My Two Pence

The right amount of food is fine. Far too much food is fine. I’m not happy with not enough food, but it’s a manageable situation - you can always go and get more. The worst volume of food is ’slightly too much’.

When there’s slightly too much food, you’re more likely to convince yourself that full consumption is a possibility and the closer you get, the more you’re committed. The very last mouthful is the hardest one of all, but it’s also the one you’re least likely to leave.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the binge-eating, but there have to be limits and they have to be either attainable or totally unattainable.

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DBC Pierre is a good writer. You might forget this, but he did write Vernon ‘God’ Little, which is one of the finest books of recent times.

All the more reason to hate Lights Out in Wonderland then. I’m maybe 200 pages into it and it has taken me months, because it is so unreadable. Maybe it’ll all work out in the end and I’ll experience an epiphany, but I’ll have bloody earned it.

The main problem is that the protagonist is a pretentious, preachy arsehole. That might be the point, but it makes the book hard to read. I generally read three pages at a time at most and I often glaze over for much of that.

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I don’t mind people leaving work early. I just hate being there after they’ve gone.

It doesn’t matter whether they’ve left at 5pm when I’m working until 5.30pm or if they’ve walked out halfway through the day because they’ve taken half a day’s holiday, it’s the feeling that life is kicking on without you that hurts.

It’s similar to the feeling you get in a tourist seaside town on a Sunday in the middle of winter. You don’t know what’s happening, but whatever it is, it’s taking place somewhere else; somewhere very, very far away.

It’s 5.10pm and I’m at work. Nothing is happening here.

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Recent research has revealed that the average worker in the UK loses 24 minutes of work time every day, because of the amount of time spent making cups of tea and coffee. Now being a caffeine drinker myself, this comes as no surprise to me. But 24 minutes? Where did they get these figures from?

I’d say I’m an avid fan of hot drinks and I’m known to divulge in a few cups of tea or coffee a day, however, if I added up the time I spent making hand warming beverages, I’d say I spend about ten minutes a day. So if i spend only ten minutes a day, I’m sorely missing out. There must be people who spend over 40 minutes making brews or even an hour. Maybe they have to heat the water in a pan or perhaps they have to make brews for all their 30 colleagues each time they make one for themselves? Now I know how long the nation spends making cups of tea every day, I’ll make sure that the average time will rise further.

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It seems my month is going from bad to worse. Getting stopped by the police for driving without an operating rear driver side brake light could be put down to being unlucky, however my car had just been serviced and passed it’s MOT a week earlier.

The police let me off with a warning to replace the offending light, so I hurried off to our local motor parts centre to buy a bulb. 15p is a bargain for a bulb I thought as I unscrewed the rear light cluster. However, when I took out the offending bulb, I noticed that it only had one filament, not the two I had expected (one for the brake, one for the rear light)?

Questioning myself, I looked at the contacts inside the bulb holder and realised the wrong bulb had been fitted to my car. That’s when the penny dropped and things started to fall into place.

When I had my MOT, the friendly man at the MOT test centre called me to say I needed to have a bulb replaced, but they would do it for a small charge. I agreed. Upon checking the receipt from the garage and the MOT documentation, it clearly states they had replaced the rear driver side brake light bulb – They had replaced the bulb for the wrong type and the car had then passed the MOT – with the brake light NOT working.

What else did they not check when they did the MOT – The seatbelts? The emissions? The brake pipes? I could be driving a death trap.

I phoned the garage and asked to speak to the manager, who courteously told me that I was wrong. I told him I was right. He told me I was wrong. I told him he was a p****.

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Is it just me or is there a disproportionate number of really bad drivers on the road at the weekend? I went Christmas shopping this week, not nice but it had to be done, and while driving to the local shopping centre, nearly had three, yes three, accidents. I’ll give you a low down on them below.

Near miss number 1

While driving in the middle lane of the motorway, a middle aged lady decided to move out of the inside lane into the side of my car. Maybe she didn’t see me, maybe it was just an honest mistake. It didn’t help my anger levels that she was speaking on the phone at the time.

Near miss number 2

While sitting in the car after just parking a nice old lady decided that she wanted to get into the same space that I was in already. She just started reversing at a snail’s pace into my bay. It must have taken a great deal of control to make the car go so slow because during this period I had the time to think - “She’ll stop in a minute when she sees me”. “She’s not stopping”. “She’s really not stopping”. “She’s going to hit my car”, “Press the horn”. “She’s still not stopping”. “Press the horn louder”. “Stop the car you stupid…”. “Thank God she has stopped”.

Near miss number 3

After braving the Christmas shoppers, another near miss was not what I needed. However, a cheery chap decided that he wanted to get into the back of my car. He didn’t actually want to get in the back of my car, he was driving far too closely to my car, however the closeness made me feel it would be easier if we stopped so I could open the back door to let him in. Mildly annoyed at how close he was made me drive more conscientiously. I made sure I was well below the speed limits as to not be caught speeding and even spent ages slowing down when approaching traffic lights. This helped it seemed, as when an opportunity to overtake ensued, the cheery chap gave me a ’special’ wave as he passed by.

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Being angry comes naturally to me, so imagine my rage when I received my bill from Virgin media and they had charged me for an extra month’s TV and telephone services.

Moving house is never easy but you expect big firms like Virgin to help out with the transfer of your account. They don’t by the way, they make things more difficult. I phoned Virgin to say I was moving and told them the exact date. They said I could keep my number and everything would be sorted. They even arranged a date for the nice engineer to visit my new home (after I moved in) to install the V+ box and connect the phone line. All going swimmingly it seems.

What they failed to tell me was that you have to cancel your contract when you move house and then take out a new contract at your new address AND then pay one month in advance. So I paid my bill in Novenber at my old address and then got charged for November again at my new address, as well as December - brilliant - two months for the price of one.

I voiced my displeasure to the charming young lady at the customer services department at Virgin, and after 85 minutes (I’m not kidding, my phone has a call timer) I got her to admit they did not inform me of this so they wavered the one month upfront.

Come on Virgin, I shouldn’t have to phone you to sort this out, I was already a paying customer, you should reward loyalty, not just try to get new customers by putting a flier through my door every other day.

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All the cold weather has put me in a bad mood, not because it takes longer then usual to get to work and not because I have to wrap up warm. It’s made me angry because I’m fed up with people complaining about the snow and ice and how slippery it is.

If you live in the UK, you have to expect weird weather conditions, it’s part and parcel of residing in good old Blighty. If you want to lie in the sun, why not move to Benidorm with the rest of Liverpool. If you don’t like dark nights, move to the Antarctic where they have days of 24 hour daylight. Just don’t keep telling me that it’s cold today or asking me when the weather will get warmer. Live with it.

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You know when you go out and your friends introduce you to new people and they ask you questions about yourself like how old are you (always an ice breaker, not) what hobbies do you have… Do you play football, go fishing or any other exciting activities etc. These questions I will happily answer as they are easy enough, for example I play five a side football once a week and do not mind watching football from time to time, i go fishing every so often (probably about two or three times a year with my grandad, if I was being honest) and also really enjoy going rock climbing at Awesome Walls indoor centre, which by the way is amazing! Anyway the question I always dread people asking is “Where do you work?”, the reason I hate this question is because if I answer: “I am a sales executive for an internet marketing company” some people will go “oh that sounds good” which is the best response. But it is when the curious ones say “oh that sounds interesting, what is it you do?” that is when it gets confusing… So most of the the time I come up with the best response, “here have one of my business cards, have a look at the website when you get a minute and you will find out all about what the company i work for does.” This I find is the best way to respond.
So if your ever out and get caught with that great question the just say, “here have my business card!”.

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Everyone wants awesome abs and particularly as summer is on its way, we want to be ready to hit the beach in our short shorts and teeny bikinis. Gym can be expensive and I feel unnecessary as many exercises can be done at home without the need for specialist equipment.

As well as the classic sit-ups, one of my favourite abs exercises is the ‘plank’; this is where you get into the press-up position and lower yourself onto your elbows and hold this position for as long as you can, making sure your back is straight and stomach is held in tightly. This is a very effective exercise if done regularly. Do this for a few minutes a day and you’ll have a flat stomach in no time!

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