Bopping with the Quo

Have you ever had mornings when it's all just too much effort? When you just don't want to be wherever you've got to go, and gravity keeps dragging you back into bed? When even opening your eyes is a bit beyond you?

Yeah, me too. There used to be coffee, but I'm decaf now. But there is another answer - Status Quo.

It's easy, you just switch on the CD player, and wait. And soon, you'll be starting to move (on a particularly bad day, this may just be a gentle nodding of the head). Once the music really kicks in, you'll be bopping through your early morning routine. You won't be able to help yourself - it even works on somebody like me, with no natural rhythm. (Careful with the kettle, though, bad things can happen!)

And when you leave the house, you'll have a little extra spring in your step. Guaranteed.

Parklife

Here's something that always makes me smile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIEsmGzo2UE&ob=av2e

DVD Box Sets

Do you remember the old days, when the best you could get was a video cassette with three selected episodes from a TV series? Remember how it always left you wanting more? Or remember the even older days, when you’d see something once, and then hope that maybe they’d repeat it one day?

Not any more. Now you can have every single episode of a series at your fingertips. And extras, probably. Maybe even out-takes. What more could a mildly obsessive TV watcher ask for?

And if you’re prepared to exercise a bit of patience, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune, either. From a combination of charity shops and second hand shops, I managed to get the first four series of ‘The X Files’ for about £20. That’s one episode every day for three months, at a cost of 25p per episode.

I’m also expanding my appreciation of 90s cult TV, by giving in to a friend’s recommendation and taking a look at ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. It’s good stuff – always trust your friends. ‘Buffy’ has a lot to answer for, though – specifically, those endless shelves of ‘Dark Romance’ books in every bookshop you come across. (Dark Romance? I suppose that ‘Bitey Boyfriends’ wouldn’t sound cool enough?)

Also, DVD box sets are great for a nostalgia trip. For years, I couldn’t even get anybody to believe that there used to be a kids programme called ‘Mary, Mungo and Midge’, about a girl, her dog and her mouse. Now, I can sit them down and show them a couple of episodes.

Although, to be honest, that’s not on DVD, it’s on a video I got for 25p in a charity shop. That’s another great thing about DVDs – thanks to them, you can now pick up videos for next to nothing!

Making Food

The foods I'm thinking about are bread and yoghurt. I have to admit, I do mine the easy way, with a bread maker and a yoghurt maker. They can be made with an oven and a thermos flask, but I suspect that this would require more skill and judgment than I've got, food-wise.

The big plus is that you know what's going into your food. When I started making bread I followed the instructions to the letter, and the amount of salt and sugar I was using was incredible. By cutting it way down, my bread was tasting much better, and was also way healthier.

And then, having mastered the basics, you can start to tinker. Examples - for a healthier yoghurt I use lactose-free milk, and if I want it thicker I put more yoghurt in the mix. So, healthier food, made to your own specifications. Couldn't be better!

And then there are the add-on benefits. There really isn't much to beat the smell of baking breads. And there's something oddly soothing about stirring a pan of milk. Partly the motion, partly the smell, partly the need to slow down while you're doing it. Just don't let it boil over though - there's nothing restful about that!

MP3 Player Shuffle Function

You know, when you’re listening to the radio, the buzz you get when they play a much-loved song that you haven’t heard for ages? Well, this is the 21^st Century version of that. Seriously, I think that this could be technology’s finest moment.

Just think about it – I have an 8GB MP3 player, which holds about 2000 songs. With an average song length of 3 ½ minutes, it would take almost 5 solid days to listen to them back to back. And mine is quite a small player by modern standards… so it’s inevitable that there are going to be songs on there that you haven’t heard for ages, possibly even years.

But how can you even go looking for a song, when you don’t know which song you really want to hear? Simple – let the technology bring it to you. It’s uncanny, with the amount of choice available, how often the player will pick exactly the song that you want, or need, to hear at that moment.

And there’s nothing quite like a favourite song, heard unexpectedly, to bring back a flood of happy memories, from the time when it became important to you. You can’t get that if you actively search out a song – but you can if you switch on your MP3 player, activate the shuffle function, and then just wait for a happy accident to happen.

Little Victories

I'll explain what brought this one to mind - I've owned, for about a year, a raincoat that folds up into its' own pocket, and today, for the first time ever, I managed to get it folded into that pocket. And sad though it may be, it gave me a small feeling of triumph.

So that's what I'm talking about - the small, pointless, meaningless things that nonetheless make you feel good when you achieve them. When I was a kid I was never able to master the yo-yo, but when I tried it again as an adult, I finally got it!

Life can be full of these - fooling someone with a magic trick, getting your sandwich ingredients just right, finding the perfect birthday card for a friend...

Like I said, small and pointless little things - they won't change your life, but they may make you smile for a bit.

Fat Free Raspberry Iced Smoothie Lollies

I don’t think I really need to say any more, do I?

Queen's Park Football Club

There are lots of reasons to love Queen’s Park. Partly it’s their quirkiness – they are the only amateur club playing at senior level in Britain. Partly it’s the surrealism – watching a home game in a stadium with 52,500 seats, 52,000 of which are empty, is a pretty strange experience. But it’s also because of their past – for this club is, quite simply, one of the most important clubs in the history of football.

They are the oldest club in Scotland (and didn’t concede a goal for the first 8 years of their existence). By playing exhibitions in various locations, they spread the game throughout Scotland. For example, a match they played in Edinburgh led directly to Hearts being formed. And the excitement caused by an exhibition match they played in Belfast led to the formation of Cliftonville, Ireland’s first club, and shortly afterwards the formation of the Irish Football Association.

The organisation of football in Scotland was down to Queen’s Park. They wrote to other clubs suggesting a cup competition, and inviting donations for the purchase of a trophy. And it was at their instigation that a meeting was called to form the Scottish Football Association.

In the earliest days of organised football, there were several different sets of rules, and Queen’s Park developed the rules that were used in Scotland. They were responsible for the inclusion of crossbars, free kicks, half-time breaks and two-handed throw-ins in a unified set of rules.

In fact, these different sets of rules cost Queen’s Park the honour of winning the English FA Cup. In 1884 they lost the final 2-1 to Blackburn Rovers, but had two goals disallowed for offside. If the offside rule had been interpreted as it was in Scotland, both goals would have stood. (In addition, the referee later admitted he hadn’t allowed another, perfectly good, goal for Queen’s Park, because nobody had appealed for it).

Queen’s Park built Hampden Park in 1903. For almost half a century it was the biggest sports stadium in the world, and still holds all the major attendance records in Europe. It also continued Queens’ Park’s tradition for innovation, as it was the first stadium to use turnstiles, crush barriers, a tannoy system, and to have a car park attached to it. It also hosted the world’s first ever all-ticket match.

But beyond even all this, there are two main reasons why Queen’s Park are so important to the history of football.

Firstly, they organised the first ever international match, between Scotland and England in Glasgow in 1872. The Scotland team contained 11 Queen’s Park players, and played in their colours of dark blue shirts and white shorts. Scotland adopted these colours, and Queen’s Park changed to their famous, and frankly superb, colours of narrow black and white hoops.

Queen’s Park also provided the world’s first ever black international footballer – Andrew Watson, who played 3 times for Scotland in 1881 and 1882.

Secondly, and possibly even more importantly, they invented passing. No, seriously, they did! In the early days of kick and rush, Queen’s Park were the first team to develop a game based on passing. It was the greatest innovation in the history of the game.

So think on this – when your opponents’ shot comes back off the crossbar, when your team manages to hold out until half time, when you win a game with a well worked free kick; when you cheer on your country in the World Cup, or enjoy watching Arsenal or Manchester United running rings round the opposition, just remember who you owe it all to – those wise old men of Queen’s Park.

Vegetarian Options

At the end of last year, I decided that I should make a few changes, start living a bit more healthily. One of the changes I made was to cut down on red meat. Boy, was that a good decision!

It had become almost second nature, when eating out on a weekend morning, to order a full English. I hardly bothered to even look at the rest of the menu, but now I take the time to see what else is on offer.

Well, it’s been a revelation. The café in the village has a fantastic vegetarian option – replacing the meat with grilled vegetables and tomato salsa. And the local garden centre offers mushrooms and hash browns.

When we were on holiday recently, the B&B made their own vegetarian sausages. Absolutely lovely, they were, even if a little heavy on the cheese for my taste.

And at home – vegetable casseroles, nut cutlets, bean burgers, lots of pasta options – there’s a whole world of flavours out there, just waiting to be discovered. And I’m delighted to have started – I wish I’d done it years ago!

Louise Wener

I reckon that Louise Wener is cool, and it’s my blog! In my world, anyway, Louise Wener is cool.

Reason one: she was the singer in a much under-rated nineties band, Sleeper. They are well worth checking out on YouTube. In particular, have a look for Inbetweener, What Do I Do Now?, and Statuesque – but be aware, miming is not one of her particular talents. Her autobiography, Different For Girls, is an excellent account of life within Britpop. We’ll be coming back to Britpop at a later date.

And then, when the hits dried up, she started writing novels. There’s no prizes for guessing where she found the inspiration for her first, Goodnight Steve McQueen, the story of a man and his band trying to make it in the music business.

Her following books – The Big Blind and The Half Life Of Stars – both feature well-drawn characters and strong relationships between characters. The Big Blind is about poker, and The Half Life Of Stars follows a woman’s search for her missing brother.

I would strongly recommend any of these books as a good read – sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always enjoyable - and if you’re lucky, you might be able to pick one up at your local library!

Happy Accidents

What I’m thinking about here, particularly, is finding a good book or a good author by accident. Sometimes it’s easy – my ex-colleagues Alison and Lois used to put together brilliant book displays, and I found load of good books that way. Or it can be systematic – I’ve heard of one library user who chooses books thus: male author beginning with A, female author beginning with B, and so on…

But it always feels better when it’s a genuine accident. I’ll give you an example – I got an email from someone querying a fact in an article I’d written for a local history database (we were both right, as it happens – but he was more right than I was). Anyway, I knew his name as someone who had written a book on the World Cup, so I tried to find it in the library (to nitpick it, if I’m honest). Instead, I discovered that he had written a novel. I decided to read it, and I loved it. I passed it on to friends, who also loved it. His name is Cris Freddi and the book is Pelican Blood – try it.

Oh, but there’s lots of ways to do it – there’s a cool picture on the cover,  he’s the son of your favourite author (Adam Lively, son of Penelope – The Burnt House is worth a read), it’s on the shelf next to the book you’re actually looking for (seriously, this has worked!).

Or here’s a good one – when you discover that the singer in a band you like has started writing novels. Sometimes, that singer can go on to become one of your favourite authors. I’ll tell you who I’m talking about next time.

Hey – my first cliffhanger!

Nature Reserves

I'm lucky, I have a small, peaceful nature reserve within walking distance of home. It's a great place to walk round, you don't often meet a lot of people there. In fact, there are times when you are in complete silence, apart from birdsong and the unexplained rustling in the undergrowth. It's a place where you can relax almost totally.

And there are occasional magical moments - when you come across a heron fishing, or hear the sound of a cuckoo, or find yourself amidst a haze of blue damselflies. At the risk of sounding pretentious, it's great to have a place where you can just take pleasure in the world around you.

I love taking a book, or a camera, and spending some quality time down there, but even a brisk walk around the reserve, which can be done inside half an hour, leaves me feeling a whole lot more relaxed than I was when I went in.

Playing darts

About a couple of years ago I got a dartboard for the garage. It's not set up at the correct height, and I don't throw from the correct distance, but that's not the point - I'm not in training for a competition, I'm doing it purely for fun. At it's most basic, it's something to do with my hands while I listen to my MP3 player, or at a stretch it's a very gentle exercise regime - at least, it gets me moving around after tea, rather than settling down in front of the telly.

It's kind of like yoga for the Scottish male, in that the more relaxed you are, the better you throw. So it benefits mind and body - as long as you don't pull a muscle punching the air when you get your first 180!

Welcome to my blog!

Hi, good to see you. First things first, I should explain what this is going to be about.

I'm on the verge of being made redundant, so I'll have a bit of time on my hands, and I thought I'd use some of it to start a blog. I thought about doing a 'coping with redundancy' blog, but there are people out there already doing it better than I could, so I thought again.

And I decided - why not do a blog about the little things you can do to make your day that bit better. So here it is. And now I've got to think of one. Or rather, I've got to decide where to start. I'll get back to you on that...

Until next time...