felt as if it had a reduced operating capability, while a portion of my mental RAM was allocated to this other task.

Burial or cremation?

Having to decide which – and having to decide which of these for someone else – is more difficult than I had thought.

They’re both so… final, which, given the circumstances, is good, but there’s the almost aesthetic principles to weigh up.

The decision has to fit the person, if you know what I mean?

And that’s so… hard to reconcile.

Because we never really know – not 100% really and truly – another person, do we?

We all have the capacity to surprise – and be surprised by – someone else.

Even if that someone else was your own mother.

You can’t tell me that you *really* know someone, to the point of knowing what he or she wants all the time, no matter how long you’ve known them; I’m not sure I would believe it, not believe it would be so *all* of the time.

So, burial or cremation?

It hasn’t been easy, but yesterday afternoon I decided that cremation would be more appropriate.

However, imagine how I felt when I rang the undertaker to tell them my decision, only to be told that she actually had to be dead first?

I am completely gobsmacked.

[p.s. I'm sorry if this offended you. It did shock Sophie, but I tried to explain that it was just my sense of humour being let out for a ramble. There's no real malice here, it's just a piece for inclusion in my short story anthology]

Job description

The news that Ronnie Kray’s criminal record turned up after being lost in an office in Durham police headquarters for forty years is obviously a point worth pondering – especially if you ever have to send valuable information to the rozzers.

But the amusing strand of information in this story is that the East-End criminal listed his occupation as ‘Wardrobe dealer’.

Brilliant.

I want to be a wardrobe dealer.

Is it like being a currency dealer, only slightly more wooden?

The past returns to… raise a smirk

An email flutters electronically up to the monitor:

Dear Brennig Jones,

Re: ‘Crossing The Line’

A pleasant day.

I’m Sheryl Davis, a Marketing Specialist of xxxxx.com

Our company is very interested in promoting your book online. We will give you 100 percent online exposure that will serve as one of your foundation in all your book marketing.

If you are interested, please provide me the best way to contact you or give me a call at 1 877 207-xxxx ext 333 or you may simply reply with this email. I’d be grateful to give you more information about this.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Ah, I love people offering to do things for me for nothing. But wait, on more considered thinking can this nice young lady actually be meaning that I have to pay her for the privilege of her and her team marketing a novel I wrote in 2005?

No, surely not.

In other news, an old friend emailed me this link that brought a welcome smile to my face.

Not me in the photo, obv.

Radley College Randomness

Sometimes funny things happen when you least expect them to (is that what makes them funny?).

I’ve recently been arranging pre-season Cricket nets for the club at one of the local colleges. I have selected to use Radley College as they have some of the best facilities in the area and because Straussy went there.

Radley College is over 150 years old, and very much set in its way. The cliché boys boarding school: no girls; lots of lessons; strange looking tutors; almost military discipline. Check out the grounds, oh yes they offer Golf as a sport and have their own course:

I would have gone there myself, but my hair is too long, and I quote:

No dyed or highlighted hair is allowed.

Hair should be kept neat, tidy and off the ears and collar at all times, but not excessively short.

Anyway, I digress from the story…

I emailed them earlier today, asking for confirmation of my booking after being told on the phone early last week that someone would get back to me ASAP with information. Nothing happened so I emailed. Now, I don’t know what goes on in Colleges like this, but the reply I got surprised me:

I told you about this lesbian just in case u cant remember, 3.30 down the road still, plus can drop off more leaflets and posters…..

It’s a lie, they didn’t tell me anything about lesbians, for a boys school this seems slightly off the cuff.

On music, horses, relationships and avoiding clichés

There’s a lovely track by American singer/songwriter James Casto called ‘Perfect Day’, in which James, an excellent lyricist, describes his charming ‘perfect day’ which, inevitably, revolves around the love of his life ^[1].

You might also remember a better-known song with the same title, ‘Perfect Day’, by Lou Reed, taken from his 1972 album Transformer.

Whilst the latter work highlights and romanticises Reed’s relationship with heroin, the former describes the writer’s depth of feeling for another person. So they’re both about a thing, an object of affection.

So I’ve been wondering why no-one has written a song called Perfect Day that describes a solo, self-contained day of self-indulgence?

Is it because companionship is our default position? Even the most miserable, curmudgeonly members of society (and no, I wasn’t thinking of the King of Curmudgeonism – yes, it is a word. I said so! – Van Morrison) have a thing, a person that we love; that we can’t imagine living our lives without.

Music, naturally, has always been a love of mine. And horses (though Tom is temporarily relegated from the top spot in my equine affections. But I’ve decided that I’m going to switch him back to the Bit I was using up until last week, to see if that gets things back to normal).

Anyway.

It is Sunday, but it also 31st January 2010.

On 31st January not that many years ago, Sophie and I drove from this place to Heathrow Airport and, via a series of links, were transported to this place.

It was, not wishing to use a cliché, the start of a journey for both of us, and in more ways than one. Not always an easy journey, sometimes with bumps and potholes, but an enjoyable journey nevertheless.

Happy anniversary Soph.

However, not wishing to plunge in to a dark pool of emotion, let’s take a sidestep over to today’s Independent On Sunday where this newspaper exposes the comedic underbelly of the world of Football Chanting, that strange method of communication that the people on the terraces use when they have something to say.

When goalkeeper Andy Gorams was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Celtic fans chanted ‘Two Andy Gorams, there’s only two Andy Gorams’ to the tune of Guantanamera.

You have to laugh at both the jibbing and the use of music.

When Newcastle FC scored an away goal against FC Zurich, the geordies used Welsh hymn tune Cwm Rhondda to deliver the words ‘You’re not yodelling, You’re not yodelling any more’.

More clever use of music to deliver good humour.

Meanwhile in other news, it has been decided (not by me!) that it is now time for us to get up.  We’re going out for lunch. That bit was my decision.

So it’s time to shut down, hit the bathroom, get dressed and get out there.

Woo yeah baby, we’re so rock’n’roll.

^[1]: You can listen to James’ work on his MySpace page, but how wonderfully self-effacing is the bio on his personal website which says ‘James plays piano like a drummer. And he sings like a drummer. Because he is a drummer’?

James Casto is a lovely guy. If you like what you hear and you drop him an email, he’ll probably write back to you.

It never reins but it snores

random title!

And despite or perhaps because of my general bleughness in the health area right now, a magazine feature I pitched for absolutely bloody fucking wanking months ago has landed in my lap with a ‘get on and do it there’s a good chap 800 words and NUJ fees ok?’ email.

Brilliant.

Barely able to string two coherent words together and that lands on top of my general pile of ‘aaarrrrghhhhh!’.

Marvelous.

This will only interest a few…

A new episode of the funniest, rudest, cleverest, most offensive video podcast has been released tonight.

You can get ‘Pets’ from iTunes free of charge. The opening scene, with Trevor the dog masturbating with a vacuum cleaner is slightly unnerving, but later, where he’s describing the rodent stuck up his arse…?

Well I laughed my socks off.

And now it’s goodnight from me, and it’s goodnight from her.

Odd thoughts (2)

I’m sure wherever my dad is; he’s looking down on us. He’s not dead, just very condescending.

Odd thoughts (1)

I was watching the London Marathon a few years ago and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: ‘This could be interesting’.