A Booky Wook

It's quite sad to see that the physical book is dying out. Sure it will be many many years before they completely disappear, but no doubt due to the technological movement and environment books will gradually disappear from our society. 

What with the Kindle, iPad and a multitude of new Android tablets due for release next year,  there will be more electronic books in circulation than physical ones. Although I can't see how children's books will be replaced as easily, there's nothing like a big bright colourful book to raise the interest. But I know that fewer and fewer parents are even buying their children books and encouraging them to read. It's far easier to buy them a Nintendo DSi and let them play with that than actually read a book with them. 

A friend pointed out that when they were in a pizza restaurant recently there was a family on the table next to them and all 3 of their children were playing with their DSi's whilst the parents ignored them. Don't get me wrong, Isabella has a DSi and no doubt Ellis will also have one in a few years, but we monitor the time she spends on it. But I'm proud to say that she has probably hundreds of books that we've collected over the years, some were given as presents, others picked up in charity shops. 

When I was younger I had no greater joy than reading a new book. I got into horror books at a very young age, and used to love reading the most gruesome and gory books and using my imagination. One of my personal favourites was the endearingly titled 'SLUGS'. They slime, they ooze and they kill. The perfect combination!

I generally used to go through a book in a couple of days, and used to love searching and hunting in the library for the next great horror or fantasy book to swallow me up and take me to a faraway place. I'm only surmising, but I expect its because of my constant need to read books from a young age that my vocabulary and communication skills are what they are today. For me there's no greater enjoyment than delving into a book, and soaking up the atmosphere and relishing every page. I have read a few books electronically, and it just doesn't work for me. 

Also I worry about the public library. A wonderful British institution that just oozes stuffiness, awkwardness and the only place where people with glasses truly feel at home. In fact anyone who doesn't at least wear glasses, a cardigan and some corduroy slacks would be out of place. But it's perhaps this reason that libraries get a bad rap. I wish that more parents would encourage their children to go to the library, and as an adult I still love to roam the shelves looking for that hidden gem, or a book I haven't read for many years. If I had as much time as I did when I was younger, then I would still happily read 2 books a week, but unfortunately the draw of technology is too strong. 

I'm a great believer in technology for improving our lives, but I just don't think that electronic books really do that. I know that they cut down on paper wastage, free up much needed shelving space, but really - you just can't get excited about downloading the latest John Grisham rather than picking it up in your local WH Smiths. I urge everyone to go to your library, sign up and start reading again.

Life without the stuffy book will never be the same again. I hope it's hear to say for many more years to come. Now to pick up a copy of the new Alan Sugar autobiography that looks like it's the size and weight of a small house. 

Trick or Trick...

So that's Halloween done for another year. One of the many new wave of holiday event days that has suddenly sprung up in the last 10 or so years. When I was a lad, all we did was watch Halloween I, II, III or IV and get scared by Jason. We never went trick or treating, it was such an American thing, that you only really saw on E.T. and other films from the old US of A. 

But as with everything that started over there, we've now inherited this totally pointless holiday. Don't get me wrong, it was lovely for the kids to dress up and have fun. I also really enjoyed carving a pumpkin and making a delicious pumpkin, sweet potato & leek soup. But the whole trick or treating malarky is rather amusing. 

Apart from the fact that it seems to be an unwritten law in the UK that you don't EVER knock on your neighbours door unless in a complete emergency, it's also rather strange to see how your neighbours live and why they lock and bolt their doors at 5:30pm on a Sunday afternoon. We're not exactly living in Beirut. 

But what I find most peculiar is as parents we are encouraging our children to take sweets off of and talk to strangers. Never forgetting what Charlie said, this is a VERY BAD THING. 






So our children toddle up to the front door, ring the bell and demand that stranger give them some confectionary, preferably the type with a lot of sugar that will make them fat. Is it me, or is this all a bit mad?

But the most annoying part, is the stroppy teenagers who ring our bell and demand some high quality sweets or indeed there will be a bad trick. So it's ok to feel threatened in our home because it's Halloween. No wonder so many of our neighbours kept their lights off and their doors locked shut. 

So why is it ok to encourage kids to eat sweets and chocolate on this day, and yet we spend pretty much every other day trying to control their intake? It's the madness of clever marketing is what it is. If Halloween consisted of children going round collecting fruit from strangers, it would never have got off the ground. Quite simply because there would have been no money in it. 

As a cynical old hack, it's not difficult to find all this commercialisation so distasteful. I went into my local Sainsbury's and found a whole isle of sweets and chocolates that only appear for Halloween. So it's now turned into Easter in the Autumn. All those Big Food companies are rubbing their hands with glee as we buy chocolate witch fingers and chocolate eyeballs. So just another example of how it's impossible to escape all this sugary madness. And we wonder why so many kids get fat and crave sweets. 

I had no problem grabbing loads of sweets when i was younger,  and I didn't need some extra pointless holiday to encourage me to eat more. The Halloween spirit was summed up for me, when I was in the queue to pay for my bag of carrots and apples (naitch) in front of me was what looked Augustus Gloop and his family from hell. Piled high in their trolley was the following:
- Monster Munch variety pack x12
- Kit Kat x24
- Mars/Snickers variety packs x 2
- Tizer
- Lucozade
- Coke (non diet)
- Variety of Mr Kipling caked goods

Stripey tops definitely make you look fatter. FACT.

...and  that was just what was on the top that I could see. The family consisted of a huge mother, equally huge father, boy probably around 9 who was as big as me and a girl who couldn't have been older than 4 sitting in a pushchair that was buckling under the weight as she sucked on a Yazoo 1/2 litre bottle of banana milkshake. Well it's got milk in, so it must be good for you!

And sadly this is probably the norm. I don't know if this was a special Halloween shop, or simply their need to top up their sugar fixes, but it made me feel ill just watching them fight over the bags. Seeing them was enough of a fright for me to last into the next Halloween and beyond thank you very much. 

So now we can look forward to Fireworks Night, where we can encourage our children to hold lit flames and watch things explode at a not very safe distance. Hurrah for mad Holiday's. I for one can't wait for Slapsday, where we get to slap random strangers who just annoy us. 

Oooh Aaah Just a Little Bit More...

Today its all about too much food. If I lived in the US I would no doubt be this big:

But maybe I wouldn't wear that shirt... 

Anyway, my point being that I'm big enough as it is, if I lived in a country where the average portion size was 150% bigger than what we're used to, then it goes without saying I would be MASSIVE. The Americans just love everything big. Bigger is better, and why give you one quarter pounder, when a half pounder burger is better. 

There's a show on cable called Man Vs Food, which basically shows this guy going round the US trying out loads of food challenges. Most of them include him eating what amounts to a whole cow, sheep or pig in cooked meat form. The food eating contest scene is so popular in America that they're actually canvassing it to be included as an Olympic sport. If you don't belive me go and have a look at The International Federation of Competitive Eating or  Major League Eating as they like to be called for short. 

Believe it or not, she could eat you under the table

So they actually class overeating as a competitive sport. If you fancy yourself a bit of a competitive food eater, then you're living in the wrong country. What is quite funny though, is that a lot of the competitors in the eating contests are actually rather skinny. Including this lovely lass Sonya Thomas, she ate 11lbs of Cheesecake in 10 minutes. Wow. I mean I love cheesecake, but eating more than a 1lb a minute..

Unfortunately as well we know the US is far and away the most obese nation in the world, and although not everyone takes part in competitive eating, the fact that they watch it as a sport, pretty much sums up one of the main problems with the country. And sadly, we're now not too far behind at all. As a country, we may be lacking in some sports, just see our dismal World Cup display. But we can now proudly boast that we're the most obese country in the whole of Europe. How about that for some top bragging rights. 

I must stop at this moment to post this clip, which has to be one of the funniest and most bizarre things you will EVER see in your life. One of the all time great competitive eaters Kobayashi (not the one from The Usual Suspects) faces off against a Giant Bear. Not a man called a giant bear. Literally a GIANT BEAR. I tip my hat to you people. Genius. 

So we now know we're the most obese nation in Europe, and that's not going to suddenly get better. Our current overstretched NHS spends more than £4.2 billion on obesity per year, and this is increasing at a rate that we can't afford. So when we wonder why the NHS is in such a state, it's because of all those fatties and Vanessa Feltz having gastric bypass surgery. 

You're probably thinking 'OK Mr. Cleverclogs, what's the solution?'. Well obviously there is no real easy solution, but I would say that one of the main factors is how children are being raised, which is a start. You only need to look around at how much food is available for kids at such a young age, and how so little of it is actually good for them. A 3yr old is more likely to recognise the Maccy D's and Disney logo, more than any other. 

I think that we're probably fcuked. To be honest. It's all down to the individuals, and at the moment people seem more interested in surgery or the latest diet pill, rather than the seemingly harder job of stopping eating crap and exercising.

Did you know that the healthiest people in the whole world live in Okinawa, an island near Japan. How are they so healthy? Well they believe in Hari Hachi Bu, which simply translates as eating till your 80% full. On Okinawa island, they have more people who live older than 100 than anywhere else in the world. They also have the longest life expectancy than anywhere else in the world. It's no coincidence, that they live on a diet of whole foods, seeds, grains, vegetables and fish, along with a daily exercise routine. Just read this to be amazed. They also manage their intake of calories, so they only ever eat till they're 80% full. I'm not saying we should all practice that, but it does make you think. I'm sure some people would say that they'd prefer to live to 65 and be able to eat chocolate and processed crap till they couldn't eat any more. But personally I'd like to live till at least 100, well I would imagine that by then my time machine will finally be working, and I can take over the world. MWAAHH MWAAAAHHH. 

So the next time you want go large in Maccy D's, think about Hari Hachi Bu. 

The Diet Trap

I know that some people can't understand when I tell them I'm not 'on a diet', as they're so caught up and brain-washed with the whole diet trap that it's not easy to see the wood for the tress so to speak.

Generally we've all gone on a diet at some point in our lives, even people who are not over-weight go on a 'diet' to lose a few pounds before a holiday, or to get into that particular dress or dinner suit. But the problem is that most of the time we're bloody miserable. Diets are horrible things, that seem to spend more time telling you what you're not allowed rather than what you are. 

It's a common fact that as soon as you say to someone 'Please can you not touch that large piece of chocolate cake, I'm saving it for later'. They automatically want that piece of chocolate cake more than anything else. It's what is commonly referred to as the Adam Complex (well when I say commonly - I just made it up. But it sounds good!). As in Adam & Eve. According to legend, and not truth - Adam could have anything he wanted from the Garden of Eden, apart from that sodding apple. So why did they eat that Apple? Because they were told they couldn't have it, and allegedly there was some talking snake who was not helping matters. 

Just one wafer thin Apple. Oh No I can't I'm stuffed. Oh go on, go on etc

Before I go on a religious rant here,  I can't let the talking snake pass. As sane individuals, we're meant to believe in god. The same god who made this snake talk, and then apparently because it was so evil took its ability to talk away for all future snakes. Well that's clearly bollocks is it not? Hands up who believes in god. Ok that's quite a few of you. Now hands up who believes in talking animals. Well apart from Dr Dolittle over in the corner, it's all gone a bit quiet. It's not like there's loads of talking animals around. Anyway - I'm diversifying and this was not a religious post, even though I am Rev Food. 

So back to the Adam Complex. This is fundamentally the basis for all diets since the beginning of time. Whatever diet you go on, they're all saying it's good to eat this and that but whatever you do, don't eat THAT CHOCOLATE BAR, or if you do, you're only allowed 1/4 of it. So obviously we spend all our time thinking 'I can't eat that chocolate bar, but I WANT IT'. So when you're on a diet you spend all your time trying not to think of what you're not allowed to eat, or using your will power to stop yourself. And generally you're pretty miserable. I don't remember many times when I've been on a diet and was truly happy. I lost over 2 stonne on the Slimming World diet, and thought at the time it was brilliant. But as the diet stops you from mixing carbs and protein it's not workable on a long-term basis, and sure enough once I'd lost the weight it soon started to creep back once I started to eat 'normally' again. 

How do you get off the Adam Complex? Well it's actually quite easy really. It''s just a case of realising that you're really not missing out on anything at all. I can eat chocolate if I want to, but why would I want to? There will be times when I choose to have some nosh, but it's my choice. I know it's hard to explain, so for now I'll just tell you about a new fad diet that I've just come up with. I'm going to make my millions from it. 

I call it the 5 ITEMS OR LESS DIET. In a nutshell - from now on - don't eat packaged food that has more than 5 ingredients in it. Simple. You'll find that you'll end up cutting out nearly all processed food from your diet and that's not a bad thing at all. And don't eat anything that you don't know where it's come from. So no random meat product. Most packaged food you buy has a lot of extra ingredients that you don't need. The items that you buy that have less than 5 ingredients, will not contain any extra sugar, salt or processed E numbers. Now go to the supermarket and see what you can actually buy with 5 items or less. You'll be amazed how little there is. 

A prize for anyone who knows what the hell this is? It sounds truly disgusting

See what I've done there. I've gone and slagged off diets, and then gone and added another one to the mix. But if I can make my fortune off it, then you can all stay fat for all I care. I'll be rich, rich I tell thee. 

A juice a day, helps you work, rest & play!

You may have no interest in getting fit or changing your diet and being more healthy. But if there's one thing that everyone should do, is find 10 minutes in their day to make a hugely nutritious and yummy juice. 

So dust off your juicers, bring them out of the cupboard of useless kitchen gadgets, it's next to the Breville Sandwich Toaster and just in front of the Smoothie Maker, and next to the Bread maker and Ice Cream machine. Right got it. 

Give it a clean up, go to your nearest fruit & veg stall and here's the recipe or guide to what you need to buy. 

One of these every day could replace breakfast, lunch or your mid-morning snack. DOOO EEEET. It's called the Dr Juice as it contains all of the fruit or vegetables you would need in 1 day in a healthy juice. 

1 raw beetroot

3 or 4 carrots (depending on size)

3 apples

1 pear

1 stick of celery

1cm of raw ginger

1cm of lime (with skin)

Throw them all in the machine and you should end up with the most amazing looking juice. It has a bright deep red colour and has a sweet taste, with a slight ginger and zesty tang. Pour it over a tall glass of ice, and VOILA your very own Dr Juice. One of these every day, will guarantee to keep you going through the winter. By the way - the ingredients above make enough for 2 large glasses (a good pint or so of juice), so you can reduce the quantity if you want. 

Personally I don't like beetroot, never have done and can't stand it in salad. But juice the fecker and I LOVE IT. So my only recommendation for the day is JUICE JUICE JUICE. 

I'll post any more great recipes I find or come across, so do let me know if you know of any other great juices. 

I'm 1,000,000% Sure

Whether it's the Apprentice or X-Factor, advertising or some other news or random snippet, the world is currently full of totally and completely unnecessary over the top hyperbole. I think the rate we're going the world will soon EXPLODE under the weight of all this utter hyperbolic SHITE. Yes EXPLODE. See - that's one just there. 

Simply not good enough. TRY HARDER.

I blame 'The Sun', no, not the large glowing orangey yellow globe that keeps us alive. I'm referring to the trashy red top which is bought buy the white van man population. They started it, with all their ridiculous 'news' stories having text in BOLD to EMPHASISE the importance of the over the top nonsense they were spouting. When really it's no big shock to read that another footballer was having it away.


It's also spread into advertising and into every area of our lives, that we're now used to it. It's so prevalent that really each time someone is trying to say something, they have to make sure we fully understand they REALLY mean it. Hence the current wave of percentage overload. By this I mean that 100% is simply not enough anymore. We all know that giving 100% is ok, but it's not perfect. Especially when the minimum expectation is now 110%, or ideally 150%. 


So when I run or walk, I'm not giving it 100% effort, I'm making sure that I'm putting all my effort in and giving it at least 200%, but I fear that may not be enough. 


This hyperbole is disguising the verisimilitude (biggest word I know - FACT. It means 'truth of things' to save you looking it up) that is inherent in our everyday lives. We really don't need such exaggeration as life has enough of it as it is. One of the growing types of hyperbole, which is now superceding all the other types for me is what you find in your local supermarket. 


I'm a lot more aware of what I put into my body, and I don't even need to study all the small print labels of every single food. The reason is that so much is now put on the front in plain sight. For example - something which is FAT FREE, is usually full of sugar or asparatame to compensate. Or they love putting 90% FAT FREE. Which means it still contains 10% fat. It's the same trick that retailers have been using for years. How many times have you picked up something that's priced at £14.99 and gone - ooh that's quite cheap. Yet the same item next to it could be £15.03 and we'd be like - 'oh, that's quite pricey'. It's not a coincidence that so many products are priced with 99p at the end. 


So it's no coincidence that we now see such hyperbole as FAT FREE, LOW IN FAT, NO ADDED SUGAR, NATURAL FLAVOURING. If you actually think about all this nonsense, a lot of it doesn't make sense. When you go into your local Lidl (or Aldi if you're not quite as posh) and pick up an Apple. You're not looking for the big signs which say FAT FREE, NO ADDED SUGAR etc, because we all know that fruit is fruit. Yet when you then go to any other isle, there's literally 1000s of these little slogans and hyperbole which overwhelms us. A good example of this is when I was using up a tub of coleslaw in our fridge and it proudly stated 'LOW FAT, 'REDUCED SUGAR', 98% FAT FREE - but it had so much crap in it the label for ingredients took up most of the side of one tub. I don't understand it. Coleslaw is just carrot, cabbage, a bit of oniion and some dressing. So why does it need to have artificial sweetener and fructose and about 5 E numbers, amongst a lot of ingredients that didn't even sound like they were written in English. The mind boggles. 

NO ADDED SUGAR  AND NATURAL FLAVOURING ALLEGEDLY

I know that you probably think I'm some health freak who needs to get a grip, but when you actually look at things and see how ridiculous they sound you'll realise what I mean. It's all a cunning psychological trap to fool our brain into thinking what they're selling is actually good for us, and not full of hidden crap. If the front of the label told the truth, then we obviously wouldn't buy a lot of it. 


All kids love Cocoa Pops, but no sane adult would give their children heaped spoonfulls of sugar in the morning, yet quite happily let them have a bowl - even as a treat. It contains more than 30% sugar. Each little brown bit of rice is made of 30% sugar. Madness I tell thee. Would it sell so many if proudly on the front of the box there was a big splash saying 5 spoons of sugar in every bowl. Or GUARANTEED TO ROT YOUR TEETH AND MAKE YOU FAT.  

The double whammy of having a 9 at
at the end and using a cute monkey

I'm sure it won't be long before some products start proudly stating that they're 150% good for you. So I'll leave you in peace for now. But please don't be fooled by all these ridiculous claims. Set yourself free and see the advertising for what it really is 300% NONSENSE, I'm actually DEVASTATED by the cunning of all these brands. TOTALLY DEVASTATED. They've completely THROWN ME UNDER THE BUS, and I'm going to have to THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX from now on. 

Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)

We all feel it. We all have on a daily basis feel pressure. Some people get affected by it more than others, and this leads to stress, worry and anxiety. But I'm not going to bore you with a long drawn out post on handling pressure in the 21st Century. Regular readers know that's not my style. 

Instead, I'm going to focus on the most heinous type of pressure, what we call 'Peer Pressure'. This quite horrible term affects us all from a very early age. I can speak from experience to say that I've suffered from my fair share of peer pressure. Whether it was bowing to pressure and lighting up the death ciggie for the first time, or being dragged along to some event or social thing that I really didn't want to go to. But as I've got older I've realised that all this peer pressure is really quite pointless, and mindless. 

I've never understood the peer pressure when you start working at a company to join in with the 'drink at pub till pissed' culture, and if you don't immediately become a part of the group, then you're seen as the dull one, or the person with no social skills. I think people do it mostly  without thinking about it. I remember when i was at school there was always a group of us that had the homework discussion, which went something like this:

"You doing your homework for Miss Clarke tomorrow?"

"Nah, going to play football after school instead, you?"

"Nope, I'm going to be playing Sensible Soccer with Mark later."

"Me neither, it's pointless anyway. Doesn't mean anything.

So of course I didn't worry about my homework, and played Sensible Soccer till my fingers were sore. And then you can guess what happened, the following morning I'm the only feckin idjeet who hasn't done his bloody homework, because my so called mates clearly had no intention of not conforming to peer pressure and like little swots did their homework. So I was the one that ended up having to rush to the library and do it during my break time. 

I'm sure we've all got similar stories, although many will be a lot less tame than that one. All through life, we spend far too much time bowing to pressure and doing things that in our right mind we never ever would do. I'm pretty sure without peer pressure I wouldn't have drunk a whole bottle of Jack Daniels and laid on the floor screaming 'I want more alcohol'. I definitely wouldn't ever have gone to a few of the seedier clubs around Camden and I guarantee that I wouldn't have gotton that blow job of that she-male prostitute in Amsterdam either*.

At first Sally thought the 'White Vest Gang' were the best thing since sliced bread. But getting her to sit on an uncomfortable park bench was one step too far. 

One thing that now bothers me about peer pressure, apart from that it's still invasive in your life no matter how old you are. (I can imagine being 80 and arguing with my friends about my reluctance of going to Holographic 4D Bingo in Hyper-Deluxe Interactive Digital)

But why is there no 'good' peer pressure? By this I mean if you have 10 people sitting down in a restaurant and everyone has eaten their main courses and the dessert menu comes round, chances are there will be general exclamations of 'Oh, are you having dessert? If you are then I am.' 'I'm going to have the chocolate fudge cake, but only if you have the cheesecake'. And what happens? You end up ordering something you don't really want, but because everyone else is, you go along with it. 

If you have friends over and you pick an apple out of the fruit bowl, you don't go round insisting that your guests have an apple, but why do we do this with chocolate or biscuits or tea or bad food in general? I can't ever remember being forced to eat fruit salad because everyone in the group was having a bowl. I may have had a chunk of chocolate cake, and then as a cursory afterthought added a few bits of fruit to make me feel healthier. 

Getting serious for a second, I do think this is fundamentally why so many people have such an issue about food and drink. It's because we feel obliged to eat or drink what other people are having. I remember there's been a few times when I've got out for drinks after work and not wanted to drink, so ordered a lemonade and told people it was vodka and lemonade. 

I can't think of many examples where in a group of people we're forced to eat or drink something that is actually good for us. It's generally the crap stuff that we end up feeling forced into eating and drinking. By changing my diet and eating healthily it's added an extra dimension to the peer pressure, as I'm now being watched even more closely. 

It's probably one of the harder aspects when you change your diet, but as I'm an old war horse who's been around the block a few times (cough!),  I feel comfortable not bowing to peer pressure any more. 

So next time Mrs Doyle asks if you want a cup of tea and says 'Go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on.' 

Do you really want one? 

* Just to reassure the more gullible readers, that was a joke. I'm pretty sure she wasn't a she-male, it was too dark to tell**. 

** Another joke. Honest. 

10k ACHIEVED... YAY!

Seeds, nuts & raisins look the same whether going in an orifice or coming out of one

A big day today. I managed 10k, which let me tell you is a lot of circuits round the park. But I had a new playlist on my iPhone so I was very happy.

Now that's actually the question that everyone always asks 'What's your playlist' or 'What's on your iPhone when you run?'. Well that's a lie. The question I'm most asked is 'Ngggh, Eaten many seeds today spazzo?' or the more charming 'You know it wont last don't you? Once a fatty, always a fatty'.

But I digress. I realised that there is real enjoyment by seeing what my lovely shuffle function will throw up next. My music taste is eclectic if nothing else. I've just replaced my old playlist full of the Glee soundtrack and Michael Jackson, Madonna and The Cardigans with a raft of new tracks.

I can heartily recommend 'American Anthems', a quite brilliant mix of songs perfect for running. In my mind, there is no better group for supplying marvellous songs for a bit of a workout than Survivor. We all know the Rocky IV soundtrack, and much as I try and emulate Sly I don't have any heavy carts to drag up a hill, or large trees that have happened to fall down. But they do seem to create perfect uptempo songs for running or walking a bit briskly. My particular favourite is American Heartbeat. Listen to it now and see what you think:

But I'd love to say that my playlist is full of cool and trendy songs. But in the space of an hour I listened to:

• Debbie Gibson
• Black Eyed Peas
• Cheryl Cole
• Gwen Stefani
• Survivor
• John Secada
• Huey Lewis & The News
• Rhianna

So I'm happy with my choices, and never know if I'm going to be listening to some cheesy and dodgy 80s song or some epic rock masterpiece. It's all the fun of the shuffle.

If anyone has any good recommendations, then I'm always happy to hear.

Weirdos

They're everywhere. We've all met them and seen them and can't help staring. Some people like to call them Strangers. I once read a quote from some famous bloke who stated 'A stranger is a friend I haven't met yet'. When i was younger, I thought this was clever and true, now I realise it's just bollocks. For sure I am probably a grumpy old man, but for me the term strangers is a bit of a giveaway - it has the word Strange plonked in the middle. If we were meant to make friends with everyone then surely a better term would be 'Chumers', then you'd think - oh yes look at that Chumer, he could be a good friend or chum of mine I think.

But instead, we look at people and think, that Stranger is very weird. And very strange. A prime example today is during my extended walk I passed a young man running on the spot, a few minutes later he passed me doing high kick running like John Cleese a la Ministry of Silly Walks (Incidentally, when I was a young 'un I had a massive poster of this up on my wall, not sad at all). But that's not the weird part. A bit further ahead he started to do star jumps. Still not fully weird.

Then he started to do what I can only describe as 'crab running' he began running sideways, quite fast.

Now I'm not an expert, but I don't think there's any sport where running sideways fast is essential or important. To make matters worse, he was wearing bright blue jogging pants and a bright orange vest. Total weird, hence why I didn't go up to him and say 'Wow, I love your crab running style, can we be chums?'.

In fact, I don't feel the need to make any more friends ever. I've come to the point in my life where if you're not a friend of mine now, you're probably never likely to be. Quite cruel I know, and I'm not discounting a few possible acquaintances, no doubt a few contacts with new people but no more actual friends. I mean how many do you need? I'm not talking about facebook friends either. Don't get me started on facebook and how people think they're suddenly mega popular because they have 500+ fb friends, but then they need reminding when it's your birthday so they can post the obligatory congrat message on your wall. Don't get me wrong, fb has a great place and I've been in contact with many old friends and colleagues, and people who I've lost touch with. But it's also thrown a few people my way that I've actually had to go 'Who are they? Am I meant to know them?'.

By now, you no doubt think I'm some grumpy bloke who hates everyone. Well you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. That's probably why I'm called Gary Poppins by my friends. I love spending time with kids, you can't go wrong with kids. If it's a boy you can run around shooting each other, if it's a girl then you can let her paint your nails and talk about how dishy Troy is from HSM, and if you're faced with a toddler then simple facial expressions generally keep them amused for ages. You know where you are with kids. You don't have to pretend to be nice, you can just make funny noises or sing badly and run around in random circles.

But adults - well you have to be nice to them. You have to conform to the world of 'small talk'. I detest small talk. How many times can you ask people what they do for a living, talk about the weather, where they're going on holiday etc. etc etc... The list is endless. I can't be arsed. I'll let my lovely sociable wife do all the talking, and I'll just stand in the background looking grumpy or go off and play cowboys and spacemen with the nearest kid I can find.

The journey i used to hate more than anything was the dreaded train journey. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone jumps gaily in the morning going 'Yippee, I'm off to work and time to catch the train. What fun!'. But I just hated the claustrophobia of being in such close quarters with so many weirdos, I mean strangers. It's not normal for us all to be so close together, hence why everyone always looks so grumpy. We all think everyone else is weird and we're the only normal ones. Come on admit it, how many times have you been in a busy train carriage when you've just thought 'Why am I in this carriage with the most grotesque weirdos on the planet'. They've either got bad breath, terrible BO, annoying social mannerisms - the list goes on.

Talking of busy train carriages, it's a great opportunity to post one of the funniest clips I've ever seen on Youtube. At the least it will make you feel better the next time you get on a slightly packed tube train.. it could be worse. A lot worse.

Addicted to EVERYTHING...

We are all addicted to something. Whether it's the latest episode of Corrie or Eastenders that YOU CANNOT MISS, or crack cocaine (not sure which is worse) we all have an addiction.

I've had many addictions in my lifetime, too many to actually list fully here, but although I know how addicted I've been to many things, it's funny how few people would admit to being an addict. I would say it's actually impossible to avoid being addicted to something, as we live in such a commercially focussed advertising-led society that being addicted to something is commonplace.

There are many addictions that are ok and would not interfere with your day-to-day life in any way. But there are many hidden addictions that we just don't realise we're hooked on.

It goes without saying that I've got an addictive personality, as from a young age I have been addicted to staring at women's vee-jay-yays and mammary glands. Actually that's one addiction that I hope will never leave me. But there are many others that I picked up along the way that were really not so welcome.

I have what can be described as a sweet tooth, so my addiction to sugar goes back to my childhood when me and my sister used to go out and walk our dog on the strict instruction not to buy sweets from Whelams (our beloved sweet shop now long gone in Barkingside). Whelams was a kids paradise. It was a proper old school sweet shop, where sweets were sold loose by the 1/4 lb and you could buy 1/2p, 1p and 2p sweets out of small cardboard boxes next to the till. This was the proper way of buying sweets in a totally unhealthy manner, open to lots of kids grubby hands rummaging in the boxes to find the last cola bottle.

We often came up with inventive ways of disguising our sugar eating habits. I loved shrimps and bananas and milk bottles and sherbet dib dabs, not forgetting the chocolate milk drops with hundreds and thousands. Avoiding the tell tale signs of our sweet eating was an ongoing battle with our parents. They now tell us that they always knew that what we were doing, but we used to go to great lengths to disguise our secret sweet eating. My favourite trick was putting our secret stash of sweets in a carrier bag and throwing it over our back fence to be collected later when the coast was clear. We hid bags in the porch, in secret pockets in our coats and even up our poor dogs arsehole.

My point is, that as soon as my Dad said 'You can't have sweets', that set off an alarm in my head which automatically went 'My Dad said I can't have sweets, therefore I WILL HAVE SWEETS AND HIDE THEM'. It got to the point that Dad often smelt our breath for sweets, so we cunningly also bought a packet of polo's or borrowed his extra strong mints to make our eyes water and breath smell fresh before the inspection (we of course didn't realise that having breath smelling of mint was a complete giveway really).

I'm not saying our Dad was a bit of a hard taskmaster (I'm often called Victorian Dad in jest and I know who I take after...), but not only was he often on sweet inspection, but he insisted on us getting a pay phone for our house as my sister used the phone too much. So we had one of those phones installed with a lock and you had to insert a 10p, 20p or 50p. It had pips on the line and everything. We of course found the key and kept on emptying it, so he never had more than £10 in the box no matter how much the bill was.

Anyway, I digress. My point is not that my father was a secret sociopath, in fact he was really quite harmless and easygoing. The point is that my addiction to sugar started at a very yo

ung age, and it shows you how hard it is for any of us to be free from these addictions.

I remember at school I was very proud as I could drink a can of Quatro (a bit like Lilt but contained around 30% more sugar and less fruit) in under 3 seconds. Yes a 330ml can of Quatro in under 3 seconds. I literally pulled the top off and poured it down my throat

. Why I thought this was clever I'll never know. A friend at school (Obby was his nickname, and I would love to know if people still call him that) discovered a cola called Jump Cola, which proudly had 5 times the caffeine and sugar of regular coke. It was eventually banned in this country, but not before we'd both gone through a few thousand litres of the stuff as we danced atop the roofs of the local houses naked whilst screaming 'WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS' (RIP Ron Pickering). Well it wasn't that bad, but I definitely had a buzz during a few Geography lessons (probably why I always get a bit of a euphoric rush when someone starts talking about contour lines and ordinance survey maps).

I was a total drug user at school, and it must have been terrible for my parents to know their son was such a druggie. My particular low light (or highlight depending on how you view it) was when I got called into the headmaster's office for drug taking. There was a big furore as there were a number of suspect clear bags of white powder that were confiscated and me along with 3 other boys were summoned to talk about this.

At the time there was a lot of fuss made of this, but we could never understand the problem. Why was it a issue to empty the contents of a sherbert dip into a small see through bag and then hide them in our school bags? We knew of course the connotations of this, and at breaktime we took great delight in sneaking into the bushes and sniffing or sucking on these small bags of sherbert.

Once the deputy head and headmaster found out that they were dealing with a perfectly legal ring of sherbert addicts and not speed or cocaine, they did thaw somewhat. But we tried to stay straightfaced as we got a stern talking to about the problems of drug use, although sniffing or sucking sherbert was probably about as lame as you could ever get. That's how hard our Grammar school was. Needless to say I was never part of the cool kids, this was as close to being cool as I ever got, apart from when I was selling 2^nd hand Razzles, Mayfair and Escort behind the bike sheds for 20p a pop, but that's another story.

But although at the time we laughed about it, I was addicted - I just didn't realise it.

So it was clear that my fascination and addiction to sugar would continue for many years. I'm not saying I'm totally free from my addiction now, but I can proudly stand up and say my name is Gary Mazin and I was addicted to sugar, and sniffed sherbert dips and drank a can of Quatro in under 3 seconds (I was that close to contacting Norris McWhirter, so proud was I of that accolade), but I'm working on it, I'm handling it. As the kids in Grange Hill always told us 'Just Say No'.

Week 3, Day 4

And it was all going so well. I've woken today with the dreaded mancold. Which is a very different illness from the more traditional cold, which affects a lot of people. Mancold is terrible, it makes the Ebola virus look like a slight temperature.

It is clear to see when mancold is starting as generally you can hear the moans from miles around.

Hopefully it won't get worse, but after my much shorter than usual walk today I nearly collapsed on the bed and couldn't move for 20 minutes. IT'S THAT BAD.

When you've been with your partner for many years, you learn to live with and understand each others ailments and symptoms and my darling wife knew straight away that I have the onset of mancold. She hasted a swift retreat and will quite rightly tread carefully for the rest of the day.

On a more positive note, I've got a lovely warming soup to look forward to later, and can snuggle up on my relaxo chair with my red fleece (TM), tracky bottoms and watch trash TV...so just like every other night then!

Hopefully normal service will resume very quickly. Apart from the mancold I was feeling great and enjoying the new exercise and food regime, so hopefully I'll be back to fighting fit status in no time at all.

Beardwatch: Not sure whether to shave or not, as I'm now in the stage of going from developed near beard to scraggly tramp beard. I know that most people hate it, but now I'v

e got over the itchy stage I quite like it, even if it does make me look 50. Also I now look like Bernard Bresslaw from Carry on up the Khyber, so it's not all bad (turban not included).

All pray at the altar of...

Reverend Food

Simon Bates: Please be aware that the following article contains language of a delicate nature, which could offend people of a nervous disposition. It also contains a number of sexual swearwords that are nastier than Poo-bum, Bogie-breath and Vadge-face.

I now have a new nickname: ‘Reverend Food’, which makes me realise that I’ve turned into my worst nightmare.. a terrible preachy annoying person who looks disdainfully at people who don't believe in what they believe in. It’s terrible as I know how annoying these people can be.

So I warn anyone who now comes into contact with me, that you’ll be getting a sermon. I can’t help it, and that makes it all the worse. Fortunately there are a few people who I can talk with endlessly about this, and I’m probably boring them as well.

The thing is, that since I’ve had my enlightenment and had my ungodly visitation by the crap food god I have been de-brainwashed. Much like someone who discovers god and wants to tell everyone about it, I’m the same – but about food and exercise. Much as I realise I’m like those annoying religious preachy types of people, I still hate those feckers, at least I’m self-aware at how annoying I’ve become. So next time you’re about to eat a massive bowl of spaghetti bolognase with pasta think of me screaming ‘No, White refined pasta, Terrible pasta sauce full of sugar + salt, Red meat – 2nd time this week..Nooooooooo’ and then enjoy it.

I know that I will not always be like this, but I see this process very much like someone finding god for the first time, or anything that can have devotees. Even though we all know that there is no white-beardy entity looking over us, but I do think that Monty Pyhton’s Life of Brian was pure fact, it has to be.

So initially you have the ‘enlightenment stage’ and euphoria of discovering all of this undiscovered knowledge that up to now has been missing from your life. You are amazed that you haven’t seen this before. There's often a glow about you, and people notice that you're going through some form of change. They often say things like 'What have you done with the real XXXX, but whatever it is, you're looking great.'

Then the second stage, which is ‘information gathering’. Once you try and find out as much as you can, you suddenly feel like you know more on the subject than anyone else that has ever existed, and that what you think and say is 150% correct (yes 50% more than is actually physically possible). The next stage is the one that everyone else dreads and fears, ‘sharing and caring’. This is when you think with all this knowledge and power (because knowledge is POWER of course in your weird twisted little mind) you can help save mankind. During this stage, anyone unfortunate enough to come within spitting distance of you will have to endure a 30 minute sermon on your specialist subject, irrespective of whether they have any interest whatsoever. You also get a bit annoyed when people suddenly get up and leave or get a glazed look on their face.

You now come to a fork in the road of your journey. This leads down two paths – one leads to the stage called ‘awakening’, the other to the more dangerous route called ‘arseholified’. They’re probably self explanatory but just to embellish. ‘Awakening’ allows you to take a step back and realise that actually you’re being a cock and can’t in fact change the world, and actually you do still quite like red meat, and the occasional steak and chips is not going to kill you. You also think back with embarrassment on all the cringeworthy conversations, and how you’ve been a complete twat. You still believe in what you’ve been saying, but now realise that not everyone thinks the same as you, and actually that’s ok. You can sometimes slip up, and appear to be in ‘sharing and caring’ or the ‘arsehole’ stages, but this doesn’t last long and you can generally snap out of it.

For those unfortunate not to discover ‘awakenings’, they find themselves in the irredeemable ‘arseholified’ stage. This is generally irreversible, and you can tell if you’re in this stage if people avoid you on the street, and if you suddenly find you have no friends. You think this is ok, as you can find new friends and people who believe in what you’re saying. I’ve known a few people who have gone down the ‘arseholified’ path, and it is a sad sight indeed.

So much so that some have been so ‘arseholefied’ that they’ve literally disappeared up their own one, due to the nastiness of the ‘arseholicness’ that has infected them. Sometimes, people that have gone down this route can end up on TV and become ‘famous’. Some you may have heard of include Anthony ‘GingerC*ntFace’ Worrell Thompson, Lenny ‘Premier Arshehole’ Henry, Andrew ‘Chocolate Starfish Starman’ Stone and of course Gillian ‘Hunchback Dogface’ McKeith (see previous post for reference). In fact there are too many to quote, and I think we all know a number of people that have suffered and still suffering from this ‘arsheholic’ pathway.

I only hope that we can try and help these people, and make them see the light. I am thankful that at the moment I’ve not gone down the route of the ‘arsehole’ stage, but that probably just means I’m a bit of a cock, so I apologise in advance if you’ve suffered from my enlightenment.

An 'arsehole' in the final and irredeemable stage

Almost Famous

Today I played a game whilst walking, to pass the time. So for every person I walked past I would decide in my head what famous person they most look like. The results were rather disappointing:

• Jeremy Spake from Airport or something (A large man with a goatee and glasses)
• Krishnan Guru-Murthy (A quite fit looking Asian man with glasses walking his dog)
• The Dulux Dog (much as I tried I couldn’t get the owner to look like anyone, apart from perhaps Mary Whitehouse)
• Charlie Dimmock (A large ginger woman with a massive arse)
• Mr Pink, Mr White, Mr Brown & Mr Blue if they’d lived to be 100 (A group of old guys all wearing the same tracksuits walking their dogs)

So in a nutshell, if you’re looking for some lookalike action – do not come to Clayhall Park. Unless you want to meet an extremely sweaty Bernard Bresslaw lookalikey.

Except I don’t look like him at the moment. I know, strange as it may seem, but I have a heavy beard growth. I’m not growing a beard as such, just choosing not to shave. Which conveniently brings me onto the subject of facial hair. It does seem that the subject of facial hair elicits an either love it or hate it philosophy. I actually think my face with hair suits me. I’m fortunate that I can get a full growth and in the space of a couple of days, look like Bigfoot. I know not all men are so fortunate.

One thing that I never understand though is men who choose to grow a moustache. I don’t think anyone looks good with one. If you think about it, what exactly is the benefit of having a moustache? If you grow a full beard you don’t have to shave, if you grow a goatee then you’re doing it so that you can try and hide a double chin, or have people call you goatee wanker or such like.

But what are the benefits of a moustache? I can’t actually think of any. You still have to shave, and generally you look like you’ve got a dead caterpillar above your lip. And if you’re a proper idiot then you’ll go for the Seaman look and accessorise your moustache with a rat tail. Nice. I saw him recently on a World Cup show and he’s clean shaven with a short haircut and he looks younger than he did 15 years ago.

Anyone that can give me a benefit of having a moustache, please post a message, as I really would love to know. Do remember that moustaches can be grown by both sexes. There’s nothing funnier or more taboo than a ladytache. You’re not allowed to point, or laugh. The only option is to ignore it. I do wonder whether they’re actually proud of the amount of hair that can be grown above their top lip. It is quite impressive when you meet a woman with a more substantial growth than most teenage boys can manage.

I know that this is one of the last taboo subjects along with necrophilia and bestiality, that we’re not allowed to discuss, but I think it’s time to say that women with moustaches should be proud, that’s an impressive ladytache my friend. I’m very impressed. At least you’ll know what to buy them for xmas, Gillette razors are dirt cheap.

Week 2, Day 4

I can't run. Never have been able to, and I realise that now I'm trying to - I have zero ability on making my legs move in the right way to make myself run.

I can walk briskly, jog a slow pace, even trot and skip - but if I need to go any faster than slow jog - my rubbish co-ordination kicks in and I just end up flapping about, huffing and puffing until I realise that I can't actually run.

To give you an example, to get my proper walking/running shoes I went to a specialist shop where they test your running style, so that they can see what shoes you need. I was so inept at running, that I nearly fell off the running machine after 3 seconds. Fortunately the test only lasted for about 10 seconds, as any longer and I would have ended up arse over tit.

I'm hoping that as my fitness improves, I can magically turn into the Roadrunner and start running everywhere. But when I say that I run/walked 4 miles today, what I mean to say is that I walked briskly for most of it, and then attempted a bit of jogging and run for 30 second intervals before my legs and arms just asked my brain what the hell they were meant to be doing and stopped working.

During my walk, I was thinking about how faddy all this nutrition and exercise malarky is, I mean every year there's a new diet or new exercise, that we should be doing or new food that we should be eating. I feel sorry for Gillian McKeith, that wizened old crochety hunchback of a so-called nutritionist that was around a few years back. She was the sickest looking women on TV, yet was telling people you are what you eat. Well she obviously ate grit and gravel and drank horse piss then.

No-one liked her, did they? She was horrible. Who in their right mind thinks its ok to examine people’s poo. At what stage in your nutrition course do you ask the instructor ‘When do we start talking about poo?’. She loved the poo examining a bit too much. The one thing I always think is how do you get the poo in the Tupperware boxes? Do you have to squat on it and hope that something lands in it, or do you have to physically pick up your own poo and place it in the box.

Neither way seems particularly enticing; no wonder all the fatties she helped looked like they wanted to smack her very hard in the face, she’d just made them poo in a Tupperware box that they’d never be able to use again.

But now she’s resigned to the dole queue, and her and Michelle McManus can talk of their 10 minutes of fame together, let’s just hope that no-one decided to give her a programme again. I’m just hoping that that horrible creature Gok Wan is resigned to the TV dustbin very soon

too.

If you’re talking of bringing back old celebrities then Johnny Ball should be in the front of the queue. He was my idol,and if he’d presented ‘You Are What You Eat’ I would have listened, because he’d probably had made it into a funny maths problem, or giving you some interesting facts about fat people. He would have dressed up in a fat suit for larks, and no doubt had made all the science part fun and interesting. He would have said ‘Think of a number between 1 and 100, now times it by 20 - that’s how fat you are’. Johnny Ball would never have examined people’s poo.

The Fattest Loser

A woman, holding up my eating trousers, yesterday.

I absolutely love The Biggest Loser. Particularly the American one, as I haven’t actually seen the UK one. It's so, so, well so American. For those who haven't seen this marvellous piece of TV entertainment (Sky 1 and Sky real lives) it's basically a gameshow where they get a range of the fattest people you have ever seen (largest was just under half a tonne - same as a baby elephant!) and put them on this intensive 12 week course of extreme exercise and diet and challenges. Each week someone gets eliminated, and the winner is the last one left who has lost the most weight. By the end the transformations are amazing, some go from being an overweight hefer to an anorexic waif, well the winner does get $500.000 so you can see why they do it.

Much as I love the show, and particularly the two trainers who keep the contestants on their toes and sweating like buckets (Bob and Gillian), I don’t really agree with the final product. The idea is there, and they do take on extreme cases and generally people do lose a lot of weight and change their lives, as well as go through a lot of psychological issues. But it seems that the final result is so extreme that I’ve heard that a lot of the contestants go back to being fat again.

It’s so hilariously over the top, and the constant product placement is just cringeworthy. Here’s one example:

Bob: Hey Gillian, I see you’re chewing gum.

Gillian: Yes Bob, I’m chewing Wrigley’s new sugar free gum.

Bob: Did you know chewing gum after a meal helps you digest the food quicker and keeps your hunger pains at bay.

Gillian: Yes Bob, especially if you use Wrigley’s new sugar free gum.

Bob: Yes. Wrigley’s sugar free gum, which is new, and great is the BEST.

Gillian & Bob: Ha ha ha, it’s the BEST.

But anything that encourages people to eat healthily and exercise is not a bad thing at all. My favourite part of the show is the ‘transofrmation’ at the end of the episode where they always hold up a pair of old trousers and drop them to show how much weight they’ve lost.

That’s my main aim for changing my diet and exercising, I want to be the person dropping my trousers and smiling vacantly. Although taking that sentence out of context, I could be arrested for doing that.