The blood-pressure of a child

Hello all

As the regular readers will know who I am currently improving my health and am trying many things, including losing weight, so when a free health check service came into work, I jumped at the chance to have myself checked out.

I had already done this twice and the last time had seen me have some shocking results. Looking at the results on the right you'd be surprised to know I'm happy with those results, but I am. My results last time were shockingly bad.

My BMI last time was close on 40.
My body fat was over 30%.
My weight was well over 18 stone.

Put it this way, the only thing from that bit of paper and my last results are that I didn't get any taller during the last few months.

Now, you may be curious about the title of this blog and I would like to point you to my bloody pressure scores, 115 over 66, which falls into the category of having the blood pressure equivalent of a child. They say it's health and I'm literally just shy of the border to the "excellent rating", but it's a very odd thing to be told you've effectively got the blood pressure of a child, especially at the age of 27.

Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted to have a healthy heart, but it's still an odd thing to be told.

A welcome quiet week after the week from hell

Guten tag

Ich wohne seit immer England. Letztes Woche war scheisse.....oh, wait, I'm not in my German lessons.....


Hello all

Well what can I say? Those who are regular readers of this blog or have me on Facebook know that the week beginning the 13th was a very difficult week for myself. It really was a week from hell.



Digging holes for myself since 1984

Well most of you know what happened to me on the Monday of last week, so I won't bore you with repeating it, but let's put it this way, what happened and my subsequent reaction has caused a major issue.

I've always been very good at digging myself a hole and the way I reacted to that situation is seen me potentially dig myself a hole that I can't get out of. To the person concerned (and you know who you are), I am sorry for my reaction and hopefully in the near future we will be able to talk again because I am ready to put this whole thing behind me and never mention it again. My reaction was unjustified and I apologise. So I hope that when you aren't busy, we can actually talk and try to get someway back to normality.


Anyway, I got hacked by someone who then claimed I was run over by a car and was on my way to hospital (obviously not true). I stepped on a glass that went through my foot, I was contacted by the passport office because of a few issues with my passport, meaning I have to sort that out now again. I saw a few old friends but whilst I was intending to show them a good night, I think I ended up boring them all to death and to top it all off, a support group that I attend was cancelled indefinitely due to external issues.

It was a week from hell.

So I got to this week and thankfully it was a hell of a lot less stressful than the previous week.

Luckily my German lessons are progressing quite nicely and I'm finally starting to get the hang of it.....I think. I was able to hold a conversation in German with a friend of mine and I think that shows progress.....I don't think I'm quite ready to move to Germany though, infact I had virtually no intention of ever going to Germany, so why I'm learning German is anyone's guess.



No more England for me....hopefully

 My applications to companies in America and Canada returned some positive results and although I got a "thanks but no thanks" from the places I really wanted to go, I got asked for an interview to various companies in various locations. Some of the companies have agreed to do the interviews over Skype, but some insist that I actually go, which means I have to hope my passport issues are sorted out soon otherwise I can't do those ones, and one is based in Toronto, which is a place I am keen to go to. Either way, things appear to be in motion.

Even if I am not successful with any of these applications, I am ready to leave England and have started booking some holidays abroad, including Norway, where I have wanted to go for some time.

The diet continues to go well and I've now lost 2 stone and am rapidly closing in on the half way mark. I always said that I wanted to be 200 pounds by the time I turn 28 (which is in September), so to be almost half way after less than 2 months is great. Obviously I'm not going to continue to lose weight at the rate I have been because the lighter I get, the harder it will become to burn the calories, especially at the levels I was burning them at at the start. I'll tell you what though, it's really nice to be able to have clothes that didn't fit me a few months ago now not even fitting the other way. I'm having to wear a belt on trousers that I couldn't get into a few months ago. It's nice.

And finally I must mention a woman called Angelica. I first started talking to Angelica a few years ago when we were both members of the RantRave forum and we got on quite well. After RantRave ended we never really spoke but on Saturday evening we had our first proper conversation in several years and you know what's good? I'm not going to go into what was talked about but it was almost like there hadn't been a six year gap in our friendship. In a time when the people I trust that actually talk to me on a semi-regular basis is down to one or two people, it's always nice to add another person to that list.

So yeah, after the week from hell, the week I've just had was very welcome. It wasn't exciting, nothing extra-ordinary happened and it was generally quite quiet. Another week like this would be very welcome.

Why do I even bother anymore?

Hello all

As many of you know, I have been undergoing a bit of a life-changing period recently, effectively a mid-life crisis at the age of 27. I've changed various things about my life. I've given up life goals, I've dropped a lot of people off out of my life, I've gone on a diet and various minor things, but one of the major things I have started to seriously question is my frequent appearances at football matches.




In recent months I have been really falling out of love with the team I support (and I'm not even sure I can use that word anymore) and go to watch on a regular basis, Lincoln City. To give you a bit of a back story, I started going to watch them on a regular basis in 2000 and the last game I missed was in August 2005. I used to love going, I ran a website and a Youtube channel about them, I loved it and for lack of a better word, I was obsessed. It consumed my every thought and that's not really an exaggeration.

I would spend my days at work contemplating recent results and upcoming fixtures, and on the odd occasion I would go though the fixtures of every team in the division and write an article on the aforementioned website about how I thought EVERY SINGLE FIXTURE would go......that took a long time.

I was proud of my football team. I was proud when we twice came from two goals behind against Premiership side Fulham (for those unaware of the footballing structure in England, the Premiership is the top division and where Lincoln were at the time was known as League Two, the fourth division, meaning we were three divisions below them) in a cup competition. Not to forget the Playoff Final in 2002/3 after being the pre-season favourites for relegation, or winning 5-0 at Barnet one week and then 7-1 at home to Rochdale the next. But those days have long gone.

After years of being pretty crap, the Imps were finally relegated to the Blue Square Premier in May and the standard of football fell so much that it has become a bit of a chore following the team. Don't let the traditional non-league sides fool you, there is a BIG gap in quality between the League Two and the Blue Square Premier. The quality of the football may not be great at League Two, but it is like watching the World Cup every week compared to the Blue Square Premier. Despite this I have stuck with them throughout the season, which is more than a lot of people can say, however, I no longer enjoy it, I don't even celebrate when City score, I don't complain when they concede, I am ambivalent.

Then last week I was asked an interesting question by a guy called Nick, who has been watching the games far, far longer than I have....and that question was "Why do we put ourselves through this?" and I just started thinking about it and it dawned on me that I don't really enjoy going anymore. Home games aren't so bad as at least I'm only a mile or so away from my house, but the away games see hours and hours of travelling to then sit/stand in a shitty ground, watching crappy football and getting stressed for 90 minutes, invariably in the cold and is generally the case these days, losing, before then returning home exhausted.



Toronto FC - My future team?

 "Armchair" fans get a lot of criticism but to be honest I am starting to see why a lot of people now stay away from Lincoln games. It's no longer enjoyable and I can't really recall the last time I was satisfied with what I was seeing. Going into every game expecting to lose is a horrible thing and the strange thing about football is that you can always get used to losing but you never quite get used to losing. I alway find myself going into games hoping for the best and then being inevitably disappointed.

People say that it doesn't make me a very good fan if I only enjoy it when we're winning games, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to win. There's nothing wrong with growing disinterested with a team that rarely entertains and hasn't entertained for a LONG time.

Maybe this all has something to do with my desire to move away from the UK. I am still looking at going to either America or Canada and have a few interviews lined up, including in Toronto, and they have a football, sorry, soccer team (the ever imaginatively named Toronto FC), so when/if I move over there I might re-discover my love of the sport, but for now I think my passion of recent years has gone.

I know one thing for sure, if I do end up moving to America or Canada, I may pick up the accent and I may adopt the different way of life, but I know I'd never get used to calling it soccer.

To end this article, here are the "Best Of" videos from the end of each season that I used to do on Youtube. I thought these were awesome when I originally did them....but they're not that good looking at them now.



For better or for worse, my year in Nottingham

5Hello all

Before I start, please note that to make sure I can avoid legal action against me, because I do get very ranty about some companies, I will be referring to them only by the industry they are in. If I name them, you know I liked them and had a lot of respect for them.

As I mentioned in another blog recently, I have joined what I consider to be my virtual family and a few have been asking why I disliked Nottingham for the majority of the time I was there…..so is my long winded account of my July 2008 to July 2009, a year where I changed.

Me in early 2008 - Looking a bit
like Musfasa from the Lion King

Introduction – How I came to be in Nottingham in the first place

So let’s begin with a back story that starts in January 2007. I left my job at British Telecom and became a temp, working for various companies around the surrounding area and although I did enjoy it to a sense, I was always after a permanent job. It gets to around April 2008 and I’m walking for a local company that dealt with water pipe repairs and let’s put it this way, I left there in a less than professional fashion and I thought my time as a temp for Ambitions Personnel was over. By the way, Ambitions are bloody brilliant. If you ever find yourself out of work, go and find them, they were fantastic with me.

But anyway, weeks go by where I am regularly only working for four hours in the entire week. Luckily I had no major expenditure so I wasn’t actually losing any money, but that’s besides the point, I needed a permanent job. I started applying for roles around the UK and got interviews for roles in Nottingham, Northampton and somewhere that I can’t recall off of the top of my head. The first interview was in Nottingham for an energy company.

I thought the interview went very badly. I was convinced I hadn't got it and was already planning for my interviews at the other two places. The interview was divided into four sections, an actual interview, a competency based phone interview and two tests, one maths and one writing an email whilst listening to tapes, amending what you’re putting along the way. I had seriously screwed up the maths section (despite generally being quite good at maths) and the interview didn’t go well, but I did do quite well in the email and telephone sections, but I thought I hadn’t got the role.

Unusually for a role they told you on the spot and that’s one of the few positive things I am going to say about this energy company. They don’t leave you hanging about and the 40 or so candidates were told there and then whether they had gotten the job or not. So I’m taken into the room where  my interview took place and I am stunned as they say my application has been successful, they even said they’ve never seen anyone so surprised.

The door to my flat

So I had the job, but what about the place to live? The job didn’t begin for nearly 4 weeks, so I had plenty of time to prepare and find a place to live. I find a student flat that was only £217 a month, amazingly cheap, so I go to look. The place is literally a corridor with six bedrooms, a dining area and two showers. My £217 gets me a room and the share of the communal area. I take it though because it was cheap.

Skip forward to July 4^th and I finally make the move.

July 4^th-July 20^th – A good start….for the most part

So I sign my contract and get the key on July 4^th, ironically Independence Day. I had been invited to the family fun day of the last company I had tempted for, DSG International, another company who I have a lot of respect for. To this day I have no idea how the hell I managed to get away without my car getting broken into and everything stolen as I literally had a car full of boxes of stuff on display in an open car park.

After that’s done I finally make my way to my new home. After spending an hour shifting all the boxes from my car to my second floor flat, I notice how muddy my clothes were from the fun day and decide to put the clothes in the washing machine…..two hours of unpacking later and the washing machine stops…..but the clothes are still wet and there’s just a puddle in the machine. The water doesn’t drain away, the first problem of my time in Nottingham and I hadn’t even been there for a day yet.

It took the rental company three weeks to get someone to come out and have a look at the problem…it turns out that the last occupants of the flat had clogged up the drain pipe with a cloth of some variety. But on the first night, not having any clothes meant I was really panicking, so I drive back to Lincoln with just my underwear and a coat on. I eventually get back and surrounded by a unpacked boxes and on a bed that is barely made, I sleep for my first night in Nottingham.

The area I live in turns out to be full of interesting characters. There was one woman from Jamaica who I had first seen when I went to view the flat and she regularly went around talking to herself. Infact the first time I ever saw her she was shouting "Did you know if you go from London to Kingston they give you a free banana on the plane?" ..... I didn't and I still know if that's true or not, but every time I saw her she was coming out with stuff like that, it was quite amusing.



The flats I called home for a year
Mine was the one with the open windows in the middle



I spent the next day getting to know the local area, it wasn’t pretty to be honest but I certainly wasn’t complaining…..yet.

Then it gets to Monday 7^th and my first day at my new job. I’m sitting in reception and am sat waiting for the start. As I’m waiting the other members of the training group came in……

·         Callum – A skater guy who, in a day where everyone is turning up in suits, decides to turn up in loose fitting jeans and a t-shirt full of holes, it was quite funny in a way.

·         James – A nervous guy who I had worked with at the interview who I almost started living with at one point.

·         Ian – If Yoda talked bullshit 24/7, he would be this guy. Ian was a nice guy but dear god did he talk crap….and plenty of it.

·         Alison – A girl from Derby who was one of the first friends I had made in Nottingham. I was pleased she had been offered the job as she was also in my interview group and I found her very attractive, although nothing happened.

·         Steve – A very quiet guy who just sat in the corner and didn’t say a lot. Very nice and quickly quit because he realised it wasn’t for him. I always wondered what he ended up doing after I last saw him. I don’t even know his surname so I can’t even find him on Facebook.

·         Ashleigh – A chav, but not one of the proper chavvy chavs, just one of those chavs that likes fashionable stuff, rather than dressing like she lives in sports shops. Me and her did get on though despite our considerably different lifestyles.

·         Emma – A 30something woman who I sat next to in the training group. Pleasant woman from what I remember.

·         Leanora – If there was ever such a thing as a child trapped in a twenty-something’s body, it was her. Whilst we were all training she would be sat there looking at cats on the internet….very bizarre girl.

So that was my training group, led by a woman called Debbie who I got on with. Training goes well and I am introduced to my future team within a few days, including Craig, who would be my mentor. Craig was awesome and was far too smart to be in a job like that. He encouraged me more than I’ve ever been encouraged and he was a good guy. He even got me to take a call on my third day in the job. The call failed miserably but it was a good experience.

However, then there comes the first major problem I had with the energy company. At the interview I was asked to take along my birth certificate and other relevant documentation so that they could photocopy it, so I do that.....but then I constantly keep getting messages saying that I need to submit the documentation or risk losing the job....despite doing it a good six or seven times already. After 4 days in the job I get asked yet again so I actually walk over there and sit there whilst someone actually registers the stuff. So after six or seven attempts to get those incompetent fools to do something, it took me actually sitting next to one of them for them actually not to fuck it up.

My first week ends with Callum and James coming around to my flat, which is still empty other than myself, for an evening of drinks, DVD and pizza…….I say pizza……I hadn’t figured out how to use the oven by this point (I literally lived in fish fingers and fishcakes during the first few weeks) and my best guess was not good enough and my pizza, which I had bought especially, remained cold and raw.

Bizarrely though I get someone ringing my buzzer, a pizza delivery guy saying "your pizza is ready." I hadn't ordered a pizza but took it anyway, it was quite a bizarre turn of events.

The next week goes by rather uneventfully until I am told on the Thursday that I would be having a room-mate on Friday, a guy called William. After I get back from football I see a load of shoes outside of one of the other rooms and I figure that my time alone in the flat is over.

July 20^th-October 23^rd – Into this den some evil serpents came

So I settle into my room for the night and I hear a door open in the background…..a knock on my door. I open it and there was an Asian man stood in front of me. We sit and talk for an hour or so, getting to know each other and at first William is quite a nice guy. He was from Malaysia and had just qualified as a pharmacist. Me and William did get on quite well at first, although I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that keen on the fact his shoes were all over the place and whenever he had a shower, he would leave his fallen out hair in there…..it wasn’t nice.

I spend the next few days continuing to get to know the city, afterall, football season hadn’t started yet so I had a bit of free time at weekends. I end up at the job centre and am looking for part time work in the evenings and find a few vacancies I am interested in including a trainee wrestler and a role at a cinema….more on that later. I phone up about the trainee wrestling and I go to the first lesson. I’ll tell you one thing, wrestling DOES hurt. It may be choreographed but I have never been so stiff and sore in the few days after this.

My 24th birthday with members of my team. That girl I'm sort of pointing at
is a Jodie, who I mention in a bit.

Work is continuingly relatively nice, I am by far the best in my training group and the only one of us who was taking calls on a regular basis. I’m still a bit nervous about them but I’m starting to know what I’m talking about and conversations are free flowing…….nearly :P. I did have one bad day though as the fire alarm went off at the flat and the building was evacuated…..this was at 5:30pm…..it eventually turned off at 4:30am…..I was absolutely shattered the next day and was very grouchy, pissing people off all over the place.

So it gets to the Thursday on the fourth week of me living in Nottingham and I hear some movement outside of my room and a girl’s voice. I open my door and there’s a guy and a girl there, the latter of which turns out to by a new room-mate……..the landlord hadn’t told us. This girl was called Leesa and we got on relatively well, she was quite cool…..at first….but more of that later.

The next day I return home from work and I hear a door open in the background and I close the fridge door and there’s a smiling brunette in front of me…..oh, hello, another room-mate. This one was a Polish girl called Roxanna and this is the moment where my time in Nottingham started taking a sour turn. Although we are quite civil at first, things turn EXTREMELY bitter very quickly.



She starts making obscene demands, such as the bigger of the two shower rooms being exclusively for the females, which to be fair I wasn't that fussed about, a shower is a shower, but after a few days neither myself or William can get the hot water working in the other shower because the control box is in Leesa's room, but none of us know how to work it....nor does the landlord. Eventually me and William start using the "girls" shower room, something which Roxanna is far from happy with. Stuff also suddenly starts going missing out of cupboards, it even got to the point eventually where I kept all my food in my room, luckily I had nothing that needed being refrigerated.



Roxanna in a previous incarnation



But anyway, on the say same night I met Roxanna, myself and Leesa go out to a party and get back at roughly midnight. We have a conversation in the dining area for about 20 minutes before retreating to bed.

The next day is the second Saturday of August and you know what that means, football season. The Imps are one of the pre-season favourites for promotion and we’re heading up to Sheffield to play Rotherham United….but don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about football very often in this blog entry. It gets to half time and all of a sudden my landlord is ringing. It turns out that Roxanna had claimed that we had woken her up and she was supposed to be at work on Saturday morning, meaning she went into work tired.

I speak to Roxanna when I get home and apologise for waking her up, even if it was the case that we didn’t actually get back that late. It turns out that she doesn’t even have a job, so in other words she bitched about us to the landlord with lies.

Meanwhile at work a young girl called Jodie (the one I'm stood next too in the picture above) starts working in my team and we get on extremely well and after a lengthy conversation at my birthday night out, I found myself falling for her. 3 nights pass and I ask her out on a date. Of course she said no but it was good for me to have asked someone out. That was one of the few good things happening at the time.

Things at the flat turn extremely sour. Roxanna turns out to be a controlling bitch, everyone in the flat gets pissed off at her, whereas Leesa is not that great herself now. I drop my car off for repairs in Lincoln after it had broken into three times by this point, and whilst walking back I get texts accusing me of stealing the wire for the communal TV…..my simple response is “Why would I steal a cable for your TV when I have my own TV in my room?” and all I get was abuse back.

I get back to the flat about 3 hours later and the two below signs from Leesa and Roxanna are on the fridge. Granted, the first one isn't directed at me specifically, but I can’t be dealing with this shit…..

I now spend most of my time on the roof of our flat building. Luckily there was a nice view from the top of our building and it was good for thinking. I had some good memories of my time up there. We once had a barbeque on the roof and it was a place where I still go to on a semi-regular basis as they still haven’t changed the code for the door.



View from the top of my flat



Unfortunately things aren’t going that well at work now either. My manager had returned from a car accident where she had injured her back and me and her really didn’t go on with each other at all.

For example, we were in a team meeting and I look at her when she’s saying something…..the meeting ends and I get held back for apparently using threatening behaviour by looking at her. What the fuck? Since when we looking at someone when they’re talking to you a bad thing?

The stupid twat did my nut in, she really did. You would go up to her to clarify something and she would cut you off half way through your sentence stating that she was on her break…..well why let me even start the sentence? Why even sit at your desk? What sort of manager refuses to help their team?

At this time I was also having a few issues. I always felt like I was in a sense of deja-vu, which isn't very nice, and I found out that my old next-door-neighbour had died, which hit me as we had always gotten on. RIP John.

And then came the moment I knew I wanted to leave. A customer started kicking off about his complaint not being actioned. I investigate and it turns out that it’s someone in my team so I talk to them about it and he’s waiting on an answer from a woman called Jodie in another department (so not the one I mention earlier)…….it then turns out that Jodie went on holiday without finding out the answer for the person in my team and didn’t leave it with anyone, so I write an email to her team manager. I get the response saying “Jodie is completely innocent in this situation,” and he escalated to my manager, who agrees with him.

IN WHAT FUCKING WORLD IS SHE INNOCENT WHEN SHE PROMISED MY TEAM-MATE AN ANSWER AND THEN WENT ON HOLIDAY WITHOUT PROVIDING IT, LEAVING THE CUSTOMER TO BE PISSED OFF?

By this time I had secured a part time job at a cinema chain, a job that my manager wanted me to not take despite the hours being part time and in the evening, away from my job at the energy company. I decide to call an end to my time with the energy company, one of, if not the poorest run company I have ever worked for and although I can't mention them by name, to give you a hint who they are they sponsored a football competition in the UK at the time.

October 23^rd – January 11^th – A new beginning but everything’s still a bit crap

So I’m now working for a cinema chain, which I did like but I can’t mention which chain it is due to an agreement I signed with them at the time….although technically there would be nothing stopping me, but it’s more out of respect.

I turn up for my first shift and the manager on that shift is a guy called Jamie who had done all my contracts (in other words, gettnig me to sign about 400 bits of paper....and that's me being roughly accurate, it's not an exaggeration), he shows me to the changing rooms, gives me my uniform and leaves me to it. In there is a guy called Jonjo, we have a brief conversation before I head down. Within 3 minutes of my shift Jamie comes up to me and says he didn’t photocopy my birth certificate correctly, meaning I couldn’t actually work that night. To be honest that was a blessing in disguise as it was the night that High School Musical 3 was released and it was crazily busy. I head back up and Jonjo’s still in there and says, and this made me laugh, “Had enough already?”

I do start the next night and despite it only being a part time job, I am quickly into doing full time hours, although I’m still looking for full time work. It was nice to have the change though. It was nice to be in a relatively pressure free role after being so stressed out at the energy company.. I quickly gain the reputation of doing stuff other people don't want to do though, such as going around the room where all the soft drinks are kept and cleaning it all....which given that it is very sticky and dirty, too bloody ages.



Jonjo (front) and Adam, two good friends that I
made whilst in Nottingham

 My first shift was quite good. I was trained by a guy called Adam and a girl called Emma. Adam would later become one of my best friends in Nottingham, whereas me and Emma got on reasonable well I thought. Their training techniques were VERY different. Adam's technique was "that's in there" and just pointed at a cupboard, Emma was very thorough. At first I got on with everything......the key part of that sentence being "at first."

At home things aren’t going great still and I’m now spending my weekends back in Lincoln with my parents. It was nice to be able to get away from that flat for a few days. They are constantly arguing with each other and me, and they just did my head in. The main reason I stayed in Lincoln over the weekends was that it just made it easier going to football, but any excuse to get away from that flat.

I tried to keep myself to myself in the flat, I spent most of my time looking for excuses to either go out or stay in my room altogether. It was just horrible being there and I did say to the landlord that I don't care about the cancellation fee, I wanted to move out, but the contract didn't have such a clause, which meant I was stuck.

With mainly working late on in the afternoon and evening, I was often home during the day alone with Roxanna. I try to be civil to her but she is just such a horrible, horrible person. There would be times when I would get home and she would be playing her music so loudly that you could hear it down the other end of the street, and I would be able to watch TV for a while, have a shower, have something to eat and then leave again without her even noticing because the music was so loud. She was horrible to live with because you could guarantee that if you got home late at night, within 5 minutes of closing your door she would be knocking on it.



The other view from the roof the flat



Me and Leesa do settle our differences eventually, which was cool. Me and Leesa had a very inconsistent friendship during our time in the flat together. When we got on well, we got on really well, but when we didn’t, it was like World War 3.

Meanwhile I have sorted out some temp work for during the days working for a telephone company, moving information from one system to another. It was easy work and easy money, I was effectively having 70 hour weeks but given that I didn’t have a social life at all, I didn’t mind. By this point I didn’t really know anyone in Nottingham that I didn’t know through either working with them or living with them, which was a shame. When you don’t know anyone in that situation then it’s hard because you don’t have anyone to talk to really.

I certainly wasn’t making myself popular at the cinema. At the time I was 24 and one of the oldest who did my specific job, and I just started getting fucked off by doing a lot of the work and then people taking the piss. For example, one person would consistently make an ice-blast (basically a slush-puppie) by “mistake” and then go into an area where you’re supposed to dump it…but he would drink it. I did say that he should be careful just incase a manager walks in, he ignored me. Then one day I just got fucked off at something happening so I told the managers what he was doing……a manager followed him into that little room and saw him drinking the ice-blast and sacked him near enough on the spot. Looking back I do feel bad about this.

I gain another full time job that isn’t temping and that is, are you ready for it?......fundraising on the street. Yep, I became one of those people who you see collecting for charities on the street. I was amazed that I was getting paid to do it but it didn’t last long…..a day and a half to be precise. I’ve never been comfortable talking to random people on the street, so I was never made out for a job like that and I quit.

Christmas soon comes and it’s nice to go and spend four days with my family, a welcome break if ever there was one.  I return after that time to find out that Roxanna had gone to Poland for Christmas to be with her family, brilliant news until I find out she had taken the key for the mail with her, meaning for two weeks we couldn’t get to our mail.

More temp jobs follow but I finally get offered another full time job, this time working for a computer software company, however, this certainly didn’t go as well as I had hoped and I was sacked after one day for apparently being “too arrogant”.

Roxanna returns to the flat and then after three days, at 2am in the morning, starts asking for money for the electricity. Now, it’s not unusual that she would want money for the electricity meter, afterall, it ran out quite quickly, but the rest of us did have our doubts whether she was actually contributing to the money into the meter or not, what was unusual was that it was 2am. We had money on the meter still and even if I gave her money then she would not be able to top it up until morning, so I said I’d get her some in the morning, but she was remarkably adamant I get some there and then. I said “I’ll get you some money for it but I am not going out at 2am after a 9 hour shift at work to get some money, it can wait until morning.”

January 12^th – April 30^th – Inconsistent feelings and several failed permanent jobs, but friends suddenly turn up

Skip forward to the next day after Roxanna is bizarrely adamant about the money and I go to work as normal, it’s a relatively normal day. I get home and I’m talking to William and he mentions that there were strange noises from Roxanna’s room all day but they haven’t heard anything for a while. I go and open the door, afterall, the bitch already hates me so what harm could opening the door do? What do you think greets me? A dead body? Her having sex? Her sleeping? No, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything had gone, she had left. DING DONG THE BITCH HAS GONE. I phoned up the landlord and he knew nothing about it, it turns out that she had done a runner and we never saw her again. I later found out that the landlords did eventually catch up to her and they sued her for the rest of the rent.....and more.

I was so fucking happy that night and when I say happy, you wouldn’t believe how happy I actually was. I phoned everyone I knew in Nottingham asking is they fancied coming around for a party. No-one took me up on it but I was so happy.

All of a sudden everything was rosey and despite the dodgy start, I was starting to make friends at the cinema chain and I was even invited on a few nights out but I got a bit ahead of myself and started trusting the wrong people. My time in Nottingham saw the disappearance of the last part of me that was willing to share certain pieces of personal information with people I barely knew.

Nottingham town centre
I'm quite pleased with this picture

Then one night at roughly the beginning of February I post a comment on Facebook about winning a competition quite comfortably at work. It was meant in a joking way to be fair but someone who I work with really didn’t take it very well at all. Whether she was drunk or not was anyone’s guess, but the next half an hour of my life was basically her telling me what a shit I was and it was stuff that really hit me a bit hard, but to be fair she did have a lot of good points.

I was all of a sudden very conscious of what I was saying and to whom. I don’t like offending people but it just happens, and slowly the people at the cinema time did start turning around and other than one self-important woman who looked like a female version of Harry Potter, but with a gap you could park a car in between her two front teeth, I got on with generally everyone there after that conversation with that one person.

Meanwhile at the flat things are going nicely without Roxanna there. Leesa is very rarely there these days as well, so for the majority of the time it’s just me and William, and although we got on, we didn’t really speak, so it was good. The odd person here and there moved in and out very quickly. Me and William did soon get into a major argument though as he kept on removing the fuses from various things such as the washing machine. I posted a rather abrupt letter on his door saying that he had no right to do one and it turns out that he thought I wasn’t contributing to the electricity, whereas the case was that because we weren’t topping up at the same time, we never knew the other had paid.

By now I had already had my heart set on moving back to Lincoln and was offered a job after doing some more temping. The job was working in sales for a newspaper’s advertising section. Now, I couldn’t sell a bottle of water to someone in the desert, that’s how bad I am at sales. It came as little surprise when I was asked to leave after four days after failing to sell a single bit of advertising space. I wasn’t that bothered to be honest, I was relieved in a way. I never actually got paid for my time working there and I am still chasing them up on it to this day.

I was quickly offered a temp job working for a driving company in Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham but again that didn’t work out well, although it was nice to be able to have a proper shower as they had a full on gym and shower system, which was nice. I was stationed with a guy called Chris who ended every single sentence with the word “sorry,” STOP FUCKING APOLOGISING! I left there after being offered a job working for a homecare company. Again, that didn’t last long. I was really struggling to hold down a job…..maybe I was just cut out for part time jobs and temping for the rest of my life.

Meanwhile there are lots of new starters at the cinema and all of a sudden I find I’ve become reasonably popular, I’m invited on nights out (not that I really do a lot on them as I’m not a going out type of person, but it was nice nevertheless) and I find myself getting close to some of the people I work with, including Becca, Melissa and Gina. I have good memories of all three of those.




 

Me, Todd (another good friend) and Becca.

My favourite memory of Becca was walking into a club on a night out and she was already in there. She ran over to me and jumped on me and hugged me. It was nice to have someone pleased to see me, it doesn’t happen often.  Me and Becca got on really well but we grew apart after I left Nottingham and she moved off to the States.

I have two outstanding memories of Melissa. The first is how she got you to write a name, a number and a place on a bit of paper and put it in your pocket. She would then guess them correctly first time, every single time, it was freaky. And then there was one time when she and my friend Richard got into a big argument  after he called her a retard in front of customers.....and I was asked to go and sort it all out (lucky me). We shared a good conversation. We haven't really spoken since I left Nottingham.

And then finally Gina. Gina was awesome, we got on really way and we decided to go and watch Final Destination 4 together and I’ve never known anything to laugh so heavily whilst people were getting killed on the screen.

These three girls were awesome and helped change my opinion on the people of Nottingham. What was even more bizarre was that one a night out at one point they invited me into the female changing rooms to talk to them whilst they were getting ready and whilst they were about to change clothes, I said “Well I’ll leave the room now so you can get ready properly” and they said “no, it’s fine, you can stay if you want.” I left anyway because I didn’t feel comfortable doing that.

I am then asked to help train new starters by the new General Manager, who I got on with quite well, and I start to train a new girl called Kirstie, whom it turns out was the sister of someone who I worked with at the energy company. To say I was being thorough was an understatement and although I was praised by the managers for that approach, the other members of staff could only laugh as I was quite clearly overloading this poor girl's head with more information than any one person could ever need on their first day.

May 1^st – July 4^th – The end is coming

So I’m now in my final few months of living in Nottingham and I’ve sorted out accommodation for when I move back to Lincoln. I’m slowly moving stuff back and a week off from work, both temporary and part time, means I have a great chance to pack up my stuff properly, which was a good thing.

With just over a month to go I get a phone call from my landlord saying that they have had an offer for our flat from a family of six from Russia. Leesa has already moved out by now so it’s just me and William and both of our tenancy agreements were coming to an end. He says that they are willing to move me into another flat within the building as they have a spare room in another flat. This flat would be the same price as before, but with all bills included and only two people in there already. I decide to take him up on the offer…..and packing all the rest of my stuff and moving it into the other building took literally all night. I was shattered.

So there I am in my new flat with a girl from Mexico who’s name completely eludes me, and Neema. To be honest I never really had a proper conversation with either of them, but both were quite nice and they were pleasant enough to spend my remaining time in Nottingham with.

However, at this time it is FUCKING BOILING and swine flu is going around…..and guess who catches it. Heat and swine flu was not a pleasant combination and I felt absolutely destroyed, especially as there was no wind at all to get some air into the flat. I struggled to get to the nearby Asda and I was hoping there would be some air-con units there…..nope, all gone.

When I do eventually get back to being healthy I am offered a job working for Vodafone. I told my temp agency about this and they stopped finding me jobs, so for a month I was just on wages from the cinema, which was ok. I liked having time during the days to myself, being able to wake up and whatever time I wanted because the chances of me sleeping until 6pm were very slim to say the least.

Me with a hook-a-duck prize that I won by cheating

I was still getting on really well with my other staff members, other than the car-park teethed Harry Potter who I mentioned earlier, and me and three of the staff go to Alton Towers and have an awesome time, but again I got really ill after this, but it was followed by a good night.

By now I am actually really enjoying being in Nottingham but it was already too late, I was already committed to going back to Lincoln, which was a shame. I am loving living in the city and I am regretting that I can’t stay, but oh well, too late now.

July 4^th finally comes around and my year is up. It was a year that started off badly but got really good in the final few months. I won’t go as far as saying I would love to move back there, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.

And finally, a video I made of the flat that I lived in for the majority of the time in Nottingham. This was recorded in around March 2009......it looks weird having long hair. Please also note that my room is a bit of a mess in this.

SO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Well I moved back to Lincoln and started working for Vodafone and that became my longest serving job by quite some way. I still kept my job at the cinema for a while but the commute just became too much with the day job, which was a shame as I did like working there.

I haven't seen or spoken to William or Roxanna since leaving Nottingham. I would like to get contact with William though, but if I search for his actual name on Facebook (Sie Wie Wong, but he had used William for some unknown reason) you wouldn't believe how many came up. I did briefly see Leesa at one point outside of Rock City but haven't seen her in a long time. I don't keep in contact with anyone from the energy company anymore, although if I ever saw the ones I like then I would have said hello.

I still go back to Nottingham on a semi-regular basis and do still see some of my old friends, but as most of them were at college age when I knew them, most moved away to university.

I look back on my time in Nottingham as the time my life changed. I am a far different person than I was before I lived in Nottingham and it's bizarre that other than Marinda, who was my best friend at the time, I can't really recall any interaction I had with any of the other friends that I've had since before I moved to Nottingham that I still have, which is quite bizarre

35 days in.....25 pounds down

Hello all.

Word to your relevant mother-ships (random quote a friend once said to me, I have no idea what it means but I assume it means that I hope all is well).

As many of you know, I have been on a diet recently, as well as getting in exercise. This has resulted in a bit of ridicule from people and people eating cake right in front of my face.

Now, for those of you who aren't from the UK, I can assure you this is actually quite normal for Brits to do. It's really hard to explain but the British do have this trait where if you're trying to achieve something, such as weight lot, other Brits will rub it in your face that they can have something and you can't. In this case, because I'm only having healthy foods (natural yoghurts, fruit, etc), I can't enjoy the sweet stuff such as cakes, despite how much I want to.

I've struggled at times to keep myself from eating food such as cakes, sweets, etc, but as you can tell by the graph on the right, it is certainly working.

35 days into my diet (the X axis), I am 25 pounds down on my original weight and that is coming up on half way to my goal of getting down to 200 pounds. I had originally targeted getting down to 200 pounds by my birthday (September), but at the rate I'm losing weight, I am going to be at 200 pounds long before then.

Now before someone asks, yes, I have still been eating and I have been consuming a good number of calories, but the difference is that I'm being sensible with what I eat. I'm still nibbling on food for most of the day, but now what I'm nibbling isn't sweets, cakes or other such foods, now I'm nibbling fruit, yoghurts, etc. For example, I might just eat a 500g natural yoghurt and there's enough of that to fill my stomach, meaning I won't be hungry for more food, but given that it's only 315 calories for the entire pot, I don't put on a lot of weight by doing it......but imagine how much chocolate I would be able to fit into the same space....and how many more calories that is. That's how I've done it.

I do feel great at the moment. My legs and back don't hurt when I'm walking anymore, I have much more mental clarity and I am just happier with my body as a whole. Although I'm obviously not going to be able to run any marathon's anytime soon, I do feel much better and I am not constantly putting my own body under scrutiny. Granted, I'm still not thin, not even close, but at least I now feel reasonably health.

There are other benefits to doing this diet as well. Now I'm fitting into clothes a hell of a easier than I did before, so much to the point where I might even have to start wearing a belt at some point. It's nice to have clothes that were quite tight on me a few months ago fitting quite nicely now. My work attire is usually black trousers and a black t-shirt, the t-shirt was snug a few months ago, and not very flattering, but now it's loose, and it just feels a bit better.

So yeah, that's it really.

My Five Favourite Films

Hello all

Well yesterday I decided to share with you five films I loved that I didn't think anyone would have seen. One or two people have thought that meant that I was effectively saying "I'm better than you because I've seen these films," that is not the case at all.

So whilst I'm on the subject of films, I figured I would talk about my five favourite films, the films I could watch over and over again.

WILLOW (1988)

CAST : Val Kilmer, Warwick Davis, Joanne Whalley and Jean Marsh

I have never really been that into Star Wars. I do like Star Wars but I've never seen the obsession that some people have with it......this was George Luca's follow up project to that.

I was 4 when Willow came out and must have seen it at around the time as I can't remember the first time that I ever saw it, but I know that it's been my favourite film for a long time.

Willow is about a farmer from a village of a race called the Nelwyn's (basically a race of dwarves, midgets, whatever you want to call them). His children discover a baby from the race of Daikini's (basically average sized humans) and after their village is attacked by beasts looking for the baby, they decide to take her to the Daikini's. Willow stays with the baby after the rest go back home and ends up having to protect the baby from a witch called Bavmorda, who's destiny is to die because of the baby, although she'll do anything to prevent that.

This film has everything I like. It's got a decent storyline, is a great mix of several genres (adventure, comedy, romance, action, etc), has some stunningly beautiful settings and it's just a film that has stuck with me for all of these years. There's sword fights, a two headed dragon thingy and a scene of Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis going down a mountain on nothing but a shield.

I may not watch this film that often but at the age of 27, I still love it as much as I did when I was a kid. There has often been talk of either a remake or a sequel, and I sincerely hope that happens.

FIGHT CLUB (1999)

Main Cast : Ed Norton, Brad Pitt, Helen Botham-Carter, Jared Leto and Meatloaf.

I'm about to break rules one and two (anyone who has seen the film will get that joke).

I first heard of this film in around 2001 from a friend, who subsequently told me everything that happened. This meant that when I did see it, the massive twist didn't hit me like it would do a lot of people, but I still loved the film. I liked the film so much that I even bought the book and at the time of writing, that was the last book I read from front to back......and that was in 2005.

For those who don't know about Fight Club, you're missing out. I can't really reveal too much without giving it all away but the general gist of the film is that an unnamed office worker (Norton) can't sleep, starts going to support groups of random diseases (that he obviously doesn't have) before meeting Tyler Durden (Pitt). Together they start a club....called Fight Club funnily enough. Eventually it turns into a terrorist outfit, all happening whilst Norton's character is having a bizarre relationship with a woman called Marla Singer (Botham-Carter).

Fight Club is one of those films which sticks with you. You remember the quotes without trying and you could even easily start living your life by some of them. It is a brilliant film. The acting is fantastic, the twist at the end of is awesome, the look and feel of the film is very suited and the fights aren't shown for the sake of having fights, they are shown to be having fights for good reasons.

REC (2007)

Main Cast : Manuela Velasco

Before I start saying why I love this film, I must say that this has since been remade by the Americans into a film called Quarantine. WATCH REC INSTEAD. REC is far, far better than Quarantine.

I surprise myself by including a foreign language film into my list of top five films as I'm not usually that big on non-English films, so much to the point where Rec and Rec 2 are the only foreign language films I would watch on a regular basis.

Anyway, REC is a Spanish horror film about a TV crew that goes into an apartment building. After one of the fire crew they are with gets attacked by a resident, they are suddenly locked into the building from the outside and anyone trying to get out is killed instantly. It turns out that the woman has been infected with a disease that turns her into a zombie-like creature and eventually more of the residents turn into this zombie-type things.

That may sound like something you've heard before but the difference between this film and others that may sound like it is that this is actually quite tense and jumpy, which I don't usually say about horror films.

The cast is excellent and I applaud the makers of the film for choosing a real life TV personality for their choice as host of the TV show in the film, it brings that sense of realism to the performance.

THE THING (1982)

MAIN CAST : Kurt Russell, Keith Childs. 

The Thing is probably one of the most simple concepts you can get for a film. It doesn't try and be clever, it doesn't try and give an important message, all it tries to do is creep you out, and that's what it does.

The plot of The Thing is that a group of scientists discover an alien in the Antarctic. It turns out that this alien can perfectly mimic anyone and as it's killing off the scientists and replicating itself (all of screen), the rest of them are left to get paranoid about which of them are human and which aren't. They all start turning against each other.

This film sparked a prequel in 2011 that wasn't actually that awful, but is nothing compared to this film.

A cast of largely unknown actors (other than Russell and Childs, who have both enjoyed good careers in Hollywood) performs very well and each puts across the feeling of paranoia exceptionally well. There's not one poor performer in the cast, which is very unusual. My one complaint is that you never really get to know any of the characters, none even have their first name revealed (they're all only refered to by their surnames).

Although this isn't scary, the concept is very interesting.

300 (2006)

Main Cast : Gerard Butler, David Wenham, Vincent Regan and Rodrigo Santoro.

Now this may surprise some of you. I talk in all my film related blogs about how characters develop, how intelligent the films are and stuff that like......and yet you don't really get ANY of that in 300.

300 is about as violent as violent gets. Arms being severed, heads being cut off, spears being impaled on people, it's just violence, violence, violence for 117 minutes.

For those who are not familiar with 300, basically it's about the ancient Greek country of Sparta and the impending invasion from Persia. Spartan law means they can't go to war unless either the king dies or the oracle decrees it, but given that the oracles are being paid off by the Persians, it means they can't go to war. In response Kings Leonidas (Butler) goes for what he describes as a walk with his 300 strong protection, in other words he has found his way around the law. They go and defend the country from the invasion and do well due to their organisation, whereas the Persians are gung-ho with their approach.

You won't get brilliant acting in this film but what you do get is 117 minutes of FUN, and that's what some movies forget, it's supposed to be fun when going to watch some films at the cinema. Also this film does what not a lot of films do and gets the small details in. For example, when you've got a slow motion of Leonidas impaling someone with his sword and then choping their leg off, you can still see other stuff going on in the background, and you don't get that very often, most films would just close in on Leonidas only.

As I say, I'm not going to pretend it's a clever or intelligent film, but it does what it's supposed to do, and the closing speech is simply awesome, spin-chilling infact. I've put the speech as the second video below.

Five films I love that you've probably never heard of

Hello all

As many of you know I am a keen film watcher and I want to recommend five films to you that you've probably never even heard of......so here it goes....

THE OPPOSITE OF SEX (1998)

Cast : Christina Ricci, Lisa Kudrow, Martin Donovan, Ivan Sergei and Johnny Galecki.

The Opposite Sex is a black comedy about a 16 year old school student who's step father dies (something which she is delighted by) and she goes to see her half-brother, a gay teacher. Whilst staying with him, she seduces his apparantly gay boyfriend and after a while reveals she is pregnant. Throughout the rest of the film she uses all of those around her but is the anti-hero type, you can't help but feel on her side.

Meanwhile, there are several mini-stories going on with all the other characters, including her half-brother getting blackmailed by a gay former student of his.

There are many reasons I like this film.

Now, the next thing I'm going to say will surprise many as it's not the thing I usually say, either in my blog or in life in general, but Christina Ricci is fucking hot in this film. This look REALLY suits her and she plays her character extremely well.

The interconnecting stories are interesting and other than Ricci, the star of the show has to be Lisa Kudrow, who successfully plays a character who is so far gone from anything else you've ever seen her in.

AT FIRST SIGHT (1999)

Cast : Val Kilmer, Mira Sorvino, Kelly McGillis

What's this? A love story? Why yes, yes it is. However, it's not just a love story, there is far more about it that just being a love film.

It's about a woman who goes on holiday and meets a blind man. They fall in love and then they discover an operation that will give the character sight, and then the film gets into a different feel and type of film. You begin to realise that simply giving a blind man sight wouldn't be enough, because the formerly blind man can't read non-braille and therefore can't even fill in application forms for jobs.

It's an interesting film in that sense, as well as a good love story, which is something I don't normally like.

I've always been a fan of Val Kilmer and he is excellent in this role, whereas Mira Sorvino is nothing special, but they work as a pair, they are believable, which is something that not a lot of on-screen couples actually achieve.

It may not be to a lot of people's tastes, but there is so much more to it than just a simple love story.

BRONSON (2009)

Cast : Tom Hardy

I was working at a cinema when this came out and they refused to show this because they wanted to be seen as a family cinema (that despite showing numerous horrors, violence and similar type films). Luckily another cinema across the city was showing it.

There's no real need to go into a full on description of what the film is about. It's basically a film about the life of infamous British prisoner, Charles Bronson. It follows his journey from childhood to being one of the best known prisoners on the planet.

Bronson is an interesting film to say the last. Obviously made on a low budget because of it's poor production value, that doesn't stop it from being intriguing but there is one particular reason why this film is awesome, Tom Hardy.

I had liked Hardy from his first appearance as a clone of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek Nemesis, and I am delighted that he is now becoming quite famous as his talent deserves it. His performance in this film is simply extra-ordinary. He carries an entire film on his own and it's hard to put into words just how awesome his performance is, so I won't try.

TORMENTED (2009)

Cast : Alex Pettyfer, Tom Hopper, Tuppence Middleton.

I'm a big fan of British horror films and this is often a film I recommend if I am telling my friends about British horror.

The story revolves around a gang in school who bully a kid to the point of suicide. The kid then comes back as a ghost and starts killing them all off one by one.

Pettyfer has since gone on to star in Hollywood films such as Beastly and In Time, this was his first decent role after Stormbreaker (which I never saw) and he is excellent as the main bully. His self-obsessed friends are played excellent by their respective actors and some of the deaths are excellent, with the death of Sophie being particularly amusing.

I have no major complaints about this film and although I've only seen it about 4 times, I consider it to be probably my favourite British horror film, which is something pretty special given the other films on that list.

ZEROPHILIA (2006)

CAST : Taylor Handley, Kyle Schmid, Gina Bellman

This is a film where I don't know anyone else who has seen it, which is a shame as it's an interesting concept for a film.

Basically a guy loses his virginity in the woods and it activates a gene which means that whenever he gets aroused, he changes sex, which of course leads to some interesting situations. He struggles to deal with it at first, especially when his female form starts falling for a guy, at which point he struggles to decide whether he then wants to be a man or a woman.

This film is a hidden gem and it's an interesting concept because although very few men want to be women and vice-versa, being the other gender, even briefly, could change your entire perspective on everything and you might end up surprising yourself.

With some excellent music through, as well as a strong performance from a relatively unknown cast, this is an excellent film that I would recommend.