Numbers

My Blackberry problems have still not been resolved. I phoned the IT guys today to see how they were getting on. This met with a lot of tutting, and words that sounded a bit like "Oh... incompatibility... problem... have to phone the boys in Delhi... very expensive". When I hung up I am sure I heard some laughter and the popping of a champagne cork.

My head seems to be full of bees and feathers just now. This morning I forgot the code to get into my office - we have one of those security dooors with the code. I've only been using it for about 6 years, so it's still not very clear in my head. My memory is so bad, I once forgot where I parked my car for 2 days.On once occasion I forgot where I lived. Although it was after a very very good office party.

As I stood there on the stairs, it struck me how many numbers we now have to remember. Used to be, the only number I had to remember was my phone number. Not a big long mobile number, but a landline. With 5 digits. That was it. The only number in the whole world I had to commit to memory.

But now, the world has become infinitely more complex. Off the top of my head, I now have to remember my home phone number, my mobile number, my home alarm code, the office alarm code, the security door code that stumped me this morning, debit card pin number, credit card pin number... The list goes and and that's not to mention the usernames and passwords I have to remember for every website in the whole world.

I am a digital man. My head is a string of numbers. They live where memories should.

Cackberry and The First Law of Computing

My Significant Other is a bit of a technology junkie. She can often be found, her little nose pressed to the shop window of Currie's, drooling over a display of Freeview boxes. Sometimes, to tempt her in from the street, I leave a little trail of mobile phone adverts torn from the Sunday supplements.

She has, for some time been coveting an iPhone 4. I could tell she wanted one from the little comments she made like: "I'd kill my own mother for an iPhone 4" and "Do you think if I sold one of your kidneys, it'd cover the tariff?".

She succumbed recently and bought one. However, she felt so guilty that she bought me a Blackberry. I don't really get the buzz out of gadgets that other people do, but I like the Blackberry. (It doesn't look anything like a Blackberry incidentally, but I think the more accurate name of "Mobile Phone That is Much the Same as Many Other Mobile Phones" was felt to be less appealling by some of the focus groups).

The Blackberry prides itself as being a business machine - a piece of wizardry designed to make your life more efficient. A little personal assistant in your pocket. So, seduced by promises of instant organisation, I recently made the mistake of trying to synch the Blackberry with my diary at work. This involves plugging the phone into the computer. That is where I went wrong. I forgot Alan B's First Law of Computing which is:

"Do Not Plug Any Other Item Into Your Computer."

If you break Alan B's First Law of Computing you are letting yourself in for a world of heartache. But I did . And the Blackberry ate all of the recurring appointments in my diary. It didn't destroy them mind you. It just ate them, so that the recurring appointments now appear only in my Blackberry and not the computer.

You can only imagine how this has simplified my life. Now, instead of having the really complex task of having to consult only one diary when I want to know my schedule, I now have the infintely easier task of having to cross-reference two diaries! Whenever someone phones for an appointment now, all I have to do is look at the computer and then run to fetch my diary from my coat pocket (usually handily located in another room - and sometimes my car - for easy access).

It really is that simple!

Do the Shake n Vac and Put the Freshness Back

Mrs B is off pampering herself this weekend at the lovely Stobo Castle. She tells me that this involves mud packs and steam treatments and such. However, as she is away with one of her mates, I have a sneaking suspicion that Chordonay and gossip may play a pivotol role in proceedings.

As she is away, it is just me and the kids here. It is now Sunday morning, and Mrs B is due to return late this afternoon. I am not sure that there is enough time to tidy up. It is amazing how much damage two under fives can cause if left unattended for a day and a half.

I have conducted a prelimenary damage assessment this morning. So far I have discovered a boiled egg in the bath, an enormous pile of assorted jigsaw pieces (from different puzzles) in the hall and something called "Mr Minerva's Bath Goo" in the middle of the kitchen floor.So. Not too bad then.

I reckon, if I spend the rest of the day cleaning (rather than providing you lot with highly entertaining blog entries) I might just about manage to make the place presentable. The whole process reminds me a bit of those teenage parties you used to have when you had an "empty" - when your parents had gone away for a night or two without you. Thbis, of course, was licence for all your friends to come over and drink their own body weight in cheap cider then throw it up behind the chaise longue. The following day was generally taken up fixing a hole in the bathroom wall with some blue tac and a Dulux Match Pot and desperately doing the Shake n Vac to put the freshness back.

Righto. I can't talk to you all morning, no matter how much I love you. I am off to engage in domestic chores.

Curry and Beer: A Love Affair

I had a lovely curry with a couple of mates last night at the Mother India in Glasgow.

This is my first curry during "no alcohol January" (my annual period of abstinence, imposed in the vain belief that it will help me live until the age of 143, thus allowing me to achieve all of the things I could have achieved if I hadn't spent the first 43 years of my life eating cheese and spending too much time on the internet).

The first curry in January is a significant test of will power, for - just as peaches love cream and as surely as Torville needs Dean - there is nothing like a lager to go with a curry. As a man who likes a beer, I can heartily confirm, that the best beer in the world is the first pint of lager at a curry house. It is, in fact, the platonic ideal of beer. There, in its sensuous cold loveliness, beads of condensation running down the smooth surface of the glass. Irresistable.

Almost irresistable. Except to a man of iron will. Like myself. I had a diet coke.

A diet coke.

A diet coke. Whilst every other selfish curry guzzling glutton gulped down pint after pint of Cobra. Smiling. Like they were enjoying it.

I had a diet coke. Did I mention that?

Final Destination?

I am watching Final Destination 2 just now and it is really annoying me. Not because of the film itself. It's quite a diverting little horror flick.

No. What is concerning me is the name of the film. Surely the fact that there is a film called Final Destination 2 means that the final destination in Final Destination 1 was not as final a final destination as we were hitherto led to believe. If the filmakers had been honest, they should have called it Penultimate Destination. Or Final Destination For the Moment. Or Not the Final Destination. Or in fact anything except Final Destnation which is just a lie. A damned lie. Damn you makers of Final Destination you have made a fool of me.

And actually, now that I think of it they couldn't have called Final Destination 1 'Penultimate Destination' because now we have Final Destination 3, the latest in a line of increasingly ill-named films.

I have to stop now. I am feeling annoyed.

Glamour

Greetings from a guest house somewhere near Lochgilphead.

I have seen the rest of you on Facebook, waxing lyrical about the glamour of your jobs. I've seen the photos of your conference in Berlin. I have heard you talking about your trips to London and how you spend your lunch hours in the National Gallery. I hate you. I hate you all, with your lefestyle choices and work/life balance.

What do I get? I get a room for one at the end of a musty corridor, a microwaved steak pie and a telly that only seems to be able to tune into an old episode of "Minder" from 1982. This is not what I was born for. Where are the jet skis? Where are the roulette tables? Where are the women in evening dress?

And most of all where is my valet???? I cannot believe that I am 43 years old, and I haven't even got my own butler yet. Here I am in a strange guesthouse, and I have nobody to press my shirt for the morning, or to fetch me my morning copy of the Times.

Here In My Car

Driving has lost its charm. In spite of what all those adverts tell you, car ownership is not about speeding through the Tuscan Hills towards some sultry brunette, who positively melts with satisfaction as you glide up the ribbon of her inviting and immaculately manicured driveway.

Nor is it funky. You are not cool if you drive. Everyone drives. It doesn't matter that the adverts suggest that by getting behind the wheel, you are suddenly a moving, shaking twenty first century boy. Putting on a pair of sunglasses out the Jet garage, and slipping behind the wheel of your Honda Ciivic doesn't mean you have entered the Matrix.

Driving is crap. It involves roadworks and crawling queues at ungodly hours of the morning. And no matter how much you try to approach the rush hour with a zenlike attitude - this is an opportunity to learn patience and appreciate the beauty of breathing - it dooes not stop the pounding of your arteries and the throbbing of your temple.

Give up your cars ladies and gentlemen. Take the train. Walk, But for pity's sake, leave the roads to me.

Studying

This weekend, has mostly been spent studying for an exam I have on Tuesday. Although I regularly need to do research for my work, it has now been well over twenty years since I sat any sort of exam.

It is very hard to study now. I suspect that this is probably due to the fact that most of my neural pathways have now been taken up with (a) thinking about cheese, (b) trying to remember where I put my keys, and (c) devising strategies to keep the kids out of my bed until after 6am on a Sunday morning. I think there is simply no more room in my rapidly-decaying brain for me to retain any more information.

I can also confirm that studying around work commitments and two small pre-schoolers is not the ideal academic environment. I suspect that if Isaac Newton had been placed in a similar position during his annus mirabilis, he would not have come up with important theories about gravity. Instead he would have had a nice kip under the apple tree if he happened to manage to get the kids to settle in front of C Beebies for more than twenty minutes. If an apple fell on his head, he'd probably have blamed the kids and put them on the naughty spot.

Essential Parental Phrases

One of the nice things about being a pparent is that it enriches your language skills. Phrases that you never used in the years before the round-faced people arrived suddenly become common currency. I thought I might give you a brief guide.

You'd better do it before I count to 3. 1...2... That's a good boy... This is a high risk phrase of course, since it is rarely used with the foresight of knowing what will happen when you get to three. The days of locking them in a cupboard until they learn right from wrong have long since gone.

Do you want to sit on the naughty spot? Useful when dealing with under-5s who do not yet appreciate the term "rhetoorical".

Who wants to tidy up! This has to be delivered in a bright and upbeat voice which is designed to suggest that tidying up is every bit as exciting as meeeting Santa Claus and all his helpers in Disneyland on Christmas Eve while bathing in a vat of chocoolate.

diet tips

I have been watching a programme on the telly tonight about scientific tips on dieting. I thought I'd share my own oersonal theories with you.

1 Do not eat a whole packet of digestives before bedtime.

2 A chocolate orange is not one of your five a day.

3 Cheese is the fatty food of the devil. He will tempt you with it in his cheesy way.

4 A whole box of Quality Street is more fattening than a nectarine.

5 Hob Nobs are not a breakfast food.

6 Step away from the korma.

7 Yoda was right when he said: "Butter fatty it is."

8 Newcastle Brown is not a "malt smoothy".

Hope that helped.

New Years Resolutions

New Years' Resolutions? Do you rate them?

Broadly speaking, I am in favour. I am a great believer in having yardsticks available by which I can measure my failures. Without defined goals, how else will I be able to beat myself about the head for the remainder of 2011, for failing to live up to the great expectations that I had whilst sipping a glass of cherry brandy on January the First?

So - when you see me next December - a few pounds heavier; struggling financially; and hated by all my family for failing to spend any quality time with them - don't judge me too harshly, for I will be doing that myself. And planning to remedy it all in 2012 of course.

Christmas Casualty

The number of small unnecessary plastic objects in my house has increased exponentially since Santa visited. We have lego, toy cars, dolls and every other conceivable piece of tat. They cover every inch of floor space. They tunble out of every cupboard. Spiky objects lie with malicious intent under the duvet.

And on the stairs, in the darkness this morning, a little blue truck lay on the 7th stair from the bottom. It lay there with intent. With evil thoughts. With intent. It lay waiting for my foot to find it.

When I fell I'm sure I'm sure I heard it laughing softly. I on the other hand was squealing like a stuffed pig.

Happy New Year

Hello again from the rather quiet land that has been this blog in recent months. I expect that 2010 has been a much poorer year for you because of my infrequent posts. I will try to do better, if only to brighten up your lacklustre lives.

The 2nd of January marks the beginning of my annual 30 Days Without alcohol campaign. This is the fourth year that I have done it. I have now been off the beer for 12 hours and already I am feeling the benefiit. The main benefit, of course, is being able to say to your friends: "Yes - yes - I've given up drinking for now and I feel so much better for it." It is fun to watch their little faces try to look encouraging whilst their Inner Voice is clearly telling them:

"You drink too much. You drink too much. Take Alan's example. He is a paragon of sobriety. Look at him heading towards a successful life, and high political office."

So, I wiish you all a happy New Year. Even if you are all weak-willed drunkards wasting your lives away in some sleazy gin den.