The Random Blogger

Working with a couple of customers recently has reminded me how fascinated I am with people, and how they behave.

These two particular customers are sort of related in a soap opera kind of way – one is the brother of a girl who is pregnant by the other customer’s son, who lives across the hall from the first customer’s ex-girlfriend, if you’re still with me.

They’re in and out of each other’s apartments all day long, and from the background noise that you can hear (and can’t ignore) when you’re on the phone with one of the two, life seems to be one long round of total chaos: there are multiple conversations going on, the TV’s on too, there are dogs barking, and (more…)

I’ve never enjoyed the physical act of writing, and this goes back to my early years in boarding school, when we were made to write with the old-fashioned dip pens and real ink. (I know, this dates me!)

Being a left-handed writer, this meant that I always had an ink stain on my left hand, as it blotted what I had just written, or my writing was illegible as I tried to avoid the first issue.

I also used to dislike intensely any writing-based activities at school, such as essays. Maybe it was because the subject matter was given to us, or maybe it was because I hadn’t come to appreciate the feeling that writing can give you.

Anyway, I welcomed the advent of (more…)

These words were favourites of my house master, back in the days when I was at boarding school, whenever he spotted some unlucky pupil who wouldn’t eat part of his school meal.

Given the generally low standard of food – they could even mess up the simplest of meals – then these words were heard quite often, and they were, I have to confess, directed at me on more than one occasion too.

I always did resent this phrase, as it had struck me from an early age that there were some foods that I simply did not like for reasons I couldn’t explain.

I’ve often wondered, since then, why (more…)

I’ve written previously about my “internal jukebox”, and usually speaking, these songs / tunes that play in my head only do so for a few hours at most.

So, what is it about the latest song that has allowed it to embed itself in my mind for about five days now, to the exclusion of all other music?

What is the song?

Well, it’s called (more…)

I know I’m not the only person to notice this, but now that I’m middle-aged (nearly 50, as I write this), it really does seem like time has speeded up considerably.

There are never enough hours in the day (although frequent naps caused by our crazy life style, such as providing 24 x 7 hour phone support to our customers, may not help), and it’s got to the point when I sometimes don’t even know (more…)

It was when I remembered, momentarily, that today had been a big day for me many years ago, that it got me thinking about life in general. (The event in question, the full details of which are sort of irrelevant to this post, was when I proposed to my first wife.)

Many people would call that day “auspicious” or “significant”, because the things we do actually do happen on one specific date – you don’t, for example, propose to somebody across a time span of several days, as “popping the question” takes a few seconds at most.

But was it really that particular day that was (more…)

Like many people (I hope), I often have music playing inside my head. It may be a favourite song, or the theme tune from a movie, or it may be a catchy but usually irritating chorus from some TV ad.

I’ve often stopped to wonder, though why specific songs or tunes are selected by what appears to be some form of internal jukebox (like an organic version of an iPod Shuffle).

Sometimes, it may be a song I’ve not heard for over 20 or 30 years, and, as far as I can tell, not anything I’ve even thought about recently.

I accept that one of the features of the human brain that still makes it so much more powerful than the computer is its amazing ability to (more…)

They say you can tell a lot about a person by their taste in all sorts of things, such as books, movies, people, cars, food, and music, to name but a few.

If that is the case, then I’ve often wondered what my tastes say about me.

You see, in almost all of the examples I list above, the things I enjoy (more…)

Now that Christmas Day has been and gone for yet another year, I reflect on the fact that in my new life, thousands of miles from my place of birth and residence for over 40 years, I don’t miss the “festivities” one single bit!

As a child, my main recollection of Christmas Day was being dragged around to see a seemingly infinite number of “aunts”, some of whom were family and some of whom were not, which was particularly boring.

And although we did many of the things that you’re meant to do at this time of year, I always felt (more…)

The older I get, the more I feel I have in common with grumpy old men, the most well-known of whom has to be Victor Meldrew from the very popular One Foot In The Grave sit-com, although I am also reminded of the TV series of the same name, that was also both funny and sad at the same time.

I’m not sure whether the younger generation really (more…)